The truth of it settles into me, cold and hard and undeniable.
I've spent years judging men like Nash from the comfort of a heated university office, eating my soy bars and pretending that my hands were clean because I didn't pull the trigger. But my hands aren't clean. My "hands-off" philosophy, the one that lets nature take its cruel course, is just violence in slow motion, passive and indifferent.
Nash's way is harder. It requires blood. It requires looking death in the eye. But it's honest. And looking at this graveyard of a clearing, kinder, I think. Kinder than what most of us do.
"Can we help them?" I ask, already knowing.
"We can't feed them," Nash says. "Their digestive systems have already shut down. Even if we gave them hay, they couldn't process it."
"So we just leave them?"
Nash is silent. He looks at the fallen bull, then at his rifle scabbard on the sled.
"We leave them," he says, and I hear what it costs him. "We don't have enough ammo to put them all down, and we can't risk the noise drawing the pack to us. And … it's not our place. The wolves need to eat too."
"The wolves," I repeat. "The pack that's hunting us."
"Yeah. This herd is a buffet for them. It might keep them occupied for a few days. Buy us some time."
It's a brutal, pragmatic calculation. It makes me sick. And it makes perfect sense.
"Okay," I say. I turn away from the clearing, unable to look at the calf anymore. "Let's go. Please."
We walk away in silence. I don't look back, but the smell of the sick herd follows me for miles.
We camp early that evening, finding a spot near a frozen waterfall where the ice creates a natural windbreak. The mood is somber. The playful energy from the shooting lesson is gone, replaced by the heavy reality of what we saw.
Nash sets up the stove. He pulls out a vacuum-sealed bag from the food crate. It's dark red meat, venison steaks, flash-frozen and kept cold by the ambient temperature.
He usually cooks this when I'm busy with data, or he eats it quickly while I stick to my stroganoff. He's been careful not to push it on me since that first night.
He puts the meat in the pan. The smell of searing protein fills the air, rich, iron-heavy, wild.
Usually, I'd wrinkle my nose and make a comment about "Bambi." I'd eat my processed noodles and feel superior.
Tonight, my stomach growls. A deep, primal demand.
I watch Nash flip the steak. He cooks it simply: salt, pepper, a little dried rosemary. He treats the meat with that samereverence I noticed with the fish. He doesn't waste it. He honors it.
He plates it for himself and reaches for the bag of freeze-dried pasta for me.
"Nash," I say.
He stops, holding the bag. "Yeah?"
"I don't want the noodles."
He looks at me, surprised. "You want the rice instead? We have the teriyaki?—"
"I want the meat."
The silence stretches between us, filled only by the hiss of the camp stove.
Nash slowly lowers the pasta bag. He studies my face, looking for … what? A challenge? A trick?
"It's venison," he says. "Sitka Black-tail. From the fall."
"I know."
