Last Rites: A Short Story About Death and Life

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The old man slid his pack off his shoulders, and the sudden weightlessness nearly toppled him. He forced his tight mouth into a twisted smile, relishing the lightness that came as much from being surrounded once again by a wilderness he had somehow come to believe was home as from dropping his pack. The old man leaned his 30.06 against an aspen tree. He leaned there too. Loam, the smell of death and life together tinged his nostrils. The shadows of ancient but familiar aspens crisscrossed the abandoned campsite. Placing his broad, bony hands on his trembling thighs, he dragged air into his lungs. He had not felt his heart thunder like this in many years, too many. He was back, finally.

Straightening, he wiped sweat from his face. His weathered skin sagged on his face like bark losing its grip on a tree. He felt as ancient as the surrounding aspens. Once tall, he was now bent from facing life’s too stiff wind. He inhaled hard. Thin, sharp air knifed into his shallow lungs. He pounded his chest. His lungs and shrunken left leg had fought him every step up the trail. But he had mastered it. Nothing to brag about, though. He made the two-hour hike in six. 

The aspens stretched their gray branches to the fading November sky as if in welcome, forgiving his ten-year absence. Carved into one aspen was the image of a bull elk, its head raised in a bugle, its massive rack stretching beyond its butt. Cole, his hunting partner, had carved it in likeness of the bull they had glimpsed year after year flitting through the trees, ghost-like, always beyond their reach. 

He fingered the carving, seeing again Cole sitting on a stump he dragged to the base of the tree, working his knife like a paintbrush. He and Cole had hunted elk from this camp for thirty-five years. Counted in days or weeks, those hunting camps represented only a fraction of the old man’s seventy-seven years. In another way, they totaled his entire life. People said you shouldn’t describe yourself by what you do. The old man disagreed. He was a hunter, a man of the mountain woods from his very core. 

This was one of many things he and Cole shared. But Cole had passed six years ago. Marin, the old man’s wife, the year after. He eyed each aspen. They still stood. Oh, to be among friends, the land of the living, again. 

Drawing a deep breath, he held it inside, letting the mountain air seep into each pore of his being. He erupted into a coughing fit. 

“Old man, you’re absurd, demented,” he choked into the cool silence. But wrong or right he had returned, to close the circle, to finish it no matter that his son Rob—who inexplicably was not a hunter—would have stopped him, had he known the old man’s plan. Soon dusk ushered shadows across the camp as he lit his one-burner stove and settled a pot of water on the flame, left hand trembling leaf-like.

He had packed Spartan: three 30.06 shells, his binoculars, The Common Book of Prayer, his sleeping bag, mess kit, and one meal—chili con carne, shepherd’s bread, and red wine. As the chili simmered, the old man uncorked the wine and poured it into a tin cup. Wine in one shuddering hand and bread in the other, he prayed:

“O God, who hast taught . . . ,” he stopped, embarrassed that his atrophied tongue, the tongue that had finally forced him to give up his lectures at the college, mangled the sacred words. He peered into the silent sky and began again straining, “O God, who hast taught me that in returning I shall be saved . . . ,” he faltered again and lowered his head, hoping his heart could speak the rest.

As the dark grew, the old man sat on Cole’s stump and ate and drank, planning the next day. He imagined tomorrow’s climb to the overlook, the anticipation of elk in the meadow. He could picture every part but the end. Would God forgive him for what he had to do? He rolled out his bag.

The stars above him were just nodding off as he woke. He dressed, shivering in the predawn. Shouldering his rifle, three shells in his coat pocket, he climbed toward the overlook, where he had missed too many shots. He still remembered Cole’s first bull, a sharp-nosed 5 x 6. Cole had wept at the elk’s death and all those that followed. Cole believed death was no friend, but not an enemy either. 

Maybe a neccessary friend, the old man thought. 

The climb to the overlook was more difficult than he recalled. Or he was more decrepit than he realized. He stumbled over a tree root and fell hard. He lay there shaking and gasping, unable to move. Finally, he rolled over, grateful Cole had not lived to see him in such a state. He lay there until he grew cold, tears leaking from his eyes, the sun lipping the distant mountains, his rifle by his side. He sat up. It was light now, and he pulled his shells from his pocket and fought them into the chamber of his rifle with shaking hands. 

Damn disease. At least he had contracted one named after a courageous athlete. 

He sat until the day’s new light touched and warmed his shoulders. Was he courageous or a coward? A high cloud drifted above him. Was there a prayer for this situation? Not to his knowledge and he had left The Common Book of Prayer in camp. No matter. It could not end here on the trail. This was not how he planned it. He struggled to his feet.

The old man reached the overlook by mid-morning, embarrassingly beyond first shooting light, and set up against a smooth rock. He began his watch on the meadow. Across the way, a golden patch, moving like a feeding bull, just on the edge of the timber, caught his eye. He grabbed his binoculars and glassed the trees, but his left hand trembled so much he could make nothing out. He threw the binoculars down in disgust and shoved his hands in his coat pockets. 

Damn disease. Why had it attacked the parts he still wanted—needed—to use, his tongue, his hands? Why not the organ he no longer had use for?

The old man battled back to his feet, located the gold patch again. God, grant me this final thing. Let it be the bull. He picked up his rifle. Propping it on a dead tree branch, through his scope, he scanned the edge of the meadow. His heart raced ahead of him as he imagined locating the bull and counting the points on its massive rack. This is where his plan began to fray, though. Would he shoot it? Then what? He could not harvest the meat. Could he finish his plan? The old man fingered the safety on his 30.06 and slid the scope along the edge of the wood, examining each dark horizontal line, each branch that resembled an antler.

Finally, the gold patch filled his scope. Laughter bubbled out from between his tight lips. He could still laugh. He lowered his rifle, the patch being just a splotch of gold leaves still hanging on.

Like me.

That night, in his sleeping bag under Cole’s artwork, he finished the wine and bread. 

This is my body. This is my blood. 

He stared into the stars and fed himself on memories. In the tent, he and Cole planning the next day’s hunt, sharing stories of high school romances and follies. The next morning, Cole had spotted the elk herd first, the herd’s hot breath trailing into the frozen air. It looked as if the meadow were filled with smoke and on fire. Cole had told him to take the first shot. He had trained his rifle on a bull but waited.

“Shoot,” Cole whispered. He squeezed the trigger. Boom. Nothing. Then the bull crumpled into the snow. Cole grabbed his shoulder, and they looked into one another’s eyes. Pride and remorse and joy and sorrow wrestled in the small space between them. It was his first bull.

That second morning, the old man rose well before dawn. He had dreamed of Marin’s funeral. But instead of Marin, the old man was in the coffin, watching mournful faces parade past. Cole had come by with no tears but rather a glint in his eye. 

He started back up the trail. Hunger and thirst ate at him. His rifle and his doubts weighed him down. He could change the plan. What if he could make it back to the trailhead? What then? A sterile hospital bed. Rob and the doctors watching him with sad eyes while his organs shut down, all but his brain? No. He would finish it.

About noon, a six-point bull ambled across the meadow. The old man shook, telling himself it was buck fever. Was it the bull? He turned to see if Cole saw the elk too. They had always had an electrical connection alerting one when the other saw something. Old habits and old men die hard. “Shoot,” he heard. He shouldered his rifle, aimed, paused, and fired twice. He jacked the next shell into the chamber, but stopped. The bull trotted safely into the trees. He would tell Cole it was the Lou Gehrig’s. Cole would grant him that. That night, he left the rifle leaning against a rock.

Leaving the Spartan camp, the third day, he dragged his sleeping bag and The Common Book of Prayer to the overlook. He searched for a prayer for himself. None fit. He did pray for his son and grandchildren, that when they found his letter, they would understand.

He remained on the meadow—he lost count how many days—light and dark and silence and sound of unspoiled creation spoke to the old man like a living Psalm. 

His fear ebbed with his readings of the cosmos and creation. 

He remembered. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” 

Cole, too, came and went like a passing cloud. Death drew near, still no friend but less an enemy. Elk crossed the meadow—one day five cows, another a spike, another time several smaller bulls, but never the bull with the massive rack. The old man now never left his sleeping bag. He slept.

Cole woke him one morning. Snow clouds capped the sky. The old man lifted his hand in feeble welcome. 

“Let’s see what’s over the next ridge,” Cole said. 

“Give me a minute,” the old man mumbled, fumbling with the zipper of the bag. It was a fine, cold day. He felt the lightness again. No hunger now hampered him. Cole was patient as always. Soon, flakes as large as quarters fell. Time turned gray and stopped. The meadow painted white. Snow climbed up to the overlook and crept onto his bag, melting and then soon covering it. At first, the snow wet the old man’s face, but in time no longer melted. 

A massive bull elk moved into the meadow. A sudden wind whipped over him and he lifted his head toward the overlook, his rack stretching beyond his butt. Seeing nothing but the soft blanket of white, the bull pawed the snow and tasted the wet grass.

This short story was first published in Bugle Magazine in 2010 the Nov/Dec issue. The artwork of the old man is by the talented Deb Hoeffner, debhoeffner.com.

This story was born from being present at a trailhead in the mountains and learning that an old man from Kansas who was hiking alone had gone missing, never to be found. It also comes from being present when several people I was pastoring were taken by ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is a piece of fiction and as such does not represent my views on end-of-life issues. They are complex, and I felt a story may convey the painful complexity and God-given mystery of how and when death comes to us all.