Tim Seger shot his first deer in fifteen years at 3:52 that afternoon.
It was a fat six-pointer that came up out of the cedar bottom along the creek crossing, right under Tim’s stand, walking slow in the late light. We heard the shot from the farmhouse, one clean crack from his dad’s old .30-06, and then nothing.
Fifteen minutes later, my phone buzzed with a text from Wes up in the top stand.
“Tim got one. He’s sitting next to it. I think he’s crying. Should I go down?”
I texted back, “Give him a few minutes.”
When we got there, Tim was sitting in the leaves with his back against the oak, one hand resting on the deer’s neck. His eyes were red. He didn’t try to hide it.
“My uncle would’ve liked this,” he said.
Dale knelt down next to him and put a big hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
Wes pulled out his phone and took a picture of Tim with the buck in front of Grandpa’s old oak stand. Later, Tim had it printed and framed and gave me a copy. It’s on the wall in the farmhouse kitchen now, next to a photo of Grandpa in 1974 with Roger Moody and his ten-pointer.
Dale didn’t shoot that day. He sat in Grandpa’s corner stand from dawn to dark and watched eleven deer, does and young bucks, come down off the ridge into the corn. He didn’t raise his rifle once.
“I didn’t need to,” he told me that evening at the kitchen table, over a bowl of venison chili Wes’s wife had sent along in a Crock-Pot. “I just sat there. Nobody came up behind me. Nobody walked in on me in the dark. For the first time in about twenty years, I just sat there and watched the world wake up.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d forgotten what that felt like.”
That night after they left, I opened the green ledger, took out Grandpa’s old fountain pen, and wrote three new lines under his last entry.
“Dale Moody, Army, Desert Storm and Iraq. 2026. Didn’t shoot. Sat all day. Said nobody came up behind him.”
“Tim Seger, Army, Afghanistan. 2026. Six-pointer, creek crossing. First hunt since he was a boy. Remembered his uncle.”
“Wes Hanna, Army National Guard, Iraq. 2026. Saw a big one, couldn’t get a shot. Says he’ll get him next year.”
Then I sat back and looked at the page for a long time. Grandpa’s handwriting ended on one line, and mine started on the next. It was the same ledger and the same ridge.
Things moved slowly after that, the way legal things do.
In December, Kurt, Mike, and Russ filed small claims cases against Brad in Dunn County Circuit Court. Each of them sued for his share of the twelve thousand dollars, $4,000 apiece, plus filing fees. They brought the forged lease, the envelope receipts from the Legion Hall, and their statements to Ray Lindqvist.
Brad didn’t even contest it. His lawyer, Darren Fiske, the one with the cowboy boots, called Patricia the week before the hearing and asked whether “Ms. Halvorsen would be willing to not pursue the forgery matter with the district attorney if Mr. Kessler pays full restitution to all parties.”
Patricia called me that night.
“It’s your decision, Amy,” she said. “The DA hasn’t filed charges yet. They’re still reviewing Ray’s report. I can tell you that a lot of prosecutors, in a first offense like this where the money gets paid back, will consider that when deciding what to do. But it’s not up to you whether they charge him. You can tell them what you want. They’ll decide.”
I thought about it for three days.
I thought about the forged signature. I thought about the duct tape on the ladder rung, and about Brad saying, “Your grandpa’s dead.” And I thought about how he’d laughed in the parking lot after the will was read and said, “That’s our land now, babe.”
But I also thought about the man I married at twenty-six, who carried me over the threshold of the farmhouse and promised Grandpa he’d take care of me. And I thought about how those three hunting buddies were about the only friends Brad had left after the divorce, and now they were suing him.
“Tell the DA what happened,” I finally said to Patricia. “All of it. The truth. Then let them decide. I’m not going to beg them to charge him, and I’m not going to beg them not to. I’m done carrying Brad’s choices.”
In January, Brad paid back all twelve thousand dollars to Kurt, Mike, and Russ in full. He sold his bass boat to do it.
The district attorney’s office charged him with a misdemeanor and offered him a deferred prosecution agreement. If he stayed out of trouble for a year, paid court costs, and stayed off my property, the charge would be dismissed. He signed it in February.
The trespass citation was a $263 forfeiture. He paid that too.
I got one more letter that winter. It came in March, addressed to me in Brad’s loopy handwriting with no return address.
Inside was a single sheet of notebook paper.
“Amy, I’m not good at this. I know I messed up. I told myself the ridge was half mine because I spent nine years out there. But it was never mine. It was Arvid’s, and then it was yours. I think I knew that, and it made me angry. I’m sorry about the paper. I’m sorry about the stands. I’m sorry I said your grandpa was dead like it didn’t matter. Brad.”
I read it twice. Then I folded it and put it in the back of the green ledger.
I didn’t answer it. Maybe someday.
