It took me a moment before I saw it—a patch of fur moving through the grass. A deer the color of brown sugar lifted its head. Jackson pulled his gun up to eye level and squinted. “God, she’s pretty,” he whispered. “Isn’t she pretty?”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He kept squinting, moving the gun as the deer dipped its head into the grass. “Stay quiet.”

“You can’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to. Not while I’m with you.”

“Then go somewhere else for a minute.”

“Jackson.” I felt myself choking up.

He took his gaze from the deer long enough to look at me. “You want me to just let it go? This is hunting, sweetheart. What’d you think we were doing?”

“But, it’s just trying to eat.” I couldn’t help but start crying—he’d called me sweetheart, and not in the good way. But this was how I’d always been with animals. Once, at a house party in college, a friend of mine had a plan to feed a mouse to his pet snake, as a kind of show for the partygoers. The mice were in a little cardboard box, like the ones Happy Meals used to come in, and while nobody was looking I took the box outside and let the mice go. The friend was drunk and annoyed and made me reimburse him for the mice, saying he’d just go buy new ones. But I’d felt victorious, imagining the mice going on to create whole new empires of vermin.

“God, are you crying?” Jackson asked. He put the gun down an inch. “Jesus.”

“Jackson,” I said. “Please?”

“Oh, hell. Come on.” He turned around, brushing past me, and charged back the way we came. I kept after him, nearly running, my heart going nuts. After only a few minutes I realized I needed to pee—bad.

“Jackson, I need to pee.”

He slowed down and turned to face me. “Well, go on then. I won’t look.”

I could tell he was frustrated with me, and for a moment I wished I were a different type of girl, the type of girl who hunted and backpacked and initiated outdoor sex. I walked toward a cluster of thick bushes, just barely out of his line of vision. I squatted down and let go. This was the first time I’d peed outside in years, since my early college days when, as long as you were drunk enough, it was acceptable to go in people’s backyards. And then suddenly I saw it—a heap of black fur moving through some reedy trees in the far distance. I stood up as quietly as I could and then squinted to make out what it was, although I already knew.

Just like the deer, the bear raised its head, perhaps sensing that it was being watched. It was not as big as I’d imagined, but still I felt faint. I imagined it noticing me, its eyes taking on an angry recognition. It would charge, leaping through the field separating us until it was on me, all claws and incisors. Jackson would have to carry my body out of the woods.