I’d always wondered how the animals could stand cold like that. I don’t mean things like squirrels and coons that have dens lined with warm leaves they can burrow down into, animals that can cover their faces with their tails. I mean the ones that live on open ground, like the deer. A brushpile or a thicket is all they can get into, and on mornings when the ground is frozen, lying on it must be bad for them. Maybe they don’t feel it like we do. Maybe they don’t have any choice.

I was shaking too hard to even light a cigarette. I tried, and I dropped my lighter. I told myself that I didn’t need to be smoking in my stand anyway, but I’ve always been a poor disciplinarian. I rooted around in my field jacket until I found some matches. I thought maybe smoking would help me throw off the shivering. It didn’t. If anything, it got worse.

My hands were like claws by then, just wooden lumps that could hardly feel or hold onto my rifle. I crossed my legs on the old, weathered boards and lowered my head. I put my hands in my armpits, trying to shake myself out of the shaking. My teeth were clattering like those windup chompers you see. The only comfort I had was in knowing I had raised a son with enough good sense to know when to keep his head under the covers and stay in the bed. I thought of how warm Mary Annie’s thighs and back and belly were under her flannel gown, of how I could have been lying against that warmth at that moment. My feet didn’t seem to be connected to my ankles any more. They were just vague aches.

When the clouds came over, and the wind sprang up, my heart sank. I almost got down and built a fire. The sun wasn’t going to come out and warm me after all. The temperature wasn’t going to rise much about close to freezing, and the wind was already bringing some tiny sleet that stung my face. I always try to rationalize everything, but there were only two choices: stay in the tree the rest of the morning and maybe not even see a deer anyway, and freeze, or get down and build a fire and give up any chance of seeing a deer once I made all that noise and created all that smoke. I stayed in the tree by rationalizing this: Jim and Bobby were probably no colder than I was, and neither of them was going to climb down and build a fire.