I went to the doctor, a friend of mine, for a check-up in October, after I had just turned forty-five. The last time I had been to the doctor was years ago, when I'd broken my foot. My wife Rebekka had finally gotten me in for a general examination. He looked at me where I sat on the narrow table, dressed in a thin blue robe, my legs rustling the paper under me. I had had blood taken, peed into a plastic cup, had nurses wrap things around my arms and stick other things into my ears. When he began talking, at first he sounded as if everything were all right -- until he said that if my cholesterol level didn't go down I was going to die.

I flexed my fingers, darting my eyes over his face, and he said, I need to be real honest with you, Philip.

Thanks, Robert. I grabbed the edge of the table and looked straight at him.

I wish you had come in earlier than this, he said. It might not be so serious.

He started to talk about diet. I thought of frying up steaks with Rebekka, pushing the pieces around in the spitting oil, leaning back in a wicker chair on the back patio, smelling the sizzling peppers. I looked at Robert, thinking, Chicken, turkey, fish = which I do like in the morning, fresh, and fried. But then he was talking about tofu and milk made out of rice. I said, What?

He said that any level this much over 240 was dangerously high, and also he didn't like the ratio of HDLs to LDLs.

I stared at the dry white peels on his lips.

He said, No more animal fat, and Phil, that means dairy, too.

I said, Otherwise I die?

Well, Philip, he said.

He crossed his arms and stepped back a little from the table. I looked on the wall at a picture of a baby in a womb surrounded by a list of all the awful things that will happen to babies whose mothers drink. The baby's back curved over its head like a lizard's. I looked down at my chest and imagined the cholesterol in there, congealed, yellow-orange, buttery. I looked for a long time, then back up at the baby with its huge head.

Does that mean no sudden excitement for a while, either? I said. Robert, I hope you're going to back me up on this when I have to explain it to Rebekka.

Robert smiled. No, Phil. But even then I didn't feel much better and as I got dressed I looked at a box of thin purple gloves on the steel sink and wondered if I did keep eating meat how long would it be before I was dead.

At the end of October Rebekka leaves for Kansas to see her sister. The day before she goes she says, Please, please. I look at her, with her arms crooked under mine, around my back, her fingers kneading my shoulder blades, her hair blond and gray, still far past her shoulders, her nose with the hint of a knob on the end, her eyes brown with a little yellow. I look at her, smiling, and she says, Please, please, only eat what's in the house, okay? Don't go out and get hamburgers or ice cream or something. I keep smiling, because she so doesn't want me to be dead. I kiss her = we're in the kitchen, surrounded by cardboard boxes of wheat germ and oatmeal, plastic bags of black beans, nuts made out of soy = and then we go upstairs.

Rebekka is an expressive woman. When she's touched enough, in any one spot, so that the skin gets a little warm there, she starts to shudder. How ridiculous, she says, for such a small area of skin to be so happy. I cover her with warm spots, which she runs over with her fingers. Over me in the bed she strokes my chest in time with her rocking, and from the concentration on her face I know she's melting all the junk in there, and lifting it out of the vessels.

The next morning about four, I go out into the woods to hunt with her brother Bruce. There hasn't been any snow yet, and no rain for a while, either, so I'm not expecting much. It's hard to track on dry ground, and I don't like sitting in a tree. Bruce has a stand he goes out to once in a while. I think it gets cold, and have always felt that it's boring. All you can do is sit there and think. It's all about patience, of course, and a good eye, and learning the byways so you don't put the thing up in a stupid place; but I do like to keep moving.

We're in an area Bruce is pretty sure of. He was out looking for sheds in the spring, and found a couple near here. He looks at antlers and determines an age the way people do with horse's teeth = something about the base. He says he can track the same deer from year to year by its sheds, by the shapes and bumps and dips on the base. I'm not sure I believe it. But of course he swears, and now we're looking for a six-year-old Bruce says he has been letting mature for three years.

We're out for several hours but don't see anything, so we stop a while to sit and eat granola bars. It isn't very cold so I take off my hat. I look at Bruce, with his buzzed yellow head, sitting across from me, chewing. He says, Do you ever hear any wolves up here, Phil?

Just coyotes.

The little ones sure yip at night.

I take a bite, then spit out a raisin.

No timber wolves, though, since the one that got the dog? he says.

No, I say. I remember carrying her down the road to the truck, her throat ripped, then her chest heaving in the kitchen.

They do take care of the sick deer in the winter, says Bruce, and the old ones. They get them when they're stuck in the snow.

I think of a kill I once found out here, the bones, the frozen blood, the long-nailed tracks. Bruce, why do you think I'm still coming out here? I say.

He shrugs and squints. You mean because of the diet? So what? You still like to do it.

I say, And Rebekka will like to have the meat.

Bruce laughs. Yeah, right.

What are you talking about?

Rebekka doesn't like venison. He's looking at me with a confused smile. He takes a slow bite.

Yes, she does, I say. I'm sure she does.

Whenever the two of you have me over for dinner she doesn't eat any of it. She always makes, I don't know, chicken or something, for herself.

I eat the chicken, too, I say slowly, trying to remember.

I can't believe you never noticed.

I'm sure she likes it, I say.

Bruce shrugs and brushes oats off his knees. He stretches his arms above his head, crossing his wrists. Do you want to head back or keep going for a while?

Maybe a couple more hours, I say.

We stay out for an hour, then drive off. I drop Bruce off at his house, then get home, starving for lunch. I want a burrito, dripping with cheddar and beef. I pull out a can of refried beans, bring it down hard on the counter, and swear at it. The phone rings and it's Rebekka. Did she leave her vitamins at home -- they would be on the counter behind the toaster.

They're not here, I say.

They must be at the bottom of my bag. What are you having for lunch?

Beans.

Thank God.

Hey, I say, you like venison, don't you?

She pauses. No, I really don't. It's gamy.

I've never understood what people meant by that, I say. What is that? Gamy.

I don't know. I guess you can tell when something's been eating sticks.

As opposed to what? I say. Cows eat corn and grain. As opposed to corn and grain?

Do you know what they feed cows? she says. There are hooves and animal guts mixed up in it. That's why there's mad cow disease.

How do you know about that? I say. I don't think I've ever heard that.

They've stopped recently in America. But they've been doing it for years.

I pause. That's why you hunt your own.

While she talks about her sister and her children and their music lessons I'm thinking, first about mad cow disease and why I've never heard about it, and then about hunting. When she stops I ask her does she remember the movie we saw once about the two lions in Africa? Does she remember the way the lions worked together to kill people, a hundred people, just for the sport of it?

Maybe, she says.

The natives said they were devils, remember? But you know, foxes will sometimes kill swans, too, just for a taste of blood.

How do you know it's just for that?

A fox can't carry a swan off. He just leaves it.

Philip, says Rebekka, I have to go. Whitney wants me to hear something. I hear a low noise and then a squawk, on a clarinet. We hang up and I stare at the beans. I remember as a kid being in town alone and for the first time ordering a hamburger on a Friday, at ten o' clock in the morning. After the first bite I waited for God to send down lightning. I thought at least our priest would be able to smell it, and would charge into the diner to pull me off the black stool and knock me around. Nothing happened and after that I ate meat whenever I wanted. It didn't make me die but it will now, so I spoon the tan mush of beans into a pot and watch until it starts to lurch and bubble.

I decide I might want to go out into the woods again this afternoon, even though it's most often not a lucky time. Before this fall, on every afternoon after hunting, whether we got anything or not, I was lazy. I took the whole day off: bowls of popcorn, buffalo wings, movies from the video store, rye-and-Cokes; but today all I can think about is getting back out. I think this time I want to go by myself.

I eat three burritos fast, to get them over with. One time I almost choke as the thick stuff plugs up the back of my mouth. I drop the crusted pot in the sink with a clang, then go back out to the truck. The day is warming up. We hunt on a small patch of woods I own out of town, bordering a field we used to cut for alfalfa. Now it's overgrown. At the turn-in I get out to open the fence, then park the truck inside, near the gate. It's always harder to rehook the wire loop around the post than it is to get it off. I push my whole body against the post, then close the gate back up and begin to wade through the alfalfa, toward the trees.

I jump over the little drainage ditch that runs across the property, then come up a little rise. At the beginning of the trees I stop for a minute at the pile of gray and blue and pink-brown rocks that marks our succession of dead dogs. The wind has calmed a little. In the trees I can hardly notice it at all. I walk for a while quietly, but not yet using the three-step approach. In the early afternoon I won't find anything so close to the road.

But not far in I hear a small crack. Someone says, Quiet, Robbie. Hearing a man's voice I stop, feeling stiff. My teeth and gums itch, as happens when I'm nervous. I turn my head around slowly, then see bent down into the bank of the ditch a man in a blue jacket, and a boy. When I see them the man creeps down further, but the boy lifts his head to look.

Stop it, the man says. Get down.

He's already seen us, says the boy.

I turn toward them, my rifle lifted a little. Hey. What are you doing here?

They're both quiet.

Who are you? I say.

The man starts to get up, so I raise my rifle higher. They both have guns, the boy's beside him on the brown grass. Keep them on the ground, I say, motioning to the man's gun.

He stares at me from a half-crouch. I'm hunting.

This is my land.

I thought it was state land.

No, I say. It's mine.

That's why we had to crawl under the fence, says Robbie, looking up at the man. The man looks down at him, then finally lays his gun down.

We're just hunting, he says.

You can't hunt here without permission.

No one was out here.

I was just out here this morning.

No one was out here this afternoon.

Come over this way, I say, motioning with the rifle. The boy walks over and the man follows, his hands up as if he's surrendering. You can put your hands down.

He lowers them slowly.

I glance back over at the bank and notice that the boy's gun is a BB gun. Did you think he was going to get a deer with that? I say.

The man shrugs, taking off his green cap and rubbing his head, which is mostly bald. Maybe a squirrel or a bird. He's just seven.

It's not any bird season, I say. He looks down at the ground. The boy is whirling with his arms straight out to his sides, stumbling in the leaves.

No? the man mutters.

Do you have a license? He doesn't answer and I watch the boy spin until he falls, then roll until he stops at a tree. I look down at my rifle and back at the man and then at their guns on the grass.

Where are you from? I say.

The man is still looking at the ground, bending his hat. The boy hums into the dirt.

How did you get in?

Robbie looks up. I told you under the fence.

Which fence?

He points. The east side, I say. I came in on the south.

The man shrugs. The boy sits up, then stands, a soggy leaf matted onto his head. Do you have anything to eat? he asks the man, who shakes his head, so then the boy turns to me.

I stare at him for a minute. His coat is unzipped and underneath I can see that his shirt is old and torn and has a faded Dukes of Hazard patch peeling off on the front. His teeth don't look so good. They are crooked and sort of gray. I say, I have a couple of granola bars.

Can I have one?

The man says quickly, You stay away from his granola bars. He crosses his arms, standing up straight; the sun shines on his head. I draw myself up a little, too, gripping the gun. He glares at me.

Well, Jesus, I say. They're not poisoned.

The man lets his arms fall, then takes a step. Run, Robbie, he says.

The boy lurches forward without a pause. The man tumbles behind him through the brush. They jump over the ditch, the boy sloshing in the weedy water before falling on his knees and staggering up the bank.

Hurry up, the man yells, grabbing him.

I'm too shocked even to shoot in the air, but after a second I take off after them. I notice they've left their guns; jumping over the ditch I slip where the boy did and feel the water slosh into my boot.

They go out into the alfalfa about twenty yards, all of us in dead runs. Then they angle back, sharply. They're going to try to lose me in the woods. I think of how stupid they must be. Now I'll just cut them off. But they don't have guns to carry and seem more used to this than I am and already I'm tired. I touch my chest, checking my heart. They hit the ditch before me.

Stop, I yell. Damnit, stop.

The man pushes the boy forward and now they're in the woods. I keep running, jump the ditch feebly, wade through most of it, stumble up the bank.

I yell, I'll shoot.

I'm about fifty yards in when I realize they're not crashing around anymore. They couldn't possibly be out of hearing already. They're creeping, hiding, getting away by stealth -- because of the gun. I stop for a moment, and everything is quiet.

If Bruce were here, I think, I'd send him around in a big loop to the west. He'd go out of hearing range, turn north, get fast to the far edge of the trees, then cut east to the fence, where they'd have to come out. I'd start a chase, stomp around; and we'd flush them out.

As it is I keep going slowly. My feet follow a perfect line. I'll walk and pause until I hear a noise; and my hearing is really pretty good. I'll look, look carefully. It's my luck that the trees here are not so thick, and I know the man and the boy didn't get very far before the noise of their feet stopped, when they cowered, shaking, the man's arm wrapped around the boy's mouth, their bodies pressed down into a hollow or behind a bush. I remember the man is wearing bright blue, and isn't that a stupid thing for him to have done. I walk this way for about twenty minutes but don't hear anything. Then I start to feel a little ridiculous, creeping along like this. Maybe the two of them are watching me, the man trying not to laugh. After almost a half an hour I stop. I start to think that maybe I miscalculated, maybe they got farther than I thought, maybe they're long gone. Anyway I don't feel like being out here anymore.

Then I hear Robbie cough to my right and I whirl around to see the two of them trying to hide behind a pile of rocks and I feel a little sick this time as I turn the gun on them again and tell them to stay where they are and Robbie coughs again. What are you doing out here? I say. Stand up. What are you doing out here on my property? The two of them keep still so I say again, almost shouting, Stand up.

We're hunting, the man mutters. You know what we're doing. He snorts once at the ground and I watch him until he looks up again. We stare at each other for a moment. He squints.

Poaching, I say. This is my land.

You know, the man says, you don't have to be such an asshole about it. As he rises he takes off his jacket and lets it drop behind him and as he does so his shirt pulls up a little. He is short and skinny with a small dirty lump of belly.

You can't just come onto a man's land, I say. It's illegal. I know maybe it's for your kid or whatever but for God's sake it's illegal.

The man takes a step forward, jutting out his chin. I raise the gun higher and Robbie falls back a step behind his father.

What people do, I say, they come to a man's house. They say, Hey do you own that 60 acre bit north of here? Do you think I could do a little hunting out there, me and my son? I might not have asked any questions. I might not have.

He is still squinting. He opens his mouth once, then closes it, then looks around him, into the trees, past them into the field, at the ground. Then he says, to the leaves and the browning pine needles and the sticks, I've been coming out here this whole year.

My cheeks very quickly get hot. Get the fuck out of here, I say. Get the fuck out of here or I'll shoot you both in the fucking head. I wave the gun and Robbie grabs the back of his father's shirt and tries to pull him back. The man reaches behind him and swats the boy's hand.

Stop it, Robbie, he says, stop it. I'm coming, grab my jacket, would you, but we're not going to run just because he thinks he can wave a goddamn gun at our heads.

It's my land, I say.

Go to hell, the man says. He turns around slowly. Robbie has picked up the blue coat and is holding it out to him and the man reaches and plucks it from the boy's fingers and pulls it on. They start to walk, and I watch them go. Then the man turns again and looks for a moment at my gun, still raised. You're not going to eat every goddamn deer in the goddamn field, he says.

It's my land, I say for about the fiftieth time.

The man crosses his arms in front of him. His shoes are dirty white sneakers and the laces are frayed and sopped. He seems for a moment standing in the slanted light to have grown from the spot.

You know, I say, since I didn't know you were here I might have shot you, did you think of that? I could have accidentally shot your kid, did you ever think of that?

Or we might have gotten you, the man says.

Turn around, I say. He stands still. I said, I say, and pause. He crosses his arms over his chest. The heat in my face rises and my heart begins to beat fast and I think that if this jerk thinks he can make me collapse on my own property, gasp and clutch at my heart and beg him to run and get help, to send his boy to the highway to flag down a car to save my life, he has another thing coming, so I lower my gun a little and shoot him in the foot. Robbie screams. For a minute I'm afraid I've hit the boy and I say, Shit, oh, shit, but it's the man hopping around holding his knee and it's Robbie who runs at me and hits my knees and knocks me down. I feel my head hit something, a tree I imagine, and the gun falls from my hand. I'm grateful it doesn't go off and hit my leg and I feel groggy and I let my eyes stay closed for a moment. There is a sort of dreamy pause in time as far away the man is swearing and calling me a dirty son of a bitch, a dirty greedy son of a bitch, and around me the air is cool and warm at the same time, that beautiful combination in the autumn of lowering temperatures and sun that can still heat your face in the afternoon. I hear them running away. I keep my eyes closed and reach out and find that my gun is still there. What a surprise, I think, what a nice surprise, how wonderful that I won't have to explain its absence to Rebekka, describe how it was lost, on the night she comes back, when we're sitting together over a plate of noodles and broccoli, or beans and rice, or potatoes minus the sour cream, discussing almost everything that has been happening in her absence, the things she has missed while she's been gone.