Samir Dayal

Deer Crossing

A motorcycle enthusiast, Arvinder Singh subscribed to every possible magazine that might conceivably feature stories or even advertising about motorcycles-Motorcycle Week, Car and Driver, even Sports Illustrated. He collected them too, like his father. Together the two had built up quite a fleet of "antique" Harley-Davidsons and 750 cc Royal Enfields as well as modern machines: colorful Hondas and waspish Suzukis were parked with only slightly less care than the older bikes along the left wall of the left garage. This obsession of course was seen by Arvinder's mother and sister as thoroughly boyish; it excluded women, except when they appeared as side attractions in the magazines and in the sports events that took up so much time. As such, it was a forgivable obsession.

But there was a darker, accompanying obsession that father and son shared that the women of the family had become increasingly uncomfortable. Arvinder had developed a passion for hunting and the outdoors. For many old Rajput families like Arvinder's, hunting had long been, for boys, a rite of passage into manhood, and this was an important element in Arvinder's developing attraction to hunting. At first it had been small things-going out in the cool mornings with his father and his friend in an open, extremely uncomfortable jeep, painted gunmetal blue to hunt quail, rabbits and other small game. Then he graduated to larger game, and even, once, a hopelessly unsuccessful tiger hunt, back in the "bad old days," as he liked to joke with his American friends, of "un-pc," deliberately using this language of faux sophisticated abbreviation that he had hated ever since his Engineering college days in Delhi. It had seemed as though everyone was talking in this patois of acronyms-Connaught Place was never Connaught Place among the college-going children of the newly rich or the aspiring he hung around with: it was always "CP," and nothing was ever just good, but TGTBT, too good to be true.

All that was in the past: another country, another life, almost forgotten. He was now part of the technological migration of workers with computer skills, who had been aggressively recruited from Bangalore, India's Silicon valley, and from the well-known branches of the Indian Institute of Technology. Of course no smart young computer literate could turn down the fat offers that lured the best away to live in tight enclaves of migrant whizkids, who socialized only among themselves and at their weekly dinner parties at which they continued, into their late twenties and early thirties to say things like, "Once you get the fundas, it's easy: you focus on the really important elements and outsource the tedious testing back to Bangalore from California."

But Arvinder was often impatient with the tribal gathering of techies and energetically sought out other social contacts, particularly attractive white women, and he was quite successful with them, until he met Catherine. With her he had felt real companionship for several years before marrying her and having a child, a son they decided to call Eric-decidedly, defiantly ordinary, betraying no trace of eagerness to bridge East and West. The first time he had met Catherine was at a reception for the release of a breakthrough software product that provided companies with an exceptionally strong "fire wall." Bored by the relentless upbeat pitch of the featured speakers, he had drifted towards the refreshments and after picking up a plate and serving himself some pineapple and strawberries-local produce, he expected-sat down on the sofa in the room adjoining the main display hall. On the high-gloss coffee table he had seen an issue of Time featuring a young software startup on the cover with the caption: "The Revenge of the Geeks," and as he was flipping through the thin, glossy pages Catherine had sat down on the adjacent armchair and said "Hi. Cheerful thought isn't it," gesturing at the magazine with the cup of coffee she held in her slender left hand. They had exchanged cards and discovered that they had a common interest in gardening magazines, because they were too busy to maintain a garden. They had met for lunch at an outdoor Italian restaurant that prided itself, he had promised her, on its beautiful plants and trellised arbor, where they had delicious chilled wine and cold lobster salad followed by poached salmon for her and a scallops and shrimp on a bed of mango and greens for him, and as they ate she told him about her brother Kurt who unlike them had been able to indulge his interest in the outdoors as a dedicated fisherman and hunter.

It was something about the avidity of Kurt's interest in fishing and hunting that was off-putting to Arvinder, and he declined two invitations from Kurt, whom he met after he had been going out with Catherine for three months and she had moved in with him. He slowly came round to acknowledging, at Catherine's gentle prodding, that perhaps this was an interest he actually had shared when he himself had been younger. "It will get you in touch with a part of your past to go on a trip with Kurt and his buddies," she said to him. But it was not until they had been married for six months and Catherine had already discovered that she had become pregnant that Kurt had invited them to visit his family in Colorado for a three-day hunting and fishing trip. Catherine could stay with them while Arvinder joined the Kurt and three friends on the trip. The young software company Arvinder had been working for had gone through an IPO and the stock had fallen through the floor in the weeks after it had opened to optimistic projections. The whole computer industry was in a slump, and even the customarily cocky talk at the Indian dinner parties had become subdued. And then Catherine lost their baby and was told she would probably never be able to carry a child to term.

"I'm sorry. Looks like a problem we hadn't foreseen when you came in for your first visit."

"Nothing we can do?" It was all Arvinder could think of responding.

"Short of adoption, no, I'm afraid." He sighed, but his body language said it was a practiced expression. "Of course you might want to seek a second opinion."

This news took the breath out of both of them when the doctor called them in and announced it without apparent emotion, his craggy face seeming to her inhuman in its impassive calm. It hit Arvinder as hard as it did Catherine herself, harder than he had expected.

The marriage entered a rough period. Arvinder had fallen into a depression that could not be blamed entirely on the doldrums into which his career seemed to be slipping. Even though he knew that the invitation from Kurt was more on account of Catherine (naturally Arvinder's depression had rubbed off on her too) than because Kurt and his buddies craved his company on the trip, he thought perhaps it would be a real change, and bring back some of that unself-conscious elation he had felt long ago on cool mornings amid the stubble fields of the Indian countryside where he had hunted partridge in blissful immersion in the complete universe of the sounds, sights and smells of the countryside-cow manure, hay, wildflower, earth.

Kurt had already arranged everything for the trip. The green Landrover was packed for departure the morning after Catherine and Arvinder arrived, and there were individual tents for Kurt and his two friends, about the same age as Kurt (thirty-five); there were three Workhorse graphite rods and three G-Loomis GL 3 Adventure series fly rods neatly arranged in the back. Arvinder had brought along his own green tent, which he had used just once, on a camping trip he and Catherine had taken in Big Sur, and his Daikoh rod. They arrived in Denver, at a gleaming new airport which seemed to them surreal, overdeveloped without apparent reason for overdevelopment. Kurt met them at the gate and kissed Catherine, holding her shoulders and then crushed Arvinder's hand with his military man's handshake, complete with the obligatory look in the eyes, held for three seconds.

"How was the trip?" The late afternoon sun coming in from the skylights flashed off Kurt's sand-colored hair.

"Fine. Must be the only airline to serve lunch on a two-hour flight."

Kurt drove them to their modest but well-appointed home in the historic district in Denver. His two friends were introduced to Arvinder, and over dinner the conversation was restrained, Arvinder thought, because he was there, an outsider. Tom and Jack had known Kurt all their adult lives and were almost worldlessly in a kind of masculine communion, agreeing on everything from which teams they were rooting for on tv (before dinner, while the women got caught up with one another's lives and everyone had found a way to communicate concern for Catherine without actually mentioning the miscarriage). From the moment he had exchanged awkward pleasantries about the flight from San Francisco to Denver, he knew that as usual conversation would remain difficult, a gulf would always stretch between them, his "difference" never fully become immaterial. But then would he really want that difference to become immaterial?

Later, when Arvinder and Catherine politely rose to go to their room the men got up to say good night, but Arvinder knew that there would be a collective relief in the room when they were upstairs, and the conversation would finally flow naturally. And tomorrow, on the trip into the mountains, it would be no different. The other men would talk easily, and Arvinder would have to find ways to say things that did not seem forced, studiedly American. After all these years living in this country, he still hadn't gone to a single hockey game (in India the men played field hockey, reserved in America solely for women); he had no favorite basketball or football team, had not grown up on a steady diet of American tv, and could hardly bear to drink Coors. He had brought Kurt a bottle of 21-year old Highland single malt as a gift, but Kurt had placed the bottle in his liquor cabinet politely after Arvinder had presented it to him, hardly glancing at the bottle except to see that it was whiskey. He had not offered whiskey before dinner to guests. The men, including Arvinder, drank Coors; the women (slightly more fortunate, Arvinder reflected privately) sipped a Ken Johnson 1999 Cabernet Franc.

And the trip was as he had expected at first, with desultory conversation that grew animated only when they discussed facts such as distance, ammunition, provisions, and when they looked at the maps each of them had. Kurt had a contour map and mentioned that at the higher elevations there was deep snow and that while it would be quite warm when they first parked, the nights would be cold and when they moved upwards on the second day, things could become considerably colder. They discussed safety procedures, checked on flashlights and jerky, on their collapsible fishing rods and flies, canned beans for protein, small cast iron pans to fry eggs and heat the dried soup and boil water. They had decided to go fly and lure fishing for trout and maybe angle for mountain whitefish in the Roaring Fork River and hike near Mount Sopris, snow-covered in late March. If the fish weren't running well there, John, the older of Kurt's friends said he remembered an 8-pound fish someone had landed when he had last gone up the catch-and-release sections on the Fryingpan River below Ruedi Reservoir. They drove up on Interstate 70 to Glenwood Springs, stopped for lunch and then caught Highway 82 to Basalt and Aspen. The woods opened before them as in a dream, with different shades of green, brown, and yellow flickering in the sunlight as they drove fast on the hot road. The heated air shimmered ahead, distorting a brilliantly red Pontiac that had stayed persistently just ahead of them, even though now and then Kurt had passed it impatiently; the Pontiac's driver inexorably gained ground on them, and after pulling in ahead of them would inevitably slow down, as if falling asleep by infinitesimal degree.

As Kurt had predicted, it remained buggy and warm on the first day of the trip, especially wearing their hunting gear and carrying their backpacks. Before coming out to Colorado, Arvinder had intensified his training routine at the gym because he knew that he had to be fit for the miles of uneven terrain they would need to negotiate. They staked out positions and even shot at some whitetail, but at the end of the day they had shot nothing. They lit a fire and talked quietly around it. Arvinder's depression had not yet lifted, and he knew he would remain the odd man out among them. But they had a warm meal of chili with crusty five-grain bread and washed it down with cold beer and for a little while he felt the magic in the night out in the open with the crackling fire warming his feet and the fragrant smoke rising towards the stars above his head.

The next morning they were going to hunt again but Arvinder decided he would rather go hiking and maybe fish in the cold stream that came down from the mountain into the valley. That seemed like a good idea to everyone, and they agreed to meet up again on the following day back at the first campsite. He had got lost when he decided that. And then he got what he had wanted from the whole trip, but not in the way he might have expected to get it. It happened when he was crossing the stream that gave onto a sandy beach that he thought would be a good place to pitch his tent for the night. He was already halfway across the silver tongue of water that separated the woods out of which he had emerged from the beach. He was thinking only of the swirling suck of the stream and the moss-slick stones polished over the millennia by glacial melt from the mountains that ringed the valley he was in. Then, suddenly, all thought all thought all though disappeared. It was replaced first by the stink of animal urine and the game odor of decaying vegetation and flesh, mixed with the hot-and-cold perfume of ferns, wild herbs, flowers. And then there was round his ears, all the way to the woods behind him and to the mountains ahead it seemed, the buzz and slither of wings and animal skin against branch and twig. He could hear the rhythmic tappings on hollow logs, the low rumble of frogs calling out meditative and seductive songs. And his skin tingled so sharply that he clutched and slapped at his neck, dropped his gun in the water and stumbled forward. He fell in an eddying pool behind a rock in the water. He sat down in the stream, and felt as light as a leaf in the water. He felt no alarm, strangely, only unutterably transformed. Was this madness? A seizure? All he knew was that the forest was rushing into his head and out again, without it seeming an odd thing. He felt no alarm. But his perspective seemed to have altered into a state of hyperawareness, an animal awareness, as though a deer's consciousness had come upon him, in a rush, stripping away the human fear and anxiety of being lost. Or he had crossed over into a deer consciousness, in which nature once again had become maternal, welcoming of him rather than something to be explored, hunted, fished, "survived."

Now, without effort, he walked the rest of the way across the stream his feet finding their way surely on the smooth stones of the stream, as though the stream were welcoming him rather than challenging his balance or as though his feet knew something his head could not know. He felt the sand now, with weeds lacing his shins without impeding him. And then he was on the sandy beach. Something made him drop his backpack now, with the green tent and his supplies and blanket, and drew him forward. He climbed the gentle slope of sand, and the sand was warm and although not as firm underfoot, equally welcoming as the streambed had been. And forward he went onto the little fleshy sand ferns and grasses, and further into the shrubs until he was among rock and scrub pine and cedar, the perfume high and intense in the even heat of the afternoon. But it was cooler in the shade of the aspen that crowded together like alert and trim soldiers, their leaves shivering in the wind that blew down from the rocks above, fanning his cheeks with the scent of red pine and blueberry and wild thyme.

Still he walked, feeling the way opening for him, legs lightly caressed by the undergrowth until he decided to take off his boots to make the walking easier. He left them carelessly at the base of the big flaking birch, as though he were in his living room, far away now in a city whose name he seemed to have lost for the moment, because he had become aware of other creatures, moving like him, full of purpose, not thinking. He was moving as effortlessly as a wild buck, and his heavy plaid shirt and thick trousers were not only wet from the river but felt like encumbrances, and he took them off and dropped them as casually as he had abandoned his boots, and soon he had given up his vest and underwear: it felt good to let the wind and the fragrant branches whip him and wick away the moisture on his skin, and he felt free. And as he went into the clutch of pine along the base of the rocky face of the mountain ahead of him, he felt the sharp stones and twigs beneath him, but he felt no pain or discomfort-it was like being back in India, when he could still play soccer in the street barefoot with all the little chokra boys and Doctor Vir Batra's son, and Riki Banerjee the lawyer's brat. The stones and trash in the street bothered none of them. He had left all that behind. But these memories came and went, like a light, and when they went he had only scent, heat, the cool of the ferns. He was leaving behind his own poor unborn son now, and Catherine and the silly quarrel about her visit to her family. The career that was careening off the promising path he had once seemed to be on now seemed a mirage, and all of Silicon valley a pathetic hallucination; the old days of chasing his own manhood in woman after woman, or of finding completion in the American dream-these were mirages too, becoming absences but spread out before him like strange ritualized objects from another creature's consciousness, as if they were negatives of photographs spread out on a table, impossible to read . He too was becoming an absence to himself, falling away from all that had been familiar, all that he had thought of as his life and now he was almost running, naked, exhilarated, feeling nothing more than the clear air and his own unencumbered passage, toward the snowfield that opened, rich and inviting before him.