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Overview
Twelve-year-old Joey MacTagert's dad wants his son to carry on the family tradition of hunting. But Joey has "buck fever"—he can't pull the trigger on a deer, and hates the idea of killing animals. He's more interested in art and hockey, two activities that his dad barely acknowledges.
Joey's dad wants him to use his special skill in tracking to hunt down the big antlered buck that roams the woods near their home. Joey knows how to track Old Buck, but has kept secret from his father the reason he's gained the deer's trust. When trouble between his parents seems to escalate, Joey and his older sister, Philly, find themselves in the middle of tensions they don't fully understand. Joey wants to keep the peace, and if conquering his buck fever will do it, he has to try.
Buck Fever is a nominee for the 2003 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429981965 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feiwel & Friends |
| Publication date: | 10/27/2009 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 271 KB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 13 Years |
About the Author
CYNTHIA CHAPMAN WILLIS's first novel, Dog Gone, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as "satisfying, appealing . . . a well-told story, spiced with humor and facts on animal care," and she was called "an author to watch." A former editor, she now writes full-time, and lives in New Jersey with her family.
CYNTHIA CHAPMAN WILLIS's first novel, Dog Gone, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as "satisfying, appealing . . . a well-told story, spiced with humor and facts on animal care," and she was called "an author to watch." A former editor, she lived in New Jersey with her family.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST DAY
"Up by six a.m. Impressive, Joey. Especially for a Saturday." Dad's voice is rough and rocky, but pleased. I'd smile if I had the energy. I don't. Not this early. Not with what I've got to do today.
One of Dad's big hands rubs at the dark grit on his cheeks and chin as he hovers over the gurgling coffeemaker. This unshaven look is weird for him. And his eyelids seem thick. They're drooping. The blue-sky brightness usually under them is clouded over. He doesn't fit into our small, cheery kitchen this morning. This room that is covered in Mom's fingerprints, from the cabinets that she painted white to the walls that she painted milky yellow to the border of teapots and sunflowers that she pasted close to the ceiling. But her mug with the kitten face isn't by her place at the table. Neither is a tea bag or a pad of paper with her scribbled list of things to do.
Our fat, smoke-gray cat arches his back as he rubs against the denim of Dad's left calf, his limping leg. For the first time maybe ever, Dad ignores him, doesn't massage the cat's triangle ears or scratch the base of his tail. Weird again. Dad must have what he calls a "swampy head," again. He doesn't sleep when Mom is away for more than five days.
"We've got a good start to your first day of hunting. Our first day of hunting together." He straightens and turns to me, six feet, two inches of broad and strong. A real grin pushes into his face. "I can't think of anything else that I'd rather be doing today, buddy." He slaps me on my shoulder. I almost spit beef jerky. My breakfast.
This is the kind of enthusiasm that Dad usually shows Philly, my fifteen-going- on-twenty sister, when she breaks track records and wins races. Last year, when she beat one of his best times in a race, he smirked, walked taller, and shoulder- smacked everyone for a full week.
"I've been looking forward to us hunting as a team since the day that you were born."
That's twelve years of anticipation. Even though the words I'd rather be sleeping form in my mouth, I don't let them out. I don't tell him how much I've been dreading the next thirteen days — antlered deer season. A once- a-year opportunity to shoot a buck.
The musky cologne that he's wearing hints of Mom's clean linen perfume and reminds me of another reason why I am up and keeping quiet. Mom told Philly (who told me) that Dad mixes a drop of her perfume into his splash of cologne when he's missing her. To keep her close.
He needs the distraction and companionship of our hunting together.
So I force a lame grin and slide my butt onto the yellow cushion of the chair I usually sit in. A bowl of sugared rice cereal in front of me crackles. Since the dread in my gut would curdle the milk, I pull out another strip of beef jerky from my back pocket. Nothing says good morning better than salt-cured, dried meat. Of course, my salad-obsessed mom wouldn't agree. She'd have a heart attack if she knew that this was my breakfast. But she's been gone for nine days, ten hours on her fourth trip in three months, not that I am counting.
When the coffee machine sputters to a stop, Dad snatches the pot. He pours steaming black into his WORLD'S BEST DAD mug, but too fast. Coffee splashes onto the counter, onto his latest history and hunting magazines, which sit on top of junk mail and bills, and onto Philly's nail polish bottles and hoop earrings. When Mom is away, my sister leaves her girl junk all over.
"You and me, hunting buddies, carrying on the MacTagert tradition the way my pop and I did. The way he and his dad did. The way your great-grandfather and his father did." Dad lifts his mug in a toast to me. "Now it's you and me, a team. We'll have memories to treasure for a lifetime, Joey. I loved hunting with my dad."
"Yes, sir." I try to sound excited, try to snuff the dread that is crawling around inside me.
Instead of waiting for the coffee to cool, Dad sips in loud slurps. Black drips onto his green flannel shirt, but he doesn't grab a sponge to wipe at this or the mess on the counter. I stop chewing jerky. Sloppiness isn't in my father. If it's not health inspection clean, it's not clean enough, he's said a million times.
If Mom saw this kitchen, she'd hang Dad, my sister, and me. In that order.
When he makes more loud, coffee-sucking noises, I bunch up my face at him, imagining the bitter, molten-tar java frying the inside of his mouth. "Man, Dad, that's got to be blistering your tongue."
"Drinking it scorching is the only way to get it down when I make it." He sticks out his tongue. An ack sound comes up from his throat. "No one makes coffee the way your mother does." He slurps again, crinkles his face, and makes another gagging noise as he limps to the cabinet where Mom keeps the vitamins and aspirins. And his jelly beans.
His bum leg is stiffer than usual this morning. The gory details of how he messed it up are a secret. All I know is that a Harley-Davidson motorcycle was involved — the one that he sold as a wedding present to Mom.
"Yes, we'll remember this day forever." He grabs the aspirin bottle, topless since he whipped the childproof cap into the backyard last September. Hours after he'd kicked the tires on his truck and called them pieces of crap. Only a day after he'd shredded the wall calendar on which Mom had marked the weeks when she'd be gone. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that he never used to lose his temper. And my mom had only been gone one week.
That afternoon, Philly and I labeled his hibernating anger "the bear." These days, "the bear is out of its cave" is code for "Dad's anger is out and on the move." That's when inanimate objects get beat up and yelled at. That's when Claude dives for cover.
"Today will be different from all the other times we've been in the woods, son." Chalky tablets clatter into Dad's big palm. They disappear down his throat in a blink, chased by coffee.
I consider asking him to pass the bottle.
He barely puts it down before hobbling into the hunting room, a space off of our kitchen that should be, according to Mom, a dining room. It is the only place in our ranch-style home that she hasn't wallpapered, painted, carpeted, and decorated with furniture and knickknacks that she has bought at yard sales and flea markets. For years Dad has talked about building her the perfect dining room, but so far Mom's dream room is exactly that — a dream.
When Dad returns to the kitchen, he drops boots and an olive-green jacket onto a chair seat. He attaches a nine-inch hunting knife, in its sheath, to his belt. "Today we won't just search out deer paths and food sources, or simply watch the habits of bucks. Today is the hunt."
He grabs his fluorescent-orange vest from the back of another chair and pulls the sleeveless thing over his camouflage tan-and-brown jacket while stepping to my right. As usual. If you ask me, he doesn't want to even glimpse the hearing aid crammed into my left ear. To him, it's an advertisement that his only son has a defect. No, he's never said this. And Philly accuses me of having sniffed glue when I mention it, but the "fifth" in Joseph Morgan MacTagert the fifth means I'm supposed to be a copy of my father, the next in a long line of Joseph Morgan MacTagerts, all hunters.
"Call me sentimental, but I can't stop myself." He picks up the stiff green jacket. It's frayed at the cuffs, worn hard at the elbows, and big enough to cover at least two of me. "For you, son." His free hand pats my shoulder again. And then he picks up the gnarled and scarred ankle-high boots. "I wore this coat and these boots on my first hunt with your grandfather. When I was your age. When I shot my first buck."
"Thanks, Dad." I stand, try to come off as thrilled at being given these things. This isn't easy. The jacket and the boots highlight that I'm not as big as Dad was at twelve. Having a five-foot-no-inches son weighing in at eighty-five pounds (wearing every sweatshirt I own) and sporting a hearing aid has to disappoint him. Philly is already five six.
"Your mother laughed when I told her that I wanted to give you these." For a moment, his smile is loud, the way it gets when he mentions her. "I told her that wearing your old man's jacket and boots for the first season is a MacTagert tradition." He gives me a wink. "Besides, I thought you'd get a kick out of wearing these."
He drops the boots. Even their thud sounds too big. When he pushes the jacket at me, I get more of a gamy stench than a kick. The thing reeks of dead rodent. The ear infections that ate away at my hearing when I was seven left me with a high-powered nose. Strange, but true, and sometimes really inconvenient.
Dad runs a hand through his thick chestnut hair. This, at least, I inherited from him. Except that his is short and neat while mine is weeks overdue for a cut.
In one step he returns to the coffeemaker. He refills his mug. "Meet me by the truck. Okay, buddy? Two minutes." He snaps off a playful salute and is gone.
Claude jumps onto the table. He sticks his face into the cereal bowl, laps milk as if this were part of his morning routine. For the record, it is not.
I bolt back to my bedroom and pull on four random socks that don't come close to matching. I grab two sweatshirts from the scattered land mines of crumpled clothes all over the floor. After sock sliding back into the kitchen, I stick my overpadded feet into Dad's boots. Even laced up, they still wobble. Cinder blocks tied to my feet would be easier to maneuver.
Next, I throw on Dad's jacket. It hangs over my layers of sweatshirts. By the time I crawl into the blaze-orange hunting vest that Dad bought for me a month ago, I'm doing a great imitation of a deflated blimp that stinks of roadkill.
Cold, raw, beginning-of-December air hits my face as I step outside. Streaked pinks and oranges are just pushing up into the sky, shoving out the dark purples and navy blues. As I open the door on the passenger's side of Dad's black SUV, he throws it into reverse. Mr. Anxious, whistling an old Rolling Stones song playing on the radio — the tune about getting no satisfaction.
"We've got a great morning," he says. "Buckle up."
"We've got a freezing morning." I climb into the cab, into the overpowering odor of fake orange blossoms coming off the cardboard air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. This sticky smell is not mixing well with the roasted nut aroma of Dad's coffee. Mom gave him this air freshener when she returned from her business trip to Florida. I'm not sure, but I don't think a grinning orange with a painted-on twinkle in its eye screams "I missed you." Still, Dad won't yank the thing down.
As I snap the seat belt together at my hip, the back of my hand brushes crisp fabric. Hunting gloves. The plastic thread holding them together is tangled with the tag of a fluorescent-orange hat. My eyes, brown like Mom's, shift to Dad's face. I tip my head at the gifts. "Thanks."
He gives me another smile. It almost makes getting up too early worthwhile.
Gravel crunches on packed dirt as Dad backs the truck out of our short driveway. The woods aren't far, but I'm glad Dad prefers to drive there. I shiver and shove my hands into the pockets of the hunting jacket. Between all the extra canvas and my layered sweatshirts, I can barely bend my arms.
"You'll get used to the cold once you wake up."
The chill of the hockey rink never bothers me. If I thought I'd be spending the day icing pucks, turning them into oversize bullets shooting across a rink, I wouldn't be thinking about the cold. Dad doesn't get this hockey love. Not even a little. He never has. Skating, chasing a rubber puck, living to slice the thing past a goalie and into a net. All of this is lost on him. Fine for Canadians, he's told me more than once. But hunting is better for kids from Pennsylvania. Once you experience the thrill of shooting a deer, you'll forget about hockey.
He straightens the truck, guides it down Mercer Place. "Hunting is the MacTagert way. It's in your blood, son."
What if it isn't this MacTagert's way? I mean, I'm the kid who stays clear of the backyard when Dad hangs a gutted deer from the trees (to let the carcass bleed out). I'm the MacTagert who flipped out in Mom's car when a squirrel bolted in front of us, too late for her to stop. For weeks I couldn't erase the replay of that fuzzy-tailed rodent sprinting for its nut-loving life before becoming the middle of a tire-rubber-and-asphalt sandwich.
Do I have to become a hunter because MacTagerts have hunted in Pennsylvania since forever? Did the first Joseph Morgan MacTagert go screwy over dead squirrels and carved-out deer in the 1700s? Probably not.
As we come to the end of Mercer Place, where it butts up against County Road 523, I am happy for the distraction that is the house that sits across the two-lane street. The Buckner place, 77 County Road 523. A tall, old, ivory-sided building with sage-green trim and shutters. Mom drools over this house, calls it a "Victorian." I call it creepy. Because the doors are always sealed shut. The windows are never cracked open behind the heavy shades. The black-iron fence that surrounds the place warns all living things to back off. Its gate has been threaded shut with a thick chain and a huge silver padlock since Mrs. Buckner died this past August. Tommy Jackson, my best friend, also known as Jacks, swears the woman was one hundred and ten.
Behind the Buckner gate and fence, the grass is always cut. The bushes and hedges around the front porch are always trimmed. The snow is always shoveled off of the driveway and the cement walkway from the gate to the porch. Fine. Except that no one has ever been seen mowing, trimming, shoveling, or sweeping. People claim to have heard the whirring blades of a lawn mower, the rapid- fire click-click-click of a hedge clipper, and the muffled strain of asnowblower blasting away on the Buckner property, but only at night.
I'd kill to hear a lawn mower, clipper, or blower. More than once I've left my hearing aid in, especially on snowy nights, hoping, always hoping.
As I stare, I gasp the way a girl would. A knee-jerk reaction that I hope Dad didn't catch. When he doesn't tease me about this, I point at the lights on a tall pine by the corner of the porch. More bulbs speckle the bushes near the steps. "Someone hung holiday lights!"
"It's that time of year," Dad comments. As if new lights are no big deal. As if they don't prove that Mr. and Mrs. Buckner's adult son, M. K., is still living inside that house. People say he is a sixty-something Vietnam War veteran. A big guy, made mostly of muscle. And scary crazy.
According to talk, M. K. Buckner joined the United States Army Rangers — an elite, special operations force of the army — and did two tours of duty in Vietnam. Supposedly the guy became a trained sniper. Everyone agrees that he ended up being awarded a Bronze Star medal for being heroic and a Purple Heart after being wounded, but some say M. K. Buckner also snapped. They say all the jungle warfare, death, and destruction pushed him over the edge.
"Jacks swears M. K. Buckner only comes out at night," I blurt out.
"You know how I feel about gossip, son."
But Jacks doesn't spread rumors. He had nothing to do with the latest whispers about M. K. Buckner strangling his mother and burying her under the front porch steps of 77 County Road 523. This story started the day after Mrs. Buckner died, when the town woke up to find piles of loose dirt where the porch steps had been. Three days later, new steps had replaced the dirt. But no one saw anyone doing any demolition or rebuilding. There was never a funeral.
As usual, I'm itching to ask Dad about the other rumors, too. Especially the one about M. K. Buckner prowling the woods at night as his special ops killing-machine self. Does he relive old war battles in flashbacks? Another of my pals, Steve Katz, a kid into all things military, says M. K. could be reliving past hunter-killer missions — operations that the Rangers executed in Vietnam.
Whenever I hear this, a seven-foot monster man in green camouflage storms into my head. My knees almost give out as I picture his face painted in shades of green that make the whites of his eyes glow with pure crazy. My stomach double-knots as I imagine a nine-and-a-half-inch bowie knife clenched between his teeth.
I'm almost desperate to ask Dad whether it's true that M. K. Buckner once killed a hunter. A poor sap who didn't get out of the woods before sunset. This would explain why some kids say that M. K. stands for "Man Killer." But asking about this will get me a lecture on the value of minding my own business.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Buck Fever"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Cynthia Chapman Willis.
Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
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