The following is from Tehila Hakimi’s Hunting in America. Hakimi is a Jewish Book Council Award–winning fiction writer and poet. She was a participant in the 2018 Fulbright International Writing Program Fellowship at the University of Iowa, and is a recipient of the 2015 Bernstein Prize for Literature. Her short prose and poems have been published in translation in Asymptote, World Literature Today, and The Poetry Review, among others.

The first time I went shooting in America I hit a tree. We’d been outdoors for a while, probably a few hours. The first shot hit a tree, but the next one whistled through the leaves. I stopped shooting, the animal fled, and everything went quiet.

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When I raised my head from the gunsight, I noticed David and the others staring at me, and I was embarrassed. I left them where they stood and approached the tree. I searched for the bullet but couldn’t find it. It must have penetrated the trunk. The scent of the earth was pungent and overpowered the acrid smell of the gunpowder, which dissipated into the air. I remained by the tree a few more moments.

We had left the office early that day, shortly after lunch. There had been an awkward conference call with Israeli management that morning. The information they offered was unclear, their messages mixed, and the conversation left everyone uneasy.

I was catching up on emails when David came into my office and asked if he was interrupting. He told me they’d decided to finish up for the day, and when I looked at him in confusion, he smiled and said he was going out to the field to shoot with some of the guys. “Would you like to join us?”

When I returned to where the others stood, David patted me on the back. I shuddered, feeling each of his fingers through my sweater. They were spread apart, like in yoga class when the instructor tells you to extend your fingers and toes like duck feet. David murmured something like “Way to go” in a somewhat perfunctory tone that nonetheless felt good. I usually didn’t like it if someone offered encouragement when I was already doing my best—it had the opposite effect on me. I smiled and said it had been twenty years, maybe more, since I’d shot a gun. Until that moment I’d preferred to put behind me the fact that I had once handled firearms, but suddenly it came back. It just slipped out, I barely noticed.

*

I thought I had a pretty good understanding of American etiquette long before that, but no amount of TV, movies, email correspondence, or videoconferences with American colleagues had prepared me. For starters, the daily office routine was more tiring than what I was accustomed to back in Israel. For an entire month, I found myself wandering around feeling jet-lagged. This wasn’t the usual fatigue of a transatlantic flight, nor was I homesick. I didn’t regret my decision to leave Israel. On the contrary, I arrived in the United States with a sense of relief and anticipation.

During the first few weeks, my long workdays ended with a pounding headache. Flashing an automatic smile every time someone approached me became a habit. The smile was wide, but not the kind that creates wrinkles. Convincing enough, although I didn’t entirely recognize myself. It was the kind of smile suitable for a profile picture on LinkedIn, or maybe a dating app.

I got to know David better during that first week. Every day, he dropped by my office to invite me to join the engineering team in the cafeteria for lunch breaks and to let me know what time they were meeting up. Besides David, I chatted a few times with Sean, a young guy I’d already corresponded with a little before I arrived in the United States. And there was Joan. We shared an office, and she was nice from the start.

*

The days were filled with constant stress. I made an effort to speak English without an accent. I wrote meticulous emails, trying to emulate the wordiness of my colleagues. It was Joan who’d tipped me off about the emails. One morning, before the daily grind began, she cornered me, closing the door to our office. She said she knew it wasn’t deliberate, and I shouldn’t be embarrassed—she had family in Israel and understood the mentality—but the direct tone of my emails might be misconstrued as aggressive. “They already have a boss,” she concluded with a smile. Later that day she sent me an email with copious comments. She’d copied one of mine and attached it to a separate document with corrections. She opened brackets after every other sentence and explained how to rephrase it. Her explanations were detailed and mostly began with these words: “It would be even better to write this.” In addition to her deletions and comments, she made sure to occasionally compliment me on a successful turn of phrase. When I thanked her for her help, she said it was her pleasure, that it was no big deal. “You’re a quick learner. Soon you won’t need me anymore,” she added.

*

The second time I went shooting in America, David brought along two of his friends. It was a Saturday, and this time no one from the office joined us. Once again I was the only woman, but I was used to this. Most of the time I was the only woman on the team, the only woman in the meeting. Sometimes I was the only woman in the entire building.

David said we were going to drive further out, to a different area. They’d received an email from the local Fish and Wildlife authority with whom they were registered, inviting them to help reduce the number of deer. The idea was to shoot to kill but also to scare them off, to move them away from the most densely populated areas. “Like warning shots,” I told David, who didn’t seem to get it and threw me a suspicious look. On the way there, he said it would be good hunting practice for someone like me, who was just starting out. He explained there was usually a specified bag limit, but that licensed hunters had been repeatedly called on since the beginning of the season to help with the deer situation. I mostly kept quiet and listened carefully while he was talking, I wanted to get up to speed. At this stage I still didn’t have my own rifle, so David lent me one of his. Most of my coworkers possessed firearms at home, some even kept a gun in the trunk. There were also a few who kept a small pistol in the glove compartment.

It was raining when we arrived, but this wasn’t a problem. David said the rain would help us, that it would make it harder for the animals to feel our presence. “Under the cover of rain,” I said, nodding knowingly. He looked at me weirdly again. We drove further along. The road narrowed into a dirt track, and David slowed down. After a while, he stopped the truck, turned to face us, and said, “Ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

David led the way, I walked behind him, and the other two followed. After thirty or forty minutes, I heard the signal we had agreed on, a birdlike chirp, to indicate that an animal was close by. We froze. David subtly lifted and lowered the palm of his hand. This was the sign to hunker down. We sprawled on the ground.

When I saw the buck standing in front of me, it was in repose, barely moving. Now it was up to me. Before the others had time to exchange glances or determine which of us had a direct line of vision, I had already fired. One shot and then another. One to the torso and the other to the neck. A moment later the buck fell heavily to the ground.

We approached the dead buck, and David identified the points of impact. He looked carefully at the first point, bleeding at the center of the torso, and then he turned to me and said it was a beautiful hit. Afterward he pointed to the neck and said, “But not that one.”

The three of them dragged the buck to the truck. First, they wrapped it in a kind of tarp and then covered it with thick material that David had tucked into his backpack earlier. Finally, they tied it up with rope. Everything happened fast, they were clearly skilled in this line of work. They took turns, two of them dragging it at a time. I followed slowly behind. All was quiet. During one of our pauses, David turned to me and said, “That’s one hell of an animal you got yourself. Not bad for a first hit.”

The buck landed in the spacious cargo bed, and the truck sank down. We drove back. After we had dropped off the others and it was just David and me, I apologized for moving so quickly, firing before a decision had been made. He was silent for a few moments, then said there was no need to apologize.

“I think you’re a natural,” he said, almost in a whisper.

*

We didn’t talk on the way back to my place. When he pulled up beside the path leading to my house, David said he had a lot of work ahead of him: He had to take care of the animal, he had to take care of the meat. He said he would come pick me up later. As soon as I slammed the truck door, or even a split second before, he drove off. From where I stood, I could see the truck sagging under the deer’s weight. The cargo bed almost touched the road.

*

Those first few weeks in America went by quickly.

I was busy figuring out how things worked in the office and finding my way around the spacious house in which I lived. I made no effort to keep in touch with friends back in Israel. I spoke to my parents once a week, despite my mother’s nagging me to call more often. They let me be only after I explained that I was under a lot of pressure at work and that weekends were a better time to talk. The atmosphere in the office was tense, but it wasn’t clear why. Joan taught me everything I needed to know to navigate my way around the huge building and avoid making tactical errors with my colleagues—those I didn’t know, and those I did. It was often tougher with the ones I already knew; I was no longer a name on an email or a face on a video call but a person in the flesh.

Sometime during those first few weeks, Joan suggested that we go out for a drink together after work. She was a big-boned, hefty woman, but when she drove her truck she somehow seemed smaller, almost my size. On the way to the bar, she asked me how I was doing, whether I had everything I needed in my new home, and whether they were taking good care of me. Her questions were not presumptuous, she didn’t ask anything overly personal. When we got to the bar, I tried to resume our earlier conversation and asked about her family in Israel. When had she last visited them? Where did they live? “I’m not really in touch with them,” she said. Joan ordered a beer, and I ordered the same. The beer was strong, and I didn’t enjoy it. But when the barman suggested another round, I agreed right away and didn’t wait to see if Joan was going to have another one too. When Joan said, “No thanks,” I briefly considered canceling my order, but in the end I drank it down all at once. When we left, I was slightly buzzed.

As we drove back to the company parking lot to my car, Joan blurted out that she and her husband were trying to get pregnant. “We’ve been trying for a long time,” she said. After we parted ways, I sat in my car until I was sober enough to drive home.

*

The new house was already fully furnished when I moved in. The company had taken care of everything. Someone from Human Resources had been in touch with me a few weeks before my relocation. She sent me photos of couches, dining tables, rugs, and drapes, but I didn’t respond in time. When I entered the house for the first time, a heady smell of paint hung in the air. Still, it looked nice and tidy, and everything was spotless. It wasn’t until weeks later, when the smell of fresh paint had worn off, that I began to notice a certain mustiness.

One evening, as I was sitting in the living room, it occurred to me that everything in the house had been chosen by another woman. I had not picked out a single object or piece of furniture. That weekend, I went to an IKEA in a city some distance from my house. I knew that something was missing, but I didn’t know exactly what. The trip to IKEA took two and a half hours each way. Strangely, the store made me feel so at home that I almost forgot I was in America. I wandered around for a few hours until I reached the restaurant, which was located in a hall between the two main levels. I stood at the entrance for a few moments. Once inside, I couldn’t decide what to order, so I took a few random plates of food: salmon with green beans, meatballs in sauce with mashed potatoes, and a hot dog with fries on the side. I ate a little of everything. It all tasted familiar, vaguely comforting. It was only after I removed my tray from the table and threw the leftovers into the trash that I realized I had left my shopping cart at the entrance to the restaurant. It was filled with bedding, a towel or two, and some kitchenware I thought I might need. I didn’t go looking for it. Instead, I went out to the parking lot and drove home.

*

Sometime during my third month in America, Joan disappeared. At first I didn’t ask questions. It didn’t seem important. I assumed she was on vacation and had forgotten to tell me, or perhaps she was on sick leave. All of her personal items were still there, including her computer. After a while, her desk was emptied and nothing remained of her in the office. When I asked David what had happened, it took him a moment to figure out who I was talking about. Joan had had very few interactions with our team. On rare occasions she would reply to emails from clients, because she worked in the commercial department. David and I worked in project management, and we interacted with a lot of other departments within the company. A few days later, at our weekly meeting, David told me that he’d inquired about Joan and learned that she was on unpaid leave for personal reasons. I assumed it was because of her attempt to get pregnant, but I said nothing about this to David. A week or two later, I went down to the Human Resources department. I wanted to get her phone number, I thought maybe I would call her. When I reached the door, I changed my mind. If she’d wanted to keep in touch, she would have left a note on my desk or sent an email. As it happened, there was no one in Human Resources anyway.

Around that same time a sense of insecurity began gnawing at me. There was a lot of gossip spreading from company headquarters in Israel. Unverified reports of organizational changes, rumors about closing or downsizing several branch offices. I tried to calculate the chances that my own business division would be eliminated. I convinced myself that the chance was low; in the short time since my arrival several major projects had been added, and we were inundated with work. I couldn’t imagine the company letting us go. These thoughts disturbed me mostly when I was alone at home, after work.

I spent my first few weekends doing nothing. The hours flew by, and on Monday mornings when I returned to work, the weekend was erased entirely from my memory. On the short drive to work I practiced what to say if someone asked me how my weekend was and what I’d done. I prepared answers I could extract quickly, grocery shopping in Costco, reorganizing the basement, washing clothes. The only two weekends I’d gone out were the Saturday I went hunting with David and the Saturday I went to IKEA.

After a few consecutive weekends of idleness, I decided to take up running again. It had been a long time since I had done this regularly. I didn’t enjoy using a treadmill, but the weather, which was turning chilly, prevented me from running outside. I joined a nearby gym, and very early one Saturday morning I went there for the first time. I chose a treadmill that looked out over unending green, similar to the view from my new house. The gym was quiet, almost empty. I started out slowly and gradually increased my pace. My body felt cumbersome, my muscles were rusty. I wasn’t running fast, but even so I felt I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for more than a few minutes. Then my phone began vibrating. It was Tal, my boss from Israel. He’d called a few times that week, and every time I tried calling him back it went straight to voicemail: “I’m not available right now but will get back to you soon, thank you.” Now I deliberated whether to pick up. I didn’t want to sound out of breath, but the phone continued vibrating. His call went to voicemail and immediately after he called me again. I stopped the treadmill and went outside.

Tal apologized for disturbing my weekend and announced he was arriving in America at the beginning of next week. He was landing Sunday afternoon and wanted to have dinner with me that same evening. The phone call was very brief and businesslike. He did not specify the reason for his visit. When I went back inside, I increased the pace, my legs flew above the belt, my body felt lighter. On the treadmill next to me was a hefty-looking guy who hadn’t been there before. He was already running hard and breathing heavily. I felt drops of his sweat spatter on my arms and legs. I stopped the treadmill. I got off so fast I almost lost my balance. In the locker room it took me a short while to find the locker where I had stored my belongings. Everything looked the same. After a quick shower I went out to the car and realized I’d forgotten to dry my hair. The cold air froze my head. Trembling, I ran to the car, holding the keys in my outstretched hand. As soon as I got in, I turned up the heat as high as it would go. It took several minutes before the trembling stopped.

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From Hunting in America by Tehila Hakimi, translated by Joanna Chen, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Tehila Hakimi and Translation © 2025 by Joanna Chen.