"The Field" lyrics

Carried off by boredom from the deer blind
Followed older brother's footsteps
Through the thick brush in behind him slow
Approaching where the forest broke
Saw him standing at the tree line
Hunter orange distorted in the boughs of pines
Between us in the woods

Where I stood now in my hand-me-downs in the cold
The same ones my uncle wore
In that framed page from the press
Both of them up north
Above Dad's desk
A couple years after their father's death
And his brother left

Stood and watched him scan the open field with his rifle scope
About a mile deep
Twice as wide at least
Where we could see
Military netting draped across the canopy of trees

Tried to keep up where he walked on
There appeared to be some compound
On the far side of the clear-cut
We knew the rumors of militia grounds in the north
Heard on our radios
Locals poaching does talk in voices down
By the bait piles on the ridge

And Father waited patient, eyeing deer sign from his blind by the lake
And I, on the other side of it
Kept on walking through the field
To find my brother standing posed with his gaze locked
In the ground down in a pit

Scattered with carcasses
Skin on their bones dried
Skulls sawed for the antlers of the dead
Like some portal to nowhere now
For forever and no time I watched
Trancelike with the vultures overhead
Heard his boots in the grass again
The fading of footsteps away
Knew he was walking off
To the compound up ahead

And I knew I had to break from the trance
Follow fast in that direction
Or I'd never find a way to close the gap

That if I stared down in the corpses there, transfixed
He would go that way forever
And I would stay here
Staring downward
And I did