John Wyman
Character Profile Draft
1/15/12
Joe Laroc was built for the outdoors. He is thirty-nine years old and six feet tall
with a thick barrel chest and big shoulders. He trims his brown hair and full beard short,
accentuating the large features of his face. Bright robin’s egg blue eyes straddle a long
straight nose that looks completely normal-sized because of his huge cheeks chin. His
hands are thick, calloused and skilled.
On the hunt, Joe wears a faded orange hat with a camouflage brim, a green and
black checkered flannel shirt, basic carhartt working pants, dark green boots and light
brown leather work gloves. Under his thick flannel, the tattered collars of three different
shirt layers peek out behind each other. To keep warm his main strategy is to keep on the
move.
Joe Laroc has a wife, three hound dogs and a daughter and he loves them all.
Spending just an hour at his home shows how Joe’s family life and play are divided yet
fundamentally intertwined. Just twenty yards from the house, three small doghouses
shelter Joe’s well-loved hound dogs. As he cracks a raw egg onto the mound of kibbles
for each dog’s dinner, he will proudly tell you their stories. Izzy is seven years old, the
veteran, Scout has great big paws like snowshoes and Rocket is pure crazy and fast. Once
inside, he will take you far away from the front door to the “gun room,” where his wife
Beth makes him keep all his toys. The walls extend about twelve feet by ten feet, but the
room feels much smaller because some twenty mounted deer heads jut out from all sides.
The floor is almost covered by guns and hunting paraphernalia big and small, including
some stuffed ground animals. Printed photographs show Joe’s father clutching the antlers
of two bloodied deer, and Joe crouching with his three hounds licking him behind a row
of seven dead coyotes. The first gun that Joe reaches for, a little 23 Hornet, belongs to his
ten-year old blonde-haired daughter Aby who just killed her first deer this fall. When I
asked him about his first deer, he grinned and told me he was nine. “One hundred and ten
pounds… I remember that deer like it was yesterday.”
Hunched over the kitchen counter, Joe confided in me that he doesn’t go hunting
anymore just to kill coyotes, “It’s about the dogs and getting to see them perform.” More
than just admiring their abilities, Joe forms deep attachments to his dogs, some of whom
he hunted with for almost as long as his daughter has lived. He told me stories of some of
the dogs he had lost on previous hunts. Hank, one of his best dogs drowned a few years
ago chasing a coyote escaped across a river. Magnum, another of his favorite dogs
completely tore the equivalent of his Achilles tendon on a hind leg. Joe took him to the
hospital and paid thirty-five hundred dollars for a surgery, even “just so he could at least
ride up front with me,” he said, but the day after a successful surgery Magnum reacted to
the anesthesia and dropped dead. “How’s that for a sad story!” Joe almost shouted when
he finished telling the story, laughing to stave away the welling of tears.
During the week Joe works hard as a lineman for Central Vermont Public Service,
repairing fallen or damaged telephone lines. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene this fall,
Joe worked fourteen straight days, 18 to 20 hours each day. That said, he enjoys his job.
He has worked at the same company for eighteen years and it his how he met his one and
only wife.