And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (23 page)

Ka-blang! Ka-blang!
*

The bird dropped straight down, landing not twenty yards in front of me and perhaps one long step to the left, coming to rest in a clump of long grass. The dogs reacted immediately, converging on the spot.

“You got it, Craig!” shouted Rob from my right.

“Nice shooting, big guy!” answered Tom.

“Great shot, Hemingway!” yelled Mark, who had moved to the left end of the line when we made the turn north. Plaudits down the line, then another shout from Mark. “Get on it before the dogs rip it to pieces.”

I snapped from my delirious reverie, a postcoital return to the present world. I was a hunter. Before I could eject the spent shells from my still-smoking gun, I ran to where the bird was lying, its lifeless and limp body a trophy of my year spent discovering what it meant to be a man. I picked it up by its neck and was surprised by the weight. It wasn't heavy, just heavier than I had expected—about like picking up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. I drank in a long gaze at my first prey, taking mental pictures before stuffing it into the front entrance of my vest's game bag, where it settled at the bottom, on the small of my back. I could feel its heat and was not nearly as creeped out by it as I had imagined I would be. I felt good. Proud. My premonition of moments before had come almost exactly true and I couldn't wait to call Rebecca and my dad to tell them my big good news.

16

The Asterisk*

M
ost of that last chapter was true and as it happened. Right up to the asterisk. From that point forward, it was the way I had imagined things happening, the way they should have happened.

Emerging from the reeds at the base of the hill, I really did have a vision and say to myself
I'm about to shoot my first pheasant.
And I really did rehearse mentally all the things I had learned. And as we crested the hill, which afforded an awe-strikingly beautiful view of the bucolic wonder that is Iowa, the grass did get shorter. In fact, the whole thing went down the exact way I described. The rooster popped up unbidden by dogs directly in front of me, just slightly higher than eye level. I moved as if by rote or instinct, raising my gun and feeling time itself slow down. I felt like I was married to that gun, and for a long moment, my mind went blank of all expectation and insight. I simply was—in the moment, doing what felt so natural.

I selected a small bunch of feathers just above the bird's spindly tail and my eyes focused in such a way that the world itself seemed to disappear. I pulled the trigger without hesitation and this is where the story deviates. Rather than a report of
Ka-blang! Ka-blang!
All I heard was
click, click.

For a split second, I thought the gun had misfired or that the ammunition was bad, but I didn't have time to think about it before the reports up the line fractured the air.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Two to my right, then three, and a fourth from my left. The bird tumbled down exactly as I had described.

“Craig, I think you got it,” Rob said meekly.

“Nice shot, Craig,” Tommy tossed in as if he were throwing the comment away like so much trash. I think they both knew the truth.

“I didn't shoot,” I said sheepishly.

“What?” “What?” “Why not?” came several replies.

I looked down at the gun and moved the thumb on my right hand to reveal a switch securely in the “Safe” position. I had forgotten to take the safety off.

“Hemingway wouldn't have missed that shot,” Mark chided from the fence line.

“One more reason I'm not like Hemingway,” I shot back, but I wasn't in a joking mood and, I sensed, neither was he. I felt like I had let him down, like I had wasted the efforts of all these people who had come out with me that day. I felt like I had dropped the ball, which, essentially I had. Yet I didn't feel sorry for myself. It was more like the kind of embarrassed anger you feel in junior high when someone says something mean about you—something, in my case, invariably true—and you want to both hang your head in shame and run theirs into the nearest hard surface. So much for showing up to my first hunt and surprising the family with a clandestinely earned expertise.

W
e continued our hunt for another hour or two, seeing only hens and calling them out as they sprung into the air and flew off unmolested. When we got back to the cars and stood around for a few minutes talking, Mark made a few mocking comments about “Mr. L.L.Bean” missing an easy shot, but it was the sort of gentle ribbing that belies a certain degree of respect and love. Cousin Ben's friend retrieved a knife from his truck and stepped off into some scrubby brush to field dress and butcher his pheasant.

“I don't really remember how to do this,” he said to no one in particular as Tom, Ben, and I followed him to where he was going. We stood for a few minutes trading technical wisdom. This was something I had learned how to do. I learned from books and countless viewings of YouTube videos, but my confidence was shot. Everyone knew this was my first hunt and this bird was supposed to have been mine. I would have looked like a real jackass had I been pompous enough to claim expertise in field dressing with zero real-world experience. In the end it was Tom who took the knife and made a slice from the bird's anus to its rib cage. He pulled the guts with an ungloved hand, as confident and sure of what he was doing as if by rote. He bent the bird's wings back until the tendons in the shoulder joints snapped and cut them off with a flick of the blade. He cut the pheasant's throat and pulled the head back with a such a deft and strong movement that he removed the head, neck, spine, and skin down to the legs, over which he pulled the feathery skin as if he were pulling off a pair of socks. In less than a minute the entire bird was reduced to two pink breasts, legs, and thighs, which were put into a zipper bag, feet and claws intact for identification by a wildlife officer (male pheasant have heel spurs, while females do not). The rest of the bird was discarded in the bushes for coyotes or foxes to eat.

I went over to the carcass as the others returned to the cars. I wanted to touch it for some reason, to feel the furry feathers, to see the beak and tails I had thus far only seen in pictures. Then it occurred to me to remove the tail feathers. They made for great fly-tying material should I ever decide to pick that up. But more than that I would have at least something to show my wife and kids for all the trouble of coming out here. I picked the bird up by its feathers, and I could still feel heat coming from the body—moist heat like a baggie of jelly fresh from the microwave and wrapped in one of those boas women get at Mardi Gras–themed parties. I grabbed the tail feathers tightly in my right hand and pulled much harder than I needed to. They came off cleanly and I stuffed them into the slot on the chest of my hunting vest that allows you to put birds into the game bag, which hangs from the back, without reaching around. I hoped no one would see me do it. I felt like a fraudulent brave scalping a victim that wasn't mine. But if they did, I'd use the fly-tying excuse. Hopefully they'd buy that.

We decided to take a break for lunch and drove back into Thornton's block-long central business district and pulled into spots in front of the only business with its doors open and lights on inside, an establishment known only as “The Bar,” a name both accurate and appropriate in a one-horse town like this one. Inside it was dark, with the majority of the light coming from a cheap flatscreen hung over the bar and neon promotional signs from the kind of beer companies you only buy from in the suburbs as a gag gift or because you're in college and value quantity over quality. The small windows in the front of the narrow, long room offered nothing by way of illumination or view, and we helped ourselves to a table in the back—like one of those tables you find in a school cafeteria with the cheap metal, padded chairs. Our server offered us sticky, laminated menus, and one glance at the offerings made me love this place instantly. It was hearty food. The kind your grandmother makes for you. The kind she would describe as sticking to your ribs. Chili. Cheeseburgers. Stew. Not a salad in sight. Homemade soup was available some days, and the chili had been made the day before so it was just getting good. Since I'm a sucker for this kind of place and since I can't possibly turn down a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich whenever I'm in Iowa, I ordered that.

We chatted benignly about work and Iowa sports as we waited for our food and about the food as we ate it. My sandwich was as close to perfect as you can possibly get. The tenderloin was pounded flat, breaded, and fried and was roughly three times the size of the bun it was served on. Pickles, a little mustard, a slice of tomato. It doesn't get a whole lot better than this. I'd take this sandwich and an iced tea over just about any meal I've ever had anywhere, except maybe that lobster club back in Maine. That was the best sandwich I've eaten in a lifetime of eating sandwiches. But this tenderloin was awesome too. This with a side of shrimp lo mein would be my death row meal (again, if the lobster club is off the table). It was that good. Feeling full and refreshed, I had a renewed sense of optimism.

Screw what had happened earlier. So what if I made a mistake? It was my first time getting the drop on prey. A rookie mistake. I could learn from it and move on, right? I could still prove my manliness to these guys, still be a hunter, right? It's amazing what a belly full of food does for me. My wife knows to put a sandwich or leftovers in front of me if I'm in a sour mood. It seems that my emotional state is directly tied to how full or hungry I am. If I were to fall on hard times and find myself starving, I would probably end up being the most miserable bastard in the world.

I'm pretty sure a Cheshire Cat smile curled over my lips as we drove back out to the second field we were going to hunt. I was eager. I was ready. I was, I've got to say, pumped up. Rob and his friend had to leave before lunch, which left Ben and his friend, Mark, Tom, Tom's friend, and me to hunt this second piece of land. Mark opted for the warmth of his truck and the Iowa State game on the radio, sending us whippersnappers off to hunt this tiny, triangular spit of long grass in the middle of a three-hundred-acre, black-as-night cornfield. We were piling out of the trucks and readying our guns. Tom was getting Zeke out and Ben and his friend were putting their guns together and giving Ava some water. I stepped in front of Mark's truck, my gun assembled and broken for loading. I was just pulling shells from my pocket when Mark yelled “rooster!” out the window. I looked up to see a rooster thirty or thirty-five yards off rising from the scrub along a fence line and hightailing it toward the piece of property we didn't have permission to hunt. I may have had a shot, had my gun been loaded, but the bird was just too quick on the draw for me.

No problem. Just bad timing. I didn't do anything wrong, right? Besides, a bird popping up this early could only be a sign of good things to come. Surely there would be more in this tiny stretch of land than there were in the 140 acres we had hunted earlier in the day. And to be sure, there were more birds. Six or seven to be exact and all of them as female as Gloria Steinem. I saw all of them, up close.

After walking across a quarter mile of Iowa soil—which is a lot like walking through a foot-thick layer of pulverized Oreos—we came to the arrowhead-shaped piece of land we were going to hunt. The wind had picked up significantly since lunch. The sun was high and bright, the sky clear, but the wind made the day feel heavy. And as if walking into a stiff wind weren't enough, the grass was chest high and thick. Ten feet into the small field, I was breathing like a fat man climbing the Statue of Liberty.

“I think they've got tunnels through this crap,” yelled Tom. He was off to the right, walking the fence line. And he was right. Running beneath and through the dense vegetation were Viet-Cong-style tunnels. Every few steps you could see them, openings to a network of tunnels that ran along the ground, weaving in and out of the plants. I had no way, of course, of knowing whether or not these were made or used by pheasant, but it seemed pretty logical to me. The species is threatened by birds of prey—hawks, owls, hell, probably even eagles—which tend to sit high up in trees and take their meals by air. If a pheasant never flies, never exposes itself to the very birds that want to kill and eat it, it has a better chance of living. I secretly hoped they had built the tunnels. I liked the idea of an animal taking its safety into its own hands—not when I was the one trying desperately to kill it, but you get my point. I liked these crafty Chinese sons of bitches more and more by the second.

It took maybe twenty minutes to cover the field, and there was nothing fun about it. The tall grass was so thick, we had to stop a few times to try to find the dogs; so deep and thick in fact that I hardly noticed when a deer stood up less than ten feet in front of me and casually walked off. Ben pointed it out. He was maybe twenty yards away and saw the doe's ears bobbing as it hopped off toward safety and comfort someplace else.

I kept my gun loaded and ready as we walked along the fence line, hoping, no wishing, no praying that I would get one last shot before we were done for the day. I did not.

The day had not gone as I had so long imagined. When I began planning this trip, I had pictured myself coming home from our hunt with a couple of roosters in my game bag and sitting on a chair outside, sipping gin and cleaning my haul as Tommy told me his favorite jokes. I'd then spend an hour or two in the toasty warm interior, checking my roasting birds, applying additional bacon strips for added fat content and chopping up some vegetables for the roaster. There would, of course, be more gin and by the time I served a beautiful meal to my expectant family, I'd be Thanksgiving drunk—just enough to endure extended periods of family time, but not so much that you can't carve a bird—and swelling with pride.

As it was, however, I found myself sitting in my car, talking to my wife on the phone, and waiting to pick up the pizzas I had ordered in lieu of providing the evening meal with my quick shot instincts and guile.

“So did you get anything?” she asked.

“No,” I said, a bit of shame in my tone. “But I came close,” I added optimistically.

“What the hell? You drove all the way out there for nothing?”

“There's still tomorrow,” I said.

“Well, hurry up and get something, will ya?”

As we devoured taco pizza and a dessert pie, Mark tried to comfort me for my mistake earlier in the day. “Rookie mistake,” he said, and “it's better that you walk around with the safety on than to get a bird or accidentally shoot someone. Everyone came home safe, that's the important part.” Plus, there was always the next day. Maybe I'd be better then.

We talked until late and until I got a phone call from Rebecca. She was crying. Being in our small condo with the kids, after my in-laws had gone home, and trying to keep them occupied with no backyard, no basement, and a downstairs neighbor who had already twice tried to get us in trouble for noise—apparently she could hear the kids walking from the living room to the bedroom and it disturbed her smoking and watching television with the bass turned to max volume—had gotten to Rebecca. For nearly ten years, we'd lived like single people in small places. We got married young. Had kids young. We had yet to put down any real roots. Not having a house was getting to her worst of all. She could deal without having a ton of extra money and extra things, but she wanted our kids to have a house, a backyard, a basement, a reasonable expectation that they could walk from the living room to the bedroom without risking eviction. And I did too.