Mulak Reader - Brown Feathers From my Game Vest

I did many of these stories a long time ago, but this one seems to be from way back there. Supposedly, the basis of aroma-therapy has to do with the idea that our strongest memories are tied to smells. Evidently, the guy who thought that one up never found a stray grouse feather in the pocket of a jacket. This one appeared in The Drummer in December of 1980. 

BROWN FEATHERS FROM MY GAME VEST

The static on my radio stops, and overhead I hear the scrape of a chair being pushed back, then footsteps. The cellar door is opened, and a moment later my nylon-faced hunting pants land in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
          "Steven?"
          "Hello." I put down the whittling knife and shake the wood shavings from my lap.
          "Your cuffs are fixed. And I found a tear in the seat, too. What else have you got?"
          "My vest has some rips in it. I'll bring it up."
          "Why don't you get yourself a new one? I've been patching that old thing for years."
          "Bean's wants 40 bucks for them now. I'll put it on my Christmas list."
          There is a telling pause on the stair landing. Then, "You might as well bring it up."
          I look through the rack of my hunting clothes for anything else in need of mending before being forgotten for another year. There is a wool shirt with a torn elbow as well as my old poplin vest.
          Some final instructions come down the stairs: "Make sure you clean out the pockets. I don't want sticks and dirt all over my sewing room."
          "Okay, Maggie."
          After a pause, she asks, "Who's Maggie?"
          "Jiggs's wife."
          "Insect!" The door closes.
          Not bad. She's not usually that quick.
          The buffalo plaid shirt has only a dried leaf in its buttoned pocket—One I had intended to look up but forgot. I stand at the trash bucket and turn out the vest pockets. During the course of the hunting season they collect enough twigs to start a good sized barbecue. I unzip the gamebag and turn it inside out...

          Suddenly a pair of woodcock are in the air, twisting up through the near-leafless aspens above Hazel's point. I track the higher bird to the top of his climb, and he folds at my shot, falling back into the branches. His fall dislodges a single golden aspen leaf which flutters to the ground as I stand listening to the echoes of my shot...

Two blacks ease over the treetops and into the shadow cast by the rising sun.  Win and I crouch together, watching intently as they bank around the rig. After one has fallen among the decoys and Win is on her way to the bird, I notice a float of feathers hanging in the air like a three-dimensional punctuation mark on the spot where duck and shot came together...

A pheasant climbs into the overcast sky from the last corner of the asparagus bed. Feathers fly at both of my shots, but the cock glides off on set wings. I send Hazel after him, and she is gone for an uncomfortably long five minutes. Standing on the farm road and peering into the riverside tangles, I happen to glance to my left in time to see her emerge from the thicket 200 yards away. The burden she carries causes her to hold her head awkwardly, but her tail is high and she fairly prances to me and delivers a bird I have no right to have expected her to find...

I stand in the clearing by the cedar I had singled out as my marker when the bird fell. All of my hope is out in the laurel thickets with Win, and I follow her progress with my ears. When her bell stops I whistle to her, and she trots through the underbrush and vaults over the stone wall into the clearing. In her mouth she carries the cock grouse I wasn't sure I had hit. His tail is spread as she carries him. After I have taken the bird and thanked her, she sits at my feet. A single fluffy breast feather remains clinging to the moisture on her nose...

I look to where my two bird dogs lie sleeping on their cellar rugs and bid them both a silent thanks. Then I reach into the trash bucket to find which of the brown feathers from my game vest fits which memory.

* * * * *

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