Mulak Reader - Rudi-ka-Zudi

Here’s another one I wrote specifically for Brown Feathers. It has held up well, and meets my definition of a “good outdoor story.” By that, I mean the story takes place in the setting of a bird hunting outing, but, in essence, the story itself is complete without the hunting part, and could just as easily be lifted out and re-inserted in an altogether different setting without loosing anything. A good story is a good story, no matter if the people in it are hunting, playing football, or working in an office. 

Rudi-ka-Zudi

"There are more things to admire

             in men than to despise."

                                        Albert Camus

          In the first moment that I saw the deer I thought he was a German Shepherd: He was shaded in winter-gray and had his tail upturned, showing white as he moved along the far side of the wall. Hazel turned and looked at him as he approached, then barked nervously and retreated. He wasn't running so much as cantering easily through the open woods, having been spooked by something downhill from us. I didn't think to count the points on his antlers as he passed, but there were some in the front and some more in the back—eight, maybe ten points. Enough so even me, a non-deer hunter, was impressed.

          Deer aren't something I see a lot of while I'm grouse hunting. Moving through the woods quietly is all but impossible, so I don't even try. Instead, I concentrate on being fast. And, of course, the dog wears a bell. Grouse don't seem to be overly alarmed by all the commotion, but deer hear me coming and stay out of my way. Once or twice I've surprised one when I've changed directions abruptly, but the only times I regularly see deer in my grouse coverts are when I sit down to take a breather. Or, as in this case, when something else spooks one.

          The buck's tracks were in the snow just beyond the wall. Mister Hancock once warned me to be careful of deer while I hunted his place: "This time of year they can be feisty—It's the runting season, you know." His warning was intended to be serious, but at the time his mispronunciation conjured up an image in my mind of a pugnacious buck calling a rival a little runt. I've never been able to seriously consider the idea of deer as potentially violent creatures since. I followed the line of tracks up the hillside with my eyes, hoping for another glimpse of his antlers, but he had vanished into the netherworld where all game animals go once you blink. I wished him good luck during the coming deer season, although his being 10-point buck in my corner of New England indicated that he had little need of my wishes: He had more than his share of luck.

          I was hunting Hampden Basin. The covert shows on a topographical map as a bowl among the Wilbraham mountains. It's the sort of place where you hunt from one pocket to the next: There are remnants of several old apple orchards overgrown with barberries and cedar and interspaced by mature stands of hemlock, and several little intense pieces of perfect grouse cover where a spring springs out of the mountainside. Snow had fallen on Thanksgiving day, and here on Friday I was trying to take advantage of the final few days of grouse season before the woods were closed for deer week, which lately had been stretched to 10 days.

          Hazel and I had already determined that there were no grouse in the first orchard section, although we had followed a set of tracks for several hundred yards until they simply stopped. I had looked up quickly, hoping to find the grouse sitting in the tree immediately over my head, but that sort of thing happens more in outdoor stories than in life, and the only birds that occupied this apple tree were a pair of chickadees, busy doing whatever chickadees do in barren apple trees on the last days of November. I have sometimes seen grouse in trees before they flushed, but seldom realized in time what I was seeing. I've also seen them running on the ground, usually just before they take off, but always assumed they were rabbits until it was too late to do anything but curse. On the other hand, I curse very effectively when required, and am never at a loss for words.

          The paths of everything that had passed through the woods during the previous 24 hours criss-crossed the surface of the snow: squirrels and mice and rabbits, mostly, but there were several other sets of deer tracks, and in one of the spring coverts were the paw prints of a bobcat.

          Against the far edge of the cover, where the woodland borders a farmer's pasture, I saw someone else's boot prints. I like to make believe that my coverts are secret places that only I know about, but there can be no deluding myself when there is snow on the ground. Unlike Robinson Crusoe, I have never been thrilled to see another human footprint. It looked like whoever it was had passed within the past hour or so, and when I followed his path a short way, it quickly became clear he was hunting. There aren't many people with feet bigger than mine, but there was room to spare when I put my size 14 into his vibram imprint. There could only be one logical conclusion: Sasquatch had come out of the mountains and was hunting grouse in Hampden Basin. And had probably spooked a buck deer uphill a quarter hour before.

          Big Foot's path indicated he had hunted along the brook through the bottom of the valley—Right where I had intended to go. I shrugged. There was a lot of cover on the high rim I hadn't investigated on the way in, and rather than follow in another hunter's wake, I directed the dog back uphill.

          Twenty minutes later Hazel produced a right quartering chance at a grouse in some cedar. It was thick, and although I heard the bird right away, when I finally caught sight of him he was topping a little rise 30 yards out, and by the time I got the gun up he was gone. Then, from the other side of the ridge, I heard a single shot followed by a spoken curse, nearly as loud as the gunshot. A grouse hunter, from his choice of curses. I shouted "Hello!", opened my gun, and went out to meet Sasquatch.

          The man who had made the footprints was dressed in briar-proofs and a shooting jacket, size extra-extra large, maybe 3 extras.

          "Sorry—I didn't mean to crowd you." he said.  "I heard your dog's bell just before that partridge came out. I had a shot at him, but I blew it."

          I knew this giant. His raspy high-pitched voice gave him away even though he wore a disguise that consisted of a mustache, grayed hair, and 20-odd years of aging.  "No problem."  I smiled.  "Did you ever hear of a Rudie-ka-zudie play?"

In the autumn of 1962 my high school football team was a powerhouse that was favored to take the double-A conference championship: The offensive line was all seniors and the defense was the same one that had only given up a handful of points the previous year. I was just a sophomore sub on that team, but when the starting center sprained a shoulder in practice, my chance came to start my first varsity game. We were playing at home against Greenfield.

           The most outstanding talent on a team full of talented seniors belonged to the right guard. Yet, unlike so many others, he was not distracted by his own abilities. He later went on to play for Michigan and, briefly, the Los Angeles Rams.  He was a nice guy (A "good shit" was the term we used back then) and, despite the pervading attitude among the upperclassmen, he was a good shit toward everyone on the team—even the subs. His name was Rudy Krizmardzick.

On that Saturday afternoon against Greenfield, we were quickly second and one on the opening set of downs, and a short-yardage fullback dive play was called for. Greenfield lined up in an unexpected 4-3 defense, with down linemen in the gaps to either side of the center. Understand that on our team the center was responsible for last-second changes in blocking assignments, so even though this was only my second play from scrimmage, the time had come to act like a varsity center: I told the line—in code—that the right guard would double team with me and that the left guard would block his man alone. What I said was "Rudie-ka-zudie and me".

Everything went right and we opened a huge hole through which the fullback galloped for far more than the short yardage we needed. First and ten. We broke the huddle and lined up again. Across the line the Greenfield captain, who had been on the receiving end of the double-team block and now looked like Beetle Bailey after being thrashed by Sargent Snorkel, motioned to a linebacker to cover the middle with him. What he said was, "It looks like another Rudie-ka-zudie play."

That caused Rudy Krizmardzick to giggle out loud. There was always something infectious in his high-pitched laugh, and soon the whole line was laughing, too. We were penalized five yards for delay of game, then another five when we still couldn't answer the "Set-down" call. It was Rudy who couldn't stop, and his wonderful giggle couldn't be denied. On the sidelines the coach was screaming at us. "What's so damn funny out there?!"

It looses something in retelling, I know. Like most good ones, you had to have been there.

         He looked hard at me, but after 20 years we're all incognito to a degree.  When I told him who I was, suddenly his face cracked into the grin that I recall from long ago. If I still hadn't recognized him, that would have given him away: Rudy's grin was and still is the quintessence of the wide open smile of Polish people everywhere.

          "Sure, I remember you." he said.  "I heard someone quote you last year sometime—Something you wrote about shotgunning—and I thought to myself, "Hey, I know that guy." I couldn't put the face together with the name, but now it all comes back."

          It didn't seem that he was disappointed with who's face the name belonged to, and I took that as a small compliment. He had an ex-jock's job as a vice-president of a sporting goods firm in another state, but was in the area for his 20-year high school reunion. This morning after Thanksgiving he happened to be hunting here in my grouse covert because it was just up the road from his former in-law's house, where he was staying while he was in town.

          "So you write stories, huh? 'Ever write about playing ball?"

          "Not so far." I said. "Those were some tough times. Not many of my football memories are the kind I'd like to write about."

          "Boy, isn't that the truth." he said. "What a bunch of assholes we had on that team. I don't even like to think about the kind of person I was back then."

          I hadn't perceived him as qualifying to be included in that description, and said as much.

          "Naw." He shook his head. "We all thought we were so many young studs, or at least we tried to act that way. Conceited bastards would be more like it. Thank God people change."

          At length I realized who I was to him, and why he was excusing himself to me.  There's a bunch of my own underclassmen who I'd like to say 'I'm sorry' to, as well. Eventually, we all escape the 'runting' season, but the person we once were haunts us all.

          So for an hour we hunted together. Hazel showed off her pointing ability when we relocated the grouse, but there was no chance for a shot. It would have been nice if it could have been otherwise—maybe we could have double-teamed the bird for one last Rudie-ka-zudie play, but, like grouse sitting in trees at the end of a string of tracks in the snow, that sort of thing happens far more often in stories than in reality.

          The morning warmed, and fog began to rise off the melting snow. They don't make any more grouse once the season starts—Waterfowl and woodcock migrate through and seemingly replace themselves, and pheasants are released all during the gunning season, but the supply of grouse only diminishes as the year wanes on, and I had earlier that fall reduced the population at Hampden Basin by two.  We hunted back along the curve of the hills, re-crossing our own tracks occasionally, hoping a bird might have moved in since we'd passed earlier. None had.

          We shared a cup of coffee at my truck, and I gave him a lift to the house where he was staying. We shook hands when we parted, and I was left wondering how well he really remembered me, if at all. What was there to remember other than a single incident in a half-forgotten football game? We weren't friends, after all, and who remembers underclassmen anyway? That was two years ago. I haven't see him again, and, in truth, I don't ever expect to again. Too bad, I thought. The random crossing of paths is just that—a most random of events.

          But as I drove away from Hampden Basin that morning, I reflected that some things in life change, and others remain the same—even those you loose track of. A fellow I remembered as a good shit had gotten 20 years older. He had survived his youth and, like the rest of us, had his share of regrets. "Thank God people change," Rudi-ka-zudi had said. But, thank God, too, that some people never do.

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