The Thaw

Mulak Reader - The Thaw

When I want to write something humorous as an autograph in one of my books, I often scribble, “Don’t believe any of this—I made it all up.” But it’s not true. People who write stories that take place in outer space or Middle Earth or Never-Never Land—they make things up. So do people who write about being a spy without ever having been engaged in espionage. But I hunt birds with a bird dog, and, back when I was young, I used to go out every day regardless of the weather. Everything in this and every other story I write/wrote/will have written actually happened, not necessarily on that particular day and if not to me, at least while I was there. As a storywriter, I just string those events together and try to make the various bits and pieces add up to something. I often take the opportunity to inject an opinion disguised as philosophy. Outdoor Life liked this one, and used it in the December 1983 issue of their magazine.

THE THAW

          In the rain, what's left of the grimy snow bank has the rotted look of a sponge that has seen its last car wash. The pebbles and dirt that the plow had thrown up along with the snow are now exposed in the receding mass. The stuff can hardly be called snow any longer except in those places where the undercut bank has fallen in on itself, revealing its almost-white interior. The right fender of the truck nudges the bank as I pull onto the shoulder. Hazel pops her head up and peers out the window at the Bondsville covert across the street. Her tail wags and the bell on her collar tinkles rhythmically. She knows.
          I shut off the wipers and ignition, then sit for a minute scratching Hazel's ears and watching the rain distort my view through the windshield. The scene beyond, although a typical picture of December in southern New England, is hardly a Christmas card setting. Pneumonia weather, my mother used to call it. Only a fool would be out hunting on a day like this. I grin. On the seat next to me is my fool's hunting jacket. I'm already wearing my fool's hat and my fool's rubber bib-fronts.
          With the open gun in the crook of my arm, we start across the street and into the covert. "Hazel," I call. "You've got a fool for a master."
          She stops and looks back at me for a moment, then casts ahead and crosses the stream to my right. She has sewn-up the primary qualification for a good hunting companion: She keeps her opinions to herself.
          I approach the brook crossing, wondering how much deeper than usual it will be with the rain and melting snow we've had. From the tangle of willows to my left a grouse erupts, banking over the line of bushes to quickly drop out of sight beyond. Moments later, I see him climb away from the stream course and head for the shelter of the tall pine woods the swamp. Dumfounded, I look down at the still-empty chambers of my open gun, then back at the truck 200 feet behind me. Things aren't supposed to happen this way. I shake my head, and take out a pair of shells from the pocket of my rain jacket.
          Once across the steam, my thinking changes: It's just as well, I assure myself. What kind of story would that have made, anyway? I got out of the truck and walked into the woods. A grouse flew up, so I shot him. It was raining. I went home. The end. I smile to myself.
          Hazel checks in, and I wave her into the willows. She is already wet, and her skin shows pink through her setter's coat. She locates the bird scent along the brook, and won't leave it until I walk on. "Come on, Bird Brain. He's already left." Finally, she races ahead.
          In the open fields to our right the rain is being blown down in sheets, but beneath the trees it is relatively calm. During the previous week I hunted in the snow with icicles forming on my moustache. The thaw began yesterday. Although the temperature hovers just above freezing, today's emphasis will be on staying dry rather than warm: I generate plenty of heat inside my waterproofs, just so long as I'm not wet. The bib-fronts are rubber-coated, but my brand new hat and jacket are of a "breathable" material that is guaranteed waterproof. I harbor my doubts. Clothing flexes as it's worn, and the continual brushing of rain-laden branches against the jacket will be the ultimate test.
          We cross an arm of the swamp that defines the edge of the covert. Shelves of ice persist underfoot, unseen beneath the sedge grass, almost but not quite strong enough to support my weight. I try to step from one hummock to the next.
          If moving quietly were an asset in grouse hunting, then rainy days would be superior to others. It isn't, and they're not. We continue through the covert, hunting along a brook where beavers have thinned the alders and birches. Two months previous, a flight of woodcock spent an October day here, resting from their night's journey. Hazel and I interrupted the afternoon nap of a few of their number. She slashes now through the same brush and beaver paths. I wonder if she remembers?
          At the edge of a frozen swamp pond, four blacks jump at our approach. I hold on the farthest bird as they cross, and when a second, nearer duck joins him in my sight picture, I say "Bingo—Two at once." Why can't I have the presence of mind to do that during the duck season instead of blasting holes in the air as fast as I can pull the trigger? The four blacks continue on, climbing as they circle the open area around the pond, then, uncharacteristically, they swing back over me as if to get a good look at the sort of fool who hunts in the rain and passes up sucker shots. The ice on the pond is covered by a layer of rain water, but there is an open spring hole by the near shore. The blacks want to return, but fly on after a moment's indecision.
          Black ducks and New England winters seem to go together. They're supposed to be among the smartest of waterfowl, but their habit of remaining through the most bitter months of the year rather than heading south with their less-smart cousins does not speak well of their intelligence. Maybe, though, they find something in winter that only they appreciate. I smile at the thought that I may well be a black duck at heart.
          Only grouse remain legal game during these closing days of the year. All the other seasons have come and gone. The birds that are left have survived weather extremes and predators of all kinds, including those with shotguns. The stupid ones are all gone. If killing grouse were all that grouse hunting were about, December would be a terrible month for it. My father used to say there isn't enough hunt in hunting to go out just for the sake of hunting alone. He always made a joke of that, perhaps out of a sense of embarrassment over philosophizing. But he was right. The most important item I'll bring home today are the memories that will last through the winter days ahead. I couldn't stay home even if I had to.
          In the farthest corner of the covert, where the swamp and timbered land beyond come together, Hazel points. The cover is fairly open, with just a scattering of hemlock shrubs and some low growing blueberry bushes. When nothing develops from a pass in front of her point I assume that the bird has run a head, and I whistle her on. She races forward, but strikes scent again 50 yards farther along and slows by degrees until she is stretched out on a low point before a tangle of hemlocks. It seems inevitable: No matter to which side I will go, the bird will come out the other. Situations like this are best handled the way a pointer puppy handles a bird field: Charge!
          As I move into the evergreen thicket, I hear the grouse boil up and think for a moment he has escaped, but then he passes close by my face on his way out. I dodge and then turn to fire, but he is quickly gone. I call to hazel and sit with her for a minute on a rock outcropping. "At least he didn't fly off thinking he had outsmarted us, Haze." She takes no part in my discussion, preferring instead to tell me her troubles, most of which have to do with us sitting rather than moving on. She races ahead when I get to my feet. We work our way back towards the truck along the opposite side of the covert, where timbering operations a few years back have left an abundance of deadfalls and slash piles. Briars took hold when the forest canopy was cleared, and still persist in thick brakes in each opening. The only positive way to hunt thorns is to have a dog that doesn't give a damn. Hazel qualifies. I skirt the edges, listening to her bell and half-hoping it doesn't go silent as she busts through the heart of the thickets.
          In a thorn-inundated orchard it happens: I can see the tip of her tail where she is pointing beyond some juniper, but as I start toward her she moves forward on a walking point. Maybe the bird can be headed off by a circling maneuver. As I struggle to get into position I find myself muttering my own version of the grouse hunter's prayer: It's not fraught with hosannas and hallelujahs, but is a simple, repeated, "Just let him stay put until I clear this damn tangle... Just until I get beyond this (Ouch!) hawthorn..." But the bird is no fool, and to keep from being outflanked he flushes as soon as the covering briar patch runs out. The shot is a left quartering chance with the grouse flying at eye level. The gun comes up easily. The bird falters at my shot, seeming to stand on his tail in mid-air, then rights himself and continues on. My second shot strikes the bole of a birch tree at a range of six feet. Beyond the cloud of flying splinters and bits of bark I see the grouse curving to the right as he clears a distant apple tree.
          Hit in the tail. I shake my head. He may or he may not be carrying pellets. I walk to the birch tree and run my fingers over the finely splintered wound where the load of 7-1/2s struck. I saw the bird clearly. A better shot with the first barrel wouldn't have left me saying, "If only this tree hadn't jumped into the way..." Why is it that I can regularly hit 90% of the targets on the skeet range, yet can easily blow four or five opportunities in a row while hunting? Of course, I'd be among the first to admit that skeet shooting, with both feet firmly planted and nothing but air between gun and target is as akin to actual grouse shooting as paging through a Playboy magazine is to taking out a cute divorcee for drinks and dinner.
          We hunt along what I guess to be the bird's line of flight, skirting the ridge that borders the cleared land to our left. About the time I am ready to conclude that we should turn around and work back along the opposite side, Hazel stops suddenly in her tracks as she passes a fallen oak tree top. Her point resembles a folding chair clumsily opened. Almost instantaneously the grouse takes flight from the far side of the deadfall, slanting away downhill. I fire quickly through the screening brush, and although I don't see the bird fall, I feel the shot was "on".
          I scramble through the slash, calling to Hazel to follow. Beyond the tangle, a float of feathers hangs in the rain like a three dimensional punctuation mark where shot charge and grouse came together. "Find dead, Hazel—Dead bird here." She burrows back into the slash, seemingly crawling on her elbows, and after a moment backs out with the grouse. I look back at the bits of fluff still floating in the air. Why can't every blind shot be as certain as this one?
          The bird's feathers are wet, and will be wetter by the time I take him from my gamebag back at the truck. When I staple this grouse tail to the carrier beam in the cellar, I will forever know this bird was taken in the rain: The feathers will never regain their vibrancy.
          Hazel waits for the heart and liver as I field dress the bird. This might be the last grouse of the season for me. I've been thinking that of every bird Hazel has brought to me for the past week. The Indians used to say a prayer over their fallen game, asking the animal's spirit to forgive the hunter. Instead, I smooth the feathers on the bird's breast, half wishing that, like my fisherman friends, I could release him to fight again on another day. If there can be a real difference between hunting and simply killing, it must exist in the attitude of those who hunt. Hunting is a game played, by and large, without benefit of referees or a specific set of rules. It is a private, solitary experience, and like other solitary games, the truly important rules are those you make for yourself. What you get out of it is up to you and you alone.
          The rain continues. With the bird in the gamepocket of my jacket we start back toward the truck. As we near the road the new-old smell of a coal stove wafts by, all the more pungent in the moist air. Unconsciously, I've stopped hunting and have the gun under my arm rather than at ready, but Hazel races through the cover undeterred.
          If man as a species does not need to hunt, some men do, just as some men need to work the soil, or compete, or drive fast cars. I don't pretend any longer that there is a hunter inside each human. Killing for sport has become highly unfashionable, after all, and it is a mistake to expect understanding from those ultra-civilized who simply cannot come to terms with the idea that food was once alive. "If killing gamebirds was all I got out of the sport, I'd have given it up a long time ago." I've used that Burton Spiller quote so often I've nearly worn it out, but all my arguments seldom had any effect on anyone who believed that, as a hunter, I was only slightly better than a crazed hatchet murderer. Other people assume that because I kill gamebirds, I must hate them. That alone is a measure of how shallow their understanding of it all is. Frank Perdue, after all, kills a lot of chickens each day, but I doubt if he hates them. No. I've given up trying to convince people that there really is a human inside each hunter. The one thing I am certain of is that I've nothing to apologize for.
          As we approach the truck I take a fast inventory; Thanks to several thousand applications of mink oil, my boots are still nearly dry. And while the hat seems to have lived up to it's promise, the shoulders and sleeves of the sweater I've worn under the "waterproof" jacket are soaked. I'll have to break out my old and often-patched nylon/neoprene rain shirt from my war bag if I'm to hunt any more today.
          As I dig out the keys and let Hazel into the truck, I notice that the palms of my hands are shriveled with the wet. Hazel sits on the floor of the cab, already having begun waiting to be let out at the next covert. She is so good that I worry about her dying young. I look from her to my wrinkled fingerprints, wondering if I might really be a fool. You actually like to hunt in the rain, don't you? My wife had spoken that accusation just that morning. I hadn't denied it. Rain, snow, fog, windy or calm, hot or cold, wet or dry—it doesn't matter. I like to hunt. Period. Maybe a tornado would keep me home, or an earthquake... It would have to be a big earthquake, you understand. She hadn't thought my reply was at all funny. More than anyone else, she knows how close to the truth even the exaggerations can be.
          Fool? Golfers out in the rain are fools, or mountain climbers risking their necks for thrills. Or ice fishermen, sitting around freezing-off certain posterior portions of their bodies. But me? Why, New Year's and the end of the grouse season are just a few days away. Then what? I grin to myself as I get out the war bag from behind the seat.
          "Hazel, what do you think?"
          Her tail wags with renewed enthusiasm. She knows.

* * * * *

This site was last updated 09/22/06