Mulak Reader - Wax and Wane

Not my own favorite, but undoubtedly the most reprinted story I’ve ever written. It was the Sports Afield cover story of the issue it which it first appeared. Sports Afield later reprinted it in a widely publicized anthology they called “The Best of Sports Afield: The Greatest Outdoor Writing of the 20^th Century.” (They wouldn’t print something like that on the cover unless it were actually true, would they? Sure.) It was what they considered their best 50 stories of the past 100 years, and there was Mrs. Mulak’s son’s name in the same table of contents with Nash Buckingham, Gordon MacQuarrie, Erle Stanley Garner, John Madson, Havilah Babcock, and Gene Hill. Mom was proud.

Wax and Wane

At times the waterfowl season seems shorter than its allotted number of days...  Times when an entire season can be compressed into a single day on the marshes:

5:40 a.m. 

          The silence is overpowering. Nearly straight overhead Andromeda and Pegasus shine boldly in the October sky, and although the first hint of dawn shows in the east, the starlight is still reflected brightly in the water. I continually glance upward in amazement. Crystal clear dawns are not normally associated with promising waterfowl waterfowling... except today. This morning we'll have fine shooting at unwary natives, and weather won't be a factor. It's opening day, and the hunting won't be as fruitful until a month from now when the first winter storms begin pushing the migrants down from the Maritimes.

          I finish securing the boat, then pull the overhanging grape tangles over the gunnels. Probing ahead with an oar, I feel my way back along the river's edge. There is a fallen tree in the dark water that I ease my way through, a half-step at a time, being careful not to hole my waders.

          My father extends his hand and helps me up the bank. He has set up our folding stools behind some low sumac five yards back from the bank. He works some imaginary stickiness out of the action of his automatic, and I test out my call with a few tentative clucks and quacks, then we settle down to the quiet business of waiting.  I check my watch, not because I suspect that it is anywhere near shooting time, but because the first symptoms of the opening day butterflies have begun. If they ever stop, so will I. Under the clear sky things will brighten up early, and I'll check my watch a dozen more times during the next half hour. Our conversation is in low tones.

          "Is the boat okay?"

          "I tied it under some overhanging vines."

          "Coffee?"

          "Sure." At this time of the day coffee is something felt as much as tasted, and it feels good. I rest the rim of the cup against my bottom lip, blowing through the swirling steam as I stare out at my decoy spread.

          "The rig looks good." My father whispers.

          I nod a thanks. The silhouettes of the teal and mallard decoys are still dark and colorless, but they do look good. Daylight will reveal a fresh paint job on each bird; rich browns and grays, crisp blacks, pure whites, iridescent greens. A season of use will wash and scuff the colors, and they'll never seem as fresh as this opening day. But today all is new; the guns show no signs of rust, my Dad's "father's day" waders wear no patches, and even the brass heads showing in the shell box are shiny.

          The sky grows lighter, and with it patches of fog begin to accumulate over the water. Across the river several birches dressed in autumn amber emerge from the dark background of the woodland. When I can definitely see the color on the head of the nearest decoy, I check my watch and find that the season officially began more than a minute ago. I take a deep breath and flex my shoulder blades. Next to me, my father pulls back the bolt of his gun a half-inch, knowing full well there is a shell in the chamber but taking a small comfort from just seeing it there—Nervous preliminaries.

          We wait.

          "Okay..." I've seen them. There is no need to say more. My father eases forward, crouching, and slowly turns to face the direction my eyes indicate.

          The flock of ducks is silhouetted against the brightening dawn. They move quickly, and seem to be showing-off their maneuvering skills. Teal. We lose them momentarily when they pass in front of the dark background, but they break the sky again much closer to us. There is no doubting their intentions—They come straight for the rig, skimming over the wisps of fog on the river.

          The safety on my father's gun clicks off.... 

7:50 a.m. 

          I've never before seen a whitecap on the swamp creek, but there's no denying it now. Close behind it is another, and out farther several more waves have their tops blown back upon themselves. In the shallow lee of a broken down black willow our eight decoys occupy half of the small triangle of calm water. If it were winter, this would be called a blizzard instead of a typical November storm.

          We had brought enough decoys to lure the entire Atlantic flyway, but thankfully we'd come to our senses in the gale winds before dawn and had put out only a handful. Chasing down storm-dragged decoys is no fun, especially when ducks are flying, and on a perfect day like this a waterfowler needs little more than to be near some sheltered water. Shooting in the gale is difficult, but we are getting plenty of practice.

          The season has waxed full. The migrants are in, as attested to by the wide variety of birds that have attempted to join our eight black duck decoys behind the willow. The only redhead duck I've ever seen in this state lies on the sacks of extra decoys behind us. My eyes keep wandering to the drake, as if in disbelief.

          A small flock of mallards, flying low with the wind behind them, swings around the willow. When they see the calm water they turn outward, climbing into the wind as they look the rig over. Two hens peel away from the group, heading farther downriver, but the rest sideslip toward us, their formation scattered.  Heading into the strong wind, the birds are actually flying sideways and backwards as they approach. The shot is confusing at best, and we both miss. In the gale, the mallards only have to think about flaring and they are instantly out of range. No second shots are possible.

          We grin foolishly at each other and reload. There is more luck than skill involved in this sort of shooting, and misses need no excuse. We hunker back down into the rushes. The wind begins to spit tiny bits of ice along with the sparse raindrops.

          I've read descriptions comparing the sound to ripping canvas, but those are from a time when duck hunters were full-time watermen on whom a strain-burst sail left a lasting impression. To me, the five buffleheads sound like an F4 accelerating close overhead after a bombing run. As with the watermen, the sound leaves a lasting impression. The buffs pass behind us, braking with an alarming din as they swing across the wind to come in lightly in the rough water beyond the rig. All five are drakes. They seem to sit on the water rather than in it, seemingly inflated imitations.  Their crisp coloration and bright blue bills do little to dispel the impression.

          We watch them intently as they swim into the rig. My partner cups a hand to his mouth and leans toward me to have his whisper heard in the wind. "This doesn't sound too macho, but they're really cute."

          I nod. They are.

          "What now?" He asks.

          I glance out at the little black and white ducks. They have fluffed out their feathers and are resting at the rear of the rig. "Let's wait for more mallards."

          He grins, and nods in agreement.

11:25 a.m. 

We watch a hovering insect land on the knee of my waders. "A mosquito.  Amazing."

          My brother shakes his head. "This is crazy. November duck hunting is supposed to look like a Chet Reneson watercolor. I'm half tempted to take off my shirt and get some sun."

          Late November brings an abundance of waterfowl to coastal New England, even as the inland migration begins to wane. Dawn had brought fast shooting, but the tide and the unpredictable weather has left us stranded on the sunny salt marsh for at least another hour. We wait, talking the talk of idle hunters everywhere; Tomorrow's game in Foxboro, stories about our mutual father, speculations about where the ducks are and how well we'd be doing if we were there with them.

          Then, because we have not paid attention for a sufficient number of minutes, a single black duck appears over the decoys. He is a rich brown loam color in the sunlight. Without announcement I stand and pump two quick shots at the bird, and although he sags noticeably he does not fall. Instead, he flies a straight line out onto the salt flats, losing altitude as if the load of shot had not so much injured him as weighed him down.

          We stand, shading our eyes. Although we never actually see the duck fall, when he finally sinks from view we assume he's down. My brother estimates the distance: "He's weynafug out there."

          I nod. "Probably farther."

          After a moment's thought, he brightens and turns to me, his hand on my shoulder. "Well, for once I'm glad you saw him first." He grins. Overeagerness has its accompanying penance: Although it had been his turn to shoot, I am the one with the hike across the marsh in front of me.

          I start off, and am half-way across the shallow tidal creek when my brother whistles "bobwhite". I freeze... wait... then hear a single gunshot and see two teal flare off. A third is at the center of a ring of ripples just outside the decoy spread.  He floats on his back with one gray foot idly paddling the air. The damsel of fate who controls the fortunes of waterfowlers must be a sadistic old biddy. She keeps score, and extracts penalties for specific transgressions: Cripple a duck and pay by watching your brother kill cleanly a bird it would have been your turn to take. She's the same one who sends in the mallards when you're picking up after a fruitless morning.

          My brother waves to me. "Hurry back!" There is more than the necessary amount of glee in his voice.

          The muck on the far bank of the creek is exceptionally sticky. This must be part of my penance, too. Waders should come equipped with handles just above the heels—I'm always afraid I'll puncture them by pulling as hard as I must to get my feet out of the mud.

          Up on the flats, the summertime expanse of waving grass has been turned into a stubble field. The tides and winds of autumn sweep over the marsh and carry off the deciduous plant tops, leaving only short stems that are devoid of all resiliency. I crunch along through the brittle stubble, leaping the smaller cuts as best I can in my cumbersome waders and taking the long way around the wider channels through the marsh.

          At high tide the salt flats are dotted with ponds. But they drain out with the ebb, leaving empty mud holes that contain nothing more than a puddle or two. My black is in the weeds at the edge of one such drained salt pond, and he springs into flight at my approach. He gives only the slightest indication that he is an injured bird. My shooting, never anything to write home about, is poorer than usual today: I fire once too quickly, then concentrate and center him with the second shot. The bird falls into the mud, but immediately rights himself and runs for the far weedy edge, waddling like some target duck in a shooting gallery. The pellets of my third shot strike all around him, but to complete the shooting gallery simile, he rolls over only to pop back up again and resume his escape. I fumble in my pocket and bring out another shell in time to reload and fire again, but the results are exactly the same.  A walking duck, of course, is not nearly as vulnerable a target as a bird in flight, and my shots have evidently not penetrated the armor that is his folded wings.

          As the bird runs, so do I, trying all the while to keep the gun loaded and retain my footing on the slippery mud bank. At last I succeed in falling. When I look up the bird has made it into the weeds. I mark the spot in my mind. But to get there, I must navigate around several cuts in the marsh. I arrive at "the spot", but am no longer sure I know where it is. Weeds and cuts have a sameness to them, especially when viewed from a different angle. Davy Crockett ponders the problem for a moment, then looks for tracks. In the soft mud they are easy to find.  There is blood among the webbed footprints.

          But the surface is harder in the weeds and the telltale tracks vanish. I look for feathers or blood or any other signs of the duck, but there are none to be found.  I search farther in. The bird has been hit four times: He cannot be all that healthy, and must be hiding nearby. I look farther up the cut, then into the next one.  Protected from the winds and tides, the dead marsh grass around the drained pond is still knee high. It isn't all that thick, but a black duck has the perfect camouflage for this stuff.

          Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. I look back at my brother. His estimate of the distance was accurate.

          The duck is going to die before morning. It seems a waste. Before giving up, I return and look again at the duckprints leading into the tall weeds. It seems a hopeless case, but I give Davy Crockett one last hearing. Squatting down like a golfer looking over a putt, the perspective is different. There, as obvious as a finger mark on newly brushed suede, is my own trail through the marsh grass. And that of the wounded duck.

          Eight feet into the weeds the hidden path ends. I stare at the lump of mud for a long moment before I can see the mottled khaki bill and the shape of the bird's head hunched into his breast feathers. At times like this, looking a live cripple straight in the eye, I wish more than anything else that I had shot slightly better... or slightly worse.

3:15 p.m.  

The dull yellow-gray of the high overcast sky is typical of New England winter days. There is no warmth, no brightness, no shadow from the thin sunlight. It is as if the December sun has all it can manage to simply illuminate the afternoon landscape.  In the peculiar silence of times preceding a snowfall, each sound is magnified and thrown back at us from the wood line bordering the swamp. The new ice on the marsh will hold no weight today and breaks noisily, but the cold is such that within a week all but the swiftest flowing waters will be frozen solid. Inland waterfowling is in its last waning days.

          We tow our boat through the ice, then hide it in some flooded puckerbrush next to the open water created by a spring hole. The crescent of brush accommodates the boat as if it had been planted with that purpose in mind. In the spring hole I arrange a late season rig of blacks, scuffed and in need of repainting, with a pair of baldpates thrown in for color.

          With the solstice just two weeks away, sunset will come early. There is barely two hours of daylight left when we settle in and begin waiting. My shins hurt from being repeatedly knocked against the shelf ice on the way in. In my pocket, the latest in my extensive collection of handwarmers has quit working. In that respect, it is little different from all the others I own.

          The quiet of the marsh is complete. The insects that buzzed and hummed a backdrop through the warmer months are silenced now, and there are no birds to be heard save the occasional distant cawing of a crow. No breeze stirs the few remaining leaves. My partner feels the silence, too, for he barely speaks above a whisper. "I saw a few flying out of here this morning. No reason to think they shouldn't be coming back to feed this afternoon."

          "That'd be nice." I speak quietly, as well. "You know, just once I'd like to be able to know ahead of time that we were going to have a gangbuster's day. That way, we could shoot selectively and not have the feeling that the first hen to show up might be the only thing we'd see all day."

          "This might be it, with the snow on the way and things freezing up all over..."  He ponders his own statement for a moment, then smiles inwardly. "Could be..."

          There has been no agreement made, but minutes later neither of us makes a move when a pair of hen mallards circles the rig, then eases in among the decoys. Conversation stops. We don't want to do anything to scare off these volunteers in our decoy regiment. The pair wanders along the edge of our spring hole, muttering duckily as they feed on buttonbush seed balls.

          Within minutes, my partner nudges me and nods toward a tall pine we have been using as a reference point. I search the sky and finally notice a flock coming down the marsh, much higher than my eyes had been focused. They pass in front of us, perhaps 15 birds altogether. There are several black ducks mixed in with what appears to be a flock of mallards. I sweet talk to them with the call, but the only answers I get are from the visitors in our decoys. The flock makes the circuit of our end of the swamp; Down into the frozen corner, around the meadow behind us, then back to our pocket of open water. They are low enough on the second pass for me to clearly tell the drake mallards from the hens.

          Out in the black water, the decoys are the only color in the gray December landscape. The iridescent green wing and face patches of the two baldpates seems especially gaudy among the washed-out tones of the marsh. Sixty yards from the boat the two suzies continue to feed, paddling about and clucking softly. When one of them rears back and stretches her wings, I know the circling flock is ours.

          They pass behind us for the fourth time. My ears follow the sound of air through their wings, and my eyeballs strain at the tops of their sockets. The birds appear below the brim of my down-tilted hat, banking around on their final approach.

          Next to me, my partner takes a deep breath.

          With cupped wings and extended feet, the flock begins its flip-flopping descent; gray bodies, white wing linings, iridescent speculums against the dull winter sky.

          We shoulder our guns together, eyes skyward...

5:50 p.m.  

Coming back with the drone of the motor filling my ears, I wonder why the night is thought of as black: The sky and water are shades of cobalt and purple and ultramarine, and the passing shoreline is shadowed in tones of indigo. Some of the sky colors blend and change and darken even as I watch, but nowhere is there a color I can label as black. The water mysteriously continues to hold the twilight glow even though the sky and landscape grow darker. Over the darkening treetops the Dipper is at its low winter point, nearly touching the horizon. The first stars of Cygnus the Swan shine in the west above the lavender line that was the sunset.

          Mine is the only boat returning. There are no other gunners out on this last day of the season. Even the bats and snipe that amused me on other earlier evenings are absent, having headed for warmer climates. The season, which began with teal and native wood ducks on this same river, then waxed full during first the inland and then the coastal migrations, and finally brought in the late redlegs in its waning days, has ended. Blacks will be the local natives for the next few months. For some reason known only to themselves, they choose to remain on what little water stays open through the bitter New England winter. Two of their number lay on the sacks of decoys in the bow. They are impressive trophies on the wing, but right now look for all the world like a couple of dead cats—Nothing is rattier looking than a dead duck that has spent a few hours in the bilges of a boat.

          The reprieve from the cold that came with picking up and sacking the decoys is fading. I jam my hands deeper into the pockets of my parka, then finally hug them into my armpits and use my knee to steer the boat through the blue evening.

          The work of hauling the boat onto the trailer goes quickly. I carry the gas can and the motor to the back of the truck, then use a hand lantern to check for things that might have been forgotten in the shadows. My fingers are so numb that I cannot push the switch to shut off the light. Normally, I am eager to be out of my waders and on my way towards home and supper, but on this last night of the season I linger.  I toss the lantern into the cab, then reach in and shut off the headlights and the engine. In spite of my cold feet and fingers, I walk back to the edge of the river.  One last time before the season slips completely into the past, I want to listen to the silence and see again the stars reflected in the quiet water.

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