It was like being pulled from deep under water, yanked to the surface. Breathing seemed to be no problem for some reason, even though I felt I was supposed to be drowning. It was a familiar kind of dream, or nightmare, one that I had often since Joey and Frances drowned over a year earlier.
The bubbling sound getting louder and louder was a problem. A large, single, wobbly bubble seemed to float just above my head, and began to break up into a bunch of smaller ones. One by one, they burst with a loud burp, each one louder than the one before. The noise, it turned out, was hollering my name.
“Buddy. Buddy! C’mon, wake up. It’s time to go hunting.”
Then I recognized the voice as Gramp’s, and as fast as a bubble could burst, I realized why he was trying to wake me. Finally the day had arrived. It was our first day of hunting season—with my own gun! I leaped out of bed.
I had had a heck of a time getting to sleep. My brain was stuffed with hunting visions. All types of birds flushed from cover in front of me: partridge jumped out from beside a clump of willows; a prairie chicken broke from tall grass at the edge of a grain field; a Mallard, the king of ducks, burst out of cattails at the edge of a small pond. A flock of Canada geese even sailed in on me while I crouched in cover beside a slough, shaded from the setting sun.
The inside of my eyelids had been like the movie theatre screen, and each part of my hunting film had played on it, bright as day and in living colour. The pictures caused me to flop around so much that my blankets, pillows and I became a jumbled mess on the living room couch. It took me hours to finally drift off.
With morning finally arriving, I let go of all that frustration.
I had spread out my clothing the night before on the big stuffed chair across from me. In the dim light from the kitchen, I reached for my long johns and pulled them on for the first time since the last winter. They were tighter on me than I remembered, and I thought of the saying, “Fits like a glove.” Heavy wool socks then slipped easily over the lighter pair I had put on my feet first. My worn, comfy corduroy pants fit snug around my legs and bum, and my red and blue flannel shirt reminded me of an old friend. The last thing on the chair was my bulky wool sweater, which I wiggled into and pulled down over my head.
My boots, which were sealed with waterproofing wax, my gloves and a plain red baseball cap with no crest on the front waited on the kitchen stool next to the front door. Gramp had bought me the cap just for hunting. Red was the colour that made it less likely I would get shot at by another hunter in the bush.
On a peg behind the door hung my heavy hunting jacket made of a canvas-like material. A friend had given it to Gramp. I figured it must have belonged to the man’s wife, since it not only fit my eleven-year-old body, but it also buttoned up on the opposite side. With the jacket on, my hunting uniform would be complete. I would add it just before heading out the door. I knew I would look like an overstuffed goose, but at least I’d be warm.
While I chewed on chunks of toast and stuffed spoonfuls of porridge into my mouth, Gramp packed our lunch. He had served me porridge instead of eggs because he said I needed something that would stick to my ribs. Gulps of milk washed everything down.
Before I was finished, I heard a knock on the door. Del was early, probably because he was as excited to get going as I was.
“Finish your breakfast, Buddy,” said Gramp, as he opened the door. “Then hustle upstairs and go to the bathroom. Might as well brush your teeth and comb your hair while you’re there, too. And do it quietly, so you don’t wake everyone up.”
By six-thirty in the morning on the third Saturday in October, weeks after the official opening of bird-hunting season, and a couple of weeks after Gramp usually went, we were driving on a gravel road about twenty miles north and east of Buffalo Crossing. Our lunch, shells, the men’s hip-waders, extra clothing, and Gramp’s back-up, single-shot twelve-gauge rode comfortably in the trunk.
Inside the ’49 Ford, Del kept his Remington pump on his right, the barrel pointing down, as he drove. Gramp kept his ever-ready Browning automatic tucked close to his side in the passenger seat. My brand new Mossberg .410 was by my side, too, as I suffocated in the back seat.
Gramp wasn’t feeling a hundred percent yet after his bout with hepatitis. Still he had decided, against doctor’s orders, to head back to work just three days after getting out of the hospital. Del could see him shivering from chills a lot, so he kept the heater blasting out hot air. At least he had his little window vent open, as well as the bigger window on his side rolled down a bit, to blow out the smoke from his cigarette. Perched behind him, I invited any fresh air that snuck in to at least cool my face.
On our trips back and forth to the lake each summer, Del wouldn’t smoke in his car. He knew if he did, Mom and Aunt Bud would light up too, and if that happened, Gramp would have a fit. But when we hunted, and there were only the three of us in the Ford, Del smoked. Not as much as he might have liked, but enough to drive me nuts. It wasn’t like I could say anything. Gramp could, but he never did.
It was pretty quiet in the car as we drove. I wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but I took my lead from Gramp, and he wasn’t talking. No one had turned on the radio. Del just smoked and drove. Except for the lights from the dash, it was dark inside the ’49 Ford. The quiet and the darkness were far cries from what it was like driving to and from the lake in the summer, with the rest of my family and all our stuff crammed in.
Outside, it was still pitch-black, too. Only a sliver of light was leaking across the horizon. I knew sunrise wasn’t far away.
Del broke the silence. “So, what do you say, Bill? The same route to check out the old haunts?”
Del owned the Ford, and because we never owned a car, Gramp and our whole family were at his mercy when we wanted rides to the lake or to go hunting. But, when it came to hunting trips, Gramp was The General who made our battle plans and decided where to go and how to work the hunting grounds.
“Sounds good,” said Gramp. “Let’s follow our usual routine and drive the side roads to see if we can spot some prairie chicken or Huns. They’ll be feeding at the edge of the fields as soon as the sun peeks out a bit more.”
So Del drove. Mile after mile clicked slowly by with gravel pinging underneath the car. Again, no one spoke. Grey began to sneak through the windows, and I sat back in the seat.
The sound of a shotgun blast jolted me awake. Cold air was washing over my face, waking me up even more. The quiet drum of the road had conked me out. Looking across the front seat, out the open car door, I saw Gramp climbing from the ditch with his shotgun in one hand and a limp prairie chicken dangling from the other. Del was standing by the front fender. Sunlight was streaming across the frost-covered stubble of the wheat field beside the road.
I wrenched on the back car door handle, jumped out, and ran around to the front of the car beside Del. “Gramp!” I shouted. “You got one. I didn’t know… I didn’t see…” I quit fumbling for words and just ‘fessed up. “I fell asleep.”
“It happens, Buddy. Don’t worry about it. There wasn’t time anyway. Del spotted a head sticking up by a fencepost, so I went after it.”
“But I wanted to be part of everything that happened today,” I said.
“Well, I bet you will from now on.”
He tossed the dead bird onto the hood of the car and tweaked the peak of my ball cap. Then he turned towards Del. “One for the pot, Del. Time for some coffee?”
Farther on down the road, Del and Gramp were sipping on cups of coffee they had poured from the thermos. Diamonds dazzled the harvested grain fields as the growing morning heat began to melt the blanket of frost. The soft yellow of the stubble bit into the darker purples and browns of the brush that bordered everything.
Ahead I could see what looked like black dots or lumps on the edge of the field a hundred yards off the road. I knew, though, that they weren’t clumps of dirt or anything of the sort. They were a flock of Hungarian partridge.
“There! By that grass at the edge of the field! See the partridge?” I blurted.
My excitement had caused me to shout, and my shout caused Del to spill some of his coffee. He quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road.
“Jeez, Buddy,” he said, wiping his chin. “How about a little less volume, and enthusiasm, from now on, okay?”
“Sorry, Del. I just didn’t want them to get away.”
Gramp chuckled. “Good spotting, Son. Let’s see if we can bag a couple.”
Within a few minutes, we were walking side by side across the open field towards the place where I had spotted the birds. I was to Gramp’s right, Del to his left. Stubble crunched under our boots. Our guns were loaded and at the ready. Our breaths caused puffs of steam to make miniature clouds in the crisp, fresh air. The morning smelled a bit like the inside of an icehouse. There was a real chill to it, which caused me to shiver. It kind of felt good because it took my mind off how nervous I was. That was until I heard my teeth start to chatter.
“You okay there, Buddy?” asked Del. “I can hear your teeth makin’ like castanets all the way over here.”
I didn’t answer, but bit my tongue instead to put something between my teeth. Brilliant light now washed over everything, as blue sneaked into the sky above the dazzling sun.
Apart from the sky almost everything else was golden. There were some purples and rusts, mostly in the thickets, and some green under the stalks and tufts of different grasses and weeds. But the rest was golden, including the sheet of stubble that was bouncing with crystal sparks from the morning dew. There was more sparkle coming off some still-standing grain along the fence line. Dawn had shot rays of gold from the east, and had even frosted the top of a pond that sat alone way off in the field. The puffs of steam I was blowing out smothered the picture with gauze.
“We’ll let you shoot first, Buddy,” Gramp said. “Your shot doesn’t reach as far as ours. Pick out a single bird, preferably one that breaks to your right. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered. I was so scared I was shaking.
We were in the middle of the field and halfway to the covey of Huns, when a racket came from the sky behind us. Beams of light, trying to push away the now darker blue sky to the west, were causing flecks of white to burst like popcorn jumping in a frying pan. It was the sun reflecting off the beating wings of a massive flock of snow geese, like snow crystals in the sky. When my breath blurred what I was looking at, it became a cloud of moths. I had seen a gaggle of snow geese so thick that a field looked like a giant snowdrift, but against the dark blue of the sky, this flock became a blizzard. Though their whistles and peeps seemed puny compared to the honks of Canada geese, the king of geese, these still made a racket.
The way the three of us stared at the great flock, I could tell that the two men were as surprised by the white wave that spread across the moody sky as I was.
“They’re snow geese, right, Gramp?”
“How can you tell?” he quizzed back.
I didn’t have to think too hard. “Well, the white colour. And the way they don’t fly in a v, mostly in a jagged line, or all mixed up. And their sound is different, too,” I answered.
“What goose aren’t you supposed to shoot, Buddy?” It was Del’s turn to quiz me. He sometimes added more questions to Gramp’s tests.
“A Ross’ goose?”
“And how do you tell them from snow geese?”
“Well, they have the same black wingtips and pink bill as a snow goose, but they’re smaller, like a Mallard duck.”
“Good job, Buddy. You’re getting there,” offered Del.
“Well done,” said Gramp, and he smiled at me.
The chill had seemed to leave the dawn as we turned back to our hunt. Soon we were getting closer to the spot where I thought the covey should be hunkered down. Unlike prairie chicken, partridge held pretty tight, and didn’t run very far. My mouth had dried out. I started to raise my .410. It was heavier than I remembered.
The quiet of the morning was suddenly destroyed by the chatter of fluttering wings. The flock of about a dozen-and-a-half Huns broke first as one, then scattered in different directions, like a tiny cloud of grasshoppers. I didn’t see, but just knew that Gramp and Del had raised their guns. I tucked my gun into my shoulder too, and aimed at a partridge that dipped and dived to my right. I noticed the barrel of my shotgun waver in the general direction of the fleeing bird and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Seconds later, two shots exploded to my left.
“Good shot, Bill,” said Del.
“You, too,” Gramp said, returning Del’s compliment.
The two of them kept moving forward, and I moved with them, keeping to the right. Del detoured into the tall grass at the edge of the field. Several yards from him, Gramp bent to pick up the downed partridge he had shot. Del continued to wade through the grass, kicking and swishing at it.
“I didn’t hear you shoot, Buddy,” said Gramp. “Didn’t you have a good enough shot?”
I had learned from enough bad experiences that telling the truth was the best choice. “I forgot to take off my safety.” Heat began climbing into my face.
“It happens. Don’t worry about it,” he said yet again. I was beginning to dislike the way he was letting me off the hook. “Your safety’s on now, though, right?”
“Yeah, it is.” I could hear the disappointment in my voice. I had goofed up my first chance to prove to Gramp that I could be as good a hunter as him some day.
“You’ll get lots more chances. Let’s help Del find his bird.”
After my wishing aloud that we had a hunting dog, a few curse words from Del, and ten minutes slipping by, we finally found the dead Hun.
Ten minutes of driving later, it was Gramp who shouted, “Del, stop! Look!” He gazed to his side of the road, and pointed into a harvested barley field. “Buddy, feast your eyes on one of the greatest sights in Nature.” He seemed unusually excited.
Probably better than two baseball diamonds’ distance away, drenched in dawn light, stood a flock of mostly white, weird-looking birds. They were big with long, grey legs and huge wings that had big black tips. The flock of over a dozen danced and hopped around, flapping their wings, which lifted each of them into the air until they dropped lightly to the ground again. Their skinny necks were like pulled toffee and were topped with smallish heads that had long, pointed beaks. I thought I could see red caps on their heads, with more red spilling below those caps and sliding to a point down the sides of their necks. There seemed to be black bands wrapped around the top of their beaks, near their eyes. A couple of birds that looked a bit smaller were flecked with a cinnamon colour.
“I wish we had a pair of binoculars, Gramp. They’d sure come in handy about now.” Too often I said what I was thinking.
“You can buy us a pair when you win the Irish Sweepstakes. Be thankful you’ve got good eyesight. Now just pay attention,” he commanded.
I rolled down my window at the same time Gramp did his, and the cold air that flooded into the parked car was alive with high-pitched screams and trills. Sharp, trumpeting sounds with a long squeal and then a shorter, even sharper hoot topped the other screams.
“Wow, listen to them,” I said. “What are they, Gramp?”
“You’re looking at the last of a dying breed, Son.” It felt good that he had called me son again, but there was now sadness in his voice. “They’re whooping cranes. Supposedly the last twenty-one of their kind in the world. We killed so many of them for their plumage—their feathers—that they’ve reached a point where it doesn’t look like they’ll survive,” he said.
“But we didn’t kill any, Gramp,” I said right away.
“He means ‘we’ as in we human beings who allowed it to happen, Buddy,” Del added. “Have you seen any before, Bill?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure,” he answered. Then Gramp turned to me. “Buddy, this is probably the best example I could ever give you of why we only shoot what we need and why we adhere to the laws. That’s also why we took the extra time to find the Hun that Del shot back there.”
I felt like Gramp was seeing himself as a preacher when he spoke.
“I understand.” It was all I could think to say.
“I hope you do, Buddy. I hope you do. Take a good look. It might help you to remember a really important lesson about the evil of greed. Yes, lad, take a good look. It’s likely the only time any of us will see such magnificent creatures.”
We stayed and watched the whooping cranes for almost three-quarters of an hour. Gramp told us how the “whoopers,” as I learned they were called, migrated for thousands of miles from northern Canada after their breeding season, down through the Prairies, all the way to Texas at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Their story was an amazing but sad one, especially because I was able to see the last of the birds right there in front of me and listen to their strange cries. They almost sounded sad themselves.
Eventually the whooping cranes took flight. We watched them lift into a sky that had become a brighter blue. Higher they climbed, round and round, in a large spiral, until they were just specks in the heaven. Then they formed into a v and headed south. I watched them until my eyes ached and I couldn’t see them any longer.
By the time we got back to hunting, somehow shooting something didn’t seem as important. That was good, though, because as it turned out, I didn’t get much of a chance.
Driving up and down, and crisscrossing the back roads of prairie farm country, we saw lots of Huns and prairie chicken in the fields and more ducks on potholes beside the road. We parked a few times and stalked the birds in the field, or we drove past the potholes, stopped a ways down the road, and then snuck back to surprise the ducks. I did get to shoot three times, once at a small flock of ducks, another at a prairie chicken that flushed from next to a grove of poplars, and finally, at a partridge—but not in a pear tree. I never hit anything, but did enjoy the thrill of trying. Luckily Del and Gramp had more success. They had bagged three partridge, the same number of prairie chicken, and two ducks to show for their efforts, all of which they laid in the trunk.
Just before noon we dipped down into a small valley and pulled off the road. In a little clearing that had a large grove of poplars growing around it, grass matted the valley floor. Gramp hauled out the old khaki knapsack from the trunk that contained our lunch. He said that, besides his cough, the heavy canvas bag was the only souvenir he had from the First World War. The sun was full blown in the sky, and I got so warm that I was almost hot again. I shucked my hunting jacket and tossed it on the hood of the car. Then the three of us flopped down on the bed of green grass in the shade of the trees.
As Gramp spilled our lunch onto the grass, Del asked, “Should I try to get the game on the radio, Bill?”
“Naw,” answered Gramp. “We’ll get caught up in it and spoil the day.”
I had forgotten the fourth game of the World Series was to be played that day. After losing the first two games, my Dodgers had come back to beat the Yankees three-to-two, thanks to an amazing job by pitcher, Carl Erskine. Erskine struck out fourteen Yankees, including Mickey Mantle all four times he came to bat.
“Are you sure, Gramp?” I asked. “It was a great game yesterday. Our Dodgers could even up the score today and tie the series.”
“There’ll be another game tomorrow, no matter who wins today. Being here right now is too pure an experience to let anything interfere with it. Let’s not have a blaring radio ruin things.”
“Okay by me,” said Del.
I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t mind just enjoying the day either.
Gramp broke chunks of Ukrainian garlic sausage off a ring, and passed them and a loaf of sliced bread to Del and me. We wrapped the sausage with a slice of white bread each and began to chow down. Meanwhile Gramp popped the cap off a bottle of 7-Up with the opener on his pocketknife and handed it to me. He and Del had more coffee. Everything tasted great. I couldn’t believe how hungry I was.
After lunch, as the two men stretched out on the grass for a snooze, I explored the small forest beyond the clearing. The poplars reminded me again of why I loved autumn so much. Their leaves had changed colour and tumbled through the branches like huge, golden snowflakes, adding to a carpet of them that had already begun to smother the grass below. The leaves still left on branches reflected shimmering, hot, liquid gold. Smaller than the palm of my hand, each one quivered and gave off a rattling sound when the light breeze tickled them. It was an awesome sight against the brilliant blue of the sky. The day smelled as clean as anything.
Somewhere deep in the grove, a ruffed grouse drummed its wings. It was probably standing on the trunk of a blown-down tree and letting all the other grouse in the valley know where its territory was. Gramp didn’t like to shoot grouse because it meant tramping through their homes in the trees with guns. In the dimmer light of the forest, he thought there was too much chance of someone getting accidentally shot. He also said that grouse were stupid birds that didn’t offer any challenge. His childhood stories about killing them by bonking them on the noggin with well-aimed rocks made it sound too easy.
As I stepped into a tiny glade within the forest, a flock of magpies began making a racket. They were trying to scare off a great horned owl that had perched on a branch in one of the trees. Gramp hadn’t let me take my gun along on the adventure, which was just as well since I might have been tempted to waste a shell on the black and white bandits. Magpies were bad for other birds because they ate eggs and chicks in the spring. I aimed with my finger and pretended to knock off two or three anyway, before walking again into the stand of trees.
I saw the deer at exactly the same time as it saw me. A big buck “Mulie” had apparently been having a snooze, too. It leaped up quickly, the back legs popping up first, then the front ones a split second later. For a moment it just froze there and looked back at me. Its black, wet nose quivered slightly, smelling this weird looking thing that stood not thirty feet away. Its back shivered like a tiny earthquake for a few seconds, and then it kind of hopped up and down, like a puppy does when someone fakes tossing a stick. With its nose poked upwards, I could see a bib of white that started right under the mouth and spilled down the chest.
Instead of bolting away like I thought it would, the hefty brute then waggled its antlers, pulled back its ears and stomped its right front hoof. I heard it snort a high whistle, just once, and I was too dumbstruck to be frightened. I did freeze on the spot, though. While we sized each other up, I counted four points on the left antler, plus the small spike nearer to its head. I had already noticed how both sides were beautifully balanced. The deer’s large size, with its thick chest and heavy shoulders, and the way the antlers branched into two beams on each side, let me know I was looking at an outstanding mule deer, probably five years old. Some hunters said that deer grew a point for each year of their life on both sides of their rack, but I had also heard there was no rule for that. Really good food could allow them to grow more than a single point each year. Either way, I knew that within a few months, the great-looking animal would shed its antlers, and then have to grow them all over again the next year. It was a part of their breeding habits, so they would be ready for the rut each fall.
Before I had the chance to admire it further, the deer’s big ears came forward and its rack thrust back to the right. Then it sprung off its front hooves and vaulted through the trees, clearing the poplar grove. My heart almost leaped after it. It was something else to see the wild thing bound up the hillside like it had springs for legs. I hoped he’d live to be the biggest and the best of his kind.
After I woke Gramp and Del with the story of my meeting the buck, we gathered our stuff together and headed out again. Usually following lunch, we would find a fence line with a lot of cover, or a stream or pond with the same, and walk along it, hoping to flush something to shoot. But, Gramp was still on the mend, so we mostly drove until we spotted something we could stalk.
We had been wandering in the car for about a half-an-hour, driving on narrow gravel roads. Some were badly rutted and Del had to really pay attention to his driving. There were harvested grain fields on both sides, but only on the right side where I sat was there a barbed-wire fence line. Tall grass grew along the fence at the same level as the ditch, a bit below the height of the road.
Gramp and Del were having a talk, but I couldn’t pay attention because Del’s smoke was smothering me. I finally reached over to crank down the window nearest the field and let in some fresh air. And that’s when I saw it.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was so dumbfounded it took me a minute to say anything. The car rolled along and my mouth hung open as I watched the image fade away behind us. I needed to holler. It was the only way I could say what I needed to say.
“Gramp! Honest… Stop, Del! I saw one. I just saw one. Stop! Please!”
Del stopped the car, but not quickly enough. I had taken so much time to get out my words that we were already a whole bunch of fence posts away. I couldn’t see it anymore.
“What? Saw what? What did you see, Buddy?” asked Gramp.
Both men peered back at me over the front bench seat. They looked annoyed and puzzled at the same time.
Gramp asked again, “What, Buddy? For crying out loud, spit it out! What did you see?”
I tried to find more words. “I swear. Honest, I really did see it.”
“Buddy, if your granddad won’t smack you one, I might if you don’t tell us what the hell you’re talking about.” Del was starting to get angry.
“Okay. I’m sorry. I really did see a rooster back there. Honest.”
“What do you mean, a rooster? Like a chicken? Is that what you’re saying, Buddy?” There was some anger in Gramp’s voice now, too.
“No. I mean, yes, kind of… I saw a rooster, a cock, a cock pheasant. That’s what I mean.” I finally found the word pheasant and spit it out.
“Buddy, c’mon,” said Gramp. “Just because I told you that I have wanted to bag a pheasant all my life, you don’t have to pretend to see one.”
“I swear, Gramp. Honest! Cross my heart and hope to die.” I crossed my heart and spit out the window as I said it. “I really did see a cock pheasant by the fence post back there. Its head and shoulders were sticking up out of the grass. I wouldn’t make something like that up. I swear, Gramp.” I was starting to whine now, even though I didn’t want to.
“Buddy, there hasn’t been a pheasant seen in this part of the country for years, let alone one shot by anyone,” Del said. “You must be mistaken.”
“Pleeeeaase! I’m not lying. I’m not making it up. I saw a pheasant beside…” I looked out the back window and started counting with my finger. “…About the twentieth fence post from here. I did. Gramp, I volunteer not to shoot my .410 for the rest of the season if I’m lying. I promise.”
“What the heck, Del. Maybe we’ll at least flush a prairie chicken if we hunt the fence line,” said Gramp. Then he gave Del his marching orders. “We’ll get out here and wait for you to drive back a ways, say four-dozen posts. Then you get out and block for us, along the fence. We’ll come toward you and try to squeeze any bird between us that’s tucked in against a fence post. The ditch is too clean to hide anything, and if something runs into the stubble, we’ll see it. Okay?” He didn’t expect Del to add anything, so he turned to me.
“C’mon, Buddy. Bring your gun. I hope you’re not joshin’ us, boy. Something had better flush along that fence line, even if it’s just a meadow lark, or you’ll be sitting on a pillow for a while when you get home.”
“But it could have run away by now. We’ve wasted so much time…” I said.
“Don’t be sounding doubtful. You won’t be helping your case,” he added.
Del dropped us off, turned the car around and drove quickly down the road, past the place of my sighting and beyond. Gramp told me to walk the ditch, from where I could easily see across the field on the other side of the fence. He then climbed through the barbed-wire, which screeched unhappily. I was worried the pheasant might run for sure now because of all the noise, before we even caught a glimpse of it. Gramp loaded his Browning, so I loaded my .410 as well, and we started down the fence line toward Del, who was just getting out of the car.
“You say it’s this side of about two dozen posts from here, Buddy?”
“I think so. It took you guys so long to stop.”
“You think so? It took us that long to stop because you couldn’t put a sentence together, Son. Now stay calm and we’ll work our way to Del.”
As we walked down the barbed-wire fence line, Gramp made a shushing sound with his voice, and dragged and kicked his feet through the grass that grew along the fence. I walked on his right side, in the ditch, not a foot ahead or behind him. At the rate we were going, we would soon reach the place where I thought the pheasant was, still quite a ways away from Del.
I had already decided that I wasn’t going to shoot if we actually flushed a pheasant—unless two cocks took flight. It was Gramp’s dream to take a rooster, and always had been. I was going to make sure this would be his thrill. My Mossberg was cradled across my chest.
It happened just before we got to the twentieth pole. I had been counting. There was a clatter in the grass right under Gramp’s front foot, followed immediately by a loud, raspy, crowing squawk, unlike anything I had heard before. The racket caused me to freeze on the spot. Blood pounded in my ears. I couldn’t have raised my gun if I had wanted to.
In an instant explosion of sound, movement and colour, furious wing beats caused the ringed-necked to burst from its hiding place and rocket into the air. The colours of the bird amazed me. Its brilliant, blue-green head was crowned with two pointed tufts like ears and a cap that blended silver with gold. Its golden eye, looking struck with fear, was surrounded by a bright red patch that drooled down below the cheek. There was a perfect white ring around its neck, standing out against a body that was shining like blood mixed with melted copper and bronze. The rooster’s long, pointed tail was tan and rust-coloured with black bars. The autumn light seemed to make the whole pheasant glow.
My mind captured all of this in an instant, like a snapshot framed against an ice-blue sky. At the same time, in the corner of my eye, I saw Gramp shoulder the Browning.
My eyes pulled back off the bird and took in the bigger picture. Gramp had a bead on the rooster as it tore at the air with its wings to escape from him. Tilting his body forward, Gramp was ready for the recoil of the shot.
But the blast never came.
The ring-necked pheasant raced through the afternoon light, hammering the blue sky and slipping overtop of the straw-coloured stubble. Then it glided and disappeared behind a thicket a long way from where we stood.
“Gramp!” I said, “You didn’t shoot! Why didn’t you shoot? You could have had him! It was perfect.” Disappointment was creeping into my voice, even though I tried to keep it out of what I was saying. “I don’t understand. Did your gun misfire? Did you forget the safety was on, like I did?”
“No, Buddy,” was all he said, still looking in the direction the pheasant had flown.
“Then why, Gramp?” I asked him yet again.
“It was too beautiful, Son—just too beautiful.”