And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (25 page)

I guess this early incident proves my stubbornness; after nearly an hour and a half of wrestling with the gun lock, I was feeling crestfallen and ready to quit. Over the last hour or so, as the sun had risen fully and the world around me had come awake, it had sounded like a war zone. In almost every direction, the sounds of shotgun bursts could be heard.
Boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom.
Somewhere, not too far off, pheasants' wings were beating their last strokes. Hunters were filling their game bags, maybe even some of the same hunters I had driven past. It's ridiculous to the point of insanity that I would persist as I had, turning the key the same fraction of an inch, back and forth, back and forth. I'd found a small can of WD-40 in my trunk and tried to lubricate the lock into submission, careful not to get any on the wood stock of the gun. I was just about ready to call no joy, to bug out and go home with my head hung between my legs when, in a last-ditch effort, I opened the glove box in my car and saw there my trustiest, oldest pocketknife. It was a rubber-handled, one-hand-open Buck knife with a half-serrated blade that locked and could be released with a thumb switch. I'd bought it when I was working at the backpacking store/fly-fishing shop right out of college. I'd carried it with me every time I'd ever gone into the outdoors except for the trip to Iowa. It was in my pocket when I'd wrecked that six-wheeler and had cut away more tangled fly line than I care to acknowledge.
What the hell?

I opened the blade and, holding the trigger guard steady so that I didn't bend or loosen it from the gun, jammed the tip into the key slot. At first, I twisted lightly, gently, hoping that by some miracle the lock might pick itself. But as seconds ticked by, I got a little more aggressive. Just under a minute after I had first inserted the blade tip into the keyhole, I took a deep breath and said “screw it, it's only money if I break something,” knowing full well that it was about much more than money—my dad's trust, his property, the fact that we didn't have any spare cash to fix a gun I broke out of pure desperation—and twisted the handle as hard as I could.

Jackpot.

The tip of my trusty knife snapped off, but so too did the outer layer of the lock. I pulled broken pieces out and without thinking jammed the knife back into the now gaping lock. I twisted hard again and, again, a layer of the locking mechanism snapped. Three more times and there was nothing left of the lock. I jammed the knife in again and twisted the actual bolt of the lock and both pieces fell away harmlessly from the unmarred, still factory-new trigger. I could have cried. I felt relieved. It was and will be a very proud moment in my life—when I successfully picked a lock meant to keep anyone but the owner of a gun from firing it. I was both MacGyver and, well, kind of a criminal. It felt awesome. My knife may have sacrificed its proud tip, but the little boy struggling in the bathroom to unzip his parachute pants was, at long last, vindicated.

W
ith half my morning gone, I quickly reassembled the gun, which I had taken apart while working on the lock, threw a water bottle into the game bag on my vest, and headed across the road to the field I had seen through the trees. A sign at the road informed me that the field was the property of the park, available for hunting, and used as a location for dog training. It was fairly large, perhaps the size of three soccer fields and ringed on three sides by trees. To the north and south, the stands of trees were fairly narrow, just twenty or thirty yards deep. To the east, the trees demarcated the barrier between field and forest, and along the western edge ran a fence line dividing the public park from a neighboring farm where three hundred acres or more of corn had already been harvested. An open grass field was not, in and of itself, a great location to find pheasant. But the pheasant is a bird that lives near its food—corn—and cover, the trees.

One of the first things the instructors teach about the act of hunting in hunter's safety is to have a plan. Right after the angry and paranoid rants about left-wing conspiracies to remove the trigger fingers from all members of the NRA, like Tom Berenger in that movie
Sniper,
they stress the importance of laying out your moves ahead of time. It's about safety, but also about game management. Wild animals tend to run away from the people stomping through their turf, so you want to be strategic in your approach. You want to push the game in a consistent direction and cover the hunting area efficiently. Given that I was by myself and I didn't have the services of a dog, this was going to be extremely difficult. Pheasant are more likely to run for cover at the first sign of trouble than to conveniently pop up in front of you. They have to feel really threatened in order to do that, and as I weaved my way around this large open space like a sailor two days into shore leave, I quickly came to the realization that I was presenting no such threat. I could have been right on top of a pheasant, standing toe-to-claw with one and I might not have known it. There could have been dozens of them standing just along the edge of the woods, cackling at me, making jokes about the fluffy man in the silly orange hat who looked lost in an area the size of a small strip mall parking lot.

I thought that working along the edge of the field, where the grass was taller and dotted with thorny brambles would give me the best shot at scaring one up. And so I walked three U-shaped circuits along the edge of the woods, hoping a bird would be nice enough to sacrifice itself for the benefit of my plate, ego, and this book. Not a single pheasant raised its claw. Perhaps, I thought, I needed to go deeper into the woods and work my way back toward the field. Maybe that would scare a bird into the open. So I, well,
plunged
is the only word for it, into the dense underbrush that was thick with thorny bushes and low-hanging branches, crouching down low at the waist while taking comically high-kneed steps to clear low obstacles, all the while trying to protect my gun and avoid putting any scratches into it. Eventually I got deep enough into the trees that the ground cover got thin and patchy and I was able to stand up in a small clearing the size of a suburban garage.

That's when I heard it—a cacophony of gunfire that sounded as if it were coming from just behind the nearest tree. Two shots, three, four, eight in rapid succession and over the span of about two seconds. I instinctively, by reflex and without thinking, ducked down onto my knees, cradling my gun and covering my head like a kid in a tornado drill. I don't think I've ever moved so fast in my life or with so much purpose. Sebastian Junger, a favorite author of mine and, in my opinion, the second coming of Hemingway, wrote scientifically and eloquently about this kind of reaction in his book
War.
In the book, he embeds with a forward operating army unit in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. He writes about the caveman instinct that takes over when a human brain detects a sudden, loud, and potentially threatening noise. The pupils dilate, the muscles contract and take the body into a crouching position, the hands instinctively cover the head. A seasoned soldier trains his body to react differently, to stand in the face of this base instinct. Hunting in a group, I didn't react when the guns went off up and down the line to fell my pheasant. I expected it. I understood the context. And sitting in my car, hearing the pops off in the distance, it was more of a curiosity than a threat. But alone in the woods, believing as I did that there was no one around, I thought I was under attack.

A couple more shots rang out, and this time I could tell they weren't coming from the south or west, where most of the shots were that I'd heard while struggling with the lock. They were to the north and not by much. It took a second or two to realize that there was another field through the trees to the north and that there must be a group of hunters there who had found some pheasant. My heart rate slowed and I felt my muscles relax. I stood up and immediately thought about that section in Junger's book, adding to his clinical description of the fight-or-flight response another indicator—a single drop of pee in my pants.

I got my bearings and walked through the trees toward where I had heard the shots. You want to be careful sneaking up on hunters when you're alone and unexpected. Blaze orange may do wonders to identify a human over a deer, but it doesn't make you bulletproof. I walked through the trees until I saw six orange figures a couple hundred yards distant. They seemed to be gathering together, I imagined, to look at the birds one or several of them had just shot. I wanted to strut over there, shotgun slung over my arm, and ask, with a manly sniff, “So how we doing today, boys?” But I decided against it. I didn't want to be
that
guy, the computer club president who thinks his job as the water boy makes him equal in physical and social stature to the football team. And, perhaps worse than being seen as a nuisance, I dreaded the off chance that they might invite me to join them. It had taken a bit of courage to join Mark and my cousins for a hunt. The idea of joining up with strangers having never shot anything or having any real, firsthand knowledge of what I was doing mortified me. It would be just my luck that a bird would rise and, apart from doing something idiotic like forgetting to take my safety off, I would do something dangerous like going full-on Dick Cheney and shooting one of the men in the face.

This is not the kind of grounded perspective my dad might have. He'd see a group of experienced hunters offering to take me with them—even though I never got close enough for them to actually do so—as a great way to learn. I saw it as an opportunity to embarrass myself and possibly maim some well-meaning stranger. No, definitely better to get a little more experience on my own. It would be better for everyone involved.

A
fter an hour of fruitless tramping, I came to the realization that I really wanted a dog. A dog would be entertaining. A dog would make this whole process more enjoyable and—dare I consider?—significantly increase the likelihood of actually getting something. But more than just wanting a dog, I wanted Quigley. Quigley was my mom's gift to my dad on his fiftieth birthday, a purebred liver-and-white English springer spaniel and quite possibly the most adorable puppy I have ever laid eyes on. I named him after Tom Selleck's character in one of my dad's favorite movies,
Quigley Down Under,
in which an American cowboy finds himself in Australia dispatching corrupt cattle ranchers dispassionately with the assistance of his trusty Sharps black-powder rifle, eventually riding off into the sunset with a beautiful, if abused, girl played by Laura San Giacomo.

Dad loved that movie. In part it was because Selleck played a red-blooded, sealed-lipped hero, the kind only a person who grew up idolizing John Wayne could really appreciate. And in part because of the gun. The Sharps is one of those big, heavy long-range guns that nearly wiped out the American buffalo. But with its hexagonal barrel and peep sight, it just looked so cool. I've had the opportunity to fire one in my life and while the experience was loud, painful, and completely without accuracy for me, for Dad it was the equivalent of dressing up like Luke Skywalker and playing with a real-life light saber.

Mom and I picked up Quigley from the store where she bought him as a surprise gift. He rode on my lap as we drove home and when we went inside, Mom ordered Dad to close his eyes then brought Quigley around and set him on Dad's lap.

“Nope, uh-uh, no way,” Dad said, holding the puppy up as if it had just laid a steaming pile on his lap. “No way do I want a dog, take it back.”

It was one of the only times I remember my dad ever being anything less than completely gracious when receiving a gift. You could present him with a sweater made out of hairballs spit up by a feral cat and he would at least say thank you before throwing it out. But not with Quigley. He did not want a dog and that was final . . . for about twenty minutes anyway.

English springers are hunting dogs, and Dad always said he was going to work on making that dog one. But as the years wore on, Quigley's training consisted more of waiting for a nod from Dad before flipping a cracker off his nose and swallowing it whole. Quigley was Dad's buddy and a great dog. True, as a puppy, he chewed up countless doors and Mom got more new rugs in those early years than perhaps any other point in her life, but eventually Quigs settled down and even came to live with me for a while. In college and for a year or two after, I drove a Jeep Wrangler and it got to the point where Quigley didn't need to be leashed or asked to hop in the backseat when I was going somewhere. He even lived with Rebecca and I after we got married, but our small apartment combined with some health problems that made him throw up on the carpet our newborn would soon be crawling on dictated that he had to go. We did our best to get him healthy, to retrain him, to get him used to his new environment. But, try as he did to improve his behavior, there was little that could be done for his health. I took him to the animal shelter on Good Friday 2005 and had him put down. I had not contemplated seriously getting another dog since, until I found myself wandering aimlessly through the woods trying to figure out just how in the hell I was going to scare a pheasant into becoming a target and, eventually, dinner.

I decided to let the field rest a bit and wait until the group of hunters in the adjacent one cleared out before making another serious attempt, so I wandered deeper into the woods toward where I thought, if my memory of the map I'd seen on the ODNR website a couple days earlier served me well, I would run into a river. Fifty yards or so in, I came across a trail marked with blue blazes and a sign with a figure on horseback. I followed it for a while and the walking was easier. I didn't have to duck under branches or step over thorns—just the occasional bit of mud that, from its color and smell, I suspected to be crushed horse dung—eventually coming to that river. I rested my gun against a tree and peed against another, feeling manly on so many levels it was difficult to comprehend. I had a good long look at the river, tried to conjure up some profound thoughts, and eventually succumbed to an odd blend of determination and anger. It was pure bloodlust. What the hell was I doing having a little stroll along a horse trail? I would never feed my family this way, never accomplish my goal of becoming a hunter.