The Hunting Trip (12 page)

Randy had, of course, asked them why they both were behaving so oddly, and they had both offered explanations, neither of which Randy entirely believed. Both had a connection with the male organ.

Phil said that shortly after he had married Brunhilde, she had told him that if he ever “stuck that thing” in another female, she would blow it off with one of his
gottverdammt
shotguns, and that he believed her.

Moses said that, although it was not common knowledge, Abraham Cohen, his beloved Rachel's father and proprietor of Cohen's Kosher Meats & Delicatessen in Biloxi—the only establishment of its kind in the state—was also a
mohel
, an observant Jew trained in Jewish Law and the techniques of
Brit Milah
, which was ritual circumcision.

Rachel was not only familiar with the procedure, Moses told Randy, but had her own
izmel
, the razor-sharp scalpel-like knife used in the ceremony. She promised to use this on Moses if he ever did what he was commanded not to do in Exodus 21:14—i.e.,
Thou shalt not commit adultery
.

And after her performance of the
Brit Milah
procedure, Rachel had further explained, Moses would not only be incapable, in a penile sense, of again violating the Seventh Commandment that his namesake had brought down from Mount Sinai, but for the rest of his life would have to sit down to take a leak.

And, Moses said, Rachel never makes idle threats.

—

After a good deal
of thought and some preliminary consultations with Señor Pancho Gonzales—who was always looking for a chance to escape for a week or two from the demands of his family, which consisted of a wife, seven children, his mother, his wife's mother, and others—Randy came up with what seemed to him, in all modesty, to be an absolutely brilliant plan.

Carol-Anne would get one of the dimmer bulbs in The Tuesday Luncheon Club chandelier to propose that the ladies propose to their husbands that everybody go to London, England, and then to Dungaress, Scotland. The ladies would get a chance to shop in London, and the men to shoot grouse and other wildfowl in Scotland.

Because Homer C. Crandall was not at all interested in shooting anything except bank robbers, he would not be going. And because Mrs. Homer C. Crandall, as president of The Tuesday Luncheon Club, whose idea the excursion was, had the moral duty to accompany the girls, she would.

In addition to the husbands of the Ladies of The Tuesday Luncheon Club who would be going, so would Señor Pancho Gonzales, president of MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc., who would probably be accompanied by a niece.

Mr. Philip W. Williams III would also be going along, with a mission in the plot that Randy decided he needed to hear only when it was necessary for ol' Phil to perform it.

The shooting in Scotland would be done on the grounds of Abercrombie Castle near Dungaress, Scotland. The father of the present earl, who was also of course the Earl of Abercrombie, who was the Rt. Honorable Charles William George Michael Bertram and known to his friends as “Bertie,” had years previous graciously struck a deal with Amos T. Bruce, Jr., of Muddiebay, Mississippi, who was
Randolph C. Bruce's father, which opened the ancestral lands to pheasant shooters for a financial consideration.

It was not the first deal the Abercrombies had struck with the Bruces. The first was in 1920, with Amos T. Bruce, Sr., Randy's grandfather, from whom, it was generally acknowledged, ol' Randy had inherited his business acumen. Old Amos, as he was called with varying degrees of affection, immediately saw, with the passage of the XVIIIth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a chance to turn a dollar.

Old Amos knew the tipplers of America, and maybe especially the tipplers of Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana, were not going to happily switch to Coca-Cola or Welch's grape juice simply because it was now against the law of the land to imbibe anything stronger. And he knew that his still (est. 1805) in a wooded area on the grounds of “Our Tara” was already at maximum production, and he was having a hard time meeting local Baptist and Methodist demand for “Mississippi's Best” white lightning. Unless Old Amos found an alternate supply of hooch, he was going to miss out on all the money that could be earned supplying the tipplers in New Orleans.

And, although Old Amos personally thought Scotch whisky tasted like horse piss, he knew that there were a lot of people in New Orleans who actually liked it. A lot.

Thus, he knew what he had to do—catch the next steamer from Charleston, South Carolina, to Glasgow, Scotland—and he did it.

Three weeks after landing in Glasgow, and after sampling all the Scots whisky he could lay his hands on, he had found the one that was the least worst. It was called “Old Pheasant” and it came from a distillery in Dungaress. He went there and sought out the chief distiller.

This turned out to be a gaunt six-footer his own age by the odd name of Myelord, who wore a plaid skirt and had a woman's purse hanging from his belt over his crotch.

Telling himself that he should know that the booze business caused strange bedfellows, Old Amos introduced himself to Myelord as a brother distiller from the New World and offered as proof a taste of Mississippi's Best. Myelord liked it, and by the time the first Mason jar was empty, Myelord and Old Amos were pals. At that time, Old Amos asked Myelord who owned the Old Pheasant distillery.

“Actually, Amos, my newfound fellow distiller chum, I own it.”

“In that case, Myelord, old buddy, I have a business proposition for you.”

By the time Old Amos and Myelord had emptied a second quart-sized Mason jar of Mississippi's Best, not only had a deal been struck, but Myelord, after asking if Amos liked to shoot birds, invited him up to the castle for dinner, and to spend the night, and in the morning to have a go at popping a few pheasants.

Amos, never having seen a pheasant before, happily agreed.

The deal struck was that the Old Pheasant distillery would sell to Amos all of its output, relabeled “Famous Pheasant” and packed in wooden cases marked “Scottish Tweed,” and arrange for its shipment by sea to Muddiebay Bay, where it would be offloaded in the dead of night for further shipment to New Orleans's “speakeasies” and “gentleman's clubs.”

The change of name was necessary, Amos explained, because the tipplers in New Orleans never having seen a pheasant would be happier with “Famous” than they would be with “Old,” the latter which would suggest to them something like an ancient chicken—in other words, tough, stringy, and smelling like a chicken coop.

Sometime during that night, Amos learned that Myelord was not his new business partner's real name, and that he was actually Bertram William Louis Oswald Harold James, Earl of Abercrombie, and that the building in which they were emptying yet another Mason jar of Mississippi's Best was not, as he had first thought, the Scottish
National Museum, but rather what ol' Bertie thought of as Home Sweet Home.

Popping a few pheasants the next morning was equally an eye-opener for Amos. Not only was it almost as much fun as popping duck in the tidewater around the MSB&DDC, Inc., facility back home in Muddiebay, but ol' Bertie said, “The bloody birds are a real pest. The more of them you shoot, the more of them there are.”

That could not be said about mallards in the Mississippi Flyway.

Amos decided that he'd have to give that some thought. But for the time being he did only what was incumbent upon him as a Southern Gentleman. He invited ol' Bertie to visit him and pop some mallards over Muddiebay Bay. Bertie didn't seem enthusiastic until Amos told him Muddiebay was not far from New Orleans and its famed cuisine and gentleman's clubs.

Thus began their lifelong friendship and business relationship. The latter turned out to be far more successful than Old Amos had ever dreamed it would. Attempting to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of New Orleanians with Famous Pheasant was futile, but on the other hand quite profitable.

In time, Old Amos took Young Amos to Dungaress and introduced him to Scottish country life. And during this period, earning them the lasting gratitude of the Earl of Abercrombie, and later his son, the Earl of Abercrombie, they came up with an idea—actually two ideas—on how to convert the pheasants of Castle Abercrombie from pests into a cash crop.

The first idea was simplicity itself. Old Amos and Young Amos knew very well how many shooters were willing to pay through the nose for the privilege of getting a few shots at mallards, and it followed that they would be willing to pay as much for the privilege of getting a few shots at Scottish pheasants.

Old Amos said that when he floated the idea, he was confident the
would-be shooters would line up like politicians at the public trough—that is, drooling and with a wide-eyed look of happy anticipation on their faces.

Ol' Bertie said that was fine, but they would have to factor in the cost of getting rid of the pheasants once they had been blasted from the Scottish skies, probably by dumping them into a ditch dug for that purpose, which, considering the price of petrol and wear and tear on the tractor that would dig said ditch, et cetera, would cost a pretty penny, indeed.

“Why would you want to bury the pheasants?” Young Amos asked.

“Well, what we have been doing for the past century or so, after shooting the bloody pests, is to send them to the Royal Dungaress Orphans Home, and its sister charity, the Royal Dungaress Home for Unwed Mothers-to-Be. But they can swallow only so many of the buggers—nobody, including orphans and unwed mothers-to-be, can be expected to eat pheasant day after bloody day—and you're going to cause a great deal more than so many.”

“Let me think about it, Bertie,” Old Amos said.

And he did.

But it was Young Amos who came up with the solution, which everyone agreed was brilliant. He had spent enough of his time in New Orleans, which of course is known for its
ambience Français
, to learn something of the French mind. He suspected, and was later proven right, that
les chefs Français
in the five-star restaurants of Paris would like nothing better than to be able to add to their menus “Fresh Scottish Pheasant, flown from Scotland Directly to Our Kitchen,” and be prepared to pay through their
nez
Français
for the privilege.

A deal was struck with TWA, which had two flights a day from Glasgow's Abbotsinch to Paris's Charles de Gaulle to do the actual flying, and then the money began to roll in.

The “guest gentleman shooters” would appear at Abercrombie
Castle, where they would be welcomed by the Earl and Countess of Abercrombie. The earl—or sometimes Lady Margaret, who was known to her friends as “Maggie”—would then explain the traditions of the hunt and the costs thereof. These were ten dollars per pheasant downed and one dollar for each shot shell provided to accomplish the former.

The earl, who was wearing the kilt of Clan Abercrombie, would further explain that gentleman shooters were expected to make a small gift—twenty dollars was acceptable, but greater generosity would not be rejected—to the “gillies” who would accompany them to the stands from which they would down their game.

The gillies had several functions. The first of these was to point the gentleman shooters away from other gentleman shooters. Next, they would keep careful count of the number of shells they issued to the gentleman shooters, and finally they would keep careful count of how many pheasants “their” gentleman shooter downed at ten dollars per downing.

Gillies, who were paid five dollars a day, plus twenty percent of the amount their shooters paid at ten dollars per bird for each shot down, quickly learned that most gentleman shooters were so thrilled to have the gillie enthusiastically cry, “Jolly good shot, sir!” that they never challenged the call even when they told themselves they “didn't come within fifty
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
feet of the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
bird.”

When all the birds had been driven past the stands by the “beaters”—children from the Royal Dungaress Orphans Home—the gentlemen were taken by their gillies to sort of a picnic lunch, where cucumber sandwiches and other victuals were available at nominal prices.

Meanwhile, assisted by a fifty-strong herd of Labrador retrievers, the more mobile of the expectant ladies at the Royal Dungaress
Home for Unwed Mothers-to-Be swept through the killing fields picking up the downed pheasants and moving them to an out-of-sight shed where they were quickly gutted by the less mobile of the ladies-in-waiting, so to speak. Next they were loaded into coolers, covered with ice, and then driven to Abbotsinch for their final flight to Charles de Gaulle and ultimately into the ovens of the Frog chefs.

The system thus devised outlasted both Old Amos and Young Amos, which left ol' Randy as the last of the Bruce line; and it outlasted the Earl of Abercrombie, which left Captain Charles William George Michael Bertram of Her Majesty's Own Scottish Light Lancers, who had become, of course, Captain Charles William George Michael Bertram the Earl of Abercrombie on the death of his father, as the last of his line.

The two got along well even after the earl reluctantly hung up his uniform to assume his earl-y responsibilities, which included administration of the Castle Abercrombie estates and the siring of an heir to keep the ball rolling, so to speak.

Randy didn't even think of this burden upon Bertie until he showed up at the castle one day and found Bertie in the company of a petite, fair-skinned young woman.

“Randy, old boy, this is my Maggie, who has just agreed to become the Countess of Abercrombie.”

“Nice to meet you, Maggie,” Randy had replied, offering the young woman his hand.

“Randy, old boy,” Bertie said, “I hate to appear stuffy, but there are traditions to be upheld, you know. Among them is that commoners like you are required to address my darling Maggie as either ‘My Lady' or ‘Lady Margaret.' And commoners do not attempt to touch members of the nobility, such as my Maggie, the Honorable Margaret Patricia Alice McNess, third daughter of the Earl of Ipswich, is.”