Love

i

Dad and Michael and I had left even earlier, at 4:15, hoping to beat Mr. Guy to the woods, and I’d told them he’d still be there waiting for us though they’d insisted that we had a chance. He was there, however, with the truck still running, the silver flake in the black paint burning white in our headlights. 

Son of a… said Michael, chin resting on the seat back between me and Dad.

Michael, I said.

I wasn’t gonna say it, he said, But seriously. 

He’s obsessed, I said. Probably been out here since midnight dreaming about it.

We gotta tell him a later time, said Michael.

I am telling you, we cannot be here before him. It cannot be done.

It doesn’t matter, guys, said Dad. He was quiet and his hearing had been harder than usual coming over the Causeway with the tail end of the storm flickering to the Southeast across the lake and the river on its way out to the Gulf.

I just wanna beat him one day, Michael said.

You just make sure you’re on your toes with him out there. He’s alright on the skeet range but he gets way too excited when it’s actual birds flying.

I know.

Some days I don’t know if we even oughta keep hunting with him.

Ah, don’t say that, Michael said.

Be nice not to have to worry about it, I said.

But it’s good for him, Michael said.

That’s true. 

We had come down the last long lane between the trees by then and pulled into the oyster shell parking lot with the verge of pines on every side and Dad swung wide and pulled up to one of the    Tupelo logs that bounded . The dust rose into the headlights and swirled like the first galaxies coming to rest at the far end of everything and Dad said, Rain must have missed, and he killed the engine and the pines showed dark against the brightness of the night sky over the woods.

Will that mess us up, I said.

Should be alright. Still cold. Still got that wind coming down.

I heard they’ll do eight hundred miles a day on a good wind.

I believe it.

I’d believe eight hundred miles an hour hard as they are to hit sometimes.

Yeah, when you shoot like you do, Michael said.

We’re wasting dark, Dad said. 

We got out. The air was colder and it smelled different than it had in the city and I remembered all the hours watching fish in the plastic pet store bags floating their twenty minutes at the top of our tank. It was quiet except for Mr. Guy’s engine still idling and as I looked over the hood of Dad’s truck Mr. Guy killed it and opened his door and through the fogged up windows of the passenger side I saw the yellow Labrador in silhouette nosing up into the front seat beside him and circling back on herself and then forward again and Mr. Guy’s voice came through the sudden deep apparent quiet of the far end of the night, Nana, cool it, dammit, Nana, take it easy.

I came around the back of the truck and we pulled the cheap black rubber waders out onto the tailgate and slung the boot ends down on the cold earth. I slipped off my shoes and slid my butt up onto the tailgate and wriggled down into the cold of the rubber and stood up and worked my feet until they were flush with the cold insoles of the boots. And I put the heavy camo coat over my shoulders and zipped it and pulled the hood over my head and shivered and uncased the gun and tucked it under my right arm and shoved my hands in their gloves into the pockets of my coat. My nose was starting to hurt.

Dad and Michael were ready, too, and Dad locked the truck and we walked over to Mr. Guy. Michael was the only one to take a hand out of his pocket and rub Nana hard across the shoulders and Mr. Guy said, Well how we doing today fellas, y’all ready to kill some birds.

Yeah, said Dad, the word rising at the end.

You think we’ll do any good, said Michael.

Shit yeah, I think we’ll do good this cold front we got. Come on now what we dragging for?

A path led toward the lake between two lines of pines, and we set off down it with flashlights playing around Nana who trotted on, usually in the lead, sometimes doubling back to frisk between us as if to hurry us along. 

We’re going, girl, we’re going.

The waders were cheap and my heels slid up and down in the boots. The chill came through and my feet felt like slabs of meat, inflexible, lame.

At the end of the path, which went on almost perfectly straight between the pines, the unimpressionable woods ran on into the marsh while the way continued ninety degrees to the right, rising to become the crest of a shallow levee dividing the three small sequential ponds on our right from the marsh itself that spread out on our left through the lingering stands of pine toward the open lake.

About a third of the way along a levee Mr. Guy stopped. 

Alright, Mike, he whispered, this is you and me.

Michael stepped to Mr. Guy’s side, keeping the camouflaged barrel of his gun pointed into the air away from all of us. 

Tell me the spot again, Guy.

Alright, so keep on going down here, Guy said. About two-thirds of the way along you’ll come to a little cut where the marsh flows into the first pond. Go down on the left there along the edge of the water where it curves out and about forty yards on you’ll hit a little stand of Roseau canes cut and set in the mud. You’ll see it. Just set up behind them canes and wait. That cut’s the spot the birds are aiming for heading in and heading out. Y’all oughta shoot good today. Only two ways they’re going down there, in and out.

Good deal. Good luck.

Y’all too.

Michael and Mr. Guy eased down the bank of the levee between two sapling tupelos and off down the edge of the pine woods pressing on toward the sea. I wondered how they stood the salt and how they burned and if they gave a good clean salt flame and then I looked at Dad, who was smiling and shaking his head a little bit in the shadow of his flashlight. He turned and we continued down the levee. There was a breeze now between the pond and the marsh and I relaxed a little. We plodded on for thirty seconds and then the levee dropped off ahead of us into a sheet of water ten feet wide with the levee rising again on the far side and carrying on into another stand of pine. Out on the levee with the pines far off ahead and behind it was bright enough to see the water plainly and there were swirls and wakes in its surface. 

This is us, Dad said. We stepped down the levee bank, holding the guns up for balance and pressing the folding stools slung across our shoulders against our hips so they didn’t clatter against the gun butts or the ground.

Feels best right along the edge, he said low over his shoulder.

Little unkempt heads of grass clumped along the mud edge of the marsh. They were grey in the dull night glow and turned sickly white as the flashlight swung over them and I stepped from one to the other with my feet flexing in the loose boots of the waders. There was a little sweat down low on my back but my feet were chilled and flexed feebly against the cold. On our left across the mud and grass and on our right across the water the pines ran on in lazy parallel. Straight ahead, within a mile now, was the lake but the wind was behind us with the clean soap scent of the pines. We’d gone for about a minute in a shallow curve along the widening edge of the water when the Roseau canes showed against the late glow of the stars. Someone had arranged them in a thin circle with a man’s width opening facing us. Dad stood aside and waved me in. You get up there, he said. I stepped to the far end of the circle and set my stool down and, bending forward to lower my weight slowly onto it, sat down. It held, and I leaned back, and then the rear bar of the stool sunk an inch into the mud and I leaned again and thrust the gun out in front of me. 

Set it on some grass if you can, Dad said. 

I lifted myself and slid the stool three inches back so that the rear bar rested on a clump of grass. I sat again, leaning back this time, and set my boots on two more clumps of grass out ahead of me. My weight was off the middle of the stool and it felt good to hold myself that way but only for a moment and I knew I’d be hurting soon and hoped the ducks would fly. Dad sat down with his gun nosing through the canes and said, Go ahead and load up. I racked the slide and took a shell from the loose inside chest pocket of the waders and popped it into the chamber and clicked two more into the magazine. Dad was ready and quiet fell across the marsh except for the faint motion of the wind in the pines which was like the dozing of the whole world and the sweet short creakings of the coots edging in the dark around the marsh grass hummocks. I was trying not to think about things and this was the time when I’d have to try harder as we waited for the first insinuations of the sun. 

I wrapped my right index finger beneath the trigger guard and touched the safety again and tried to imagine the wilted yellow the grass would lie along the marsh edge at sunup and the fresh straw color it would assume if the wind stayed up and there was no more rain. I was trying to think at the limits of the body, at the tips of fingers and in the eyes and the skin but now and then a thought would worm from inside and drop into my belly and I’d push against the grass a little and I didn’t hear when Dad said it the first time and then he leaned over to put a hand on my shoulder and I pressed my left foot into the grass and saw Dad’s face now in the fading of the night.

I think that’s a bird on the water, he said, lifting the hand from my shoulder and pointing through the screen of canes into the darkness doubled on the surface of the water, where the grass hummocks stood up among nodes and ridges of mud where the wind had swept the water out to the lake. 

Where, I said, not turning my head.

There, and he pointed again. Nothing in the grass and brackish waste between me and the far pines looked like a duck, but at last a shape seemed to move on its own, apart from the wind, turning and dabbling in a space between two humps of mud.

There? I said.

I’m almost positive.

Should I take it?

Yeah, stand up and let it fly and take it.

I leaned forward over my legs and rose and stuck the gun out through the canes and thought I saw far off down the barrel the spread of wings with a v wake starting behind them and I pulled the trigger. The water erupted into nothingness and the roar of the gun rolled out to the pines. I’d set my right foot back as I rose and the boot had sunk into the mud with the kick and I stood, stuck, peering over the settling water.

Did I get him?

I think so. Can’t really see. But you hit right where he was flying.

Any idea what he was?

Not really. Mr. Guy says this is the spot for woodies.

I leaned over my left foot and pulled the right from the mud. The foot came up out of the boot a little and I swung the boot over a grass clump and worked my foot back down into it and sat. If the duck was out on the water it was dead and indistinguishable from the grass and juts of mud. I could see my breath, and a trickle of sweat ran down the lower part of my back.

Get ready, Dad said. Ten o’clock. 

A single bird was coming in about ten yards up, angling for the cut into the pond. I stood and shouldered the gun and swung the bead up and pulled the trigger just as it crossed the bird. Nothing happened. I racked the slide and the first spent shell sailed high over Dad and I fired, knowing as I did that I was behind and I pumped and drew the bead again and missed and watched the duck arc over the pond. The light was good now and I sat down and didn’t look at Dad.

Happens, he said.

I sat and looked for the first duck.

Might wanna reload, he said.

You can shoot the next one.

You oughta reload. Don’t know which way they’ll be coming.

I reloaded. The sun was behind us, though still a long way below the tops of the pines, and a genial bodiless light hung over the water. Ahead of me and just to the right the wake of some fish moved off from the bank in the direction of the wan moon, and above the moon, with the sun rosy on their feathers, hung a flock of ibises. The wind was dying, and the air felt colder.

Far off down the water a small cloud of shapes whitened in the dawn moved against the pine trunks. It neared and resolved into a flock of birds. Dad said nothing. Their flight was not like ducks’. They wove up and down among each other as they came. They were small, too, but large enough I thought they could be teal, and as they crossed I fired once and again and racked the slide and made to fire the third shell but stopped, arrested by some inscrutable impulse. The birds flew on, untroubled, weaving unconcernedly through the cut over the pond. 

Those aren’t ducks, Dad said.

Oh.

I reloaded and looked resolutely over the marsh. The moon was behind the pines, and a few clouds were raveling high in the north.

Here we go, Dad said. 

I turned, and a single duck was coming up out of the cut toward us. I waited, but Dad did not rise, and as the bird came in front of me I drew on it and fired and pumped and fired and pumped and the bird in the most obliging and unbelievable curve came along the edge of the grass to my left, and I swung well ahead of it and fired and it dropped with a final wet thud into the marsh.

There you go, Dad said.

Finally, I said. My breath came in big white clouds. Can I go get it?

You don’t wanna just wait for Nana?

I just hate seeing it. Never know what might happen.

Alright. Leave the gun here. Be careful in this mud.

I laid the gun across two heads of grass, yellow now in the daylight and muddy from my boots. I left the blind and started quickly along the edge of the water, stepping hummock to hummock. The duck was in the mud at the water’s edge, but the grass gave out ahead of me. I set a boot in the mud and sunk immediately to the ankle and leaned back on my left leg and pulled my right free. If I went a long way around to the left I could follow the grass mounds almost to the duck, and so I started off, going as fast I could, though farther on the grass itself was treacherous. Once I fell to my knee and had to scramble on, splay-limbed, to the nearest sturdy patch and slowly rise. A gun boomed three times to my left and I watched over my shoulder as a pair of gadwalls worked into an inlet in the pines where Michael and Mr. Guy must have set up. A second gun roared and the ducks passed out of sight. My bird was only a few yards out now, wings spread over the mud, giving back to the morning a faint iridescence. There was a pine bough a few feet to my left, and I took it up and laid it before me and stepped out onto it. It sank slightly but sustained me until I gripped the duck by the neck. Lifting it high I eased my way back and stood on the nearest hummock. I looked at Dad and held the bird aloft and he waved. The walk back was easier, with the duck cradled in my right hand, the wings folded and smoothed and the head with its short wispy crest swinging softly side to side. I wasn’t sure what it was.

Little wood duck hen, Dad said.

Oh.

Wonder if that was the drake, he said, lifting his chin to the place where I’d fired at first light.

The morning rose around us and high above the air was filled with egrets and spoonbills, ibis and cranes, and the white pelicans making their migration. The water swirled nearby and a kingfisher chittered his flaming way down along the surface and up to the bald limb of a cypress. There were no more ducks, and the guns to our left were silent. 

Guy says call it.

Dad worked his phone back into his pocket and racked the three shells from his gun and stood and slung the stool over his shoulder. I bent and with my left hand picked up the nine spent shells and dropped them into the loose inner chest pocket while my right hand held the duck level with my head.

Should we wait here for Mr. Guy?

Nah, we’ll meet him on the levee and come back.

We plodded to the levee and the wakes of fish broke away from the water’s edge before us. The kingfisher dove again, and a red-tailed hawk’s breast shone in the lowest branch of a pine. Halfway down the levee we waited, our bodies angled away from each other.

Think Nana’ll find the drake? I said.

If it’s out there.

Didn’t you think I hit it?

I thought so.

Nana came up the short slope of the levee and turned to wait as Mr. Guy followed her and then Michael. They had nothing but their guns and I held up the hen.

Hell, that all y’all get? Had the whole damn arsenal sounding off. Mr. Guy ran his free hand over his face and up under the rim of his cap and I heard the bristling of his stout grey mustache. I saw Michael had grown. His eyes were almost level with Mr. Guy’s but beside him he looked especially thin in the chest and the arms and his face was still rounded and soft-looking and worn like a child’s after waking early.

We think there’s a drake out there, Dad said.

Well shit let’s get Nana after it, Nana, you hear that, ya heard that, girl, duck. How’d y’all bring that one to hand, he said.

I walked out, I said.

You better be careful as hell out here in this stuff. All this used to be cypress swamp. You hit a spot one of them used to be that’s all rotted out, you’re liable to slip down through and that’s that, especially in those raggedy waders y’all wearing.

Nana looked up and wagged her tail and kept on down the levee toward the cut. We followed and together picked out way to the Roseau canes. 

Where’s he at? Mr. Guy said.

Oughta be straight out there, I said, parting the canes as I pointed. 

Nana, he said and pointed to his foot. She sat at his heel and he swung his flattened palm up and down on the line I’d indicated and said, Get!

Nana burst from his feet and flung herself into the water and half-paddled, half-floundered through the mud to a point some thirty yards out among the hummocks and turned in a circle a few times and started back to us. Mr. Guy repeated the process twice, adjusting Nana’s line. Each time she returned panting.

He and Nana moved down the water’s edge to near the place the hen had fallen, Mr. Guy sinking to the ankles every step and tearing himself on with a short wet sucking sound as Nana padded lightly over the mud. Mr. Guy kept glancing to the right. When he judged the place good, he stopped and sent Nana into the marsh again. Twice she came back panting and on the third attempt she went a little farther, not searching in a circle but scooping something from the muck with a harsh thrust of her jaws and turning back with her head high and her white chest plowing the mud back to Mr. Guy. The two returned as they’d gone out and Mr. Guy handed me a perfect wood duck drake, the green crest swept back over its neck and the buff breast with its chevrons untouched by the mud where it had lain.

ii

It felt good to be in the truck, out of the waders, with my feet bare and the two ducks resting where I could see them against the tailgate and Michael asleep in the back seat by the time we’d hit the highway.

Dad was on the phone.

Only Roman, he said. He got two wood ducks. No, not today. No, he didn’t either. Yeah, he’s happy. Taxidermist oughta be happy too. I think he’s been getting worried about us. Alright. Alright.

He set the phone in a cup holder and touched his knee to the wheel and ran both hands over his scalp.

Put a tough one on your brother today, he said.

He’s had good days.

He has. He has. 

We going to Jamie’s? I said.

Yeah, he said, and we drove in silence under the grey sky that had flowed over us as we left the marsh.

At the edge of the woods where Mandeville began was a low building with a porch held up on rough cut logs and a white sign against the sky that read Jamie and the Green-eyed Man. Mr. Guy was on the porch, thumping his boots against the edge of the boards. He held the door for us and had to hold it a minute while Michael walked off his doze. It was hot inside and smelled of cooking oil and I pulled my sweater off as a lady walked us over to a table near the windows. There was a draft at my back as I sat down. 

Whatchyall eatin fellas? Y’all want some spinach dip get started?

Yeah, that’s good. And what, iced teas?

Yeah.

Just water for me, said Michael.

Alright baby.

She walked away with her ponytail swinging back and forth through the back of her ball cap. 

Well, I’m glad you got them two, Mr. Guy said. That’s a good spot. We oughta kill more ducks out there.

I like Apple Pie Road better, said Michael.

I know, but we gotta branch out. 

I like this spot, Dad said. I saw on the map there’s some ponds off East of the trail. You think there’d be birds in there.

Shit yeah there’s birds. Y’all wanna go tomorrow?

Well, the boys are actually going out of town tonight.

Oh yeah, where y’all headed?

D.C., I said.

D.C. this time of year?

It’s for the March, Michael said.

Oh, he said and sat back in his chair, which slid an inch over the checkerboard tiles and creaked. Oh. Well that’s a good thing y’all are doing. Good thing.

This is our third year.

Well, good, good. 

The iced teas and the water came in tall red translucent cups. The waitress departed in silence and Mr. Guy leaned in.

You know, it’s something that just touches so many lives. I just learned a couple years ago actually my sister, well, you know.

Oh, I said.

Yeah, well, she was going out with this boy, real good looking, played the guitar. Like one of the family. Then he got called off to Vietnam, and she knew he was gonna come back and marry her. That’s what he said. Got two letters and never heard from him again. So it’s a big thing. Real big thing.

Yeah, Michael said.

Well, good. 

He put his hands on his thighs.

I’m gonna hit the head, he said.

He rose and walked across the middle of the dining room to the black swinging door, passing the waitress who came over and set a bowl of spinach and cheese and bread crumbs in the middle of the table, steaming.

iii

The overcast had cleared a little by the time we made the midpoint of the Causeway. Sun knifed through to light a stretch of lake stirred up with waves like the scales of an unopened pine cone. 

What’s the matter, Dad said.

I’d felt him glancing over at me but kept my eyes on the waves.

Nothing, I said. Just some stuff I’ll have to make up for school.

Well, he said, you’ll be alright. You’ve always been smart.

Danny Fitzpatrick is the author of the novel Only the Lover Sings and editor of Joie de Vivre.