by Bill Heavey
I pulled in front of him, opened the trunk—and found that the still-limp deer (which had almost no external injuries and was a young buck that had recently shed its antlers) was more than I could lift by myself. After a moment, the officer got out to help but looked hesitant.
“You, ah, got any gloves?” he finally asked. I fished out the green army-surplus liners I’d just stuck in my own pockets rather than get them dirty moving the deer and handed them over. He looked at them and I found I could read his mind: These are wool, which is porous. Latex would provide a better barrier against whatever diseases a wild animal carries, but they’re better than nothing.
After I thanked the officer for his help and got my gloves back, I asked for his card in case anybody questioned the untagged deer in my vehicle. As I drove off, I was trying to square the fact that a road full of commuters, all on their way to the jobs they needed to put food on the table, had passed up free-range, organic meat that would go for more money per pound than USDA prime beef—if there were a place you could buy it.
Wanting to swap venison for assistance with butchering, I drove the buck to the house of my friend Paula, a fellow scrounger. “Hell, yeah, I’ll help,” she said. “I’m a sucker for a dead deer.” We promptly set to field dressing it on a tarp in the backyard. It was messed up pretty bad on the inside, but she figured that most of the meat, backstraps included, could be salvaged. At a certain point, she asked me to hold the trash bag while she used a shovel to load the guts in. Problem was, they were so slippery that they slid off every time she lifted the shovel. “Well,” she sighed, “guess I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” She rolled up her sleeves and scooped the innards into the bag with her hands. Then, carrying her knife, she went around to the front of the house to the outside faucet to wash off while I tied the bag, put it inside a second one, and placed it all in the garbage. When she came back, she was laughing so hard she had to stop every few feet to catch her breath.
“You shoulda seen it!” she gasped. “The bike path is just up the street, y’know, so we get these yuppies on their thousand-dollar bikes bopping down the sidewalk all the time. Usually they damn near run you over.” One had been bearing down on her when he saw the knife and her bloody hands. “Man, this guy steers onto the lawn of the house next door, goes through the hedge, and nearly wipes out! Oh, man, the poor guy! He musta thought I’d just killed somebody!” She was squeezing out tears of mirth now, acutely aware of how impossible it would be for the average modern suburban commuter, even one who traveled to work under his own power, to make sense of someone actually butchering her own meat.
“Hey, Paula,” I said, wanting her take on the modern germ phobia. “Can you imagine a touchable world?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Heavey? You got some strange notions sometimes, you know that?”
CURRENT CRAZY
It’s been raining so much that I’ve revised “go” fishing conditions to “river levels rising, but at a slower rate than last week.” And I’m thinking of raising tilapia in my basement. Every morning, I don Crocs and descend for the ritual sucking up of the previous night’s seepage, wearing my shooting muffs against the roar of the wet-vac. In the midst of this reverse-baptism one day, I felt my cell phone vibrate. It was the tobacco-cured growl of Paula Smith. “River’s rising like a $%&#@. Last chance for perch, baby. You in?” Paula’s desire to fish, like mine, had overridden her judgment. Fishing in current conditions was like investing your retirement in Hummer futures. “I’m in. Meet you at Fletcher’s,” I said.
I left with water lapping at the cardboard box holding my tax records. You made up the numbers once, I reasoned, you can do it again. Paula was waiting and irritated—her normal state—at the dock. Nearby, police launches rumbled past, searching for two anglers who had misjudged the river and paid accordingly. Paula shook her head at the spectacle. “If a body doesn’t pop up immediately, it’s wedged, okay? Takes four, five days to get bloated and pop free. Till then, they’re just burning gas and eating donuts.” The rain had resumed. I rowed while Paula tapped the side on which she wanted power. Slipping into the main current, I pulled hard for the next eddy. Paula was unable to keep even a shielded cigarette lit, which made her even crankier. She suddenly said, “This is #(*)@% crazy, you know that?” I didn’t have breath to answer. But Paula’s threshold for crazy is legendarily high, so being out here with her didn’t reflect well on my own mental fitness.
I had meant to propose a retreat upon reaching the eddy. What I actually said, however, was “Think that anchor’ll hold?” Paula pondered at length. “Might.”
The anchor turned out to be the only thing that did hold. Our jigs, despite two ounces of lead, couldn’t, which indicated more current than the perch would fight to stay here, much less stack up. As crazy people will, however, we fished for another half hour. Finally, facts had to be faced. Crazy is not the same as stupid.
Back at the dock we found Dickie Tehaan, maker of the very jigs we’d been using. Upon hearing that we’d blanked, he said, “Hey, that’s better than I did with Paula the other day.” I asked how that could be. “We were out perching—nothing biting—when Paula sees this dead beaver floating our way. She grabs a leg and swings it aboard. Big sucker. And ripe. So I decide I’ve got other things to do. Soon as we get in, Paula pulls her knife, starts cutting off the head right on the dock—”
“Hell, yeah, I cut off the head!” Paula interrupted. “The #@%$& yuppies love a beaver skull. Don’t ask me why. Must remind them of the summer camp they never went to. You let the beetles clean it up, glue the teeth back in, you’re looking at fifty bucks, baby!” As she worked, a D.C. cop had approached. “He says, ‘What’re you doing?’” Paula continued. “And I say, ‘I’m cuttin’ off this beaver head!’ So he thinks this over and asks me why. ‘Because I want it!’ Cops can be sorta slow sometimes.”
Meantime, Gordon Leisch, in whose basement Paula lives, had anchored nearby to fish with a beloved old Shad Pappy dart. “She’s got the head,” Dickie said, “so she rows back out and chucks the carcass. Except she doesn’t look. So the carcass snags Gordon’s lure, washes downstream, and breaks him off. Gordon, understandably, loses it. ‘You got the whole damn river to throw that thing in, and you throw it at me?’” Dickie said, imitating Gordon.
“Aw, jeez, I felt terrible,” Paula said. “I thought I was gonna have to take the bus home. Well, I learned my lesson. From now on, I’m gonna look before I throw a carcass in the river.” I let this hang in the air for a moment, then observed solemnly, “A wise woman learns from her mistakes.” Paula started to laugh, shaking her head. Then Dickie started giggling, and pretty soon the three of us—soaked and fishless and suckers for the river in all its stages—were hooting it up at the divine madness that had driven us to this.
Looking back, it was one of the highlights of the season. And the #@%$& yuppie who ultimately bought the beaver skull was yours truly. “Why?” Paula asked, incredulous. I said it reminded me of the summer camp I’d never been to.
CLAY-BIRD BRAIN
In the 1920s, a group of grouse hunters seeking to hone their skills invented a shotgunning game called “clock shooting.” After destroying every clock within fifty miles, they decided to try moving targets. They called the new version “skeet,” an Old Norse word meaning “close, but no horn of mead.” Modern skeet, enjoyed by literally dozens nationwide, is designed to ruin your shooting confidence. I know because I recently took a lesson. One of the pleasures of skeet is finding someone who shoots even worse than you do. At the thirteen-field range I visited, that someone was me. My goal had been to minimize the humiliation caused by my performance at the dove opener. But the crowd I drew here made the dove field seem like my own private island.
Standing with feet aligned on the point where the target is to be broken, eyes “soft” to pick it up faster, I call for the bird, which zings out and rises t
o fifteen feet, where it hovers briefly. I shoot at this moment and watch it fly on untouched, breaking silently as it hits ground. This—the going-away bird from the low house at Station 7—is the easiest shot, the one designed to make novices say, “By golly, I can do this!” I miss it three times in a row.
I miss because skeet—like sex and beer pong—is largely a mental game. In that it makes you mental. Schizoid, in my case. Part of me accepts my inability to hit a bird as logical. I often can’t hit the tollbooth basket with a quarter from a stationary vehicle. Meanwhile, another part of me is astonished, enraged, and wants to break into the low house and bludgeon every bird there to dust with the butt of my gun. Which is the one part I can use effectively.
Chill, I tell myself, each shot is a whole new beginning. “You hold the gun so tightly,” says Alonso Abugattas, my gentlemanly master instructor, who has shot skeet since his boyhood in Peru. “Think of holding a bird in your hand. Too tight, you break her bones. Too loose, she flies away. Softly, but with control.” I nod. And then, softly but with control, I miss. My eyes roll back into my skull, as if I am possessed by demons. “Let’s have a Coke,” says Alonso.
At the beginning of each round, each of your shooting errors takes a number and awaits its turn. Remember to swing the gun through the shot and you will forget to lead the target. Get the hang of shooting slightly below falling birds and you will lift your cheek off the stock. Take a break to use the men’s room and, once in position, you’ll remember to call “Pull” but forget to unzip your fly.
Refreshed by nerve-steadying caffeine, I’m ready for more agony. Out of nowhere, I crush one. I stand amazed, entranced by the tiny orange cloud I have wrought. “Good for you!” shouts Alonso. “Quick, another one, without thinking.” But between his injunction and the next shot, there is just enough time to ponder not thinking. Which makes me miss.
I want to burst into flame, scream bad words, or become an anesthesiologist. My arms feel like cement. For this I blame T. Edward Nickens. Back in 1993, needing a shotgun and not wanting more money tied up in my gun safe than in my house, I sought his advice and bought an economical and perfectly good but heavy gun. In my hands it has conserved more wildlife than the federal duck-stamp program.
Alonso, who showed up with three shotguns, puts one in my hands. I don’t know the make, but it’s a featherweight over/under that shoulders nicely. When you break it open, two smoking hulls jump right up into your face. Somehow I make the sky rain orange bird soot. “Bravo, Bill!” shouts Alonso. “Again.” I dust another one.
Finally, it is time to go. Alonso puts a finger to my chest—a gesture that only certain foreign-born men can do in a way that makes you feel befriended rather than confronted—and says, “You shot very well there, my friend. I’m serious.” I want to kiss this man in gratitude and take off running with his gun. Instead, I ask what it costs. “About five thousand dollars,” he says, shrugging apologetically. “But I am obsessed.”
I am awake all night, likewise obsessed. The next day, I discover that nearly 2 percent of the 5.6 million Avon sales reps worldwide are men. So if you answer the door and see a bald guy hawking Avon Anew Ultimate Age Repair Day Cream, you should definitely buy some. It is reputed to give you younger-looking skin in just minutes. And I can absolutely guarantee that it will improve my shooting.
HOW TO BE THE MAN
As I watch the endurance leg, the final event of Field & Stream’s four-day Total Outdoorsman Challenge, outside Branson, Missouri, I come to the following conclusion: God did not intend for middle-aged men to do anything at high speed. This realization occurs while I’m watching John Sappington, a forty-six-year-old fishing guide and one of sixteen finalists. In this part of the contest, you start flat on your back in a laydown blind. Jump up, fire two blanks, and retrieve your “birds.” Run to a tree and attach a climbing stand. Run some more and drag an eighty-pound sled twenty yards. Run some more and shoot two arrows at 3-D targets with a wobbly bow while sucking air. Run again and start a matchless fire. This, incidentally, is the spot I’m watching from, along with John Davis, the fiend who designed the course—the ringmaster of this circus. Davis cups his hands and hollers, “C’mon, John! Almost home, buddy!”
Sappington has entered a parallel universe of suffering. He’s a big boy to start with (40-inch waist, XXL shirts, and size 13 boots), and forty-six is not one’s athletic prime. And now his face goes splotchy. His eyes take on the wild desperation of a man lost in the deep woods. But Sappington didn’t come this far to surrender. Somebody will ride out of here $25,000 richer. Somebody will claim the aura that comes from being the Man: the guy with the chops, the poise, and the grit to overcome.
It may be this desire to win that has Sappington unconsciously windmilling his arms as he runs, as if he might gain a step by pulling himself through the humid air. He lumbers toward the last station, sit-on-top kayaks at the edge of a stream. The goal here is to don a life vest, launch, and paddle twenty yards upstream. “Do it, John!” calls Davis. The finalists already regard Davis, who works for Blue 3 Productions, the firm coordinating the contest, as the Man, the one noncompetitor they respect. He’s the guy they seek out when they have a problem with their gear, another competitor, or the scoring. When a hotheaded contestant gets out of line (you don’t get here by being meek, after all), Davis backs him down. When that same guy blows an event he had counted on winning, Davis helps him find his confidence again. When the TV crew needs to set up a shot, they go to him.
Outwardly, he is a bearded, burly badass, an Arkansas hillbilly and flyfishing guide. Talk with him and you discover a hybrid redneck: a guy with woods smarts (his crew says he could hold his own with any competitor here) and plenty of gray matter. Among other tasks, he writes the blog about the contest, in which he has taken a couple of gratuitous but well-aimed pokes at me. He has a pretty wife, JaNan, and three young daughters (Elizabeth, Emme, and Ella Fu, the youngest, whom the couple traveled to China to adopt). He brags on how the girls are already outfishing their daddy.
He also has an aggressive form of lymphoma, a rare cancer in a forty-one-year-old. The doctors just found it two months ago. That he’s here at all is surprising. The chemo has left him with circles under his eyes, pallid skin, and hair in clumps on his pillow each morning. When you’re the son of a World War II marine, a countersniper in the Pacific, you grit it out. “Cancer’s a good way to get clarity about your life,” he tells me. Everybody working the event wears a green rubber lymphoma-awareness bracelet in John’s honor. We’re all aware of something else, too: The guy in the biggest contest here didn’t even sign up. The fight found him.
When the event is finished, the overall winner is the smallest competitor. He’s a rookie: Tom Boatwright, thirty-nine, of Perdido, Alabama (29-inch waist, medium shirts, size 7 boots). Davis had said of him: “He won’t be distracted, because he doesn’t care about anything in the world but hunting and fishing.” John Sappington places third.
That night, at a dinner honoring the contestants, those who ran the event are asked to stand and be recognized. At Davis’s name, the room hits its feet. The hillbilly smiles and waves, enduring this uncomfortably. What he cannot know is that our applause is as much for ourselves as it is for him. We beat our hands, secretly hoping that in his shoes we’d muster half his courage, grit, and grace.
IV
I WOULDN’T TRY THAT IF I WERE ME,
2010–2014
THE LAST MOUNTAIN MAN
The good news, I tell myself after verifying no broken bones in the fall, is this will make a really good story if you survive. I’m trying to stay calm, trying to push down the bulge of dread rising in my stomach. I’m sitting in the snow, having bailed off a snow machine just after it lost traction and just before it left the trail, coming to rest on its side in a drift a good five feet below grade. It’s my second fall in ten minutes, which confirms my suspicion that I missed a turn. Marty wou
ld never have put me on anything this steep and with this much sidehill.
It’s 30 below zero, and I’m lost in the bush of eastern Alaska—a place that is pretty much all bush all the time. I’ve come here to spend some time with Marty Meierotto, a trapper who runs lines on about nine hundred square miles of public land, the location of which he would prefer I not identify too specifically. Not divulging our location isn’t a problem because all I really know is that it took us two hours to fly here from Fairbanks in a Super Cub, that we’re somewhere north of the Yukon River and south of the Porcupine River, and that the nearest other human is a trapper running lines some forty miles distant. Actually, Marty doesn’t know if he’s around. The last time he saw him was eight years ago.
I pick myself up slowly and brush off the snow. Stepping off the trail, I posthole up to my knees and hike down to the machine in its drift. After the first fall, I used a stick to dig the machine out, shoved some spruce boughs under its track, and finally got it back on the trail again. I’ve stuck it good this time. Marty told me he likes these old single-cylinder Ski-Doo Tundra IIs because they are the only snow machines small enough to fit disassembled in the back of his plane. Even so, I bet one weighs four hundred pounds. I tug on the handlebars. It doesn’t move.
You’re not going anywhere for a while. I simultaneously accept this fact, and deny it. My mind, like my body, feels sluggish and foreign, as if it’s not mine at all but on loan from somebody else. I know this is a bad situation, but the sharp edge that the knowledge should carry simply isn’t there. This fact worries me, and yet I feel curiously detached from it. I decide to make a list of what I know:
