Song of Suzies

by Dave Balcom

  “It won’t float that boat. Looks like a big gym in size, but only about a foot deep.”

  “Sounds perfect for a walk-in; carry a dozen or two dekes, and your gun and you’re hunting. Any time I can hunt in hip boots, I’m a happy man.”

  He finished stapling the last of the grass to his blind, and handed the staple gun to his boy. “You wanna clean this mess up?”

  “Sure.”

  I walked over to the boat, and saw that the frame had vertical supports that extended four inches below the bottom cross member. I saw similar-sized brackets welded into the gunnels of the boat.

  “They travel laying flat in the bottom, and then we just put them in place when we’re ready to hunt.

  “I’ve been building boat blinds for thirty years, and I’ve killed all kinds of birds out of them, but I’ve never quite found the perfect combination. I just keep trying.”

  I thought this rig looked workable, and said so. “Workable? Probably; perfect, not quite.” Then he laughed with good spirit; “It’s the quest for perfection that makes the off-season bearable,” and he clapped me on the shoulder as we walked out into the sun.

  “So, where’s that duck call?”

  I pulled it out of my pocket, and put its lanyard over my head.

  “Ahh, your buddy’s dad had excellent taste,” he said as he fingered the walnut barrel of the call. “A D-R dash one, one, five – the finest mallard call P. S. Olt ever crafted. Let me hear it.”

  I felt nervous, but I placed the call to my lip as I had been taught, as if I were taking a sip out of the barrel, took a deep breath and exhaled into the instrument. The stream of sounds that emerged sounded like a duck to me, and I repeated it with another three-call string.

  “Not bad,” he said encouragingly.

  “Really?”

  Chris piped up, “Really. It’s not bad; it’s awful.” He laughed.

  “That’s harsh, Chris,” his dad teased. “Jim’s got some fundamental things he’s doing right, but he needs some practical work.” He held out his hand. I took the call from my neck and handed it to him.

  As he held it in his hands, I was shocked to see how massive his mitts were. They seemed to swallow the call. I’m six-feet, five-inches tall, and I’ve been holding a basketball in one hand since I was thirteen. He was just over six feet tall, and his hands looked huge compared to mine.

  He must have noticed my look. “Yup, they’re really mine. And, you know the old saying about the relationship between the size of his feet to other members?”

  I started to laugh.

  “Well, it’s really the hands, not the feet.” With that he placed the call to his mouth and appeared to cough into the call. The sound was huge! It sounded like a duck, but it was a duck on steroids.

  He looked admiringly at the call. “Did you catch the fact that each and every note is separate from the others? Each is just one note, there’s no crescendo or tailing off, it’s ‘quack’ in one syllable.

  “This is a hail or greeting call. If you go out tonight where there’s a bunch of ducks on the water, listen and you’ll hear this call.” He belted out three simple notes, all evenly paced, and each self-contained.

  He did it again and again. Christopher took over the narration, “Now they’ve seen the decoys. They’ve turned and are coming at us...” His dad went silent. “Now they’ve flown over our heads and are flying crosswind away from us...” Wayne opened up with the same three notes, but they were closer together. “Now they’ve turned to the left and are on the down-wind leg... we’ll let them keep going to see if they’re going to turn on their own, or...” His dad opened up again, this time the three notes took on a scolding tone, and he repeated it twice more before Chris resumed his narration, “That did it, they turned, locked up and are coming right into the decoys. They’ve dropped their feet and they’re starting to back-pedal a bit to slow down...”

  “Take ‘em!” Wayne hissed, and both of them started laughing. “If it was only that easy,” he added.

  “Yeah, maybe on opening day they come that quickly, usually they circle and circle and circle, giving a guy every chance to mess up and spook them,” Chris said.

  Wayne blew into the barrel of the call, and spittle sprayed out of the mouthpiece. “Not the most hygienic, I suppose, but I promise I don’t have anything you can catch off your call.” He turned it in his hands again. “This is a great call. Doesn’t need tuning or anything, you just need to practice with it.” He handed it back to me, and I put the lanyard over my head.

  “How do you recommend I practice?”

  “You own a dog, don’t you?” I nodded. “Take that dog down in the basement and start calling as if you had ducks workin’. Keep trying to get separate, one-syllable, loud, raspy notes like I get. You’ll know you’re gettin’ it when that dog starts whinin’.”

  “Really?”

  “I know, it sounds weird, but you know dogs can hear sounds we can’t hear, and I think ducks respond to those sounds that we can’t hear.”

  “I’ll have my own basement in a week, and I’ll give it a try.”

  “After you’ve got that dog whinin’, you just need to get in front of ducks. Listen to those hens. You’ll hear different messages, just like the ones I was sending. You can get those suzie mallards callin’ right back to you and that’s a sure sign of success. But, if you hear one sudden ‘quack’ out of a hen, it’s all over. That’s their danger signal, and if you’re callin’ and you get that response from a mallard, you know you’re busted.”

  I wondered out loud, “Where is there a good place to call with the ducks?”

  He smiled. “You know that marsh at the south end of this lake? It’s a refuge, owned by the county. You can drive right down to a bald eagle hacking tower. If you go there at first light or last light, you’ll have lots of ducks to play with.”

  “Thank you, Wayne.”

  “You’re welcome. Now let’s go find those women and see if we have any beer in the fridge.”

  11

  We had moved into our new house, and Sandy was in total “nesting” mode when the duck season opened on a Saturday.

  I had been practicing with my call every night while Hans the Vizsla patiently ignored my every effort.

  On the first Saturday of duck season, I rose in the dark and drove the hour to Jennings’ farm, arriving at four-thirty. I made my way to the pond by flashlight. There was no wind, so I decided to see if any wind picked up before choosing my hunting and decoy location.

  I had a bag with nine plastic decoys. Each decoy had a hollow keel running the length of the bottom. This keel would fill with water when the decoy was floating, providing ballast while allowing the deke to swing on the tiniest of breezes.

  Legal shooting time started thirty minutes before sunrise, and the official sunrise in mid-October was about six-thirty. The handbook detailing the waterfowl rules included a chart that allowed hunters to calculate the opening time, but my mentors in this sport had simplified it: “Don’t shoot until you can tell the boys from the girls.”

  A gentle breeze rippled the pond as my watch indicated that it was minutes from legal shooting. I waded out into the pond, dropped a decoy and waited until it swung on its anchor, showing me where the wind was from.

  I set the rest of the decoys in a random fashion that I thought looked relaxed and safe to other ducks. Then I found a cozy hiding spot for Hans and me with the breeze at our backs.

  The sun was just coloring the horizon when the first flock of six mallards circled the pond above the trees. I waited. I had my hand on the call, but I didn’t want to use it if they’d come in on their own.

  They circled three times, lowering each time, and then they went behind us, and I saw them start to turn, go downwind, turn again, and begin their descent into the decoys.

  Just as they were about to land, I stood, picked out one green-headed target and shot. The bird folded and hit the water with a splash. I turned my attention to another drak
e that was desperately trying to reverse its momentum, and it too splashed into the water.

  The next bird I turned to was a hen, and while I was looking for another target, they were all gone.

  “Hans!” I said sharply, and the pointer launched himself into the pond, running as much as swimming. He picked up the first bird in his mouth and started to go to the second bird. “Hans! Come!”

  He turned immediately and bounced back to me. “Good boy,” I said as I took the duck from his mouth. “Heel.”

  He turned and sat, looking out at the pond. “Mark... Hans!”

  At the sound of his name, he bounced back into the water and surged to the second fallen duck, picked it up and started back to me. When he got to shore, he started to drop the duck so he could shake. “Hans, hold!”

  He came all the way to me, dripping water off his ears and nose and delivered the bird with style that made me glow with pride. “Thank you,” I said as I took the bird. He shook and showered me. I couldn’t have cared less.

  Two more small flocks came to the pond that morning, and by nine, I was packed and walking out to the car when a Conservation Officer greeted me. “Morning.”

  “Hi.”

  “You do any good here?”

  “I did; five birds, all drakes.” I showed him the birds which were in my decoy bag for the walk back to the car.

  “May I see your license and stamps?”

  I showed him my hunting license with the New York and Federal Duck Stamp attached and signed as the law requires.

  He looked at my pump shotgun, and reached out for it. “Plugged?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said as I fished three shells from my pocket and handed them to him.

  “Shootin’ steel, I see.”

  “Yes, sir. The research on lead poisoning in ducks is too overwhelming to ignore.”

  He shoved two shells into the magazine of my Remington eight-seventy, and the third wouldn’t fit. “Perfect.

  “I’ve got only one more question. Do you know who owns this property?”

  “State Senator Dan Jennings.”

  His eyebrow arched. “You have permission to hunt here?”

  “I do. In fact, I have permission to hunt on several of his farms down by Lake City for geese and ducks, but I thought it would be fun to try this spot.”

  He looked at the birds again, “You figured right, Mr. Stanton. Understand that when I check with Dan, if you’re not telling the truth, I’ll be comin’ down there to see you.”

  “I’m not hard to find. I’m the new managing editor at the Sentinel-Standard...” I looked at his name tag on his uniform ... “Officer Whitten. Stop in anytime I’m off deadline. I’d like to get to know you.”

  He extended his hand. “Sam Whitten. Dan told me the new editor at the paper was an outdoorsman, and it’s about time, but he didn’t tell me he’d given you permission to hunt his farm up here.”

  “We have an agreement, Sam. When I’m in the newspaper and he’s on the stump, he gets the same treatment as anyone else; when we’re fishing or hunting, we never talk business, never.”

  The C.O. nodded and laughed. “That sounds like him. He can compartmentalize anything.”

  “It’s a trait I’m trying my damnedest to cultivate.”

  We walked to the road together. “How does this opener compare to other openers you’ve worked?” I asked.

  “Pretty quiet. I checked about thirty hunters on the state marsh this morning, and found one guy with three hens... he thought one of them was a gadwall, he said. But there haven’t been any accidents or drownings, and that’s the best news.”

  I had everything in my station wagon, and Hans was in his carrier. “Well, you be safe, and I look forward to seeing you again.”

  At home, when I had the birds photographed and cleaned, I put all my gear away, taking time to wipe down my shotgun. Then I took a shower. When I came downstairs, I found Sandy and Sara at the kitchen table. “Want some lunch?” Sandy asked.

  I went to the refrigerator and found a sandwich on a plate. “There’s soup on the stove, it should be hot,” she said. “What are you going to do with the rest of your day?”

  I smiled a contented smile, “Sleep to college football in my new den.”

  “Trish Ward called this morning, and invited us to a “Duck Day” party at their house tonight. Actually, it’s a four-thirty to seven affair as all the guys will be looking for an early bedtime.”

  “What do we bring?”

  “A duck if we have any. The idea is to ‘grill the kill.’”

  “Sounds like fun. I breasted out two young drakes and saved their legs and thighs; the other three were easy to pick, so they’re whole-body birds that will roast perfectly. We can pick up a couple bottles of cabernet sauvignon...”

  “We can baste them with Italian dressing and grill them like steaks; that was my dad’s favorite recipe when I was growing up.”

  “I like that, too. What about potato salad?”

  “Trish said it was pot luck. I’ll make some up and get the wine while you’re watching football.”

  I watched the kickoff of the Notre Dame game. Sandy woke me up with three minutes left in the game. I felt like I’d been asleep for days...

  The mood at the Ward home was a celebration.

  “We had a tough morning,” Bart said by way of greeting, “but I hear you limited?”

  I smiled. “Where did you open?”

  His smile was rueful. “I own some property just north of the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a little shack and about twenty-five acres of marsh. We went up last night, got out early this morning, but we forgot to invite the birds. We shot two wood ducks and a gadwall. Trish shot a goose that wandered in mid-morning, and that was it. At least we didn’t miss many.”

  “Jim went five for five,” Sandy crowed.

  “Good shootin’,” Bart nodded.

  “When they’re trying to land in your decoys, the shooting percentages go up,” I said, careful to keep anyone from thinking I was unduly proud of my shooting ability.

  Wayne, Christopher and Roberta came up to the porch. “How’d that call work, Jim?” Wayne called out.

  “Never got it out of my pocket.”

  “Really? You makin’ any headway?”

  “Hans hasn’t made a whimper.”

  “Keep at it; your fundamentals are sound, and you know what you’re lookin’ for, just keep it coming from your chest. You’ll get there.”

  I kept at it, and the duck season worked its way through October and into November. Suzanne’s story was down to a weekly update, and falling further from the community’s consciousness.

  Max Hennessey gave Cindy an update on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, and on Tuesday the mail contained another message that stirred the community.

  “Jim, there’s another letter for you here. Looks familiar,” Randy called over the intercom.

  “Bring it here by the edges; I’ll call Hennessey.”

  The policeman and a crime scene technician on loan from the State Police were in my office five minutes later.

  The technician held the envelope up to the light, and then used a scalpel to slit the bottom of the envelope... “We’re seeing some amazing things in research on DNA,” she whispered. “I sent the last one to the FBI lab in Washington, and they thought the sample had been damaged in all the handling.”

  “We didn’t know what it was...” I started to defend our actions.

  “Sure, I know. This time, though, I thought if we got another shot, I’d let them get an untouched sample.”

  She used tweezers to extract the letter, and another pair to unfold it.

  When it was open and on my desk, she backed off to let me read it.

  “To the Editor,

  “Looks like our story is going stale, unlike our girl Suzanne.

  “The police are no closer to solving her case so I think you should give them some help. I’ve never had a slice of three-year-old, but the
idea is appealing to me. You think your friends at the cop shop could help you find her?”

  I stopped reading and reached for my phone. I dialed home and Sandy answered after several rings. “Is Sara with you?”

  “Of course, why? What’s the matter?”

  “Lock the doors and stay inside; I just got another letter from Suzanne’s maniac and in it is a threat against Sara.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “I’ll be home shortly,” I said as I hung up.

  “There’s more letter here, Jim,” Max said pointing.

  “What nobody’s talking about is the Y.

  “You’re all hung up on the Who, but the real reason is the Y.

  “You all want a clue, but if you get one what would you do?

  “You will never understand the Y unless you allow a Her to die

  “Will you let some Her die just to know the Y?”

  I shook my head in wonder and walked to Doug’s office. Harriet said he was in there, alone.

  I knocked, and entered. “Jim, you look shaken. What’s up?

  I told him about the letter. “I’m planning on taking Sandy and Sara to Maryland for the holiday. We were going to leave Wednesday night. I think I’ll leave this afternoon. I think Sara will be safer with her grandparents.”

  “Of course, just drive safely. Will we be doing another story on this letter?”

  The question stopped me. “I certainly thought so, why?”

  “Isn’t that what he wants? Publicity? An audience?”

  “Wait here,” I said. “I’m going to get the police in here.”

  I found Fritz leaving, having photographed the letter, and Hennessey and the tech packing to leave. “Can you come with me before you leave? Both of you?”

  They followed me to the publisher’s office without a word. When the door was closed, I asked, “What does your experience or research tell you about our writer? What would happen if we didn’t publish this letter or do a story about it?”

  Hennessey spoke first. “I have no experience in this kind of thing.” He turned to the technician. “Alice?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t do behavioral. I do finger prints and physical evidence. I have friends in the FBI, if you wanted to consult with them. I know how your chief feels about them...”