Song of Suzies

by Dave Balcom

  16

  Cindy’s story went off in the community like a powder keg; it caused a great deal of heat and smoke, but no real damage.

  But then the letters stopped, and the story went back into hibernation.

  I spent Christmas in Maryland at Sandy’s folks, Bill and Nancy Price, just outside of Cambridge. The Price family had been farming in Dorchester County for three generations. Bill was semi-retired, which meant at that time he was working only six twelve-hour days a week. Hired help saw to the four hundred acres more or less that he had in seed products.

  “My grandfather grew corn, tobacco and beans and was broke most of the time; my father grew corn, alfalfa, and soybeans and was broke most of the time. When I took over, I made a promise to myself that I would someday grow nothing that people eat, and today, that’s the way it is. We grow seed for others to plant to grow things that people eat.”

  His farm was diversified into nursery space for ornamental trees and flower seeds and grass seeds and seed corn. His bent grass seed was coveted by golf course superintendents all up and down the Eastern sea board.

  “Oh, and I plant just enough corn to feed a never-ending skein of geese, deer and turkeys each year. People pay me more for the right to shoot my animals than they ever did for my row crops.”

  Visiting the Prices, it was easy to see how their only daughter turned out the way she did. They were loving, even doting at times, parents, but their calm and steadfast outlook on life was readily readable in every corner of their home and their farm.

  “Do you ever do anything in your garage?” I asked him once. It was the cleanest and neatest work space I’d ever seen.

  “Of course I do. If you farm, you do a lot of things by yourself. You become handy out of necessity,” he answered looking around his shop. “But I also put things back after using them... I allocate so much time for every job, and that time includes the time it takes to clean and neaten up the work area.

  “I just can’t tolerate mess.”

  I wondered what he’d say if he could see my office... my basement? My garage? I decided he wouldn’t be invited to see our new home until I had a chance to clean and neaten.

  The week went by too fast, and Sandy was grousing about being separated. “I can’t stand the idea that this jerk, whoever he is, has divided our family. Sara misses her daddy, and I miss my lover.”

  We were walking one of the many trails I had discovered during my morning exercises. I could feel a certain spring coming back into my step, and my daily workout was now averaging a more respectable fourteen-minute mile, including the time I spent on my forms.

  “I feel much more comfortable knowing you’re down here. I can’t watch over you in Lake City, and this guy has so much as said he was going to go after Sara. She needs to be here and so do you.”

  “We need to be together. I heard they’re looking for an editor in Easton...”

  “Really? You want to move already?”

  “I want to be together, safely.”

  “Easton is a weekly newspaper; I don’t think I’d be happy doing that.”

  “You’d be happy if we were safe, and you could hunt all these waterfowl...”

  “I think we’ll be happy in Lake City once this business is behind us.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I couldn’t hazard a guess.”

  We walked in silence after that, each with our own thoughts. That was okay with me. I knew this was as close as we had been to an argument since our first year of marriage, but I also knew that she was no coward. She wasn’t raised to run from a problem. I decided to let it rest, and I guess she did too.

  “You’re not eating right, are you?”

  I was startled by the sudden topic change. “I eat breakfast at home; I pack a lunch and I eat dinner at home. I’m not missing meals. Why do you think I am?”

  “I can feel your ribs, and you look gaunt in your face and neck, like you did when I met you.”

  I was pleased. “That’s great!”

  “What’s great?”

  “I’ve been walking and working on my t’ai chi again. I haven’t missed a day in more than a month, and it’s working. I’m getting into some kind of shape.”

  “If it works that well you really need to teach me that stuff.”

  I thought about it. Sandy wasn’t much for athletics or exercise. “You’ll have to sweat to do it, you know.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the thought, and then said with some regret, “But if it works, it would be worth it.”

  “Good, we’ll start you tomorrow morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Five.”

  “In the a.m.?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why not p.m.?

  “Wastes too much of the day. My way is better, believe me.”

  She had no response, and I had no expectation that I’d have company the next morning or any morning after that.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and she stopped. I turned her and kissed her gently on the lips. She put her hands on the back of my neck and increased the intensity of the kiss. “I miss you a lot,” she whispered.

  “Stay on task.”

  “You’re impossible,” she broke away laughing. “I try to seduce you, and you make wisecracks.”

  “I’m seduced, I’m seduced. Now, where can we have some privacy?”

  “Come on, you clown,” and she grabbed my hand and headed toward her father’s barn.

  “I feel like a kid again, sneaking around.”

  “Sneaking, my hat. I told Mom not to let Daddy near the barn until we got back.”

  Bill Price had more than a neat workshop in that barn. A room just off the workshop featured a king-sized bed, color television and Bose Wave sound system. “Bordello?”

  She pushed me and I flopped onto the edge of the bed. “It is a guest room that Daddy rents to hunters in the season. There’s another with bunk beds next door.”

  “You gonna talk or hunt?”

  17

  “So, how’s the duck call working, Jim?”

  Wayne Crosby was the greeter at the Ducks Unlimited Sponsor Event at the Lake City Rod and Gun Club. The early spring event each year was planned to show appreciation for the fall banquet sponsors and to recruit new additional sponsors. I had recruited three new sponsors last fall, and today I was one of the hosts for a barbecue and some skeet shooting.

  “It’s coming. I’ve got Hans whining pretty consistently.”

  “Then it’s time to start making music with the ducks. I call it ‘singing with the suzies.’”

  “Really? When are you going to show me?”

  “Tomorrow, before church.”

  “You going to pick me up?”

  “Five a.m.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  As we were talking, the first of the sponsors arrived, and within ten minutes we had all of the guests lining up to start the skeet shoot. For me, skeet, unlike sporting clays which was becoming popular, or traditional trap shooting, was a much more social game.

  Skeet uses two trap houses; one tall house and a second shorter building which throw their clay targets at crossing angles. The “range” consists of seven shooting stations in a semicircle connecting the two trap houses and an eighth station midway between the two. Unlike trap where the shooter never knows where the clay pigeon will be heading, the skeet shooter knows, but as the shooter moves, the angles change and in addition to single pigeons from each house, at stations one, two, six and seven, he gets the additional challenge of shooting doubles.

  Each shooter has twenty-five rounds and gets a “mulligan” at the first missed target. If he completes all eight stations without a miss, he gets to call a “bonus” or “straight bird” from the station of his choice.

  But the social nature of the game is that while each shooter takes his turn at each station, there’s an audience standing by to critique or kibitz.

  “Jim, did you bring a gu
n today?” Bart Ward asked as I was registering shooters.

  “I did, but I’m not sure if I’m going to shoot. I’d rather make sure that our sponsors have a good time.”

  “Part of their fun is watching guys like you miss.”

  “See? That’s why I don’t think I should chance ruining their fun.”

  “Oh, cocky some? This I gotta see.”

  I laughed with him, and turned back to my chore. “We’ll see.”

  At the end of the shooting, we had the guns put away and tapped an ice-cold keg of beer while a pig finished roasting in a pit that Andy Tittle and his sons had dug years before, and opened up for this kind of event at every opportunity.

  “There’s nothing like this pork,” Tittle crowed as he directed the Boy Scouts who were on hand to set up, serve and clean up the meal. “You’ll be a convert by the end of the day, Mr. Stanton.”

  And I was.

  Wayne drove up to my door just minutes before 5 the next morning. I poked my head out of the kitchen door and asked, “Want some coffee? A cookie?”

  “Got coffee. Can’t eat cookies before a duck hunt.”

  I grabbed my thermos, showed Hans into his pen, and got into Wayne’s pickup without further conversation. Once we were on the road, I asked, “Why no cookies?”

  “I get tired of replacing the reeds in my call.”

  “They break?”

  “They will if you’ve got crumbs or nuts anywhere near your windpipe. If you’re calling right, those little missiles will hit the reeds at high speed and the reeds break.

  “I always have two Olts, and I always have replacement reeds, all tuned, and ready to go. I carry them in an old Band Aid container.” He fished the container out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me.

  “I never thought about replacing the reeds. Is it hard?”

  “I’ll show you later. You need to know how to tune your call a bit, and I’ll show you that process too. I learned about tuning the reeds after mine broke. I used a nail clipper, and a nail file, and ended up with such a sweet sound that I now trim brand new reeds before I put them into the call.”

  We drove south until we got to the bridge over the inlet to the lake. Just across the bridge was a trail that entered what was known as the Clay County Conservation Committee Refuge.

  We drove down the small track until we got to the eagle hacking tower. Wayne parked the truck, and we got out. “There’s a path right here,” he said from the dark. I brought a flashlight, but I can’t seem to... oh, here it is.”

  The light picked up a break in the cattails that surrounded the tower, and he led the way down the trail until we came to the bank of the inlet.

  “There, look!” He pointed south, and I could see the ducks winging over the black marsh.

  “Listen.” I could hear the ducks then, making almost a clucking noise. “That’s called a ‘feeding chuckle.’ I don’t use that with ducks. They rarely make that noise while on the water. I’ve heard it from birds on the water after dark, but never in the daytime.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “Yeah, and it’s easy to do once you learn how, but if a guy hunting near me chuckles his ducks, I’ll steal ’em.”

  “Really?”

  Wayne put his call to his lips as he pointed to the west and up. I looked and saw a small flock swinging around the marsh. At the sound of his three-note series, the ducks all stopped flapping their wings. Instead, they “locked up,” and started gliding towards us.

  “You try now,” he said.

  I watched the birds coming at us, and then, hearing no more calling, they veered away. As they turned, I gave my rendition of Wayne’s three-note call, and followed it up with a quicker version.

  The ducks turned and came back toward us. “Promising,” Wayne said softly. “Hit ’em again. Make it a five-note scold coming down the scale. Think ‘get-your-ass-down-here.’”

  I hit the five notes as he directed, and was rewarded by the sound of a hen in the flock answering me. “Whoopee!” Wayne gushed under his breath. “That’s the epitome of duck calling right there. You know you got ’em when the suzies start calling back at you.”

  I had heard the hen mallards called “suzies” but I didn’t know the origin of the phrase.

  “I don’t know, either,” Wayne admitted. “I just know that duck hunters who call ’em suzies don’t shoot ’em except by accident.”

  “Accident?”

  “Say you were shooting a drake out of a flock, and the hen right behind him takes one in the brain? What’re you gonna do, leave it to rot or take it home and eat it?”

  “I would never let a duck rot in the marsh if I could retrieve it. I find even shooting over decoys they can sometimes carry more shot than you think they could.”

  “That’s why every hunter who thinks he’s a sportsman wouldn’t hunt without a trained retriever. Does that Hans retrieve?”

  “He does. He likes the water, too. But he can’t handle late season water. Once the water starts freezing around the cattails, he’s done.”

  “Got your eye on a Lab?”

  “I’m pretty much a one-dog guy. I don’t have enough time to spend with one, much less two. When Hans retires, I might become a Lab guy. But, then again, I’ll always have a soft spot for pointers.”

  I saw a pair of ducks out over the marsh, and put my call to my lips and sent out a three-note hail call. They responded, I followed it up, and they locked their wings.

  Wayne then chimed in with a series of softer calls, and the pair came in even closer. I could see the drake turning its head, looking for the mouthy hens he was hearing. As they glided past us, I heard Wayne murmur, “Bang, another drake bites the dust...”

  We pulled the plug on our outing at about eight, and I was in church by ten. I was glowing with the pleasure from calling ducks and having them respond.

  “I’m going to do more of that,” I promised myself.

  And I did. Either on the way to work or on the way home in the evening, I became a regular visitor to the hacking station in the county refuge.

  The spring evolved into summer. We had no more word from the letter writer, and Sandy and Sara came home with me after the Memorial Day weekend in Maryland.

  “It’s so good to be home,” Sandy cooed as she walked around the house. “Are you sure you lived here?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s so clean. I’ll bet you cleaned like a madman last week before you came down to get us.”

  “No bets.”

  Sara was tickled to be back with Hans.

  “She’s so fond of that dog,” Sandy said. “I didn’t realize how much she missed him until right now. I hope we can be safe here.”

  “I have no doubt that we are, but we’re going to be very careful. There’ll be no time when you or Sara will be alone outside this house, especially at night.”

  “And you? You continue to take your early morning walks?”

  “Always hoping that creep would make a play for me...”

  “That’s encouraging...”

  “Let’s not let that guy ruin our lives, but let’s just be on guard. We can’t afford to take any chances.”

  18

  Randy came to my office after deadline on August first, and he had Cindy and Fritz in tow.

  “Got a minute, Jim?” He asked at the open door. I looked up from the Sunday column I was trying to write, and shrugged, “Of course.”

  They filed in and took seats at my table. I held the Apple key and typed an S to save my work, then joined them with a questioning look on my face.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “Opportunity is more like it,” Randy said. “We’re thinking that we should do something special on the anniversary of Suzanne’s disappearance.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Randy chuckled. “That’s about as far as we got, the idea. We just don’t know what to do, but we think we should do something.”

  “A life-goes-on story?”


  Cindy spoke up, “Something like that might work. I could interview her family, friends, the police, even college officials.”

  “You know the college has tried its damnedest to distance itself from Suzanne,” I noted.

  She nodded. “And that’s bull crap. I’ve approached Mrs. Freemont over and over when I’ve seen her, and she has just one answer, ‘We don’t consider this story to be related to the college. We can’t even be sure she was at the college that night.”’

  “And, in her defense, that’s all true. But I wonder if there’ve been any changes or awareness levels this past year.”

  Fritz smiled, “I know there are a lot more lights on the walking paths on campus. My brother-in-law’s company got the contract. I think he said they installed over a hundred lights there last spring.”

  I looked at Cindy, “Is that the school raising safety awareness? If so, that would be something that would show a caring and concerned administration. It’s at least a fair question.”

  She was scribbling notes.

  “What about the police?” Randy said. “Anything we can do there?”

  “We know that there’s a growing, national awareness of missing youngsters,” Randy said. “It’s being called one of the shames of modern life in this country. We need to tie this in to our local story.”

  “I like this idea,” I said. “I think I’ll talk to Cecily to see if we can sell a sponsorship package to go with this, something to give our business community an opportunity to share in the community memorial.

  “Get me a rough outline by tomorrow end of day, and I’ll see what we can package up with ads. Okay?”

  They nodded, and started getting up, “I’ve got great file photos to go with this...” Fritz stopped and I could see the signs of epiphany flashing across his face, so I waited him out.

  “What if we got behind a community event marking that anniversary, you know, like the yellow ribbons on trees for soldiers or the pink ribbons that mark the Search for the Cure?”

  Cindy joined in, “Sure. We could sponsor a candlelight vigil or an ecumenical service at the stadium... I can see that giving some relief for the whole community.”