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DUCK HUNT For Marylois Dunn There were three hunters and three
dogs. The hunters had shiny shotguns, warm clothes and plenty of ammo. The dogs
were each covered in big blue spots and were sleek and glossy and ready to run.
No duck was safe. The hunters were Clyde Barrow,
James Clover, and little Freddie Clover, who was only fifteen and very excited
to be asked along. However, Freddie did not really want to see a duck, let
alone shoot one. He had never killed anything but a sparrow with his BB gun and
that had made him sick. But he was nine then. Now he was ready to be a man. His
father told him so. With this hunt he felt he had
become part of a secret organization. One that smelled of tobacco smoke and
whiskey breath; sounded of swear words, talk about how good certain women were,
the range and velocity of rifles and shotguns, the edges of hunting knives, the
best caps and earflaps for winter hunting. In Mud Creek, the hunt made the
man. Since Freddie was nine he had
watched with more than casual interest how when a boy turned fifteen in Mud
Creek, he would be invited to The Hunting Club for a talk with the men. Next
step was a hunt, and when the boy returned he was a boy no longer. He talked
deep, walked sure, had whiskers bristling on his chin and could take up, with
the assurance of not being laughed at, cussing, smoking and watching women's
butts as a matter of course. Freddie wanted to be a man too. He
had pimples, no pubic hair to speak of (he always showered quickly at school to
escape derisive remarks about the size of his equipment and the thickness of
his foliage), scrawny legs and little, gray, watery eyes that looked like ugly
planets spinning in white space. And truth was, Freddie preferred a
book to a gun. But came the day when Freddie turned
fifteen and his father came home from the Club, smoke and whiskey smell
clinging to him like a hungry tick, his face slightly dark with beard and
tired-looking from all-night poker. He came into Freddie's room,
marched over to the bed where Freddie was reading Thor, clutched the comic
from his son's hands, sent it fluttering across the room with a rainbow of
comic panels. "Nose out of the book,"
his father said. "Time to join the Club." Freddie went to the Club, heard the
men talk ducks, guns, the way the smoke and blood smelled on cool morning
breezes. They told him the kill was the measure of a man. They showed him heads
on the wall. They told him to go
home with his father and come back tomorrow bright and early, ready for his
first hunt. His father took Freddie downtown
and bought a flannel shirt (black and red), a thick jacket (fleece lined), a
cap (with ear flaps) and boots (waterproof). He took Freddie home and took a
shotgun down from the rack, gave him a box of ammo, walked him out back to the firing
range and made him practice while he told his son about hunts and the war and
about how men and ducks died much the same. Next morning before the sun was up,
Freddie and his father had breakfast. Freddie's mother did not eat with them.
Freddie did not ask why. They met Clyde over at the Club and rode in his jeep
down dirt roads, clay roads and trails, through brush and briars until they
came to a mass of reeds and cattails
that grew thick and tall as Japanese bamboo. They got out and walked. As they walked,
pushing aside the reeds and cattails, the ground beneath their feet turned
marshy. The dogs ran ahead. When the sun was two hours up, they
came to a bit of a clearing in the reeds, and beyond them Freddie could see the
break-your-heart blue of a shiny lake. Above the lake, coasting down, he saw a
duck. He watched it sail out of sight. "Well, boy?" Freddie's
father said. "It's beautiful," Freddie
said. "Beautiful, hell, are you
ready?" "Yes, sir." On they walked, the dogs way ahead now, and finally they stood within ten feet
of the lake. Freddie was about to squat down into hiding as he had heard of
others doing, when a flock of ducks burst up from a mass of reeds in the lake
and Freddie, fighting off the sinking feeling in his stomach, tracked them with
the barrel of the shotgun, knowing what he must do to be a man. His father's hand clamped over the
barrel and pushed it down. "Not yet," he said. "Huh?" said Freddie. "It's not the ducks that do
it," Clyde said. Freddie watched as Clyde and his
father turned their heads to the right, to where the dogs were pointing—noses
forward, paws upraised—to a thatch of underbrush. Clyde and his father made
quick commands to the dogs to stay, then they led Freddie into the brush, through
a twisting maze of briars and out into a clearing where all the members of The
Hunting Club were waiting. In the center of the clearing was a
gigantic duck decoy. It looked ancient and there were symbols carved all over
it. Freddie could not tell if it were made of clay, iron or wood. The back of
it was scooped out, gravy-bowl-like, and there was a pole in the center of the
indention; tied to the pole was a
skinny man. His head had been caked over with red mud and there were duck
feathers sticking in it, making it look like some kind of funny cap. There was
a ridiculous, wooden duckbill held to his head by thick elastic straps. Stuck
to his butt was a duster of duck
feathers. There was a sign around his neck that read DUCK. The man's eyes were wide with fright
and he was trying to say or scream something, but the bill had been fastened in
such a way he couldn't make any more than a mumble. Freddie felt his father's hand on
his shoulder. "Do it," he said. "He ain't
nobody to anybody we know. Be a man." "Do it! Do it! Do it!"
came the cry from The Hunting Club. Freddie felt the cold air turn into
a hard ball in his throat. His scrawny legs shook. He looked at his father and
The Hunting Club. They all looked tough, hard and masculine. "Want to be a titty baby all
your life?" his father said. That put steel in Freddie's bones. He cleared
his eyes with the back of his sleeve and steadied the barrel on the derelict's
duck's head. "Do it!" came the cry.
"Do it! Do it! Do it!" At that instant he pulled the
trigger. A cheer went up from The Hunting Club, and out of the clear, cold sky,
a dark blue norther blew in and with it came a flock of ducks. The ducks lit on
the great idol and on the derelict. Some of them dipped their bills in the
derelict's wetness. When the decoy and the derelict
were covered in ducks, all The Hunting Club lifted their guns and began to
fire. The air became full of smoke,
pellets, blood and floating feathers When the gunfire died down and the
ducks died out, The Hunting Club went forward and bent over the decoy, did what
they had to do. Their smiles were
red when they lifted their heads. They wiped their mouths gruffly on the backs
of their sleeves and gathered ducks into hunting bags until they bulged. There
were still many carcasses lying about. "Good shooting, son,"
Fred's father said and clapped him manfully on the back. "Yeah," said Fred,
scratching his crotch, "got that sonofabitch right between the eyes,
pretty as a picture." They all laughed. The sky went lighter, and the blue
norther that was rustling the reeds and whipping feathers about blew up and out
and away in an instant. As the men walked away from there, talking deep,
walking sure, whiskers bristling on all their chins, they promised that tonight
they would get Fred a woman. Come on back next Thursday, March 4,
for another totally free short story by Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale!
"Duck Hunt" was originally published in the Tor Books anthology After Midnight. It later appeared in By Bizarre Hands, a collection published by Avon Books, and Bumper Crop, a collection published by Golden Gryphon Press. "Duck Hunt" © 1986 Joe R. Lansdale. |
