Not My God

The painting was of a doorway, an ornately carved wooden valance surrounding a wooden door, almost in black and white like a photograph. The door and casing were set into a plaster wall that had been depicted as flaking and rust-streaked from old nails driven into the stucco. In all, the effort was very nice.

The artist had painted his name proudly, legibly, in the lower corner as most artists do, but I could actually read it.

Centered over the door were Arabic words that were carved into the wood as well all the flourishes and hallmarks of Arabic, African...Muslim art. At first the sight of these words raised an eyebrow as I was with family waiting in the lobby of a huge Christian church to go in for my annual appearance on Easter. (Not true, I go all the time to ogle women.)

What I mean is, it didn't bother me of course, I can't read Arabic, but we were in NC, the "No you cannot hunt on Sunday" bible belt state!

Well a tad later, I was introduced to a man in black, and when I heard his name, I recognized it as the painter's name.

"You're the artist," I said.

"Yes. I saw the door doing Mission work in Africa, tiny island off the coast. blah blah blah..." Of course I asked him what the words over the door said.

"I am the Door," He said. Quickly he explained that he meant Jesus was the door. That he wanted people to see that on Easter (without a translation) because it was relevant, or so he thought.

I blabbed about the "Knock and the door will be opened," part of a verse I read long ago...he smiled.

He remarked how the image reminded him of Passover and the offering up of blood from a sheep to save the first born of the believers.

"I changed the door from what it originally said," he offered up.

"What did it say?" I asked, almost throwing out, "Kill whitey?" but biting my tongue.

"In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful," he said as I smiled on blithely.

"Why'd you change it?"

"Because it's from the Koran."

I blinked at him, and before I could ask, so? He said, "He's not my God."

Inside I shuddered, wanted to laugh and yell the obvious*, but I didn't...not the place or the time I reckoned.

And I thought, that's why I'm never at these places, these multi-million dollar expansive, invasive, and sometimes obscene monuments to religion. A friend once told me on facebook about a cathedral in Canada and how awesome it was (in the classical sense of the word--not how to describe a pizza--but awe inspiring) and i felt the same way about that, though I never even saw it in person.

I sat and thunk, they probably bulldozed a million trees or Indian burial grounds just to build it so people could convert the heathens of the land...or give them smallpox, whatever was easiest.

It's so cliche to say now, but my god doesn't need any of that...that gaudy display of wealth that some mistake for piety. For some, it was easy to put into words, and don't roll you eyes, but Robert Ruark, in The Horn of the Hunter, put down in a few words what he thought about his God:

"There was nobody around but me and a million animals and a thousand noises and the bright sun and the cool breeze and the shade from the big trees that made it cathedral--cool but a lot less musty and damp and full of century-old fear and trembling. I got to thinking that maybe this was what God had in mind when He invented religion, instead of all the don't and must-nots and sins and confessions of sins. I got to thinking about all the big churches I had been, including those in Rome, and how none of them could possibly compare with this place, with its brilliant birds and its soothing sounds of intense life all around and the feeling of ineffable peace and good will, so that not even man would be capable of behaving very badly in such a place. I thought that this was maybe the kind of place the Lord would come to sit in and get His strength back after a hard day's work trying to straighten out mankind. Certainly He wouldn't go inside a church. If the Lord was tired He would be uneasy in a church."


And if you saw, I talked about my god, in an awkward little note sometime back:


"Living things. Eternal combinations of a magic molecule sit high in my list.
Not just us, but all of “us.”
The same twisted ribbon makes a carrot, makes a cat, and makes a Mozart.
It, everlasting indeed, will make me a “ghost” and immortal.
I do worship life. I have seen how fragile, yet how unrelenting it is.


How? I can’t describe the collective feeling I have with our family.
To see a sunrise, and be there when colour comes back to the world.
To see life all around you, even in your home. And know, unseen, life is buzzing; marching, crawling, replicating…it blows my mind.

I hear it, I feel it. I am just here like the ant, the deer, the dog, the tree, the vine. I can’t explain. There is no ritual, only of being thrown in the pot with everything else. And everything dies. And everything eats. And there is no life without destroying life, and I am humbled by that, but not to tears."

So I think back on "Not my God," and wish maybe we could be happy not editing carvings in paintings, not bull-dozing trees and wiping off the green for the kingdom of heaven and not forsaking green soccer fields for a Jesus, or a Mohammad, or a Torah...

Something to Value

Always eager to explore why I hunt, I read, and sometimes (yes, even I) listen to others' explanations and thoughts on their reasons for the "stalk". Naturally, as I've been obsessively reading Robert Ruark's works because he has written about hunting so well and so often, I've taken a minute to chat about it too.


In the book, Horn of the Hunter, he remembers a safari he took in the '50's with Harry Selby. And in fact, Ruark quotes Selby's take on a part of hunting I have only dabbled in because, frankly, when you hunt Lions or Greater Kudus or Elephants or Grants Gazelles in North Carolina, the Asheboro Zoo calls the cops. Well, that part of hunting is called trophy hunting.


"'You are not shooting an elephant,' Selby told me. 'You are shooting the symbol of his tusks. You are not shooting to kill. You are shooting to make immortal the thing you shoot. To kill just about anything is a sin. To kill something that will be dead soon, but is so fine as to give you pleasure for years, is wonderful. Everything dies. You only hasten the process. When you shoot a lion you are actually shooting its mane, something that will make you proud. You are shooting for yourself, not just shooting to kill.'"


And I suppose, to him that makes sense. But, as we like to say around here, "You can't eat antlers," as the only big game animals in these parts are deer. And so I've mentioned that the idea of a "stuffed" deer head on the wall is to me, somewhat distasteful and disrespectful. As if to say, "Look how purty you were before I shot you in the face."


But to look back on the day you collected a deer with a large rack of antler, or your first deer ever, and have something real to hold in your hand rather than a dimming memory is indeed nice. Sometimes, like in the case of Jaime, my son, it's both.


So a part of me broke my promise to respect my game by eating it and never making a trophy out of body parts and did just that. But like every other broken promise I've ever made, I can rationalize it away with a single breath or just a few keystrokes.
The difference is that it was a day I want my son to remember with me...his first deer. I too don't ever want to forget the feeling we had when this big(ish) eight pointer stepped out of the brush.


One hundred yards away, and I could see he had a bad eye and eight, nice bony-white points from where we sat. Deer sauntered in front of us, and I told the boy to raise his gun and find him through the scope. Easily done as it wasn't even 4:30 that afternoon but Deer wouldn't turn broadside for Jaime. As He turned away from us and started to walk deeper into the brush, I reached for my rifle, knowing I could make a back of the neck shot and forgetting about the boy for a moment.


But before I could even get my rifle ready, Deer suddenly turned broadside and stopped walking! I said something that very few people get to say to a first time hunter: "Take Him!" I whispered! I watched slack-jawed and nervous as I heard the click of the safety followed by the report. Deer jumped straight up and ran in a circle as deer do when their forelegs are shattered and the blood is supposed to be gushing from their chests. Deer fell in high enough brush that we couldn't see him anymore...he was down!


And so I want to remember the smiles we had! I want to remember the high five and the whispered, "Yes! Yes!" we shared and the fist bump and the clap on the back and the "that makes up for the possum you missed three years ago!" Always we'll want to remember the good...but also the bad...


I'll never forget looking out with the binoculars and finding the rack of a fallen Deer amid the low scrub, and then seeing it move. Deer wasn't quite dead. I told Jaime that Deer was just bleeding out, that He'd be dead by sundown, that we'd wait for me to shoot a deer then get them both on a four wheeler, but the antlers kept moving, atop a head that kept trying to see, maybe even will a way out of the scrub He was in and push His way out of sight on His two good rear legs.


Of course, there was a tree, and a limb blocking a finishing shot from the stand we were in no matter how I tried to play it. There just wasn't a clean shot as He only exposed the top of his head. So, a half hour before sunset, I unloaded the chamber by stuffing the cartridge deep into the internal magazine, closed the bolt on an empty chamber, and climbed down from the stand to do what I had to do. At the bottom of the stand I heard a voice, "Don't leave me," but of course we had no choice.


I pulled the bolt back again and racked it forward, stripping the cartridge off the top of the internal magazine and re-loaded the chamber with it. It is a custom rifle on a Mauser 98 action which means it was designed and not often modified since 1898, and used by our German enemies in two world wars! Even though I have loaded and fired rifles hundreds of times, I have never flipped a bolt shut on a loaded rifle with as much purpose and apprehension as I did that moment, that day.


I stalked to where I had last seen Deer laying in the brush, and He was gone, but I could hear Him ahead of me trying to avoid me in His own struggle. I nearly ran to Him, and knowing He was only ten to fifteen yards away, still could not see Him through the tangle of briars ahead. Out of the boy's sight I nervously followed narrow Deer trails through the brush. I was in no danger of course, but my heart was pounding, my mouth was dry.


So was Jaime's. "Dad?" he called. I had to ignore him. I pushed ahead and suddenly I saw Deer's silhouette a mere seven yards in front of me. I had traveled three hundred yards through the thick brush and was loosing the light. I threw the rifle up and centered the cross hairs on the shadow of Deer! So good is his camouflage that He, a mere 21 feet ahead, was nothing but a dark blur in front of me. Incredible to see, or not see at such a range, and figuring I couldn't miss, I shot. And then He was gone out of sight.


I heard splashing and grunting, muffled grunting, and walked up to Him and finally saw Him, head down, antlers twisted and caught in tall grass, and did, again, what we had come to do, but close enough this time to hear the life leave Him in a shuffled cough, a final cough. We were done. Jaime called again from the stand and I yelled back, "It's okay. He's down." Everyone heard us, and I walked back towards the stand.


A four wheeler trip later--an ordeal for me for the rest of my life since my other adventure on one--I grabbed a picture of Deer where he stopped being Deer and became Jaime's first deer.



I had pulled the antlers free and waited for help and the four wheeler. I was soaking wet from the waist down and growing colder. Jaime's first deer had made it to the back of the Dan River's flood plain and was soaking wet too. After a struggle to load Him single handedly in the dark onto the ATV, we got Him back to the truck for more pictures, though none show the bad eye really well.







And so we took Jaime's first deer and butchered it to hang and age. Jaime's bullet had grazed the brisket right to left and broke a foreleg. My shot at the silhouette had missed but the finisher had done just that, finished the chase. Jaime could see his mistake there, skinless and easy to see, and promised a touch higher in the future. Another lesson to remember as well.


Reading the whole story, maybe it's easier to see why it's important, at least to us, to me, to remember the day forever. And since we had the pictures, we wanted more options. We chose a skull mount for that is the reality of what happened to Deer. Also, the mount doesn't make a mockery of Deer's passing with a phony, lifelike Styrofoam-filled head with Deer's skin stretched taunt over it finished off with big glass eyes. A skull is what Deer is now, what we did to Him. We don't want to forget how beautiful He was, but we don't want to make a caricature of Him either.





Of course, I can admire others' trophies, and often do, but even better are the stories that go with them. I can see how one would want to keep something that fine around the house, and be able to see it as it was when it was taken, killed, without having lost a bit of that image to age and time. But that is not the only reason we hunt. Years from now though, me and the boy, Jaime, as I'll have to start calling him now that he's on the cusp of teenagedom, will have something to see, something of value only to us, and have a memory of his first deer, my son's first deer.

Saturday

"We're leaving,"
I'd say to strangers--
Then saunter out doors.

So sick of cold and biting my tongue,
Managed to be
Smiling and laughing
To the next open door.

Meeting few strangers and
Trying to speak,
Politely shouting into ears.

Then elbows made wet
While I bartered for beer,
And the rally went up:

"We're leaving,"
I'd said to strangers,
And hustled out doors,
Still sick of the cold.

Quail Hunt of 2010

Before you ask, let me say that these are wild birds, wild and free bob white that know when to hide, and when to fly, and if you're gonna catch one in the air, you'd better be ready.

These boys are the bunch that went. Everybody knows (thanks to Dick Cheney) that too many shooters is too many shooters. Three is about perfect, but NOBODY has wild quail so EVERYBODY wants to go. We worked it out pretty good so we could be safe with a lot of "Hey? Where are you?"'s to go around because, unlike TV hunts, these birds like the cover.

Cover is briars! Cover is short little hardwoods that grow so close to each other that you have to bend over to deer height to crawl along the deers' trails IF there are any to follow. How a horny buck with a head full of antlers does it is beyond me because I was struggling without any horns at all.

The dogs, who hadn't been hunting all year but on one occasion were, to put it politely, hog wild! They didn't listen to Mark, their owner, and they wouldn't hold a point. But run and sniff they would. And they busted the biggest wild covey of birds I have ever seen! They flew and scattered and it never occurred to me to shoot at them until I saw Mark drop one with his .410!

Later, the talk of number varied from my guess of 12 to the high number of twenty, so the truth is probably somewhere in between. If the dogs had done the classic dog thing, and found the covey and held a point, more of us might have been able to at least think about getting ready for a shot. But it was something to see anyway, a flock of quail, and a 30 yard crossing shot from Mark that dropped a bird.




After you bust a covey like that, I've heard you're supposed to simmer down and let them hang out, but we were more bloodthirsty than that. We went after the doubles and such after the initial flush with the hyper dogs and had a pretty good time. Time was all I got to kill. I missed an easy crossing shot, again, flat-footed and unready. When the whir starts you better be drawing up your shot gun.

I was toting that 20 gauge Italian babe again. I learned my lesson trying to tote a Remington 11-87 last year for hours and hours, but I still couldn't swing ahead of my bird before my finger had clicked off a couple of shots. As a timed up skeet shooter, I think I may need to approach that endeavour differently in the future by NOT mounting the gun and practicing "low-gunning" it weeks before I go hunt.

Well you can't argue with Mark"s success. He shot a double once, and he picked one off in front of Tay, but was forgiven since he brought the dogs.



To say he was hot and showed us up would be an understatement. In fact, I was so disgusted with my performance that I let loose on a cottontail that darted ahead of me. The bigger, much slower and less sophisticated target still took three shells to do her in. Of course, sheepishly after the shot I asked, "It's still rabbit season ain't it?"

But Mark ended up with a four bird tally while the rest of us at least got to shoot at some birds and scare the poop out of them. I missed an easy easy shot toward the end of the day, and was so mystified by the miss, so taken aback by the sight of all the underbrush dissolving in my shot pattern just under the little body of the flapping, rising bird, that I never even hazarded a second shot.



Well, it was the first time we got to hunt that spot this year, AND it was the last time we got to hunt that land this year as the season ran out. So I doubt we put a dent in that covey that they cannot recoup--if it doesn't flood their nests out this year with all the rain we keep getting. After the hunt was over, and while we watched Mark clip the birds into little tiny, ready-to-fry mini "chickens" and I manhandled the innards out of my conejo, we could hear the covey calling to each other trying to regroup and get into their circle for the night.

So it was a good time, but it was just a shadow, though, of what the old guys at the club tell me were the good ol' days when Bobwhite were heard and hunted all over the state. Even I remember the call in summer time when I was just a kid, but I never hear it now where I live. I was just glad I got to take my baby for a walk and got to shoot at a few partridges. Next year I'm gonna keep on my toes and keep my head on the gun!

When we figure out why there aren't any quail around anymore, maybe we can figure out how to bring them back. It starts, though, I think, by spaying your nasty-ass cats. Feral cats are hard on an eco-system. So go get 'em snipped so I can go hunting more and more often!

I measured success by empties left in the grass,
And stains on my shirt sleeves,
And feathers lofting across backyards,
Not just mine, but others' as well.

Failure was three,
yellow or red,
slipped inside, then pulled from within.
Same three from weeks behind,
Same three weekend next.

Failure was a pop in your ear,
and a kick to your shoulder,
And a straggling descent,
Just out of sight,
Just out of reach.

Finer is success
with its taste in your mouth,
And smoke twisting up
From a fire like you're Abel,
As you give thanks
and regards.

The Old Man and the Boy

Many times I have sat here and tried to write about looking down through a scope and seeing deer, or looking over a bead and seeing bird, trying to explain why and what it felt like to do so, but...

I've read the Green Hills of Africa by Papa, and thought, that was it. And it is a great work yet through the eyes of a grown man full of jealousies and wit. But this newly read book, this work by Robert Ruark, makes poetry of the hunt and tells of the whys and the hows that I haven't really been able to confer with you just so.

I can't tell you about it without reading it to you...

The gist of it is the author telling stories and memories of his grandfather when the author was a young boy. We see a glimpse of Brunswick County, North Carolina in the thirties, and how they made their way hunting and fishing and living before times had a chance to change.

Of course the Old Man is wise and the boy eager. So we learn about hunting from the Old Man just as the boy did. For those of us who hunt, we read things in print that we've only felt, or understood without ever having been told, yet recognize immediately when read.

And for those that do not hunt, there's the picture painted for you of how it feels, and what it means to be a sportsman and hunter and to take part in the ritual that still struggles on in the face of urban development and anti-firearm views that are pervading this over-crowded country.

I reckon I can't read it to you so I'll just grab and show you quotes that strike the "tuning fork" in my heart:


The boy on an early hunt gets schooled in gun safety. That too is an early subject for all hunters and the Old Man sums it up best with:

'The older you get the carefuller you'll be. When you're as old as I am, you'll be so scared of a firearm that every young man you know will call you a damned old maid. But damned old maids don't shoot the heads off their friends in duck blinds or fire blind into a bush where a deer walked in and then go pick up their best buddy with a hole in his chest.'

He writes of a problem most men still struggle with, most men who were boys too:

Like most boys, I was as bloodthirsty as a cannibal. I got my first air gun when I was just six years old, and the robins and the blue jays and the catbirds and the rain crows really took a pounding. I shot everything from English sparrows to the neighbor's cat. When we had nothing better to do, my cousin Roy and I went out into the woods and played Indians and shot each other from ambush. Why somebody didn't lose an eye will always be a source of wonder to me.

A big, old, sassy mocker lived in the magnolia tree alongside our house, and he used to sing late at night in the moonlight. He would scatter those notes around like a fisherman on Saturday-night payoff. He was a pet of my grandmother's; so it was natural when I took down the Daisy one day and removed him from the concert business, the Old Man took down my pants and applied a very limber lath to my behind. It was one of the few times I ever had a hand laid on me, and it made an impression.

'Hunting,' the Old Man said when my noise had slacked off, 'is the noblest sport yet devised by the hand of man. There were mighty hunters in the Bible, and all the caves where the cave men lived are full of carvings of assorted game the head of the house drug home. If you hunt to eat, or hunt for sport for something fine, something that will make you proud, and make you remember every single detail of the day you found him and shot him, that is a good thing too.

'But if there's one thing I despise it's a killer, some blood-crazy idiot that just goes around bam-bamming at everything he sees. A man who takes pleasure in death just for death's sake is rotten somewhere inside, and you'll find him doing things later on in life that'll prove it. I realize all young'uns get that first phase when they want to carve up desks and bust windows and shoot mockingbirds, but I aim to see you grow out of it, or I'll have every last inch of hide off your rear end.

'I want you to go to bed tonight and stay awake thinking about the mockingbird that sung so pretty and your grandmother loved, and then think of that little mess of dirty feathers even the cat didn't want. And then think a little bit about this nice air rifle that Santa Claus brought you to learn to shoot with, and wish you had it back again.'
Whereupon the Old Man took the little Daisy and busted it over his knee, and threw it over into the bushes where he had thrown the carcass of the mockingbird. That was Lesson One.

And I submit to you that another NC native, Andy Griffith, probably read this in Outdoor Life and thought it'd make a good episode.

Well, I can't keep stealing quotes or Henry Holt and Company, LLC are gonna have a cow. But I will close my mentioning that Ruark writes of fishing too, which though not as dear to my heart as hunting, fishing still makes me smile when my kids and I catch a mess of fish, then deep fry the hapless.

He says to the boy:

'Now, then, son,' the Old Man said, 'we ain't goin' to talk any, because fishin' is a silent sport and a lot of conversation scares the fish and wrecks the mood. What I want you yo do is set there and fish, and when the fish ain't bitin' I want you to listen and look and think. Think about heaven and hell and just how long is hereafter. Look around you and don't take nothing for granted. Look at everything you see and listen to everything you hear, just like you were brand-new come from another world, and think about all those things and how they got there. Now let's fish.'

See it seems the boy had been ditching Sunday school and had been caught shooting craps in the church basement, so the Old Man saw fit to take him fishing to jog the boy's perspective a little. And it seems to work, for the boy, Ruark, writes a little further on in the chapter:

...I got to thinking about eternity, and how long something that never ended would be, and I got to thinking about how much trouble Somebody went to, to make things like cocoons that butterflies come out of, and seasons and rain and moss on trees, and frogs and fish and possums and coons and quail and flowers and ferns and water and moons and suns and stars and winds. And boys. Especially boys.

I have a boy myself, and this summer he'll be working the pages of this beautiful book before he gets on the odious Wii or the PsP or leaves the house to shoot his friends with airsoft guns...yes, somethings never change.

-rbm

2009 and what I learned last year

Early on I learned about facebook thanks to the powers that be that were trying to organize our 25th year high school reunion or as I like to call it, Brett's drunken night out. So thanks for that Lisa Cook and Keith Dillon. It's awakened the frustrated writer in me again.

I learned that we human people can get parvo viruses too! Hell, you beat the fever and you come out of that, only to get the rash. Then you itch like hell but then you beat the rash too, only to have the most ungodly joint pain you've ever had in your life!

I gobbled street vicodin like a fiend and was left alone in a house where I really had trouble feeding myself for one weekend. Anyway, they call it fifths disease and it was no fun.

I also learned that chicken pox can come back to haunt you! I thank my immune system for beating it in the second or third grade AND for keeping this new hell out of sight of the rest of the world though it looks now like someone shot my right butt cheek with a .410 shotgun.

I learned that money can buy happiness. We've always known it; it's only the ones who do not posses it who say it cannot buy happiness. I reckon I always knew that.

I'm in a poetic mood...