Eight Idle Hours
(Jacksonville Journal 1962. Old copy paper brown as old meerschaum)
The first hour — Up at four in pitch blackness, the muted clump of hunting boots going down to breakfast, subdued excitement: today is the day; today we hit it big.
The guns and shells and coats and vests; hot, butter-fried eggs heaped over a mound of cheese, the indescribable taste of a cold Coke on a cold morning. The car loaded, lights splashing down the bumpy lane to the street, deserted as a graveyard. The sole all-night filling station, slippery soap compound wetted down to threaten your footing, making you glad of cleated rubber boots…prosaic Plaid Stamps tucked in the sun visor for Mama.
The second hour — The long procession of motels, darkened and silent, then palatial Ponte Vedra homes behind your racing wheels, the sky still black, palmetto scrub and tall oaks streaming by in the flareback of the headlights — an oncoming car, click and dim, click and bright; race on toward meeting with dawn. The bite of the air after your warm snug car, record your licenses, inquire after the warden’s health, how many hunters are in, and how’s the duck situation, any better? Punch and in, and rolling slowly in second gear across the dam into tall cathedral woods. Stop, uncase your guns, get out your shells and straighten piles of paraphernalia into semblance of order. Two shells in the magazine, empty chamber, two in the double-barrel, bent open and safe. Then bumpy rolling to the spot you want, motor killed, lights doused, and windows rolled down and absolute silence maintained. Let any observers of our arrival settle down again before the first gray dawn… a seemingly endless parade of cars and trucks and Jeeps rattle and bump by, deeper into the woods.
The third hour — Out of the car and the doors closed under the blanketing noise of a passing Jeep, and wait. The sky grows lighter by degrees — the world is hushed, awaiting the first call of the first bird of morning. Moving silently, silently, single-file, inch by inch, feeling out twigs and stones, easing into the woods…an abrupt crescendo of birdsong and squirrel chatter as the woods come alive. And you are there, your guns are ready — but the hogs are gone, leaving only their tracks deep in the ooze.
A shrill as of jets, and ten goldeneyes swoop over the trees, wings locked, feet down and stretched for the edge of the water — and up, wings blurring, climbing frantically into the paling sky. The reason for their panic trudging along with a peculiar lunging gait as he navigates mud, long-barreled gun on his shoulder and iridescent orange cap on his head. The swishing of his feet comes faintly. The sky is pale blue and clouds the purest pinks. Guns have been going in the woods fifteen minutes now. Boom-boom-boom — an autoloader — and then spat, a .22.
The fourth hour — the woods are noisy; it’s hard to walk without imitating an irritable tank. Wind coming up, but a few quiet periods to call squirrels. Lips behind the teeth and chirrr — chirrr. Snap the shotgun safety back and forth with a sound like gnawing acorns: I’m the biggest meanest squirrel in this vicinity and I’ve got the biggest nut and anybody disputing my claim better come on out and fight, or I’ll be digesting it. A squirrel moves, high in the treetops in the golden early sunlight. Gun up, then lower it — he’s out of range. Wait — wait — he’s coming…and Whoosh!
Not the wind but the treetops shake violently. By damn! A turkey! Two…three…four of them, more. Your squirrel is long gone, frightened senseless by their tumultuous arrival. High above your head a big old Tom, beard nearly the length of your arm, has no more awareness of you than pygmies on the far side of the moon. With magnum fours in your twelve-gauge you cannot shoot because the law is on turkeys on the Guano. You can’t buck the law, not even for a giant gobbler all iridescent in the sunlight, with a beard at least as long as your arm and leg combined. Ten turkeys in all, coasting and flapping above your head, hens and more Toms gobbling mightily back and forth, secure in the knowledge they are safe from sudden death.
Eventually they move on. The songbirds settle down. Two more squirrels spotted; they disappear. The wind is now steady. Shooting has been sporadic all morning.
The fifth hour — Back at the car. A Thermos top of hot, wonderfully aromatic coffee; a corn-beef sandwich, an apple. Fifteen minutes to sit. Move the car farther down the road. A big brown and white hog has left his calling card — that is, his head — on the trail beside a pile of squirrel hides covered with buzzing flies. We sit very quietly after we see a man with strong-smelling cigar, single-shot twelve and young son, crash odoriferously through the woods, wondering why he can’t spot any hogs…
The sixth hour — Legs cramped, the wind moans in the trees, clouds march. A little spider climbs on my knee, looks me over, and begins decorating me like a Christmas tree with tinsel. Time drags by. The spider’s web grows. My gun barrels, the bill of my cap, my elbows, the trunk of the tree; all are joined by tenuous threads as if I have been sitting here since trees fell with no one to hear them…
The seventh hour — All things must end, and the spider’s shattered work rides with me in wind-whipped shards out of the woods. I follow a vale of marsh grass, through wild peas that make quiet walking impossible. Near the lake the wind is howling. A gnarled and twisted grove of trees vaguely resembles photographs of African thorn trees. I could be in Africa, the twelve-gauge a double rifle…here’s a slime-covered waterhole to make the image stronger, soft mud filled with hog tracks. Through low branches, I have a long view of oceanfront houses on barrier dunes lining A1A…
Hog droppings; hog bedding areas — but no hogs. And to make a touch of irony — an ageless sausage can, rusted beyond belief, perforated by rifled slugs. Symbolism, perhaps? Shoot the sausage can and the quarry will come to bag?
The eighth hour — Back along our trail of the early hours and beyond, a right turn on Shell Bluff Road to a firm spot among the trees and get out the big lunch, watching the trees across the road for a possibly demented squirrel … (Here newspaper deadlines intervened.)
A little over a year after high-school graduation I had two burning passions: hunting and writing. Untrained in either, I was trying to teach myself both. Winter weekends in the Florida woods, weekday work as a daily-newspaper copyboy, pounding an old newsroom reject of a typewriter between deadlines. My fledgling hunting log — kept in a spiral WriteRite school notebook — offered me grist for writing practice. The above essay was based on the following log entry:
November 18, 1962 — Dawn to 2 p.m. No squirrels. Saw a helluva big tom turkey, but no can shoot — closed season on the Guano. He flew into the oak tree above my head and called his harem to him. Beautiful contrast of weather and terrain.
