Thousands of birds falling through the air, coming down like streams of colour, and I was ten and I loved this. Uncle John’s rifle shouted out some more anguish, the smells of sulphur and animal blood rising like thick mist. The glade became a cemetery for the mass of bird carcasses. Tim, who was Uncle John’s son, had gone into the barns to rouse the pigeons then my father, grandpa, Uncle John and I lifted our rifles skyward like a soldier would raise his bugle at a military funeral, and fired.
We would call it a tour, a grand tour. We’d go hunting all day and settle down in our tents for the night or, if we had time, drag our kill along the dusty road up to the huge house. My father had a farm out in Central Valley in California and I’d travel from my mother’s place, near San Francisco, to join him for the hunting outings. We’d hunt quail, pigeon, pheasant, even foxes if we could. I killed my first deer when I was eleven.
Uncle John was the maddest of the lot. He wasn’t really my uncle, just father’s best friend. He’d consistently bring in the most game. He was a true hunter. A White Indian. A Caucasian Mohican. I saw him take down four pigeons in a row once. Then he had looked at me and grinned with those autumn teeth. I never forgot that grin, right up to the day when he went crazy and shot his father before turning the gun on himself.
Grandpa had a handy shot as well but he was too frequently drunk, working in the orchards in the off season, he smelt of the wine country. His wife died some years before I was born and I remember when he used to stumble off through the leaves, his swagger cushioned by the soft mattress they offered. Father would find him just beyond the pine land, snoring heavily, the grey of his beard tucked under the green velvety lawn. He used to say to me, “there ain’t no devil, that’s just God when he’s drunk.”
My father’s house was huge, with sheds, barns and acres of land right next to mountains and ridges blessed with pine forests all around. Forests perfect for my youth as a hunter. My first shot rang out in the slough, crisp and serene. The men hooted and laughed, slugged at their beers and shot out in the air. I can still remember grandpa’s laughter turning to splutters and coughs from smoking cigars, all croaky and wooden in sound.
My father was a dominant figure in my youth. To me he was larger than life, in him I’d see everything that came to represent men; he was by ways capricious, exuberant and shared a sadistic sense of humour with his friends. In our guise as hunters I’d feel a knife’s edge away from being a man. We shared the surge of adrenaline that gave way to laughter, joy and triumph. However, there was still a gulf of difference between me and them; a divide that ran deep. I think it mostly had to do with how much respect I had for the women in my family. They were successful and strong-willed women. The men in my family were outnumbered, which didn’t help. From my standing, the women had always been honest, whereas the men had been weaving their lies like pernicious black widows.
We took a photo when I killed my first deer. All the men’s faces smiling and cheering at me and me with my rifle, feeling like gold. ‘Now you’re shitting in tall cotton, son’, was Father’s response, his smile wide and glowing. The thrill of my father’s praise was tempered by the sweep of sadness I felt when I looked at the buck lying in the ferns with the sunlight dappled on its body like strands of confetti. Its large brown eyes were still open. Once we’d taken it back to camp and father had gutted it, Grandpa started to skin the hide and Uncle John threw the liver and heart on the skillet. The organs cooked and roasted and turned in the heat, the smoke and steam like the deer’s last breath.
One of the dogs was running about playing with a bone and one rubbed up against my leg under the table. The others sat down with me, sipping their beers, tentative and mute. I waited steadfastly, until Uncle John slapped down the meat on my rusty metal plate. The smell lingered in my nose and tangled with the pine air. Taking a big bite my teeth sank into the liver. They went all the way through. It was just mush. I was gagging and desperately trying to swallow. The dog was startled as my leg kicked out.
The men started their brazen laughing as the dog whimpered under the table. Uncle John’s diaphragm heaved as he watched my suffering. The dogs started barking and it felt like they too were taking part in this grand display of mockery. I grabbed my glass of water and washed down as much of it as possible. Next was the heart. The only way I could think of describing this would be to say it was like eating a rubber tyre, tough and raw. Well after the laughs had died down the men turned to cooking the good meat and I managed to pass handfuls to the dog, who took to it more eagerly.
There was the time with the fox as well. Uncle John and Tim took me to one of the sheds. I knew this was where they kept prized game. The trophy shed. My father pointed out the fox that hung from the middle of the room, lit above by a solitary bulb, like a filament halo. Uncle John told me to skin it. “Press down firm on the hide, let it slide down under your hand.” I could see where the penis had been removed. I struck down hard along the belly. Three-day old fox piss splattered my face. The stench was overwhelming and the taste of putrid, viscous liquid stayed on my lips. I ran around frantically searching for the hose, smothering my face in the hay to try to block the smell out. The men were bawling with laughter, Uncle John bent double. I shot out of the entrance and located the spigot. I ran that water for a long time, drinking, spitting, cursing, anything to rid me of that rancid taste. My father brought me a glass of juice, his eyes wet with tears of laughter. I never knew if those tears had anything to do with pride. Looking back on the event, with my adult perspective, the tears could just have easily been tears of guilt. The guilt that eventually consumed him.
My father was never a callous man but he wasn’t honest. Before the divorce we lived in Alaska. My mother was a strong woman who knew the faults of men well; her own father had been an abusive bully. So when she found out about his infidelity she was prepared to forgive him for the sake of the family. We all moved to the farm that he inherited. Here, where the pine land stretched out like an open canvas, we shared an affinity that often finds people in the face of such vast land. My mother was happy as father became affectionate, making it up to her, appeasing his transgressions. However, the hunting outings were his greatest pleasure and that happiness was a rare sight anywhere else but among the thickets and brush. The signs of malaise were there; ever more time spent outside and the drinking bouts.
They separated shortly after. Mother took it in her stride, perhaps she knew it was coming. He confessed he wasn’t happy and they decided to file for a divorce. We stayed a week longer and then moved to my mother’s sister’s place in San Francisco. From then on I’d only visit my father in open season, when I’d stay for as long as two weeks on some occasions. I’d see the age in his face after each winter, a deepening of lines, an accumulation of dead cells like the build-up of carbon in the chamber of a .300 magnum after frequent use. The chamber of a gun was a good metaphor for my father’s life. He lived it fast, as if it’d dry up in an instant. I loved him, but the bullet bit us all hard.
I knew a part of him still loved my mother. He said he missed her gooseberry and apple crumbles. Sometimes, after a good hunt and once we’d set up tent, we’d be lying there in the glade, the pine branches obscuring the night stars and the moon hanging there all sullen, and he’d say, “your mother really was a whizz when it came to them apple pies. Dear Lord I can still smell ‘em. That’s what I miss most, those damn apple pies.” Then he’d turn away and breathe in the pine air till it soothed him to sleep.
I heard stories of him drinking too much and how he’d spend months fishing in Alaska. When I was twelve, he took me up there in his truck, filled with fishing gear. He brought his guns too. I asked him why he was fishing and if his hunting days were over. He said they both were his calling and just as I had hunted with him, he had fished with grandpa as a boy. He told me something his father used to say to him, from a children’s book or something, “A dry fisherman and a wet hunter have the same sad look.” I said I knew what he meant because as a hunter when I got wet it was from fox piss. My father roared with laughter when I said that. It can’t have been all bad for him though, he’d remarried less than a year later.