A Shady Spot

THE HUNTING CLUB membership was gathered in the large round booth in the corner of Doreen’s 24 HR Eat Gas Now Café. It was so hot outside the trees looked as if they were slumped in the heat.

“It smelled like dove season when I went outside this morning,” I told the guys.

Doreen came around for refills. “What does that mean?” she queried.

Doc held up his cup. “It’s the scent of dust in the air.”

She paused. “Did all of y’all know that?”

Nods all around.

“You guys are just weird.”

Wrong Willie sprinkled a few grains of salt into his coffee. “We’ve hunted together for so long, sometimes we think alike.”

“Yeah, like when we get to a field, we all want to hunt from the same place.” Jerry Wayne nudged Wrong Willie. “You always want to sit with me.”

“That’s because you always sit on the cooler.”

“Oh.”

“Well, it’s true.”

I glanced out the window at birds sitting in the shade, their mouths wide-open in an effort to cool off. “Most of the time, shade is an issue, and we all know that doves are drawn to lone trees and corners.”

Doc laughed. “Remember when we were all scrunched up in the shade of that skinny little mesquite tree out by Wichita Falls?”

We laughed and laughed.

Doreen waited for several seconds after we stopped and sipped coffee. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What happened?”

Jerry Wayne frowned. “We scrunched up in the shade.”

We laughed some more.

“I don’t get it.” Doreen began to steam, thinking we were messing with her.

I didn’t want to get thrown out into that hot parking lot…again. “What he means is that it was growing beside a water hole that had evaporated down to the size of a bathtub.”

Doc picked up the story. “It was a bird magnet. There wasn’t anything else anywhere close…”

Wrong Willie stepped in. “…and it was about a hundred yards from the truck…”

Jerry Wayne picked up the narrative. “…and as usual I got there first…”

Me: “No you weren’t. I was there first.”

Jerry Wayne: “Then I was second.”

Doc: “And before we knew it, all of us were there squatting in a circle.”

Me: “Everybody was facing out and the birds were flying straight in.”

Wrong Willie: “I think I flinched every time somebody shot…”

Jerry Wayne: “…because we were so close together.”

I pointed at him. “…and some people were shooting at my birds.”

“Hey, I simply reacted to motion.”

Doc laughed. “You missed a lot.”

That’s when the dialogue came fast and vicious.

“I didn’t miss that snake that was heading in our direction.”

“You think it smelled those birds we had?”

“I think it wanted our shade.”

“It got it.”

“Why didn’t y’all shoot the snake?”

“And waste a shell?”

“The way you were shooting, you needed all you had.”

“Hey, I got my limit. You were two short.”

“You got the last one off a tree branch on the way back to the motel.”

“It was flying.”

“Close. Its wings were open, and it was barely off the limb.”

“That’s flying.”

Seeing Doreen was lost again, I tried to bring her back. “If someone had been watching from above, they would have seen birds coming in…to the tree like it was a magnet, and all of us exploding away from the shade at the same time and running in different directions.”

Doreen sighed. “How do you guys remember all these details about a hunt years ago…”

Wrong Willie broke in. “Thirty years ago, I believe.”

She shook her head. “Like I was saying, so long ago and y’all remember all these details, but you can’t remember people’s names or what your wives tell you.”

We shrugged as one.

What could we say to that

 

Email Reavis Wortham at ContactUs@fishgame.com

 

 

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