He pulled Samantha closer to a sofa-sized rock to give them cover from the radar eyes of the turkeys. From experience, he sensed a winter flock perched in the trees around them. Shooting and shot selection in this dim light would be unworkable for her.
He placed his mouth to her ear and whispered. “Be very still. No shot here. Enjoy.”
In irregular order, seven turkeys sailed to the ground with yelps and flapping wings. The latter represented an assemble call. The Kid and Samantha observed the birds, causing a rattling noise in the leaves with their churning feet while they scurried about to assemble. The yelps from gobblers sounded similar to rhythmic rusty gate hinges swinging back and forth, while the females’ yelping struck the human ear as smoother tones.
“This flock should be large. So far, they seem like hens, young and old, with one gobbler. Maybe others remain hidden from view by a small cluster of orphan leaves or a twist of branches. Birds roost—as low as a basketball goal; of course, they may be higher off the ground— in taller oaks, pines, and in a swamp, bald cypresses. Watch. Appreciate the show. We’ll try to call him up after he lands. Betcha’ a big boy’s up real high.”
They crouched. The north wind swirled leaves, stung their noses, fingers, and toes, as their breath resembled that of a team of workhorses pulling a wagon. The view from their perch at the crest showed a valley one hundred feet deep, fifty wide, and a half mile long, with a three-foot stream; to witness this picture dulled the punishment hurled by the wind and cold.
On the opposite rim, the creature decided to move out of gun range by thirty yards. From high in a northern red oak, flapping signaled a wild turkey springing from a limb, accomplishing air speed, pulling up the legs, straightening its neck, plunging amid the frozen naked branches, gliding, gliding, gliding, tipping its shoulders, using an airfoil up or down to dodge limbs, accelerating, clearing the lowest boughs, locking its spread wings, slanting and playing into the crosswind, gracefully plummeting down the ridge into the ravine, dipping its body by backpedaling, using his flaps, and putting his feet to the ground to land safely and slowly beside a three-foot stream--possibly because he felt secure here.
“Oh.” Samantha’s jaw slumped. “This is a wonderland.”
The Kid grinned and eyed Samantha. “A big boy, Sugar. Note how large and dark he looked.”
She leaned forward, locating her mouth an inch from his ear. “So wonderful. Never in my life, but their wings seem too small for flying, don’tcha’ think?”
“Rest assured. The One who hung Orion knows how to build turkeys.”
“Kid, what now?”
With his open palm in front of his face, he wiggled his fingers. She tagged along behind to the area where the tom had landed. They came to a stream, three feet wide. At the bend in the flow, he took a stick and pointed to a wrinkle at the water’s edge. “Freezing.” She nodded. He stepped to the opposite side and extended his hand to help her with the jump. She landed. She crunched leaves with less noise than would a fawn. Once across, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on top of her toboggan. He added a three-stroke knuckle haircut and motioned for her to follow him up the hill.
With the nimbleness of a shoplifter, the Kid pulled an object from a pocket.
They whispered.
“What’s that, Kid?”
“A turkey call.”
“Looks like a round black plastic box the size of a baseball with a piece of slate on top.”
“Exactly.”
He removed another article.
“Looks like a plastic peg with a tiny thing on one end. The small item looks like the big ones cheerleaders used umpteen years ago.”
“It’s called a striker. The rod is acrylic, and the cheerleader gadget is a megaphone. I make turkey sounds by the angle and pressure of the striker on the slate. Let’s start calling.”
She spoke into the Kid’s ear. “You made a terrible noise. Squeak, squawk, cluck. How does something so majestic respond to such gobbledygook?”
“Thanks, Samantha. Memorize what you heard. When the sound becomes the worst mess imaginable, you witness perfection.”
After thirty minutes of working with the slate and acrylic striker, all they got was silence. Either no turkey had answered, or else any that had answered came in mute.
“Remember, Samantha. I told you the difficulty of calling turkeys in the winter.”
She shook. She rubbed her gloved hands together.
“Oh, me.” He rubbed the four days of beard growth. “The sun’s creeping above the horizon and the glow’s dimming.”
Samantha’s trembling returned him to the futility of winter turkey hunting. “Hey, hey, hey. You’re shaking like a dog coming out of water. Whatcha’ say we leave and try this spring?”
“Let’s move about a little. My hands and toes are tingling. The feeling is like millions of needles. I’ll be okay, Kid. Didn’t we ‘set up’ too far for one of those turkeys?”
“Where did you learn the term?”
“Reading turkey-hunting stories.”
“Good. Yes, we did. If we drew closer, we’d be on the property of one Roscoe Willbrant Slaughter.”
“So?”
“Everybody calls him, Ross. Samantha, some terrible information circulates about Ross, but his is the best place in Pittsylvania County to hunt.”
“What? Give me the breaking news.”
“Can’t now. Let’s concentrate on you filling a big game tag. Let me be blunt. I’m not sure your health is up to this.”
“I’m dying. I would rather die here trying than to live sitting by the fire, wishing to hunt somewhere like this.”
“Ya got spunk. I’ll give ya that. Listen. We’ll work our way through this draw, away from Ross’s place to a ridge, where we’ll stay thirty yards apart, search for turkey scratchings. We find them, we check ‘em out.”
“Kid, where are we?”
“In a woods.”
“Very funny. You understand what I mean.”
“Samantha, this is the last time.” He pointed at his temple. “What’s in here?”
“A compass.”
“Miss, you pester me. Stop now.”
Samantha giggled, but she did not smile.
“Wait a minute. You’re scared. Your face shows fear. Nothing will happen to me. My backpack has a cell phone.”
“Yup.”
“Show faith in the Master.”
“Gotcha.”
They ambled while daylight took a grip. The brightness teased the gray woods into a wonderland of colors— standing blackjack and spruce pines showed an evergreen shade except for one pine struck dead by lightning. A strip without bark from top to bottom proved death by electricity. Other trees, now nude, supplied a rich appearance to the forest floor, while lighter beech and beige dogwood leaves as well as the darker oaks and hickories furnished the majority of material.
He grabbed her shoulders, freezing her in place. A pileated woodpecker with red, black, and white feathers landed near them. The kitten-size animal pecked away at the decaying base of a rotten tree; then the shy bird saw the invaders and flew.
“Let’s meander up this ridge,” said the Kid. “Perhaps by the time we reach the summit we’ll find some turkey scratchings.”
“Kid, I’ve read about them. “Feeding, huh?”
“Correct.” The sun rose behind clouds.
“Samantha, listen to me. The last weather forecast at three this morning said we’d get a heavy snowfall beginning around sundown. I think they’re wrong. We’ll hunt ‘til twelve. I’ll bet you’ll glimpse the first flakes by one today. We see those, we leave.”
After they had taken several steps, the Kid seized Samantha by the nape of her neck. “Whoa! See something?”
“Nope, nothing, Kid.”
“Try again.”
The Kid, with his keen vision and eyes trained for the woods, had spied a rabbit. He had learned to spot feral animals naturally camouflaged by coat, shape, size, in their us
ual habitat.
“You must learn a skill in order to see that tom’s head poking out in the woods.” He told her to pick out four trees and to draw an imaginary box in her head. She must read the area like a page in a book, and he told her to remember what she had learned in school about punctuation. Sometimes use a period and stop, other times a comma and pause. Start at the beginning. Proceed from left to right, six inches at a time, until you finish. If the rabbit did not appear, reread the page. Of course, her brain’s eye detected the animal in a flash, but the cells within her cranium didn′t assemble Peter Cottontail until everything linked to coordinate the detective work.
“Nothing, Kid.”
“Keep trying.”
“Kid, I’ll humor you until you end this farce.” She stiffened. “At the base of the oak on the right. Balled in a knot not much bigger than my fist. The leaves surrounding him added to his camouflage. Those brown eyes expose him. Double wow, Kid.”
“Good job, Samantha. The exercise should train your eye to discern the old tom’s head when he sneaks in through brush looking for the caller. Also, note Mr. Bunny resides on the sunny section of the tree to receive protection from the north wind. Want to flush him?”
“No, Kid, he’s so cute. Let’s don’t make him leave his warm bed.”
“Good decision; Mr. McGregor may well make an appearance. Up the ridge we go, and when we arrive, you’ll learn what’s meant by ‘letting the woods calm down’.”
“Kid, finding the rabbit means something to me. Does the process get easier to do?”
“Oh, yes, faster, too. I didn’t pause to study the ground, did I? Keep practicing. Quail are the hardest. Soon the picture will leap to you. Consider a snake, for instance. Mister Serpent has good camouflage, but he can’t hide his curved lines. Those are what give him away. Keep trying and learning, Sweetie.”
“Thanks to you, I’ll die a much happier girl without a twenty-pound tom.”
“Who knows? We might.”
Shrieking past the trees, a blast of arctic air rocked them. Samantha grabbed a rotted branch for balance. The limb broke, but the Kid grasped her coat to keep her from pitching forward onto a chair-size rock. With freezing breath streaming through her nostrils and mouth, she canted to the right, smiled, and pushed into his chest. “You’re the best!”
She can be yours. Examine your habits. You’re an alcoholic, a cheat at cards, a liar, and a whoremonger. A cackle of dark laughter racked the Kid’s soul. Above all, you let your sister drown. You got a bigger inheritance, huh?
He stepped behind her. He bit his lip. He shuddered. As best he could, he disregarded the malevolent inner presence. He gestured toward the ground. “Tell me the name of these.”
“Scratchings.”
“Good girl. The books taught you some things. What else?”
“Turkey doo-doo.”
“Talk to me, baby sister and daughter.”
Her eyes filled. “You mean those words. Wow! The droppings remain unfrozen, therefore fresh. The ones shaped like mud a child has squeezed from his fist are from a hen. The other is a male, a big one, ‘cause the manure resembles a fishhook, and the fecal matter’s as large as your little finger.”
“Good, Sam. Now tell the way they go and how many?”
After a lengthy pause, she answered with an air of expertise. “First, my name is Samantha. They are move-move-moving downhill. The piles of leaves are on one side. Their scratching efforts throw everything backwards, like barnyard chickens. With all these scratches, the flock may contain as many as twenty turk-turkeys.”
“Samantha, I’m impressed, to say the least. Are you cold?”
“No, silly dorkster, this is typical Mi-Miami Beach weather. I’m freezing. I’m fighting to keep from shivering, stut-tut-tering, too.”
With his thumb and index finger, he held her chin. “The lips aren’t blue, but pull the wool facemask down.”
Struck by another frigid blast of wind, she crooked her right arm to encircle the trunk of a dogwood tree. Tottering, she hung on. A shiver swept her. “Cold as heck, tired, but never so happy. God bless you.”
***
The Kid picked a location that snuggled them out of the wind. They huddled among what used to be the top branches of a spruce pine, but now the tree lay storm-thrown. Those limbs of dark brown blended well against their winter camouflage. The spot rested at the crown of a ridge sprinkled with mature red oaks, tulip poplars, and beech trees. At the same time, the precipice gave them a view of the basin, sixty feet below, where a four-foot stream, now brick-hard-frozen, rested on a twenty-foot wide floodplain.
The wind howled, sending dried leaves of brown, crimson, and gold across the ground in a chatter.
Without speaking, they waited and listened and looked and waited and listened and looked.
Some say the woods are neither ally nor adversary, but serve those capable of understanding the ways to connect with her. At any rate, forest wildlife detected invaders. They responded with wariness. This would take an interlude of adjustment.
Time passed. This earned the human beings a place. The animals, sensing no danger, began to reappear. A squirrel’s head jutted from an old woodpecker’s hole in a lightning-killed tree. Seeing nothing threatening from the air or woods, he scurried out, descending to a lower branch. Glancing about with tail quivering, he darted to earth. Without making a sound, the animal dug holes into the ground. As if by magic, an acorn appeared in his clutch. Cherishing the prize, bearing the morsel with his front teeth, climbing the dead tree in a spiral and lingering for a moment on the limb, he disappeared into his den.
A house wren flew in. She landed in the brush at their feet. Small vegetation lay crushed by the fallen tree. Possibly the winged animal spent time scavenging this section, since she went straight to work, first scratching one place then pecking at another. Looking, hopping without fatigue, she located a small treasure, and with a blur of wings she flew.
“Samantha, listen. A gobbler lives here. The dimensions of the droppings suggest a large bird. I’m going to cluck to him. Keep an eye out. You’re learning. Start practicing on directing your breath down into the scarf or clothes. He’ll see the moisture if you don’t.”
He removed a ‘box call’ from his pack. The sides of the brown object consisted of thin pieces of wood. The base measured two by eight inches. A wooden paddle with a convex bottom served as the lid, and single screw secured this movable part on one end. The sound came from the action of the paddle when swung against the top of one slice of thin wood. One side imitated the hen and the other impersonated the gobbler.
He prepared. Removing his gloves, he blew warm breath on his fingers to aid agility. Together he flashed them back and forth. He chafed the box on the tom side. “Cluck.”
“Oh,” whispered Samantha.
“Yeah, Samantha, sounds bad. Stay sharp. The old boy must be near. He may not be the boss, since he’s with hens, but he can still be the trophy you desire. The real leader is possibly a hermit. I’ll nudge you if something comes. You do likewise. Search for him like you did Peter Cottontail. We’ve reached midday. Look at the sky. Snow’s coming.”
Samantha shivered hard.
The wind, his skin, and the touch of metal spoke to the Kid. Uncomfortable hunches ate at his guts. He thought: We do not want dark to catch us here. Freezing before dawn becomes a risk. Stop these ideas.
“Anything wrong, Kid?”
“No, you worried?”
“Not really, you act funny.”
“Gettin’ on my nerves. You show a wild imagination. You watch too much television. Stop trembling. Be vigilant. A hunch says we’ll lure one in.”
“Kid. Stay cool.”
Thirty minutes crept by.
Nothing.
A rustle from heavy brush and an eight-point buck with an eighteen-inch inside spread strolled into view, sauntering from their right. He stopped, displaying no fear, strolled again, hesitated, and ambled into a crosswind, which slam
med the human scent into his nose. The deer vaulted, ran, jumped a log, ran, leapt a boulder, and ran, waving the white underside of its tail to warn other deer.
The Kid breathed easier, because the animal issued no alarm snort or snorts, which would have broken the stillness of the forest.
Minutes later, a gray squirrel poked his face from a leaf nest. He detected danger from neither the air nor the ground. The squirrel pranced from his perch, descending by circling the trunk of the red oak tree. Noting its direction of movement, the Kid grabbed Samantha’s knee. He squeezed. In seconds, the creature scampered across her foot. It searched, dug a number of holes, found an acorn, seized the plunder, and dashed to the tree. It parked on a limb and dined. Satisfied, the animal played Houdini by disappearing into its home.
He whispered into Samantha’s ear. “Gray squirrels can’t pick out well-camouflaged hunters.”
She murmured, “Thanks for grabbing my knee. You stopped a scream.”
He took the opportunity to shift his body for comfort. Seeing him, she followed suit.
A mockingbird landed on the barrel of the Kid’s pump shotgun. The dull gray colors matched the darkening forest. A sassy thing, her tail and beak pointing into the air gave her body a C shape. Five seconds later, she distinguished the two pairs of eyes gazing at her. She bolted.
He whispered. “The buck, birds, squirrels, do they teach you anything?”
Her teeth chattered. “Y-y- yes.”
“Persevere. You’re suffering, but he’s around here somewhere. What have you discovered from those animals?”
“A nor-normal woods, one, one un-undisturbed or set-settled.”
“Are you sure you can tolerate another hour of this cold?” He thought. Oh, the fight in her face and eyes.
“I’m happy, K-Kid.”
“You demonstrate spirit. I’m like you.” He sent a gobbler cluck through the frozen woods, while they braced from the increasing northern blusterer, blowing harsher toward the south, triggering more leaves to dance and prattle.
Their exhalations came out in swirls.
He nudged her. “Turkey’s coming, final instructions. Deflect your breath downward into the ski mask. This helps hide the frost. Note the four-foot pine ahead of you. The tree represents the maximum range of the .410. One additional thing— wait until they all pass behind an object before you shoulder your gun. Any slight movement will alert them.”