And there you have it, that’s how for a decade and a half, coincidentally the same amount of time I was in the cowboy’s safe, Ishmael shot on an unlimited license, night and day, 365.24 days a year in the two most populous whitetail counties of the most populous whitetail state in the country. And I am pleased to report that at the time of his retiral, the bucks no longer weighed 80 pounds but were pushing 230. Scores also increased from the mid 80’s to the mid 160’s and the cotton, my God, I wish you could have seen it. Chances are that if you wore clothes in between 1994 and 2009, it was made with the cotton Ishmael shot over and, sure enough, true to his word, Mr. Spaulding split the ascending profits with him and, although his education was paid, the blood money was how he financed his dates, his guns, his Irish whiskey, and even his boat.
What I won’t tell you; however, is that that buck above the fireplace at Cracker Barrel, the ones hanging in the local fish camp, the one at your eye doctor’s office or any of the ones ever listed by the taxidermy factory on eBay are his but at some point I can assure you that the Spaulding’s tired of repairing and buying tires and innertubes for their combines and tractors and since Ishmael refused to shoot them in their stomachs with his 10/22, I suppose other arrangements had to be met. I will also not tell you that Ishmael may have picked up the sheds that popped off when the March and April deer were shot or the antlers that were inadvertently shot off. And I won’t tell you that any of the meat may have been donated to the First Assembly of God’s foodbank for distribution to the poor. And I won’t tell you that Ms. Clara Mae Gatson and her 11 children on Wahalak Road always had a Merry Christmas as did everyone in her community. As did the families on MLK, Chapman Circle and the depot but I will tell you that some laws are shameful and the needy should be allowed to eat better than buzzards and coyotes.
They are almost to the gate and Ishmael is recalling a late evening March 14, 1998, episode where a bachelor group of four bucks entered the cotton together. The rut had long since passed and their necks were no longer swollen and he and his apprentice, Travis Powe, were sitting, turkey hunting style against a massive oak and it hits him – TRAVIS POWE! For the entire week, Lin had been reminding him of someone who he knew but he couldn’t put his finger on it until now. The revelation jolts him, and he is no longer on the edge of the cotton – he is in Africa – and his Travis Powe looking PH has stopped the cruiser for one of the trackers to open the gate.
Over a concrete bridge, around a bend or two and Lin punches the brakes and Ishmael sees him – TATONKA. He is big and black and 40” and left to right and standing in a beautiful place to die at the base of a hill and looking at us like we owe him…... respect. And although the demons of old were singing their siren song for Ishmael to pile from the cruiser, grab me, and break his neck with 400 grains of Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, Ishmael tells Lin, “Let’s go,” and Lin doesn’t argue and go they do.
T. V. Bulpin wrote “The Hunter is Death” and for 15 years, under the laws of syllogism, Ishmael was the hunter. Why Africa, you ask? Chasing the Dragon – that’s what this was about. Certainly, after a hiatus of over a dozen years that the automaticity would be gone and being 25 yards in front of a 13,000 pound elephant whose tusk configuration, according to the natives and Lyell, rendered him very dangerous as he was clearly kept from the females by the superior tuskers and made irascible at times. Did it work? Perhaps not but Rome wasn’t built in a day and, somewhere in all of Zimbabwe, there is a scrum cap buffalo wilder than a feral pig in a peach orchard with a nasty disposition who has dodged natives’ snares, been run by wild dogs, chased by spears and is hopefully carrying a poacher’s ball or two in his hip.
And I am hopeful that the sadness he felt at the death of the elephant, the euphoria of standing in the spray and the internal giggles in the blind followed by the excitement he felt of the possibility of a buffalo actually coming along and him being able to wake Lin’s sleeping ass up teleported him to his youth. To that little boy who was always far too excited to ever hit a deer, or anywhere close to one, whose breathing was always far too heavy and whose heart was always beating far too hard and far too loud – loud enough that oftentimes he could hear it beating through his open mouth – for time after time after time. For three years he hunted hard and at 13 deer he shot before he ever hit his first, a doe, with a Ruger No. 1, sitting beside his daddy in a 4x4 plywood box on borrowed land - nearly half a decade after every other boy in his class had already done so. And he still remembers it, like yesterday, breathing so hard his daddy had to tell him, “Ishmael, calm down; the time to get excited is AFTER you kill the deer.”
And when it finally happened and she dropped, he was so excited he called his grandparents, and all his friends and his parents videotaped him at home with their VHS camcorder with blood on his cheeks and he wanted to sleep outside in the cold December night with her. And for so many years afterward he would have to remind himself of his daddy’s advice everytime he would look through his scope and his crosshairs would be dancing.
Before they fish, Ishmael has business. He heads to his room, grabs his backpack, places it on the bed, and pulls out an envelope with the words “Last Will and Testament” printed across the front. Opening the envelope, he reaches inside and counts to 65 and retraces his steps back to the dining hall. Lin is at the table. Ishmael approaches and hands him the $100 bills and asks, “Is this enough to reserve a buffalo, sable next year in Makuti and get me to the park tomorrow?” Lin fans the cash and says, “I’ll have to see what I have on quota.”
“And a PH who doesn’t sleep in the blind?”
“I’ll see if Tine’s available,” he replies smiling.
They catch a few vundu, feed a crocodile some guts and tour the park the following day and the following day, Lin drops Ishmael off at the airport where he begins the process of mentally preparing himself for the afternoon of the lady’s metamorphosis from baby-wanting to baby-making.
Epilogue
And you thought Ishmael was going to be rescued by a fish poacher searching for his long-lost son while floating in the Zambezi clutching a pelican case. But we’re still here – me two spaces down from the Weatherby and he dreaming of the buffalo who will cause him to hear his heart pounding through his open mouth.
FINIS
Chasing the Dragon by Medicine the Rifle