The Old Man sat in a deep-bottomed arm chair with his sock feet propped on the hearth. Flames from a stout fire rumbled up the flue. He struck a kitchen match on the bricks to light a pipe, and I watched the flame sputter and grow as he held it in his hand.
“Pull up a chair,” he said, and I did.
It was rare to see him stationary very long, but the temperature outside was flirting with the single digits. The duck season was on hiatus and there weren’t enough quail around to hold his interest anymore.
In one corner near the chimney sat the makings for new trotlines, as yet unassembled. There was a big roll of waxed nylon line, bags of swivels and boxes of hooks. They lay in the bottom of a slim foam cooler. At some point, I knew, he’d combine these elements to create the chief tools for our next summer’s adventures. For now, though, he was content to watch the fire burn.
A few logs shifted in the grate and sparks drifted up. The wood was some that had appeared one day in a heap in the yard, a dumptruck load of red oak chainsawed into fireplace sections. I’d spent afternoons after school splitting it with a big maul and a pair of wedges.
The pile had started out more than head high to a boy, which was me, but, by worrying at it a couple hours a day, I began wearing it down. For want of anything better to do I stacked it neatly to one side of the yard and watched the stack grow, which proved to be a good idea. The unspilt pile hardly changed, but the split stack grew quickly. There was going to be a lot of fireplace fodder rendered once I was done. When I’d reduced the unspilt pile by half, I knew I could make it. Eventually, I did. Now it was gradually turning to ash as it warmed the house and marked the hours.
A small pile of books lay near where the Old Man sat, with a newspaper folded to a completed crossword puzzle on top. He drew on his pipe and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.
“I was enjoying your deer hunt when you came in,” he said.
I’d spent a cold morning on the Noxubee Refuge a month before and had told him the tale. We’d acquired one of the first climbing deer stands any of us had ever seen, and I’d gone along with an older cousin to a place he knew. We’d crossed the Noxubee River in the dark on an icy log, then I’d been directed to find myself a spot alongside a slough as my cousin drifted away, seeking his own spot in the dark. I’d picked out a pine tree and climbed as high as I dared.
As daylight broke, I’d watched two does and a spike pick their way along the water’s edge. They were the first deer I had ever seen in the wild. The does weren’t legal game in those days, and the spike got downwind of me and trotted off before I could get a shot.
At midday, I’d climbed down, then gotten half lost searching for the place I was to meet the rest of our party. I didn’t get lost, though, or fall in the water or out of the tree and, while I didn’t get a deer, it had been a pretty good adventure all the way around.
I’d related all this to the Old Man, taking care to include the truck stop biscuit that had begun the day and the return trip across the river at day’s end.
“Don’t you want to take one of the climbers and go deer hunting yourself?” I asked.
“The thing about going out in the cold is, you don’t have to do it every day to get the gist of the idea,” he said. “I’ve done it enough times already. The experience is enough to let me fill in the gaps for myself and enjoy other people’s memories.
“I have my hunts, and my memories, but most of all I have my experiences. That lets me enjoy the stories in magazines and the tales I’m told, almost as much as if I’d been there.”
“But just almost,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said with a knowing smile. “The tree you shimmied across the river on was about the same size as the one you split in the yard. Why don’t you throw another piece of that one on the fire, and tell me about crossing the other one one more time.”
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 24 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
