The Hunters

This is how it was, rolling through the black of night on an open prairie highway. The headlights from the big red Chrysler would make the painted lines of the highway streak in front of the oversized hood emblem. The pale green glow of the speedometer dimly lighting up the smooth red leather cab as we would eat turkey sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and sip consomme soup from a red plastic cup. It was thanksgiving, and like every other thanksgiving since 1975, I was going hunting.

Each year we would arrive at the same stretch of land somewhere west of Winnipeg. My dad, his dad, my cousin, and my brother. We would all sit in silence as we listened to my grandfathers New Yorker slowly scrape along the mud caked paths of the freshly harvested fields. There were rules. Hunter etiquette implied that you should not hunt a field that is already occupied with other hunters. Many times we would sit with the engine running, peering into the darkness, trying to look for other hunters hiding in the fields, or stray cars disguised as hay bales. Hunters always wave whenever they pass each other, by car, or on foot. They would look us over as we went by, projecting an analysing smile. We rarely shot anything. My dad and grandfather always seemed much more interested in the taste of a cold beer drunk in the crisp wind, and blackened toast covered in butter from the Coleman stove, instead of killing water fowl. They would often stop the car and comment on a particularly large flock of geese, look for a moment, and drive on. Their unloaded shotguns would rest on the front seat of the car, dangerous, but free. When I was young, I wanted action, and would often get impatient as they sat there analysing each field, watching the other hunters through binoculars. I never brought a gun myself, just didn't think of it. So I was at the mercy of two hunters who were not about to crawl through the ditch on a whim. But when we did step out, into the dawn, things would get more serious. The hunters would load their weapons, my brother, cousin, and I would converse over who would go with who. I would often pair with my dad. Lying in the hay field as the sun was rising, the sound of the stiff straw poking at my down filled Canadian Squire jacket. We would wait, hiding, as thousands of geese would fly high, too high, over our heads. But every so often, a stray flock would come through. My dad would rise, quickly, his body recoiling as the 12-gauge would fill the air with a hard, sharp, ring that flattened the ears. Often nothing would drop from the sky, sometimes something did, it didn't matter. Like true sportsmen, for us it was about being outdoors, watching the cyclical forces of nature at play. Mixed with man's destructive influence no doubt, but fascinating all the same.

When you repeat something, year in, and year out, you are able to organize time in to concentrated fragments. We all aged in that car, and in those fields. Each time I stepped into that familiar openness I would achieve another right of passage into manhood. I went from arguing over chips with my brother and cousin, to being able to drive the car, to being hungover and reeking of booze in the back seat, to getting ready in the morning with a woman sleeping beside me. It seemed as if it would never end, but as the years wore on, the trips got shorter, and the hunters would get older. My grandfather's rifle was eventually replaced with a cane, until finally, his usual seat in the Chrysler empty because he was too sick to travel. When he died, the whole thing stopped.

That must have been sometime around 1998. And while the geese continue to gather in the fields, every year, forever. So do the hunters, by remembering the thunderous chorus of a thousand birds rising out of a field all at once. The beeping sound a car makes when the door is left open as you stand on an empty gravel road to pee. The taste of canned potatoes served on a paper plate, and the way my grandfather emblazoned his name on everything he owned in huge letters with a black marker. We might not be there, but we linger, somewhere in Manitoba.