THEY ARE GOING TO COME

Always believe they are going to come. Standing waist deep in the swamp. Watching your breath trail off in front of you. Look at the openings in the trees. Hear the snipe but never see em. One day you'll get one. Did I load the gun? I can't remember. Safety off. Red means dead. Check to my left. There's Cole. Right there's John. Sydney is quiet for once. Maybe she won't pull John into the beaver dam again. Is it shooting light? Is this snow? Yes it is.

Snow's here, Cole says. Flakes big and wet. Disappear as they hit the bill of my wax hat, my waders. Turn to water on the foregrip of my shotgun. My hands are red. I blow on them. Here they are. Two woodies through the gap on right. They hit the water before anyone fires. They are in front of me. Bust em, John says. Get up, I yell. Both woodies startle and leap into sky. Burst of white feathers drift slowly down on the water. Both ducks flat, their heads hanging in the water. It's quiet again.

Always beleive they are going to come. Behind us more woodies. Maybe four. Shots ring out. I have no shot. Hen doesn't light. Keeps turning round the swamp. Two drakes come back round and drop in. They are dead before they hit the water. Mallards, three maybe, before anyone has pushed air through a call. It's snowing hard. All guns booming. Smoke rolling. Smell of gunpowder. Call em, boys, Cole says. No tellin who killed what, John says. It's quiet. Sydney is let loose and does her thing. One and then two ducks and back to the dam.

Wade out a few feet and grab my two by their feet. Hear them coming left. Load load load, pulling shells from the loops in my waders. Shot chambered. Aim. There right there. Lead him. There. Boom. One down. Two to the right lighting. John fires. Cole fires across. Calls the drake. One away. Turning through the pines squealing and then gone. Quiet. Syndey retrieves. Snow has turned to cold rain. Sloshing through the swamp. Hear a mallard come in. Cole is at the swamp's bank on opposite side and points to him with the barrel of his gun. He fires. Throws the mallard forward and he pounds into pine. Dead there at the ground. Steel shot patterned out like constellation on his chest.

The cabin is damn near tropical. Fire roars. Logs snap and crack. Going so well it groans and swoons. Sweat rolls off us. Beers crack. Whisky comes out. Grocery sacks emptied of tupperware of duck breasts and backstraps and venison hearts and livers. Charcoal's ready, glowing. Outside to round up the birds. Throw them in the cooler. Pull a few aside and start dressing on the truck bed. Stripping feathers. Handfuls of them. Feathers in air and drifting and stuck to fingers and waders and flowing along with the snow. And there's blood. Bright and red. Few steel pebbles of shot. Follow along the breast bone. Two soft bloody brown lobes of meat. Wipe the knife on my leg. Grab another bird.

Where'd you come up with that name, I ask. It aint exactly a real recipe, John says laughing. Name bout as dumb as they come. Duck balls. Ducks aint got balls, least none I killed. He pulls the sliced breast meat from the Kraft Italian dressing marinade. Wraps meat around hunk of cheese, sliver of jalapeno. Wraps thick piece of bacon around the mess and stakes it with a toothpick. Mexican taught us this in Texas when we hunt that rice out there. Goddamn they could shoot. Made me blush. They call their birds like they was playin pool. Damndest shit ever seen. I can hold my own with a rifle, but I cant come close with a shotgun. Never have been able to get that quick. It was like they known where they birds were gone be before they did. Like they known their patterns. Remind me of a coach that studies film. Aint no game out there in Texas.

Snow is stickin. I have to drive 50 miles home. Cole says I-75 north turned into parking lot. Have one them duck balls hoss. Work off that buzz you wearin. We hear John whoop from inside the cabin and run in. Biggest goddamn fox squirrel I ever seen, he says. Points it out and it big as a housecat. He grabs the Mossberg from the chair and my wax hat off my head and runs out after it, the snow pounding down out the sky around him.