HELP WANTED

Carson Dobe been a sod farmer all his life. His daddy and his daddy’s daddy were sod farmers. Part of pioneer families here in Huber. Come late November he run a small classified ad in weekly newspaper under HELP WANTED. Call on bird hunters specifically. But says any hunter with good eye’ll do. Dobe’s got a goose problem. Had one since he start farming sod. He used to keep it in check with an old Remington pump but his sight’s gone far south. Cataracts and whatnot. So now he stir pot searchin for “local talent.” No money involved. Just love of the sport. Good morning’s shootin. About all.

Chip Stanse come into the paper office Wednesday morning after paper printed and sent out and he slam the classified section down on the counter and there’s Dobe’s ad circled in red marker and Stanse put a dirty finger on it and says, Me and you got shootin to do.

Stanse he never struck me as a sportsman. Not that he don’t hunt and fish as day is long. His methods? Rather unsavory. Been brought too many blurry Polaroids of him and the new “county record” buck out of goddamn season too many times. Seen too many stringers full of giant largemouth look dynamited rather than brought to hand honestly. And that don’t even include fox, coon, coyote pelts he got coverin ever single living surface he come into contact with. But I shook on it and walked down the way to H&H Hardware and bought two boxes three inch steel and cleaned my gun that night and met him in the Beulah Baptist parking lot at dawn. I endured the ride and the pages torn from Oui and Juggs and scotch-taped to the El Camino dash and glove and the floorboard covered up with crushed Natural Lite cans and wads of chaw spat out and stuck to and dried up into black brown knots.

Dobe met us at the gate. Never seen him in flesh before. Tow headed and pink faced and his cheeks thick and high and so fleshy his eyes gone to slit and rove red as sow’s. His voice come breathlessly and his lungs cut his speakin short and he come huddled under coughin and then trail off wheezing something terrible and wavin us on. Stanse tell him, Get in the bed. Dobe stood the tailgate and it whined and screeched and he lumber into the back and the El Camino sink down inches from its tire tread and Stanse gas her and she crawl on up ahead, Dobe wheezing and smiling from the back. Dobe struck the cab with his fist and Stanse stopped and Dobe point at a beatup jonboat and me and Stanse get out and wipe the spiderwebs out the boat and put the guns in her and set her on the pond lip. No sun in sight.

Come right out ways north here, Dobe says, breathing heavy, pointing his fat pink hand to treeline. Get up close to treeline and you’ll tear them sumbitches apart. Stanse broke the double barrel and loaded it. He popped the plug out his .870 and ran five shells up its gut. I loaded the Browning, checked my calls. Stanse set the jonboat to water and sit in the bow and set his guns around him and I got in and pushed off with the gun stock and we drift out into the pond, Dobe standing there on the bank smiling and wheezing. Stanse grab his .870 and row with the stock. Row us crossways the pond slow and then flush up flat with the treeline.

This no limit shootin, Stanse says. Dobe done declare them nuisance. We kill as many as we hit. Stanse shove a wad of chaw in his mouth and chew over it slow like a cow.

We set in the boat and watch our breath roll out and Stanse look at me and says, You gone blow that fucken call. So I blow into it and got it rollin well and it sound like four or five Cans grabbassin around the water and by His grace response come hoarse and chopped and awkward from away, that warbling honking as a billon bike horns bein squeezed on. Stanse point his twin barrels up treeline and we see them comin fanned and scattered in jagged V and wide and thick in formation and Stanse fires through the bald trees and it’s louder than it seems the doublegun should sound and there a mist, faint red mist like quick dead dew spittin from clouds. Dogs all about Huber bark. Crows startle from treetops and squawk and drift out from above and settle beyond the pond. Explosion of feathers. Black and white and grey and they fill the air and fall. Drift to water and rest and float. Little Brim strike them like they bugs. Two geese thud into the boat. Another drops at stern, its head blown to the wind, body poundin roundabout, feet twitching.

What are you shootin, I yell at Stanse.

He smiles at me. Buckshot. Double aught. Bring the mist don’t it.

I point at the dead Cans in the boat. You gonna eat these.

Stanse frowns. Spits. Oh fucken hell no. They eat up worse than hog liver. Spose we give em to the niggers.