MAYBE GETS YOU THE BIRD

Never saw the bird, much less the shot. But I pissed myself a little when his gun boomed and then smelled cordite and heard Major Marvin Applewhite's wheezy laughter. Bitch sent off with instruction to Get her girl. Don't even know if one would call this shootin light. Still dark to me. Sky's hazy. Orange. Mostly red. Like blood dribbled in water, legged, dilute. Ride over the marsh with the sun run across the horizon in thin red smear and Bitch chewing herself while Marvin sit quiet behind the wheel, spitting dip into an empty Bojangles cup. Said he hunted snipe since he was 10 years old. Said Alachua County run over with snipe. About like squirrels in Georgia, he says. When he talks his face crawls about itself and undulates damn near reptilian. He's clean shaven. His head shiny and gleaming. Like Yule Brenner in the movie about Moses. His arms move stiffly when he talks. Swear you can see blood running through them. He must sleep with his weights. He's knotted up like a sailboat, run over with line and curve.

We come up on the dock and Bitch leaps out and he grabs the guns and flashlight and we step out on the dock and he stands there and looks at the sunrise and spits dip in his cup. Bitch whines. Marvin shushes her and gives her water from his squeeze bottle. Hold this, he says. I shine the light on him. He breaks the .20 and loads. He checks his boots. He sprays deet all over hisself. You best wet down or you gone get drained all your fucken blood, he says. I spray myself. Enjoy this walk up the dock cause it's last solid ground we gone touch.

At dock's end the ground gives away and we're knee deep in marsh. Bitch sloshes ahead. Marvin whistles to her. She slows. Marvin stops. He listens. He waves me to stop. He whistles. Bitch sloshes ahead. Bugs are in our ears and nostrils and fight to get in our mouths. My feet are wet. I struggle to stand. Bitch whines. Marvin waves me to stop. He rubs a finger of dip into his lip and sucks at it and spits. Sun's still not up. Sky's like blood. Whipporwills sing. Their song warbles and comingles and it sounds as one song and then the song sounds a pulse, the song taut and repeating and the song then drawing up all around it, and then the song thrown out amongst the marsh.

Bitch lunges out the mud and sprints through a run of wiregrass and scampers far ahead. Marvin lets her loose and waves at me to stop. He turns to me and whispers. Now you got to give yourself a reason to shoot. Might not think there's a bird there, flushed out the grass. Might not be. But maybe they is. Maybe. It's maybe you got to lean hard on. Maybe gets you the bird. If you think and feel maybe you best shoot. Maybe got me a heap of birds. Maybe been good to me. Marvin spits lazily and dip runs slow down his chin.

I'm scared of Marvin. Always have been. Calder Watts tell me he killed a man in Gulf County. Said he was tradin beers and shots at some honky tonk one night and this sumbitch down the bar goin off about how he laid pipe to Sue Bob, Marvin's ex-wife, and Marvin never tried to piss out that belly fire. He let it burn on. Calder said he'd never known a man to care what happened to his ex. Most men he known want their ex graveyard dead. But Marvin's approach differ. Calder said he beat the sumbitch in the head with a tire iron, gut him with a K-Bar, and left him for the hogs. Don't doubt it. Marvin never given me a reason to do so.

Here we is, Marvin whispers. He runs, but soft like. He picks up his legs high as if he's high steppin into paint cans and it's not loud like it should be; it just sound wet and slosh a little bit. Bitch so stiff she look like she in full rigor. Tail fed fishbowl of Viagra. Marvin turn to me. I'm out of breath. Hunched over at the knees. He puts his hand on my back. You can eat the whole fucken thing, he says, slowly. Snipe shit before they fly. You roast em head on. That long ass beak run out they face. Splay them snipe guts out on piece of Wonderbread. Suck em up like sketti. Crack they heads open and scoop they brains out. Don't need nothin else but a little catsup. See Bitch. She turn stone. Feel and think maybe. You feel it. Feel like electric shock. Like how you feel when you go and make choice that might could fuck some shit up. Either way you know what I mean.

Ever since Calder told me that story about Marvin feedin that sumbitch to the hogs I can't think of him none other way. Like I see him only set in some assend trailer in Wewahitchka, packin rounds, dip running down his chin, that poor sumbitch out in the swamp eaten down to bone, covered up with turkey vulture. When Marvin's .20 booms I see vultures scatter in black blurs and see that poor sumbitch's ribcage bleached white by the sun and smell the salt and sulfur in the air and that dead smell like a paper mill lit afire. When Marvin turns and looks at me and wheezes loose with laughter I see only his eyes, and even though Bitch is barking and whining like she's caught up in barbwire, I hear only Marvin, and watch his mouth move slow and his dip stained chin roll and his arms pump blood, his eyes sharp and white as he wipes his chin and whispers, Maybe gets you the bird.