CULLA MANSE'S LUCK

Drove down the dirt and gravel drive around dawn every Wednesday morning, trailing the rural mail carrier in his old F150. Only three houses on the straight shot three mile drive. One a retired chicken farmer, two others apparently in contest to see who could accumulate the most dead cars and car parts in their yards. The retired chicken farmer had the most land, a wide rambling swatch of overgrown green offset by broken backed chicken shacks, tin roofs rusted, wood siding nail-scarred and riddled with the climbing tower of dirt dauber nests. In the warmer months the fields covered up in sunflowers, huge green stalks set with staved yellow stars. Meant to knock on that farmer's door every year. Meant to bring him some deer meat or duck or wild turkey or hog, hat in hand, asking sheepishly for permission to spend a long afternoon sitting butt on a bucket, waiting for small gray birds fluting amongst the flowers to flush and wing about the field so I could aim and shoot and miss as many as I knocked out the sky.

Took me seven years to knock on the farmer's door. But I did, finally, and he said yes, and asked if he could hunt with me. Culla Manse, a widower of 20 years, and blissfully retired chicken farmer, said he planted sunflowers every year with the intention of baiting dove, said he had dove hunted since he could hold a shotgun, said he been meaning to get back at it as he'd given it up years ago, didn't like killing things no more, and suddenly, now, had the thirst for it. Culla wore a Pointer chore coat and high-backed overalls even in the 90 degree heat. He smoked an old briar pipe whose bowl wound and wiggled into chaotic non-shape, a strange knob of wood alit and smoking and smelling of cherry and spice. He didn't say much. He didn't need to.

Agreed to meet him opening day before dawn. Pulled up in front of the farmhouse. The front door hung open bright with light. Walked in and smelled biscuits and sausage and eggs and coffee. There at the long heavy oak table sat Culla in his chore coat and overalls cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife. He motioned for me to come in and told me to help myself to breakfast. Told me about the last time he'd gone dove hunting. How he and his daddy and his daddy's daddy shot so many birds they failed to retrieve them all. Covered up the tailgate with them. Mound of limp gray blood-pocked and stiffening. He sipped coffee and picked at a biscuit. Daddy called it beginner's luck, he said, smiling. He always called it that, he said. Culla's .20 GA rest against the wall. Smelled smartly of gun oil. Culla stabbed his mouth with the pipe stem, lit a match, puffed, smoke took and rolled.

Dove weren't moving at shooting light. It was loud as any other morning, squirrels whining and barking, birds chattering, the sounds of shotguns booming in the distance--dove hunters who'd lucked up and were covered up in as many as they could shoot. Culla sat a good 100 yards from me, but I could still smell his pipe. Saw him in my mind cleaning his nails, flicking the half moons of dirt off the knife's blade, scraping again at the thumbnail, the sweat heavy on his face and beginning to roll thickly about his neck and back, the chore coat soaked through and dark with sweat. I felt myself falling asleep. Then I heard Culla's gun. I stood in the field and saw him wheeling below winging dove, swinging the old .20 and firing, breaking the gun, reloading, firing again. He missed the lot of them, but when they came back around he took them all, a whirl of aiming, firing, reloading, hulls flying, shots ringing out over the field. He turned and saw me and while I couldn't see his face, I knew he was smiling and I knew he would not sit back down on the pail, that he was going to stand until he got another shot, gunpowder now overtaking the pipe's smoke, his ears still ringing, shoulder aching and recalling that old shock of wood on bone, his eyes somehow tighter, heavier, younger. He looked at me and pointed skyward and yelled. Beginner's luck, he said and laughed. I knew then I would not put a single bird in the bucket.