FEATHERS AND FINS

When a sodden Hank Lyons stepped from a cover sloping away from the East Bucksport Road, the wind-whipped November rain struck him like a string of spent shot. Tucking his chin onto his chest, he squinted through the stream of water running off the bill of his hat. In the narrow strip of field edging the cover, Hank turned and listened intently. When he attempted a sharp high-pitched whistle, it skidded off his lower lip and fell in a soggy sputter.

Cursing, he took a deeper breath, but expelled it when “Jake,” his English pointer appeared ghost-like in the gray and shivering alders. Not until the dog was nearer did the sound of his bell penetrate the smother of wind and rain. “C’mon, you,” Hank yelled. “If there’s a bird in there, it’s wearing webbed feet.”

When they reached the station wagon, Hank lowered the tailgate and with an easy bound, Jake leaped onto it and ducked into the dog box. As his intense, amber eyes glowed through the wire door and his bloodied tail did a drumroll, the hunter chuckled. “They didn’t put an ounce of quit in you, did they, boy?” he said shutting the tailgate.

With a swipe of his hat, Hank helped the defroster unsteam the windshield as he turned onto the King’s Mountain road and headed toward Brewer. Handy to Fields Pond, the wind ripped open another cloud and its contents fell with a force the windshield wipers couldn’t handle. “Man,” Hank thought aloud as he pulled off the road, “If I’d scratched around a little I think I could’ve scared up something better to do today.” Was that an affirmative thump of Jake’s tail?

With the hush that follows a faucet being shut off, the downpour abruptly subsided. When Hank continued toward Brewer, raindrops as big as buckshot struck the windshield and it seemed that the wind was short of breath. Seemed, that is.

Now a flood of ambivalence began flowing through the hunter’s mind: “Maybe I ought to try one more cover…. Nah, from the looks of things, I’d say most of the woodcock put that wind under their wings during the night; I’d better head home and get wrung out…. Course it could have brought some birds in, too…. What the hell, I can’t get any wetter, I’ll swing by Whiting’s Hill and take a look along Burr Brook.”

At that time, a small vegetable stand stood in a turnout near the railroad crossing at the foot of the hill. After leaving the station wagon there, Hank and his steaming hunting partner slogged along the tracks, crossed the brook, and followed the edge of an abandoned bean field. As they approached a somber sprawl of alders accented with birches and poplars, Hank noticed that the spaces between the rain drops were skinnier and windier. No sooner had they set foot in the cover when the sky split another seam. Literally, it roared rain.

Brimming over its banks, the brook swaggered like a young boy wearing his older brother’s jacket. Now and then, the chiming of Jake’s bell changed to liquid notes as the hard-hunting pointer lunged back and forth across the flow. As they neared the end of the cover – where it became trashy with swale grass – Hank shook his head as he shifted the 16-gauge Ithaca pump from one rain-puckered hand to the other. Turning toward the watercolor-like wash of umbered field, he yelled, “C’mon, Jake, let’s get out of here.”

At the edge, he paused and listened. No sound of a bell spilled from the soggy wind. Hank Lyons really didn’t want to go back into that cover. His clothes were clammy against his skin and the rain that his hat squeegeed from his hair ran cold fingers down his neck. Home and a hot shower were only minutes away, but somewhere back in that cover his hunting partner’s silence was shouting “bird” – and Jake never lied.

Hank crossed the brook and thrashed his way to the far side of the cover where he stopped in midstride. Beyond, in a strip of plowed ground, the liver-and-white pointer was curled into a stiff-as-starch point.

“Pheasant, surer than hell,” Hank allowed as he hurried toward the dog. But instead of the cackling rise of a ringneck, a woodcock twittered upward. The bird folded when rain beading the barrel of the shotgun burst into mist.

Aside from a quick toss of his eyes toward Hank, Jake never moved. Directly, another woodcock spiraled straight into the air from almost beneath the hunter’s boots – in fact, he caught it as it fell. What happened next was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. When Jake went to fetch the first woodcock, which was wing-tipped, it bounced upward directly in front of him. In a long leap, he caught the bird in midair – and struck the ground on point. That bird tumbled before it reached the top of its rise.

Suffice it to say, those furrows were full of woodcock. Flight birds that no doubt dropped in shortly before daylight. Discovering the smorgasbord of worms, insects, grubs, etc., forced topside by the rain, they were feeding among the furrows before resting. It took only a few minutes for Hank to fill his limit of five birds.

With difficulty, he then worked Jake back to the railroad tracks. As he trudged along the ties, the extra dog bell in his jacket clanked in time with each boot-squishing step. Little did he know that the tracks they were leaving would one day emerge as warm memories of a November rain that roared and woodcock found in a furrowed field.