BURGER SCOOT

In my teenage years, my father, brother, and I were briefly into pheasant hunting. My father and brother loved fishing. I mostly came along to skip rocks until they told me to stop–I was scaring off the trout. But one year (some time in my high school years), my father bought some Remington 12-gauge shotguns, and we all attended a gun safety class. When we finished, we all received a nifty orange patch, and Mom sewed them on our new hunting vests. For what lasted only one season, we spent many Saturdays in November and December walking my dad’s friend’s alfalfa fields with a family friend and his two springer spaniels, two of the worst hunting dogs in North America. The pheasant hunting trip captured below hadn’t happened yet, our excursions consisted mainly of: getting up way too early, eating at some 24-hour greasy spoon, walking up and down an alfalfa field until it became too warm, then set up the clay pigeon launcher, and shot the shit out of the sky until our shoulders got sour from our shotguns’ recoils, then we would go home or visit burger joint before disbursing. It wasn’t until the very last time that we came home with a pheasant, two or three, actually. This was mainly due to no pheasants hanging out with the alfalfa except a few times when the two dogs saw rabbits or other non-game critters and ignored their master’s command to stay put and took off. In the distance we could see game birds flying away. I don’t know how many times these dogs spooked what we thought should have been our pheasants.

Sometime during this brief romance with shotguns, I accepted an offer from Rick, the older kid next door, to go duck hunting with him. I’m sure I thought it would be just like the pheasant hunting I had been doing. But it wasn’t. The morning Rick and I went duck hunting, we loaded his rusty old truck with shotguns, shells, wader overalls (I had to borrow Rick’s morbidly obese dad’s wader overalls), and jackets and drove in his truck that honked every time he made a right (or was it a left?) turn. Whichever way it was, I impishly waved out the window at strangers who slowly waved back, mouths agape, trying to figure out who I was. Rick hated drawing attention to himself and cursed through his teeth when the truck honked. It was all I could do suppress laughing out loud.

I don’t know where we were when Rick parked, someplace where the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers helps create the California Delta. But when we were gearing up, I realized I was too narrow for the wader pullover he had me try on. The boot portion was at least three sizes too big, and the waist made me look like Jared, that degenerate Subway spokesman, swimming in his old jeans. Rick did what he could to tighten his dad’s waders on my smaller frame, but I felt my body stiffen walked into the blind and I realized we were in the freezing Delta waters. Unlike the pheasant hunting I had done, I couldn’t walk; I was told to stay relatively still. (Clarification: I didn’t have a thermometer handy and there were no chunks of ice floating by us; “freezing” is just the way the water and my Sacramento body felt in it.)

Rick had a duck caller that looked more like a hash pipe than anything else, but when Rick started calling on it, all I could think of were raspberries. It looked like a stoner’s pipe and sounded like a party gag. It was all I could do from laughing every time he blew that thing, and I was already on Rick’s shitlist for sporting the orange gun safety patch. He said ducks could see that thing. A few minutes later, I heard some real ducks and raised my Remington to the sky, only to hear Rick say they were too high. I wondered if they could see us or my orange patch.

After an hour or so, Rick said he would scout around for another blind. I was hoping it was an Four Seasons-style blind or more like a Comfort Inn with a space heater, couch, hot chocolate maker, an Amana Radar Range, and of course, a television–I was missing out on my weekend fix of cartoons, damn it. (Funny I didn’t think that was when I was pheasant hunting.) While Rick was out, I had more room to move to warm up my legs and feet. (By this time, I had lost feeling in my toes.) But when I started sloshing around in the cold water, some of the Delta poured over the side of my waders and down into my feet and ankles. Now I really was miserable.

When Rick returned to the blind, he had welts on the lower part of his face. I asked, “What the hell happened to your face?” (Yeah, just like that, because I was growing tired of this duck hunting shit, me and my numb feet.) Rick said nonchalantly that he had been “rained on.” Birdshot had rained down from the heavens and landed on his face. I didn’t question this, I just assumed he must have been looking up. From that point on, I swore never to look up while I was in the Delta, which meant if I were going to discharge my shotgun I would be firing by the sound of duck quacks.

About 30 minutes later, Rick said it was time to go. I was so excited to leave that if my feet hadn’t turned into ice blocks, I would have beaten him to the truck even if it did not have a heater. I looked back at the blind wanting to give it a good riddance raspberry, but Rick had put his faux-hash pipe away.

When we were within a mile of home, Rick pulled into the neighborhood A&W. I was uncomfortable to the point that I would rather go home and warm myself up. This is not my normal. If I learned anything from my mother, it’s that if you are going out, make sure you throw a meal in with the event. Although my mom wouldn’t consider A&W as the lunch stop, my taste wasn’t so sophisticated.

Rick pulled up to one of the parking spots, rolled down his window, and asked me what I wanted. Teen Burger and fries was my order through my rattling teeth. Rick ordered a Papa Burger, fries, and an A&W root beer in a frosty mug. I cut in asking if any of those birdshots had corrupted his mind, it was still freezing. Rick had the person on the intercom wait while explaining “reverse chemistry.” He said to me that the chill of the root beer would cause a reaction in his body, and while it would warm up the liquid, it would also warm up his whole body.

I quickly told him to order a frosty root beer for me, also. I want to warm up via reverse chemistry. While waiting for our lunch, Rick told me stories of freezing explorers in the South Pole breaking off chunks of ice to eat to stay warm. I had no bloody idea how the human body worked. I had only taken one science class in high school (the only one needed to graduate), and I spent most of that time trying to look down my science partner’s blouse.

Some years later, I told my hunting stories and how I didn’t think “reverse chemistry” really worked, and didn’t think it was a real thing. Gary, an avid hunter and outdoorsman, told me first that he had been “rained on” many times and that it didn’t hurt at all, much less cause welts on the skin. “If he got welts on his face, that is because someone in an adjacent blind leveled his shotgun and discharged it.” Eek! He also told me there are blinds that are completely dry and out of the water and blinds that are in the water, but you climb into and they are dry, finally he said by my description I was in a lousy blind. (It made me think there might be some Comfort Inn blinds out there afterall. Finally, Gary told me there’s no such thing as “reverse chemistry.” (I knew it, I remember freezing even more after drinking that damn root bear!) And if you are in the Arctic, Antarctic, or wherever and need to get warm to the point that you would eat ice, that must mean you have hyperthermia, and if someone doesn’t come along and save your ass, you will most surely die. This part was verified when I read Bill Bryson’s excellent A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, where Bryson retells some horrific stories of people stripping naked in freezing weather because hyperthermia has set in. Well, so much for reverse chemistry, Rick! If I would have paid more attention in that science class I’m sure I would have been able to correct Rick in his unheated, honking truck, but like I said, I was too busy trying to look down my science partner’s blouse.