And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (6 page)

This was the part that scared me the most. I loved the idea of being out in a field with a dog or other people and shooting the bird. That seemed so sporting, so regal. And I liked the idea that I could prepare one to be served. But it was the required action in between that made me nervous. I watched a series of videos in which American hunters of questionable dental stability displayed their preferred means of field dressing a bird, which consisted of standing on the bird's wings, grabbing its feet, and pulling until the head, spine, organs, and other nontasty bits were pulled off like an old sock. The men demonstrating would cackle, then pull out a knife that looked like it had been purchased at a truck stop, and cut off the wings, leaving just the pinkish breast of the bird. I'll hand it to these men, it was efficient. The whole process took less than a minute, but turning an animal inside out didn't exactly inspire hunger or desire.

There was another method I found equally repugnant, involving a device called the Bird Hitch. Essentially, it's a hook that fits onto the trailer hitch of your hunting truck. You jam the hook through the bird's neck, grab it by the wings and pull. It's dismembered in seconds, leaving the hunter with nothing but breast meat and wings. I threw up a little when I first saw it. Not a full upchuck, but one of those ones that rise up into your esophagus like Scooby-Doo peeking into a dark attic. Yet, I couldn't stop watching because the video was not just one guy in a field, but several in several different settings using the Bird Hitch on several species. Pheasant, geese, ducks. All came apart with equal and apparent ease. It was an infomercial for drawing and quartering, an obvious attempt to drum up sales of the device, which made me wonder—who came up with this thing?

I imagined a group of semidrunk hunters sipping on Old Milwaukee and tediously going about cleaning the day's haul around a campfire with knives.

“Boy,” says one, “field dressing birds is just such a pain.”

“I know,” says another. “I spend all day in the duck blind shooting only to come back to camp and have to spend hours dismantling these geese.”

“If only there was another way,” the first says.

Then, as if from the clouds, a baritone announcer chimes in: “Now there is an easier way!”

“There is?” the two befuddled hunters say in unison.

“That's right! Never take the time to properly care for your prey again, thanks to the Bird Hitch!”

“The Bird Hitch? What is it?”

“It's only the greatest thing to happen to evisceration since the Spanish Inquisition. The Bird Hitch makes low-grade mutilation easy and convenient, and it looks good on your truck too.”

“Wow!” they say in unison. “Thanks, Bird Hitch!”

I found other videos, mostly done by British sportsmen and chefs. These were decidedly more sedate and somehow more humane. I realize the incongruity of saying that I wanted to treat the birds I would theoretically shoot with a bit of dignity. After all, I would have just forced little bits of lead into them at fourteen hundred feet per second, but it somehow mattered. I wanted to be a hunter, not a killer, and grabbing a bird by its legs and yanking it apart head-through-asshole felt more like something a killer would do than what a gentleman hunter would do.

Soon, it was time to announce my plans, to tell somebody, anybody, what I had been doing on all those late nights. I needed to make my intentions known so that they would become a reality, or else I might content myself with surreptitiously watching videos late at night or reading in spare moments at the office. Sneaking off for private moments of hunting research was beginning to feel illicit, sneaky, like a preteen boy sneaking off for a few moments of vigorous self-exploration. I needed to tell somebody so that it didn't feel quite so dirty.

At a dinner party for our wives' moms' group, I pulled John aside and told him my plan.

“I'm going to learn to hunt,” I told him.

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What are you going to hunt?”

“Pheasant.”

“That's cool,” he said. “You got a gun? A license? Anything?”

“Got a gun, but nothing else.”

I told him what I knew about the license process and gave him a rough outline of what I wanted to do. I'd make my way out to Iowa in the fall with my dad, telling him I wanted to go hunting. I'd tell him I wanted him to take me pheasant hunting with Uncle Mark and some cousins. They wouldn't expect much, given that I had never been before. But I'd spend the next six months preparing, learning everything I possibly could about hunting so that when I showed up, I would already be as close to an expert as possible.

“They'll be surprised,” I told him, “because they won't need to teach me a thing.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” he said. “What's Rebecca say about it?”

“I haven't told her yet.”

“Well, good luck with that one. You gonna write a book?”

“To be honest,” I said, “I hadn't thought about it.”

He went off to get a couple more beers and I felt more excited than I ever had about the prospect of hunting. It felt like I had passed some sort of initial test. And I couldn't wait to see the look on my dad's and Uncle Mark's faces when I showed up and kicked some pheasant ass.

I told Rebecca a couple of days later about my plan to become a hunter and, to my great surprise, she was fine with it.

“Knock yourself out,” she said. “Just don't shoot your eye out.”

That may be one of the things I love most about my wife, her ability to be completely unironic. And, to be honest, I had expected a good deal more resistance to the whole thing. I realized later that I may have needed more resistance. Instead, her approval meant the only obstacles I had to becoming a hunter were the ones I would create in my own head. There were plenty of those, not the least of which was the simple question of why I would want to do such a thing.

I think in the very early stages, it's because I was grasping for something. I was looking for something that would make me feel more like a man. But a month or two after my late-night revelation, I realized learning how to hunt would do little to improve my feelings of masculinity. Becoming a hunter wouldn't undo the uncertainties I felt about my career choice; it wouldn't fill my bank account and suddenly put us in a position to buy a house and settle into the life that had for so long surrounded us but that we had not been able to live. I had been desperate in thinking that it would.

So what was it then? Why was I even more determined than ever before to do such a thing? It was because I felt like an outsider, a pretender, a faux adventurer content to live through other people's exploits. When I was in a room or at a party and someone would tell a hunting story, I would tell one of my dad's or recite something I had read in Hemingway. But I didn't know what it was like to walk off into the woods in pursuit of dinner. I didn't really understand what my dad and uncles and cousins got from being out there. You tell your grandpa's war stories when you're in high school and they somehow feel like your own. But, at some point, it's time to stop telling other people's stories and simply enlist. I have told a few of my dad's army stories dozens of times. I've told other people about the day he shot a bear in Canada. I've done it at parties. I've done it in meetings. And I've been crushed by the shadow of legacy, of having to tell my father's stories because I had none of my own. I'm too old to join the army, too entrenched in my life that I was beginning to realize was only half lived. I realized it was no longer good enough to have his stories, because I could not have a perspective built on his experiences. I needed a perspective of my own, to live my own stories, to tell my own stories.

There was also the curiosity. I wanted to know what it felt like to be out there, in the woods or on the field with purpose. I wanted to understand why highly unromantic people like my dad and family seemed so romantically drawn to the pursuit. I wanted to know what it was like to carry a gun, to listen to the sounds of the woods, to taste protein I had procured. I was well beyond the notion that learning to hunt would somehow make me feel more like a man. I was beyond the Hemingway code. Instead, I was driven by curiosity and a desire to once and for all feel what it meant to have stories of my own.

I had so few, particularly ones that were so grown-up, so adult. There were stories from my beat on the paper in Virginia, from college, and from life with Rebecca. There was our engagement and marriage, but those seemed like the last vestiges of youth, not the full-blown tales of adulthood. We had some. The birth of our kids, for example, or the child we lost to miscarriage, surviving soul-crushing debt and coming out better for it, but these aren't the stories you tell around a bonfire. These are stories you tell yourself when you're alone and in rush-hour traffic, the ones you tell no one.

I remained devoted to the idea that I could learn to hunt not because people were expecting me to do it, not because I had told a hundred people and they were watching me closely, but because they weren't. Because it was unexpected. Because I wanted to do something disruptive and to understand better what hunting was about. And hunting was, at that time, the most disruptive thing I could do.

Plus, I wanted to carry a gun into the woods and maybe stop somewhere along the way to pee on a tree.

That would be a story worth telling.

PART II

SPRING

6

Long Road to Iowa

I
checked my mirror three or four times, hoping not to see lights. I don't know that what I was doing was illegal, but I imagined it would be, at least, frowned upon. No cops. No cars. Nothing behind me but miles of highway rolling out like a ribbon, much closer than it appears. The cruise was set at seventyish and I was trying to adjust the zoom on my iPhone camera while maintaining control of the steering wheel. I wanted the photo that I could see out ahead of me, but it was hard to balance driving, paranoia, and my Ansel Adams vision for landscape photography. I'm just glad my wife wasn't with me. I can't imagine what she would say about me taking pictures while driving. True, it's not texting, but it's not exactly safe either.

I love driving through the Midwest. I love the farms, the wide-open spaces, the mild shock of coming to a city or town with multiple exits. It's like finding treasure in the sand at the beach. And on this drive, western Illinois is something to behold. It was only April, so the corn wasn't up and most of the trees were still without leaves. There's just something about being alone in a car surrounded by that much space, that much all-over nothingness. It's completely different from driving alone in other places. In the Virginia Blue Ridge or the Oregon Cascades, you're not really alone. You're never alone in city traffic; there's always other motorists, pedestrians, stoplights. Out here, on Interstate 74 west of Peoria, you can check out for a while.

I snap a couple of pictures of the road rising in front of me. A truck in the distance, farm fields creeping up to the edge of the blacktop like strangers. I'm on my way to my uncle's funeral. He died suddenly, without warning. In some sense, the best way to go. No hospice, no dreary hospital beds, nothing pending or lurking in the future. He just went upstairs to the bathroom and never came back down. I decided the moment I heard that I would make the trip. In the Midwest, in a family like mine, you don't miss these kinds of things. Miss a wedding, maybe. A baptism, that's understandable. But a funeral, you go. My cousin Chris was flying in from his home in Kazakhstan. He's an oil field engineer. My parents, sister, brother, and niece were driving in from Cleveland. They, at the moment I snapped the photo, were somewhere north of me—west of Chicago, but not yet to the line.

With eleven hours to myself, I did a lot of thinking. I thought about my uncle—the oldest of my grandparents' nine children. Third brother up from my dad. He was the family historian. The know-it-all, but in a good way. He was the kind of guy who talked to everyone he met. He was the kind of guy who got endless enjoyment from an old farm implement catalog. He was never fancy. I remember seeing him in a suit just a couple of times—my cousin's wedding, my grandmother's funeral. He wore funny-looking suspenders, and his beard looked like the hide of a mange-ridden dog. He was serious, in his way, but also not. At his oldest child's wedding—which was held in the pasture a hundred feet from his front door—he built a big bonfire by way of a rehearsal dinner. After the sun went down, he brought out a mason jar filled with clear liquid and a moldy-looking peach. A little white lightning someone had given him as a thank-you gift for some unknown favor. Uncle Don embodied all that Iowa has come to represent to me.

I thought about him as the miles ticked by. I thought about the way he told stories, how he took me to the Surf Ballroom when I was in college so I could see where Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper played their last concert. He never forgot about the Big Bopper, even though history generally does. Once, when visiting with my wife and kids, he tried to convince me to take my sons to see the World's Largest Tractor. He spoke of it as transformative, as if seeing it would cure all the wrongs my suburban life had foisted upon me, my sons, and my conception of manhood. I didn't go. I should have gone.

And thinking about him got me thinking about other midwestern men. My dad, my uncles, those I am related to and those I have come to know. Their stoicism. Their ability to stand up and face a fight. The way they talk about doing what's right and what's good. They don't like taxes, they shoot guns. They are patriots. They liked Ike. How many other great men have called the Middle of America home? Well, off the top of my head: Henry Ford, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Wright Brothers. Ted Nugent is from Michigan. John Wayne. I'm reminded of Herbert Hoover as I pass his memorial highway just east of Iowa City. Bob Feller and Jim Thome. Warren Buffet, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, Abraham Lincoln for God's sake. Harry Truman was from Missouri, I think that counts. Ronald Reagan. Charles Shultz. Walt Disney and Ray Krock. Michael Jackson was from Indiana, though I'm not sure he counts. But Larry Bird and Magic Johnson—Indiana and Michigan, respectively—certainly do. Harry Houdini claimed to be from Wisconsin, though he was born in Hungary. Miles Davis, Ely Lilly.

The writers alone who called the Midwest home make for a staggering list: Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmore Leonard, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow. Jonathan Franzen is from Illinois. Two of my personal heroes, Bill Bryson and Garrison Keillor, are from Iowa and Minnesota. The lists go on and on.

All my life, I thought I needed to be from somewhere else in order to be the person I wanted to be, but the more I drove, the more I realized I was already from somewhere. As the miles wore on, past Waterloo and on the home stretch to Mason City, I contemplated the men of the Midwest. I thought about all their accomplishments that, inevitably, led to a critique of my own. I'm in my thirties, a husband and a father, and, yet, I don't feel like a man. I feel like a watered-down version of a man. I certainly don't feel like any of the men listed above and don't even feel like a Heimbuch man. I feel like my life is too much about compromise. That's not to say that being a man means living without compromise, but I do feel too ready to give in, too willing to cower, to hide from problems, and to shy away in the face of opportunity. I realize that, if I am ever to become the man, the husband, the father, the writer I want to become, I need to learn how to face life standing up.

I
spent two days in Iowa for the funeral. I shot about five hundred rounds with my brother and cousin at the shooting range my uncle Mark has built on his property. I slept in his basement and listened as he explained the finer points of gun mechanics, hunting laws, and the latest thing that has him pissed. I realized I don't allow myself to get pissed. I don't roar the way he does. Uncle Mark has kind of a famous temper. When he witnesses something that he feels isn't right, he speaks his mind. When his kids do something stupid, he'll yell himself hoarse about it. But, inevitably, he hugs them and helps them out of the jam they've gotten into. He told me stories about the jams he's been in. He told me about getting in trouble in college, about my dad getting in trouble. He embraces his failures. I've never been in trouble—not really—and yet, I tend to run at the first sign that I might be wrong—cover it up, silence it. It makes me feel weak, to hear someone talking about how they've been wrong. Because I could never do that, could never admit it.

Hours were spent in small conversations. My dad and his cousins told hunting stories. My cousin told me about the time he did something that got him in hot water, something brave and unthinkable for me. My dad told the story about the first time he went deer hunting. He was younger than I am and already married with two children. He was so scared he shot the same buck three times. “They told me to keep firing until it went down,” he said, laughing. I tried to relate to the story, but, really, I couldn't. I don't know what that feels like. I don't know the nerves, the twitching hands. I don't know what a real adrenaline rush feels like. I don't know the thrill of the hunt. My best adrenaline story involves working up the nerve to ride a roller coaster that was particularly tall. What kind of a man am I when I don't know what it means to tell someone off when they have it coming? When I have no idea how it feels to be in the wilderness possessing the power of life and death?

I chided myself for not understanding what the other men were talking about when discussing their guns. I berated myself for not disagreeing with Uncle Mark when he said something about President Obama and “those damned Democrats who won't leave Bush alone.” I wanted to tell him that the Republicans were still blaming Clinton seven years after he left office and that the fact that we're still paying for two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—not to mention tax cuts—just three years after President Bush left office is worthy of disdain. But I demurred. I chickened out. I tried to tell myself that it's about respecting my elders, about blending in, and that discretion is the better part of valor, but I am not brave enough for valor, so I say nothing.

I mentioned to my cousin Tommy that I was thinking about coming out for a pheasant hunt in the fall. We were sitting in the basement at Mark and Linette's house. I was staying in the spare bedroom down there, and neither Tommy nor I could sleep all that well. I think after a couple of days of potlucks and receiving lines, we were both a little tired of nodding reverently and accepting or giving condolences. So we played video games.

Strange that in my midthirties, Tommy, then sixteen, is the one I feel the most comfortable hanging out with. I guess in some ways you just never leave the kids' table.

“I'm thinking about coming out in the fall to go pheasant hunting,” I told him during a particularly quiet game of video football. He didn't exactly drop his controller in amazement, but he didn't say anything either.

“Cool,” he said after a pregnant pause.

“Do you think you could help me figure out what I need and schedule the thing?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. And I tried to imagine what my reaction would have been had one of my older cousins asked me to help him or her, had they taken an interest like that. I would have been flabbergasted. I look at old photos of family gatherings and can never remember what circumstances led up to them being taken. Even now, all grown up with a family of my own, I think about how separated I feel from my generation on my dad's side. My mom's side? Well, I don't even know all their names, let alone have a private memory of a time spent together with them.

But Tommy and his brother, Will, are different. Will is thirteen years younger than I am, Tommy another three years younger than that. But they've always felt more like siblings separated by distance than cousins. Maybe it's because Uncle Mark has always felt like more than an uncle and Aunt Linette more than an aunt. Maybe it's because they are the people in the family my parents are closest with, but I've always loved being with them.

Once, when Jack was small, Rebecca and I went to visit Mark's brood in Iowa for a long weekend. We spent long days just chatting, letting Will and Tommy play with Jack in the massive yard and listening to Mark tell stories about a family that was mine and yet something so unfamiliar. That tends to happen in big families. There tends to be one or two siblings who move away and their children are raised apart from the rest. We were those children, my sisters and I, and my dad was one of those siblings who left. Mark never left. He remained, an epicenter in a family bound for a quake. He and Linette built a house on the property where my grandmother had spent nearly her entire life. They did it to help her, to be there, and to give their boys an upbringing they could never get living in town or in another state. I listened for hours as Linette told me about my grandmother's favorite recipes, how she liked to can blackberries from her garden near the back of the seven-acre property, right next to the shooting range.

We'd have a bonfire in the yard in the evening and after Jack had gone down and Mark and Linette had gone to bed, Rebecca, Will, Tommy, and I would stay up late playing cards and singing silly songs. Here were two boys in the throes of adolescence, on the cusp of the independence that comes with driver's licenses and high school football, yet it seemed like there was no place they would rather be than with us, playing canasta and cracking each other up with falsetto versions of Stevie Nicks, singing about the white-winged dove.

Still, for all this familial bonding, there were reminders that in addition to being great hosts and kids cool beyond their years, Will and Tommy were still brothers. Will has always been the quiet one. The brainy one who loved to get his little brother's goat. And at that point, he was probably fifteen and developing that cockiness that comes with pubescence. But while Will's confidence was growing, Tommy's temper was inherited from his dad and was already in full blossom. Most of the time, it was pretty simple. Little jabs from Will, big demonstrative lashes from Tommy. Will would tell Tommy he was an idiot, Tommy would tell him to go to hell. But on the second-to-last day of our trip, I witnessed something truly amazing, something that astounded me as the much younger brother of two sisters, a man so afraid of conflict that I refuse to send back food when given the wrong order.

Will and Tommy were helping out a neighbor across the street. Apparently the neighbor was out west and the boys had agreed to take care of his dogs. This involved crossing the road a couple of times a day, getting the dogs out of their pen, feeding them, changing their water, and tossing a ball for a bit. Will had been riding Tommy's tail for a good bit of the morning and since the afternoon sun was getting pretty hot, we had decided to take Jack inside and lay him down for a nap. While we were doing that, Will and Tommy had gone across the road to perform their duties. I went back outside and was wandering about the property under the cool shadows of the ancient oak trees when I looked toward the road and saw Tommy coming back. I would say he was walking, but it actually seemed more like the stride of a man on his way to murder his wife's lover and he was muttering under his breath like a deranged homeless person.