FENCEROWS... Black Squirrel
By John Luthens
After the snowy dust settles on another gun deer hunt, the stories and memories remain. This was written to commemorate my son’s first deer hunt. He wasn’t old enough to carry a gun yet, but even if he had been, he would have been more intent on hunting squirrels than deer. He rustled around in the blind, moving about, and I’m quite sure that every deer within a mile’s radius didn’t work very hard to avoid us.
At first, I’ll admit I was somewhat disappointed at his lack of focus, until I remembered my own short attention span in the woods at his age. And somehow I turned out alright: more-or-less, anyway.
It’s a fictional story. But at least for me, there is a ring of truth at its heart.
Black Squirrel
We hunted; stalking our best, step by step and quietly. But the curved, white tails intertwined with stream bank slashings that were thick enough to keep even the squirrels out. The air was sharp and the clouds were sinking fast, promising snow, but there was yet no white cover. It was difficult picking deer against the gray-brown contrast of the thickets. It was tough going for an old man and a kid.
We contented ourselves the best we could in a wind-fallen balsam blind that had surrendered to a late summer wind storm. The stand sat banked between the hardwood ridge and the stream.
We judged the pines had not gone quietly. Roots were tossed in mounds, clinging to the life force of the earth. The shattered branches still breathed life, as if the trees were not content to offer a dead blind. Pitch and sap stuck to our gloved hands where we rested, watching the dark ridge roll into the stream bottoms.
“Do you see them?” whispered the boy.
“Not really. I see flashes of brown. Maybe there’s a bit of white when a tail flips up.” I whispered back.
‘I’m pretty sure I see horns.” said the boy.
“You have good eyes.” I said.
“Why don’t you shoot?” urged the boy.
“My eyes are older. They’re not as good as yours,” I answered.
The boy shifted his position, settling back into the balsams. His head slanted in my direction and his eyes narrowed; his mind deciding whether or not I had complimented him.
A sharp note blew from the bottoms. It might have been the warm greeting of a forgotten horse. But we were not in a summer pasture. We were hunting deer. A cascade of splashing came up the ridge from the hidden creek. Then it was still.
“Scented us,” I said, resting the rifle in my lap. Holding it so long across my chest, my muscles hadn’t had time to register the tense position. I relaxed now.
“They didn’t scent me. They scented you,” said the boy. “You should shower more often.” He dug his heels into the packed dirt beneath the pine needle carpet.
“That’s pretty good,” I said. “You’re picking up the finer points of the hunting business.”
He tried to look serious, but couldn’t help smiling. The deer had gone but still the boy’s face was unmarked by cares or worries. He didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he was learning.
We sat in silence for more than an hour. It could have been less, because time passes differently in a forested grove. I wasn’t sure and didn’t bother checking the watch. Shadowed light lengthens slowly, giving every pine a leaning chance to become its own sundial. It becomes the very essence of how time was meant to be.
Light swirled in from the shadows above. It was growing darker. Finally I did pull off my glove to see the watch, coming back from daydreams to the winding minute and second hands that dictate legal shooting hours.
The glove froze in space, stopped short by a soft rustling behind us. It was a whisper in the hardwood leaves, back up the ridge from our pine tree blind; soft, then gone-then soft again. It was a faint forest noise that sometimes only your mind creates.
But the boy seemed to hear it too. He had been watching light snow accumulating on the end of an upheld branch. He seemed fascinated with sticks when we sat together on a stand. Now his back stiffened and his neck came around, his eyes peering up the ridge as the crackling of leaves grew louder.
We sensed it coming. The whole herd was riding down on top of us. I kneeled and checked the safety on the rifle.
Then the boy started laughing. “That’s the biggest squirrel I’ve ever seen. For sure it’s the noisiest. It’s a black squirrel too.”
I’d forgotten how much noise one squirrel could make. I knew how they could be when they crossed back and forth through the leaves foraging for winter stock. But I’d forgotten. I laughed too.
The squirrel perched low on a branch, peering at us. Its back arched gracefully, its eyes were dark to match the shade of its fur, and its tail was full and bushy-nearly as big as the animal’s body.
“You don’t see many of them around here. They stick mostly to the pines, and we’re sitting in one of the only stands around. We’re probably right underneath his home,” I pointed to the thick branches above.
“It’s the coolest squirrel I’ve ever seen.” said the boy. “Look how he sits watching. Look at that tail.”
Snow came now in quick bursts through the falling pine shadows. The wind sung in the branches. It was not a cold wind. It was the exciting wind of a growing storm.
The squirrel rose on its haunches, front legs outstretched and folded in a look of quizzical prayer. The black bushy tail arched over and hung in front of the solitary creature’s shining eyes.
I stared from the balsam blind back at the squirrel. I lost myself in silence, thinking about the first time I’d seen a black squirrel; thinking how long it had been since I’d seen one this close.
The boy broke the silence. “Shoot it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why? Why would you even think that? I thought you said it was the neatest squirrel you’d ever seen.”
“I want the tail. I want to pin it on the side of my hunting cap.”
“I’m not shooting the squirrel,” I lectured. You’d look like a hillbilly with that tail hanging from your head. All your friends would laugh.”
“I don’t care. It would be epic,” the boy shot back.
I shook my head. “No way, I’m not shooting it for you. Anyway, we’re deer hunting- not squirrel hunting.”
I stood up and my knees cracked. The squirrel darted from its low perch and safely out of reach onto a higher knotted branch.
“If we don’t want to get lost, we’d better get going,” I said. “The snow can turn familiar woods inside out; especially when it gets dark.”
The boy took a last look at the squirrel and said matter-of-factly, “Whatever. I’ve been back in here enough. I know the way.”
“You lead and I’ll follow,” I said edgily.
We began to work our way out, the boy picking landmarks out one-by-one, and not hesitating. The black squirrel slipped away but its shadow followed. I hoped once again that the boy was learning.
Coming out of the heaviest of the trees, the lights of our cabin were visible as a dancing pattern in the distance through the snow and cutover timber. He stopped in a bent grass clearing, stepping over a remnant strand of barbed wire. The rusted wire was engulfed between two oaks that had grown up around it. There was only the one strand and I’d never known why it was there. Nothing in my memory recalled anything to fence in. I waited a few paces behind him. I could see he was thinking. The snow fell and sat heavy on our shoulders as we stood in silence.
The boy’s question came to me from across the worn wire fence. “Did you shoot a squirrel when you were my age?”
I found myself thinking carefully before answering. “Yes. I guess I shot a lot of squirrels when I was your age.”
“Why?” he asked.
“They’re good to eat.”
“But they’re not good to eat anymore?” questioned the boy.
“I would imagine they taste the same,” I said.
“But you don’t hunt them anymore. How do you know?”
“I doubt the recipe has changed much,” I said
The boy started walking across the clearing. The snow was measuring in inches now and I followed in his boot tracks. His stride was well measured in the snow and I found it to be nearly equal to my own.
He called back over his shoulder, “What did you do with the tails?”
I remembered the first squirrel. It had been a black squirrel. I told the boy that I did not remember the tails.
“Now you hunt deer,” he said. It was difficult telling if it was a statement or question because the tone was muffled across the wind swept openings of the snowy meadow and tree pockets.
“Yes. I hunt deer now,” I said.
“And when I finish learning, then I will hunt deer too?”
“Yes, I guess. If you grow to understand it, grow to respect it-then you will slowly grow to love it. Then you will hunt deer.”
We were almost home. A warm fire would beat back the storm. There were deer mounts with stories along the fireplace wall too. In front of the fire that night, we took apart the rifle, cleaning the chamber and barrel with a bit of oil and rag. The boy finished the final detailing, rubbing the grained stock into a high polish, while I plowed my way to the woodshed for an oaken night log.
I stood on the porch, the heavy split wood in my arms, watching and listening. Snow fell heavy and still. The wind was gone.
I wondered of the black squirrel; what I had done before the first antlered head found its way to the cabin wall. Was it so long ago that I had stood trembling under that hemlock with a .22 rifle unslung and smelling fine of fresh powder? Was it so long ago that I’d forgotten that squirrel. Had I not cut the tail and carried it in my hunting jacket for purposes now lost to the ages? Why could I remember the moment so well, remember the squirrel, but forget the tail. It was not mounted on the cabin wall among the antlers, but was it not as important? Maybe it was more important.
Through the open door I saw him gently place the rifle in the rack. Wandering to the table, he absently pegged a few holes on the cribbage board that sat in its immortal and proper place next to the worn deck of cards. He had no patience for cribbage. He flipped a card and glanced at it. Gazing for a moment upon the mantle mounts, he came to stand with me at the door.
“Rough going tomorrow, by the looks of all that white stuff,” I said.
The boy nodded, “It will be easier to pick them out now, though.” He kicked at a drift by the door, adding, “I’ll get through. Deer got to walk in it. I’ll be able to make it just fine.”
“It’s not you and the deer, I’m wondering about,” I said.
He weighed my words carefully.
I went on, “If you get out early, you can break a trail-maybe figure out what’s moving in the fresh snow. A strong kid like you should be able to handle it.”
“What will you do?” He asked.
“I guess I’ll eat a good breakfast,” I answered. “If you cut a good track, I’ll be along later.”
“What if I see a buck? Should I run back and get you? Maybe I should just tackle it.”
“No, don’t worry about the deer. I was thinking maybe you should take the .22 with you. Head for that pine grove where we sat this afternoon-see if that black squirrel is still there. Probably there’s more than one climbing around in there,” I said.
“I thought you said we are hunting deer, not squirrels,” he questioned.
“I’m not hunting squirrels,” I said. “But if you get a couple, I’ll show you how to skin them out. Cut the tails off right, and they’ll keep for a long time you know.”
He shivered. Maybe it was the cold. Probably it was something else.
I breathed in the snow rimmed air. I felt fine, and why not. We were hunting together. I walked inside, put the final log on the fire, and got ready for bed. I said my prayers under the deer mounted wall.
And in the morning, I rose and sat up on my bunk, and he was already gone, as I knew he would be. But I was with him as he stood in the pines, as he stood, maybe debating, maybe wondering where it would lead; the rifle bead on that first black squirrel.