24 September 1975
He is Willing to Die to Make It Happen
“I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to give me a gun,” the boy said, trying to pull the huge flowered quilt back over his head. But Nathan had a good, tight hold of it. “You certainly don’t know me very well. I don’t want to go duck-hunting. It’s four o’clock in the goddamn morning. I want to go back to sleep.”
“There will be no swearing in this house,” Nathan said. “And it’s actually four forty-five. And I’m only asking that you try it with me this one time. If you don’t like it I won’t ask you to go again.”
“I shouldn’t be forced to do things against my will.”
“You agreed last night that you would do this. I’m only asking you to remain true to your word.”
“Well, I don’t remember why I said I’d do it.”
“Because you wanted me to show you the exact spot.”
“Oh.”
Nat sat up. Swung his legs over the side of the bed. Sat rubbing his eyes. Wearing only a short-sleeved tee shirt and faded boxers. Looking somewhat resigned, but a full measure short of cooperative.
Maggie, who had been spinning in circles around Nathan’s knees, suddenly reared up on to her hind legs and kissed Nat on the nose. As if to say, why on earth would you want to stall at a time like this?
“What’s she all wound up about?” the boy asked Nathan.
“She loves to go hunting.”
“Oh,” Nat said. “Well. That makes one of us.”
Nat seemed quite content to walk away leaving the bed an unkempt mess. But Nathan ran through it with him, and they worked on it together. Nathan taught him to make hospital corners, he working on one side and Nat working on the other.
Nathan made a point to ignore the rolling of Nat’s eyes.
Then Nathan attempted to bounce a quarter off the bed, with less than remarkable success.
? ? ?
The boy was sulky and quiet on the drive to the lake, but he showed something of himself by reaching back to scratch Maggie’s head. At least, Nathan felt he was showing something from the inside of his recalcitrant bad-boy shell.
Maybe Nat didn’t realize that he was allowing, and displaying, a certain vulnerability by openly bonding with Nathan’s dog.
Nathan made a mental notation: Ertha Bates had said if there was something this boy responded to she had not stumbled across it. But Nathan had discovered a chink in his armor already. Nat responded to dogs. He wondered if the Bates home had ever included pets. He didn’t suppose it had.
He looked briefly over at Nat, who met his eyes defensively.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Nat took his hand back from Maggie’s head, sat facing forward, and sulked with his hands in his lap all the way to the lake.
Maggie leaned into the front seat, as far as she could get without breaking the rules, and even went so far as to let out a few quiet, thin whimpers in Nat’s direction. But Nat stared out the window as if he hadn’t heard.
? ? ?
“Check to see that the safety is on,” Nathan said as they unloaded the car in the dark. “And then carry the weapon so it points at nothing. Up across your shoulder, or in the crook of your arm pointing forward and toward the ground.”
“But the safety is on.”
“With guns it’s best to be double-safe.”
They began the hike to the lake, side by side, Maggie bounding ahead.
Nathan charted a path for them by flashlight.
The sky had just begun to lighten. In five or ten minutes they would be able to see their own steps, unaided, in the fallen leaves. It was the perfect time to go hunting. By the time they reached the lake the flashlight could be stowed away, and they could set up behind the blind using only available light. But it would not yet be dawn.
It was the time of morning that always made Nathan grateful for his own life.
“I wish you wouldn’t make me ask,” the boy said after a short walk. “I wish you would just tell me, and not put me through having to ask.”
“When we get there,” Nathan said, “I’ll show you the place.”
About a tenth of a mile later, Nathan said, pointing, “Right over there. Under that tree.”
The boy walked over and stood looking down at a fresh blanket of the new season’s leaves in the near-dark.
Nathan and Maggie waited, respectfully, until he was done. Nathan even resisted the temptation to feel impatient as the sky lightened. The experience was like that of watching a mourner at a funeral approach the open casket in dark silence.
It was not a moment one could rush.
Several minutes later, Nat turned and walked back to Nathan and the dog. Maggie jumped up and hit Nat in the chest with her paws. It was strictly outside of the rules and she knew it, but just in that moment she had been unable to contain her own exuberance. Nat said nothing. Nathan chose to let it go by.
Nathan expected the boy to renege on his hunting commitment. Now that he had gotten what he wanted. Nathan expected him to flip his middle finger and head back to the car.
Instead he followed Nathan and Maggie toward the lake, head slightly drooping. As if he were suddenly too tired to argue the matter further.
? ? ?
The lesson in hunting did not go well. In fact in time it broke down completely, with Nat leaping up in the air and waving his arms to purposely scare the ducks away.
“Fly away,” he shouted. “Fly away, you idiots, or you’re going to get shot.”
They did fly away, the reflection of their collective wings beating across the water.
Then he sat down behind the blind and waited to see what Nathan would do.
“The acting-out you’ve been used to doing,” Nathan said, “will not be acceptable with me. While you’re with me you will behave like a civilized person.”
“Great. You want me to shoot things. Very civilized.”
“Do you eat fowl?” Nathan asked.
“Do I eat what?”
“Are you a vegetarian?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Then, yes. It’s civilized. What a man eats, he should be willing to kill. It’s not absolutely necessary that he do so, but he should at least be willing to face the reality of it. To eat a chicken only if it comes from the market is the height of cowardice and denial. Someone still had to kill it.”
Nat rose and walked a few feet away. Kicked at the grass for a moment.
When Nathan looked up again, he found himself looking down the barrel of the boy’s gun.
The gun was, of course, filled with light birdshot. And the boy was an inexperienced shooter. But still, it’s hard to miss a substantial target with a shotgun. Plus the kick would raise the muzzle some, and a pellet through the eye could certainly prove fatal. So it was conceivable, though unlikely, that Nathan could be killed.
He weighed and juggled these factors as the boy spoke his piece.
“You can’t civilize me,” Nat said. “You can’t make me stop swearing. Or learn to hunt. Or act like a gentleman, or be double-safe. I’ll shoot you down before I let you make me into something I’m not.”
“I want you to be what you are,” Nathan said, “only civilized. And the only way you can stop me is to shoot me dead, so if you’re set on stopping me, then I suppose you’d best go ahead with that now.”
The boy’s hands trembled on the shotgun for another moment before he let the muzzle drift slightly downward.
Nathan said, “All you’ve probably needed all this time was someone who cared enough to insist you behave.”
And perhaps willing to die to make that happen, he thought.
The boy dropped the shotgun and ran away.
? ? ?
When Nathan and Maggie arrived back at the station wagon about two hours later, the boy was waiting for him inside. It pleased Nathan to see this, but he didn’t make a fuss.
He placed his four ducks up front, in canvas sacks, two on the bench seat between them, two on the passenger floor near Nat’s feet.
“I won’t insist on this,” Nathan said, “but it’s a lot of work to clean and dress four ducks. I’d appreciate it if you’d help me.”
“Why did she do it?” Nat asked.
“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “I can’t imagine.”
“Think how it makes me feel.”
“I have. Many times.”
“Then my grandmother abandons me.”
“Cry for yourself for the first of those two events,” Nathan said. “You have that due you. But look hard at yourself about the second one. You did something to cause your grandmother to wash her hands of you. I just don’t care to know what it was.”
“What do I have to do to make you wash your hands of me?”
“There’s nothing you could do. I will never wash my hands of you.”
They rode the rest of the way home in silence.
? ? ?
Nat joined him in the garage for the cleaning and dressing. He wasn’t willing to gut, but seemed able to pluck out the feathers.
“We’ll put three in the freezer, and I’ll roast one for our supper tonight. Have you ever had roast duck?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re in for a treat.”
They worked in silence a few minutes, then the boy asked, “Do you know whatever happened to my mother, after they let her out of prison?”
Nathan froze in his movements, standing stock-still with a handful of entrails.
He remembered his promise to Mrs. Bates. He had agreed not to raise any issues she might deem inappropriate. But Nathan hadn’t raised this issue. The young man had raised it for him.
Besides, it struck him suddenly, Mrs. Bates was out of the picture. She was no longer raising this boy as she saw fit; she had abdicated that position. Now it was all about how Nathan saw fit to raise a boy.
“What did your grandmother tell you on that score?”
“First she wouldn’t tell me anything at all. And besides, if I asked she would start to cry. But last week I asked anyway, and she said my mother went off to California. That she was really busy trying to get some big career together, and so she never had time to write.” Then, with his hands still full of feathers, he looked up at Nathan. “Are you just going to hold those disgusting guts for ever? I’d let go of that mess really quick if it was me.”
“Oh,” Nathan said. And put them on the newspapers he had arranged to wrap them in. “In my opinion, she was wrong to tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not true.”
Nat looked up, quickly. Sharply. He dropped his half-feathered duck back on to its makeshift table with an audible thud.
Another chink in his armor, Nathan observed. He cares very much about the truth of this matter. And he is afraid to hear it. And also afraid not to hear it.
“What’s the truth?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you she died in prison. Just a handful of days after you were born. She had been bleeding. It had been a difficult birth. She developed sepsis.”
“Which is …”
“It’s a serious infection that gets into your bloodstream.”
“And they didn’t even help her?”
“She didn’t let anybody know she needed help.”
“Oh.” The boy picked up the bird again. Resumed plucking its feathers. “What about my father?”
“What about him?”
“I know his name. Richard A. Ford. Is he in jail?”
“No. He jumped bail. He’s gone.”
“I could find him. Maybe I could live with him.”
Nathan heard the hopefulness in the young man’s tone. Hated to dash it.
“The first is unlikely. He’s hiding from prosecution. If the police haven’t found him, it’s unlikely that you will. But I think the second half of that proposition is even more troublesome.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning … they say the best way to judge what a man will do is by looking at what he’s done in the past. He hasn’t exactly shown himself to be the loving-father type so far. In fact, at the risk of hurting your feelings or offending you, I’d even go so far as to say that your biological father is not a father at all. There are certain human qualities involved in fathering. I’d say that he’s more just a young man who accidentally got a girl pregnant. Look. Nat. You can try to find him. At some point in your life I’m sure you will. It’s the kind of thing people feel compelled to do. Just promise me you’ll be prepared for a disappointment.”
A long silence, during which Nathan couldn’t imagine this a fitting end to such a conversation. “I’m not sure why your grandmother didn’t tell you the truth. I think she had this idea that certain truths are not suitable for young people. But I feel differently. I feel that the truth is simply the truth. And that to shield someone from it is only a manner of treating that person with a lack of respect. I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way, though. I’m sure she was doing what she thought best.”
No reply.
“I’m sorry. I know these must be hard things for you to hear.”
“Yes and no,” Nat said. He did not elaborate.
Nathan chose to leave him alone about it for a time. In fact, for as much time as seemed warranted, however long that turned out to be.
? ? ?
They sat down together to a roast duck supper with applesauce and mashed potatoes.
Then they both stalled in a moment of strange reverence prior to reaching for the food. As if the situation at hand had stopped them cold, frozen them into the ice of it, like the surface of a lake in the dead of winter.
Then Nathan broke his own promise to himself. He asked, “Are you sorry I told you? Or is it better to know?”
At first, no reply. Still no reaching for food.
Then Nat said, “At least I know why she never wrote to me. Never sent me a birthday present. Or a Christmas present.”
“I did, though,” Nathan said. “I hope they were always passed on to you.”
“Yeah, every birthday and every Christmas my grandmother would give me a present, and she would say, ‘Here. This is from the man who found you in the woods.’”
His voice sounded different, which caused Nathan to look up, but the boy was looking down at his plate, expressionless.
“I’m surprised she told you about me at all.”
“I think she thought if she kept saying that to me … from the time I was old enough to talk … I wouldn’t think much about it if somebody else said it.”
“If she gave you a present from me every year on October first … then why did you act surprised that I still remember your birthday?”
The boy only shrugged.
“They may not have been the best, most appropriate gifts,” Nathan said. “I don’t know that I ever gave you what you wanted. Because I didn’t have the advantage of knowing you. Knowing your likes and dislikes.”
“I don’t think that’s the important thing, though,” Nat said. “I think the thing is, you never once forgot.”
“Well,” Nathan said, a bit embarrassed. “Let’s dig in, shall we?”
And he dished up the largest portion of duck on to Nat’s plate.
Politely using his knife and fork, Nat took a tentative bite of duck before even accepting the offered bowl of potatoes.
“This is good,” he said.
Nathan thought perhaps they had turned a corner. He expected that things might turn out all right between them after all.