People have been whining about too much pro wrestling talk, not enough music, and the fact that my movie reviews are bad. So I've decided after much personal debate and a decision to throw my own self criticism away, that I'll post some of the prose and plays I've written and continue to write. Most of what you'll see over the next few weeks/months is stuff that was written for classes since that has been edited by legitimate writers.
FOREWARD: I wrote the following short story for my Art of Revision class second semester Junior Year. This draft is the 3rd of 4, so there are some minor grammatical issues as well as some brief things I'd like to change. Pheasant Fest Eleven
I stared out the window onto the setting sun. It cast a nice arch of color onto the town skyline, Fort Royal, North Carolina. My birthplace, my home. Every single time I look out onto the setting sun I think for a second, not about the beauty of the sun setting, not about the science of what makes the sun glow and what makes night and day happen, but about life. It was going by and that sunset meant one more day was ending. One day closer to our deathbeds.
“It’s really that time of year already?” Buck said under his breath, calling my attention span back to the murky ammunition store.
“Damn right it is,” I tell him, “Pheasant-fest is the best night of the year.”
“Well how in the hell do you do Pheasant-fest when your brother moved up to god damn Yankee village three months ago?” Buck asked, unlocking a glass cabinet and removing two boxes of rifle ammunition.
I rub my hand on my chin slowly, stroking the ends of my moustache. “I don’t know. I go out with a gun and shoot me some pheasants.”
“Aw fuck you Harvey, you know what I mean. You think you’re creative enough to come up with Pheasant-fest by your own damn self?”
No, I wasn’t.
“Yeah, I came up with it.”
“No you didn’t you moron, it was in this store Marshall came up with idea when I told him that round this time of year the pheasants always feeding late at night.”
He got me, god damn Marshall coming up with these cool ideas in public places, taking all the credit.
“Well let me tell you something Buck,” I told him, “Tomorrow night when I have eaten a delicious pheasant for dinner and am wrapping up the leftovers, I’ll mail some to my Yankee traitor brother and you can write a love note to him and slip it in the package.”
Buck chuckled under his breath, “Yeah at least I have someone to send love notes too Harv, how long has it been since you had a little,“ he winked at me,.
Jesus man, if there is one time of the week that I always want to seem like my wit is sharper than it is, it’s when this fucker takes a stab at my love life.
“I don’t know, why don’t you ask your sister,” I said.
Wow, I’m funnier than I thought. I walked out of the store before he could come up with something that was worse. Not the first time I’d done it.
And so it always was at Buck’s Ammunition Station, I bought ammo there for huntin’, protectin’ the property and shootin’ cans in the yard. He’d always give me lip about one thing or another, but I think he was just jealous of me. But Pheasant-fest was indeed a special time of year. You see, when my brother was 20 and I was 18, we came up with the idea of it. The pheasants round this part of North Carolina have a three month period of the year when they feed at night, and not like one or two of them went out and grabbed some worms or something like that, but the whole herd, or flock, or whatever it is you call a bunch of birds. Marshall, decided that once a year, me and him would go out into the woods, and hunt as many pheasants as we could in one night and pack ‘em up tight and make ‘em last as long as we could. It went from a basic idea to a ritual, went from being whatever night we felt it should be, to the first full moon of May, you see the full moon makes it so we don’t even need flash lights aside from walking to and from my truck. It went from grabbing a six pack of beer at the truck stop to stashing some Sam Adams Winter Ale in my fridge from December all the way until May. It was pretty much the most bad ass thing that any human could do, aside from maybe stranglin’ a grizzly, which my Uncle Frank claims he did once. Bull shit I say.
Times have changed since the now legendary Pheasant-fest one. As Buck so clearly stated, my brother Marhall got a job in New York. He fixes planes. He used to do that out here, but the pay wasn’t very good and according to him there was no room for “growth.” When your job is tightening screws on the wing of a plane, how much growth can you expect to really have? I dunno, he up and left about three months ago to take a job where he’s being “properly utilized” as he said when he told me he accepted the job. He moved out of the small house we inherited from our grandpa and up to Albany. Now it’s just me. I do plumbing work mainly, a little carpentry when my neighbor needs some help and has a few bucks to toss me. I got a decent life overall, steady income, nice things, so on and so fourth. People keep asking me why I don’t have a wife, especially cause I live in a house that is very facilitating towards family. I say, “When the time comes my door is open.” Porn will keep me occupied until somebody knocks. I mean, who gets married and settles down at 29?
I picked up my cell phone and flipped it open. As I entered my contact list I scrolled down to the M section, right below my boss Mark, was Marshall. I felt like I was standing on Kate Hill’s porch before prom with my little pin-on flower. This is not a feeling I get often. Should I call him? Why hasn’t he called me? He’s the one missing out, so why am I the one holding the phone attempting to call his dumb ass? He couldn’t ask for time off at work or nothing? I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket and the butterflies that were dancing around inside me turned off the music and settled down. His loss.
I walked by the convenience store that I lost my virginity in, and the diner where my Dad got arrested for public drunkenness. The whole town was ageless to me. None of these places were ever gonna go out of business and it seemed like none of the people were going anywhere. Well, except for Marshall that is. I got down the street to where I parked my car, in front of the hardware store. That was my first job.
And out of the blue I saw a familiar face crawl out from the evening shadows dressed in torn jeans and a Fubu t-shirt. Do black people even wear Fubu anymore?
“Harv! Let me come with you, I know you want the company!”
It was the Colonel.
“No Colonel, you can not come to Pheasant-fest. This is a Moss family tradition.”
Colonel’s name wasn’t really Colonel. His name was Joe Sanders, and when we were like 15 someone called him Colonel Sanders and then slowly his god given last name was shaved from the nickname.
“Where’s the rest of your damn family then Moss?” he asked, sounding like a little girl.
“Shut up Colonel, go back to your little closet at the Y, you ain’t got no right askin’ to hang out with me when you can’t even afford to buy a hot meal.”
“Hey man, I’m a veteran! I fought in Afgahnistan! Not my fault people ain’t wanna hire me!”
“You got kicked out cause you kissed a dude.”
“So what?” he started flailing his arms like a queer, “I’m still one of your oldest friends!”
“Yeah okay, I have two rules for friends, rule one is you need to have a job, and rule two is you don’t canoodle with no other men. And if you break one you ain’t my friend, so you broke two so that means you’re doubly ain’t my friend.”
Colonel shook his head at me.
“Can I at least hitch a ride to the parting, it’s only a few miles from the Y, I lost my bus pass.”
I rolled my eyes. The Y was basically on the border of ours and the next town over. The forest was sort of a natural barrier separating our town from theirs and there were a few buildings scattered between the two. We sort of isolated ourselves off from the rest of the state. I never knew why, but there was probably good reason for it.
“Yeah but you ride in the bed, I don’t want no homo trying to interfere with my driving putting on his Pop 109.3 and dancing like you did last time I drove you somewhere.”
I dropped the bed hatch and Colonel hopped in, dangling his legs from the back like a fruit. Figures.
I got in the front door and revved the engine, I started driving and watched the little bitch scamper to the back of the bed and pull up the hatch like a pig runnin’ from the sound of a shotgun, or a pheasant runnin’ from the sound of a rifle. That one makes sense and kind of fits the situation. I’ve been trying to get better with my vocabulary and literary shit.
Seeing Colonel in the back of the bed reminded me of the days when me, him, my brother, and my brother’s friend Jack Evans would all ride in the back of my dad’s truck during the Memorial Day parade with our Native Scout headbands on. I shook my head a bit, shaking out those old times. For some odd reason for the weeks leading up to Marshall’s departure, the Colonel had starting popping up at bars, diners and church when we were there and he’d sit with us. Marshall always tried to stimulate conversation with him and include him. But me, I had no desire to. I mean he broke my rules! Well I only really made those rules because I wanted to keep him out of my face when he would go around asking for a cigarette or a couple of dollars for a milk shake. He wasn’t broke exactly, he just was living off of money his parents left him when they passed. It was enough to survive, but not in any great way. He could probably get out of the Y if he tried, but that homo-shellshock is probably keeping him there. Marshall asked him if he wanted to move into our house once he left, but I remember yelling so loud as soon as those words left his mouth that I was asked to politely leave. Apparently church picnics aren’t supposed to exceed a certain volume.
“Cherokee Hills Forest:” the famous sign said, with the flip-open one below it reading, “Hunting Season: Open.” I smiled and slowed the truck down, rollin’ down the window and stickin’ my head out of it.
“Hey Colonel, the bus stops here.” I hollered.
“Okay Harvey, I appreciate this a lot man. I hope that one day you and me can be friends like we was,” he started saying, “I know you and me don’t agree on certain things, and that I’ve broke your two rules-“
I pulled away before he could finish. He didn’t know I made up the rules for him. I’d never tell him either. My Dad always says that homos can do no good for the world. I don’t know if I really agree with that, but for right now it works.
And so I drove into the parking lot and stopped up at the gate. I turned off the radio and hit the shattered interior light to find that little envelope. “Cherokee Hills Gate Key” there it was. Buck had some connections that could get us in to do this whole pheasant thing, and five years in the guy bypassed Buck’s ammo store and ended up dropping the key off personally to the house. This shit was pretty serious, if you hadn’t gotten that impression by now.
For the first time ever I had to open the gate. This was Pheasant-fest eleven, and for the past ten I drove the truck and Marshall opened the gate. I kept the headlights on as I walked to the gate, stickin’ the key into the small lock and gently pushing open the gate. It swung open slowly, and it made a real eerie creeking sound as it swayed slowly. That was strange. I mean, it was Marshall’s job to open the gate and handle the key. It just started to hit me how different this was without my brother around. I started to tense up a little in my shoulders but figured that I couldn’t stop now because what would Buck and the Colonel and Marshall say if I told ‘em it felt wrong going into the forest. Buck would try and set me up on a date with the Colonel or something as a joke. It wouldn’t be the first time he tried it.
So I got back into the truck and parked in the lot nearby, taking my flashlight, the six pack, and my rifle out of my backseat. My old backpacking framed pack was in the bed, as was the ammo I had just bought. I eagerly yanked the pack out of the bed and loaded everything into the bottom compartment, you see the top was for carrying all the pheasant carcasses. Generally you fill a framed pack with enough shit for you to live off the land for a few days, but me, I preferred to throw in dead birds. I felt up the bottom zip up portion of the pack where I kept my butterfly knife to finish off the pheasants that didn’t quite die with the rifle. It was still there in one piece. Good to know that some things don’t up and leave.
And so I ventured off into the forest, walking slowly, since I knew the pheasants were about a half mile deep in. I popped open a Sam and sipped slowly as I hiked through. The moonlight was shining through the trees onto the path, giving it all a really serene look. The beer was good and the scenery was nice, but I had to admit, going without Marshall was a little bit different. I was starting to doubt whether or not there would be a Pheasant-fest 12.
About ten minutes later I sat down to finish off the beer that I had been idly holding and recycled the bottle back into my pack. I looked around the forest, I’d never really given it the once over, as the only other time of year I came around to Cherokee Hills was for the Fourth of July barbecue. The place really was a beautiful piece of nature, I should jog out here, god knows I was starting to get a beer gut.
Then I heard some slow pit pattering about 250 feet behind me, it seemed like it was on its way towards me. Was it a fox or a bear? Jeez, I didn’t pack any bandages. That was in Marshall’s pack. The steps got closer and closer, and I could hear whatever it was breathing, I retreated a bit into the brush, and I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit scared. The steps got louder as they got really close, I wanted to close my eyes, but I had to see what beast was marching down towards where the pheasants were, had to scope out my competition.
The sound got closer and I started to hear a repetitive clicking, what kinda animal clicks? A bird? Must be one big ass bird. It was well into the night now, probably around 9, and it was pretty dark out in the woods. This thing must be a predator looking for some sleeping squirrels or raccoons. Maybe I was about to see a Bigfoot or something. I held out my rifle as the steps got louder and louder, sweat started dripping into my eyes and I was saying some prayers in my head in case this sasquatch did indeed survive my bullet and come after me. I looked out of the brush and saw the silhouette of a beast. It started making some incoherent noise.
“This lighter sucks.”
I let out a breath loudly and the beast, a.k.a. Colonel jerked his head and nearly jumped out of his second hand boots, seemingly as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Harv! I’ve been looking for you!”
“Colonel what in the fuck are you doing out here?” I asked in an angry whisper.
“Harv I know what you’re going through!” he started to say to me.
“First off no you don’t, second don’t be so loud.”
He had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and was flicking his lighter to try and get it lit, it made a click sound as he tried and tried.
“Okay!” he said whispering, “But your brother abandoned you out here in the woods! All of my brothers in the army abandoned me when they heard…about my lifestyle! I can relate, I mean, why not?”
I rolled my eyes at him, but in the dark I doubt he saw my exaggerated gesture.
“Look Sanders, I appreciate the sentiment, but this ain’t workin’. You are a homeless, jobless, homo slob that disgraced our nations army and our graduating class, I mean how can I stand to be around you?”
“Harv, what I did was...bad. Well I mean, I suppose I went about it in the wrong way,” he started getting all sappy on me, “But come on man, we used to be real close. I knew I was gay in like sixth grade but that never stopped us from hanging out then!”
He had a point. While he hadn’t outright said it, in retrospect all of us did hang out with a queer our entire lives. I suppose maybe I had been a bit harsh on him. I mean he hiked all the way out from the parting.
“Okay Colonel, you can walk with me,” I told him. “But you’re only gettin’ one pheasant and I’m not dropping you off at the Y after.”
He grinned, his dirty teeth were in uniform with his unshaven face and long, dirty hair. I didn’t even bother to wait for a reaction, I just set down the trail.
“In the mountains we used to have to stay in groups of four,” he started talking, “One guy would have the 100 pound communication setup, another would have the 75 pound first aid equiptment, and the other two would have rations and ammunition.”
“Really?” I questioned him, to my surprise, “I always figured that everyone carried their own ammo and food.”
He shrugged his shoulders, “Well everyone has like a granola bar and two clips, but the two carriers would have like real meals and a backup weapon or two. But these were only for recon missions when we went looking for the big man himself.”
“What I would do to find that god damn mountain where that fucker is hiding from us, I would skin him faster than I do a chicken when I go to my Uncle’s house.”
“That’s why I enlisted,” he said, getting real serious, “It’s not like I’m some fag who hates America and wants to not have a job.”
I didn’t respond. Some say I am too quick to judge, even when facts are given. Colonel was not my kind of friend these days, but he was starting to appeal to the heart of me. I reached back and tried to pull another Sam from my pack, but I moved them when I put the bottle back before Colonel so pleasantly surprised me. He started unzipping the pack and he handed me a cold one and started to zip it back up.
“Take one.”
He did, and he popped it open and tipped the stem of the glass at me.
“For old times ‘eh?”
“Might as well.”
We sipped on the beers as we walked, he even carried my rifle for about 100 yards. And in front of me I saw it. The very first one, it looked like a small turkey without the long neck. I smiled, like a little girl, and the Colonel held out my rifle.
“No,” I sternly told him, “We let the first one we see keep on keepin’ on. He’s our omen.”
“Kinda grim, ain’t it?”
“No.”
As we approached the bird it fluttered it’s wings as it went pecking around in front of us, the game keeper had spread out some meat on the ground and this fella here had managed to take a hunk and get away from the flock. The smell of raw meat started to come at our nostrils, and I accepted my rifle from my old friend. My old friend? He can’t be my friend, so I guess emphasis on the old.
And then we saw it. Slabs of meat on the ground, there were dozens of pheasants scurrying around, some fluttering a few feet in the air trying to scare others away from their rightful piece of their dinner. I aimed slowly and carefully and then did what I did best.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Four shots. The pheasants flew away into the darkness and disappeared. On the ground five lay motionless, and a sixth scampered in a five foot circle trying to get away.
“Morbid,” Colonel started saying to me, “But beautiful.”
“Don’t get all analytical on me now Colonel, the job ain’t done yet.”
I laid down the pack and went to unzip the pouch with my knife, as I did so a small piece of paper fell out. Must’ve been a receipt from last year, for the beer or the ammo or something. I stuffed it into my pocket and went up to the struggling pheasant, swinging open the knife and closing in on my prey.
“Come on,” Colonel said, covering his eyes as I quickly slashed the birds throat, ending its life.
“Man up..” I told him, not even making the connection that he wasn’t a real “man.”
We stuffed the birds into separate garbage bags and tossed them in the backpack, cracking open two more beers as we parted back. Colonel even offered to carry the pack, and since my back was aching a bit, I let him.
“Man, we used to have to spend like seven hours a day crawling around in the sand trying to find a hole or cave where some terrorists were hiding,” Colonel said, “And we’d get nothing. We’d have to crawl back to base and then we would get scolded. All that work and no payoff. You come out here and literally shoot a gun four times and call it a successful outing.”
I chuckled, “Oh so now all of a sudden you’re Mr. Badass.”
This felt strange, I hadn’t actually given him the time of day since he came back from Afghanistan.
“Well clearly not, Mr. Badass wouldn’t get kicked out for putting the moves on his direct superior.”
I gagged and Colonel knew that meant he had to change the subject.
“So how’s Marshall doing these days?” he asked, realizing his own mistake.
“Eh, last I spoke with him he said it’s okay,” I said staring off into the dark, “He says the women in New York are more attractive and there are more of them.”
I was making sure this possibly awkward conversation didn’t go back to homo-ville.
“Yeah, well there are more of them I bet,” he said, “And it’s not like he knows all of them like we do out here. I mean it’s kind of awkward when the only singles club has all of the same people you used to throw sand at on the playground.”
I laughed at that one too, I’d forgotten Colonel’s sense of humor.
“That’s true, of all the girls I’ve been with over the past few years, only one of them didn’t go to school with us.”
“That’s why I chose to explore something else.”
I laughed at that too. Uncontrollably. Colonel smirked and we kept on walking. It was actually a fun walk back, except for the fact that some pheasant blood got on my new jeans.
“So that’s it?” he asked me as we closed in on the truck, “You shoot four times, drink four beers, and hope that you kill as many as you can?”
“Yeah, but with two rifles you end up taking out more than six. Our average was about 14.”
“That’s impressive,” the Colonel started, “So you’re a little under this year?”
“Yeah, but five should feed me,” I told him as we got close to the truck.
“Five?”
“Yeah, ones yours.”
The colonel gave me a look, not like he was in need of money to buy a meal. Not like he knew he was weirding me out. But like we just threw a Tootsie Roll off the side of my Dad’s truck and it hit some bully in the head and he was crying. A look like when I turned from the pitchers mound and saw him catch the fly ball that should’ve been thrown a strike.
And that’s how it ended, Colonel taking his pheasant and giving me his number at the Y, insisting that I take his number and call him if I wanted to go to the bar or needed a “wing-man.” He insisted that he could assist in getting me a date. And then he walked away, awkwardly carrying a dead animal over his shoulder.
I went home and threw the birds in the freezer in my garage. I walked inside and took off my jacket, taking out the game keepers key to give to him the next day and that receipt fell out with it. I opened it up to see how much the rate of ammo, or beer, whatever I had bought, had raised in the past year. But it wasn’t a receipt.
“Harv, If you are getting this note that means you needed to take out your knife because your shot sucks and you couldn’t kill the pheasants with your shooting skills alone. I know it’s gonna be awkward without me, but I guarantee while you are reading this I’m waiting up in my apartment thinking about Pheasant-fest 8, the one where we got 25 of them. I miss it, and I miss home a lot. I hope you don’t mind Colonel coming along with you, I told him to do whatever it took to fix things with you because I know if there’s one guy that can appreciate Pheasant-fest it’s our old buddy. Who cares if he’s gay? Call me tomorrow morning.
-Marsh
Dated February 15”
And slowly I realized that Marshall was the first pheasant of the night. The one that gets away alive. In our little town, no one leaves. We all come back, go to work, or to war in Colonel’s case, and follow our old Fort Royal routine. We were the ones eating the meat the game keeper kept out for us, and Marshall took it and ran. It was simple and it made sense. He knew what he was getting out of, and he tried to make sure life was good for all of us who were stuck in the meat pit. He even did his best to leave me with something to keep me going, a friend.
I took the crumpled “Inter-Faith Volleyball League” flier Colonel had given me out of my wallet and looked at the messy handwriting on the back. I flipped open my cell phone and hit the “New Contact” button.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate it because I had to spend an entire semester whittling away at it. I love it because it's the one story I've written that has been whittled away at to the point where it says something. People in class told me that I had to have grown up down south and gone hunting to have written this way and they were all surprised I was a suburban Connecticutter. I've noticed the inconsistencies in the narrators dumb/smartness and that urks me. But all in all this is one of the better short stories I've written.
