“This is absolutely, positively the last time,” I told Kidd Chapin as I reached for a second slice of the best pizza I’d eaten in six months. Not only did it have olives and peppers and sausage, two slices even had anchovies, an irresistible combination. “If you don’t catch somebody shooting loons tomorrow morning, you’ll have to go back under the porch or go lie out in the bushes.”
“And get my tailfeathers shot off?” he grinned. “Not!”
“Well, it won’t be here,” I warned, “because I’ll finish up tomorrow evening and drive on back to Dobbs.”
We were seated at the Formica kitchen table, shades drawn, splitting the last three beers in the refrigerator, and telling war stories.
At least Kidd Chapin was. He reminded me of Terry Wilson, my SBI buddy. I’d already heard his oystering story about the poachers he’d caught only that day—two old-timers who swore on their mothers’ graves that they’d harvested that bushel of succulent bivalves before the thirty-first of March, the day oyster season officially closed. “They said they were just bringing those two-week-old sackfuls out in their boat to wet ‘em down again.”
Next had come his bear story, two loon stories, and now we were onto spotlighting deer.
“—so we’re trying to sneak up on this abandoned house out at the edge of a soybean field where we’ve heard there’s been lights flashing around at night and the sound of gunshots. Well, just about the time we get in range, the door flings open and this powerful flashlight beam sweeps across the field and then pow-pow-pow! We dive for cover and land in a briar-covered ditch with about six inches of water. A minute later, we hear the little skinny one yell, ‘I b’lieve I got him, Cletus!’
“Ray and me, we raise up real easy like and see this man mountain come to the door—bushy red beard, carrying this humongous bowie knife and wearing a tee shirt that says ‘Kill ‘Em All And Let God Sort It Out.’ He’s one mean-looking mother. ‘Where?’ he says.
“‘Over yonder,’ says the skinny one, and he’s laughing and whooping like he’s killed a bear, and here comes that flashlight beam again.”
He savored an olive and took a deep swallow of beer.
“Now Ray and me, we’ve got these riot shotguns, so I shout, ‘State Wildlife Officer! Throw down your gun!’ The big guy runs back inside, but the little guy’s not quite sure what to do. ‘Bout that time, Ray pumps a shell into the chamber and soon as he hears that, the little guy throws down his gun and hits the dirt, yelling, ‘I ain’t done nothing.’
“I run around to the back of the house about the time the door opens and I think for sure I’m gonna see the snout of an M-16 or something. Instead, here comes Man Mountain’s nose, real cautious-like, and this little teeny voice says, ‘Who’s there?’ like he’s expecting the Avon lady.
“I tell him to come on out with his hands up and it’s `Yessir! Yessir! Don’t shoot.’
“So we get ‘em handcuffed, under arrest, down on their knees and all the time they’re swearing they ain’t done a thing. ‘Course Ray and me, we know they have, so we start gathering up the evidence and the first thing we find is this shotgun shell. Only it’s birdshot, nothing that’d bring down a deer. About twenty yards out, we finally find what the little guy was shooting at. Not a deer. A goddamned house cat!
“I mean, here we are: two officers with riot guns, two guys handcuffed and under arrest, and one mangy dead
“So what’d you do?” I asked, licking tomato sauce from my fingers.
“Only thing I can do.” He grinned and reached for the last piece of pizza. “I pick up that dead cat and I shake it in their faces and yell, ‘You sorry piece of garbage, you see this?’
“And the little one starts whining, `Yessir, please sir, I didn’t mean to do it.’
“‘You know this is against the law, don’t you?’
“And the big one’s moaning, `Yessir, We’re sorry. We won’t never do it again. I promise you, sir!’
“‘Okay,’ I say, ‘We’ll let you off this time, but we catch you shooting cats again, you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble.’ “
Laughing, I topped his glass from the last bottle of beer and poured the rest into my own. “And cat lovers everywhere salute you, sir!”
“‘Course, we actually did see some guys spotlighting deer a couple of nights later. We eased my state-issue Bronco down into this driveway on a country road and parked facing out. No lights on in the house, people had gone to bed. And we sit there about an hour till sure ‘nuff, here comes a pickup with two jokers sitting out there on the front fenders. One’s working the spotlight and the other has the gun. Well, we scrunch way down in the seat till after they pass, then I switch on the ignition and try to follow them and all of a sudden the whole right side of my Bronco sags down. We got out and find two of our tires melted slam down on the rims. Seems that old farmer was in the habit of dumping his hot coals and ashes in the driveway before he made up the fire and went to bed at night.”
“Bet you had fun explaining that to your boss,” I said as he cleared away the box and paper plates and put the beer bottles in a recycling bag.
“Well, tell you the truth, I could never exactly find the right time to break it to him so I just stole the spares off’n a couple of other officers’ Broncos.”
While I washed our glasses and wiped down the surfaces, he swept the floor.