“Saint Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second class hotel.” Malcolm Muggeridge
Somewhere in Carroll County – A huge, mean cold front raged outside of the trailer. The surround sound Stereo predicted a morning low of snow laden twenty two degree weather as the mobile home’s heater kicked on.
I drifted off thinking about the consequences of sleeping in a tent or under a tarp in the storm that was shaking the 38 foot trailer. “Roughing it” on this deer hunt was not in the prospectus. I was, once again, out of my element.
The evening before, our host had toured us through lush green fields by “shooting houses” that dotted his West Tennessee bottom land wood lot. Deer randomly bounced about lazily trying to elude the noisy pickup truck that had ruined their feeding schedule.
“Now boys, there’s just one deer I don’t want you to fool with, she’s a white doe with a brown blotch of a saddle, and she’s just too pretty to harm.” I thought about his idea of pretty and the mathematics involved in a gene pool that developed a white deer. I’ve hunted with folks that have claimed to have actually seen white deer, but they were all good friends.
Being better acquainted with these folks than most, I usually listened quietly to the awe in their voices as they recounted the mystical sightings of these ghost deer. Something always made me certain that they must have dosed off in some stupid dream state that comes from sitting too long in one place. I just figured they were hallucinating, or seeing visions, or some other strange sort of metaphysical, transcendental mental crack in time had gobbled them up and made them think they had actually seen strange things in the light of day.
Besides, most of my hunting buddies are pretty accomplished liars; most of them are world class liars.
Just ask their ex-wives.
Dawn was windy and cold, by ten o’clock I was frigidly making my way to the cover of a 7x7 foot shooting house that sat at the end of an acre wide, five acre long green field, filled with new clover and winter wheat.
The wind was bumping the storm windows loudly until I found the big army surplus ammo box full of food and water. Quickly opening some candy and stuffing the wrappers between the windows made the big elevated box quiet. I found myself very easily settling into the big comfortable chair that was outfitted with a good swivel system. A small heater sat on the floor. A can of wasp spray sat half empty in mute testimony among thousands of decaying bug corpses and dead wasps. Another canister of foam insulation spray had been used to wind proof the house on stilts. A large supply of bottled water sat in a corner, chilling nicely.
This was just like the TV boys do it on the Outdoor channel, I thought to myself. I looked over my shoulder and envisioned my camera man. I found myself wanting to say something to the camera in a breathless stage whisper. “Look there folks, would you look at that immature little 17 pointer. He’s really not what we’re looking for. We’ll just let him grow up a year or two. Why, next year he’ll be a dandy folks. Besides, if I shoot him now I won’t get to finish my nap before they let the really big boy out of the crate! I hope when I shoot the big boy that the blood doesn’t get all over that big pile of corn they just shoveled out there in the wheat!”
This wasn’t huntin’, this was more like watching TV. I was in a house that was better insulated than the one we rented when we first got married. I was having trouble with all of this comfort, it reminded me of the time we lived on the lake and would shoot ducks out of the kitchen window. Slowly spinning around in the chair like I was in one of those revolving restaurants on the top of some hotel in some big city, I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t huntin’.
It was the chair. There was something about the chair. The more I orbited clockwise in the chair, the more it took me back in time. After about three revolutions it came to me. The chair was an exact match of the one that the big fat slob jailer sat in that morning in Smithville when we were paying our way out of jail.
That particular night in jail had been a long night. That night, I settled into the corner of the large jail cell that was strategically situated as far away as possible from the overflowing toilet that was sitting nakedly next to the wall in the other corner of the cell.
The county boys were doing a bang up business that night; all the local jail cell accommodations had been badly overbooked.
Those of us in the cell that were long term guests had chosen the choice bunks complete with greasy mattresses. Next in the order of stay time were the ones that had bare steel bunks. Many of us were sleeping on the floor. The new guys that had just been hauled in from Center Hill Lake had squatted along the wall in a spot where an enraged inmate had recently turned a steel bunk bed into a pile of badly bent scrap metal.
We marveled at the strength of the good old boy that could have done that much damage to welded cold steel.
One of the long term guests, in one of his more sober moments, noticed our fascination with the crumpled pile of steel and explained that Old Odell had done this during one of his latest fits. He went on to say that when Odell had a fit, that there was no place in the county that was safe. The damn Georgia Dome wouldn’t have been big enough to hide in, much less this cramped jail cell.
It seems that Odell had taken offense to something about the steel bunk, causing him to launch into a fit, which in turn caused the Jailer’s to take offense to Odell’s fit, and the whole affair fissioned into some kind of big huge jail uprising.
At first there was this skinny wise ass deputy that thought he should calm Odell down. His technique was simple, he would be teeing off of Odell’s melon with a weathered and badly dented Louisville Slugger.
They said this skinny deputy was swinging that bat like he was going for a 400 foot shot to the cheap seats. The way they described it sounded like he looked like Mark McGuire on a monkey pituitary based steroid binge.
With every homer the deputy hit they said Old Odell would let out a grunt like a 400 pound hog at the slaughter house. After about the fourth home run shot the bat shattered. By now all of the wild eyed inmates were standing in their steel bunks screaming ODELL! ODELL! And they were doing the WAVE!
Odell managed to get his huge paw on the skinny deputy and jam his head down the toilet before the Smithville SWAT team arrived. They said that if you wanted to, you could go over by the cracked toilet bowl and actually see the skinny deputy’s tobacco stained eye tooth lying in the floor.
The inmates said there was a lot of discussion about making a run to Vanderbilt for Odell and the deputy, but the folks inside the jail never heard an ambulance arrive, just a pickup truck.
I declined the offer to review the skinny deputy’s tooth. It was a long night.
This story they told about Odell and the home run hitter did manage to solve the additional mystery of the large amounts of dried blood, hair and splinters on the cell floor.
I spent most of the rest of the night getting acquainted with a slowly sobering local. His name was Darrell Bittenbury. No introductions were necessary. It was obvious what his name was because Darrell had tattooed his name on his calf, along with a rather remarkably long story of his young life. It started with, …..MY name is Darrell Bittenbury. I was born to lose…….
I had a little trouble reading his calf’s entire life story because Darrell said it was one of his first attempts at self tattooing. Darrell seemed a little chagrined that he had not done too good of a job with his life’s story. I assured Darrell that it was probably one of the best damn tattoos I had ever seen and Darrell lit up like a Roman candle.
We passed the long night talking about the intricacies of applying India ink to bloody holes in his body and how various designs had come to him from time to time and how he seemed more than accommodating at telling me which jail, or prison he was in when he applied his art work to various parts of his anatomy.
As the night wore on I asked Darrell to speculate on our near term future. He asked what I was in for and after I told him he quietly reflected on the answer. I waited anxiously as I could tell that I was in the company of an expert and that Darrell was more than well acquainted with this particular community’s system of jurisprudence.
“Well, we more than likely will get thirty days on the road, may get sixty. I hear the judge is pretty PO’d.”
ROAD GANG !!! - TATOOS!! - THIRTY DAYS!!!
I immediately called the fat girl I was acquainted with two counties over because she had a car and always seemed to have a steady supply of cash. It was my one allowable call and as I dialed the last digit, I prayed she was home and in some kind of decent mood.
When the jailer called our names I knew she had arrived. We exited the cell and I turned to Darrell, “See you on the Road!”
Darrell said, “Bring cigarettes, I’ll Tattoo your knuckles with LOVE and HATE for a carton!”
I squeezed the fat girls hand like my life depended on it. If things got dicey from here I figured I could follow her blocking out to the street and to freedom. She could have played linebacker at any 1-AA school in the south.
Now this is where the chair comes in. There was this big, hell he wasn’t big, he was an absolutely huge, Cop/jailer sitting behind this big desk writing out receipts for those of us that had borrowed money.
We were handing him wads of cash and he was handing us a big manila envelope with our empty billfolds, other personal effects and then he was writing out a receipt on a Smithville Concrete and Block Co. Memo pad.
He wrote…. $125.00 PAID IN FULL.
As he scribbled this note, the big chair groaned and juice from his chaw slid slowly over his jowls and dripped into a big empty can of Maxwell House that was a breeding ground for a rather large, cloud-like colony of dog pecker gnats.
My Yankee buddy from Virginia got his receipt and for some strange reason decided it was an opportune time to go off.
“I just want to know WHAT IN THE HELL I WAS CHARGED WITH?” He got louder and more Yankee sounding the more he talked.
We all knew immediately that this was clearly a case of inept timing. A deadly hush fell over the fat Jailer’s domain. I think the Jailer leaned back in the big chair and closed his slits where his beady eyes should have been. The chair groaned to the breaking point. It was the only sound made as the rest of us in the room held our breath. I gripped the fat girls hand with all of my strength.
The immense law enforcement official slowly looked up from his Smithville Concrete and Block Co. pad and fixed his glare on the dumb Yankee. Then he slowly looked at the other cop in the room.
He said, “This boy here ain’t had enough!” He slowly handed the wad of bills back to the dumbfounded and speechless Yankee and shredded the receipt as I accompanied the fat girl out of the jail and into the warmth of the sun.
A huge gust of wind shook the shooting house and I snapped back to hunting. The time piece on my wrist told me I had been sleeping for hours, the sun told me I had missed the day.
This wasn’t hunting, this was like watching TV.
I slowly moved the big chair looking out of the dirty window to my right and my eye came to rest on the ghost deer. She stood in the shadow of the wood line like a mirage. Behind her, back in the fading light, was a skinny spike with a set of slowly curved twelve inch horns. The phrase Born to Lose came to my mind.
I couldn’t believe it. I turned to look over my shoulder at my camera man and whispered breathlessly, “Did you get that? Dou you see it? The ghost deer?”
Slowly I slid the window in the track, spilling the candy wrapper onto the pile of dead wasps in a crunch. The buck sensed the movement as I leveled the scope on his shoulder in the fading light. It was an easy shot. I remembered something I had seen in the shooting house. It was scrawled in a two by four. It said, Ian Thomas, Killed his first buck here 12/27/2000 – Spike.
I turned to my camera man and said, “That’s not the one we want, better let him grow up. This one’s for you Darrell and Odell!”
The next day I moved to a tree stand.
This shooting house thing, it’s just not huntin’.