Column: Pass the Hotdish

“Ducky! Get in here. I’ve got something for you.”

I ran to see what was so important that my dad would come home in the middle of the day to give it to me.

“See this here?” he asked. “This here’s a Marlin 30-30, nicest little hunting rifle you’ll ever see.”

Then he pulled a prison orange snowsuit and cap from a giant K-Mart bag.

“Props and costumes! Am I auditioning for ‘Annie Get Your Gun’? Could there be sheet music at the bottom of that bag of Broadway bounty?”

No.

“We’re going hunting out at the farm this weekend,” my dad announced. “You, me, and Sus.” That would be my sister, Susie.

Huh. I’d grown up around hunting and guns. Hunting meant venison and guns meant hands off. Before I learned to crawl I learned that guns were not toys. Even play guns were off limits, except for a contraption I had that shot ping-pong balls and looked like a vacuum hose, and one of those pink plastic water pistols. I wasn’t allowed to point either of them at a person or our Pomeranian. Having a squirt gun fight with the side of a tree really quashes the desire for future fire play, and if you shoot ping-pong balls at the wall they just bounce back and hit you in the face. That’s no fun at all. No, guns did not interest me, yet here I was the indifferent owner of one.

Saturday morning we arrived at my dad’s farm in Rumely, Mich. We started with target practice. An empty Clorox bottle hung from a tree and we were supposed to pop a cap in its “ox.” Susie went first. A perfect shot, and she did it with her blond hair flying around her face. She was a regular Charlie’s Angel.

I was up next. BOOM! I got up off the ground and there was no Clorox bottle in sight. I did better than Susie! My shot was so powerful I blew that bottle right back to Marquette!

“Did you see that Daddy?” My dad walked over and picked up what used to be a healthy, thriving tree limb. Tied to it was a Clorox bottle, intact.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “The box said this rifle was dependable for its ‘pinpoint accuracy.’

“I guess they never bargained on you,” my dad answered grieving his gimpy tree.

“Sus, you see a buck, you take the shot. Ducky you be the lookout,” he ordered walking away dragging the limb behind him with the Clorox bottle bouncing in the snow, shaming me.

“But I don’t see so great far away. I think I need glasses.” I yelled after him.

“You don’t say,” he grumbled

Rather than have Hot Shot and Tree Killer wandering through the woods, my dad put us in the original dilapidated house built by the farm’s first owners. It was two stories and one side was ripped away so the second floor provided a view of the whole farm.

Susie and I sat there in silence for what must have been minutes.

“I had a faaarrrm in Rumely,” I began, putting on a lousy Meryl Streep accent, “at the foot of the Flapneck Creek. The nights were cold and Robert Redford washed my hair …”

“When I get home I’m shooting your copy of ‘Out of Africa’ with this rifle,”

“But it won the Oscar.”

“Shut. Up.”

After we had “hunted” a little longer …

“I bet there’s buried treasure under this place.”

Susie was clearly tiring of me, “Yeah, pieces of eight right here in Rumely, Michigan.”

“No,” I insisted. “During the Depression people would put money in jars and hide them under their houses. Let’s go look.”

“No.”

“We have a better chance of finding some old lady’s stash than we do of shooting a deer,” I muttered under my breath.

“And you would take it, thief?” This was an all-out fight now, albeit in whispers.

“She’s not coming back for it! Look around! Her house has no walls!”

Just then a buck walked right up to the old house like he was going to ring the doorbell if it had a door.

“It’s a six-pointer,” I said.

My sister raised her rifle. “What if we actually get it?”

“I don’t know. Kick the extra point? Go for two?”

The buck looked right at us and moved closer. Impudent buck! I tried to stifle my giggles and waited to be yelled at. Susie slowly lowered her rifle and put her hand over her face. She shook with laughter.

We laughed so hard we almost fell out of the house. The thought of us shooting that animal was ridiculous. We had walked by many a dressed deer hanging in our garage, we ate venison with gusto, we grew up celebrating a culture of hunting, but shooting that buck was just not our bag. He was worthy of a better hunt than we could give him.

He didn’t lower his head to thank us. He didn’t dart away in panic. He snorted, tossed his head and pranced off to live another day or another hour. He looked back once. We stopped laughing because you don’t laugh at a beautiful animal. You let him run off with his dignity to whatever fate awaits him.

St. Paul resident Alexandra Kloster appears on two Fridays a month. She may be reached at alikloster@yahoo.com and her blog is Radishes at Dawn at alexandrakloster.com.