Rites of Passage by Dan Barfield

Rites of Passage

         There are “rites of passage” that every boy goes through. And I suppose that there are also such rites of passages for girls as well. For boys, turning 16 and getting your driver's license seems to be the big one today. But when I was a boy, the first, and therefore the most important rite of passage was getting your first shotgun. Shotgun. Not rifle. Not pistol. A pistol is very good at what it is designed for, which is shooting other people. Beyond that it’s useless. A rifle is very good for what it is designed for, but this was the deep coastal south and the woods were thick, making for limited visibility and short shots. The biggest game was white tail deer and wild hogs. the average shot was less than thirty yards. Most hunting was wing shooting for Quail over an uncle’s Pointers, or for rabbits, and squirrels. It was table hunting, not killing for pleasure or trophies.

          Killing something just to kill it was a thing my granddaddy could never understand.  There is no pleasure in killing, even for food. How can pleasure be taken from destroying a living thing? You waste the beauty for no reason except to waste it. He would get so mad at the “rich yankees,” as he called them, who came down to the old Okatie Hall plantation, which was now a hunt club. “They want to catch every fish in the river and kill every creature in the woods,” he would fume. “There just ain't no sense to it!”

     We never had air rifles or BB guns. All they are good for is killing birds, and God’s mercy on you if you ever killed a bird! In the spring my granddaddy would locate the bird’s nest near the house. Then when the eggs hatched and the babies were old enough, he would go around and pop a worm into each begging, peeping, mouth. When the little birds fledged and could fly, they would fly to him and perch on his shoulders and hat.

     I never saw him lose his temper with any of us, but killing a bird would have probably done it.

     It was my twelfth Christmas that there was a shotgun under the tree for me.  Actually, it wasn’t under the tree, it was leaning against the wall with a big red bow on it.  It was a 'Western Field' single shot twelve gauge. No boy today getting a new car for his sixteenth birthday knows the pride and delight I knew picking up that gun.

    There was something almost magical about a shotgun in that place and at that time. It was a big step into manhood, but it was more than that. It made you independent and strong. Now you could protect yourself, your family, and your property from marauding animals. And, if necessary, from marauding people. You could put food on the table with a pocket full of number six shot, double ought buck, or rifled slugs. Depending on what you were after.

      Squirrels were plentiful in the pecan and oak trees, and rabbits were in the fields. Many a winter Saturday I would drop a handful of number six shot in my pocket and we would have fried squirrel or rabbit for super. People say that everything tastes just like chicken. I can promise you that fried squirrel or rabbit does taste like chicken, and even looks like a small fryer the way my grandmother cut it up. When a wild hog started raiding the garden at night a rifle slug took it down and we had a Bar-B-Que.

     I was fourteen when I killed my first, last, and only deer. I just never had the desire to kill another one. killing a deer was also a rite of passage in that place and at that time, and something that you were expected to do. As soon as the weather began to get cool my friends and I would begin to talk about it, wondering when our parents would think that we were finally old enough to go on the big hunts.

      Once a year in November all the men in my family would meet for the Big Hunt in the Deep Woods. For two years I had waited for the time my granddaddy and uncles thought I was old enough to go.

     The day finally came. Uncles and older cousins began arriving early at The Bluff. Bed rolls and tents were unloaded and made into packs fot there were no roads into the deep woods and everything was carried in on our backs. Cooking would be basic since food had been prepared by my aunts and grandmother. Biscuits, fried chicken, baked sweet potatoes; the menu never changed. A frying pan and  coffee pot long burned black from a hundred campfires, a roll of tin foil for heating the food, paper towels and toilet tissue. paper plates, forks, and cups.

     Hour after hour I followed my cousin Rodger’s back as my uncle Lawrence led us down game trails made by wild hogs and deer. The pack straps pulled and rubbed against my shoulders for if I was old enough to go, I was also old enough to pull my own weight. The shotgun gained weight the longer the hours stretched until it felt like I was carrying a cannon. My right arm kept “falling asleep” because my pack was unbalanced, and I had to clench and relax my fist to get the blood circulating.

     When it seemed like we would never get there, wherever “there” was, we were there. It was a small clearing by a spring fed creek that offered cold, clean, water from deep underground. Water for coffee, for drinking, for washing. (I was surprised to see soap and toothpaste appear. It was something I had not thought about.) Guns were leaned against trees, packs were dropped, and tents were set up and firewood collected. This would be home for the next few nights.

 .      That night we heated the chicken and sweet potatoes. Biscuits were eaten cold. Coffee was brewed and I had my first taste of strong coffee laced with bourbon. A deck of cards was brought out and an endless game of poker began that would last until we broke camp and ended the hunt. I didn’t think I could sleep that night, but as soon as I crawled into the warmth of my bedroll and closed my eyes I was gone. Asleep to the sounds of Whip-Poor-Wills and owls, and soft talk and laughter from around the camp fire.

     The next day started long before dawn. The fire poked back to life while I shivered in the damp cold. Cold biscuits and hot coffee while the owls and Whip-Poor-Wills still spoke in the night. Then into the jungle and onto the stands.

     I had been in the old moss tangled oak tree since before dawn. Cold, wet, hungry, and sleepy, but too excited to care. This was my first big hunt. The swamp was coming alive now with the first light of a pale November dawn. The sounds of the night were fading, and a million birds were calling up the sun. Mist was rising from the creeks and ponds and condensing on the leaves, dripping back to the damp earth below.

     This was the Deep Woods, wild and primitive. As it had been for a thousand years. For a thousand times a thousand years. As it had been when Tomochichi had been Mingo of the Yamacraw Creeks and welcomed the first English settlers. Even before that. As it had been when the Spanish had slaughtered the French colonists at Fort Caroline. Even before that. As it had been since the beginning of time.

     I felt myself become a part of it, a part of this wild and savage place. This place of wild beauty and a strange peace. And the blood of a thousand generations coursed through me, making me a part of it. One with the dawn, the bird calls, the dripping mist. One with the primitive. The deep woods. 

     And he was there. Suddenly there. He did not step from the shadowed trees or the palmettos. He simply appeared. An apparition in the pale light, vapor rising from his back, head low, sniffing the air. And the drums beat loud in the caves of ancestral memory, carried by the very blood in my veins. And the blood is hot and the memory is demanding.

     I don’t remember squeezing the trigger. The gun suddenly barked, spoke loud in the silence. Bird songs stopped, started again. The mist rose and dripped from the leaves. The buck almost jumped. Fell. A clean kill. Excitement and remorse exploded in me. I had passed into manhood. I had destroyed a beautiful living creature. At that moment I would have given anything to give it back it’s life.

     My grandfather came at the sound of the shot. He dipped his finger in the warm blood and drew a line across my face.    

     “Now we give thanks to the deer for giving himself to us.”  He took out the pouch of Buglar cigarette tobacco that he always carried in his overalls pocket and sprinkled some on the earth.  “Now we give thanks to the earth and the sun.”

     And it was done. I never had the desire to kill another deer.

-Dan Barfield