MISSOURI SQUIRRELS

Missouri Squirrels

     Christmas vacation [1966, just back from Vietnam], after my first semester at Colorado College, I decided to visit my Aunt Bessie and Uncle Lank Hickman in Wheaton, Missouri. They'd made another of their moves between Oregon and Missouri. I'd go by Greyhound, of course: even the accumulated wealth of a year's overseas pay, combat pay, and a Corporal's wages was quickly gobbled by the cost of life at an expensive private college; a plane ticket was out of the question.

     The bus didn't go through Wheaton; it was too small and out of the way. It was nearly dark when I got off the bus. I asked directions. There were no local buses, no taxis. Bessie and Lank lived several miles from where I stood.

     I walked half the night along rural Missouri roads. Dogs would awaken with the crunching of my boots on gravel, bay their alarms, passing awareness of my presence to the dogs at the next farm. It was a little scary, but none of the dogs came after me. Sometime in the night I got lost, and had to knock at a farmhouse, waken someone, and ask directions. I apologized. They said it was no trouble.

     A few days later I was stacking firewood on Bessie and Lank's porch. An old man walked by out in the street. He stopped to watch me. At least, that's what I thought at first, that he was just watching me stack wood, to pass the time like old men will, maybe to pass judgment on my ability to lay up a neat and stable rick of wood, which is a recognized art among country people. I began to be more careful.

     Then I realized that he wasn't so much watching me work as looking at me personally, at who I was. I straightened, nodded. "Howdy," I said.

     "You kin to Bob Metcalf?" he asked. No preliminaries, no introductions, no chitchat about firewood or the rare skift of snow that had Wheaton drivers sliding all over Main Street. "He was my dad...." A dozen questions bubbled in me, but none formed quickly enough. "Y' look just like 'im. I delivered mail in these parts for thirty years." He turned and walked on.

     We were going out to see Dan Metcalf, my grandfather, who lived near Monett, a town even smaller than Wheaton. He'd long since separated from my grandmother Elizabeth, a woman who'd had long flowing black hair as a young woman, who my dad always claimed, with some pride, was part Indian. Maybe Cherokee(

); she'd come from Oklahoma.

     Dan's current wife was Rose, who was always spoken of (though never in her presence) as "a reformed prostitute." Even out of her presence, people never said "prostitute" without "reformed" being attached. They were trying to be generous to her because, they said, she was good to old Dan. But you could tell they were working at it. And you could tell she felt it too, but she just went about her business. I wasn't quite twenty-four, but had probably seen more prostitutes than most of the Metcalfs around there. Rose didn't look like the prostitutes I'd seen. She looked more like Aunt Bessie to me: a plainspoken, plainlooking, hardworking country woman. Except for an extra air of worldliness about her - a tinge of sadness, it seemed to me, at knowing and having lived a truth that everyone else also knew (some more directly than others) but would never say aloud.

     Dan was a lean, kindly old man who was glad to see me but was clearly holding back. He didn't say much. Bessie and Lank figured later that I reminded him too much of his son, dead only six years. My dad had committed suicide at age 40, in 1960.

     Dan and Rose both looked to be people who had cleaned up their acts considerably from the way they'd lived until well into their middle years. Dan came from a long line of moonshiners. The story had it that one night he'd come home likkered up and blasted a hole in his own roof from inside the house with his shotgun, just for fun.

     I wanted to go hunting. Something in me needed to close that circle, to carry a rifle meant to put meat on the table instead of to kill another human and leave him to rot in the mud. Bessie and Lank thought about it a while, and said, Well, we might go out and visit Lank's sister and brotherinlaw, Dorothy and Floyd Jennings, who lived in Thomas Hollow, one of those folds in the Ozarks like those where most of my extended family grew up. (They spelled the word h-o-l-l-o-w, but everyone said "holler". Bessie and my mother were born and raised on a 160-acre homestead in "Star Holler".

     They were a little reluctant to drop in on the Jenningses, especially Floyd. They seldom saw this man. He kept to himself, didn't have a lot to do with relatives and even less with outsiders. Don't expect him to cotton to you, they warned. He's just that way.

     We drove out to Thomas Hollow. Lank brought along his slide action Remington .22 rifle, which was very accurate, for me to use in case Floyd could be talked into a hunt.

     We all sat down in their cabin's small living room. Dorothy busied herself offering us coffee and cookies. Bessie and Lank introduced me, said I was just back from “Veet Nam.” Floyd lit up, started rocking animatedly in his chair. "Ah was thar, durin' the war," he said. "Well," he went on, "guess I should say, durin' the other war, or World War II, or whatever." Actually, he said, he'd never been ashore in Veet Nam. But he'd been aboard a Liberty ship in those waters. "Yup. Spent quite a spell thar. Hell, most people 'round heah nevah had no idy they was such a place, let alone whar it was. Leastwise till this war come along. I'd say somethin' about it, an' a body'd just shrug. But I knowed. I was thar. Durin' the war."

     Lank and Bessie had relaxed. Lank chimed in that he'd told me Floyd had a pretty good squirrel dog. Still got 'im?

     "Oh yeah, he's gettin' on, but still does pretty good, for a collie." That was the first I'd heard of a collie being a hunting dog. I'd had two collies as a kid, Mike and Buddy, so we talked about collies for a while. Pretty soon we were up in the hardwood grove behind the cabin, Floyd and the dog and I. Lank said he'd not go this time, he'd lend me his rifle and let me do the huntin' 'cause I hadn't been in so long.

     The tree limbs were bare, their leaves now a crunchy mattress we walked on. With that noise, we'd never have seen a squirrel, but for the dog. The collie would run ahead, making a big circle out in front of us. Pretty soon he began to bark. "He's got one treed," Floyd said. We walked toward the tree where the dog was, and stopped a few yards away. Floyd motioned, Be still. Squirrels, when they hear a threatening noise, will go around the tree, putting it between them and the noise. After we'd stood still a while, the dog slowly circled the tree, moving away from us, barking and making a racket in the dry leaves. When the collie got to the far side of the tree, we saw, up high, just the head of a grey squirrel peek around the tree. I looked at Floyd. He nodded back at me. I raised Lank's rifle, pushed off the safety, took my time, got just the sight picture Lank had described to me, put the front bead where its top was at the center of the head, where the squirrel's eye would be if I could have seen it at that distance. I squeezed off the shot. There was a long pause. The squirrel slid, tumbled over a couple of branches, fell to the ground.

     We walked over. Floyd knelt and picked up the squirrel and examined it. He stood and looked at me, went so far as to raise his eyebrows. "Right in thuh eye," he said. "Don't waste no meat thataway."

     We shot four or five squirrels - "just enough for a mess of 'em" was how Floyd put it - and walked back to the cabin. His wife made us all a big pot of squirrel and dumplings. All the while Floyd and I sat and talked about Veet Nam, even though he'd never been ashore. We talked about the South China Sea, how there were flying fish that would bust out the side of a wave and glide, and sea snakes swimming close to shore.

     After all, we'd both been there, durin' the wars.