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Early Morning Hunting

Chris Schafer

    “I can’t believe I let you talk me into that,” Earl rolled the cigarette between his fingers. He’d thought about quitting but he kind of liked the idea of knowing what would kill him.“You act like you didn’t have a good time,” Syl retorted. He had just tossed his cigarette over the side and lit a new one. The ripples of the lake jostled the boat beneath them. Syl knew the moon caused tides on the oceanfront, he wondered if they did the same thing to lakes.
    “You knew we were hunting today and you had to go out last night,” Earl persisted.
    In the darkness a duck squawked but the night hid its shape. Earl looked for it once but all he could see was the reeds of the blind around them.
    “Good to see something else is alive in this world besides us,” Syl snorted. “We should’a just stayed in bed.”
    “Four hours in a motel bed is about all I can stand. If I had to listen to that little whore of yours anymore, I’d a shot you then and there,” said Earl.
    Syl laughed, but he didn’t deny it. “There was one for you big man. Not my fault if you left her at the bar.”
    Now the smile from Earl’s face faded. “That was not for me. There is no way I’m flying wingman with that ugly bitch. God, I bet she had teeth down there!”
    Syl laughed again.
    In the darkness another duck called out. “Quiet,” said Earl. “You hear that?”
    “Of course I do,” Syl responded. “It’s just a koot. Nasty-ass puddle duck. They know no one in their right mind would shoot ‘em, that’s why they’re all loud. What’s to fear?”
    “I’ll shoot ‘em,” Earl responded.
    Syl shook his head, “You’re just a regular Jack Pine Savage aren’t you? You ever seen a recipe for koot in a cookbook? They tell you to simmer it in a pot with a brick and after an hour you dump the pot out, pitch the koot and eat the brick.”
    “Was that in one of Nancy’s cookbooks?” Earl asked.
    Syl nodded.
    “I think I’da taken the brick over Nancy’s cooking regardless of what she was serving,” Earl laughed.
    Syl raised his hand and even in the dark Earl could tell his friend thought he was number one. “Besides, Nancy had her good points.” Syl stated with a predatory smirk on his face.
    Earl looked away; even the blackness was more appealing at this point. “Yes, I’ve heard about her good point, you told me, I don’t need to hear it again.”
    “It’s like sucking on your thumb,” Syl said with a slight giggle in his voice as he thought back to his ex-wife. “It’s like sucking on your thumb.”
    Beneath them a tiny swirl joined the larger ripples.
    “Quiet, you hear the ripples in the water? That koot is moving.” Earl raised his shotgun and waited. He was sitting on the north side of the boat, surrounded by the reeds but the position did give him a nice open area to look through. They had to dock here in the first place and now he would use it again as his own little sniper perch.
    The ripples continued underneath the boat, slow and low. They looked like warm syrup spread out over pancakes as they gradually progressed across the waterfront and underneath the boat.
    “I can’t believe you’re going to waste a shell on a koot.”
    “Shut up Syl.”
    “You know it isn’t considered exactly sporting to shoot a bird off the water?”
    “Syl, I’m on no sleep here and the last thing I want to hear is a lecture on sporting. I want to get a bird and if it happens to be on the water’s surface, so be it.”
    Syl sighed in contempt but yet he couldn’t help but watch over Earl’s shoulder as the pair waited for the koot to show itself from beyond the reeds.
    Underneath them the water rippled once again.
    “He’s close now,” said Earl. “He’s coming this way.”
    But what was coming this way was not the koot, on the water from around the bend. Instead it was a mallard, flying low directly above their head.
    The crafty duck flew by at top speed, it seemed to know they weren’t paying attention and didn’t let out a call until he was nearly out of shooting range. Earl and Syl booth looked up in time to savor their lost opportunity with pure disgust. “Great, there goes a real trophy and we missed it because you’re so focused on shooting aquatic rats here!” said Syl.
    “There’s no reason you couldn’t be looking for that. You didn’t have to be watching me!”
    “I just can’t believe you...” And then there was silence from in the boat. Because outside the boat, on the other side of the reeds, the koot was screaming. The bird fluttered its wings in rapid succession as though it was trying to take off but the wings kept striking the surface and the bird never left the water. There was a guttural cry and suddenly the wings were flapping against water, under the water. Another cry and then the bird’s voice was suffocated underneath the water.
    Syl and Earl sat motionless, the mallard now long since forgotten. “What the hell was that?”
    “Probably just a snapping turtle,” said Earl. “Guess I’m not the only one that’ll eat a koot.”
    Syl looked as his friend with disgust, amazed Earl was going to try and dig this argument up again. “Snapping turtles don’t eat adult ducks. They eat babies, little fish and shit of the bottom.”
    Underneath their boat the ripples of the water intensified but neither man noticed.
    “It’s all perspective,” said Earl. “A koot ain’t a big bird so a big turtle could take it down.”
    As Earl spoke a second koot drifted along past the threshold of the reeds, exactly where he had been waiting for it. The jostling and talking coming from the boat did nothing to dissuade this bird from sailing out into the open, right now all it wanted to do was get away from where it had been.
    “There’s one of your prized buzzards right there,” Syl pointed.
    Earl turned around and sure enough, the koot was now sitting complacently in the water some ten yards ahead of them. It had stopped its retreat and now rested on the rippling waves. Ripples that were growing again.
    “You think a snapping turtle could take that one?” Syl questioned snidely as he looked at the adult bird.
    Earl spared only a moment to shake his head at his friend before raising his gun and putting the koot in his sights. As he did so the ripples underneath the boat increased, forcing the tiny vessel to undulate. Twice Earl lost his focus on the bird and he was forced to resight. The entire time the koot sat complacent, “Take your time,” it told him. Still the ripples continued. “What the hell?” Earl spat between clenched teeth.
    And then the ripples dissipated and the bottom of the boat was struck by that which created them. The boat shook violently and for a moment Syl swore they were out of the water. He thrust both hands out to the sides and grasped the railings, his fingernails digging into the plastic.
    Earl, was sent backwards into the belly of the duck boat’s center. His shotgun was slung over the side where it sank into the murky water and reeds below.
    “What the hell was that?” Syl said. The fear in his voice was obvious. At once he was taking inventory of their situation. They still had the oars and one shotgun. Suddenly leaving seemed like a very good idea.
    “Where the hell’s my gun,” said Earl who had recouped himself and was now looking over the side where nothing but ripples and reeds greeted him. The water was so thick, you could probably sink a boat down there and no one would ever see it. Syl was suddenly starting to wonder what else was down there that no one else had seen.
    “I’m going in,” Earl said.
    “Are you crazy?”
    “That’s a seven hundred dollar shotgun. You think I’m going to just let it rot at the bottom of this swamp?”
    “Didn’t you just feel that?” Syl said slapping the side of the boat with his left hand. “Aren’t you a little worried about what else is at the bottom of this swamp?”
    “Ain’t shit down there but reads, fish and my gun,” said Earl as he took off his left boot.
    He was halfway through taking off the right when Syl glanced up at the koot again. “Look!” he screamed, this time the fear was apparent in his voice.
    The ripple pattern had stopped and the lake below the duck was suddenly tranquil. The duck sat in this frigid water for a moment and then it motioned to move, its feathered body lunging forward but gaining no ground, its head darting out only to ripcord back again. Twice more the duck tried before letting out a frustrated squawk.
    And then the water was a swirling funnel below the duck and the creature squawked again, this time in pure pain. Its head totemed straight up towards the sky as its body descended into the water inch by inch. Another painful squawk and then the bird was gone, its body lost in the shadows of the empty darkness.
    “What the hell was that?” Earl squealed.
    “I don’t know, but that was no snapping turtle.”
    Earl had forgotten all about his gun now. “We need to get the fuck out of here,” he said.
    Syl nodded and reached down, grasping the adjacent oar in his left hand and slowly dipping it into the water. Nether man diverted his eyes from the water’s surface, which was now faceless once again.
    Syl touched the water with the oar and as he did the water before them came alive once again. “Get that damn thing out of the water!” Earl screamed.
    Syl obeyed, but it was too late.
    The rippling pattern lunged forward creating its own wake as it headed for the boat. “It’s coming,” screamed Syl as he grabbed for his shotgun.
    Earl crouched low in the boat, his hands over his ears. In the commotion Syl couldn’t hear him scream.
    The tide surged further towards the boat, and Syl waited for something to rise. The shot wouldn’t penetrate the water well but whatever it was down there, if it rose, Syl was going to give it both barrels.
    But nothing ever did surface, instead the waves subsided at the base of the boat.
    “Where the hell did it go?” Syl questioned.
    Earl had stopped screaming now and he was also looking around. “We have to get out of here!” he whined again.
    Syl grabbed the oar again and turned to put it in the water. The reflection of the moon greeted him as he turned.
    Reflection of the moon?
    Syl had only a moment to contemplate it before the giant pupil, rolled across the reflection to face him. In the reflection of this giant eye, Syl could see his own screaming face. Below the boat the water undulated and suddenly the boat and both men were airborne in an eruption of water.
    Earl swirled three times in the air, bashing his ankle against the side of the boat. He had never seen the eye but now he was traveling through the air, thanks to the power of this thing. He circled once more and then started to fall, head first towards the water. But he would never touch it, instead a giant mouth rose from the water, splicing itself. And as Earl fell towards that yawning death, he suddenly realized what it would look like with teeth.
    Syl never heard Earl die, no one did. Instead he hugged the side of the boat and cowered. The water around him was tranquil once again. Around him the articles of the boat, the light, the candy, the coffee, they all sunk slowly into the water.
    The tranquil water, nothing moving nothing rippling.
    Something nursing.
    Syl’s right leg, which had been swirling back and forth was now locked in a vice. And Syl could feel himself being sucked down, his right ankle firmly holstered in a place to horrible to comprehend.
    It felt like nursing at first, a gentle pressure. Almost like sucking your thumb. Like sucking your thumb.
    And then the feeling subsided and the gentle nursing gave way to a crunching, grinding sensation. Syl had only a moment to scream before the water took him and all sound was drowned out by the murky darkness.

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