Hunting in Texas
When I was between the ages of 10 and 14 years, my grandfather took me deer hunting. Parts of hunting in central Texas did not appeal to me.
But I loved the company.
Papa, as we called our grandfather, offered a weekend of cold wind, dust in your eyes and grit between your teeth, the smell of creosote, coveys of quail and white-tipped doves skirting the road, the grunt of javelinas and wild boars, jackrabbits darting out like, well, scared rabbits, outfitted with those tall, skinny ears poking the sky.
I preferred this world over white Sunday petticoats and black patent leather shoes that squished my toes.
If I went hunting, Papa bought a license that allowed me to shoot two deer in the November hunting season that began on my birthday. Having a license made me hold my shoulders back. It was so official: red and blue ink on thick paper with a black stamp, dated, with my name printed on it. Holding it made me feel I was legal, a real person, not just a girl. I never thought about the fact that the tags tied around the antlers of the first deer shot had my name on it, even though I never shot a deer in my life.
We had built three blinds on different portions of our land my grandmother inherited: several hundred acres of low chaparral, cactus, thirsty mesquite and clutches of blue gamma grass. My grandmother owned this parcel of land from her mother, who, following her husband’s heart attack as he pushed a black man’s carriage out of a muddy hole the day before Christmas. My great grandmother assumed his role as president of the local bank. In the 1930s, this was not a common role for a woman in Texas.
Many Texans used land as collateral for loans. When the Great Depression arrived, landowners lost this acreage, and she inherited it.
This plot of land was never picturesque. Sun blistered with soil parched by overgrazing a generation before, rendered the area unfit for farming.
But it was great for hunting deer. We lodged those weekends at the Antler Inn motel in Three Rivers, Texas, the only lodging around. The motel’s dining boasted the largest collection of barbed wire, pronounced “bob wahr.”
Across the back red wall of the dining room was an extensive collection of barbed wire, mounted like a series of jagged horizons. “Baker Perfect” was the name of one favorite. The “Split Diamond, another. We gazed and touched barbed wire labelled beneath with typewriter slips of paper: “Twist Oval”, “Necktie”, “Buckthorn”, and “Arrow Plate.”
A thousand varieties, if you are interested, spread across the plains, cutting off the free range of cattle and sheep. After a long day on the chilly range, we feasted below this compilation of wire on our favorite cuisine of Chicken Fried Steak, which was composed of sirloin strips, dredged in batter, deep fried, and placed on a strip of white butcher paper in a green plastic basket. Heaven.
One late afternoon of bitter cold, we drove by to pick up my youngest brother. He waited for us perched at the foot of the blind, holding a jackrabbit by its ears.
“Guess what!” he yelled, his brown hair bouncing in the air as he ran over to the car. “I threw this rock and hit the rabbit and killed it!”
“Ok,” Papa said. “Well, did you get a deer?”
“Oh,” my brother nodded, his chin over his shoulder. “It’s over there. But can you believe I got this rabbit with a rock?”
Three Rivers made news following WW11. In 1947, the town council denied the rightful burial of Felix Longoria, who sacrificed his life in the war. LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, raised a protest and later made sure they buried Longoria at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Even in the late 60s and early 70s, young men my grandfather took under his wing often joined us deer hunting. But whenever we pulled up at small town diners for food, I was confused. They remained in the backseat of Papa’s burgundy red Impala. The first time, I looked back at them, with a “aren’t you coming?” glance. With a slow gravitas, the oldest shook his head. I followed my grandfather and my older brother but felt a strange privilege emerge in an invisible social order. I felt I abandoned these brothers, with whom I’d shared a childhood of pinata birthday parties, Saturdays riding ponies, and exploring Petronila Creek. Papa always knew what to order for them and we bought back warm paper bags filled with takeout for them to eat in the car.
Only much later, beneath all the Texas hoopla and bravado, and left out of the topics covered in my eighth grade Texas history, lay the actual history of the state. The US stole a vast amount of Mexico’s land during the middle of the 19thcentury when President Polk claimed that “American Blood has been spilled on American land.” Eventually, the US moved the previous border of the Nueces River, to the annexation of all land south of that river, to the Rio Grande. Nearly a hundred thousand Mexicans became U. S. citizens against their will. As one Hispanic writer commented, “We never crossed the border, the border crossed us.” Only later did I see a revisionist history book with a black-and-white photo of a sign on a store in Texas, “No Mexicans or dogs allowed.”
Like hunting, I loved and dreaded early mornings waking up in that single motel room with all of us piled across two double beds, sleeping bags and cots. In the darkness, I’d wake to the spit and sizzle of Papa pushing strips of bacon around in an electric skillet he brought.
The aroma permeated the room. To this day I associate the scent of bacon with hunting and my grandfather- a single fork in his large tan hand, tossing thick cut bacon over the heat.
But these sounds also signaled the need to get up in the chilly winter room after a night of hearing the metal rusted wall heater beneath the window chug off and on. Car lights from the highway out front slipped around the room, morphing into Dali shapes that disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
Better get up now, was the unspoken prompt when Papa left our room to fill his tall green metal thermos with hot coffee. My red plaid plastic leaky lunch box thermos seemed a toy next to his hunter heavy man thermos.
I did not like scaling up the ladder into the freezing top blind in the dark, with twenty-two rifles slung over our shoulders, to huddle next to each other with our backs against the thin, pressed wood panels to wait and shiver. We tuned our ears for snorts, sniffs, rustling leaves, or hooves on the white caliche road. Often we got the giggles sitting side by side as rosy dawn appeared with nothing to do but listen and not listen like in church until my older brother shushed us like he meant business.
I was on the cusp of thirteen when Papa invited a recently returned Vietnam vet, whom we shall call Henry, to come deer hunting with us. I first met Henry at our home while he visited with my brother. He smiled down at me, shook my hand warmly, and looked me in the eye.
My face blushed like a Saturday sunburn. Henry was movie star handsome. Think of a straight version of Rock Hudson. Polished and well mannered, apparently unscathed by his time in Viet Nam.
A few weeks later, I got wind of this. I skedaddled to inquire, as casually as I muster, if I might come too?
Of course, Papa said. Faint at my sudden good fortune, I expected spending my birthday weekend with the man I aimed to marry- having given up on Paul McCartney- was the best birthday a 14-year-old girl could wish for.
When Papa spotted a buck, he handed our guest a .270 rifle with high-powered scope and watched as Henry expected and gauged the stride of a twelve point buck. He pulled the trigger. Boom. Henry staggered backwards and struggled for balance. The kickback from the rifle scope smacked the bones around his eyes socket. My grandfather stared at Henry as he covered his right eye and regained his balance.
Papa’s jaw dropped. Had this Viet Nam vet ever fired a rifle with a scope?
Apparently not.
Later we learn that during Henry’s tour of duty, he served as the head manager of the Officer’s Club. Hotel Management and Hospitality had been Henry’s Cornell degree. In fact, his family owned one of the largest hotel chains in Florida.
Driving home late that Sunday afternoon of my 14th birthday weekend, divine providence required that I ride home festooned between my grandfather and Henry in the front seat. I yearned over Henry’s swollen eye and basked in the warmth of his body next to mine. When Henry draped his left arm over the back of the car seat for more room, I swooned. I was too young to know what swooning meant, but I was glad to be sitting down and propped up between Papa and Henry.
For two hours, I floated in bliss all the way home. Transfixed was I, as the bright white highway lines lit up, then disappeared beneath the headlights of our blue Ford station wagon. I wished those white lines would never end.
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