He knew how bad his anger was for him. So he took two of the pills and washed them down with a drink of Gordon’s gin from his flask since there was no water.
He knew the gin was bad for him too and he thought, everything is bad for me except rest and very light exercise. OK, rest and light exercise, boy. Do you suppose that is light exercise?
You, beauty, he said to himself. I wish you were here now and we were in the double blind and if we could only just feel the backs of our shoulders touch. I’d look around and see you and I would shoot the high ducks well, to show off and try to put one in the blind without having it hit you. I’d try to pull one down like this, he said, hearing the wings in the air. He rose, turned, saw the single drake, long necked and beautiful, the wings fast moving and travelling to the sea. He saw him sharp and clear and in the sky with the mountains behind him. He met him, covered him and pulled as he swung as far back as he could swing the gun.
The drake came down on the ice, just outside the perimeter of the blind, and broke the ice as he fell. It was the ice that had been broken to put out the decoys and it had re-frozen lightly. The calling hen looked at him as he lay and shifted her feet.
“You never saw him before in your life,” the Colonel said to the hen. “I don’t believe you even saw him coming. Though you may have. But you didn’t say anything.”
The drake had hit with his head down and his head was under the ice. But the Colonel could see the beautiful winter plumage on his breast and wings.
I’d like to give her a vest made of the whole plumage the way the old Mexicans used to ornament their gods, he thought. But I suppose these ducks have to go to the market and no one would know how to skin and cure the skins anyway. It could be beautiful, though, with Mallard drake skins for the back and sprig for the front with two longitudinal stripes of teal. One coming down over each breast Be a hell of a vest. I’m pretty sure she’d like it.
I wish that they would fly, the Colonel thought. A few fool ducks might come in. I have to stay ready for them if they do. But none came in and he had to think.
There were no shots from the other blinds and only occasional shots from the sea.
With the good light, the birds could see the ice and they no longer came in and instead went out to the open sea to raft up. So he had no shooting and he thought without intention, trying to find what had made it at the first. He knew he did not deserve it and he accepted it and he lived by it, but he sought, always, to understand it.
One time it had been two sailors when he had been walking with the girl at night. They had whistled at her and, the Colonel thought, that was a harmless enough thing and he should have let it go.
But there was something wrong with it. He sensed it before he knew it. Then he knew it solidly, because he had stopped under a light, in order that they might see what he wore on his shoulders, so that they might take the other side of the street.
What he wore on each shoulder was a small eagle with wings out-stretched. It was embroidered onto the coat he wore in silver thread. It was not conspicuous, and it had been there a long time. But it was visible.
The two sailors whistled again.
“Stay over there against the wall if you want to watch it,” the Colonel had said to the girl. “Or look away.”
“They are very big and young.”
“They won’t be big for long,” the Colonel promised her.
The Colonel walked over to the whistlers.