Snipe Hunt

I lay in my nylon tent listening to the drip of water from above. It had stopped actively raining about an hour ago, but I knew the residual drip from the trees above would keep me awake all night. Gary was out with the guys sitting by the campfire and they were laughing their heads off at something clever, no doubt a joke told by “Candyman” Curtis. He was the oldest of our little troupe and fancied himself as being quite the lady’s man, as much as a thirteen year old can be I suppose. I was grateful for Gary’s absence to tell you the truth. The boy was built like his Mom’s Frigidaire, he snored, and smelled a bit like cheese that had sat in the sun too long.

Part of me wanted to join them, but I knew that they were all just telling stories that only they would get. We had just moved to Batesville and although I had really clicked with these guys, I was still on the fringes. They had been nice enough to invite me to go camping and so far it had been a blast. It was a pretty good way to spend my eleventh birthday.

A voice, muffled by nylon and humidity, came from the firepit. “Hey Don, get your ass out here with the rest of us.”

After a moment of fumbling for my glasses, issued to me as a military dependent and actually thicker than a coke bottle, I unzipped the tent door. “Keep your shorts on Sean.” I snagged my jeans and exited my tent with all of the grace of a newborn faun. Once standing, I pulled on the damp denim to the whistles of Sean the snake-handler.

“Nice underoos, Don.”

“Shut it you fag.” I zipped up, put on my shoes, and walked over, my sneakers making little farting noises in the thin layer of mud. A chorus of “Ooohs” accompanied me. As I made it into the circle of light, I could see grins all around. Gary tossed me a tin of Skoal Bandits. I tucked one of the pouches in my cheek and pretended to like it. “So what are we gonna do? It’s too dark and wet to play D&D, and if I hear one more of Curtis’ stories about almost getting laid by Cindy, I’m gonna puke so hard that…well I’ll puke really hard.”

Curtis stood and hooked his thumbs in belt loops stretched by habit. “Funny you should ask that Donny. We were just talking about admitting you into our little club for real.”

The fact that they had been laughing for the last ten minutes made me wonder at what this indoctrination would include. “Okay. So I’m not in the club now?”

Sean swept back stringy brown hair from his eyes and grinned that lunatic grin that he always wore. His folks were serious hippies and I was sure that his brain had been fried from the womb on. “Oh you’re in the first circle, sure. To be a real Worrior though you need to catch a snipe.”

The little gang called themselves the Worriors after a game we all spent too much time playing down at the arcade; and as silly as that may sound, I was dying to be a part of them. At the mention of a snipe I groaned. “A snipe? You must think I’m an idiot. I know there’s no such thing.”

Gary spat a stream of tobacco juice into the fire. “You may have lived all over and read a bunch of books, Don, but you can’t tell me there ain’t no snipe. We’ve all caught one and my daddy has one hangin’ stuffed in his shed.”

“Okay fine so I have to catch a snipe. I guess you’re gonna give me a bag and then make a bunch of noise so that it’ll be scared into the bag.”

Curtis snorted and spit his own stream of juice. “Hell no. That would be stupid.” He reached down and picked up a long stick from near his foot. An easy toss and it clattered against my shoe. Someone had taken a long, straight branch and tied an opened scout knife to it with bailing wire. “You’re gonna stab it with that. No bag we got could hold out against its claws. It has to die.”

I forgot my intellectual superiority in the mental image of rending talons and blood. I picked up the makeshift spear and weighed it in my hand. Something was caked all over the drop point blade. Everything looked red in the fire’s light, but I had no doubt in my prepubescent mind as to what it was. “So I guess you guys don’t believe in cleaning your weapons after the kill?”

Sean barked. “Nah. Snipe blood is nasty. Touch that and you’d be sick for a week.”

I held the weapon nearer the butt. “So what am I supposed to do?”

The ringleader took his cue. “Well you were part right. We are gonna go and try and flush the critter to you. You stand where Gary tells you and wait. When you hear us start to holler, listen for something coming through the bushes. That’ll be the snipe. Stick it real good and then we can make you one of us.”

My stomach felt hollow, like I was going to puke indeed. I gripped the wooden shaft tighter so that I could focus and looked around at my new friends. No trace of the boyish camaraderie that we shared could be found in their eyes. This was deadly serious business. Gary came up beside me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. I never realized until then the origin of the phrase “jumped out of my skin”.

“Don’t worry Stick. All the snipes down these parts are babies. The mamas and daddies stay up in the mountains.” He walked off into the woods surrounding our campground and expected me to follow. I looked up towards the distant bluffs and hoped that Mama Snipe knew that. Holding the spear at port arms, I trudged into the woods after my large friend.

Clouds had rolled back while we were having our palaver and revealed a carpet of stars. The moonlight picked out Gary’s white t-shirt and made him easy to follow. A broad path lay before us. It was free of underbrush and in fact led us into the camp. After a hundred yards or so, he broke right into the woods proper. The leaves were still thick on the trees and every time I brushed against one I could only think of the bout of poison ivy I had the summer before. A few minutes in and I was completely lost. Gary was like a beacon and so there was no danger of losing him, but there was no way I was going to be able to find my way back.

“Gary.” My voice quivered just a little.

His only answer was a shush. He did seem to know where he was going and well he should. This land butted up against his family’s farm. They hunted here for dear, opossum, bear, God knows what else. We were at least a mile from their house though and might as well have been in Timbuktu. A whisper floated to me through the thick air. “Make sure you talk low. Don’t worry bout this man. The boys are just tryin’ to scare you. There idn’t anything out here that’ll hurt you. No such thing as a snipe you were right about that.”

I stopped. “So why are you telling me this?”

“I like you. So do the other fellas, but my Daddy always told me that it weren’t fair to pick on city boys no matter how fun it might be.” He stopped and turned to look at me. His face was almost a moon on its own. “They’re gonna whoop and holler and rattle the bushes and trees. Don’t you be scared, though. It’ll just be us. Sean brought some kind of costume to wear and he’s gonna jump out at you. Make sure not to stick him. When we did this to him he almost put Curtis’ eye out with that thing.” We both smiled and I almost laughed. He shushed me again. “They aren’t too far away so don’t let on.”

I nodded and he turned around. A loud crack came from the left and seemed to wash over us. Gary jumped and so did I. Whatever that was mustn’t have been part of the plan. My grip on the crude weapon shifted to put the blade ahead of me. The crickets that had been singing to this point stopped and the only sound was steady dripping. Wet undergrowth muffled our steps.

Gary came to a stop in a small clearing. We faced off and he tried to smile, but it just wasn’t working. “Ready man?”

“As I’ll ever be.” I didn’t want to know what that noise was and I was sure he didn’t want me to ask.

His meaty paw clapped on my shoulder for the last time. “You’ll do fine.” He left me there in the circle.

Moonlight trickled in and I could actually see a fair distance beyond the tree line. I really needed to pee and tried not to think about it. If the guys were out there I didn’t want to give them a free show. I began my wait. It wasn’t long before my patience was rewarded. The game began with a steady hooting. Even a city boy like me could tell that it was someone trying to pretend to be an owl.

After a few moments of that I heard a loud crashing through the brush to my right. It didn’t sound close at all. Behind me a screech pierced the air. If that wasn’t Sean then I didn’t know my friends. The scream took on a meatier quality after a second or two and was cut off by a wet ripping sound. Little hairs in the back of my neck stood up and I began to feel nauseous. This was a little too real for me.

“Guys?” my voice was barely a whisper. I began to wish that I had brought a canteen. After trying to work up some spit I realized that at some point I had swallowed the tobacco. That explained my nausea. The idea of throwing up in front of my friends was equally as unsettling as taking a leak in front of them was. With every bit of my will I fought back the rising bile. Another loud rushing sound helped distract me. Off to the left of the clearing came a scream that I didn’t think was human. I found my voice. “Guys, this isn’t funny anymore.”

A thud from directly behind me was my only answer. I turned and saw a ball at my feet; only it wasn’t a ball after all. Gary’s face looked up at me from the ground. His neck ended in a ragged stump. I couldn’t hold it back any longer and emptied my stomach onto the ground. I did manage to avoid my friend’s head, but it was a near thing. Firmly planting the butt of my spear into the ground kept me on my feet as I wretched again.

Laughter somewhere between a crow’s caw and Sean’s giggle assaulted me from above. I didn’t have to worry any more about peeing in front of the guys. Part of me actually believed that they were still there.

I crouched down and started talking to Gary. “You said it wasn’t gonna be real. I believed you man. I don’t want to be in the club any more. I don’t want to be a Worrior. I just want my momma.”

Curtis started to scream then. I knew it was him, because he sang in the choir. He had the prettiest voice and could really hit the high notes. The snipe brought his talent to a new level. I screamed along with him for what seemed like hours.

When I came back to myself and realized that I was talking to my dead friend’s skull and felt the tears streaming down my face I knew I had gone crazy. Stuff like this didn’t happen to real kids did it? A fresh breeze blew through the little clearing and dried my tears. It also took the smell of blood and vomit with it for the briefest of moments. My head cleared and I knew I had to run and so run I did. Branches slapped at my face. They tried to yank my spear from me but I clutched it to my chest. Red eyes blinked at me from what could only be a few yards ahead and I stopped as quickly as I had started.

The eyes were as big as the saucers my Mom used at tea. They were slanted like the eyes of a cat, but solid red like an Atomic Fireball. Hovering three feet off the ground, they began to circle to my left. There was a strong smell of metal and something sour. I spread my feet shoulder width apart and pointed my blade at it. My knees shook like I had just gotten off the world’s biggest coaster. “B-b-b-b-back up you piece of sh-sh-shit.” My teeth were chattering.

A hissing like a thousand copperheads came from the direction of those eyes. They continued to circle and I followed, pivoting. It ducked and weaved like a boxer. I picked a moment and thrust my spear into the dark with every ounce of my weight. The hiss turned into a scream. The snipe, for that’s how I thought of this, nearly wrenched the spear from my hands. I pulled it back and moonlight glinted off a dark fluid covering the last six inches.

A cloud covered the moon just as the snipe leapt at me. I got the spear up between us and heard something snap. Pain overwhelmed everything for a moment as I was crushed to the ground. Warm fluid gushed over my arms and chest. I heard a sound and thought of my Mom de-boning a chicken, before the next wave of pain hit.

The hunters found me in the woods later that night. They had heard all of the screaming and saw our fire. Bits of Sean were scattered around our campsite. I heard that it took three men to find every piece. His mother insisted that they needed to do that so he’d have a proper burial. Gary had been gutted and his head knocked clean off. They never did find Curtis. I died on the operating table and was gone for a good five minutes. There were no lights or anything, at least not that I remember. A couple of hundred stitches, gallons of blood, and a lot of prayers brought me back from beyond the brink. The snipe had pulled a good portion of the flesh from my right leg and no small amount of my stomach muscle free before it had decided that it needed to limp off. Oh they say it was a bear or maybe a wildcat, but I know better. I’ll be damned if my son ever goes camping even if it’s just behind a friend’s house.