At the end of my first year of college, I had stopped attending Mass, my limited portion of religious ardor having been squelched by the disciplinary regime of Assumption’s Catholic paternalism in general and in particular by the mind-numbing absolutism of a maniacal White Father missionary, fresh from Africa, who conducted a weekend-long fire-and-brimstone retreat for us freshmen. According to Father Spoilsport, atonement was beyond our reach unless each of us swore off women and their Satanic wiles, prayed like cloistered monks every day, and made otherwise sweeping soul changes. Instead of deepening my faith, he fueled my apostasy. Besides, I’d read my Hemingway: Why bother with anything but the here and now? When a murderer’s bullet spreads all the darkness we will ever need, maybe a separate peace is the antidote.
Recalling those moments, deep as I was in my hedonistic Sturm und Drang phase, I was incapable of parsing my intentions any further than that, incapable of the niceties of ethical judgment and moral perspective of a truly enlightened person. Perhaps I was lazy and preferred an easy physical rather than spiritual path to follow. Perhaps I was desperate to fill a moment in my own youthful history that had suddenly come to seem otherwise meaningless and empty on its own. Even now I’m not sure I can adequately answer much about that day except to acknowledge its contradictions and paradoxes. Maybe that’s enough, maybe not. Oddly enough, the deed done, the birds in hand, I began to experience a calmness I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Anyway, I had no clue what the Catholic Church’s official disposition was toward pheasants, but in my book, wasting wild birds was a sin. I knew exactly where my one-two bag would go.
I trudged to my car, unhinged my gun and cased it, then walked to the rear of Taylor Hall, the college’s cafeteria, and knocked on the back door. The dining hall was staffed by an order of French nuns. In their wimples and long habits, they could be seen only in piecemeal fashion. We never knew the color of their hair, the shape of their legs. Here and there a pretty young face among the mostly older women sparked sexual fantasies about what Sister or novitiate So-and-So looked like under her raiment, not an unusual urge among the all-male student body. But by and large the female religious staff remained anonymous, even invisible, and closed off to us. We never learned their names (or they ours), and I’m sure the college’s monastic powers preferred it that way and went out of their way to squash any evidences or outbreaks of randiness. In an institution that owed so much to the Kennedys, that was an irony of the first order.
One of the older nuns appeared. She was backlit by the bright kitchen and looked like a giant moth. She had a wide face and very pale skin. I spoke no French and assumed (wrongly) that she didn’t speak English. She saw what I was offering and accepted with a smile. For us? Thank you. Instead of grabbing the birds by their feet, she cradled them in her arms and rocked them side to side as though lulling an infant to sleep. Before handing them over, I pulled tail feathers from the rooster, planning to tie flies.
We pushed our trays past those habited women each morning, noon, and night, and they were pleasant enough as they ladled out this or that bland institutional grub from gleaming stainless containers. I hailed from an Italian household, where fresh-from-scratch food was a regular offering and dining a much-anticipated event, so to experience such routine fare day in and day out was one of the least appealing aspects of college dorm life. We all assumed the nuns were responsible for the deadly sameness of our meals, and sometimes when finding a wood splinter in our hamburger, or puzzling over the latest one-size-fits-all mystery-meat smothered in glutinous brown gravy, we improvidently cursed them, each according to his own appetite.
The meal went beyond delicious into a category of brilliance all its own—the way, now that I’m reminded, that a pheasant is a bird, but not just any bird.
Next day, Tuesday, Taylor Hall was decked in black crepe bunting, and the dining room seemed more somber and subdued than usual. Talking loudly seemed out of place if not obscene. Here and there, small groups were conversing quietly, as one would in a funeral chapel. Many of my buddies, risking demerits, had already taken off for Thanksgiving break. That same older nun was on the lookout for me, and when I pushed my tray down the dinner line, she handed me a plate wrapped in foil. She was smiling. For you, she said. Enjoy!
I stacked the dish on my tray and went to an empty table. I don’t recall what the regular offering was that night. But under the foil there were the remnants of the two pheasants—part of a breast and a whole thigh. I peered, I sniffed, I poked, I gave thanks. Jesus, I whispered, Jesus! The birds were cooked in a white sauce with shallots, a classic béarnaise, the kind my gourmand uncle was fond of preparing.
Perhaps it was failure of imagination or empathy on my part, perhaps it was the sudden onset of ravenous hunger unlike anything I’d ever felt, but I wasn’t thinking of our slain president, our country’s tragedy, or what I would do with my life. Those would come later, as would my decision to serve a lifetime in public education. Instead, I dived in and ate like there was no tomorrow. When I accomplished all I could with my knife and fork, I gnawed bones and sucked their remaining meat and marrow, mopped up the gravy with a piece of bread, then licked the buttery residue from my lips. The meal went beyond delicious into a category of brilliance all its own—the way, now that I’m reminded, that a pheasant is a bird, but not just any bird.
I didn’t think such perfection could ever again be equaled. I didn’t know if I would ever again feel so satisfied, or so lucky.
Robert DeMott is Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Ohio University, where he taught from 1969 to 2013. His recent books are Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs (2010) and Astream: American Writers on Fly Fishing (2012), both from Skyhorse Publishing and newly available in paperback.
