Dante began his walkabout in a dark wood after losing or, depending upon the translation, abandoning his way. He clearly wasn’t where he wanted to be, and neither was I. Aches and pains had recently resolved into a wake-up call that my walkabouts wouldn’t go on forever. With mortality in sharper focus, I slipped into backward glances at choices I had made, things I wish I’d done differently. My offenses lacked star quality—weak resolve more than wrongful intent: turning a blind eye to someone who needed help; using harsh words when kind ones would have served; feeding various whims, often for no better reason than to kick-start a bored mind, with enough money to sustain a third world country. Small stuff, but it adds up. Now I wanted to do things right, and yet a few minutes ago I’d added trespassing to my list. The elation of sneak-hunting had suddenly gone stale, and now I just wanted to get back where I needed to be.
From my spring walkabout, I remembered an old logging trail ahead that circled back to our property. Good idea, said the left-shoulder guy. It’s easier walking, and you might even see another squirrel. Gently, from the right shoulder came, Turn around. Leave now. A squirrel chattered from deep inside the briar thicket in front of me, and Left Shoulder won.
Pussyfooting through the wait-a-bit wasn’t an option, but the route I chose gave me a few more minutes as a petty criminal in Squirrel Acres, and then another hour’s walkabout on our own property, timed to end at sundown at the best spot on the creek.
As I cut the old trail, the chattering from the thicket stopped and the tempter squirrel shot across the road and up a seed oak. Was it a gift? That depends, said Right Shoulder. I steadied the Marlin on the piece of squirrel I could see and squeezed off the shot. What would have been squirrel number 4 tumbled backwards, and wedged solidly in a maze of sucker limbs. Another temptation gone sour. But maybe I could fix this one with a shot forward of the fulcrum point from directly underneath. Six hollow points later, what was left of the squirrel flowed down through the suckers and landed at my feet like a limp paper towel. I stretched what was left over a log for the night crew to clean up. Whether bad choices or plain bad luck, enough was enough. Quickstepping along the trail, I recrossed the property line onto hallowed ground.
Three squirrels certainly were enough to satisfy my needs and make me feel like I’m still a helluva squirrel hunter, but Left Shoulder rasped, Four would be better. You’re just coming to your favorite spot. If you don’t get at least one, you’re losing your edge.
I’ve never figured out why squirrels found this particular stretch of woods so appealing. Ecologists point out that critters prefer edges, and this place was all edges. A fence to the north sharpened the gradual decline from the upland fields to the river swamp, a beaver pond lay to the east, and a six-foot terrace to the west separated upland mast trees from floodplain cypress. The spot encompassed no more than a couple of acres, but if you arrived there just before sundown, things always happened.
On my knees, I saw the tip of a gray tail in the hole. My one chance was to grab it and pull—risky business, I remembered from childhood stories of squirrel incisors that can cut through hickory nuts humans need a hammer to crack. But the time for caution had passed, so I lunged, grabbed—and came away with a couple of gray hairs
Leaning against an oak old enough to have witnessed Dante penning his lines, I waited and waited and waited some more. I may as well have been standing in permafrost on the Canadian Shield. From the rational thought that three squirrels were plenty, I was slip-sliding toward a desperate need for a fourth. From my left shoulder came a chuckle and the rasp of sandpaper palms rubbed together; from the right came a sigh.
Then came a wild scratching of claws from the very tree I leaned against. I leaped back, and went bug-eyed from staring up and holding the Marlin at the ready, but I saw only a single leaf drifting down from a nest in a high fork. The nest shook ever so slightly. Only kids and fools shoot into a squirrel nest. I was determined to redeem this walkabout that had started so well and had lost much of its luster, but an impulse made quick work of what little luster was left.
When my crosshairs quartered the nest, a howl of glee came from Left Shoulder and a deep sigh from Right. Another leaf spiraled quietly down. A long second later, and the squirrel tumbled out and landed with a thump. With a mixture of relief and guilt, I walked over to retrieve my prize, but at the base of the tree I found only a small hole with a single drop of blood at its entrance. From coveting my neighbor’s squirrels to the pride of needing just one more—a good start on the Seven Deadlies—I now had a wounded animal.
On my knees, I saw the tip of a gray tail in the hole. My one chance was to grab it and pull—risky business, I remembered from childhood stories of squirrel incisors that can cut through hickory nuts humans need a hammer to crack. But the time for caution had passed, so I lunged, grabbed—and came away with a couple of gray hairs. Left Shoulder spewed laughter and brimstone. Right Shoulder stayed quiet, perhaps giving me up as a lost cause.
But I wasn’t done. Sliding my short-barreled .22 revolver from a vest pocket, I dug enough soil from the opening to reach inside and twist the muzzle vertical. This had worked before, at least once. The blowback was deafening, but no squirrel fell from the hole.
An over-the-top hunting buddy from college days once told a story of losing a squirrel in a hollow tree, then felling and sectioning it with his grandfather’s chain saw until the squirrel bolted. His grandfather owned the land and needed the firewood, or so the story went, but I suspect his own left-shoulder guy was dancing a happy tune. I owned neither the land nor the tree, and I’m not sure those small points would matter if I could have gotten my hands on a chain saw.
To my relief, the woods had become too dark to see. Feeling my way back to the trail, I considered Dante’s punishments for avarice—transgressors circling each other, pushing stones and hurling eternal insults; and for pride—the unfortunates pressed nose to ground under stone slabs to promote humility. This all seems a little 14th century now, and although Dante’s beatific vision at the end is no less hard to grapple with, his walkabout had at least ended well. Mine ended with a wounded squirrel lost in a hole.
Crossing the fence and climbing into the fields, I saw the path ahead in the sunset’s afterglow. Bright contrails crisscrossed the sky above the black river swamp, bending toward the horizon, chasing the light as it disappeared over the rim of the world. Writ small in the contrails, I saw a guy on a walkabout also chasing something he would never quite catch, one who knew better than to trespass or shoot into a squirrel’s nest yet was unable to resist doing both.
We’ve learned many things since Dante wrote his masterpiece, but whether our left shoulder–right shoulder choices have improved remains dubious, at least to me. To the winking crocodile man, a walkabout was just a lark in the bush. My walkabouts had been that, as well as a chance to learn new things about the world. To the Aboriginals, walkabouts were paths of discovering who they were and choosing who they wanted to become. The older I get, the better I like their take.
Beatrice, Dante’s second guide, who stepped forward when Virgil reached his limit, described the place he sought thusly: “That which subdues thee here, is virtue against which is no defense.”
Not an easy goal.
The left-shoulder guy with the brimstone breath knows his stuff, and his persuasive powers are a matter of personal record. But you have to like the quiet guy on the right, whose most powerful weapon is a sigh, and who is always ready to give bumblers who never quite seem to get things right—like me—another chance at redemption.
This coming season, Rusty plans to smear his left shoulder with axle grease and his right with Super Glue in an effort to gain better moral traction.
