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Jungle Dirt
by David Robert
Crews
In 1969, Jerry was a nineteen-year-old kid working as a
bear hunting guide at his Uncle Dan’s and Aunt Cathy’s
lodge in Maine. In July of that year, a
twenty-one-year-old guy named Sam and his millionaire
stepfather came up to the lodge, from Florida, for a
one-week black bear hunt.
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The stepfather had called the lodge on the phone to set
up the hunt on Friday evening, only three days before he
wanted the hunt to begin. He had talked to Cathy and
said, “I’m sorry it’s such short notice darlin’, but
what ever it takes I’m willing to pay. Anything you
want, darlin’, anything you want. I’ve got me a
million-dollar concern down here. Just book me and my
stepson for next week. I’ll take care of ya’”
When she informed Dan and Jerry that she had just booked
two more hunters for the next week, Cathy clowningly
grinned with faux pride and added, “Oh, their from
Florida, one is a millionaire and the other is his
stepson. Be ready to roll out the red carpet.” |
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In 1969 millionaires were kinda rare, but Cathy was just
kidding, because all of the lodge’s guests got the same
great treatment.
Jerry was standing in the lodge’s dining room on Sunday
afternoon, talking to a few of the lodge’s guest’s who
had just arrived for their week long bear hunt, when he
looked out the windows at a car that was pulling into
the driveway. He saw that it was a big, long, dark blue,
fairly new Cadillac with Florida tags on it and two men
in. One man was obviously much older than the other.
“Hey Cathy,” Jerry called into the kitchen, “this looks
like your millionaire comin’ in.”
As soon as they walked into the lodge, the older man
immediately introduced himself and the younger man all
round to the lodge staff and other paying hunters who
were there in the lodge’s dining room. They were indeed
the millionaire and his stepson, Sam.
Then, Sam stood there quietly and uncomfortably looking
down at the floor and then back out the door as his
stepfather bombastically announced, “Everyone, I don’t
care if I get a bear or not, this hunt is for my stepson
Sam here, he just got back from Vietnam and was
discharged from the army on Friday morning.”
Jerry took one look at Sam, and felt horrified for the
guy. The young guide knew that there was no way that a
bear hunt could offer the kind of rest and recreation
that a guy needed who had just, two and a half days
before, returned from a year of hard, bloody, muddy
fighting in the Vietnam War.
Jerry thought, “That man’s a millionaire! What a jerk!
He should be paying for that guy to be in a luxury hotel
room in Miami with two high priced call girls, cases of
booze and all the great room service meals he can eat!”
Sam sat down at the long, heavy wooden table that ran
the length of the dining room. The stepfather walked to
the far side of the dining room and began talking to
some of the other hunters who were over there relaxing
and conversing. Jerry sat down across from Sam and
carefully engaged him in conversation.
Jerry had a natural ability to make guests feel welcome
at the lodge and to show them a good time in Maine. He
loved people and what they could share with him about
their lives. He was deeply concerned, though, about
Sam’s ability to have a good time there. He knew that
Sam had earned and deserved a good, relaxing rest, but
he felt that six days in a tree stand stalking bears
wouldn’t give the guy what he needed at that point in
his life.
Jerry looked at Sam with deep respect, admiration and
wonder because of Sam’s ability to make it through the
mud and blood of Vietnam without a scratch. Two of
Jerry’s high school buddies had been killed in Vietnam,
and the nightly TV news reports of body counts and
filmed scenes of tired, frustrated warriors had sickened
him to the point that he wouldn't watch the news
anymore. Also, like many other nineteen-year-old
American lads at that time, he was expecting to receive
his military draft notice any day. Consequently, Sam was
especially impressive to him.
As Jerry sat there across from Sam, he noticed a lot
about the young warrior.
Sam had the perfect physique for survival in a jungle
war. He looked like someone had put a vacuum cleaner
hose to the bottom of his foot and sucked out all of the
excess fat and muscle from his body. He appeared to be
drained of everything except what he needed to act
lightning quick, on a deadly level, without any wasted
effort. He was more in control of himself than a bobcat.
He never made the slightest movement unless it was
absolutely necessary.
The pure survival mode that he was still locked into was
far too intense to have ended at the completion of his
tour of duty in Nam.
Sam sat at the table, very quietly, with his hands
folded, his face tilted over his hands, and his eyelids
covering the top third of his eyes. He found it
impossible to look at anyone longer than it took to
answer or ask a short question. Jerry and some of the
other folks in the dining room were saying friendly
things to him, but none of that could make him feel
welcome there. And he seemed to have lost his ability to
smile.
For months he had been shutting new acquaintances out of
his life due to the hard, cold fact that too many ‘F-ing
New Guys’ that he’d met in the previous months had died
soon after landing in Nam.
Suddenly, Sam’s entire body grew taught, and he came
part way up off of his chair. He pulled his hands apart,
palms down, fingers straight and vibrating like a tuning
fork, the way that they did after discovering a trip
wire to an enemy booby trap. He stared at his finger
nails with wide, well focused eyes.
“I’ve still got dirt from the jungle under my nails,” he
said, in a low tone, using tightly strung vocal chords.
He looked up and around the room with a terrified
appearance on his face and frantically, almost pleaded,
“Who can lend me a pair of nail clippers? Who can lend
me a pair of nail clippers?”
Cathy was in the kitchen, and when she heard his strange
tone of voice she came to the doorway of the dining
room. She stood there looking at him for a second; it
was obvious by her mannerisms and the serious, sincere
look on her face that she understood what he had
experienced in Nam.
Cathy fetched him a pair of nail clippers real quick.
As Sam cleaned his fingernails, one of the hunters, who
was Jerry’s age, sat down next to Sam, facing sideways
on the chair towards the quiet warrior and leaning
intrusively into his personal space like a trusted
confidant.
That hunter idiotically asked, “How many of them did you
kill?”
Everyone there knew that he was inquiring about Sam’s
personal body count of communist soldiers whom the war
weary young man had dispatched to the great beyond,
because the bear hunting hadn’t begun yet.
Sam automatically wrenched his body and, wincing, turned
his face away from the idiotic inquiry; overpowering,
painful, traumatic memories engulfed the poor guy like a
personal-sized flash flood. He froze up still and quiet,
like when it wasn’t prudent to start firing at the VC
soldiers moving through the jungle night just a few feet
away from his listening post.
Jerry was stunned by the appalling idiocy of that hunter
who was military draft material, too. The young guide
felt a sickening whirlwind of concern, as he searched
his entire insides for the words to rescue Sam from his
anguish. But he didn’t have enough worldly experience to
know what to say.
Other people sitting or standing around the table were
in a state of shock, and they were also quietly thinking
fast for a way to help Sam.
Fortunately, Dan, who had been awarded a Silver Star, a
Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for kickin’ commie ass in
the Korea War, was standing behind Jerry. Dan jumped in
with, “It’s usually nighttime when you’re fightin’ and
ya don’t see who you hit. And with the modern automatic
weapons you just throw out a field of fire, so nobody
knows who killed who.”
From around the table, other quietly appalled
individuals agreed with what Dan said. Then they took
the conversation in a different direction, away from the
rigid, silent young man’s recent war trauma.
Meanwhile, the stepfather was busy proving to everyone
that he was a big shot.
The stepfather was short, round, bald on top and kept a
big fat cigar in his mouth. He wore a white business
suit and a dark tie, the kind of outfit that’s tailored
from lightweight material and made for wearing in
southern summer heat when lots of perspiration flows. He
talked with a slightly southern accent in a deep,
abrasive voice. The character Boss Hog on the TV show
Dukes of Hazard was a spittin’ image of the stepfather.
The stepfather was into big business, and he made sure
that everybody knew it. There was only one phone at the
lodge, and there was no privacy when using it. Ole Boss
Hog loved it that way, because he could make several
phone calls a day loudly and intrusively discussing his
business deals. After every call he’d strut ‘round the
lodge bragging about his business.
After two days of that, Dan laid down the law and told
him, “These other hunters came up here to forget about
their business for a week, we don’t wanta hear about
yours. No more phone calls.”
The stepfather had bought Sam the hunting trip,
ostensibly, as a welcome home present. Jerry and most of
the other folks working or staying at the lodge, though,
thought that the stepfather’s intent was to impress
Sam’s mother and to travel around showing off his son
the war hero. Sam was a hero, he had kept a lot of his
friends alive in Nam, but his stepfather had never
really been any kind of a father to him.
Sam couldn’t stand his abrasive stepfather. The man was
his mother’s third husband and, like her second husband,
he was supporting his businesses using the money that
Sam’s father had left to his family when he died.
Sam went along on the hunt to please his mother. He
didn’t want to go, but he was just too tired and worn
down from outwitting death to care about anything but
being back home alive. Sam was a good son to his mother,
and she loved him as best she could. She had hoped that
this hunting trip would encourage a father and son
relationship to develop between the two of them.
Problem was, Mom tested high on the social register but
low on common sense.
On Monday, the first day of the hunt, Dan and Jerry had
Sam ride along with them, in the lodge’s pickup truck,
out to a dirt logging road where their string of bear
baits with the most recent signs of bear activity on
them was located; a carload of other hunters followed
behind them into the vast Maine wilderness. They were
going after timid, smart, and beautiful, wild black
bears.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. Dan drove
and Jerry jumped out at every bear bait to take a hunter
into the woods and show him his tree stand and give him
some tips on how to hunt that particular bait.
They had put Sam on the first bait. The last hunter on
that string of baits was to drive the car back out after
dark, pick up the others hunters, that he had dropped
off along the way, and meet the guides who would be
waiting in the lodge’s pickup truck near the first bait.
Dan told them that they were doing it that way so that
the guides could know as soon as possible if any of
those hunters had shot at a bear and it needed to be
tracked and retrieved.
What Dan said was true, but he had put Sam on the first
bait so that the guides could pick him up first. That
way they could spend more time with him.
The Combat Veteran Dan knew that Sam needed to spend
time with a few understanding buddies, not out in the
woods alone waiting to kill a bear. Dan also knew that
when nighttime fell it would probably make Sam feel like
he had felt the previous Monday evening, when Mr.Charlie
Cong was out there in the jungle waiting for it to get
good and dark before attacking Sam and his friends.
After deploying all those hunters, Jerry and Dan talked
a little about their day as they drove on back out the
logging road. It was less than a half-hour since they
had dropped Sam off, but there he was sitting
comfortably in the grass at the side of the road.
Jerry thought, “Damn right, good man, ain’t no sense you
bein’ out here on a bear hunt after huntin’ heavily
armed Vietcong Guerrillas for a friggin’ year!”
Neither Dan nor Jerry said a word. Dan stopped the
truck, and Jerry got out to let Sam into the front seat
between them.
“Your rifle unloaded?” Jerry asked his new buddy.
Sam tilted his head side ways, with a questioning look
on his face, and asked, “Aren’t you going to go in and
get the bear?”
Jerry and Dan looked at each other in amazement.
In their heads, they instantly deducted the five minutes
or so it had to have taken Sam to climb down from his
tree stand and walk out of the woods from the
twenty-five or so minutes since Sam had been showed his
tree stand and realized that for the first time in the
history of the lodge a six-day bear hunt had ended in
just fifteen or twenty minutes!
Over the years, a very small percentage of the lodge’s
hunters had killed a bear on their first day out, but
usually not until late in the evening when it is peak
hunting time. Hunters went out to their baits in the
early afternoon, so that they could settle into their
tree stands before the bears started their evening
grocery shopping. Not only that, some people went on
bear hunting trips to the lodge two or three different
times before they even saw a bear. Of those who saw one,
only a third were sharp and fast enough to shoot one,
and no more than another third of them did everything
right and killed their bear.
The bear that Sam killed was probably coming into the
bait that early to avoid a larger bruin, which most
likely had previously chased the smaller bear away from
that bait. Like all wild bears, it had also been on the
lookout for its only predator, man. It was very
carefully doing its best to ease in to the bait
unnoticed, by man or beast, while looking, listening and
sniffing for danger. It wasn’t just casually strollin’
in for a snack.
Sam had skillfully tuned into his surroundings as soon
as he had climbed into his tree stand, and the wind was
right for dispersing his natural odor away from the
direction that the bear came from. The bear had walked
into the bait from directly behind Sam. It is almost
impossible for a human to catch sight of a bear that’s
easing in from behind them, and wild black bears usually
sha-boogie on outta sight when they see any movement
that is out of sync with the natural flow of their
surroundings. But, that bear had mistakenly walked up
directly behind a hyper alert, superb jungle fighter.
Quicker than the bear could blink an eye, Sam had swung
his rifle all the way around 180 degrees and killed it.
That was a thrilling fact to the professional hunting
guides. They had neither known nor ever heard of any
hunter being fast enough on the draw to do that.
No doubt some well trained, battle-hardened Vietnamese
Communist Soldier had met the same fate as that bear had
during the previous week. Sam shot the bear dead so fast
that it didn’t have time to react. One shot to knock it
down, and two more for a sure, quick kill.
After they had retrieved Sam’s bear and were driving to
the closest country store for a round of sodas and
snacks, Jerry looked at Sam and thought to himself, “If
God has ever taken a direct hand in a bear hunt, he did
it for this guy.”
It seemed right to Jerry, even when he considered the
bear’s loss.
Sam’s stepfather was loud and self servingly proud about
Sam’s successful bear hunt. Most of the folks at the
lodge, though, were genuinely relieved to see Sam’s hunt
end so mercifully fast.
Unfortunately, Sam's mother’s hopes that this trip would
create a bond between her son and her third husband were
in vain. For the rest of that week, Sam didn’t pay much
attention to his stepfather.
Those folks at the lodge who understood the Vietnam
Veteran’s needs made sure that he had a good, peaceful
time for the rest of that week. They showed Sam the best
of backwoods hospitality. The women working in the lodge
treated him like a visiting cousin who could never wear
out his welcome. The guides and some of the paying
hunters took Sam along with them on rides throughout the
picturesque Maine countryside. Their new buddy began to
regain his ability to smile again, and he gave them his
slight, easy smile often enough during those last five
days that they knew his trip to Maine wasn’t a waste of
his time.
Sam was finally getting the rest and relaxation that he
so richly deserved.
Ten years later, when Jerry told this story to some new
hunters at Dan and Cathy’s lodge, Dan added, “That was
the only time that one of our hunters ever got a 180.”
David Robert Crews
2727 Liberty Pkwy.
Dundalk, Md. 21222
410-262-3618
ursusdave@hotmail.com
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