Monday was the first day of dove season in El Paso county.
Two point one million Texans have hunting and fishing licenses. Jaime’s one of them. He got his at Walmart, along with a box of shells that’s almost doubled in price since last year.
We loaded into the pickup truck at five. I sat shotgun, even though the shotgun was in the backseat with Gary. Jake rode in the bed.
We took a declining hierarchy of roadways, from interstate to highway to two-lane blacktop, past glass-faced strip malls and stucco tract homes, to chile fields and desert. Each turn took us to a lesser tributary, like we were following a river to its source. We turned off the pavement in La Union. Behind us the Franklins were gold in the afternoon sunlight, and alfalfa grew green out the open window. The mesa was close enough to put the roadway in shadow. Chile, unharvested, flashed red under the leaves of withering plants, and the yellow sticks of corn and milo stubble poked up through grey-brown dirt.
We turned left, passed a sign that said Posted -- No Trespassing, and a row of farm implements, discs and plows and agricultural esoterica I can only guess the names of.
The road followed a narrow cement irrigation canal, full, that fringed a field whose recent crop had been plowed under. Jaime parked the truck under a lone pine tree, twenty five feet tall, with a trunk fourteen inches thick. The canal hooked an elbow there, and across the narrow channel, a tree farm soaked its roots. The trees had gone feral, too big to harvest with anything but the biggest, most specialized machinery.
Jake was out of the bed before we were out of the cab. He circled the truck, switched on, his seal-sleek body tracking his nose, every corpuscle frenetically attentive.
Between the tree farm and a grove of pecans trees, fifty yards away, a brown Chevy SUV sat parked, a canvas lawn chair barely visible behind it. A pair of hunting dogs, floppy-eared hounds, bounded around the truck, and occasionally the hunter would show, and his gun would bark, and a bird would fall.
His boy was there, too, dressed in hunter chic, and his small .410 would pop, with no visible effect.
Jake was bred to hunt. He arrived in El Paso years ago as a puppy, pre-paid from a Weimaraner farm in the Pacific northwest. In Jaime’s backyard he’ll wear you out fetching a tennis ball. Because he lives to serve. He’s not happy unless he’s providing a service, even if he’s providing a service you’re not particularly keen on him providing, like fetching a spit-soaked tennis ball till your arm’s tired.
Gary lugged the ice chest from the back seat and put it on the tailgate. Jaime unsheathed the shotgun, a Berretta side-by-side in twelve gauge, and thumbed the lever that opened the breech. The gun broke, the barrels hanging from the hinge. He loaded the stainless steel shells and draped the shotgun over his forearm.
The first bird, a white wing dove, crested the pine tree, and Jaime snapped the breech closed and tracked the bird across the sky. The gun barked, and the bird fell.
Fetch it up.
Jake released, bounding across the broken field, and trotted back with the bird in his mouth. Jaime threw it in a plastic bucket.
I’m a hundred percent for the season, Jaime said.
We popped the tops on a couple of green bottles, German imports, and Jaime bagged a couple more birds on a couple more shots.
Still a hundred percent.
He missed the fourth shot. The bird was slicing three-quarters away, and far. Five and six put two more birds in the bucket.
We sat on the tailgate, and drank beer. I pulled the flask of Sotol from my back pocket, and passed that around, and I hefted the gun.
The Berretta is vintage Italian, with a hand-checkered walnut stock and minimal engraving, a far barrel and a near barrel and a safety/selector switch between them. I pulled the butt into my chest and traced the trails of imaginary birds across the cloud-clotted sky. Then I lowered it, and opened the breech, and snapped it closed again.
Closes like a bank vault, Jaime said.
I handed Jaime the gun and he shot some more, tossing the birds into the bucket and the empty shells in the back of the truck.
A pair of ducks flew by. But it’s not their season.
The sky turned pink, and Jaime dumped out the bucket for inventory. Ten white-wing, one mourning, and a big breasted Eurasian ringneck. Twelve in all. The bag limit is fifteen. Jaime didn’t bag the limit.
But that’s not what it’s about, he said.
Wayne says that from Fort Worth it’s a three hour drive to hunt, and then you got to pay someone when you get there, Jaime said. And he says it’s shitty hunting. Here’s it’s a fifteen minute drive and the hunting’s free. Wayne wants to move back for that.
The other truck loaded up their lawn chairs and drove off. Jaime unloaded the Berretta and pushed a foxtail swab through both barrels before he put the gun back into the soft canvas sheath and zipped it up.
We sat on the tailgate in the fading pink-orange glow, and we finished our beers. And we felt sorry for Wayne.
