The Grasshopper Trap Read online

  What had never occurred to Bun was that guns, confined in the limited space of a gun cabinet, breed and produce offspring. Just last summer I discovered a brand-new little Browning over/under 20-gauge shotgun in my gun cabinet. It was nestled right in between a 12-gauge Browning automatic and a 16-gauge Browning pump. I had no problem guessing what had happened. The gestation period of a new gun is exactly six months. I counted backward to the Christmas holidays, when the gun cabinet had been left unsupervised for a few days. Those rascals! No doubt they gave the Winchesters, Remingtons, and Marlins some ideas of their own. I thought about writing the Browning people to complain, but instead I’m raising the little 20-gauge just as if it were one of my own. The little devil has already gobbled up a case of shells, too.

  Here’s another example of outdoor phenomena that wives can’t understand. A while back I told Bun I needed another boat. She agreed to listen calmly to my reasonable explanation, after I had pried her fingers from around my trachea.

  “It’s this way,” I explained. “I have the big boat, right? Right. Then there’s the rubber boat, which I couldn’t do without. Sure, I have the two canoes, but I keep one only out of sentimental attachment. The other one is the work canoe. Of course, there’s the duck boat. The rowboat? That’s a toy for the kids. Now what I need is a simple little fishing boat—nothing fancy—that I can putter about the lakes in. Is that too much to ask? Here I work my fingers to the bones day after day trying to keep us afloat—uh, inapt metaphor there—financially secure, I meant to say, and you raise a fuss over my wanting a little ol’ fishing boat.”

  “Oh, all right,” Bun said. “I guess you can have a little ol’ fishing boat if you want it. I do hope it comes with decent oarlocks. I hate the ones on the rowboat.”

  Oarlocks?

  A few days later I brought the new boat home. When I showed it to Bun, she ran back into the house to climb a few walls. (We have one of those new phones where by pushing single buttons you can dial the police, the fire department, or the divorce lawyer.)

  Eventually I managed to get her settled down long enough to explain the phenomenon to her. “Look,” I said patiently, “this sort of thing happens to an outdoorsman all the time. He goes down to the marina to buy a little ol’ fishing boat and finds about what he’s looking for, a twelve-foot aluminum job with a little fifteen-horse kicker for power. So he dickers with the salesman a bit and they finally work out a deal. He starts to haul the boat home, but discovers it’s grown to sixteen feet while he was dickering with the salesman. By the time he’s three blocks from the marina, the boat’s bigger than his car. He has to speed all the way home before the boat grows so big he can’t tow it. That’s nearly what happened here.”

  “Will it get any bigger?” Bun asked, gnawing a young elm by the porch.

  “Nope, that’s it. Twenty feet and three tons, with just enough room for two bass fishermen. It’s so fast it’s got an altimeter in it instead of a depth-finder.”

  “Well, if it makes you this happy, I suppose it’s worth it,” Bun said. “You are happy, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, sure. But I still need a little ol’ fishing boat. Maybe I can pick one up …”

  Have you ever had anyone try to run you through with a gnawed-off elm? No, I suppose not.

  We now come to the problem of metamorphosis. (No, dummy, you can’t catch it from a handful of leaves.) Metamorphosis refers to the transformation of a tadpole into a frog, a caterpillar into a butterfly, that sort of thing. You don’t hear much about it because nobody can pronounce “metamorphosis.” Even though you don’t hear much about metamorphosis, there’s a lot of it around, especially at our house.

  Metamorphosis is one of those phenomena Bun just can’t comprehend. For one of her many birthdays, I bought her one of those food processors, an expensive job. You could leave it home alone and it would have a six-course meal on the table when you got back. I wrapped it up in a nice package a few weeks before Bun’s birthday and hid it in the back of a closet. That was my mistake. The closet was too warm, and metamorphosis occurred. By the time Bun opened her presents, the food processor had turned into a shotgun-shell reloader! It was one of those miracles of nature you hear so much about, the kind that leaves you sort of awestruck and even a little reverent.

  Metamorphosis occurs so often on her birthdays and at Christmas that Bun may be getting some slight grasp of this mystery of nature. Last December, for example, she hinted to me that she would like a really nice string of pearls for Christmas.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “But they’re too expensive,” she said.

  “No problem. I doubt they would cost a bit more than the neat little automatic I was looking at the other day.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t need another pistol.”

  “Of course not.”

  The pearl necklace I bought set me back a sizable bundle, but I must admit it was lovely. Oddly enough, the box it came in was about the same size one might expect for a neat little automatic. Carelessly forgetting the possible consequences, I hid the package in the back of the same closet.

  Christmas morning we let the children open their presents first, and then Bun and I opened ours. She unwrapped the pearl necklace last.

  As usual, she seemed stunned. “You shouldn’t have!” she yelped.

  “Don’t blame me,” I said. “Blame old Mother Nature. She’s the one responsible for metamorphosis.”

  “I mean they’re much too expensive!” And she pulled out this beautiful string of pearls. She was right. They were much too expensive. If you can’t trust Mother Nature, whom can you trust?, that’s what I want to know.

  “Dad’s acting peculiar,” one of the kids said.

  “Good,” Bun said. “It’s nice to have him back to normal.”

  The Swamp

  We had just been sprung from eighth grade for the summer. To celebrate, Birdy Thompson and I talked the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree into taking us fishing on Pack River. Rancid considered most of my friends “a bunch of smarty-pantses” but he liked Birdy, probably because of Birdy’s having been born with a serious psychological defect-chronic gullibility. Birdy believed everything Rancid told him.

  As we rattled along in Rancid’s truck, the woodsman poured forth a stream of “facts” so strange they threatened to erode the very foundations of science. Through the mercy of time, I have forgotten most of the oddities of nature Rancid claimed to have observed firsthand “with maw own eyes,” but I do recall the cross between a skunk and a porcupine.

  “Now thar was a smug critter. Why, he could spit in a coyote’s eye, and the coyote’d say, ’Scuse me, suh, fer gettin’ maw eye in yer way.’”

  Birdy was awash in awe. “Gee, Mr. Crabtree, I wish they taught interesting stuff like that in school.”

  “They should,” Rancid responded. “But all them teachers knows is book-larnin’. They don’t git out in the woods whar all the interestin’ stuff is.” Then he glared at me. “What you lookin’ like thet fer?”

  “No reason,” I said. “I was just rolling my eyes, and they got stuck back in my head for a second.”

  Presently we came to the river. I had fished every inch of Pack River except for a section that meandered into a wild and swampy region. The river emerged from the swamp a dozen or so miles away, where it crossed under the road. I had never met anyone who had followed the river through the swamp, and it occurred to me that the fishing back in there might be fantastic.

  “You ever hear of anybody who followed the river through the swamp?” I asked Rancid, interrupting his account of a tree-climbing rabbit.

  “The only person Ah ever heard of to foller the river through the swamp is me. And Ah didn’t have to hear ’cause it was me what done it.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Waal, thar’s a whole lot Ah ain’t told you, mainly ’cause you don’t pay attention to what Ah tries to teach ya. Now iffen you was more like Birdy here, instead of bein’suc
h a smarty-pants, you might larn somethin’.”

  Birdy gave me one of his smug smiles. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was smug smiles from gullible guys like Birdy.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “If you know so much about the swamp, Rancid, why don’t we ever go back in there fishing?”

  Rancid thought for a moment. “Thar’s a lot of strange critters back in the swamp. Ah seed a killer bat the size of a goat in thar. Might of got me, too, ’cept Ah managed to git outta the swamp whilst it was still daylight. A feller shore wouldn’t want to git caught back in thar after dark, Ah can tell you thet!”

  “Sure,” I said. “Listen, it’s still early morning. Why don’t we build a raft and float the river through the swamp? I bet we can catch some terrific fish.”

  “Ah ain’t too hot fer the idear mawsef, what with the killer bat and all.”

  “Birdy,” I said, “it’s bad enough you believe everything Rancid says, but talking like him is too much.”

  “Sorry,” Birdy said.

  “What do you say, Rancid?” I said. “Let’s build a raft and float the river through the swamp.”

  “Might be kinder fun,” Rancid said. “Shore, let’s do it! Ah got a saw and ax in the back of the truck. We can whup together a raft in no time.”

  Birdy looked wildly from me to Rancid. “But what about the killer bat, Mr. Crabtree?”

  “Killer bat?” Rancid said. “Oh, the killer bat. Waal, we don’t have to worry ’bout him lessen we gets caught in the swamp after dark. As Ah recollects, it only takes three or four hours to float down to the road. We’ll be outta the swamp no later than noon.”

  Rancid’s predictions had a way of sending chills down my spine. I didn’t for an instant believe his story about the killer bat, but just on principle I didn’t want to be caught out in the swamp after dark. It was still only about eight in the morning, however, and since Rancid’s prediction had a margin of error of approximately eight hours of daylight, I knew there was no way we wouldn’t be through the swamp by sundown.

  Immediately after sundown, one of the first things I noticed about the swamp was that it had become excessively creepy. We had been lost for hours. The bleached skeletons of long-dead trees seemed to take on a ghostly glow in the fading light. Wispy strands of moss reached down for us like long gray fingers from the overhanging limbs. Darkness oozed into the swamp from all sides and began to close in on us. There was a stillness in the air, broken only by the sounds of water burbling against the raft, the splashes of our poles, and a strange, eerie moaning.

  “For cripes sake, Birdy!” I said. “Would you stop your dang eerie moaning! It’s getting on my nerves!”

  “We’re never gonna find our way out of here, I just know it!” Birdy whined.

  “Go back to the eerie moaning,” I said.

  Rancid, seated on an apple box in the middle of the raft, scratched the stubble on his jaw thoughtfully. He had early on assumed the dual positions of captain and navigator of the craft, while Birdy and I did the poling.

  “What are you thinking about, Rance?” I said, hoping he was about to come up with a brilliant idea that would lead us out of the swamp. Even at that young age I had discovered that when a group of people finds itself in a predicament, nothing so calms fears and nourishes hope as the expression of calm deliberation on the face of one of the members. It is an expression that conveys the message, “This mess we’re in is but a riddle, which I am about to solve with my powers of inductive and deductive reasoning.”

  “C’mon, Rance,” I said. “What are you thinking about? Have you figured out how to get us out of here?”

  “Wha? What’d you say? Ah must hev drifted off thar fer a spell. You fellers got any idear whar in tarnation we is?”

  Sometimes, of course, the person with the expression of calm deliberation on his face has the reasoning powers of a golfball.

  Birdy raised his eerie moaning by two octaves. “We’re gonna die in this stupid swamp, I just know it.”

  For the first time that day, I thought Birdy might have a point.

  In its upper reaches, the river was an energetic, somewhat boisterous stream that flowed from one point to another in a no-nonsense manner. In the swamp, however, it turned lazy and slothful, sprawling out in a drunken stupor of aimlessly meandering channels. Most of the channels ended in bogs that could have slurped down a team of plow horses, had the plow horses been dumb enough to pole a raft into the swamp. Our problem was how to find the main channel.

  Dark, shimmering clouds of mosquitoes and gnats hovered above us, kept at bay only by the periodic bursts of sizzling profanity from the old woodsman. As hoarseness overcame Rancid late in the day, however, the insects unleashed their pent-up fury and ravenous appetites upon us.

  “Gol-dang,” Rancid croaked through a haze of gnats. “Ah thank we oughtta go in the direction of that big dark shadow over thar.”

  “Which dark shadow?” I said.

  “The great big’un. The one what’s shaped like a barn.”

  Birdy and I started poling the raft toward the shadow shaped like a barn. Suddenly we detected some current in the water.

  “Maybe we’ve hit the main channel!” I yelled.

  “Ah told you Ah knew what Ah was doin’!” Rancid gloated.

  We poled into the shadow, feeling our way through low-hanging branches. Dead moss hair brushed our faces, strange protuberances reached up for us from the watery depths. Then moonlight began filtering into the swamp. Mist rose from the water in a manner befitting a Count Dracula movie. Swamp creatures filled the night with eerie sounds—screeches, hoots, howls, chitters, chatters, and wails.

  “Stop the wails, Birdy,” I said. “They give me the creeps.”

  “S-say, Mr. Crabtree,” Birdy said. “A-about where was it in the swamp you saw the killer bat as big as a goat?”

  “Huh? What? Oh, the killer bat. Heh heh. Waal, Ah cain’t rightly say whar it was. Might of been right near here. Area looks kinder familiar.”

  Birdy started with the wails again.

  “Geez, Birdy,” I said. “You’ll believe anything anybody tells you. There’s no such thing as a killer bat as big as a goat.”

  “Is too,” Rancid said.

  “Is not.”

  “Is.”

  “But M-Mr. Crabtree s-saw it,” Birdy said.

  “Thar! Thet proves it!” Rancid said. “And it was a fearsome-lookin’ critter, Ah can tell you. Ah shore hope he don’t notice us.”

  Rancid’s mood had improved considerably, since it was now obvious we had found the main channel. Indeed, the water had stretched out into something vaguely resembling a river.

  “Say, Rance,” I said. “Let’s make this ol’ raft get up and move. Birdy’s gettin’ awfully tired. Why don’t you take a turn at his pole?”

  “Oh, all right,” Rancid said, and the two of them exchanged places, Birdy almost instantly slumping into a slumber on the box in the middle of the raft.

  We glided swiftly and smoothly along, the current now helping to carry the raft. It did seem to me that Rancid was working on a ratio of one stroke of his pole to every three of mine. In fact, sometimes there was such a long period between strokes of his pole that I suspected he was catching himself a quick snooze. It was during one of these periods that I noticed two Canada geese drifting on the water directly ahead. I expected them to take off at any second, but they too were apparently snoozing. Well, I thought, it will be interesting to see how close we can get to them. I knew both Rancid and Birdy would welcome the opportunity to see two wild geese close up, a wonderful bit of relief from the monotony of poling through the swamp.

  The raft glided up beside the geese. When they were right next to Birdy—he could almost have reached out and touched them if he had been awake—they became aware that this strange floating thing going past consisted in part of three human beings. The geese exploded into the air over the raft with a thunderous beating of wings and deafening goose sounds.
r />   “The killer bat!” screamed Birdy.

  “Gol-dang a-mighty!” shouted Rancid, who obviously also thought it was the killer bat. He thrust at the geese with the ten-foot rafting pole as though it were a fencing sword.

  “They’re honkers!” I yelled, but in the excitement and confusion of the moment, this apparently was misinterpreted as “We’re goners!”

  “Not yet!” Rancid roared. “The bleep-of-a-bleep ain’t got us yet!”

  Then the geese were gone. Waves beat against some dark bank, but otherwise there was only silence in the swamp, and the sound of heavy breathing. The three of us stood on the raft, shaking. Even though I had known all along that the ruckus was caused by geese, the experience unnerved me. Birdy was momentarily paralyzed by fright, as I suppose anyone would be who thought he had just narrowly escaped the fangs of a giant bat. Rancid recovered much faster.

  “Ah’m gettin’ mighty tired of this gol-dang swamp,” he said. “Sit down and gitcher selves a grip on somethin’.”

  He then poled us out of the swamp by himself. I remember the feat especially well, because it was the only time I’ve ridden on a log raft that achieved planing speeds.

  Later, as the three of us walked up the road to get the truck, Rancid said, “You boys are dang lucky Ah was along. Warn’t fer me fightin’ ’em off, them killer geese might of got both of yuz.”

  “There ain’t no such thing as killer geese,” Birdy said.

  I was astonished. Maybe the swamp had cured Birdy of gullibility.

  Rancid walked on in silence for a moment, then said, “You know somethin’, Birdy? If you’re not careful, you could very easy become a smarty-pants just like somebody else Ah knows.”

  A Hunker Is Not a Squat

  One reason diplomats have so much trouble coming to any kind of agreement is that they sit in soft chairs around a large table with yellow pads in front of them to doodle on. They’re too comfortable for serious negotiation. My theory is that world peace could be achieved in short order if the diplomats were made to hunker out in a barnyard and draw their proposals on the ground with sticks.