Hunting Club members form a hunter answering service
The Hunting Club membership took up residence in the large, round corner booth in Doreen's 24 HR Eat Gas Now Cafe 30 minutes before the sun made its appearance. I knew the day would be interesting because deer season opened at that exact moment.
Doreen looked over the counter, snorted in disgust at the group and slammed the kitchen door.
"She's not a morning person," Doc observed.
"She's like that all the time," Wrong Willie said.
"Edgy," I said, holding up my empty coffee cup. Mutters from the kitchen. The harsh clank of glassware. Then she emerged with a fresh pot.
"I don't know why y'all don't just get a deer lease somewhere and give me a little rest," Doreen snapped, sloshing coffee into our cups without apologies for the overspills. She returned to the kitchen.
Doc's cell phone rang. "Hello?" He listened for a long moment. "Well, Delbert, I can't help that you haven't seen anything yet."
Woodrow glanced at his watch. "Tell him to be patient. The sun has only been up about 20 minutes."
"What's his complaint?" I asked.
"Just a minute, Delbert." He turned to the assemblage. "He says he's set up on a scrape, but he hasn't seen anything."
"Scrape or a rub?" Jerry Wayne asked. "What size?"
"Did you hear that? Which is it?" Doc listened. "You idiot. Those are little scrapes, and they're made by a young buck. The two big scrapes you told me about were made by a big buck, so you should have set up there. Nothing I can do for you."
Doc closed his phone. "He should have called me earlier in the week."
"He'll learn," Willie said. We sipped our cups empty and motioned for Doreen to bring us more. "I'm gonna need something to eat," Willie told her when she arrived with the pot.
Doreen was stunned into silence. It took about 30 seconds for her to digest the information. "You want to buy food for once?"
"Sure."
"Whadda ya want?" she asked, cautiously.
"Bacon."
She dutifully wrote the order on her pad. "What kind of eggs do you want with that?"
"None. Just bacon."
She paused for several more long moments. "Two or three strips?"
"That won't be enough. I'm hungry. How many strips in a pound?"
"I don't know," she said, already exasperated.
"Well, just bring me a pound of bacon ... crisp."
"I hate you all," she said, slamming her book shut. "Do you have money for this meat?"
Willie produced a full wallet, and she left. His phone rang. "What's up, Hubert? Oh, let me ask the guys." He looked at us. "Hubert wants to know if he oughta shoot the 8-point or the 10-point he's looking at."
We studied on his dilemma for a moment. "What does he have on the wall already?" New Wally asked.
The answer came back: both.
"Let them walk," Willie said and hung up.
My phone rang. "'Sup?"
The question.
"Deuce, just ... wait a minute. Willie's bacon is here."
Doreen slammed a full platter onto the table.
Willie looked sad. "That's a whole pound? I thought it would be more."
"Yep. That's it. What's with all the phone calls?" Doreen asked. "Those stupid rings of yours are driving me and the customers crazy."
I looked around the cafe. Only one old rancher was leaned over his coffee cup at the counter, and he hadn't moved in the last thirty minutes. I wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. The rest of the cafe was empty.
"We still don't have a deer lease, because the one Rev was working on fell through," Doc said.
"That wasn't my fault," I argued. "My cousin thought he had one, but--"
"And I don't really want to hunt with your kinfolk anyway," Willie broke in, screaming into his cell phone.
"Enough!" Doreen shouted, ending our verbal melee. "I just wanted to know about all these stupid phone calls."
"Well, as I was saying," Doc began. "Since we don't have a lease, we're staying involved by helping other hunters with their questions. You see, around this table we have somewhere around 700 years of experience. We're in great demand."
Doreen sighed. "So you're telling me you're going to sit here all season long and not hunt. You're just going to stay on telephones and waste your time when you could be out hunting for a deer or quail lease somewhere."
"That's about it," Willie said, his voice muffled by a mouthful of bacon.
Doreen took a cell phone out of her apron pocket and dialed a number. "Jan?"
"Uh, oh," I said. Jan is Willie's wife. "Dude, you're in trouble. She's ratting you out about all this bacon."
While Doreen spewed such words as cholesterol, lazy, waste, bacon, leases, bacon and bacon, we frantically began dialing phones to find a deer lease before she could talk to the other wives. It was time to leave.
The search was on.
Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
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