By J. Baker
Our club goes back to the 70s when a bunch of lacrosse-playing, skirt-chasing, fraternity brothers graduated, got jobs, and had enough scratch to lease private land. They bounced around properties up and down the Eastern Shore of Maryland, finally landing on a farm with three goose pits and a water blind on a small finger peninsula on the Chester River. The 1995 goose hunting moratorium took out many clubs over the seven years it was in place. Luckily we had the river blind and duck hunting sustained us.
Every club has a guy who is a mess, usually drunk, and only around because he goes way back with the boys. I remember two things about Anthony: his fly was always down and he taught me a lot about love and hate in a single afternoon. He was entrenched in a drawn-out divorce. Kids were involved, and the term adversarial would be an understatement. It was never far from his thoughts given how often he found a way to talk about it and disparage his once bride. At some point he even did time for a contempt charge stemming from threatening the family court judge.
I was 12, the lone youth in a hunting club of men, all equal in our desire to be outdoors. On a January morning, it was blustery, raining off and on with low cloud cover—prime waterfowl weather. We were in early to decoy and get set up. When the wind and tide are working together the Chester River rips. Early action was fast with groups of mallards and teal flying and giving us looks. The dogs got a workout. By late morning with a respectable stack of ducks in the blind, the weather calmed to blue skies, and things slowed down. Thermoses were touched for the first time, cigars lit, and the general banter that comes with empty skies started. Eyes stayed sharp and a pair of ducks that tried to sneak us didn’t escape. The drake fell in the decoys, quickly recovered by the matriarch golden retriever. The hen was winged and sailed out across the river. Anthony volunteered to get in the jon boat and go after her.
Wearing waders, new Benelli in hand, he walked down the trail. Five minutes later he had the 9.9 horsepower running and was motoring out—no life jacket, fresh lung dart in hand, wind in his hair. Risk happens slowly, then all at once. Anthony steered hard to starboard when he marked the duck, in the blink of an eye the back corner where he was sitting dipped under the surface and water swamped the boat. One second the boat was there, the next it was gone and Anthony was struggling to stay afloat in the middle of the river, waders quickly filling with the cold brackish water. God threw him a bone; the red gas tank was floating within reach.
Someone called 911. Anthony was being carried downriver by the current. My dad, potentially making the situation worse, took a top-of-the-waders walk across the inlet to hijack a neighbor’s rowboat. Pulling on the oars for 15 minutes, he got to Anthony who held onto the stern and was rowed back to shore where he was met by EMS. Soaking wet, hypothermic, and scared, the first words out of his mouth were, “Thank God I didn’t die. That bitch would have gotten everything.”
Anthony had not taken the time to bail out the water that accumulated in the boat from the night’s rain. Nobody was surprised. When he turned hard it all consolidated at his feet and that’s all she wrote. It cost him a littering ticket, boat recovery fees, and a new shotgun.
On the way home my dad had some risk management to do. He told me how the situation was going to be shared with my mom and how I was to omit some key details if asked. This wasn’t the first time we had such a conversation and wouldn’t be the last. Felons can’t have firearms, and Anthony’s incarceration forced his early retirement from the club.
Watching someone almost die for the first time didn’t really bother me. His words once on dry land are what made an impact. I knew from that day I never wanted to have such spite in my soul for a woman.
