advances of any sort.
Peabody reacted by contacting the lovely Stephanie for advice on how to convince me to allow advance payments of his monthly stipends. The lovely Stephanie and I met to confer prior to the initiation of legal action. The contractual limitations on Peabody’s ability to get early distributions as well as the rights of the residual beneficiaries and my duty to protect the trust corpus were explained. I gave the lovely Stephanie a copy of the trust instrument.
After studying it, her attorneys concluded the document was carefully drafted and contained no loopholes through which Peabody could squeeze. The Major’s attempt at legal action ended before it began. It also began my personal association with the lovely Stephanie. It has never ended (though, some of my friends believe it never really started.).
In spite of the (to him) disagreeable conclusion of his threatened lawsuit, Major Peabody, the lovely Stephanie and I remain good friends. Occasionally, the Major invites both of us to dinner at Bookbinders. Those invitations are usually extended during the last week of a month when Peabody is short of cash.
Privately, the lovely Stephanie tells me how much she appreciates the fact that Major Peabody does not insult her by adopting the male chauvinist insistence on grabbing the check. He allows her to pick up the bill. (In deference to maintaining my reputation with other customers who may be watching, the lovely Stephanie graciously allows me to pay the bill.)
The lovely Stephanie also appreciates the Major’s sensitivity to other important issues of the Women’s Rights movement. I’ve heard him tell her the women’s tees at the golf courses should be destroyed since they suggest an inequality between the sexes. I’ve heard him tell her the popular trout fisherman’s artificial fly should be re-named The Royal Coachperson. I’ve heard him tell her the Federal Department of Interior’s Fish and Game people should be chastised for assigning 25 points to the drake Mallard and only fifteen to the hen.
If the lovely Stephanie has a minor flaw detracting from her perfection, it might be her strident attitude in regard to matters concerning women’s rights and the equality of the sexes. Though the thought has occurred to me, I’ve never had the courage to suggest the Major might be putting her on.
I’ve certainly never hinted at my growing belief that men and women really are different. Women do strange things. They give peculiar anniversary gifts for one thing. I thought she knew I didn’t hunt.
* * * * *
The Major crouched in a duck blind on a backwater of the Mississippi River near La Crosse, Wisconsin. He smiled as he thought of a dinner conversation with the lovely Stephanie.
In a few weeks, she had told him, it would be exactly five years since she and the Major’s Trustee first met. Peabody took advantage of her comment to point out the traditionally established anniversary gifts were demeaning to women. The historically proper presents for an eighth anniversary (electric appliances), the ninth (pottery) and the thirteenth (lace) as well as the various gem stones were, in the Major’s opinion, “based on the archaic attitude that the head of the household should give housewifely sops to the little woman”.
Major Peabody went on to state: “This disparaging affront to women should be ended and assigned to the obscurity it deserves”. Then, after mentioning the classic gift for the fifth anniversary was something made of wood, he said: “Stephanie, my dear, why don’t you strike a blow for equality and instead of awaiting for some depreciating gift from your man, give him the anniversary present? And I know just the thing to give him.”
The Major’s reverie was broken when a flock of Bluebill, flying in their un-patterned and disorganized manner, came into sight. They responded to the Major’s calling and came directly to his blind. They set their wings and slipped air as they dropped towards his newly acquired set of two dozen wooden decoys.
The decoys were a gift from the attorney who managed his Spendthrift Trust at the Smythe Hauser Engels & Tauchen law firm. (Major Peabody had to promise he would never tell the lovely Stephanie where or how he got them.)
The Education of a Grouse Hunter
On September 30, Major Peabody and I flew to Wisconsin. I accompanied him because I was obliged to personally deliver his trust remittance on the first day of October at 12:01 a.m. - the date when he would be in a deep woods cabin, awaiting sunrise and a day of hunting the Ruffed Grouse.
We went through customs in Milwaukee’s Billy Mitchell Airport. After signing an affidavit swearing we brought no oleomargarine with us and denying we had ever been members of an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the cow or advocating the abolition of beer drinking, we were allowed to enter and Peabody bought an out-of-State hunting license.
The Major’s three friends, dressed in their hunting togs, were waiting at the airport. They drove us to a backwoods cabin in the Central Wisconsin Conservation Area. The Major called it a cabin. I’d call it a shack. I was being charitable. It was only one small step above a hut.
On the following morning, I delivered the Major’s check, but couldn’t immediately return to Milwaukee for the flight to Philadelphia because “it was inconvenient”. All of the men planned to hunt together on November 1. No one found it convenient to take me back to Milwaukee before the afternoon of the second day of November. As a result, I had to spend a day and a half in the Central Wisconsin woods. As a result, I felt an overpowering urge to “go hunting” with Peabody and his friends.
I am not a hunter. I’m afraid of guns and I’m afraid of dogs. They enjoy barking at me and snarling at me and threatening me. Before the Wisconsin Ruffed Grouse trip, if you mentioned the term Bonasa Unbellus, I would have presumed you were talking about the head of a New Jersey crime syndicate. Nevertheless I wanted to spend the day hunting with Peabody and his friends.
If I didn’t “go hunting”, I would have to spend the entire day alone in the cabin, surrounded by wild animals. One look at that cabin convinced me snakes could easily crawl into it. They might have been in it at that very moment. I wondered if scorpions came that far north. I knew any sized black bear could easily knock the door down with one blow of its huge, razor sharp, clawed paws. When I heard the ominous sounds of distant drums, I decided I would be safer if I were surrounded by armed men. Hence my decision to “go hunting”.
One of the men offered to let me use his back-up shotgun. I didn’t want to touch the thing and tried to refuse it on the grounds of not having a Wisconsin hunting license. The host claimed it was all right. He hadn’t seen a game warden in the vicinity for over ten years. Peabody said it was all right because I could afford to pay the fine and buy a replacement shotgun if one was confiscated. My objection was overruled.
My first day of hunting was an educational experience. I learned about grouse and grouse hunting and grouse hunters. Peabody’s hunting companions consisted of a dentist, a publisher and a lawyer. (I understand it is usually necessary for grouse hunters to bring their own attorney with them.)
These men were my professors. I learned the scientific name for the Ruffed Grouse was Bonasa Umbellus. I learned the male grouse attracts the female by drumming his wings against his chest. That explained the drumming sound I had heard and I was relieved to learn the bird seldom attacks a human being.
That evening, in a poker game celebrating the coming hunt and substantially adding to the expenses of my trip, I learned grouse hunters are probably scoundrels and have to be watched when they deal the cards. I believe they were all trying to distract me from my game when they told me things like - on average, the grouse has 4,400 feathers - if you don’t count
