Deliverance Re-visited

Deliverance re-visited:

A long time ago and, in a desert far, far away, a friend and I used to hunt 'Chucker' At the time, I didn't know what a chucker looked like and as a matter of fact, I didn't even know if they really existed. My friend, Dennis, just told me they were out there, they looked something like a quail on a diet and we ought to go hunt for food as man should.

Armed with our trusty shotguns, we would spend most of a Saturday morning wandering the Mojave Desert, occasionally firing at a rusty tin can trying to make a getaway but never, ever seeing anything that looked, even remotely, like a quail.

On one particular outing, after having meandered through and around the sagebrush and scrub-oak for an hour or so, Dennis suggested he take my car and check out another area. Unable to get excited about anything at this point I just said, "Whatever."

After watching Dennis disappear in a cloud of dust down the desert road I wandered around for a while and then began to realize a growing 'call of nature.' It was a call that was not simply the morning coffee taking its natural course … this was a serious call of nature.

Although I kept a desperate eye out for a returning Dennis, he was nowhere in sight and the 'call' was getting stronger. At some point I realized my true dilemma; nothing but sand, rocks, mesquite and probably not a few rattlesnakes surrounded me ... that was all. I wore a pair of Levi's and a t-shirt ... I didn't even have any one-dollar bills in my wallet!

Necessity being the mother of invention, I decided to tear a piece of cloth from my t-shirt. I didn't need to take it off; I just tore a square piece from the front. Unable to wait any longer for Dennis' return, I found what I thought was an appropriate area, e.g., no rattlesnakes in sight and not too much cactus, and I did what I had to do.

Later, as I'm walking down the dirt access road and thinking of the ways I will make Dennis suffer for what he has put me through, I saw a cloud of dust coming up the road and assumed he was coming back to meet his fate. As the car got closer I realized it wasn't Dennis but in it were, what appeared to be, a young couple. Disappointed I wasn't going to able to exact my revenge on Dennis, I decided I would ask the couple if they had seen my ex-friend.

I stepped into the center of the dirt road and lifted my hand as if asking them to stop. Oh, they stopped all right; they came to a screeching halt about a hundred feet from me and sat there for a few seconds, just staring at me. Suddenly, the rear tires started spinning and the car slid around into U-turn and, throwing dirt and rocks behind them, raced down the road, never to return.

I just could not understand what their problem was until I realized; I was standing in the center of the road, in the middle of nowhere, wearing Levi's and a t-shirt with a square piece missing right over my belly-button and I was signalling for them to stop! Oh, and I should add, I had a shotgun in my hand as well.

Who knows why that young couple were driving into the desert but I suspect they never went back and they probably talk about their encounter to this day.

As far as Dennis is concerned, he eventually came back and even though I had a shotgun loaded with bird-shot, I didn't shoot him ... he was sitting in my car. We didn't go hunting any more after that and I have never, ever seen a chucker.