Rick Moody - The Diviners

It’s only after the terms of the meal are settled, and after fending off his one especially sycophantic clerk, that the distinguished jurist remembers the last time he saw the special chum. This was perhaps eight or nine years ago, on the occasion of a shooting expedition in the state of Maryland. On, or about, or during Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., and this he remembers because he recalls explaining to the special chum about the implications for copyright raised by Feist, wherein originality triumphed over “industrious collection,” to the detriment of phone book compilers henceforward. He recalls the special chum laughing grimly and asking if the vogue, in his own business, for film “sequels” might be affected, since those films seemed less the products of “authorship” than works that were simply compiled by the “sweat of the brow” from preexisting narratives. The distinguished jurist remembers these things, and he remembers that it was early spring, and that the weather was overcast, with light winds, and that the smell of sulfur and ejected cartridges was wonderful, as ever, and he remembers, naturally, that the special chum was not doing very well in the matter of obliterating the little clay pigeons. The special chum was made increasingly uncomfortable by his abject failure.

Of course, the distinguished jurist was not born into the condition of firearms enthusiast. It’s more that his position on the Second Amendment has made it natural. In the march of life, strange bedfellows do we become. In truth, the distinguished jurist, as a young man, rarely found himself in the company of those who had been reared up with firearms and the sport thereof, and yet as he rose through the ranks of national adjudication, he found himself learning about firearms and connoisseurs of firearms. He found himself appreciating the ritual of cleaning, preparing, shooting, caring for the gun, nailing up the kill, plucking the kill, and here the distinguished jurist will admit that he does take care of the plucking himself, disbelieving that his wife should be burdened with such things. And though the distinguished jurist was not born to carry a gun, like many men of leisure, he is rather good at the sport, and so he was handily trouncing the special chum on the day in question, at least in numbers of clay pigeons dispatched. Even the young man who was accompanying them in the marshes of Maryland, the young man from the local rod and gun club, found himself saying nothing in the tense silence as the special chum shouted “Pull” again, and again the clay pigeon traversed the sky unperturbed.

Because the location of the shooting expedition was outdoors in a rather rustic part of the state of Maryland, there were about them some examples of what remained there of wildlife, the few species that had not yet properly come under man’s dominion. There were a few buffleheads, and there were a few cormorants and other such waterbirds, and there were a few geese. Canada geese, in particular. On a number of occasions, the special chum was heard to exclaim that these birds were pestilential, and he used a number of obscene epithets for the geese, and he noted that when he was a child, these geese were given to leave droppings on the lawn of his summer home, on the windward side of Cape Cod. Goose droppings, the special chum remarked; horrible. You’d go out there in the morning, you’d better be sure to wear Wellingtons if you didn’t want to step in the mounds. The birds were unfriendly, too, the special chum observed, always trying to run the children off the estate. The distinguished jurist took pause here, since he could not help but notice that the special chum’s dream of a Cape Cod childhood was at variance with some of what he knew of the special chum’s curriculum vitae. The special chum during his time in Hollywood had apparently gerrymandered the locale of the story, because the special chum was, by virtue of his religion, occasionally picked on as a lad, and this was something that on the most drunken nights in law school the special chum would share with the distinguished jurist, calling him by his diminutive name, saying that they understood each other because they were here at the law school at a time when the scions of Protestant legacy would not have any truck with them. They had each overcome the prejudices of the nation, the special chum indicated back in law school, and yet, out in the marshlands, with his gun loaded, the special chum, as if he had something to prove about the rumors that the distinguished jurist had heard about him, had felt a need to seem other than what he was, that is, a person whose summers had taken place in Mamaroneck, by the Long Island Sound.

Accordingly, what happened next was perhaps natural. It was perhaps part of the natural order that the special chum should call “Pull,” that the clay pigeon should rise up into the sky like a tiny emblem for Apollo making his journey across the day. And yet, just when the special chum might have fired on the clay pigeon, he instead turned the barrel of the gun in another direction. Both the distinguished jurist and the young man operating the slingshot for the clay pigeons ducked, flattened themselves, and there was a pause and a pathetic squawk as the shot perforated the hide of one of the Canada geese settled nearby beside some brush. The other geese reared up, astonished, and the whole of the gaggle took flight, except for one, who remained behind momentarily, looking, no doubt, at its now mortally aerated mate. Then this bird, too, lifted off. There was a silence as the special chum took all this in, the fact that he had finally hit something. Then he ejected his cartridge.

“Fifty years of irritation rectified,” said the special chum.

Their rod and gun club guide mumbled something about how they were definitely pests and needed to be shown a thing or two, or that’s how the distinguished jurist remembers it. The rest of the day, no more than three quarters of an hour, passed in uncomfortable silence.

Though there was an aggrieved apology, next day, when the distinguished jurist reached his chambers, a little handwritten note about the nature of sportsmanship and how the special chum, by his own reckoning, had failed the test of sportsmanship (and would the distinguished jurist please accept this gift in his name to Ducks Unlimited in the amount of et cetera, et cetera), the distinguished jurist found the event, the dispatching of the goose, unsettling, distasteful, and so further years passed without much consort between the two friends.

However, one finds that old friends are gilded by the lateness of the hour, the headlong rush to the beyond. We are thrown into this life to fend for ourselves, and everywhere there are disappointments and conspiracies that can drive us from our charted course. We are only given a few bosom mates. No lapse in judgment should separate us — for whose slate is without its chalk marks? — and though the distinguished jurist has spoken out to any number of groups against the love that dare not speak its name and how its pleas for special rights must be repelled — notwithstanding these things, the distinguished jurist always did like the special chum. Though the special chum is thicker around the waist now, and though his blue eyes have dimmed, and though he is craggy and not the rake he once was, the distinguished jurist feels that he will not give up on the amity of long lives lived together. Such is loyalty.

In fact, this is what he is thinking as he waits at security in the rear of the building, when the special chum arrives and passes through the metal detector.

“Good buddy!” says Naz Korngold.

“Special friend!” says the distinguished jurist.

The two hug. The distinguished jurist takes in the outfit, the pleated pants, the silk shirt, the sport coat.