Christmas Goose (Part 3)

I met Rick in the bitter, windswept parking lot. Tumbleweeds hurried across the pavement, and huddled together under the frames of the vehicles, shivering. I tried not to quiver in front of Rick, but the wind pierced through my parka and bit at my ears under my wool cap, and I had forgotten to wear the long johns I usually use to give me more girth under my clothing. Rick waited patiently in his short sleeve Fish and Wildlife shirt and khaki slacks, leaning comfortably against his truck, picking at his manicured cuticles with a Swiss Army knife.

He dropped the tailgate on his pickup truck and raised the door for the cap. I peered in: feathered death. There appeared to be about eight slain geese piled atop one another, their hopes and dreams ventilated by birdshot through their bellies, tiny purple tongues protruding out from their slack beaks.

It had never occurred to me that geese have tongues.

“Take your pick, excepting these three in the front here. They’re for the orphans.”

“Of course they are. Wow, there’s a lot of them. And… and look: they have feathers. Look at that. They’re all… feathery.” I’m not sure if I expected them to be set properly in a Styrofoam tray and shrink wrapped, but I hadn’t calculated the plucking process. I paused and wondered if it was in poor form to decline his offer. I wondered if he’d realize that I knew nothing of guns and killing and diesel trucks, and that perhaps my only claim to masculinity was a ritual morning shave.

Rick looked back toward the offices, “Go ahead and grab one.”

I had to crawl over the carnage, trying my best to cling to the ceiling of the cap, legs split across the bed from wheel well to wheel well while I closed my eyes and squeezed the smooth, cool neck of one of the geese and pulled him out with me. It was surprisingly heavy. I laid him across the tailgate, his head slung limp over one side, his tail feathers sticking out over the other. “I had no idea they were this big.”

“Dinner with the girlfriend?” he asked.

“Yeah… umm… no—“ Why is he asking about Janie? “Well, yeah. Janie and my mother, stepfather, his kids, some neighbors—“

“Better take two,” he smiled generously, quickly looked about and urged me back into the truck.

Iew. I dragged another out, and he brushed my Christmas dinner to the pavement below before slamming the tailgate shut and dropping the cap door, to lock it.

“Best get those in your truck,” he clapped his hand on my shoulder as though I’d done him a favor and then strutted back to his office.

I left them on the ground, pulled my truck around and hefted each of them into the open bed with a thunk! My light, Nissan pickup bobbed with each impact. I was amazed at their weight.

In the warmth of my officicle my brain began to thaw and I realized I had no idea of how to prepare a goose. From the Internet, I downloaded three succulent looking recipes for the perfect Christmas goose dinner. Notably, none of the entrée presentations included feathers. I wasn’t sure about how to pluck feathers, and wanted to approach the task properly, so as not to risk damaging the final, magnificent presentation of my delectable geese.

I called my good friend Mark Lomax, whom I knew to trudge through brush and shoot at things, sometimes wildlife. Surely he would know the best defeathering method.

“What do you mean you have geese? Where?” he asked, with a curious alarmed tone.
“In the back of my truck, man.”
“At the Arsenal? You’d better get them out of there.” He hurriedly explained to me the criminal punitions for the possession of geese without a hunting license.
“But I didn’t hunt them. I’m not a hunter. I don’t even have a gun. I’m a gatherer,” I cried, “I gathered the geese!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mark added. “You’re in possession of a migratory bird without a hunting and conservation stamp.” He elaborated, touching upon powerful imagery such as imprisonment and up to $15,000 in fines.

Doing what I do best, I panicked.

“Well, maybe they’re tagged,” he added.
“Like with a bar code?”
“No, you—They should have tags on them with the hunter’s name, address and total kill number?”
“What if they don’t?”
“Who gave you these geese,” he asked, appalled.
“Rick.”
“Rick Dangerfield?” he asked. Mark used to work at the Arsenal, right around the time that Rick started. “Why I can’t believe that. Did you talk to him? Wow, I haven’t seen him in years. Does he ever mention me?”
“Mark, focus.”
“Right. So, what kind of geese are they?”
“I don’t know. Dead geese.”
“Snow geese? Canadian geese?”
“How the hell should I know? It’s not like they carry papers.”
“Snow geese are predominantly white, and there’s no kill limit, so possession isn’t treated as harshly. Canadian geese have a light grey underbelly, dark wings and a dark head with a patch of—“
“White? A patch of white? Shit! I’m going to jail, aren’t I? Are they protected? Are they endangered? Oh God, I’m going to jail on possession.” But it wasn’t the cool kind of possession that might win you friends in jail and keep you alive. Christ, they beat the hell out of pedophiles in prison – what will they do to someone who seemingly kills endangered birds for fun?
“They’re not endangered,” Mark reassured me, “but there is a bag limit of six. How many did he have?”
“Like, eight, I think.”
“So he gave you two to get down to his possession limit.”
Bastard! I knew he was no good. I smiled, “Maybe I should tell someone?”
“Tell them what? That you have two dead Canadian honkers without a hunting license? Cover them up or something,” Mark urged. “Get a big box. You’ve got to stop at the guard post on the way out and, trust me, you don’t want them to see those. They’ll assume you got them off the Arsenal. Then you’ve got another federal crime to contend with, and – umm, don’t take this wrong, but – you’re a little too fancy to fare well in prison.” He continued to feed my fear with worst-case scenarios, painting mental pictures of a joyous Christmas day filled with beatings and unsolicited manly love.

“Dude,” I implored, “Will you please help me clean these things?”
“I don’t know anything about dressing geese.”
“I’m not entering them in a fashion show, Mark. I just want to get the feathers and stuff off so Janie can cook them.”
“Dressing means—forget it. Look, Brian, I hunt quail. I don’t know anything about cleaning a goose. Rick probably field dressed them anyway.”
“I think the only thing he did was shoot them.”
“You mean he didn’t clean them at all? That’s not cool.”
Ah-ha! “He was supposed to clean them?”
“Well, it’s sort of hunters’ code to at least field dress the gift of a kill.”
“Well, he certainly didn’t. So I guess I have to. Will you help me?”

Mark moaned. I thought that hunter-types longed to get blood on their hands. Shouldn’t cleaning the kill be nearly as enjoyable as killing the kill? “Brian, I don’t know. It’s so damned cold, and I need to put up decorations tonight. And I have to make dinner for Marie and myself. And I have an early—“
“Dude! Pleeeease! I’m begging you man. I’ll totally owe you a favor. You may not know much about geese, but it’s 100% more than I know.”

After more moaning, Mark conceded. He instructed me to have clipping shears, sharp knives, and garbage bags at the ready. I smiled for a moment, thinking of sharp knives and shears and other manly instruments of destruction. I didn’t, however, envision their application.

I went to the supply room to steal a garbage bag to stuff the geese in, only to discover wastebasket-size clear trash bags. I took two, and then took two of the largest boxes I could find out of the reproduction room. Outside in the biting cold, I gripped the smooth, cold carcasses and shoved them into the bags. One purple tongue was pressed tautly against the clear plastic. I jammed the bags into the boxes, guiltily looking this way and that, and then sweated out the rest of the icy day in my cubicle, dreading the ride past the guard post and all the way home.

I normally speed a bit when driving, but all the way off the Arsenal I maintained the exact speed limit. Police should be most wary of those that do the speed limit.