Standing in hide among reeds and frond heads of tall marsh grasses, even the decoys in open-pocket water, close, were obscured.
Fog held low and heavy and suspended as mist that floated more than fell faint and light from sky. Air and the decoy spread were still, lifeless, but James didn’t worry. In a world pf perpetual need for movement and impressions of action, it was the people and places—even decoys now—that never paused and made excessive show of action and forever movement that seemed the most-false.
Even the birds had learned and, conditioned to mistrust, avoided hailing calls and spreads too perfect to be true: too perfect perceived as arrangement of human deceit and trap. It seemed to James that it was the silent spreads, unseeking and unpretentious, to which birds were drawn—like tired men—believing safety and refuge to be found not in crowds and noise but amongst the silent, resting weary.
In the heaviness of fog, you head the whistle of wings in pass before ever gaining sight. Following sound, attention and eyes swung. Shotgun rose in ready. Then shadow-sight amongst the grey, forms of beating then cupped wings, bodies rocking in fall and descent before final wing-flap beat of land; then, just before, report and recoil of shotgun fire echoing in the near and absorbing and muting in the far of marsh and fog as crumple-form on water rests stilled and broken.
With the whistle then search, find and set of ready, fire-flash and recoil, after-scent of powder heavy in air’s cool dampness and left as residue in barrel: he restored into alive.
There was a piece to him that would always be tied to water and the sea; not sea of beach and blue skies but forgotten places that, in oblivion, retained their wild; tides not of crashing wave but currents through marsh-maze of creeks, mud flats, and deeper pools amongst the lattice; where one becomes lost and, becoming such, finds one’s self again—just as he did right then in the fog and mist and oblivion of the living open-empty.
After crumple of first bird in connect, affirming he still could, James fired no more shots. He stayed in his hide, watching and welcoming sight after whistle of cupped wings; swinging, rocking fall and final slow before light and land into the still and quiet possessing peace and refuge all hoped to find, and sought, in wild forgotten of the marsh.