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Field Ethos
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By Gayne C. Young
I once killed a beaver. With a plastic cafeteria tray.
Alcohol was involved.
The story of this most definitely illegal endeavor began with my first attempt at college. Located in Jacksonville, Texas, the now defunct Lon Morris College educated such luminaries as singer and dancer Tommy Tune, Peter Pan on stage turned cracker pitch person Sandy Duncan, that guy you know from that show Alan Tudyk, and yours truly, Gayne C. Young. My not being as successful as all the aforementioned might have something to do with the fact that I didn’t really go to LMC to study. I went to become a writer and as such, I did such writerly things there as drink, explore the region, spearfish Lake Jacksonville, drink, smoke cigars, drink, womanize, and drink.
You know. Ernest Hemingway/Rober Ruark-type stuff.
Doing all this was quite the challenge as LMC was affiliated with the Methodist Church, had stringent rules, and required all 300 students to live in single-sex dorms. I lived in Fair Hall, which housed a band of do-gooder Methodists and some Baptists who couldn’t get into schools of their own, and both these groups loved to narc on writers-in-training sneaking booze, tobacco, and firearms into the dorm. Luckily, these folks were absent during the region’s first major ice storm in over a decade. Not only did the majority of the students leave campus but so did most of the school support staff, including the ancient sea hag of a dorm mother who lived downstairs from me. That meant that I and four other guys had the run of the cold, dark, desolate campus to ourselves. We were even given a key to the cafeteria to fend for ourselves food wise.
Anyone know what to do with a 50-pound bag of dehydrated mashed potatoes?
the Vodka Run
My crew and I stocked up on several cases of beer, hard liquor, cigars, and junk food, and settled into the basement next to the boiler to keep warm. We drank and smoked pretty much all day until hunger for something of more substance than corn chips and hot pork rinds overcame us, and we decided to head up to the cafeteria. We crawled from the basement to find the campus covered in a thin layer of snow and sleet falling in heavy sheets. To a bunch of Central Texas boys who seldom saw snow in real life, it was amazing. Thoughts of food went to the wayside as we rolled, then began pummeling each other with ice balls.
Young Gayne and his pet beaver.
Soon after someone slipped on the ice (and we all laughed because he hurt himself) we decided that we needed to go sledding. We grabbed some plastic trays from the cafeteria to use as a sled, grabbed a couple bottles of vodka, and four-wheel-drove ourselves to the golf course where we knew we could find some hills to slide down. The town was shut down and half the community was without electricity. We made it to the golf course to find it black as pitch. The sky above was dumping sleet and snow upon us and the homes surrounding the course in the midst of a blackout. We parked our truck at the top of the hill and let its lights shine down on our run to be. The run was maybe 50 yards long and ended in a water trap. At least that’s what we thought we saw. The lights didn’t really illuminate much of the course.
We each threw caution to the wind, let the alcohol guide us, and took turns hurling ourselves down the ink-black darkness of the frozen fairway. After each run, we’d hoof it back up the hill, take a shot of vodka, and throw ourselves down the run once more. On the third run, my friend Jay* didn’t come to a stop fast enough, slid onto the thin ice of the water trap, and fell through and into a frozen slurry of water, ice, and mud. My friend Dave rolled off his tray and into some bushes and exited the vegetation scarred from frozen limbs slapping him in the face.
Smashing Beaver
Seeing that our sled time was coming to an end, I decided to make one last run. I ran forward with all my might, dove onto my tray, and fired down the hill. I was almost to the pond when I saw a dark form ambling before me. I thought it was a cold, to the point of being an almost crippled, dog. A very short and squatty dog. I did my best to steer away from the oddly-shapped dog, but collided with it head on. The definitely furry object and I tumbled and rolled forward and to a stop at the edge of the pond. I spun around and up, then grabbed my head in pain. I looked about in a daze to see my friend Dave examining the object I had rocketed into.
“Holy shit man! You hit a beaver.”
I stood and wobbled toward the downed rodent. Sure enough, it was a beaver. And it was dead. Near as any of us could tell, I must’ve broken its neck with my head when I crashed into it.
Jay didn’t care.
The slurry he had fallen into had frozen to him and he was on his way to becoming a popsicle.
Since I’ve never killed a beaver before and the one I had just taken out with my noggin appeared to be a trophy, I loaded it into the back of the truck with the intention of skinning it out later. I never did. I went down to the basement and drank for the remainder of the storm. The beaver stayed forgotten in the back of my buddy’s truck until it thawed out and became a puddle of rot and stink. I look back on my laziness to skin that flat-tailed rat in heavy disappointment. I have plenty of hunting trophies on my wall but none I actually killed with my drunken, frozen head.
* All names changed.
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