The river spreads out beneath the concrete deck of the Bong Bridge. A flat plain of decaying ice extends from the Minnesota riverbank to the wooded Wisconsin shore looming larger through the windshield of my road-weary Pacifica. I’m headed east to Appleton to say goodbye to a friend. My wife sits quietly in the Chrysler’s front passenger seat, classical music playing softly in the background, rubber humming against cement, as the river’s wide, frozen estuary passes below. I think about Pat, my departed friend. We met our sophomore year at Denfeld High School while playing B-Team football. As the Pacifica’s engine purrs, I muse that, as long as I’ve been a friend of Pat’s, I’ve been a friend of Vicky, Pat’s wife, even longer. Vicky and I grew up a few blocks apart in Piedmont Heights, a post-war suburban neighborhood that sits high above Duluth affording expansive views of the meandering St. Louis River and its ultimate destination; the seemingly inexhaustible Big Lake. Unlike me, Pat lived his formative years in West Duluth and, given that he grew up within a stone’s throw of the river and the fat, grain fed green-headed mallards that claim the marshes and seasonal ponds of the St. Louis as their home, you’dve thought Pat knew something about duck hunting. But he didn’t.
Autumn of my freshman year at UMD, my buddy Rick, who grew up a few doors from Pat, figured out that the sloughs and marshes behind the Elliot meat processing plant in the shadow of the titanic DM&IR ore docks on the Duluth side of the river were favored by mallards gathering for migration. Now, understand: Duck hunting on the Superior side of the St. Louis River, provided one stays a safe distance from businesses and dwellings, and provided one possesses a Wisconsin license and a duck stamp, was and is perfectly legal. Trouble was, Rick and I were college kids working minimum wage jobs. We weren’t about to buy a Wisconsin non-resident license and duck stamp on the off chance we might shoot a mallard or two. No, in the time-honored tradition of my dad and his West Duluth buddies, we were destined to hunt the Minnesota side of the river, which caused us to run afoul of the law. Oh, Rick and I weren’t stupid. We bought Minnesota licenses and duck stamps, making us eligible to duck hunt in Minnesota. But there was—and still is—a pesky Duluth city ordinance that prohibits the discharge of a firearm within the City of Duluth. So, while Rick and I could legally hunt ducks in Minnesota; we couldn’t legally hunt ducks in Duluth, Minnesota.
The Washburn house was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Washburn and their six kids. Rick was the oldest. Most days when Rick and I were going to hunt, Mrs. Washburn would make us a hot breakfast and the three of us—Rick’s mom, Rick, and I—would sit at an enormous pine table in the narrow kitchen, eating, talking, and sipping hot coffee as a blanket of darkness cloaked the slumbering neighborhood. Rick’s mom never asked us where we were going to hunt, though, if she’d asked, we would’ve honestly told her, “Behind Elliot’s” and she would’ve accepted our answer despite the illegitimacy of our reply. Being the mother of five sons and a daughter, Mrs. Washburn wasn’t the sort of woman to get excited about one of her kids violating a seldom-enforced city ordinance. There were bigger things, in her estimation—such as how to keep five boys in hockey skates on a railroader’s salary—to worry about than whether some over-zealous Duluth cop was going to ticket her oldest kid for duck hunting in the city. Besides, tradition held that, so long as no one complained, the cops looked the other way. Mrs. Washburn understood this. So did we.
You’re impatiently asking, “Ya, but how does this have anything to do with Pat?” I’m getting to that.
Rick and I fortified ourselves with Mrs. Washburn’s breakfast before setting up mallard decoys in shallow water. Behind the old Elliot plant, next to the ore docks, a point interrupts the St. Louis River on its methodical descent to Lake Superior. Sometimes, as we set up to hunt, employees on the ore docks would ask, “How’s it goin’?” Other than that, no one bothered us. No one questioned our right to hunt the Minnesota side of the river. It just wasn’t that big a deal. Hiding in bulrushes, decoys bobbing on riffles, we’d shoot mallards or teal or woodies drawn to the floating ruse, watch my brother’s golden retriever bring in the ducks, reclaim our decoys, tromp back to the gravel parking lot, pack up my Wagoneer, and drop off dead ducks for Rick’s mother to clean, all before heading off to class. Rick would leave his shotgun at his house. I’d leave my Winchester in my Jeep parked in the UMD lot. A different time. A different world.
One night, while playing poker at Pat’s, the topic of duck hunting came up. “I’m going tomorrow with Washburn,” I said. I‘d hunted grouse with Pat and knew he wasn’t much of a shot. But he seemed so hell-bent-for-leather on joining us, I couldn’t say “no”. 4:30 the next morning, Pat joined Rick and me for breakfast in the Washburn kitchen.
Out on the point, November wind whipped St. Louis Bay to a frenzy. I plodded through cold, bronze colored water in hip waders, anchoring decoys to the river’s muddy bottom. “You stay in the blind,” I told Pat when I returned to shore. My friend was hunkered down behind a tangle of cattails, out of the wind and concealed. “Rick and I’ll each walk a side of the point. Hopefully, we’ll jump a few mallards holding tight in this wind. They’ll likely swing towards you. Stay low. Pop up and shoot as they land. The dog’ll do the rest.”
“Got it.”
I left Pat, his breath curling above the fuzzy headed cattails, the barrel of his 16-gauge pump reflecting the newly risen sun, and started to tromp through surrounding marsh in hopes of raising birds. A few coots scattered in the distance. A pair of wood ducks, the male resplendent in color, rose out of range, caught the wind, and scuttled towards Wisconsin. I kept going. On the other side of the point, Rick’s semi-auto twelve gauge barked. I tromped on. My noisy passage through cane startled a great blue heron feeding in a pond. The big bird took flight, looking more like a prehistoric dinosaur than a bird, its long wings slowly lifting its slight body off fetid water. Sunlight caught the narrow head of the great bird as it turned towards the point.
Uh oh.
Pat’s 16-gauge barked once. Twice. Three times. I moved as quickly as my hip waders would allow. By the time I made the blind, Pat was standing, gun at parade rest, admiring the slow, methodical retreat of the heron.
“Biggest damn goose I’ve ever seen,” Pat said. “Too bad I missed.”
When folks tell stories about Pat Pufall at the little Episcopal chapel in Appleton, I too will have something to say about my friend. But the story of the one that got away is not a story I intend to tell in church.