“A damn good day. Hard not to on a day like this. When it’s this kind of a day, the air just the right temperature and so fresh you know it was just made this morning, and the sun comes through the trees and casts a dappled pattern on the ground, and you’ve got a spring in your step that makes you positive you’re younger than the calendar tells you, well hell, sir, you could never set eyes on bird or beast and you’d still have to call it a good day.”
“You speak like a poet.”
“Afraid I’m nothing of the sort. I’m in insurance, fire and casualty and the like, and let me tell you there’s nothing the least bit poetic about it. But when I get out here the woods and the mountains do their best to make a poet out of me.”
The smaller man smiled, raised his glass, took a small sip. “I would guess,” he said, “that today wasn’t a day in which you failed to — how did you put it? To set eyes on bird or beast.”
“No, you’d be right. I had good hunting.”
“Then let me congratulate you,” the man said. He raised his glass to Dandridge, who raised his in return.
“Dandridge,” said Dandridge. “Homer Dandridge.”
“Roger Krull,” said the other man.
“A pleasure, Mr. Krull.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Dandridge.”
They drank, and both of their glasses stood empty. Dandridge motioned to the barman, his hand indicating both glasses. “On me,” he said. “Mr. Krull, would I be wrong in guessing you’re a hunter yourself?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Oh?”
Krull glanced down into his newly freshened drink. “I’ve hunted for years,” he said. “And I still hunt. I haven’t given it up, not by any means. But—”
“It’s not the same, is it?”
Krull looked up. “That’s absolutely right,” he said. “How did you know?”
“Go on,” Dandridge urged. “Tell me how it’s different.”
Krull thought a moment. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “Of course the novelty’s gone, but hell, the novelty wore off years ago. The thing about any first-time thrill is it’s only really present the first time, and eventually it’s all gone. But there’s something else. The stalking is still exciting, the pursuit, all of that, and there’s still that instant of triumph when the prey is in your sights, and then the gun bucks, and then—”
“Yes?”
“Then you stand there, deafened for a moment by the roar of the gun, and you watch your prey gather and fall, and then—” He shrugged heavily. “Then it’s a letdown. It even feels like—”
“Yes? Go on, Mr. Krull. Go on, sir.”
“Well, I hope you won’t take offense,” Krull said. “It feels like a waste, a waste of life. Here I’ve taken life away from another creature, but I don’t own that life. It’s just... gone.”
Dandridge was silent for a moment. He sipped his drink, made circles on the bar with the glass. He said, “You didn’t feel this way in the past, I take it.”
“No, not at all. The kill was always thrilling and there were no negative feelings accompanying it. But in the past year, maybe even the past two years, it’s all been changing. What used to be a thrill is hollow now.” The smaller man reached for his own glass. “I’m sorry I mentioned this,” he said. “Sorry as hell. Here you had a good day and I have to bring you down with all this nonsense.”
“Not at all, Mr. Krull. Not at all, sir. Eddie, fill these up again, will you? That’s a good fellow.” Dandridge planted a large hand on the top of the bar. “Don’t regret what you’ve said, Mr. Krull. Be glad of it. I’m glad you spoke up and I’m glad I was here to hear you.”
“You are?”
“Absolutely.” Dandridge ran a hand through his wiry gray hair. “Mr. Krull — or if I may call you Roger?”
“By all means, Homer.”
“Roger, I daresay I’ve been hunting more years than you have. Believe me, the feelings you’ve just expressed so eloquently are not foreign to me. I went through precisely what you’re going through now. I came very close to giving it up, all of it.”
“And then the feelings passed?”
“No,” Dandridge said. “No, Roger. They did not.”
“Then—”
Dandridge smiled hugely. “I’ll tell you what I did,” he said. “I didn’t give it up. I thought of doing that because I grew to hate killing, but the idea of missing the woods and the mountains galled me. Oh, you can go walking in the woods without hunting, but that’s not the same thing. The pleasure of the stalk, the pursuit, the matching of human wit and intelligence against the instincts and cunning of game — that’s what makes hunting what it is for me, Roger.”
“Yes,” Krull murmured. “Certainly.”
“So what I did,” Dandridge said, “was change my style. No more bang-bang.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No more bang-bang,” Dandridge said, gesturing. “Now it’s click-click instead.” And when Krull frowned uncomprehendingly, the big man put his hands in front of his face and mimed the operation of a camera. “Click!” he said.
Light dawned. “Oh,” said Krull.
“Exactly.”
“Not with a bang but a click.”
“Nicely put.”
“Photography.”
“Let’s not say photography,” Dandridge demurred. “Let us say hunting with a camera.”
“Hunting with a camera.”
Dandridge nodded. “So you see now why I said I was a hunter in a manner of speaking. Many people would not call me a hunter. They would say I was a photographer of animals in the wild, while I consider myself a hunter who simply employs a camera instead of a gun.”
Krull took his time digesting this. “I understand the distinction,” he said.
“I felt that you would.”
“The act of taking the picture is equivalent to making the kill. It’s how you take the trophy, but you don’t go out because you want a picture of an elk any more than a man hunts because he wants to put meat on the table.”
“You do understand, Mr. Krull.” The glasses, it was noticed, were once more empty. “Eddie!”
“My turn this time, Eddie,” said Roger Krull. He waited until the drinks were poured and tasted. Then he said, “Do you get the same thrill, Homer?”
“Roger, I get twice the thrill. Another old hunter name of Hemingway said a moral act is one that makes you feel good afterward. Well, if that’s the case, then hunting with a gun became immoral for me a couple of years back. Hunting with a camera has all the thrills and excitement of gun hunting without the letdown that comes when you realize you’ve caused pain and death to an innocent creature. If I want meat on the table I’ll buy it, Roger. I don’t have to kill a deer to prove to myself I’m a man.”
“I’ll certainly go along with that, Homer.”
“Here, let me show you something.” Dandridge produced his wallet, drew out a sheaf of color snapshots. “I don’t normally do this,” he confided. “I could wind up being every bit as much of a bore as those pests who show you pictures of their grandchildren. But I get the feeling you’re interested.”
“You’re damned right I’m interested, Homer.”
“Well, now,” Dandridge said. “All right, we’ll lead off with something big. This here is a Kodiak bear. I went up to Alaska to get him, hired a guide, tracked the son of a bitch halfway across the state until I got close enough for this one. That’s not taken with a telephoto lens, incidentally. I actually got in close and took that one.”
“You hire guides and backpack and everything.”
“Oh, the whole works, Roger. I’m telling you, it’s the same sport right up to the moment of truth. Then I take a picture instead of a life. I take more risks now than I did when I carried a gun through the woods. I never would have stood that close to the bear in order to shoot him. Hell, you can drop them from a quarter of a mile if you want, but I got right in close to take his picture. If he’d have charged—”