by Galen Winter
Scorpions? Tarantulas? Great Scott!! My fear of scorpions and tarantulas was exceeded only by my fear of rattlesnakes.
“I don’t suppose there’s enough room in the trailer? I could sleep on the floor or I could …” Peabody interrupted me in mid-sentence.
“Counselor, if it were up to me …” He paused and slowly shook his head. Then he explained. “It’s Freddie’s mobile trailer and he is a very particular cuss, He will allow only four people to stay in it. He wouldn’t even let one of my Arizona friends join the hunt. That poor fellow is afraid of Gila monsters and rattlesnakes. He wanted to spend the nights inside the trailer, but Freddie was adamant. ‘Four and no more’ he insisted. Freddie’s funny that way.”
Gila monsters? Rattlesnakes? My God, what am I doing here?
“I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep in the pop-up,” Peabody concluded. “With a few blankets, you’ll be warm and cozy.” Peabody paused for a moment before adding: “Make sure you shake out the blankets before you get into bed. It’ll get rid of the insects - probably. And shake out your shoes before you put them on in the morning.”
I spent the night squatting on top of the front seat of the rented Bronco. I nearly went to sleep once. I was saved from that danger by a pack of wild coyotes. Their frightful howling shocked me into full consciousness. Their yelping was followed by silence and I am convinced the bloodthirsty beasts had surrounded my vehicle and lay there hoping I would emerge to relieve myself. I was ready to burst when the sun finally appeared.
I didn’t wait for breakfast. I delivered the Major’s remit-tance and immediately drove back to the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Facing Philadelphia’s snow and ice and sleet and soot, was, by far, the lesser of two evils.
The Peabody Proposal
When it comes to grouse hunting, those who are easily distracted seldom develop the degree of proficiency needed to qualify for the designation of “Expert”. In fact, very few hunters can hope to attain even the “Gifted Amateur” title. Grouse hunting requires a single-minded concentration difficult to maintain, especially since the hunting season opens during the best time of the year.
As soon as the hunter begins to muse about the beautiful color in a stand of hard maple, or directs his attention to the beech log he must step over, you may be assured some nearby grouse will say “Let’s see if he has a weak bladder,” and explode out of the undergrowth causing the hunter to drop his shotgun and use language guaranteed to teach new words to any minister who may be picking black berries in the vicinity.
The incidence of bladder accident among duck hunters, on the other hand, is statistically insignificant. They usually see their quarry approaching from afar. If the duck hunter’s attention wanders, a good retriever - with eyesight so superior to that of his master - will often twitch or raise his head or make some kind of movement to jolt the hunter from his reverie and put him on the alert.
Duck hunting does not demand constant vigilance. There are many periods of inactivity when the horizon is barren of birds, the coffee has been safely poured from the thermos, the decoy layout requires no fiddling and neither temperature nor wind velocity force the hunter to hunker down and limit his attentions to the damnedable snow or rain or wind (or combination thereof) which assail him.
Major Peabody had no cause for such complaint as he sat in his Boulder Lake shore blind. It was a bluebird morning. His hunting companion, Hans, was not in a talkative mood. Hans tends to be a taciturn type, but, then, generally speaking, Labrador Retrievers are not garrulous. Sitting alone, the Major was reduced to watching little black specks, probably Bluebill, congregating far out in the middle of the lake.
Canadian weather patterns had not yet produced enough cold air to cause large numbers of birds to start their southern migration along the Mississippi flyway. Peabody wondered if there were other reasons why he could find no flocks of ducks anywhere in the sky. Certainly, there weren’t as many water-fowl as there were back in the 1950s when a much younger Nathaniel Peabody got his first 20 ga. single shot and began to hunt them.
After checking to make sure there were no ducks in the sky, the Major continued his musings. He approached the subject in his usual direct and logical manner. There were fewer ducks in the air because there were fewer ducks. There were fewer ducks because the hens were laying fewer eggs. The hens were laying fewer eggs because there were fewer wetland areas available for duck reproduction activities.
If you destroy all the bedrooms and all the backseats of automobiles in the world, the number of human beings will decrease. The conclusion was inescapable. No wetland habitat means no thriving duck population.
Peabody considered the work of the Ducks Unlimited organization and their labors to create and preserve wetlands for duck habitat. Great work, but not nearly enough. The growth of cities and urban and suburban developments undoubtedly contributed to the problem, but the main reason for the damage to the duck population was the drainage of wetlands in order to increase the amount of land needed for agricultural purposes.
Peabody remembered how the Roosevelt Administration approached a 1930s Depression problem. The farm economy was on the fritz. It cost the farmer more to grow his crops than the amount the market would pay for them The Federal government stepping in. It paid the farmer for plowing under every second row of corn and for killing every third pig.
It was an example of the successful application of basic supply side economics. Limit supply and demand will increase. Peabody reversed the proposition. If you decrease the demand, the supply will be increased. The logic is irrefutable. Peabody had found the answer to reconstituting the nation’s waterfowl populations.
A Federal government program should be adopted immediately. The government should pay a bounty for the killing of every other person in the United States - citizen or illegal immigrant, it doesn’t matter. A smaller supply of people means a smaller demand for food. A smaller demand for food means no need for the further drainage of wetlands. It also means land currently under cultivation, but no longer needed for food production, could go wild and return to being wetland and wild life habitat.
There would be more wetlands. There would be more ducks.
Such a government program would appeal to others in additional to duck hunters. Land used to produce corn will become fallow. The pheasant and Hungarian Partridge populations will increase. Upland game hunters will have to assume the heavy responsibility of keeping their number under control.
With only half the number of people available to eat meat and drink milk, cattle herds can be reduced by fifty percent. That means the bossy cow production of methane gas will be cut in half and the quasi-environmentalists will, thus, be assured the world’s atmosphere will be saved.
With half the automobile drivers exterminated, half the motor vehicles will sit unused and rusting in residential garages. The smog, the carbon monoxide and the sulfides they spew into the air will discontinue. Global warming will cease to be a problem and the quasi-environmentalists will have to abandon their cause and find productive work. There will be only half the number of drunken drivers aiming their cars at us and we’ll have twice the amount of room to dodge them on the highways.
The program is not one without the dangers of unforeseen consequences. The citizenry might take it upon themselves to polish off all those who deserve it. More than half the population might be killed and, certainly, all of the politicians in the United States would be put at risk.
The plan will require the involvement of Congress. Senators and Representatives won’t consider funding any program unless it creates a flourishing bureaucracy to regulate it. Moreover, government licensing, seasons and bag limits are necessary. Without carefully drawn regulations, Peabody thought, some fool might try to kill him.
At that moment, Hans opened his eyes, stiffened and raised his nose a few inches above the paws upon which it rested. He turned his head slightly to the left. The Major noticed the movement and carefully looked to the sky. He saw a f
lock of Bluebill descending in preparation for a swing over his decoys.
Peabody’s project was immediately forgotten and received no further treatment.
Compromise
Major Nathaniel Peabody had worked himself into a corner. He was committed to travel to Uruguay to hunt Perdiz and Grey Winged Doves. He paid the airlines and the outfitter, but had nothing left to pay incidental expenses. He had been tenacious. I had been obstinate. “You lawyers have a bad reputation,” he said, testily, after I refused his third or fourth request for an advance payment from the Peabody Spendthrift Trust.
“Largely undeserved,” I countered, expecting the over-whelming logic of my simple statement would be enough to quiet him. Somehow it didn’t work.
“Oh?” he answered. I didn’t have to look at him. I knew he had raised his eyebrows, intending to indicate both surprise and disbelief. “Look at all the damage lawyers do to innocent people just because of some silly clause in a trust agreement,” he fired back and quickly went on, before I could respond. “Most of the people in Congress are lawyers and just look at all the disasters they cause by the stupid laws they enact.”
I protested. “A majority of the people in Congress may have law degrees,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t make them lawyers. Most of them have never practiced law for a day in their entire lives. They went from law school directly into politics. Oh, some of them might have been a Prosecuting Attorney for a few years and had some slight experience trying to jail people guilty of misdemeanors, but that isn’t really practicing law.”
“Nevertheless,” Peabody insisted, “those Congress people are lawyers and I am forced to agree with you. They are incompetent.” Then, looking directly at me and, slowly, in a disparaging tone, he added: “There’s no law requiring any lawyer to know what he’s doing.” He emphasized “any” and made me feel quite uncomfortable.
Peabody continued without pausing, giving me no opportunity to interrupt and correct his misquotes. “Once the people you characterize as incompetent lawyers get into Congress,” he said, “they feel they must justify their existence by passing laws. They amend and patch and tinker with clearly written proposed legislation until it covers thousands of pages and is entirely incomprehensible.
“Of course, they do it on purpose. It is meant to provide income for their fellow attorneys. Think of the number of lawsuits started because a judge is required to try to make sense out of incomprehensible legislation. Every one of those cases represents an expense for the clients and a source of income for the lawyers.” Peabody paused and lit a cigar.
Clearly, the Major intended to continue to attack attorneys in general and me in particular because of the requirement that I follow the terms of the Peabody Spendthrift Trust. It was time for me to mount my defense. “There is a germ of validity in your comment,” I admitted, emphasizing the words ‘a germ’. “However, you can’t blame the legal profession. Remember, it is people like you who elect the incompetent members of Congress and people like you who keep them in office when they run for re-election.”
I had the satisfaction of watching Peabody scowl and look like he just bit into a Florida Key lime. It showed he recognized the truth of my argument. I was on a roll and didn’t want to give him an opportunity to recover. Before he could answer, I proceeded to distinguish my kind of law practice from the kinds he berated.
“Your germ of truth lies in the fact that poorly designed legislation gives rise to unintended consequences. And those unintended consequences give rise to lawsuits. Private practitioners, on the other hand, are particularly careful to prepare documents in unambiguous terms which require no judicial interpretations.” Now I was ready to deliver the coup-de-grace.
“The Peabody Spendthrift Trust is an excellent example. It says: NO PREPAYMENTS. It cannot be misinterpreted. Its language is crystal clear. That’s the kind of clarity in contract provisions that saves our clients from future expensive litigation.
“In those rare situations when a contract is not entirely clear,” I added, “we protect our clients’ interests as well as their pocket books by avoiding courtroom battles. We seldom adopt intransigent positions. That’s the sort of thing that results in confrontation and expensive litigation. Litigation is more than expensive. It is risky. Lord only knows what a jury will do. Not even the Lord knows what a judge will do. We tend to be arbiters. Most civil law problems are not resolved in the courtroom. They are settled at the conference table. A good civil attorney is a genius at compromise.”
“Really?” Peabody questioned. He thought for a while, blew a smoke ring and, surprised me by abruptly changing the subject. “For God’s sakes, young man,” he blurted out, “it’s only a matter of eight days until the first of the month. Do you want me to arrive in Uruguay without a cent? If I’m careful, I could limit my shooting requirement to 4 cases of shells, but they cost ten dollars a box. Do you want me to stand there, aim my Lefever at a Perdiz and yell out “Bang, Bang?
“And there are the gratuities,” he muttered. “A hundred and fifty for the guides and fifty for the lodge staff is the absolute minimum. Do you want me to look like a miserly tightwad? Surely a respected, conscientious and crafty member of the bar - much like you - could find a way to save me from such a dishonorable predicament. To use the word you so eloquently used, can’t we find some sort of…” Peabody paused before emphasizing the word… “compromise?”
Peabody was trying his best to peddle guilt. He was trying to shame me into allowing an advanced trust fund payment and I would have none of it. Yes, I opened the door to argument when I inadvertently mentioned the word ‘compromise’, but I was sure I could recover from that error. I meant to stick to my guns.
“Compromise,” I explained to him, “does not mean ‘surrender’. You would get a benefit if the unmistakably clear provisions of your Spendthrift Trust were modified, but the Trust itself would receive no balancing benefit. Without balancing equities, there can be no basis for compromise.”
Peabody slowly nodded his head in agreement. He seemed resigned to start his Uruguayan hunt with little more than the change in his pockets. He sipped at the Macallan and again changed the subject.
“This will be an interesting trip,” he said. “We’ll leave Philadelphia in two days. A two-hour flight to Miami followed by a few hours layover and then an eleven-hour, late night flight over the Caribbean and South America will bring us to Buenos Aires. We’ll land in the morning. After another layover, we’ll fly to Montevideo and after still another layover, we’ll get into some tiny puddle jumper airplane and continue on to Mercedes. From there it’s only an hour by road to the estancia. I suspect the road may scream for surface attention.”
“That journey sounds to me like a twenty hour ordeal,” I said, trying to make pleasant conversation. “I’d be exhausted. I just can’t sleep on an airplane. Regardless of the number of pillows they give me, I can never find a comfortable position.”
Peabody leaned back in his chair. He looked at me and smiled. “I know,” he said, “I know. I don’t have the problem of sleeping on airplanes. I have a clear conscience. I can sleep anywhere.” Peabody blew another smoke ring. He was smiling when he adding: “It is a shame you’ll have to take that sleepless trip only because you must deliver a check to me on the first day of the month.”
He waited a few moments while I considered the prospect of twenty hours cramped in an airplane seat and an hour of jolting over a seriously potholed road. Then the Major delivered his coup-de-grace. “It will be especially difficult for you,” he said, “because we’ll be returning on the afternoon of the same day you arrive at the estancia. You’ll get there, delivery my check and then have to turn around and spend another twenty hours getting back to Philadelphia.”
* * * * *
Luckily, I was able to negotiate a compromise. I delivered an early payment from the Peabody Spendthrift Trust and the Major promised to keep his mouth shut.
Is There Life Before Death
Whenever Major Peabody returns from one of his hunting forays, he calls from the Philadelphia airport. I drop every-thing, pick him up and drive him to his apartment. It’s Standard Operating Procedure. That Standard Operating Procedure usually includes of a dinner and associated expenses (at my cost, of course).
The Major finished a five day turkey hunt in Texas. His flight was scheduled to arrive at 11 o’clock and I was ready to perform my post-hunt duties. But Peabody didn’t call. The broken pattern bothered me. At one o’clock I called the airlines. The Major’s flight arrived as per schedule.
The girl who answered the phone told me it was against company policy to divulge the name of any incoming passenger. I asked her if it was against company policy to divulge the name of anyone who was not on the passenger list. She laughed and told me she could do it. Then I asked if Nathaniel Peabody was not on the flight. She thought for as while and said. “No Nathaniel Peabody was not “not on the flight.”
Peabody refused to immediately answer his phone. He let it ring and so did I. Finally, he picked it up. I was struck by the lackluster manner in which he spoke. He seemed preoccupied. His tone of voice as well as his failure to call from the airport were causes for concern. That concern was magnified when I made the usual invitation to dinner. He was reluctant to accept. After applying pressure and describing the quality of the ox joint and sauerkraut on the menu of his favorite German restaurant, he finally agreed.
Peabody’s reactions were so un-Major-like, I knew something was up. I suspected it was serious. I cancelled my afternoon appointment and went to his apartment. I intended to find the reason for his extraordinary behavior. I pressed the buzzer on his door. The apartment was quiet. I pressed again and again. I heard him stir and the door opened.