The Captain & the Reelfoot Stove

    I suppose it all had to come to a head. At some point it was inevitable that things would reach some sort of climax. Ill feelings had been building up at the Old River Rod and Gun, Bloody Mary Society and Gentleman’s Club all season. For the first time in anyone’s memory, mumbled curses had been heard around the lodge after the morning duck hunt. And on several evenings arguments had even broken out at the dinner table. The hostility was directed at our own Captain Anderson.
    Ordinarily the Captain was a favorite among the members. As a retired Naval officer and engineer, he was usually a handy fellow to have around. No one was as clever with mechanical things as the Captain. For example, he was quite an asset when somebody’s shotgun went on the fritz.
    “Captain, my old A-5 was shucking them awful slow this morning,” somebody might say.
    “Hand her over!” the Captain would order.
    Then he’d retire to his work area, an oily spot at the end of the kitchen table. After a half-hour of grunting and cursing he’d return the shotgun to its owner along with a scolding.
    “Hell, man! You had your selenium dido positioned behind your gobbler switch.”
    “I did? Oh, sorry, Cap.”
    The Captain was an inventor too. And most of his inventions had been pretty successful. The automatic decoy washer was a big hit. And his wind-powered game feeder worked pretty well as long as a good wind was blowing.
    The trouble began when the Captain spent a weekend hunting ducks at Reelfoot Lake. His guide there introduced him to a gadget called the Reelfoot stove. The Reelfoot stove was a simple little contraption designed to warm a duck blind. It was no more than a steel box sitting on four legs with a chimney at one end. The top was on hinges so that charcoal could be put inside. There were a dozen ports and vents around the sides, which I believe the Captain liked best of all because they required lots of tinkering and adjusting. Anyway, the Captain was so impressed with the little contraption that he took the idea home to his workshop and built his own version, which he claimed was much improved over the original.
    The morning that things finally reached a crisis was an unusually mild one for January. The ice around the duck blinds had melted, and there was a thick mist rising in the cornstalks. The Captain and Pogo Walters were in the Willow Blind, a little two-man outfit near the river. Pinky Lipscomb, Walter Matthau and I had drawn old No. 7. No, I don’t mean Walter Matthau the movie actor. This man’s name was Melvin Creamclot, but he looked a lot like Walter Matthau, so that’s what we called him. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered man with droopy jowls.
    “Things have warmed up a little,” Walter Matthau announced.
    “Yes, they have,” Pinky agreed.
    “But mark my words, the Captain will soon be firing up that infernal stove of his.”
    “Oh, no doubt about that,” Pinky replied.
    “Well, it’s Pogo’s problem this morning,” Walter Matthau said.
    Duck hunting at the Old River had never been what you might call spectacular. Oh, we had a good year now and then, but the difficulty always had been in putting two good seasons together back to back. It seemed that if the birds liked our river bottom one year, they usually liked someplace else the next. There were great shoots written down in the old club logs, but time seemed to put more and more distance between those glory days and the present. Still, the old farmhouse that we self-importantly called “the lodge” was accommodating. And we owned a good stretch of frontage on the river, which was our ticket to the smallmouth spawn in the spring. And even if the duck season was dismal, men get comfortable in their surroundings. They are reluctant to leave old friends and places behind. So the membership remained mostly unchanged.
     The best time to shoot a duck at the Old River has always been at sunrise. There, in that hour of half-light, before the sun fully lights the bare trees and illuminates the fields, the ducks, if there are any, lift into the air and hesitate, not sure if they want to leave for the safety of the big lake on the refuge or remain in our bottom to feed on the ample corn, milo and native grasses. With sharp eyes, stillness and careful calling, a bird or two might be brought to hand.
    Unfortunately, sunrise was precisely the time the Captain had been starting up the Reelfoot stove. He usually began by filling the little box to the brim with charcoal. Next he stuffed in a couple of issues of the Wall Street Journal. He was not a man to be stingy with material. More was always better with the Captain. Finally, all this was drenched with a gallon or so of diesel fuel. Then the whole business was touched off with a big wooden kitchen match.
    When the initial roar of the diesel fuel subsided, he began what he called “fine tuning,” that is adjusting the little ports and vents on the sides of the box. First he’d open one, then another, then regulate a third to perhaps half-open, enjoying himself immensely. But no matter what adjustments he made, great clouds of smoke were soon boiling out of the stove. It was as if the little box were connected to the gates of hell. The blinding smoke sent most hunters out the back door of the blind for air. Pogo Walters once fired into the billows claiming he’d seen a “fire duck.” It later turned out to be a flaming airborne page from the Wall Street Journal.
    “Shhh,” Pinky whispered to Walter Matthau and me, interrupting my thoughts.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Not so loud,” he said. “I can hear the Captain and Pogo talking. So they might be able to hear us.”
    “The Captain already knows my opinion of that stink box of his!” Walter Matthau volunteered in an overly loud voice. “If he hears it one more time, it won’t bother me!”
    Pinky was right. We could hear voices from the Willow Blind with perfect clarity. Over Pogo’s fervent protests, the Captain was about to fire up the Reelfoot stove.
    “Oh, gee, Cap, why do you have to light that blasted thing?”
    “To take the chill off, Po. A little warmth will be nice.”
    “But I’m not cold.”
    “You’ll be cold later. It hasn’t set in yet. Anyway, there’s nothing like a toasty warm duck blind.”
    “Even if I were cold, which I’m not,” Pogo countered, “I’d rather be cold than put up with that stinking, smoking contraption of yours.”
    “I’ve never seen people make such an issue out of a little smoke.”
    “A little smoke, hell! Anyway, what’s that you’re pouring on top?”
    “It’s something I made up last night. Your complaint about the smoke has been duly noted and duly remedied. So why don’t you just sit back and enjoy a nice warm hunt?”
    “But why are you pouring so much on?”
    “I suggest you leave the engineering to me, and I’ll leave the car selling to you,” the Captain replied.
    “Auto leasing,” Pogo said, correcting him.
    “Whatever.”
    “Good Lord, you’re going to kill us,” Pogo said.
    “Nonsense.”
    Next, three events occurred in rapid succession. First there was a flash of light. Not what you’d call a blinding flash, but sufficient to illuminate the surrounding landscape and make each cornstalk stand out in graphic relief. Then came a sound from the Willow Blind that might best be described as a “vooom” or a “whoosh.” And third, a black mushroom cloud appeared above the blind. It was an exact duplicate, in miniature, of the mushroom clouds seen over atomic test sites in Arizona. After that succession of events, chaos ensued. A flame appeared in the dry cornstalks on top of the blind and engulfed the little structure in a matter of seconds.
    “Aaaaaaggghhhhhhhh!” Pogo wailed.
    “Out the back!” the Captain shouted.
    “Where’s the door?” Pogo bellowed. “I can’t see!”
    In a split second the Captain crashed through the back door of the blind and lay sprawled in the mud.
“I’m going to diiiiiiieee!” Pogo howled from inside.
    But he didn’t die. A moment later he came over the top, through the flames, like some circus animal jumping through a fiery hoop. His momentum was such that he landed in the decoy spread, a good 15 feet out. When he hit the shallow water, he made a hissing sound like a hot piece of iron. For several seconds Pogo lay still. Then he slowly got to his feet. The Captain stood a good distance away from the inferno that was now the Willow Blind, brushing the mud from his coat and trousers. Then Pogo saw him.
    “I’m going to kill yoooouuuuu!” he bellowed.
    Pogo started forward through the shallow water, his arms extended in front of him like an old-time zombie in a horror movie. A half-dozen mallard decoys tangled in his hip waders trailed behind him.
    “And then do you know what I’m going to do with that Reelfoot stove?” he shouted.
    The Captain was surprisingly quick for an older man. He picked up his old Remington and headed for the treeline, not quite running but at a fast walk. It appeared for a moment that Pogo would cut him off. But seeing he was beaten, Pogo turned and made for the nearest shore. By the time he reached landfall, the Captain had disappeared.
    After that weekend Pogo’s temper cooled. By nature, he was not a violent man. Still, he refused to see the Captain for the balance of the season. If the Captain was expected at the club, Pogo made a point of not being there.
    “He’s making a big deal out of it,” the Captain said. “I’ve been hurt worse than that grilling hamburgers.”
    Pogo wasn’t seriously burned. He might have had his hair singed off had it not been for his old corduroy hunting cap, which, at the time, was pulled down over his ears. As it was, he’d only lost his eyebrows. Without eyebrows to mark where his forehead began, his face looked unusually long, rather like a horse or a mule. It would’ve been better if Pogo had left things as they were. People could have grown used to his equine appearance. And eventually, of course, his eyebrows would have grown back. But for whatever reason, his wife decided to draw on a new set. And instead of putting them back as they had been, she painted on a pair much like her own: two high sweeping arcs. This gave Pogo a startled look. Someone suggested he looked like a member of the cast of Gypsy.

    Duck season ended, summer passed and fall arrived again at the Old River. With a chill in the air, there was once again a hardwood fire in the parlor fireplace. Another waterfowl season was approaching. And, as always, the members talked about it hopefully, sure that this one would rival the old days. Fresh cane and oak brush were added to the duck blinds. The dog stands and ladders were repaired, and the floors of the blinds were shored up. And finally stops were put in the water structures and the water began rising week after week, flooding the corn and native grasses along the river.
    It was about that time that those little propane-fueled heaters began appearing in all of the sporting-goods stores. After much pressure from the members and Pogo actually threatening to put his membership up for sale, our president, Deacon Maxwell, went out and bought one—with club funds of course. It proved to be a marvelous little device. Not only did it create a large amount of heat, but it also was odorless and smokeless. But the Captain never took to it. I suspect part of the reason was its simplicity. It had only one knob. That single knob controlled all functions. He finally refused to touch it, declaring that its operation was not deserving of his expertise.

Bob McDill is a retired songwriter and magazine contributor living in Nashville. The Captain passed away several years ago. His ashes were dropped from a small plane over the duck camp. Stories about him, however, live on.