The Major

It was the last day of the month. I was in a grouse camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula prepared to deliver Major Peabody’s first-day-of-the-month Spendthrift Trust remittance as soon as 12:01 am rolled around. (For the uninitiated, the Upper Peninsula is also known as the “U.P.” and its inhabitants are called “Yoopers.”) After dinner—pan-fried grouse, of course—the five Yooper hunters, knowing I was a Philadelphia attorney, turned the conversation to matters jurisprudential.
    Major Nathaniel Peabody (USA, ret.) took no part in the discussion. He was occupied removing burrs and stick-tights and other unwanted clinging weed seeds from the ears and withers of an English pointer known as Lothario. The dog sat next to him with his muzzle on the Major’s lap and his eyes closed, quite obviously enjoying the procedure, which involved plenty of ear scratching.
    (The Major had an ulterior motive. Because there were six men and only two dogs, each dog had to work with its owner and two other hunters. Peabody hoped Lothario would show his appreciation during the following day’s hunts by working close to him rather than ranging in front of all three of the hunters assigned to him.)
    One of the Yoopers with a fine sense of justice started the discussion. “How could they let that Hollywood celebrity off?” he asked me. “No question about it: He killed her. They should have found him guilty and hung him. The miserable S.O.B.  deserved it.”
    “The jury found him not guilty and that was that,” I said.
    “That’s what happens when you put a stupid judge, an incompetent district attorney and a biased jury together,” the Yooper shot back. “Up here in the U.P. we have stupid judges and incompetent DAs, but we have unbiased juries—and that’s all you really need to dispense justice. We never would have let him go.”
    “Stupid judges and incompetent DAs,” I repeated, shocked by the statement.
    “Oh, yes,” the Yooper said. “Almost consistently. You see, some young attorney fresh from law school moves up here and hangs out his shingle. He can’t find the handles on the courthouse door and would starve to death for lack of business. We take pity on the poor fellow and elect him district attorney, thereby providing him with a salary to live on. If he develops a reputation for being smart, he quits that job and quickly builds a successful private practice. If he remains stupid, we keep electing him district attorney. Then when another young lawyer comes to town, we send the stupid DA to the judge’s bench and elect the new guy to the vacated DA position.”
    “Don’t the other lawyers object to having to practice before incompetent judges?” I inquired.
    “Of course not,” the Yooper answered. “Lawyers don’t want smart judges. They want judges they can fool easily.”
    “And since the judge and the DA are both dummies, justice depends on the good sense of the jury,” I said, completing his thought. “Have you ever been on a jury?”
    “Oh, sure,” the Yoop-er said. “Just last month. The game warden caught Aksel Jorgenson with too many ducks.   We all call that warden ‘Officer Dog’ because he’s such a miserable S.O.B. At the trial he got on the stand and testified that the ducks were flying and he heard a lot of shooting at Rice Lake. He sneaked over there and found Aksel’s pickup truck parked behind John Schmid’s cabin. Then he hid in the shrubbery behind John’s place and watched the blind Aksel had built out in the lake.
     “He knew Aksel was a good shot, and it didn’t take long before he saw him drop a number of birds and then begin to pick up his decoys. Officer Dog watched Aksel paddle back to John’s cabin and saw him take seven bluebills from the skiff and put them in the front seat of his truck. Officer Dog was disappointed. Seven bluebills were the exact legal limit. His spirits rose when he saw Aksel walk back to the cabin, take the cover off of the garbage can next to the back door and remove another seven birds.
    “Aksel told a slightly different story. He testified that he shot his limit of ducks, brought them to shore and was just about to drive away when he became curious about the garbage can. He opened it and, to his amazement, saw all those ducks inside. He took them out to count them and got arrested. He thought maybe Office Dog put them there to trap him.”
    “The judge told us it wasn’t necessary for the warden to actually see Aksel shoot those other seven birds. Mere possession of them was enough to convict.
    “That gave us jurors a problem. Aksel has a wife and five kids. Moreover, Officer Dog has a well-established reputation for making silly arrests. He had given almost all of the jury panel citations for such insignificant violations as not having an approved life jacket in a boat or failure to have an up-to-date hunting license.” Then the Yooper slowly shook his head and added: “He even gave me one for inadvertently shooting a deer out of season.
    “The jury came to the conclusion that Aksel never really had possession of those last seven ducks. We found him not guilty, and justice was served. Officer Dog had looked forward to confiscating Aksel’s ducks, shotgun, skiff, decoys and pickup. He was mad as hell when we let Aksel go. We were all happy to frustrate Officer Dog. The miserable S.O.B. deserves lots of frustrations.”
    Another Yooper made his presence known. “Tell him about the time you were on the jury when Daisy shot Ole.”
    “Oh, yeah, I remember that one,” the first Yooper said. “Ole came home drunk and beat up Daisy again. He did it all the time. Then he started eating dinner and passed out at the table. Daisy went to his arsenal and picked out a shotgun. I recall it was the 28-inch 16-gauge, Full choke, Iver Johnson Champion single-shot, probably built in 1945. Yeah, that was the one she took. Ole always claimed he only used it for grouse, but a lot of buckshot went through that barrel on those occasions when a deer stepped in front of him during grouse season.
    “I suppose Daisy wanted to make sure. She loaded the shotgun with double-ought buck and blew Ole’s head off. She admitted pulling the trigger, and the planning as well as her actions made it obvious the whole affair was premeditated. We came to a verdict and could have left the jury room in less than an hour. It was after 11 o’clock, so we delayed until noon in order to get the county to provide us with a free meal. We got chicken and pizza. It was good.
    “At 1 o’clock when court reconvened, we found Daisy not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. (Ole beat her up a lot, and he’d never repaid the money he’d borrowed from some of us.) Daisy was overjoyed by our verdict. She came to the jury box and thanked each one of us individually. When she got to me, I whispered in her ear, ‘Ole deserved it. He was a miserable S.O.B.’”
    I hope no Yooper ever thinks I’m a miserable S.O.B. . . . .

Galen Winter’s favorite Major stories have been collected and anthologized in The Best of the Major, available for $25 (plus shipping) from 800-685-7962; www.shootingsportsman.com.