Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 3 3 S he was a green-eyed freckle- faced redhead, long of hair and limb, married a couple of times before I met her but neither lasted too long. Her name, literally translated, meant "the daughter of an angel of bright shining light," and it was true, mostly. She was a banshee in bed and she came with a duck lease. Way up in Minnesota, a good long time ago, where I tore up my truck on the way to Alaska and tarried a spell, where land was a hundred bucks an acre, Buckhorn long-necks three bucks a case, and the marijuana grew higher than the corn. When the aurora popped and rolled, when the lakes rumbled and the pheromones crackled, otherwise pure Lutheran girls would cruise gravel roads in their rattley old four-wheel drives, sucking cherry Skoal and nipping orange schnapps, looking for a man with rolling papers and a big woodpile. Just leave the porch light on. And if you got real lucky, you might get fresh-baked bread in the morning. She was a great Nordic beauty, but I told you that already. We were a lake I will call Little Windy. When they eventually lost enthusiasm for hip boots and cold water, the rights got passed down the generations. Did I mention that she was a wingshooter? I bought her a 20-gauge pump, an over-and-under 28, and a Marlin .44 lever gun when we turned our attention to filling the freezer. It was perfect, damn near. W e hammered the birds late one November, the sleet blowing sideways and the little ice beads on the point of each cane rattling against the old Alumacraft, sounding like hail stones on a tin roof. "Birds mark left, Carrot," I said. My mustache was freezing to my bottom lip. My toes felt like they had a vise-grip on each one . . . Lordy for cold. Tail end of the season and the ringbills were on the wind, Canadian birds that had never seen man or decoy, redheaded woman either. They roared low over our blocks with a noise like ripping canvas. "You don't mind me calling you Carrot, do you?" She was a great Nordic beauty, and she came with a duck lease. Duck BlinD Heaven by RobeRt ChildRess – CouRtesy nanCy ChildRess o r i z o n s H Roger Pinckney simultaneously and recently single in a very small town way out on the edge of the world, and we made the best of our slim pickings. But I should hardly complain. Back in the '50s her pappy pitched in with the vet and the bait-shop man to buy a rocky point on