Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

Today is the first day of dove season, the day I take a little time to grieve and remember my poor friend Mark. He was bipolar and he killed himself a couple of years ago.

The last three years we lived in the same town in Texas, our professional acquaintanceship blossomed into buddyship and then matured into deep friendship. And on the first day of dove season, or maybe the first weekend following opening day, it was usually just him and me at dawn, sittin’ on field chairs within shoutin’ distance of each other, at the edge of some woods, watchin’ the horizon and listenin’ for the distinctive sound of doves in flight. Then he moved to one town in Oklahoma and I moved to another, and we drifted apart, of course.

The last time I saw him before he was diagnosed was at a professional cockfight in eastern Oklahoma. The anti-cockfighting extremists were making noise and the handwriting was on the wall for legal cockfighting in the state. We met up with my brother and a couple of my oldest friends.

I’d never been to a professionally organized and sanctioned rooster fight, although I’d seen more than a few backyard cockfights growing up. Mark grew up in Tulsa, was a real city boy in some ways, and had never seen anything like it. That was the last time we were together before he started to get sick, although he did stop by where I live one other time to have lunch; his illness was evident then, although he had not told me, or very many others, what his diagnosis was. I didn’t know, in fact, until he died.

The last time I talked to him, he called me, frantic, and in need of help. He couldn’t articulate what he needed, and I didn’t understand. He wanted me to come see him. He wasn’t making much sense, and was threatening his wife and some others that he thought were out to do him harm. He was not my Mark. He actually said something about doing himself harm. I could not get away to go see him. He killed himself -- one of his many guns to his head -- about two weeks after that phone call.

Our best times together were the last few years we both were in Texas. Our very best times together were squatting on camouflaged foldin’ chairs in a field of wheat stubble, watchin’ the birds fly. He shot almost as many as he saw. I shot about a box of shells per downed bird. I used to say he’d go dove huntin’ and I’d go dove scarin’.

I haven’t been dove huntin’ since the last time with him. Every time an opportunity to hunt comes up, something else comes up to keep me from it -- or maybe I come up with something to keep me from it, I’m not sure.

Mourning doves are called that because of the vacant, plaintive sort of cooing-warbling sound the males make. Once you hear it, you always notice when the birds are within earshot. There are woods and wheat stubble close enough to where I live, even in a suburb, that I hear them from time to time when I’m readin’ in the back yard and the dogs are quiet.

I’m not sappy enough to think it’s Mark sayin’ "Hey, buddy!" or anything like that. But I’ll never hear the sound of a mourning dove again without being reminded of, and mourning, my poor friend Mark.

To Mark.

END