Todd Bush - Blammbi

 

Hello. So, it's January 1981, and I am 14 years old and I'm sitting in the deepest woods of Alabama with my father freezing my ass off at 6:00 AM in the morning because we're deer hunting. He has been dragging me out into the woods to hunt deer for four years at this point and I never wanted to go deer hunting, but there I was. I certainly didn't want to kill a deer, but so, I'm there. And because I didn't want to kill a deer, I figured the best way to make this not happen was to talk. So, for four years, all I did was talk, talk, talk, talk, talk nonstop. He shh’ed me all the time and I didn't stop. So, it worked. Four years we didn't shoot at a deer. We didn't even see a deer. [audience laughter] Except for this one day, a doe jumped out of the bush and I lifted my gun and I pulled my trigger, wham. And I promptly scared the deer away. Total miss.

 

So, my father was hunting since he was a really small boy because his mother was abusive to him. And it was a way that his father could keep him away from her, was to keep him in the woods hunting. So, he hunted his whole life and it was a real saving grace for him. He found the woods to be peaceful and to be safe. So, of course he wanted to pass this along to his sons. And my two older brothers when they turned 10 years old, because that's how old you had to be in my house to go hunting, they went and they loved it and they became carbon copies of him and they loved hunting. But me being this little effeminate kid, not so much. So, in being that effeminate, my father didn't really know how to handle that. So, he, for whatever reasons, began to withhold certain affections from me because I guess he thought I was going to grow up to be gay. Not that he wasn't affectionate, he just wasn't affectionate to me. [audience laughter]

 

So, when he started speaking to me about hunting, I went on-- I made a few attempts to say, "I'm not interested," but it was always met with this bright-eyed enthusiasm, right? And, he would, a little hug here or a nudge there. And so, I was like getting this attention from him. So, I'm like, "Wait a minute, maybe I should just do this hunting thing" which I did. So, it was my 10th birthday and I was sitting to open presents and my father gave me a big cylinder package that I could barely hold up. And it plopped down on my skinny little lap and I opened it and there was a barrel of a 16-gauge pump shotgun for my 10th birthday. [audience chuckle] And I knew at that point that I wasn't getting toys. It was going to be all hunting stuff. So, I got like a butane hand warmer and like an orange vest [audience laughter] and paper like deer for target practice, really good stuff.

 

And one of them was a pair of socks that had wires in them and little Velcro pockets at the top for batteries so you could like warm your feet because it's that cold at 6:00 in the morning. So, anyway, I acted excited because I didn't want to disappoint my dad. So, I was like, "Dad, a gun. Thanks." [audience chuckle] And a month or so later, he said, "Come on, son, we're going to do some target practicing." So, he took me down behind our house to the edge of the swamp where he had tied some deers up between some trees. And he taught me how to shoot my gun. And I was just tiny as a 10-year-old. Like, I only ate like Snickers. [audience chuckle] So, I pulled the gun on my shoulder and I shot it. Blam. And it spun me around. I was so skinny and it just was painful. And mostly I'm like, "Why is he putting me through this?" But, whatever.

 

So, for an hour I just shot and it was just rubbing my shoulder raw. But I got through the day and a couple days later I was black and blue. And how when you push on a bruise like it’s painful, right? So, two days later he's like, "Come on, son." And I'm like [beep sound]. So, we go back out and the gun's on my shoulder and it just feels like someone taking a bat to my already bruised shoulder. But three weeks later I got through it. I guess my aim was good enough and it was time for hunting season to start. So, we got up in the morning and he wrapped me up in like five layers of clothes. I looked like the little kid from like a creepy Christmas Story. And went to the hunting camp and there were 50 or so redneck men drinking beer at 6:00 in the morning and me, and I was like terrible. So, there was one man I remember, he was really old and he was just terrible. His name was Luke and he was just a really serious redneck. He had thick coke bottle glasses, his eyes looked like English peas and he had a long mustache and he would chew tobacco, and it was spitting all day long. So, it was constantly wet with tobacco and it had bleached it out. And you could smell it when he spoke to you, it was terrible. 

 

And he was the kind of redneck that judged you for your redneckness. [audience chuckle] Like you had to be some sort of a backwards idiot to fit in, right? So, he walks up to me that morning, and he's like, "Hey, boy." And I just hated him instantly for calling me boy, you know? So, anyway, I turn over, I look between two muddy trucks, and there's this little kid over there, like my age. And I'm like, "Yes." So, I go over and I speak to this kid, and I'm like, "Hi, I'm Todd." And he said, "Hi, I'm Brian." And I was like, “My mom had taught me about brining a turkey”. And I was like, "Why would someone name their child after a cooking method?" [audience chuckle] So, he corrected me and he said, "Brine." And I was like, “Ohh.” [audience chuckle] I said, "This is my dad's hunting camp, but this is my first day hunting. Like, how about you?" And he goes, "No, I've been hunting since I was really little." And I thought abusive mother. [audience chuckle]

 

So, we are back four years later. It's January 1981. I've just missed the deer. And we go back to the hunting camp, and Luke steps up to me, and he goes, "Don't you ever [beep sound] miss a deer, boy. You just took food off all of our tables.” And I'm 14 and I was like, "Sorry." And I felt two men grab me, and they ripped down my camouflage jumpsuit, and they untucked my LL Bean flannel button down and took the tail or the back of the shirt and Luke cut it off because that's what happens when you miss a deer. And I was really sensitive still, and I ran over to my dad with tears in my eyes because I wanted him to kick them out of the camp. And he just kind of laughed at me and said, "That's what happens. Take it like a man." So, I was really destroyed, and I felt completely unprotected and sad and mad and all that.

 

And the next hunting season began. And I think my father had figured out that if he didn't stand with me, I couldn't talk his ear off. So, he would place me and he would stand 100 yards away. So, this one day, freezing cold, I heard the dogs running. We were running dogs. Running dogs consist of a line of hunters here and a line of dogs like a mile away in the same line. And the dogs run and flush out all the deer toward hicks with guns. [audience chuckle] So, I'm there and I'm hearing the dogs and it's like they're coming right for me. And I'm just like, "Don't come." I didn't want to kill a deer. And it just kept on and kept on, and right in front of me, I heard a crunch and like a twig snap. And I lifted my gun and out jumped a buck. And I shot him. And he fell right where he had stood. And I screamed to my dad, "Dad, I got one. I got a deer." And he like ran over and he met me at the deer and he scooped me up and he gave me the biggest, longest bear hug ever, which I had been missing and it's why I was there. 

 

And he just said "You did it, son. You got a buck on your first deer." And he just held me and it was great. And I could feel the love and the pride. And he let me go. And I looked at his face and it was awesome. And I leaned down to pet the deer as it was dying, and I began to feel conflicted because he was this great love. But I had just taken the life of a deer I mean, which is terrible. And I just bounced back and forth, and it was pretty heady stuff for a 15-year-old. We got back to the camp and Luke took my deer and he strung the deer upside down. And he said, "Come here, boy. I'm going to show you how to gut this thing." And he took a giant knife and he stuck it into the top of the gut and he cut it down the center. And the guts just oozed out and steamed and hung there. And I felt several of the men grab me and they put me horizontally and they shoved my face into the guts [audience aww] because that's what happens when you kill your first deer. [audience chuckle] And I remember screaming and writhing, and I remember tasting the deer's blood, the salty blood in my mouth. And I just felt the guts on my face. And I was writhing and they finally just let me go. And Luke was standing there and he had some entrail in his hand, I don't know what. And he squeezed it and it was like more blood, like down into my neck. 

 

And I just went silent and I snapped. And I was like "That's it, obviously." And I got up to march toward the dirt road home. And I remember passing Brian. And Brian wouldn't make eye contact with me. And I passed my dad, and I wouldn't make eye contact with him. And I'm stomping down the three miles to my house, and my dad pulled up beside me in the truck, and he's like "Come on, son, get in the truck." And I ignored him like I had never ignored him before, like he didn't exist. I just didn't even acknowledge him. And he said, "Todd, get in the goddamn truck. This is just what happens when you kill your first deer. We've all been through it. Just take it like a man and get in the truck." And I ignored him.

 

And he eventually turned around and went back to the camp. And when I rounded the last corner of my long driveway, my mother was standing in the door. Mother's intuition and all. She knew something was astir. And I ran into her arms, crying with the tears mixing with the blood on my face. And I said, "I'm not hunting ever again, mom." And she said, "Well, we'll see." And I pulled back, and I caught her eye. And I'm like, "No, I'm never going hunting again." And I went to my room, and I remember a panic setting in. I had these four years with my dad, and I was like, "I'm going to lose that connection with him. It's going to go back to the way it was." And I was just petrified about it. 

 

And a couple of days later, he came in and he sat on my bed, and we had a really long talk about all that had gone on and how I never wanted to go and how it was forced and everything that happened with the hunting. And the opposite happened, actually. He kind of gained a respect for me, like, as a young man at 15, for standing up to him somehow. And our relationship was really amazing after that, somehow. And he leaned over and gave me a giant hug, and it was great.

 

I look back on the story and I think how gross it sounds and how terrible. I mean, the bloodbath sucked, obviously, but I have warmth at the base of most of the thoughts. I mean, not that because I killed a deer and that's what I got as far as I felt. And even the target practice, even though it felt abusive to me, that was a rite of passage. So, everything now I hold dear. And I thought about Brian, too, because I had gotten out of that and been able to be gay. And I had always thought Brian gay, because when I was young, I had my first gaydar and wondered about that. And years later, when I was in beauty school, I ran into a friend that was still hunting. And he had told me that one morning, Brian had, no one knows why, but he had left his stand and walked to his father's stand. 

 

And Luke being old, and I don't know if it was the morning sun in his glasses or what, but he raised his gun to what he thought was a deer, and he shot his own son. [audience reaction] And he died in the back of a pickup on the way to the emergency room that day. So, in the end, I wasn't the only one to leave that camp. After that day, he never stepped foot in the woods again. Thank you.