Wintertime winds are brutal in the Mississippi Delta. They are soaking with humidity, and howl unchecked across ironing-board flat fields. Delta folks call these winds “cuttin’ body hawks.”
At daybreak one freezing January morning, the body hawk unleashed its full fury upon us two duck hunters: my lifelong best friend and mentor, the beloved old black man everyone called Jaybird, and me.
Just as we stepped into a field of rice stubble in which we had built a blind, I looked down and spotted a shivering puppy, crying pitifully. He resembled a Doberman pinscher — solid black with rust-colored jaw patches and feet, and a long nose. When I squatted before him, his dull, mucous-clouded eyes, filled with fear and hopelessness, looked straight into mine.