One time I had to get me a barium enema and I thought it was a pretty bad deal, but after I saw what happened to my friend Cal Thomas that day in the woods, it turns out it wasn’t so bad after all. Yeah, that was his name all right, Cal fucking Thomas. Just like the guy you see yelling and screaming on the news. I’m a crotchety old bastard and can remember the days when they did reporting on the news, but those days are gone. Nobody wants to watch information anymore. They’d rather pick a side and watch people yelling and screaming about shit. People need stimulation, so I guess I don’t blame them. I fucking hated sitting there on my ass watching information too. So, yeah, I figured the name would be familiar. The tv Cal is like most people on the news: an old white guy. I know he’s got a mustache on his face, but I forget what team he plays for, Liberal or Conservative.

…………It don’t matter anyway.

…………The Cal Thomas I’m talking about had been a friend of mine for years. Shit, back in the 50s we used to bang each other’s wives and smoke grass with the Negroes. When we got older and richer we decided it’d be a hoot to go out in the woods and fucking kill things, so we started hunting. Every Fall starting about ‘68, me, Cal, and another friend of ours, Steve Loomis, took a trip far the hell away from our families. We’d go to some god-forsaken land like Wisconsin or Minnesota or South Dakota, crawl out into the woods about four in the morning all dressed up in khaki and psychotic orange, and just start fucking killing things. One time we even went up into Canada to kill things, but spent most of the time marveling at all the Socialized Medicine they got up there.

…………Mostly deer, but we’d kill anything–beavers, badgers, bears, housecats a little too far from home, you name it. One time I even blew away a monarch butterfly with my Mossberg 500 shotgun and the damn thing vanished before my eyes. It was hilarious.

…………The last day I went hunting was the last day of Cal’s life. I just ain’t got the belly for it anymore. Sure, I still put out antifreeze for the neighborhood dogs and stand out in the yard shooting songbirds with my pellet gun, but full-blown hunting just ain’t possible for me now, not after what happened to Cal that day.

…………We were in South Dakota, the Black Hills area to be exact, in November, and we were having a hell of time finding anything to kill. It was like the animals had heard we were coming and made themselves scarce. We’d been there three days with no luck and basically just wandered around the woods getting drunk on Busch Lite and bitching about how all we were doing was wandering around the woods getting drunk on Busch Lite.

…………About evening on that third day, we decided to stumble back to camp and pass out and give it another go in the morning. It would be our last shot. We were due back in the howling emptiness of family life in a few days and had to get on the road. We were trying to be all optimistic and shit, but were actually feeling pretty low.

…………We were about halfway back to camp when Cal announced how he had to take a shit. “You boys go on without me,” he said, “I gotta take me a shit.”

…………So me and Stevie went on without him. Over my shoulder I watched Cal pull down his trousers and prop himself up against a pine tree. He looked like he was settling in and gonna be there awhile.

…………“Uh-oh,” Stevie said to me. “He’s gonna pass out.”

…………“Guaranteed,” I said back to him.

…………If there’s one thing you need to know about ol’ Cal, it’s how he liked to take shits. Even when he was sober he’d be like 20, 30 minutes on the throne. And when drunk? Hoo boy, he was goner. He’d be a-droolin’ and a-snorin’ every time, pants around the ankles and knuckles in the muck. I can’t tell you how many bar toilets I hauled him off of over the years.

…………We had wandered about 8 miles away from camp and so there was still another 4 miles to go and me and Stevie walked it pretty much in silence. I had a real weird feeling in me, like something bad was gonna happen but I didn’t know what. A kind of nervous, apprehensive thing that was in my stomach and wrapped around my balls and all up and down my spine. The only time I ever felt anything like it was when the wife made me sleep with her, but it was real strange feeling it out here in the woods with the boys. Looking back on it I see now that it was women’s intuition.

…………About maybe a hundred yards from camp, Stevie spotted himself a deer and he up and shot it, scaring the hell out me since I didn’t know he had seen it. All of a sudden he just fired and I about jumped out of my boots.

…………“Holy hell, warn a guy, will ya?” I said to him, but he was already scurrying over to his kill with his knife out.

…………We don’t ever keep nothing we kill since we’re all committed vegetarians, but gutting an animal is a way fun experience I highly recommend you try. Sometimes it‘s even more satisfying than the kill itself. I stood there and watched as Stevie sliced open the deer’s belly and pulled out the innards, hiding my jealousy as best I could.

…………“Ol’ Cal missed it,” I said. “Probably the only kill this year and he missed it.”

…………“Yep,” Stevie said. “What a fucking tool. We should play a joke on him, have a few laughs.”

…………“Like what?”

…………“I don’t know, something.”

…………Suddenly, it hit me. “I got an idea,” I said.

…………Now, don’t ask me why this popped into my head. It is what it is, though. It was all my idea and I regret it to this very day whenever I think about it, which is pert near never since I’m not a thinkin’ type man.

…………“I say we sneak back and shove these guts under his ass.” As soon as I said it that apprehensive, nervous feeling I was telling you about got real, real strong inside me.

…………Ol’ Stevie loved the idea. He LOLed and ROFLed to beat all hell. “I’ll run get the cooler!” he said.

…………It was three hours later and full on dark by the time me and Stevie walked into camp. We started breaking out the flashlights and cucumbers, chuckling away at how witty we were.

…………“That fucker‘s sure gonna be surprised!” Stevie said in his high-pitched, squeaky midget voice. Did I mention that Stevie was a midget? Yeah, that’s why we called him Stevie, even though the technical name for him was Steve. He swears up and down he ain’t no fucking midget, though. He says he’s just vertically challenged, but don’t you believe him. He’s a balls-out midget, all right, perfect dick-sucking height and everything.

…………We figured Cal would be along about sunup, ready to cuss us out, but when he didn’t show up by 7 am, we almost started getting worried.

…………“Where the hell is he, I wonder,” I said to Stevie, cracking open my third beer. “It ain’t like him to sleep in.”

…………“I know,” said Stevie. “‘The early bird catches the worm,’ he always says.”

…………“And a penny saved is a penny earned.”

…………“Word to your mother,” agreed Stevie.

…………It was, oh, about nine when Cal finally got to camp. He was walking real funny and real slow, like he was limping on both legs. I figured he bit it somewhere out in the woods, but was I wrong. All wrong.

…………As soon as we laid eyes on his face, we forgot about the joke we played on him the night before. I ain’t never seen anyone so white, even Hitler.

…………“You ok?” I asked him.

…………“You boys ain’t gonna believe what happened to me,” ol’ Cal said, his voice kinda shaky. “I had to shit so bad last night my insides came out!”

…………“What the…!?” Me and Stevie said at the same time. My voice is real low and Stevie’s voice is real high, him being a midget, and together we harmonized quite prettily.

…………“But it’s ok,” Cal said, putting up a hand. “I managed to get ‘em back in with the help of a stick.”

…………Two hours later he was dead, after complaining of bloat. Did I mention how Cal wasn’t too bright? Yeah, he wasn’t really.

The End

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