This is a short story written by Wes Murphy, T&D outdoors columnist. Murphy can be reached at wesnyou@hotmail.com.

The old man leaned quietly against the ancient live oak as he looked out over the river swamp. Old bones against old wood. The same oak tree that he had spent the last morning of turkey season against for the past 45 seasons. Both of them were dying but all in all the tree had weathered the previous four-plus decades much better than the old hunter. He didn't need a doctor to tell him that this would be the last season. The pains in his chest had made that perfectly clear in recent months.

In his younger days he had traveled all over the South chasing turkeys, but he had always ended the season under this same tree. This particular swamp had always seemed to him to be filled with magic as if something wonderful was just waiting to happen. The tree itself looked just like any of a dozen others within sight but none of those others fit him in the same way.

Sort of like when someone pulled your cap off and then placed it back on your head. It might look as if it was in the exact same place but until you reached up and adjusted it, it was just wrong. He had tried sitting against some of the other trees but they didn't fit.

The old man hadn't started turkey hunting until well into his thirties.

Like many others who hadn't found their calling until later in life he had felt as if he had to make up for lost opportunity. As a younger man he had hunted anywhere from four to seven days a week all season long. He had reached his 80th birthday halfway through this season and now only hunted on opening and closing mornings. More to honor tradition than to actually hunt. The time spent in the company of family and friends at the club house had become the best part of the hunt for him.

It had been three years since he had last shot a turkey. Eyes made dim by time and ears made dull by years of working in a machine shop meant nothing short of a small miracle would make it happen again in this lifetime. In fact, he had made a little promise to the powers that be that if he could call up and see one more gobbler on his last hunt that he wouldn't shoot it.

In almost 50 years of turkey hunting, he had never passed up the chance to shoot one. In his opinion, if you wanted to bird watch, then why bother to tote around a heavy gun. Now just this once before he died, he wanted to call up and let a turkey go. It seemed like as fitting a way as any to end a long career.

For the most part, the old man was motionless, the only sign of life the slow rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He had learned that movement was the surest way to scare off even the most naive of birds.

Occasionally a sharp pain in his chest would cause him to jerk in surprise.

He would chastise himself, but it couldn't be helped. The pains came more often and took longer to stop now. The old man knew that sometime soon, one of those spasms in his chest would cause his heart to lock up for good.

He had told many people that if he died while turkey hunting, they could be sure he had died happy. Now he wondered if the time to find out the truth of that statement, so often made only half in jest, was near.

As the old man sat there waiting on daylight, he allowed his mind to drift back over the years. He thought back on the many times with his grandfather.

The same grandfather who had brought him to this very club to hunt first for squirrels and then later for deer. The grandfather who had taught him how to drive a truck and work with tools. The same grandfather who had taught him all the things a boy needed to learn about becoming a man. The old man was now 10 years older than his grandfather had been when he died, but he still wondered if he had lived up to his grandfather's expectations.

Daylight slowly starts to creep into the swamp and as so often happens this time of year, it arrived in a shroud of fog. At first the old man thought it might be his eyes. Lately everything seemed to have a haze around it but as the fog drifted throughout the swamp, he realized that the mist was gently moving. That didn't happen when it was his vision clouding over.

Often fog meant the turkeys wouldn't start gobbling or leave the roost until later than usual. In the past, the old man would have considered this to be a minor nuisance. Today he decided it was a major blessing. It meant more time to daydream about the past and allowed him to put off for just a little longer the end of his life as a turkey hunter.

His thoughts wandered here and there with no particular destination.

Thoughts of his favorite old dog of a lifetime ago. His first car. His first deer. Then they settled in on his children. His daughter being born. Her first fish. Her first car. The time she had sat in his lap and cried her heart out over some long-since-forgotten boy. Her wedding day. A hundred other little memories flashed by one on top of the other. He would have never believed he could have loved another as much as that child.

Until the boy came along. The old man found himself reliving the boy's first turkey. It had come on the old man's birthday almost 40 years earlier. He had always considered it one of his finest presents. They had spent countless mornings since then sitting in duck blinds and against trees waiting for daylight. Those mornings of whispered conversations paraded by one by one just for the old man's pleasure. When the boy was 9, the old man had put the boy on his shoulders and carried him through the swamp to shoot wood ducks. Now 40 years later it was the son who had to help the old man when it came time to hunt.

The sharpest pain yet caused the man to cry out. For a minute he thought it wasn't going to let up. Just as he started to panic and struggle to rise up from the ground, it finally relaxed it's hold on his heart. He thought maybe it was time to leave, but he was just so tired. Maybe in a little while.

As he sat there trying to catch his breath, his thoughts turned to his wife.

Tears ran down his wrinkled old face. Partially from pain, mostly because losing her only two months earlier still caught him unawares at times.

Sometimes he could still catch glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye.

In the 20 years after he had retired, they had sat up and talked every night as they watched the Braves play or the 11 o'clock news together.

That night she had said she was tired and going to bed early. She had leaned over and kissed the top of his head and whispered, "I love you old man." He had kissed her on the cheek and almost as an afterthought replied, "I love you too," and turned back to the news.

When the news was over and after he had walked the dog, he had gone into the bedroom and found her. She was lying there fully clothed with a serene, almost happy look on her face. As soon as he had entered the room he had known. As he sat there on the bed next to her, waiting on the ambulance, he held one of her hands in his and stroked her hair with the other. She had always loved to have her hair played with, even bribing the grandkids with small change to do so. While they waited there, together, he told her over and over, "I love you." He could only hope she heard him.

The first gobble of the morning interrupted his reverie. Just out there on the edge of hearing. He knew that between the dampening effect of the fog and his poor hearing that the turkey had to be close. Maybe the last prayers of old men do have a chance of being answered. While waiting on another gobble, the old man pulled out his box call. The same one he had used to call up his very first turkey. Dark with age, it had seen so much use since that only the ghost of a name remained on the lid. After several gobbles, the old man stroked out his best imitation of a hen yelping. Some things age can't take away and he had done this so many times before that it was now second nature.

Getting an answering gobble for his trouble brought a smile to his face and a quickening to his troubled heart. Deciding to string this out as long as possible, he waited and listened as the old tom gobbled over and over.

After coaxing one last set of yelps from the old box, he tucked it under the edge of his leg and waited.

There! A slight movement in the fog. Lord he was going to get to see it one last time. Thank you. It must be more than one. He could see several shapes almost out of sight and the one gobbling was beyond even that. Wait a minute, that isn't a turkey. Somebody is walking around out there. Maybe it's his son come to check on him. Can't he hear the bird behind him? He must be almost under the tree the bird is in.

As the shapes drift closer, the old man detects something familiar about them. Like unexpectedly seeing the back of a friend across a crowded room after a long absence. He thinks he knows who they are but can't be sure just yet.

A gentle breeze parts the mist and the old man sees his wife standing there, her hand held out for him. She looks just like she did on their wedding day so long ago. So young and pretty. In the 54 years since then, she had never been turkey hunting with him. Now for some reason her

being here doesn't seem strange to him. Just the opposite in fact. She belongs here with him.

The fog is getting thinner and the old man can see his grandfather in the background. He hasn't changed a bit since the last time they met. He stands there with a smile on his face and the old man finally knows that his life has met the other old man's approval.

As his wife takes his hand to help him up, he sees others that have gone on before him. There is his mother. A younger brother. The uncles that spent so much time with him as a child. A dear old friend that he had lost touch with. So many. Some old, some young, all just like the last time he had seen them. All of them standing there with smiles of anticipation on their faces.

Anticipation of giving him something that he would have never thought to give himself. Something that was so perfect.

As his wife leads him hand in hand through the fog, he knows that the season has ended and now it is time for him to go home.

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