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            When I first met him, I didn’t even know that Charles Morgan, MD was a doctor.  We were paired together on the same squad at the trap range, and I was admiring his shotgun, a Diana grade Belgian Browning like I’d always lusted for but could never afford.  He seemed like just an ordinary Joe to me and he even offered to let me shoot a practice round with it. 

            He was a reasonable good shot, but nothing really spectacular.  He would never make it into the coveted AA class or back to the twenty-seven yard line, but he was consistent and seemed to have a good time.  I bought him a beer after we were done shooting, and I mentioned that I was going out after doves Sunday, the first day of the season.  He said that he liked to hunt but didn’t have any access to any land to hunt doves.  I told him that I had sole access to a relative’s woods and that I’d welcome his company.  He then fished a calling card out of his pocket, jotted a number on the back, and told me that I could call him anytime.  I pocketed the card without reading it, and it was only later, when I pulled it out to read it, that I learned he was a surgeon.  A lot of doctors are kind of stuffy even when not involved with their patients, and demand that people call them Dr. at all times, but he wasn’t like that at all.  He insisted that I call him Chuck, and he treated me as if I was his intellectual equal at all times.  Later on I learned that he was one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the state, but you sure wouldn’t guess so by talking to him on the trap range.

            He picked me up the next Sunday morning in a six-year-old Bronco, which didn’t seem to me what an upscale surgeon would drive, but he was totally unpretentious about things like that, too.  He wasn’t as good a shot in the field as he was on the trap range, but doves are pretty hard to hit.  They come straight at you really fast and then veer away at the last minute.  He got so frustrated at one time that I thought he was going to sluice one that was resting on a power line, but he waited until it flew to shoot.  He finally got the hang of it and by two in the afternoon we both had our limits.  We stopped by the old barn to clean the birds, and I got a chance to watch a guy who was really good with a knife do his thing.  He skinned and breasted out the birds faster and cleaner than anyone I’d ever seen, and was done with his limit before I had barely started my own.  He thanked me profusely as he dropped me off, and said he was looking forward to shooting with me again. 

             It was a couple of weeks before I saw him again at the trap range, and this time he greeted me like an old buddy.   We shot a few rounds, and then he casually mentioned that he had another Browning Superposed, this one a field grade, that he would be willing to sell if I was interested.  I was.  Hell, anyone with any knowledge of shotguns would jump at the chance to own one of the old classics, but I told him I probably couldn’t afford it.  He allowed as how he thought we could come to some kind of terms, and I agreed to follow him up to his home and take a look at it.

            His house was above the lake and was not visible from the road. I had probably been by his driveway a hundred times but had never really paid any attention to it other than to note that it was posted with No Trespassing signs, and that it was therefore a private drive and not a public lane.  I followed him up the winding driveway for what seemed like a mile before we emerged on the top of a ridge that separated two arms of the lake.  He drove to a large, brick faced garage that sat apart from the house.  One of the four overhead doors rose to accept his Bronco, and I got a glimpse of the rest of the doctor’s fleet.  An old 356 Porsche, immaculately restored or preserved, sat in front of a 55 Chevy convertible.  A 560 Mercedes with custom plates was apparently one of his daily drivers, as was the newer Ford Diesel pickup truck that sat beside it.  The most amazing thing about the garage however, other than its size and cleanliness, was the display of exotic taxidermy mounts that covered the walls. 

            “Pretty impressive,” I commented, eying the mounts.

            “This is just the overflow,” He answered.  “I ran out of room in my den, and the wife doesn’t really care to have the whole house decorated with them, although I don’t really see why.”  He then led me into the side door of the house.  “She’s at her bridge club this evening,” he explained as he disabled the security system. “ She won’t be home for a couple of hours.”

            The house was huge, to say the least.  I didn’t get the whole tour, but I’d guess there must have been six or seven thousand square feet in the thing.  He led me through a vaulted ceiling living room that was big enough to play ball in to his office and gun room, which was bigger than my house.  Three walls were covered with dozens of trophies and a gun cabinet covered the other wall.

            There must have been over fifty rifles and shotguns in his collection, and by what I could recognize the total value would have easily exceeded two hundred thousand dollars.  Exotic Magnum double rifles shared the rack with fancy English engraved shotguns, scoped bolt actions, and obviously antique Winchester rifles.  He went to the far end of the cabinet and extracted the plainest looking firearm in the collection.  “I picked this up as payment on a debt six or seven years ago,” he explained, breaking open and handing me the shotgun.  It’s a field grade Superposed, twenty-eight inch barrels, choked Modified and Full.  I’ve never shot it, but it feels like a club compared to the Diana that I shoot trap with.”

            The wood on the buttstock and forearm, while plain and unfigured, had never suffered the indignity of having been dragged through a barbed wire fence and the bluing on the barrels was almost virgin, as if never had been carried in a truck’s gun rack.  “Feels good to me,” I said, closing the action and shouldering the finely crafted Belgian Browning.  “What’s it worth?”

            “Depends on who’s asking,” he replied.  For a dealer, who only wants to re-sell it, or a collector, it would probably be about two or three grand.  For a friend, who truly appreciates it as a fine shotgun and who only wants to shoot it, probably around five hundred,” he replied.  I’ll sell it to you for four hundred, with the provision that if you ever sell it I get it back at the same price.” 

            I’m not a pauper by any means.  When I say I can’t afford something it really means that I can’t justify spending the money.  I work hard and am very well paid and I certainly don’t need charity from anyone and I possibly should have felt insulted that the doctor thought otherwise. “Okay,” I said, fondling the beautiful piece of craftsmanship.  “That’s an offer I can’t refuse, but don’t count on ever getting it back.  I intend to shoot it until it wears out.”

            “I hope you do,” he replied.  “Just bring me a check next Thursday at the trap range.  Oh, there’s also a leather travel case that goes with it.”

            Business concluded, he offered me a beer from the small built in refrigerator and then led me around the room while he told me a little about the trophies that lined the walls.  “This is my favorite,” he said, as we stopped in front of a shoulder mount of a massive, almost black, lion.  “He was from the upper reaches of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.  I went there specifically for a black lion, and I was rewarded with this old guy.”

            “That must have been quite an experience,” I said. 

            “I have a lot of the safari on tape.  If you have an hour to kill I’ll run it for you.”

            Amateur home videos bore the shit out of me, but there wasn’t anyway that I could gracefully reject the offer, so I took a seat on his leather couch while he slid open a panel to reveal a fifty-inch flat screen TV.  The tape was actually pretty good.  The doctor had a good quality camera and someone obviously knew how to use it.  He said that the light in  the highlands of Africa is so intense and the air so clear that it is hard to take bad pictures, but I think that most of it was due to his skill.  We watched him spot the lion, make the stalk and finally make the shot.  After that the scene changed to the streets of a small village, and he shut the VCR off.

            “This next part is something that happened in the village and is pretty intense,” he warned.  “If you’re at all squeamish we’ll skip over it.”

            Having been duly challenged and warned, I told him to go ahead and run it, and that it took a lot to shock me.  “Okay,” he said, as the tape began again.  “There was some kind of commotion in the village, so we wandered over to see what was going on.  This young guy, the one on the ground, apparently either raped or molested one of the local girls.”

            The video, like that on the safari, was rock solid and perfectly focused.  Five or six nearly naked black men had just wrestled a younger man to the ground.  He looked to be fifteen or sixteen years old, still beardless, and had light skin and blonde hair and was clad only in the ubiquitous tee shirt and athletic shorts worn by youths all over Africa.  “He doesn’t look like one of the natives,” I commented.

            “He was probably an abandoned kid”, the doctor explained.  “It’s quite common for a Westerner or European to knock up one of the local girls and then split.  The mother abandons the baby if he’s too white, and they just kind of become wards of the village, almost like pets.”

            The men finally subdued the boy and turned him face up on the ground.  An older man, dressed in an elaborate native costume walked up and raised his hands for silence.  He seemed to be in charge of things, and he was making some kind of elaborate speech.  He finally finished talking and nodded to another younger man.  The younger man knelt between the youth’s pinioned legs, produced a knife, and proceeded to cut the boy’s shorts off.  A small crown of blonde hair accented the stark whiteness of his untanned crotch, and he had a slender circumcised penis, and plump, low hanging balls that seemed out of place on a boy so young.  The man then stood up and handed the knife, a small ivory handled dagger, to the chief or whatever he was.  Without hesitation the older man bent over, grabbed the youth by the balls, stretched them out, and cut them free.   There was no sound track on the video, but the contortions of the boy’s face practically filled the room with his silent screams as the ultimate indignity was inflicted on him.  The other men released him and walked away, and the chief threw the severed gonads to the ground for the dogs to fight over.  There was no apparent attempt to tend to the youth’s wound or even staunch the copious flow of blood from his crotch.

            “Jesus!”  I said.  “Did he survive?” 

            “Probably so,” the doctor answered.  “I stitched him up and pumped him full of antibiotics, but they say it happens all of the time there and most men survive castration.  Does kind of make a guy think twice about messing with the natives though.”

            I rose, intending to leave, while the doctor rewound the tape, and was suddenly aware that I had an erection.  I immediately turned away to hide it as the doctor spoke up.  “No need to be embarrassed.  It happens to just about everyone who watches the tape.”

            I left the house and went on home, and by next morning I had a new goal in life:  I would scrimp and save every dime I could, and someday take a trip to Africa.  Specifically, one particular village in Ethiopia.