At first, Mark Eaton thought Thomas Hacker was just a nice older man, a community leader who鈥檇 taken an interest in him. In the mid-1980s, Eaton was a Boy Scout in the suburbs of Chicago. Hacker was a schoolteacher and a deacon at his church. He was also the scoutmaster of Eaton鈥檚 troop, and they went on a lot of campouts together.

鈥淭he touching,鈥� Eaton would explain years later, 鈥渋t was pretty much every campout.鈥�

Eaton shares his story about Hacker鈥檚 abuse鈥攁nd the way it changed his life鈥攊n the new Netflix documentary , which chronicles the extensive history of child sex abuse and cover-ups in the Boy Scouts of America. Eaton鈥檚 abuse lasted years. Eventually, he earned the highest scouting rank, Eagle, and he was honored in an elaborate ceremony.

Hacker was there, too.

鈥淗ow do you take this award ceremony,鈥� Eaton says in the film, 鈥渁nd then try to tie it together with this hidden-in-plain-sight type of abuse that鈥檚 going on?鈥�

The film鈥檚 production team includes executive producer/director Brian Knappenberger and executive producer Orlando von Einsiedel, as well as co-executive producers Clare Tucker and Anna Murphy. This film comes a year after the Boy Scouts settled the largest sex-abuse lawsuit in history. More than 82,000 men said they鈥檇 been abused as children, and the organization, its insurance companies, and some churches that sponsored troops agreed to settle for a total of $2.46 billion. The Boy Scouts of America has also to the victims a number of times, and even moving forward in a way that will keep children safe.

The new film makes it clear that sexual abuse was a long-standing problem in the organization. Scouts Honor features journalist Patrick Boyle explaining the origin and nature of the Boy Scouts鈥� so-called 鈥渃onfidential files鈥濃�攔eferred to by critics as its 鈥減erversion files.鈥� The organization kept secret records going back decades documenting allegations of molestation.

Thomas Hacker鈥檚 name is in those files. Before he became a scoutmaster in Illinois, Hacker already had a criminal record across the state line in Indiana. According to the film, the Boy Scouts knew about the accusations in Indiana, and despite that allowed Hacker to relocate and reenter scouting鈥攖he way Catholic churches moved predatory priests from one place to another鈥攅mpowering Hacker to continue molesting children.

Hacker eventually confessed to sexually abusing hundreds of boys, sometimes dozens of times each. He died in prison at 81, but his crimes are still reverberating. Christopher Hurley, an attorney who has represented some 4,000 survivors who鈥檝e sued the Boy Scouts, is also interviewed in the new documentary. He says that Hacker might be the most prolific pedophile in American history.

Hurley took a deposition from Hacker before he died. In what might be the most chilling moment in the film, Hurley says that he asked Hacker, this rampant abuser, why he chose the Boy Scouts.

Hacker鈥檚 response: 鈥淏ecause they made it so easy.鈥�

I wasn鈥檛 a scout, but I have a two-year-old son who may decide he wants to join someday. Two of his uncles are Eagle Scouts. We live in Texas, where scouting still matters. Nationwide membership has plummeted over the past few years鈥攄own since 2019鈥攂ut the patriotism, the reverence, the focus on manners? Those things are big in Texas. So is the ethos of can-do individualism. The organization鈥檚 headquarters is in Irving, just outside Dallas.

My wife and I have talked a lot about what we might say if and when our son asks if he can join. We want him to grow up with the knowledge and skills to thrive outdoors, along with the confidence that kind of self-reliance yields. But it鈥檚 more than this. My family admires the values the organization espouses.

If you鈥檙e not familiar with the way it works: Every scout takes an oath to follow 鈥淪cout law.鈥� The code dictates that a scout must try at all times to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. My wife and I want our son to be all those things.

But of course the Boy Scouts of America hasn鈥檛 always lived up to those ideals. Millions of families trusted the organization with their children, and the Boy Scouts let down too many of them. The organization certainly wasn鈥檛 loyal or helpful to the boys who were preyed upon, especially when higher-ups learned about previous accusations against troop leaders but allowed them to remain in contact with children anyway. The courageous move would have been to confront these issues head-on, referring every allegation to law enforcement, and doing whatever it took to keep every scout safe. So the organization damn sure wasn鈥檛 brave.

The main whistleblower in Scouts Honor is Michael Johnson, Boy Scouts of America鈥檚 youth protection director from 2010 to 2020, who tells his story for the first time here. Before working for the Boy Scouts, Johnson was a police officer who investigated child sex crimes. (As a youth, he was also a scout.) Early on in the documentary, he鈥檚 asked why he took the job at the Boy Scouts in the first place.

鈥淒o you want the truth or what I was told to say?鈥� Johnson replies.

Scouting has always been protective of its image. Parents were told that the organization had a rigorous process for screening volunteers, but for years that wasn鈥檛 the case. The truth, as Johnson tells it, is that the Boy Scouts of America is by its very nature a high-risk organization. How many other groups allow adults nearly unsupervised access to children on overnight campouts, sometimes for days at a time? The rules explicitly instruct scouts to obey their adult leaders.

But instead of paying for extensive background checks, or creating serious protective protocols鈥攁t one point, a member of the organization鈥檚 youth protection task force was 鈥攖he Boy Scouts spent years focused on . It also publicly which requires extensive background checks of adult volunteers.

Steven McGowan, the former general counsel for the Boy Scouts, also appears in the documentary, as the organization鈥檚 most vocal defender. His office oversaw nationwide youth-protection efforts. He contends to this day that the institution itself didn鈥檛 abuse anyone, that it was a problem caused by 鈥渂ad people that got in,鈥� and that the Boy Scouts had no way of identifying abusers ahead of time.

McGowan also stresses the obvious point that child sex abuse isn鈥檛 a problem solely for scouting. He believes it鈥檚 a broader social illness, and that the issues facing the Boy Scouts are emblematic of something bigger that鈥檚 wrong in American society.

鈥淲e just happen to be the one with the deep pocket right now,鈥� he says.

A sizable swath of American society has fretted belligerently about absurd child sex-trafficking conspiracies鈥攖hink QAnon and Pizzagate鈥攂ut the truth about the Boy Scouts, which has been known for years, doesn鈥檛 seem to have landed on many radars. Even before the massive settlement last year, there was a series of criminal and civil cases going back decades. Anyone who wanted to could learn the scope of the abuse and the nature of the cover-ups.

For reasons that could surely fill a doctoral dissertation, our culture has a difficult time discussing male-on-male sexual abuse. Often the allegations come years鈥攅ven decades鈥攁fter the abuse occurs, and the people disclosing the details of these heinous crimes are now adults. Most of the men who share their stories in Scouts Honor are tall and broad-shouldered. It鈥檚 sometimes hard to remember that when the abuse was committed, they were just children, still growing physically and emotionally, desperately trying to figure out how the world works.

One man鈥檚 abuse lasted nine years, until he turned 18. Another says he was abused at a large gathering, about 200 yards away from his parents. Another was passed around by his troop鈥檚 leaders. And another was molested as he slept in a cabin at Boy Scout summer camp.

Despite the ubiquity of these incidents, however, American society barely has the vocabulary to talk about the issue. The phrase we use, sexual abuse, is a euphemism. It鈥檚 our way of not discussing the painful details of the assaults that were happening in tents, cars, and cabins all over America. These moments fundamentally reshape a child鈥檚 understanding of almost everything. They can fracture psyches for life. The men in Scouts Honor describe something vital being taken away, years of childhood stolen. Several describe thoughts of self-harm and suicide. The stories these men tell are horrific and heartbreaking.

Mark Eaton says he was in his forties before he understood that the abuse he suffered wasn鈥檛 his fault, that he was a victim of Thomas Hacker. For decades, he lived with a deep, abiding anger that bubbled to the surface with little provocation. He talks about punching holes in walls. He says that the shame he felt hurt his relationship with his parents. And like thousands of other men, he鈥檚 had to figure out a way through all of this.

In the end, insurance companies will pay the vast majority of the settlement with survivors. The Boy Scouts of America will cover of the total. The organization agreed to give up to $80 million worth of property, another $80 million in a promissory note, and about $20 million in cash. The settlement was part of a massive bankruptcy filing鈥攎ost of the litigation took place in a Delaware bankruptcy court鈥攁nd the organization is now taking steps to evolve. The Boy Scouts no longer have a policy prohibiting gay members, and some troops allow girls.

As for the survivors, nothing can undo what they鈥檝e experienced. And while $2.46 billion sounds like a lot, spread over 82,000 plaintiffs, the settlement averages less than $3,500 per person. Some of the attorneys stand to make a lot of money, but almost none of the victims will get enough to substantially change their lives. Contrary to Steven McGowan鈥檚 quip about the Boy Scouts鈥� deep pockets, the men who鈥檝e come forward are obviously doing it for reasons other than money.

鈥淚 wanna take some of the stigma away from it, from boys being victims,鈥� Eaton says at one point. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not the boy鈥檚 fault.鈥�

Men sharing their stories, attempting to face down society鈥檚 stigma so others won鈥檛 have to live with the same pain, there鈥檚 a word for behavior like that: brave.

Michael J. Mooney writes for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic and Texas Monthly.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly credited filmmaker Alex Gibney as the producer of the film.聽

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In the spring of 1996, this magazine sent Jon Krakauer to Everest in search of a story. There, Krakauer was caught in a deadly blizzard that killed eight people. Five months later, 国产吃瓜黑料 published his firsthand report of the disaster, which was followed in 1997 by the award-winning book .

You鈥檙e probably familiar with the story. The catastrophe鈥攖he deadliest day in Everest鈥檚 history until an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas last year鈥攈as been the subject of five other nonfiction books, one made-for-TV special, a documentary, and an (planned for a 2015 release).聽

Now, it鈥檚 been retold as an opera.

Everest, which premiered last weekend at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, is a 70-minute fever-dream version of the famous story. At its emotional core, it鈥檚 a show about the value of each breath and step. And like many accounts of the disaster, it鈥檚 about both the cost of ambition and the collective hope we derive from challenging ourselves in the world鈥檚 most unforgiving places.

Those who鈥檝e read Krakauer鈥檚 accounts will be familiar with the plot. The opera follows Rob Hall (played by Andrew Bidlack), an accomplished New Zealand mountaineer, and his client Doug Hansen (Craig Verm) as they make their way to the summit and attempt to descend through the blizzard. The two climbers perish, but not before Hall manages to make a final call to his pregnant wife, Jan (Sasha Cooke). The show also tracks Beck Weathers (Kevin Burdette), a client of Hall鈥檚 who survives the ordeal despite being left for dead twice.

While Everest fanatics might quibble about a few of the exchanges and artistic depictions (for instance, it shows Hansen鈥檚 death, though his body has never been found and the exact cause of his death remains unknown), the opera stays true to most of the story鈥檚 facts. And there are some very moving moments, such as when Hall, told to leave Hansen to die and trek back to camp alone, replies, 鈥淗e can hear you.鈥�

Elite mountain climbing may seem like an awkward subject for the stage, but it鈥檚 a fitting pairing. Opera, like Everest, is more dramatic and emotional than everyday life.

To transform the story into a libretto, the text upon which the action is based, the Dallas Opera tapped American songwriter and award-winning librettist Gene Scheer, whose 2010 Moby-Dick was one of the most successful operas of the past decade. To pen the musical score, Scheer teamed up with British composer Joby Talbot, who has worked with bands like the White Stripes and whose eclectic resume includes everything from composing music for a theatrical rendition of Alice in Wonderland to scoring the film version of聽The Hitchhiker鈥檚 Guide to the Universe.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a very dramatic story, and it鈥檚 a very poignant story,鈥� says Scheer. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what I鈥檓 always looking for in an opera鈥攖he chance to watch people making decisions in real time that will affect those people and their families for the rest of their lives.鈥澛�

To create Everest, Scheer immersed himself in the 1996 season. He read the original 国产吃瓜黑料 feature. He studied Krakauer鈥檚 book and three other book-length accounts. He watched the made-for-TV movie and the documentaries. He researched George Mallory and the long history of people who鈥檝e died on Everest. And he spoke with survivors from the other climbing teams, people who鈥檇 worked with Hall, and families of the deceased.

But Scheer spent the most time with Weathers, who lives in Dallas. Over several days, Weathers told him the story of being left for dead in the blizzard and walking to camp on his own. He lost his nose, a hand, and all the fingers from his remaining hand. As difficult as the ordeal was, Weathers also credits the experience with saving his marriage and drawing him out of depression.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e trying to be true to the spirit of the thing,鈥� Scheer said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a hard thing to define, but that鈥檚 the task. Ultimately, when you鈥檙e telling a story in an opera, music is the primary means of communication. That doesn鈥檛 mean that the words aren鈥檛 important, but the job of music is to allow people to feel this experience.鈥�

When he finished the libretto, Scheer went over to Weathers鈥� house and sang it to him. Weathers, he recalls, began to weep.

The production itself required months of planning, designing, and rehearsing. At the premiere, the set was composed of about 50 four-foot-square white blocks, stacked and scattered around the stage. Many of the blocks were backdrops for projections: a map of Nepal and Everest, a view of the mountain鈥檚 summit, grass and beer bottles from a hallucination of a backyard barbecue. Throughout the performances, the actors climbed鈥攁nd, on occasion, dragged one another鈥攐ver them.

There was also a chorus: a handful of singers dressed in white standing on the outer blocks. They sang poetic questions and recited the time as the climbers struggled, with the inevitable end closing in. At the end of the opera, the names of all the climbers who鈥檝e died on Everest were projected on the stage.

Following the final curtain, Scheer and Talbot were called to the stage. They were given a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. For an opera that subtly emphasizes how critical every second can be, it was a fitting tribute.

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AFTER MORE THAN THREE and a half hours in the deer blind, gazing silently over acres of auburn forest and dried brush and gashes of mud as black as the Mississippi night, the only sign of wildlife we'd seen all afternoon was a plump blue jay nesting under a bush. The wind was picking up and the temperature was dropping. We knew it wouldn't be long before we'd have to call it a day.

Donnell Adair, the 23-year-old former high school football player I was sharing the small wooden blind with, snapped a quick scenery shot with his phone. “You gotta be careful,” he said in the hushed tones men use in blinds. “As soon as you're looking down, sending a picture to your girl, that's when your deer pops up.”

He sent the picture. Still no deer.

Donnell made the same trip last year but never got a chance to shoot his gun. He was hoping to avoid the same fate this year. As the sun began to set, he looked disappointed. It was the week before Christmas and we were in Louise, a small town in the heart of the flat, alluvial, portion of northwest Mississippi known as the Delta. I was on a hunting trip with Donnell and his father, Donny Adair, the founder and president of the African American Hunting Association, a Portland, Oregon鈥揵ased group that promotes participation in outdoor sports through a Web site and a small-budget TV show. Every winter, Donny and Donnell fly from Oregon to Mississippi to see Donny's in-laws, get together with other black outdoorsmen, and hunt the magnificent whitetail bucks that grow wide and tall in the soybean fields and backwoods down here.

The Adairs want you to know that, yes, black people in America do hunt, though they can seem as rare in the hook-and-bullet world as they do on ski slopes. Though African Americans make up nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 2 percent of American hunters.

Donny wants to change all that. A jovial, bespectacled municipal-diversity coordinator with a magnetic personality, he feels passionately that hunting could help fix some of the problems in the African-American community. “If kids are in the woods with their fathers,” he says, “they aren't running in the streets, dealing drugs, getting into trouble.”

He also thinks marketing the outdoor life to minorities could be a very lucrative business鈥�”a growth industry,” he likes to call it. Always ready to promote his cause, Donny offered to show me a classic hunting experience in the place he calls his adopted home. Earlier that day, at a greasy-spoon caf茅 in nearby Anguilla, we got together for lunch with our unofficial guide for the week, Darnell Berry, a self-described “grizzly bear of a man” with a hearty preacher's voice. He's one of the members of the local hunting club. Over purple soda and a plate of deep-fried chicken gizzards, Darnell said he was confident Donny and Donnell would soon know the joy of harvesting a Mississippi buck. He'd seen plenty frolicking across his property recently.

“They're movin' through!” Darnell proclaimed. “Another fella I know just got a nine-pointer. Beautiful animal.”

Darnell led us toward the club's “lodge,” which is situated on a muddy road in a fairly remote part of the state. To get here, I'd flown in to the nearest major airport, about 100 miles away in Jackson, then driven west on U.S. 80 for a stretch and turned north before hitting the Mississippi River town of Vicksburg, passing through counties whose names sounded Faulknerian: Yazoo, Issa颅quena, Sharkey. I crossed a section of the Delta National Forest, took unpaved farm roads for about five miles, past gray cypress trees that seemed to climb out of the swamp, and looked for a small clearing with a tiny shed and a propane grill. The patch of land belongs to the Beaver Dam Hunting Club and serves as base camp for hunts in nearby public forests.

The six or so African-American men who founded the club are old-school southern outdoorsmen who can shoot, string up, skin, and butcher a deer before lunch. During last year's trip, as Donny was wrestling his foot out of some mud, Darnell took down a thick eight-point buck at 250 yards, in the rain. Here, when a member of the group kills a deer, everyone celebrates. Five or six men might pile into the back of a pickup and drive around town, showing it off. That night someone makes deer stew and brings it up to the clubhouse for a feast. To get to our stand, Donnell and I rode on the back of a four-wheeler for a mile or so, ducking thorny branches as it splashed through chilly mud puddles. All afternoon we sat 20 feet above the ground, in a stand made of warped plywood and sliding windows taken off an old school bus. We stayed perfectly still, listening for the crunching of leaves. We watched the waves of brush, the trail along the tree line, a patch of bright winter-green grass in the clearing.

Nothing. “That's why they call it hunting,” Donnell said, “and not shooting.”

DONNY ADAIR鈥擜 60-YEAR-OLD man with diabetes, living in the largest city in Oregon鈥攎ight seem like an unlikely champion for African Americans in the outdoors. But when he's not at work or with his wife and kids or doing play-by-play for Jefferson High School basketball games, Donny is fishing. Or hunting. Or talking about hunting and fishing.

When Donny goes to expositions and trade shows around the country, he says he's generally one of only two or three African Americans in attendance. Sometimes he's the only one. “It can be a little lonely walking around for six hours and not seeing a face that looks like yours,” he says. “It starts with kids. Not enough boys and girls in the African-American community grow up learning to hunt and fish, taking hunter-safety classes, enjoying the pleasures of the outdoors.”

Donny didn't grow up hunting, either. As a boy, he occasionally went fishing with his grandfather and uncle, but for most of his life he only dreamed. When he married Linda Faye Chocolate鈥攖he daughter of a southern hunter who took Donny into the fold鈥攈e quickly grew to love the time he spent trekking through the mud, the gratification of procuring food for his family, the special way men feel when they hunt together.

“It dawned on me that a lot of good could come from black folks going out into the woods,” he says. “You're bonding with your friends and family. You learn to respect the power of a gun. It's also a tradition. A lot of African Americans, especially in the South, have been hunting for food since they got here, before the Civil War.”

There are a number of reasons more African Americans don't hunt today, but, says Donny, it mainly comes down to land access. “In most places,” he explains, “black people just don't have a place to go hunting or fishing.”

Donny wanted to make sure the outdoors were part of his sons' lives. He took several hunter-safety and master-hunter classes. When Donnell was six, he got to shoot one of his father's guns. By age eight, Donny's other son, Kenny, was a decent fisherman. In 2008, Donny started the African American Hunting Association. Later that year, he bought a hi-def camcorder, asked his sons to help film and a friend to help edit, and started producing a labor of love called The African American Hunting Association Outdoor Show.

For each episode, Donny and Donnell, and sometimes Kenny, travel somewhere new to hunt or fish, often in the Northwest. In one episode, they hunt pheasants in western Oregon. In an episode coming out this fall, they hunt waterfowl around the Willamette River Valley. Right now, the only place to see the show is , but Donny says he's in negotiations with Comcast to broadcast it regionally. He's also working to get sponsors.

Odds are that Donny Adair will never become Oprah in camo, but it would be nice if more people got a chance to see his spirited, smiling face. The opening credits feature Donny's very recognizable silhouette grooving in front of a snowy cabin. The theme song, written and performed by Kenny, is a rap with these lyrics:

It's The African American Hunting Show!
Takin' back the tools that we were given befo'.
It's The African American Hunting Show!
Goin' back to the woods with guns, rods,
and bows!
So let's go! Let's go!

The highlight of season one was the Mississippi trip. In addition to hunting, Donnell interviewed his grandfather, Percy Chocolate. Percy has lived around northwestern Mississippi his entire life, working up until recently as a laborer on a huge Delta farm. He has a first-grade education and has never had a driver's license. From his early twenties on, he fed his wife and three daughters with his rifle. If it wasn't a deer he brought home, it was a rabbit or a squirrel or a fat raccoon.

On our first morning, over a breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits, and grits at the home of Donny's sister-in-law, Percy told Donnell and me what it was like for a black man to hunt in those parts 60 years ago: risky. He didn't own land, obviously, so he poached. If the game warden had ever caught him, he would've gotten a trip to jail and a serious beating, and his gun would've been confiscated.

Percy said he would go out only at night, taking the bulbs out of his taillights so the game warden couldn't see him braking. Sometimes he'd be walking with a doe over his shoulder and hear the warden's truck. He'd throw the deer in the ditch and lie on top. “Those white bellies are bright as a piece of paper at night,” he said, adjusting his worn Dallas Cowboys cap and looking off. “Sometimes I could feel the gravel kicked up from the truck tires on my back as he drove on past me.”

It was a cold morning. Sitting, rubbing his hands together in front of a propane heater, the old man was imagining himself stepping through the muck, his eyes scouring the landscape for prey. But he has gout now, and his feet can't take being out in the cold.

“I could still pop it,” he says, referring to his legendary aim. “I could still get that buck. One shot. That's all it'd take.”

FOR OUR SECOND try at a deer, Donny, Donnell, and I woke up at 4:30 and drove through the misty darkness to a piece of Darnell Berry's land, near Anguilla. Most properties along the way had signs made of rotted wooden pallets and rusted oil drums. Some read, POSTED: NO TRESPASSING.

Donny parked his rented Ford Focus at the edge of a muddy bean field. We slogged across, a few hundred yards, and waited quietly as the morning sun lit up the sky. Donnell had decided he wasn't going to be choosy about his deer. He wanted the celebration, the pride of feeding his loved ones with his rifle, just like his grandfather.

“It doesn't have to be a buck,” he said. “I'll take a doe. I don't have to have horns.” But for hours, as the sun arced ever higher, warming the loamy, wet air, we didn't see a single deer.

We did see some white hunters driving by in two hunting-customized golf carts. Each had special mud tires, a large brush guard on the front, and an extended bed built to hold a pile of deer carcasses. They nodded as they passed.

This is not unfriendly country, but these counties, which produced blues icons like Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, have a history of dark and often violent race relations. It's a region where plantation life鈥攆ollowed by sharecropper life鈥攑ersisted for 150 years, leaving a residue on every aspect of existence.

In many of these little towns, there are old, white two-story houses with remnants of slave quarters still standing out back. The history lingers in the way white hunters and black hunters don't speak to each other much at the burger joints in town. People get along OK, but there are still two separate worlds here.

As the old traditions slowly crumbled, so did the thriving agriculture business, the lifeblood of the Delta economy. Now this is one of the poorest parts of the country. The farther you get from the quaint grocery stores and town squares, the more you see dogs running in the streets, homes cobbled together from pieces of corrugated steel and salvaged wood, families living in shacks 15 feet from the edge of a swamp.

Hard times often breed community, of course, and that's certainly true for the hunters Donny knows. That night, he made his “world-class chicken vegetable soup.” In a giant pot, he brewed an olfactory-tingling concoction that could warm an entire adult body within seconds. We brought the pot up to the Redbone Cafe, a modest building in the middle of a town called Cary, with unfinished walls, a front door that sticks, and a slanting pool table.

Donny started dishing out bowls to the handful of men sitting at the bar, talking about the improbable run of the New Orleans Saints. Then phone calls were made. Within half an hour, there was a line of muddy pickup trucks parked out front. Everyone had one or two cold cans of Budweiser (except Donny, who sipped juice), and someone put on Keith Sweat's greatest hits. Soon, some of the men called women they knew and there was dancing around the pool table. An hour later, the giant pot was empty and Donnell was listening to hunting stories from the local men. Donny sat behind the homemade wooden bar, cleaning off a few drops of spilled soup. He nodded at the crowd dancing and sharing beers, the smiling faces.

“This is what it's all about,” he told me. “People, the community, getting together. You don't even need a reason. This is the best way to get through life. It's how people survive when things get hard. You celebrate whatever you can, even if it's just my delicious chicken soup.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Donny interviewed me for his show, Donnell pointing the camera while Donny asked me what I thought of everything we'd done. It's funny: For the entire trip, I was the only white guy in a group of African Americans and there was never an awkward moment鈥攗ntil I was interviewed on camera. Even now, I'm not sure what I said as I nervously stammered and rambled on. Afterwards, Donnell told me not to worry. “We'll fix it all with Hollywood magic,” he said.

Donny is only a few years away from retirement, and he'd like to promote his cause full-time someday. In the meantime, he likes to look at Donnell, a college graduate, dressed in camouflage, rifle in hand, anxious to get a deer. “He's the future of America,” Donny told me.

Of course, in places like Mississippi, regardless of race, hunting is a timeless way of life. In the isolated wooden thickets, in the corners of the soggy cotton fields, at the end of the long, bumpy roads. The men here will find a spot to look over the land. They will sit quietly with a gun. They will wait. And life will be OK.

On this trip, Donny and Donnell didn't kill a deer. We saw plenty as we drove around, but there never was one on display during a hunt. In the end, Donnell was undaunted. “It would be nice, but I'm not gonna get too down about it,” he told me. “I've got plenty of years of hunting ahead.”

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