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  "Okay, next we load."

  Ainesley reached into a pocket of his yellow waterproofed hunter's jacket and pulled out two cylindrical shells of number 5 lead shot. He pointed them up in the air for the boys to see and fed them into the barrel heads. He intoned, "Then we close the barrels," and clicked them shut. He aimed the gun away from the boys and turned it slowly to the right in a semicircle, as he would leading a turkey passing in front.

  "Allrightee! We're set to fire. It's as easy as that. One, two, three, bang, dead turkey."

  Raff didn't think it would be that easy, and with each passing moment he was getting more anxious about the whole thing.

  Ainesley cradled the gun under his right arm, with the barrels pointed downward and slightly in front of his feet. He started down the trail, and without looking back continued his lecture to the boys. They double-timed to catch up.

  "Always carry a shotgun like I'm doin' it now. That way if you stumble and fall, or you're accidentally bumped by somebody, you don't shoot him or blow your own damn fool head off."

  He paused, then added, "Remember this too, and it's real important. Watch every step you take."

  The party proceeded several hundred yards down the path, which soon became hemmed in by dense second-growth pine and oak. After a while they came to a shallow wash partly covered by wire grass and dotted with rotting pine stumps. Two bobwhite quail exploded out from behind one of the stumps and flew away through the trees on the opposite side.

  "You don't see much of them anymore," Ainesley said. "Ever since they started protecting coyotes and chicken hawks and other vermin such as that, a bobwhite's most likely to get gobbled up before it even gets out of the nest."

  Crows could be faintly heard calling from treetops a mile away. High above them a turkey vulture circled, its wings rigid and unmoving, the terminal feathers curved upward. The air in the clearing was still and dry. The heat of the sun bounced back up from the patches of hard bare soil, and the air around them was still and uncomfortably hot.

  Ainesley turned to Junior and handed him the shotgun sideways, so the boy could take it with his hands held well apart.

  "That's good, that's the way, so you won't slip and drop it. Next, you shoot it."

  Junior gave him a puzzled look. "What do I do?"

  "Don't be nervous. Just take it slow. Hold the barrel in your left hand here, and your right goes behind the trigger guard there. Now, very carefully raise it and point it straight ahead. Pull in the butt tight against your right shoulder. That way, when you fire, the gun will push you but it won't break your shoulder. You're right-handed, aren't you? There, you're ready."

  Junior was left-handed. But he didn't want to complicate an already delicate situation by quibbling. He had never held a gun in his life. His own father did not hunt, and kept the single weapon he owned, an old .38 police revolver, under lock and key with the bullets hidden in his desk drawer. Junior handled the shotgun as best he could, but gingerly, as if it were a dead snake.

  "Now, very gently," Ainesley said, "put your right index finger 'round the trigger. Don't pull it yet! Hold the gun steady. Now let's point it at that old pine stump over there." Junior closed his eyes. He tightened his lips and his breath came fast and shallow.

  Ainesley laid a hand gently on Junior's left shoulder and continued the lesson.

  "Now, before you shoot, let me warn you, it's going to be loud and it's going to buck your shoulder. But don't worry, it's not going to hurt you. Don't let it scare you. You aren't the turkey. Whatever you do, don't drop that gun."

  Raff was thankful his father had started with the other boy. The shotgun seemed almost as big as he was. Maybe Ainesley would settle for the one demonstration with Junior, so they could all just move on. He figured that if they found a turkey, Ainesley himself would do the shooting. Then Raff wouldn't have to do anything at all except watch. For the time being, as far as he was concerned, he was going to be invisible. He discreetly backpedaled to a small pine tree nearby and stood partly behind it.

  Ainesley put his arms around Junior's shoulder and gripped the gun himself so it wouldn't kick out of the youngster's hands when it was fired.

  "Okay, now, slow and easy, boy, squeeze the trigger."

  The blast roared through the silent forest. Pieces of bark flew off the stump and landed around the near side of the base.

  Junior held still for a moment, stunned. Then he abruptly threw his arms out to give the gun back. The barrels were pointed at Ainesley, who gently turned them away.

  Taking the gun, Ainesley walked back to Raff, who was stepping from the tree onto the trail.

  "Okay, your turn, Scooter."

  Raff froze, speechless. His apprehension had been building all morning, and now it turned into paralysis. He had no words with which to protest. Instead, terrible images crowded his mind. Violence, handling big dangerous machines you can't understand, killing animals as big as the family dog. Blood all over the place, smashed heads. No sir, no sir, please, no sir. He turned his gaze away from his father's face.

  "Come on, son," Ainesley snapped. "Don't be a sissy, boy. It's not going to hurt you. You've got to do this sometime. Now's the time. You'll feel a lot better. Look at your cousin there. He did real good. You can shoot a gun just like he did. All you gotta do is pull the trigger. Come on, show us you can be a little man."

  Raphael stayed rigid, scrunched like a trapped animal, hoping all this would somehow just go away. Junior was silent too, but relaxed in posture, with arms folded proudly across his chest. He'd come close to refusing the gun himself. Now he was basking in his uncle's approval. Junior Cody, not his cousin Raphael Cody, was the little man of the day.

  Ainesley stiffened at the refusal. He closed his lips tightly together, as he did whenever he was angry, and worked them up and down over clenched teeth. He turned away from Raff without another word and walked on down the trail. The boys hurriedly fell in behind him, like a pair of ducklings chasing after their mother.

  The hunters pressed on for another half mile, through mostly scrub slash pine and wire grass. Finally, they came to a meadow, fringed on the far side by a stand of denser woodland.

  "Turkey country," said Ainesley cheerfully. He sat on a stump, broke the shotgun, lit another cigarette, and started talking again.

  "When you're hunting, you've got to be quiet. Otherwise your turkey or your deer is going to hear you coming a mile away. It'll scoot off and you'll never even know it was there. You gotta listen for your target, you gotta stalk it, and you gotta shoot straight. Sometimes that's got to be from a good distance. You got one shot, win or lose. There's a lot of hunters that set up blinds, and they just sit back and drink beer and whisper to each other, waiting for something or other to walk by. Maybe they make a gobble call with one of those little hickey things, to bring the turkey closer in, if that's what they're after. Hell, that's not real hunting! It's just sitting around on your ass and waiting! It's only real hunting if you go out and find the animal, not the other way around. The best I ever did that way was two birds in one day. Big cocks, with beards hanging off their chests."

  Ainesley rose, flicked the cigarette without looking onto another pile of dry leaves, and led the hunting party onward. Raff didn't watch the smoking ember this time. If that catches fire, he thought, maybe we can put it out on our way back. I'll help out and that'll make me look good to Dad and Junior.

  They continued on for another half mile, Ainesley peering this way and that, with no game in sight. Feeling bored, Raff began to watch for little animals along the trail, ones more the size he preferred, the kind he knew so well at Nokobee. He spotted a tiny scarab beetle, bright green and copper in color, rolling a sphere of dung across the trail. A wondrous jewel that came from nowhere, it was bound for a place Raff could not imagine. Ainesley and Junior didn't see it, and Junior came close to stepping on it.

  Raff was startled next to see a coachwhip. The elegant tawny and black-headed snake, easily four feet long, was mo
ving through a swath of ankle-high grass well ahead and to the side of the trail. Its head was raised the way coachwhips do while they're hunting mice and other prey. As the hunters drew closer, the snake pulled in its head and disappeared. The others had missed it entirely, and Raff was glad. He said nothing, because Ainesley might have stopped and blown it away with the shotgun.

  The trio continued on for another half mile, Ainesley leading and looking this way and that. Still there was no game in sight. Ainesley abruptly sat down on a fallen pine trunk that lay along the trail. Raff was alarmed to see that he had started to breathe heavily.

  "I think we ought to head on back," Ainesley said, more to himself than to the boys. "I don't feel too good today, and there aren't nearly as many turkeys around here anyway as there used to be. Just too many goddamn hunters coming in from outside, excuse my French. They're clearing the game out. Maybe the state ought to raise young turkeys and turn 'em loose in the woods here, the way they stock trout and some of the other kinds of fish in the lakes. Might finally do some good with my tax money."

  With that, Ainesley headed back toward the trailhead, at a noticeably slower pace than when he had started out. Raff walked closely behind, relaxed now, aimlessly scuffing pine cones off the trail, thinking, Dad didn't do too well today either. Maybe he won't be too mad at me after all.

  At the pickup Ainesley ordered the boys to relieve themselves one more time so that they wouldn't have to ask later. Then he put away the shotgun and dragged on a last cigarette while he waited. They all climbed into the cab, with Raff squeezed in the middle, and began the hour-long drive down two-laned Alabama 128 to Clayville.

  Halfway there, Ainesley announced that they were going to stop at a farm and get a guinea hen. He pulled over to the owner's neat, recently painted house. It had a cornfield to its immediate left, chickens in the yard, two torpid basset hounds on the porch, and a large sign in front on the edge of the road that proclaimed JESUS SAVES.

  "We're gonna pick up our dinner here," Ainesley said. He climbed down out of the cab and walked across the yard. At the porch he stepped around the dogs, one of whom raised itself and uttered a single Wuff!, then lay down again. Ainesley knocked on the door. A voice called out for him to come on in, and he pushed open the door and entered.

  In ten minutes or so Ainesley came out again with a heavyset man, about sixty or so--hard to tell. He was dressed in shorts, ankle-high shoes, and a T-shirt decorated with a faded palmtree logo and the word ARUBA.

  Ainesley walked to the rear of the truck while the man waited, pulled open the tarpaulin again, and this time took out a bolt-action, single-shot .22 rifle.

  "Come along," he said to Raff and Junior, "I'm going to show you how to get your own food."

  Following the owner, they passed a toolshed and the abandoned shell of a truck, then a tiny plot of land surrounded by a low white picket fence. Inside the fence was a gravestone bearing the single word BELOVED.

  Pointing with his thumb, the owner said, "That's where I bury my dogs."

  Soon the group came to an outdoor pen enclosed by a wire fence. The owner said it was two acres, but it seemed much smaller. Thirty yards inside the fence they saw a flock of a dozen guinea fowl resting in the shade of an oak tree. The owner wagged an index finger in that direction. "These here is the only guinea birds you're gonna find all the way down to Mobile."

  Ainesley pulled the bolt of the rifle back and down, chambered a slim cartridge, and hooked the bolt back into position. He flicked off the safety.

  "Now, what you remember when shooting small game like this is always go for the head. You do that and you get a sure kill, and you don't mess up the body. We've got to clean the bird when we get home and I don't want to have to dig a bullet out of the best eatin' part." The flock, disturbed by the approach of the humans, began to stir. Ainesley sighted on a cock in its midst.

  Raphael clenched his whole body, gritted his teeth, and tightened his fists. He half closed his eyes. He'd never seen a warm-blooded animal bigger than a mouse killed, and certainly nothing executed with a gun.

  The shot made a popping sound, surprisingly quieter than the shotgun. The bird's head kicked back, and the rest of its body simply collapsed onto the ground. The owner went into the enclosure, scattering the flock as he approached. He scooped up the slain bird in a newspaper and handed the package to Ainesley.

  As they drove the rest of the way past farms and pine plantations to the little town of Clayville, Ainesley was in better spirits. He took a shot of Jack Daniel's from a small paper-bag-covered bottle lying above the dashboard, cleared his throat, and continued his lecture on the hunter's life. "You saw how I took that bird down. The big thing down in this part of the country is marksmanship. In the early days most people had to get some of their food from the woods, and they couldn't afford to waste any ammunition doing it, either. That's why the Confederates--and there were Codys in action during that war, believe me--they were able to pick off so many of the Union infantry at places like Shiloh and Antietam. Our boys have always been the best shots. They've always been the best soldiers in America too."

  Later, he continued his lecture on Southern marksmanship. "Right around here, they used to hold shooting matches every year. For example, one contest was 'snuffing the candle.' You had to clip the wick at fifty yards and put the flame out. But--and this is important--it was just the tip of the wick you were supposed to cut, so the flame would go out but then it came back on again.

  "My dad told me about another contest they called 'bark the squirrel.' Shooting squirrels was a big thing in those days. Some of the country people around here still make squirrel stew, with okra and tomatoes and stuff, and I'll tell you, when done right it is real tasty."

  Chuckling, he added, "If you like squirrel meat, that is." He took another sip from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of a sleeve.

  "Anyway, you didn't want to tear up the squirrel any more'n you had to, so you tried to bark the squirrel. So here's how it was done. You let the squirrel run up the tree and stop to look back at you the way they always do, then you move real slow until you're looking at it from the side. Then you fire, but you don't hit the squirrel, you hit the bark just under it. If you do that just right, a piece of the bark flies up and stuns the squirrel. And you got your meal."

  By the time they got Junior home and made it on to their own small house in Clayville, it was growing dark. Clouds from the Gulf of Mexico gathered and closed gently over them, hastening the night. With a slight breeze whispering its approach, a warm soft rain began to fall.

  4

  AFTER SUPPER, RAPHAEL LAY in bed, worrying. He stared sightlessly at the screen of his twelve-inch color television set, last year's Christmas present from his Uncle Cyrus. Two rooms away Ainesley and Marcia were talking loudly. He could not make out the words, but he knew from the volume and tone that it was an argument. From past experience he was certain that this one was about himself.

  During the meal of fried calf's liver, turnip greens, and biscuits, he had averted his gaze from the two adults and uttered not a word. It was not easy being an only child. After the dishes were washed and dried, his father departed for the Delchamps Supermarket in Clayville for groceries. As soon as Ainesley left, Marcia took Raff aside and gently worked out of him the main events of the day. As he described the firing of the shotgun and conquest of the guinea fowl, her narrow, pleasant face turned increasingly grim.

  Now his parents were squared off, as they had been many times before, on the issue of how their son should be raised. They were coming at each other from different positions Raff could sense but not understand. It ran a lot deeper, he knew, than just a turkey hunt. The ten-year-old's loyalty was divided by the conflict. That was bad, because the fissure appeared to be insoluble, and he did not know to whom his loyalty was owed.

  Raff worried that Ainesley and Marcia might separate, leaving him without a father or a mother, one or the other. Maybe he would have to live with a rel
ative or some stranger. He knew kids at school in that fix. They seemed mostly okay, but in his case, he thought, it would strip away his own security and upset his life completely. He fell asleep trying to puzzle this dilemma.

  Toward dawn, as Raphael slept, the rain slackened off. By the time he was roused for breakfast, the wind had picked up and a slight chill was in the humid air. The blond weatherwoman on Mobile Television Channel 5 said with a clipped midwestern accent that the Alabama and Mississippi coasts would be cloudy, but with no more rain. Still, Marcia made Raphael put on a slicker, which he hated, and a rain hat, which he hated even more. They made him look like a sissy, he thought. His father thought the same, an opinion he had let recklessly slip to Marcia more than once.

  Raff rode his bicycle down Charleston Street to the first light and then left three blocks to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Grammar School. Once, many years ago, it had been the Robert E. Lee School. Through the day he couldn't think about anything much in class. Geometry, English, and American history churned on past him like the talk of strangers in a shopping mall. During lunch and recess he stayed away from his best friends. He kept thinking about Ainesley, worried about the wrath to come. He feared the angry spells, the way his father occasionally raised his hand as though to hit him, although he never really had. He felt ashamed that he had refused simply to hold the gun with his father's help and pull the trigger. He felt guilty that he told his mother about the incident.

  He thought, Am I a sissy? Even though I get in fights with other boys and don't run away? He felt even worse for letting his father down, because he knew Ainesley thought of him as a special and very precious boy, and maybe a little man too, after everything was said and done. Once he had heard Ainesley refer to him in conversation with some neighborhood friends: "I wouldn't take a million dollars for this one or give you a dime for another."

  When he arrived home from school that midafternoon, he was surprised to find his father waiting for him. Ainesley had returned home early from the hardware store and was sitting on the porch in the rocking chair, cigarette in hand.