Sometime later he awoke, and as his eyes reluctantly opened a sight confronted him that brought him wide awake. His legs were stretched out in front of him and a squirrel was sitting on the toe of his right shoe with its forepaws folded on its chest, staring at him with great curiosity and trying to decide what he was. He managed to control a start of surprise and dropped his eyelids most of the way; his mind began a frantic scurry, searching for some way to get a shot at it. He couldn’t find an answer. His gun was behind him, and at his first motion to grab it the squirrel would be gone. He forgot the last, crippled squirrel; he wanted this one, and as his excitement and frustration built up, the squirrel suddenly jumped from his right foot to his left one and faced him again. It twitched its tail several times and gave the whining bark that squirrels give when puzzled. He could have reached out and touched it with his hand, and to have it so close and be unable to do anything about it was finally too much for him. He tensed himself and rolled, making a grab for the gun; the squirrel jumped straight up in the air and landed running; he knocked the gun down and had to scramble about for it, and when he finally had it he jumped up and tore through the woods after the squirrel. A trailing vine caught his foot and he fell full length. He had pushed the safety off on his gun in his excitement, and when he hit the ground the gun went off and cut a widening swathe through the underbrush.
He lay there for a moment, half frightened by the discharge of the gun—which he realized might well have killed him if it had been jarred from his hands and fallen pointing in his direction—and half ready to burst out in laughter at the ridiculous scene which had just taken place. He finally did laugh, at the recollection of the barking squirrel practically in his lap and his own mental gymnastics when he was trying to find a way to deal with it, but beneath the laughter was the sober realization that he had been silly and careless with the gun.
He decided that he had done enough squirrel hunting for the day, got up, and went back to the bateau. He had slept for several hours and the sun was well down in the west, and as he paddled down the middle of the Pond he saw two ducks in the distance against the sky, high in the air. As he watched them they swung and began to drop; they were coming down to the Pond. They scaled down and grew larger, dropped below the trees to the west, and, flattening out a few feet above the water, still came toward him. He put the paddle down and picked up the gun. They came on swiftly; they were going to be almost over him, and as they came into range he swung and shot. One duck began to rise but the other was hit; it took a long glide and struck the water several hundred yards behind him with a splash. He had a fine feeling of triumph, for it was the first fast-flying bird that he had ever shot, the first time he had solved the problem that fascinates shotgunners until their shooting days are over; the swift and complicated decision of how to hold, swing, lead, and fire so that the target and the shot charge reach the same place at the same instant. The triumph of hitting a squirrel in a tree was very minor compared to this.
He reloaded and put the gun down and turned the bateau toward the duck. It was swimming around, but had a broken wing and was unable to fly; he would have to shoot it again. As he got close to it he put the paddle down and picked up the gun, but the duck dove out of sight and was out of range when it came up again. When he caught up with it, it dove again, and this went on until the duck began to weaken and make shorter and shorter dives. When he was sure that it would come up within range he stood up in the boat to shoot at it, and stepped on the empty shell that he had dropped when he reloaded the gun.
The shell rolled under his shoe and he lost his balance and went over the side. It happened so quickly that he wasn’t conscious of doing anything, but his reflexes saved him; if he had gone to the bottom with his hunting gear on he would never have come up. As he fell he dropped the gun on the bottom of the bateau with one hand and grasped the gunwale with the other. He went under the length of his arm and the cold water stabbed him and took his breath, but he was pulling himself up again before he realized that he had hold of the gunwale. His head cleared the surface, and although his heavy clothes were soaked and much heavier because of it, he managed to get one foot over the gunwale and roll himself aboard. While he was doing it the bateau heeled to the waterline and shipped considerable water, but rolled sluggishly back once he was on the floor.
He hadn’t had time to be frightened yet and was too cold to think about it now. The wet clothes gripped him like a freezing coat of mail. He began to paddle, and with the shipped water sloshing about at every stroke finally reached the wharf, fished the gun out of the bilge, and stumbled dripping up the hill with his teeth chattering like castanets.
Mr. Ben was on the porch and helped him get his clothes off; the old man toweled his back while he toweled his front, rolled him in a blanket, sat him in a chair in front of the stove, and shook up the stove to heat the breakfast coffee. When his teeth stopped chattering and he began to get warm he told the old man what had happened.
“Well,” Mr. Ben said, “everybody has to meet the fool-killer sooner or later, and you were one of the lucky ones. He wasn’t really after you, he just wanted to show you what he could do, but he might be feeling mean next time.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said.
“The water’s about thirty feet deep where you were, and it’s a long walk to shore. You’d better throw empty shells overboard after this.”
“I reckon I’d better,” Joey said. “I bet my clothes weighed a ton after they got wet.”
“It looks to me like you were born to hang,” Mr. Ben said, “and I think it would be just as well to let your father find that out in the fullness of time. If we tell him about this caper he’ll worry every time you’re here. Or maybe he wouldn’t even let you come again by yourself.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, considerably chastened by the thought. “I reckon he won’t be here until day after tomorrow. You won’t tell him, will you, Mr. Ben?”
“No,” Mr. Ben said. “After you get warm, now, you ought to put your gun by the stove to dry out and then take it apart and oil it.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, and remembered dropping it with the safety off. The fool-killer had really shown him twice, but he didn’t intend to tell Mr. Ben about that. He fell to thinking of that, and of hitting the duck, and the freezing, greedy embrace of water as it closed over his head. It had been quite a day, and now that he was warm and safe and Mr. Ben wasn’t going to tell his father, he nodded and drowsed for a while in the chair.
Charley was in the yard the next morning, sitting by the foot of the steps. When Joey went out to welcome him he looked thin, and he was wary; he wagged his tail slightly, in an apologetic way, but kept his distance. It was pretty apparent that he had had a poor time in one way or another, and Joey was outraged. He was generous with the dog biscuits, and while Charley ate them he went in and got his gun.
He decided to go up the north side of the Pond, for there had always been squirrels there before, and he started out across the big field. The dog, which moved a little stiffly, trotted quietly along behind him with his head and tail low and showed little enthusiasm, but when they came to the edge of the woods his head came up and he seemed to feel better; he began to move with something like his usual spirit and was soon out of sight.
Joey couldn’t find the first squirrel; there were several round holes in the trunk of the tree and it had apparently gone into one of them. He had brought a dog biscuit along in his pocket and gave it to Charley and they went on. The second squirrel was somewhere in a tremendous beech and very hard to find, for its fur was almost the same color as the bark. Joey moved around and around the tree, searching the branches, until his neck ached from looking up. He was sure it was there, for he could find no hole for it to go into, and after an interminable time and several more circuits he finally spotted it flattened on a limb halfway up the tree.
One shot brought it down and Charley got it; as Joey started to chase him he stopped, raised his head and cocked
his ears, dropped the squirrel, and moved off. This was a surprising development; Joey pulled up in mid-stride and looked in the direction that the dog had looked. Sam White was leaning against a tree a few yards off, looking back at him; Joey didn’t know how long he had been there, for both he and Charley had been so concentrated on the squirrel that they hadn’t noticed him come up.
Joey jumped; he was startled, and then a cold fear took hold of him. He realized at once that it wasn’t a chance meeting and that White wasn’t hunting; he didn’t even have a gun with him. He had a little stick, and as he looked back at Joey he tapped his overalled leg several times with it. His close-set eyes, which had seemed so remote and disinterested when Joey had met him by the well, saw Joey now. The remoteness was still in them, but it was different; the eyes were remote and fixed on him at the same time, and Joey had a fleeting thought of the eyes of the weasels in the rockpile.
The fear that was in him, incoherent and confused, compounded of the things about Sam White that he had heard and seen and thought about, stiffened him for a moment. It seemed to him that everything within him was drawing together, tensing, to burst explosively and throw him into action and flight.
White reached into his pocket, brought out three twenty-gauge shells, and held them in his open hand for Joey to see before dropping them on the ground. “I found these here where you had been sittin’,” he said. “Don’t nobody shoot a little gun like this around here but you. I don’t aim to have young-uns spyin’ on me.” He licked his lips. “Don’t go try to run,” he said.
“No, sir,” Joey whispered, and swallowed; the sound of it was loud in his ears.
He couldn’t run now; all volition went out of him, his skin crawled as though evil things were moving about over it, and he was fast to the ground. White, in no hurry, continued to look at him and seemed to be considering. He raised one hand to his narrow chin, and Joey could see the black rims of his nails. Somehow this seemed to be worse than anything else about him.
Tension wound itself tighter in Joey, and still White remained where he was; the stick tapped his leg again. An observer might have thought that he was savoring the boy’s fear and prolonging it; actually he was trying to decide what to do. He was a man of precarious balance; he had contrived to bring this meeting about and in his first blind rage had intended to beat the boy and perhaps hurt him badly, but now that the boy was in front of him he was having some second thoughts. The quickness with which the teacher had been removed indicated that the affair had got out of the neighborhood; there was more power behind the move than he could cope with, and he had had time to think about it and begin to fear it. The fear of this power filled him with rage and frustration, but it also brought a strengthening conviction that things would go very hard with him if he defied it. He was approaching that dangerous point at which he was so keyed up that a spasm of the nerves was just as liable to send him one way as the other, when there was a rustle in the leaves loud enough to break into the intense concentration of both of them. Sharbee came up.
“Good day to y’all,” Sharbee said in his soft voice and stopped a few feet away. He had an old, single-barreled gun with him and held it easily; he smiled at Joey and then looked at White with his odd, amber eyes and didn’t smile at all. “I heard the dog, so I reckon I come along and see what luck y’all have.”
Joey had never been so glad to see anybody; a feeling of relief washed over him that was almost painful in its intensity. Sharbee was shorter than White, and slighter, but he seemed much bigger at the moment. Although he stood easily he seemed, somehow, with his air of a wild creature, to be ready for instant action. He was formidable.
White had been standing motionless through all this, and and now he moved. He raised one hand, took off his old battered hat, and wiped his forehead with the back of the hand. He closed his eyes as he did it and an expression flitted across his face that seemed, strangely enough, to be one of relief. He put his hat on again and opened his eyes. “Hi, Sharbee,” he said, and they could hear him let out his breath. “I heard the shot and came along to see what happened too.”
“Yes, sir,” Sharbee said.
White stood for a moment longer and looked around. “I ain’t huntin’ today,” he said. “I’m lookin’ for a good sassafras tree. I reckon I better get along.”
He moved off. When he finally disappeared Joey suddenly sat down in the leaves; all the strength had gone out of his legs, and there was a horrible emptiness in his stomach. He tried to speak and couldn’t; he choked up and tears came to his eyes. Sharbee moved closer to him and stood by.
“I walks along a way with you,” he said softly, “but don’t you worry no more. He glad he didn’t; he be all right now.”
Joey finally regained his self-control, rubbed the tears out of his eyes, and got himself to his feet. “I was so scared,” he said shakily. “I’m sorry I was so scared. I sure thank you …” He had never heard anyone call a black man “Mister,” and he hesitated for a moment. “I sure thank you, Mr. Sharbee.”
“Yes, sir,” Sharbee said. “You is real welcome.”
Joey smiled at him; the black tide of fear was ebbing fast, and he felt like himself now. He got his gun, which had been leaning against the beech, and they started to walk.
“I sure am glad you came along,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Sharbee said. “I reckon I didn’t rightly just come along.”
“You didn’t? How were you there?”
“Well, sir,” Sharbee began, and looked a little embarrassed. He walked along a few steps, looking at the ground, and then decided to go on with it. “Well, sir, I reckon it was the coon. I know how you liked him, and I was right glad you didn’t bring me the cash money. Did you do it, did I have the cash money in my hand, I reckon I might have give him up. I thank you for that. I got to studyin’ on it, and the only way I see I could thank you enough was to watch you and see don’t nothin’ happen.”
Joey stared at him.
“Yes, sir,” he went on, “I knows what goes on in the woods. I always knows. I don’t rightly like to mess in with folks, but it might have been a right bad thing.”
Joey was much moved by this revelation; he didn’t know what to say. He stood looking at the man who had saved him from a beating or worse, all because Mr. Ben hadn’t let Joey take him the money for the raccoon, and he was at once ashamed and extremely grateful to both of them.
Sharbee stopped. “I reckon I turn off here,” he said. “Like I say, you be all right now.”
“Mr. Sharbee,” Joey said. “Mr. Sharbee …” Words failed him; he put out his hand, and Sharbee took it. They shook hands quickly, and Joey had the impression of a hand hard and strong but light, delicate, and wild as the raccoon’s hand on his ear; the amber eyes looked deep into his own, and then Sharbee was moving off easily through the woods, with the air of a wild creature about him, as though retreating to a place of safe concealment again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Joey didn’t go anywhere the next morning; his father was due, and Mr. Ben thought that he might appear sometime before lunch. They didn’t get up very early, and as they ate breakfast Joey started several times to tell the old man about White and Sharbee, but finally decided not to. He hadn’t mentioned it the afternoon before when he had come home, for he had an implicit belief in Sharbee’s statement that White would never bother him again and he was afraid that Mr. Ben would be so enraged that he would get his shotgun out and go looking for the other man. He shrank from the trouble it would cause, or that he thought it would cause. For the first time in his life he had known real fear; he had dreamed about it in the night, and now he wanted to forget about it. It was already receding, being pushed into the background by his mind’s protective devices, and it didn’t seem nearly as frightening in the light of the new day.
After breakfast he got out the turkey call and practiced with it for nearly an hour, but the proper sound still eluded him. He finally put the call away and wandered o
ut onto the back porch. Charley was there, looking better than he had looked the day before, but he was still wary; Joey put dog biscuits on the ground until he couldn’t eat any more.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when his father drove up. He had Bud with him, and there was a big black and white setter in the back seat. Charley took one look at the entourage and, as the setter made hostile noises at him from the car, he turned with dignity and trotted around the corner of the house. Joey ran down to the car; he was surprisingly glad to see them. Bud’s freckled face was split by a wide grin, and Joe Moncrief eased his long length out of the Model T and took Joey by the shoulders.
“You’re looking fine, boy,” he said. “I’m glad to see you all in one piece. Your mother doubted that I would.”
“Hi, Dad,” Joey said. “Hi, Bud. Dad, are you going to stay? For a couple of days, I mean?”
“We have to go back tonight,” Joe Moncrief said.
“Is that your dog? Did you buy him?”
“I borrowed him. I thought we might stumble into a couple of coveys of quail while we were here.”
Mr. Ben came out of the house and joined the rest of them.
“When Pitmire got your letter and called me,” Joey heard his father say to him, “I got going right away with the State Superintendent. I play poker with him. The report I got back later seemed to indicate that they got going too. Is everything fixed?”
“Everything’s fine,” Mr. Ben said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
They began to talk about duck decoys, and Joey stopped listening to them; he hadn’t made very much out of the talk of getting going and the State Superintendent anyhow. Bud had got out of the Model T by that time, and they stood smiling at one another, pleased to be together again.
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