Free Home from the Hill by William Humphrey Page B

some dirt an he th’ow his head up in the air an bare his tushes an then he put his head down to charge. An still Cap’m stand there lookin. An then he rushes him, an you never saw nothing so fast in yo life! An not till he’s three-quarters cross that little clearin does Cap’m raise his ole Winchester an fire. My Lord, he missed! Cap’m Wade Hunnicutt shoot at a big thing like that an miss! Well, I knowed it was all up with me, an I was so mis’able I didn’t much care. I closed my eyes. Then I open em. An I see Cap’m hoppin aside an spinnin aroun an that pig rushin past him like a loco bull. An he hadn’t missed. The blood was spurtin out of that pig, only it didn’t phaze him. Oh Lord, I couldn’ look an I couldn’ keep from lookin. An whut do I see this time? That great big ole hawg jist about this far from yo papa comin like a bolt of lightnin an him not movin a hair, if you please! Wellsir—”
    And then, like as not, he would stop, yawn maybe, take out his pipe, his can of Prince Albert, fill the pipe and pack it carefully and test it and search himself all over for a match, finally find one with half a stem and spend two or three minutes striking it on his lifted ham, then suck in the smoke and heave it out until he disappeared behind it, and then maybe he would get up to leave.
    â€œWell? Well?” Theron would gasp.
    â€œHuh? Well, whut?” he would say, as though astonished to find a small white boy in his presence.
    â€œWhat? Why, what happened then?”
    â€œWhut happen then? Why,” he would say, and grin and look at the big boar’s head over the mantel, “why, you know puffeckly well whut happen den.”
    He got his first rifle on his fourteenth birthday. His father taught him to shoot, to take a deep breath and let out half of it, to squeeze the trigger slowly, to lay his cheek snug against the stock, to keep both eyes open. When it rained that winter and spring they fired into the fireplace down the length of the long room, using a charred log for a backstop, and the crack of the rifle resounded throughout the house. In good weather they went into the fields, where they set up rows of brown Skeet & Garrett snuff bottles which they found in abundance on Chauncey’s and Melba’s garbage dump. He shot always from longer distances. It got so he seldom missed. Then he would set a bottle against a stump and walk away from it until his father said, “Now!” whereupon he would spin and fire. He learned to hit two out of three bottles tossed into the air. One day he went alone. Before that day was over he could toss the bottle himself, raise the rifle to his shoulder, and be sure of shattering the bottle as it hung poised at the height of its flight that one instant before beginning to drop.
    One day his father, who had become a little more respectful of the game laws now that Theron was with him, said, “Squirrel season opens a week from today. On opening day we’ll go.”

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    He told his mother about it while he skinned the squirrels.
    Above the hind feet he made a cut all around, then he slipped the blade under the skin and down the legs drew slits that met in the crotch. He sliced through the tail bones, then with one foot holding down the tail, peeled out the silvery-red body. With a quick shallow jab he then slit down the belly, ripped out the entrails and flung them over the fence against which two hounds strained, eager but quiet. Turning, he caught his mother’s glance and he smiled with embarrassed pride.
    He placed the raw carcass on the newspaper in the row where the others lay already darkening in the sun and wind, and he wiped the gore from his hands on the fur of the ones remaining. He picked out the largest squirrel and plied its stiffened joints. “This one is mine,” he said. “My first. Or rather, the first that I did as I should have. I could tell Papa knew it was a big one