Free Vintage Ford by Richard Ford Page A

father—noticing us—squatted on his knees too and averted his face downwards. And after a few moments of Renard calling, I peered over the top of the straw wall and could see two black-colored ducks flying right in front of our blind, low and over our decoys. Renard Junior changed his calling sound to a broken-up cackle, and when he did the ducks swerved to the side and began winging hard away from us, almost as if they could fly backwards.
    â€œYou let ’em see you,” Renard said in a hoarse whisper. “They seen that white face.”
    Crouched beside him, I could smell his breath—a smell of cigarettes and sour meat that must’ve tasted terrible in his mouth.
    â€œCall, goddamn it, Fabrice,” my father said then—shouted, really. I twisted around to see him, and he was right up on his two feet, his gun to his shoulder, his topcoat lying on the floor so that he was just in his tuxedo. I looked out at our decoys and saw four small ducks just cupping their wings and gliding toward the water where Renard had left it open. Their wings made a pinging sound.
    Renard Junior immediately started his cackle call again, still crouched, his face down, in front of his peach crate. “Shoot ’em, Buck, shoot ’em,” my father shouted, and I stood up and got my heavy gun to my shoulder and, without meaning to, fired both barrels, pulled both triggers at once, just as my father (who at some moment had loaded his gun) also fired one then the other of his barrels at the ducks, which had briefly touched the water but were already heading off, climbing up and up as the others had, going backwards away from us, their necks outstretched, their eyes—or so it seemed to me who had never shot at a duck— wide and frightened.
    My two barrels, fired together, had hit one of Renard’s decoys and shattered it to several pieces. My father’s two shots had hit, it seemed, nothing at all, though one of the gray paper wads drifted back toward the water while the four ducks grew small in the distance until they were shot at by the other hunters across the pond and two of them dropped.
    â€œThat was completely terrible,” my father said, standing at the end of the blind in his tuxedo, his blond hair slicked close down on his head in a way to make him resemble a child. He instantly broke his gun open and replaced the spent shells with new ones out of his tuxedo-coat pocket. He seemed no longer drunk, but completely engaged and sharp-minded, except for having missed everything.
    â€œY’all shot like a coupla ’ole grandmas,” Renard said, disgusted, shaking his head.
    â€œFuck you,” my father said calmly, and snapped his beautiful Italian gun shut in a menacing way. His blue eyes widened, then narrowed, and I believed he might point his gun at Renard Junior. White spit had collected in the corners of his mouth, and his face had gone quickly from looking engaged to looking pale and damp and outraged. “If I need your services for other than calling, I’ll speak to your owner,” he said.
    â€œSpeak to yo’ own owner, snooky,” Renard Junior said, and when he said this he looked at me, raised his eyebrows and smiled in a way that pushed his heavy lips forward in a cruel, simian way.
    â€œThat’s
enough
,” my father said loudly. “That
is
absolutely enough.” I thought he might reach past me and strike Renard in the mouth he was smiling through. But he didn’t. He just slumped back on his peach crate, faced forward and held his newly reloaded shotgun between his knees. His white-and-black shoes were on top of his overcoat and ruined. His little pink carnation lay smudged in the greasy mud.
    I could hear my father’s hard breathing. Something had happened that wasn’t good, but I didn’t know what. Something had risen up in him, some force of sudden rebellion, but it had been defeated before it could come out and