The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [195]
Junior looked up and said, "Well, we come out to use up some old ammunition." He lifted his upper lip. He had another pine cone on his mind. He pinged it.
"You hear me?" said the voice.
"It sure did look like Mr. MacLain to me, Junior," Mattie Will whispered, pretending to be as slow as Junior was. She squinted against the small sun points that came at her cheeks through the braid of her hat. Then she pushed her way around her husband.
"Well. And we come out to shoot up some old ammunition on Saturday," Junior told her. "This/.; Saturday." He pulled her back.
"You boys been sighting any birds this way?" the white glimmer asked courteously, and then it passed behind another tree. "Seen my dog, then?" And the invisible mouth whistled, from east right around to west, they could hear the clean round of it. Mr. King even whistled with manners. And with familiarity. And what two men in the world whistle the same? Mattie Will believed she must have heard him and seen him closer-to than she thought. Nobody could have told her how sweet the old rascal whistled, but it didn't surprise her.
Wilbur, the Holifield dog, flailed his tail and took a single bound toward the bank. Of course he had been barking the whole time, answered tolerantly by some dogs in town who—as certainly as if you could see them—were lying in front of the barbershop.
"Sighted e'er bird? Just one cuckoo," Junior said now, with his baby-mouth drawn down as if he would cry, which meant he was being funny, and so Blackstone, his distance behind in the plum thicket, hopped on one foot for Junior, but Junior said, "Be still, Blackstone, no call for you to start cutting up yet."
"No, sir. Never pass by these parts without bringing down a few plump, juicy birds for my supper," said the voice. It was far-away for the moment; Mr. MacLain must have turned and looked at the view from the hilltop. You could see all Morgana from there, and he could have picked out his own house.
"My name is Holifield. We was just out using up some old ammunition on Saturday, me and a nigger. And as long as you don't get no closer to us, we ain't liable to hit you," said Junior.
That echoed a little. They both happened to get behind gum trees just then, Mr. MacLain and Junior. Junior was behind a tree! And she was between them. Mattie Will put her hand over her laughing mouth. Blackstone in the thicket broke a stick and chunked the pieces in the air. "And we won't pay no attention what you do in your part of the woods," Junior said, a dignified gaze on the falling chips.
"Suits me, sir!"
"Truth is—" Junior always kept right on! Just as he would do eating, at the table, and to his sorrow. "I ain't prepared to believe you come after birds, hardly, Mr. MacLain, if it is you. We are the ones come after what birds they is, if they is any birds. You're trespassing."
"Trespassing," said the voice presently. "Well—don't shoot me for that."
"Oho ho, Mr. Junior! Know what? He gawn shoot us! Shoot us!" In the ecstasy of knowing the end of it ahead of time, Blackstone flew out in the open and sang it like a bird, and beat his pants.
"You hush up, or if he don't shoot you, I will," Junior said. "Look, what happened to your gun, you lost it agin?"
Mr. MacLain was moving waywardly along, and sometimes got as completely hidden by even a skinny little wild cherry as if he'd melted into it.
Ping!
"One more redbird!" sighed Mattie Will.
"Ain't we two hunting men letting each other by and about their own business?" asked Mr. MacLain, suddenly loud upon them. They saw part of him, looking out there at the head of the gully, one hand on a knee. "Look—this is the stretch of woods I always did like the best. Why don't you try a different