Heart Songs and Other Stories by Annie Proulx

Author:Annie Proulx
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

The first morning was a good one, a solid bright day with a spicy taste to the air. Noah was on his mettle, eager to find birds and showing off a little for the stranger. Santee set Earl some distance away on his right until he could see how he shot.

Noah worked close. He stiffened two yards away from birds in front, he pointed birds to the left, the right. A single step from Santee or Earl sent partridge bursting out of the cover and into straightaway flight. He pinned them in trees and bushes, scented them feeding on fallen fruit or dusting in powdery bowls of fine earth, marked them as they pattered through wood sorrel. He worked like two dogs, his white sides gliding through the grass, his points so rigid he might have been a glass animal. The grouse tore up the air and the shotguns bellowed. Earl, Santee saw, didn’t know enough to say “Nice dog” when it counted.

Santee held himself back in order to let his pupil learn, but Earl was a slow, poor shot. The bird would be fifty yards out and darting through safe holes in the air when he finally got the gun around and pulled the trigger. Sometimes a nervous second bird would go up before Earl fired at the first one. He couldn’t seem to catch the rhythm, and had excuses for each miss.

“Caught the butt end in my shirt pocket flap,” he’d say, laughing a little, and, “My fingers are stiff from carrying the gun,” and “Oh, that one was gone before I could get the bead on him.”

Santee tried over and over again to show him that you didn’t aim at the bird, that you just threw up the gun and fired in the right place.

“You have to shoot where they’re goin’, not where they are.” He made Earl watch him on the next one, how the gun notched into place on his shoulder, how his right elbow lifted smoothly as his eyes bent toward the empty air the bird was about to enter. Done! went the shotgun, and the bird fell like a nut.

“Now you do it.” said Santee.

But when a grouse blustered out of the wild rose haws, Earl only got the gun to his hip, then twisted his body in an odd backward contortion as he fired. The train of shot cut a hole in the side of a tamarack and the bird melted away through the trees.

“I’n see you need a lot of practice.” said Santee.

“What I need is practice.” agreed Earl, “and that is what I am paying for.”

“Try movin’ the stock up to your shoulder.” said Santee. thinking that his kids had shot better when they were eight years old.

They worked through the morning, Santee illustrating swift reaction and tidy speed, and Earl sweating and jerking like an old Vitagraph film, trying to line up the shotgun with the bird. Santee shot seven grouse and gave four to Earl who had missed every one.

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