“My brother Spencer and I hunted birds all out through here when I was a boy. Little boy too because that was before the war. In most ways my childhood stopped when I was twelve and the war came and Spence went off. At least it seemed like it stopped, like it was something just hanging there waiting for when he’d come back. There would be those short sweet times when he’d get a leave and be home a week or two and we’d try and pick things up but it was all changed and we both knew it. So what I have are those sweet sweet memories of the two of us, Spence old enough to be good at what he was doing and so serious about it and because he was that way I tried to be too. We didn’t have a dog because my mother wouldn’t have a dog around the place on account of the fleas and ticks but some one or another of the boys Spencer hunted with always had a dog. Mostly big old hammerheaded pointers is what I recall. It’s mostly still what you see around here. They’s some setters but not many. They can’t stand up to the heat as well as the pointers plus they get all wrapped up with burrs and thorns and such like that. But oh yes those fine days. Seems like most fine memories come out of dawn or evening, I don’t know if that’s just me or not. But some way even cleaner than the moment right in front of me I can see old Spencer in a stand of big pines with a covey of quail going off before him and what I recall is how he always took a little pause as the birds went up to watch them before he’d single out the one he wanted and then that gun would come up and go off at the same time like he wasn’t even thinking about it.”

“Yes,” said Foster. “That’s how it works.”

“I was never that good at it. I was all right and if I’d kept on I probably would’ve gotten better. Although there were men, still a few here and there, lost arms like I did but kept on in the woods and fields like I did not and learned how to shoot one-handed. Always got their deer. Some birds. But it was not like that for me. I lost all taste for it. Wasn’t the war so much because the truth is I didn’t see much of that business. I can’t even say it was some kind of grieving for my brother although if he’d made it back we would likely have picked up where we’d left off—but it wasn’t just him either. It was both those things and more than that. Some men are on a clear course from day one; others make themselves as they go. Then there are those few others who drift along. In the world but just barely. Who kind of nudge their way.”