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Black Fawn, The

<h2>chapter 4</h2> As he walked toward the road with a lunch pail dangling from one hand, it seemed to Bud that the driveway—endlessly long when he had labored up it that first day, with a chip on his shoulder and fear in his heart—had shrunken miraculously. He glanced quickly behind him to see if he was being watched and, seeing nobody, bent down to loosen the laces of the shiny black school shoes Gram had bought him in Haleyville. Then he straightened up and walked on, trying to manage a natural gait. But it was hopeless because after the conquest of Old Shark he had stopped wearing shoes. The soles of his feet had become so calloused that he could even run over the sharp stones around Gramps' gravel pit. Now, at the end of the summer, it had been so long since he had worn shoes that he felt as if he were dragging a ball and chain on each foot. His shoes pinched, too, but you could not go to school barefooted, not if Gram Bennett had anything to say about it. The summer had been so wonderful that, looking back now that it was ending, every minute seemed precious. It had taken Bud a month to realize that there was actually only a bare minimum of work to be done and that Gram and Gramps had planned it that way. They had labored prodigiously to rear and educate seven sons and four daughters and, now that the children were grown up and had their own families, the old people had made up their minds to do the things they had always wanted to do. For Gramps that meant hunting and fishing; Gram wanted nothing more than to make other people happy. There was money in the bank and very little labor was needed to provide for the two old people even now that they had taken a hungry orphan into their home. Bud reached the blacktop road and waited for the bus to take him to the Haleyville Consolidated School, where he was to enter the eighth grade. He had concealed it from Gram and Gramps, but he dreaded starting out in a new school. As he stood there waiting, he tried to ease his troubled mind by concentrating instead on one of the high points of the summer. He had cast a dry fly beneath a hollow stump beside a pool thickly bordered by a jungle of willows. The fly had gone truly and he had taken a fourteen-inch brook trout. Gramps had not been effusive, but it had meant a great deal to hear him say, "Some day you'll be a fisherman, Bud." Bud knew that although he might have learned to cast a dry fly, a single season or a dozen seasons do not necessarily produce a dry fly fisherman. There were very few masters of the art. Still, Gramps' approval was the next thing to achieving knighthood. Sometimes with Gramps and sometimes alone, Bud had gone to see how the black fawn was faring. Although the fawn and doe had widened their range somewhat, they were still in the same general area. Now they were much more difficult to approach, but Bud had seen them enough times to know that the fawn was doing well. The knowledge that the fawn was flourishing made Bud less uneasy about his own good fortune, for since that first meeting, he had never stopped believing that a bond existed between himself and the fawn. Bud's luck had taken its turn for the better as soon as he found the little black buck and he was sure that misfortune would overtake him again if harm ever befell the fawn. Bud had discovered the ruffed grouse, known locally as "pat'tidges," the thickets where foxes hunted and the places where black-masked raccoons washed their food. He had come to understand what sportsmanship means as opposed to hunting, and instead of recoiling when Gramps asked him to go grouse hunting, he had accepted eagerly and was looking forward to the opening day of the season. Finally, he had found a dream of his own. Gramps had a half-dozen turkeys, as many geese, a few ducks and a large flock of mongrel chickens that ranged from fussy little bantams to huge dunghill roosters. The flock was allowed to wander at will and to interbreed freely. According to the articles in the farm journals Bud had found stacked in the little closet off the living room, that was not the proper way to raise chickens. Although purebred fowls cost much more in the beginning, the returns were said to repay the initial investment many times over if the flock was correctly fed and housed. So far Bud had not broached the subject with Gram or Gramps because it was useless to talk about a project until you had the means to carry it out. Nevertheless, he had privately decided that, if and when he got both the money and Gram and Gramps' permission, he would buy a pen of purebred chickens and try to build up a flock. That was for the future, but this was now, and when he saw the school bus approaching, Bud drew a deep breath. Then he clenched his teeth and boarded it. The trip to Haleyville was over before he thought it could be, and the children assembled in little groups in front of the school. Bud went up alone to the entrance to the building and stood by himself with his back against the wall pretending to lounge nonchalantly. He was the only one who did not seem to know exactly where to go or what to do. Bells rang at intervals and the crowd of boys and girls thinned until the only ones left were Bud and a tall man who was obviously a teacher. When Bud told him he was in the eighth grade, the teacher led Bud down several long corridors and past rows of closed doors with frosted glass panes in them. Finally he paused before one of the doors and, opening it, propelled Bud through ahead of him. A man with the physique of a wrestler but with gentle eyes looked around. "I have one of your lost sheep, Mr. Harris," Bud's escort said. "Come in and join the class, sheep," Mr. Harris said, smiling. The class tittered and Bud writhed. The only refuge he knew was defiance. "Don't call me names!" he shouted. "I'm not a sheep!" "You're not very polite, either," Mr. Harris said without raising his voice. "What is your name?" "Bud." "Is that all your name? Just Bud?" The class tittered again and Bud's mortification mounted as he choked out, "Bud Sloan." Mr. Harris consulted his class roll. "It says here you're Allan Sloan." "I don't care what it says!" Bud shouted again. "My name's Bud!" All at once he found himself sitting on the floor. Lights danced in his head. He blinked owlishly, and as if from a great distance, he heard Mr. Harris say, "Get up, Allan. Your seat is the third one in the first row. Take it." Bud walked to his seat and the class was subdued. Bud sat in sullen silence for the rest of the morning. When noon came, he ate a lonely lunch and when the dismissal gong sounded at the end of the day he was the first to rise. "You're to stay after school, Allan," Mr. Harris said. Scowling, Bud sat down again and watched his classmates whoop out to freedom. As though he had forgotten all about Bud or perhaps because Bud was too insignificant to notice, Mr. Harris methodically and calmly put his desk in order. Finally he looked up and said, "Come on." Mr. Harris led the way out through the rear entrance and Bud gulped as they neared the parking lot. He would have run if his legs would have obeyed him, but since they would not, he got into Mr. Harris's car. They started up the road toward the Bennetts' farm, and after they were out of town, Mr. Harris said, "You needed that cuffing I gave you." Bud said nothing as Mr. Harris continued, "You had it coming and you know it. I know exactly what you were thinking and why. Stop thinking it. "Let me tell you about another boy," Mr. Harris said, "another orphan. He was farmed out when he was just about your age, and he went to a new school exactly as you did. Inside, he was frightened as a rabbit with five dogs and nine cats backing him into a corner, but he was afraid to let anyone else know that. The teacher reprimanded him and he shouted at him. Then, because he was convinced that only tough guys can get along, he hit the teacher with a chair. The boy was twelve when it happened. He was eighteen when he finally got out of reform school, and it was a reform school even if they called it a training school for boys." Bud said nothing and Mr. Harris went on, "It's a true story, as I should know. The boy's name was Jeffrey Chandler Harris, who now teaches eighth grade at Haleyville Consolidated School. I've wished many a time that that teacher had had sense enough to clobber me when I most needed it." Before Bud could recover or reply, Mr. Harris eased his car to a stop in front of the drive leading to Gram and Gramps' house and was holding out his hand. "Friends?" "Friends," Bud said, and shook hands. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> The autumn days were literally golden days. Gold leaves clung to the aspens and birches and to some of the maples. Goldenrod bloomed. A golden moon shone down on a field where golden pumpkins lay among shocked corn. The sun rose golden every morning and set in a golden blaze every night. Most of the crops were harvested and the fields lay bare. The cellar beneath the farmhouse was bursting with the fruits and vegetables that could be stored, and every shelf was filled with jars in which Gram had canned those that could not be stored. Split and neatly corded wood was stacked up to the roof of the woodshed and now the wood boxes on the back porch and in the kitchen were kept heaping full. The warmth the kitchen range radiated was welcome these days, for even at high noon there was a sharp tang in the air. The cattle preferred the sunny to the shady parts of the pasture and a box, which had a hole cut in it and with a cloth hung over the hole, covered Shep's bed on the porch. After their first encounter Bud and Mr. Harris had understood each other and Bud brought home a very creditable first report card. That afternoon he raced up to his room to exchange school clothes for work clothes and ran back down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen only long enough to gobble the cookies and drink the milk Gram had ready for him. "I have to hurry and help Gramps get everything caught up so we can go grouse hunting," he explained when Gram remonstrated. "Oh. That's real important. Scoot, now." Bud drank the last of his milk and ran out. In the corn field Gramps had the team hitched to the light box wagon and was walking beside it and lifting ripe pumpkins into the box, starting and stopping the horses with his voice alone. Bud raced toward Gramps, and Shep came leaping to meet him. As he petted the big furry dog, Bud looked toward the autumn woods and for an instant he thought he had caught a glimpse of the black fawn melting away into the trees. For Bud the fawn was outside the laws of nature, but with the taking of Old Shark he had learned the difference between sport for sport's sake and killing for killing's sake. Actually, as Gramps had explained, it was not only fair, it was wise to harvest some creatures. Old Shark, for instance, had been a ravenous old tyrant who had consumed vast amounts of food, including smaller trout; now that he was gone, the trout left in the pool would have a better chance. Gramps had made Bud see that it was, in fact, kind to harvest the surplus game crop because there is enough food for only a limited number of wild creatures. The rest must die, and the ways of nature are almost always crueler and more prolonged than death at the hand of a hunter. Bud thought that the swift-winged grouse were among the most fascinating of wild creatures. He almost never saw them until they thundered into flight, a thing that never failed to startle him. They were birds of mystery to him and he could not help being excited because he and Gramps were going to hunt grouse when the season opened. Safe in its case in Bud's room was a trim little double-barreled twenty-gauge shotgun, and as soon as the last of the crops was in, Gramps had promised to show him how to use it. Shep bounced ahead to frolic around Gramps, and Gramps stopped work as Bud came up to him. "Hi, Bud." "Hello, Gramps. I hurried so I can help load the rest of the pumpkins." "Well now, that's right decent of you. But you won't be sorry. A man ain't lived 'til he's helped load and haul punkins. Did you ever stop to consider what a remarkable thing a punkin is? You can look at 'em and tell what the weather's been by the looks of the punkin, so they're a weather table. You can just about tell the season by the looks of a punkin, so that makes 'em a calendar. You can bounce one off somebody's head and knock him sillier'n the cow that jumped over the moon and still not hurt him, so they're a weapon. You can turn 'em into goblins on Halloween, and you can eat 'em. Yep. A punkin's a right remarkable outfit." "How are they most remarkable?" Bud asked. "In punkin pie. Let's get to work." When they had loaded the wagon, Gramps unwrapped the reins that had been around the wagon's center post, drove to where the great, outer cellar doors yawned wide, and two by two they carried the pumpkins into the cellar. Then, while Bud stabled and cared for the horses, and pitched hay down the chute for the cows, Gramps milked. That night, after the evening meal, Bud gave himself to the complexities of English, arithmetic and American history while Gram knitted and Gramps pored over the latest issue of The Upland Gunner. Bud's eyes stole from his textbook to the magazine in Gramps' hands, and although he made a prodigious effort to return to the conjugation of irregular verbs, he found it a hopeless task. He raised his eyes again to the magazine, which had a gorgeous front cover showing a woodcock in flight, two English setters on perfect point and a hunter who was obviously about to add the woodcock to his bag. Gramps spoke from behind the magazine, "That was a mighty fine report card you fetched home, Bud." "Thanks, Gramps." "You fetch home reports like that, and you'n me will have a whack at Old Yellowfoot sure after we're done with the grouse." Without bothering to find out how Gramps had managed to peer through the magazine and discover that he was not studying, Bud returned to his textbook. Gramps had given him the incentive he needed at the moment, but on a farm everybody has his tasks and Bud knew without being told that his chief one was to get everything he could from his school work. When Bud came home from school the next day, Gramps was sitting on the back porch with the twenty-gauge shotgun, Bud's gun, across his knees. Nearby was a wooden cleaning rod, some strips of white cloth, a can of nitro solvent and a can of oil. As though such an occupation was too commonplace to call for any explanation, Gramps said, "Best get moving." "Moving?" "Now doggone! You didn't think I'd take you grouse hunting 'thout you know which end of the gun the shot comes out of, did you?" Bud changed his clothes in frantic haste, gulped down the milk Gram had waiting and caught up some cookies. Gramps looked at him reprovingly as he burst out the back door. "You ain't going to a fire. Slow and easy's the way you take her when you're hunting. Come on." He led the way to a windmill behind the barn. Before the farmers along the road had organized to form their own water company, the windmill had pumped all the Bennetts' water. The wind furnished power when it blew. When it did not, a gasoline engine operated the pump. Even though there was another supply of water now, Gramps had not let the windmill deteriorate in case it should be needed again. While Bud had been at school, Gramps had hung cans by eight-foot cords from each of the vanes of the windmill and hooked up power belts so the engine would turn the windmill. A hundred feet away he had also put up two wooden standards that looked like sign posts and covered them with newspapers. Two boxes of shotgun shells were laid out on the engine mount. Gramps picked up one. "Some people practice shoot on live pigeons," he said. "I don't hold with that 'cause I don't hold with killing anything for no good reason. Some shoot at tin cans tossed in the air, but that's no way to learn 'cause tossed cans just ain't fast enough. Some shoot clay pigeons, which is all right if you got the money. I have my own way. Now you know about choke?" "Yes, Gramps." "Tell me." "The left barrel of this gun is full choke, which means that it has a narrower opening than the right and will shoot a closer pattern, but it also has a longer range. It's to be used for birds flying a considerable distance away." Gramps nodded and took two shells from the box. "Load her." Bud flipped the lever that broke the barrels and slipped a shell into each. He tried to do it very calmly, but in spite of himself his hands shook. He had broken the barrels a hundred times before and in imagination he had loaded the gun and sighted on a speeding bird a thousand times. But this was the first time he had ever held the gun armed with live ammunition. He did not forget to check the safety, and Gramps noticed but said nothing. The old man said, "So you can see for yourself what pattern means, and the difference between a full and modified choke, shoot your left barrel into the left paper and the right into the right." Bud braced the gun stock against his shoulder, sighted on the right-hand paper, braced himself, and pulled the trigger. The gun's blasting roar was much louder than anything he had expected, but the recoil was almost negligible. He shot the left barrel with more confidence. "You flinched on the first but held steady on the second," Gramps pronounced. "Now let's see what happened." They walked forward and Bud studied both papers. The one to the left shot with a full choke bore a roughly circular pattern of evenly distributed pellets that had gone through the paper and imbedded themselves in the wood backing. The target shot with the modified barrel was pock-marked with such a wide circle that it was obvious not all of them could have struck the paper. "Understand?" Gramps queried. "I understand." "Then we'll get on, and since anybody who'd shoot a bird on the ground would catch a trout on a grasshopper, like a certain party did on Skunk Crick, we shoot 'em on the wing. Just a minute." Gramps started the gasoline engine. The windmill vanes began to whirl and the dangling cans, gaining momentum, strained at the ends of their strings. Taking the shotgun, Gramps fired one barrel, then the other, and two of the whirling cans leaped wildly. He gave the shotgun and a pair of shells to Bud. Bud shot, but although he knew he was on target, he missed the can at which he had aimed. He shot again and again until he had scored twenty-three consecutive misses. Then, all at once, he found the feel and balance of his gun. It was no longer a separate thing but a part of himself. With Gramps' coaching him on leading, or shooting ahead of the target, he scored two hits, missed three and scored ten straight. "You're real good at shooting tin cans on the wing," Gramps pronounced. "Now we'll see how good you are on grouse. Saturday's the day, Bud." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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