bush in the side yard. It was, indeed, very small. Again he heard himself in the courtroom: “And with no hesitation you got out of your car?”
He got out. Don and Jim were walking toward him. He could tell from their faces that there was nothing to fear. Don was holding a can of seltzer. Jim—who looked much larger beside his tiny house—had a set of keys in his hand, though he used none of them to open the unlocked door.
“Used to live in a Victorian over in Milo,” Jim said. “Wife comes home one day, says she’s seen to it I can’t come within ten feet of her. For nothing! Never laid a hand on a woman in my life. You can march into the police station, if you’re a woman, and just get an order to have a guy gone from your personal space, like it hadn’t been his space, too.”
“Bitch,” Don said, under his breath.
“Do you have children?” Francis asked.
“Children?” Jim said, somewhat puzzled. “Yeah, we had a kid that had a lot of problems that we couldn’t take care of at home. One of those things,” he said.
Don averted his eyes and toed a dandelion that had gone to seed.
“I’m sorry,” Francis said.
Don said, “I got one wife, no kids, a bulldog, and half my life stacked up in some storage place by her brother’s, since we had to downsize when the balloon came due. Downsized into my brother-in-law’s garage! You know what I mean?”
He did, actually. “Yes,” he said.
Jim tossed the big key ring on the worktable, which took up most of the room. There was a single bed pushed in the corner with a cat lying on it that looked something like Simple Man. The cat raised its head, then curled onto its side to continue its nap. There was a brown refrigerator in the corner opposite the bed, and a sink hung on the wall. The toilet sat next to the sink. He saw no sign of a shower.
“Sit,” Don said, pulling out a canvas director’s chair. Francis counted seven such chairs, most of them similar to the first, but avoided the one that sagged badly.
“Could you use a beer?” Jim said.
“That would be nice,” Francis said. He told himself, I can’t call my wife, because how would I explain where I am? He reached for the can of Coors, which was icy cold. He could not think of the last time he’d had a beer, rather than a Scotch-on-the-rocks. He raised the can, as they all did, in silent toast to whatever they were toasting.
It did not look as though Jim had done any work on the table recently. There were piles of newspapers, dishes, something that looked like part of a saddle. In a glass, there were some feathers. Francis wished that he could see some wood chips. The table looked too low to carve on—you would stand to carve, wouldn’t you? He saw with relief that there were a few tools, but the one he focused on looked rusty. “O.K., let me get ’em out,” Jim said, kneeling.
He lifted a box from under the table, opened the lid, and unwrapped a white towel inside. The box itself was beautifully made, with the word “Mallard” burned into the wood on the underside of the lid. Jim removed a duck and put it on the table.
“Un-fucking-believable,” Don said, shaking his head.
Jim took a step back, cleared his throat, and said, rather formally, “Some would do it different, but I use black eyes on the mallards. Ten millimeter,” he added. Francis stood with his can of beer, looking down. He wondered if he was supposed to touch it. It was quite convincing, and really beautiful. He moved forward tentatively, and, as he did, Don said, “Let me get that Coors outta your way,” sweeping the can out of Francis’s hand.
Francis held the decoy at a distance where he could see it clearly without putting on his reading glasses. Jim was pulling out other boxes. “Got one more to go, then I ship ’em off. Guy from Austin, Texas. He got himself an art gallery as a ‘ship to’ address, so maybe it doesn’t matter if he’s got no real idea what he’s doing,” Jim said. “Guy wants nothing but mallards, O.K., but if you’re going to set out decoys, then, yeah, you can have mallard, mallard, mallard, mallard—lots of ’em. But you throw in one of these—” He set another box on the table, and unwrapped a beach towel. “This is your egret. You put all the mallards out there, but if you’re going hunting you need something like this egret, for a confidence decoy.”
Francis had never heard the term, but he understood. In any case, the egret was a real piece of art.
“Yeah, like things are just nice and casual,” Don said. “An egret happens to be standing around, you know? Could be something else. A crow. Got to mix it up a little bit, so the ducks don’t get suspicious. ‘Hey, look down there, quite a flock of ’em, even an egret wandered in. Let’s go down and see if we can join the party.’ ” Don put his beer and Francis’s on the table. “Bang!” he said loudly.
“That’s the idea,” Jim said.
“How many of these did you make for the man in Texas?” Francis said. He was amazed at the detail. He stared at the black eye, and it seemed to stare back, the way it reflected light.
“Just over a dozen. If he’s a hunter, which I doubt from the way he talked and looked, maybe he’s been having bad luck. That’ll change when he gets this confidence decoy. Might have overdone it just a bit, carving an egret, but what the hey. You know, if you’ve got ’em in fields, most of them will be eating, but then there’s always one at least that acts as a sentry head. You think about all that while you’re working. About how the whole flock’s gotta look.”
“Well, the detail is just incredible. You say you learned this from your grandfather?”
“Learned a couple of things on my own, I guess. Went to some shows, got some ideas.”
“I do the naming,” Don said. “I’ve got a kit. I’m enrolling in a course in special writing at night school, come fall.”
“Calligraphy,” Jim said. “We’re a team.”
“I wonder if you would be offended if someone who didn’t hunt wanted a mallard just as a beautiful piece of handwork to put on his desk?” Francis asked.
