into brambles followed by coffeepot, bean and tomato cans, preserves. Guy is back with a bucket of water into which he pours carbolic. He is mopping up bathroom and cleaning toilets while I sweep. Under the dust the floor is yellow pine in good condition. Yellow pine paneling on walls and ceiling, Trapdoor leads to attic.
Guy is cleaning table and shelves when the Ellisor boy returns with buckboard. Boy unhitches horses and hobbles the strawberry roan.
Next to unload in sequence. We don't talk, we know what to do. Water container by stove. Fill container from two five-gallon cans. Fill boiler with river water. New stove on table. Fill stove with kerosene. Fill burner under boiler with kerosene, put in new wick. Groceries and cooking utensils on shelves and stove and nails. Mattress and blankets on walnut bedstead. Trunks along wall, bedclothes packed in trunks, Gladstone bags out of the way in the attic. We take off our shirts. Steve's body is red-brown like his face. Guy's body also tanned but tanned in overlaid blotches like dab painting.
'Star tan,' he tells me.
Steve and Guy start screening the porch. I take ladder outside and scrape the walls for paint. Old paint comes off easy. One wall scraped. Screen door on hinges, porch half-screened. Time for lunch. Lemonade, apples, flapjacks. Screening finished on porch. New screen for the two side windows. Scraping. Painting. No wasted movements, no getting in each other's way, no talking. Time laid out in screening, painting, putting things away in trunks, storing cases of food and ammunition in attic. At four o'clock we are looking at a neat house, white and shining like a ship in the afternoon sun. I mix a copper-luster pitcher of lemonade. We go out and sit on the porch steps. There it is in the afternoon sun, a white church steeple with a gold cross on top. I can see the mean pinched hate-filled faces of decent church-going women and lawmen with nigger notches on their guns.
Steve retrieves the bean and tomato cans I have thrown away and puts them up on a beam of the loading shed about thirty-five feet from the porch steps. He walks back towards us, pivots in a crouch, draws, aims, and fires, gun held in both hands and extended at eye level.
SPLAT
A tomato can explodes dripping tomato juice down the beam. Steve sits down. Guy stands up, draws, and aims and fires.
SPLAT
Bean can explodes.
I stand up, arms relaxed, both eyes open. Look at target. See bullet hit. Release draw mechanism. Gun jumps into my hand.
SPLAT
We fire six rounds each and reload.
Smell of black powder, smoke, beans and tomatoes. Steve gets a shovel from the porch corner, walks around by side of house tapping ground with his feet. He stops and digs, fills can with earth and thick red worms. We get three lines on spools with hook, leader, float. Guy and I take our 30-30s. We walk down road to the tributary which is about forty feet wide at junction with river. As we pass the end house I see three people sitting on the porch which is overgrown with vines. A dark Irish boy grins and waves. Sitting on either side of him are a boy and girl, obviously twins. They both have casques of bright orange hair and blank inhuman expressions. They wear green shirts and pants and yellow shoes. They look at us, faces twitching. Across the inlet the road continues overgrown with weeds and bushes. I start to take out my line. They boy shakes his head.
'Catfish here.'
He leads the way along a path through undergrowth by the inlet. A water moccasin thick as my arm slides into the water.
'Here.'
We stop by a deep blue pool, bait hooks and drop lines in. In a few seconds floats are jerked down out of sight and we are pulling out bass and jack salmon. We are cleaning the fish when I hear a deep growl. We turn, picking up 30-30s. Twenty feet away a huge grizzly stands on its hind legs, teeth bared. Cock guns.
Click
Click
Steve slides his Colt
