Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 2 shiverin' an' I pulled her up into my coat anyhow. "Daddy looked over at Mama when we started home. 'They's fifteen birds back there, Dorothy. We've got Chris'mas.' Then he'd tell us how. How many coveys they found, how Mister Bert dropped ev'r'thing and went with 'em for a time, how the old dog whirled and pointed as she'uz bringin' back a bird. How Miz Lannie Edmundson said "Hello" and she'd expect us come Sunday dinner." If he could go back for just one day, he told me, it would be when he was coming fifteen, and his Daddy let him have the old Remington eleven-sixteen. And he got to shoot it the first time. After all the years of wanting too. It wasn't just a gun he told me. It was his gun. "When we got to the house that night I'm tellin' 'bout," he said, "it was dark. Daddy hung the birds on the porch, went in first, lit an oil lamp. Queenie limped off to her little building. "We all went to bed early, after a glass of milk and some cornbread. Queenie too. The moon was up by then an' I could lay in bed and through a crack in the corner see those fifteen Bobs, hangin' out there in the cold o' night, gittin' ready for Chris'mas. "I could hear Mama and Daddy talkin' quiet again too, just before I went off to sleep. An' Daddy set something straight I'd worried about sometimes when the kids at school bragged about havin' mor'n I did. "He said, 'Mama, they's some days I think we ain't so poor after all.' "An' like I told gee, I been rich ever since." Author's Note: In memory of Lyman and Dorothy Carraway, and an old-time, country bird hunt. never spent 'em on nobody you didn't like. "I always figured if the South had won," he said, "Mister Bob woulda been the national symbol. Right up there with General Lee. "Mama could cook up some birds, now Mister," he told me. "We'd have fried quail and rice for breakfast. With homemade biscuits. Only kind they was. "Mama invited the man in town we rented the farm from over for a bird supper. Mama passed him some rice. 'I can eat rice at home,' he said, 'pass them birds.' An' he just ate birds, an' biscuits an' gravy. "But anyhow, that mornin' we let Daddy out 'long that ditch near the Maury prison camp. It was jus' breakin' day. Mama pulled onto a little dirt path an' shut off the Chevy. "Daddy'd always give Mama a peck on the cheek 'fore he left. 'You take care o' yore Mama, now Robert,' he'd tell me. 'Yes-Sir,' I said. Back then, when you said something it began with Mister and when you was asked som'thin' back, you ended with 'Sir.' "Oueenie would already be out o' the car an' up the hedgerow. She'd run out an' look back. 'You're comin', ain't you?' Daddy'd get out his old Remington Model 11 sixteen, load up. "Shells were hard to git, it bein' the War an' all. But Daddy had a friend, Bert Albritton – ran a hardware there in town – an' Mister Bert kept him supplied. "Daddy didn't carry much other than his gun. A apple maybe, a orange, a pocket o' peanuts or a piece o' cake Mama cut he could share with the dog. When he swung close to somebody's house, he'd stop by an' they'd talk farmin' and such. They'd give 'im a sweet tater or a drumstick, and 'fore he left he'd leave a bird or two.'Bout noon, he and Queenie would find a oak tree 'long the creek, rest a bit, eat the cake. They'd be eight or nine birds in his old vest. "He'd tell us about it. "Mister Bert Dixon, Mister Wilton Taylor, Mister Shep Brand – they all had farms 'long his round that day. Miz Martha Edwards always gave 'im a glass of cold buttermilk. And Mister A.C., Daddy said, would advise 'im 'bout another big bunch o' birds he'd seen, down by the new ground. "We'd stand by the Chevy, Mama and me, watch 'em away," he said. "First sun touchin' the trees and firin' the mornin' frost. Watch 'em all the way to the woods. But they's days the ol' dog would lock up 'fore they got there, an' we'd watch Daddy shoot a bevy o' birds right off the roost, hear the sound o' the shots, from the car. "Set me on fire!" He started hunting with his Daddy when he was twelve or so. The birds would blow up, and he'd shoot twice, while his daddy shot once. His daddy would ask how many birds he'd killed, and he'd say "none." And his daddy had killed two. How? he'd say. You watch, his daddy would tell him. When those birds get up they's a few always cross. That's when you shoot. You shot at the wad, didn't you? "Yes-Sir" A bird hunter dudn' do that, his daddy told him. I've killed a few like that, crossing, he told me - but it ain't no easy thing. "Best of all was when we'd be there to pick 'im up," he said. "We'd see 'im comin', cross the field. Queenie'd be a few feet in front. You could tell she was tired, ready to go home. A big ol' orange sun'd be sinkin' over Snow Hill. "'I'm tired,' he said that particular night, when he got there, an' stuck his old gun and vest behind the seat. 'But it's been a great day.' "It was fallin' dusk when we got in the car. Queenie crawled in the back seat with me. She was wet an'