“The proper tools being the gun.”
“Yes, though perhaps not exclusively. In this instance, for example, we could do with a bird dog.”
“The dog would run ahead and flush out the birds?”
“Precisely, and find them after we’ve shot them.”
“Afteryou’veshot them, you mean.”
Ignoring her correction, he said, “Without a dog, it can be difficult to find felled birds.” He was speaking with enthusiasm; this was clearly a topic close to his heart. “Do you remember Baron? What a birder he was.”
She did remember Baron, but she was still focused on the logistics of what Archie was saying about the hunt. “So you might end up killing a bird but be unable to find it?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
To kill animals purely for sport seemed infinitely worse than killing them to eat, but she held her tongue. Though she’d sparred with Archie about hunting before, seeing him here, witnessing his almost boyish excitement, the way he all but blossomed as he held forth on the topic, made her reluctant to be so overtly dismissive. They proceeded in silence. The trees thinned as they approached the meadow.
He stopped suddenly, pointed—with his finger, not his weapon. There was a bird standing on the ground not ten feet off. It was fat, patterned with gray and brown markings. It was a grouse, and it had no idea what was coming.
She squeezed her eyes shut and braced, willing herself not to cry.
Nothing happened. When she found the courage to open her eyes, Archie was quite a way ahead of her. She hurried to catch up, but, heeding his warning, stayed behind him. “Why did you not shoot that bird back there?”
“I prefer to shoot them on the wing.” He kept walking and was scanning the skies as he spoke.
“What does that mean? You aim for their wings?” How barbaric.
“No, it means to shoot them while they are in flight. If you’re quiet enough and careful enough, it’s possible to come upon a bird while it’s on the ground, as we just did. Of course, neither pheasants nor grouse fly much, but still; it doesn’t seem fair to shoot them where they stand.”
“As opposed to shooting them as they flee.”
He abandoned his survey of the sky and turned to her, a bit taken aback, she thought. “I beg your pardon?”
“I think the problem is in trying to frame any of this as fair. How can a man with a gun versus an animal ever be so?”
“They do get away a good fraction of the time,” he said, as if that was at all a reasonable argument.
“You speak of the natural order of things, but is a gun part of the natural order? Animals are meant to kill and eat each other? All right; some of them are, yes. But are they meant to do it with man-made tools of death, with iron and lead and gunpowder?”
“You’re misunderstanding.” He frowned. “And if there are any birds around, you’ve scared them away.”
She winced. Yes, her voice had gone shrill. She’d agreed to this outing; it wasn’t fair to sabotage it.
“May we carry on?” There was just the tiniest hint of rebuke in Archie’s tone, detectible only in a tightness that seemed to have papered over his usual affability, but to Clementine it felt like being given the cut direct.
She pressed her lips together and nodded, some of that same tightness spreading across her throat.
For several minutes, Archie stood stock-still, so she did, too. Eventually, she closed her eyes again, to help blunt the blow she knew was coming. In her experience, the disabling of one sense heightened the others, and here, now, she could use that fact to her advantage. There was a slight breeze, and if she concentrated, she could hear the grasses rustling. So, grasses in the wind. What else? The air was warmer here than it had been under the cover of the trees, and the sun heated her cheek. She tilted her head slightly, playing with the angle, feeling the warm spot move along her jawline.
Archie shifted, just slightly, but she could sense it. She opened her eyes but kept the rest of her body still. He hadn’t moved, but he had raised his rifle. She could almost tell herself he was a mere statue, more marble than man. The scene consequently began to take on an air of unreality as she stared at Archie the statue. Perhaps she was a statue, too. She rather felt like one, or at least she felt less than human. Cold, removed from her surroundings.
But then she was thrust back into the world, its wonder and terror slowly converging on her. It was a subtle swishing sound at first, like pond rushes in the wind. The sound grew louder, more agitated, an angel crash-landing, its wings flapping wildly. Then a short, sharp, two-note call, like a rooster whose morning song had been cut short. She gasped when the animal appeared. Pheasants, especially the males, had such lovely markings, but their bodies were so heavy-looking, lopsided almost, and seemed so unsuited for flight, which she supposed was why they didn’t do it very often. Yet here was one climbing almost straight up, its red feathered head majestic against the clear blue sky, a small, everyday miracle of flight, nature triumphing in that relentless way it always did. She felt as if her heart were tethered to this bird, rising from its burdensome, corporeal constraints up into the sky, up, up—
Bang!
There was the blow. The coiled fist she had sensed, just out of range of her senses, coming down. Her body wanted to scream, and indeed, it started to. The bellows of her lungs prepared to discharge her anguish, like poison being expelled, but she stopped herself with her lungs stuffed full of air. Screaming wouldn’t help anything, or anyone: not that bird; not her.
“Damn!”
