“You go, Billy. You hang around all the time. Go on.”
“Son a bitch,” Billy said. “I get tired this. What we come? Hunt or what?”
“You can take the gun. There’s one shell.”
“All right. I get a big black one all right.”
“I’ll holler,” Nick said.
Then, later, it was a long time after and Billy was still away.
“You think we make a baby?” Trudy folded her brown legs together happily and rubbed against him. Something inside Nick had gone a long way away.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Make plenty baby what the hell.”
They heard Billy shoot.
“I wonder if he got one.”
“Don’t care,” said Trudy.
Billy came through the trees. He had the gun over his shoulder and he held a black squirrel by the front paws.
“Look,” he said. “Bigger than a cat. You all through?”
“Where’d you get him?”
“Over there. Saw him jump first.”
“Got to go home,” Nick said.
“No,” said Trudy.
“I got to get there for supper.”
“All right.”
“Want to hunt tomorrow?”
“All right.”
“You can have the squirrel.”
“All right.”
“Come out after supper?”
“No.”
“How you feel?”
“Good.”
“All right.”
“Give me kiss on the face,” said Trudy.
Now, as he rode along the highway in the car and it was
