Drive - A Memoir 49th Installment
Edith,
meeting us half way, said, “I’ll send hot milk; by the time you
want a drink, it’ll be just right.” She did heat the milk. Edith
was good that way; she always took real good care of us. Quite often
Edith would ask us, “What do you want for lunch, a baloney sandwich
or a bowl of stew?” We got to choose what we wanted. There were
hundreds of nice things and even more good situations Edith would
provide for us. Russ and I pulled on our winter gear, collected our
guns and ammo, retrieved the charged up 12 volt car battery, found
the spotlight from the basement, got our cookies with a mason jar of
hot milk and set out. Russ started the tractor while I loaded up all
our hunting junk and saddled myself straddling the tractor hood. We
drove the half mile to the hill, shut off the head lights and drove
toward the hay field called ‘The Twenty–five.’ The only light
we could drive by was the spot I was shining around at likely clumps
of brush. Sure enough, we started seeing jackrabbits right away. When
a jackrabbit was in the spotlight, it would stay still. Russ would
stop, take up the 22 rifle and pop the jackrabbit in the chest if it
was twenty feet or more away. If it was closer, he would pop the
jackrabbit in its red eye the spotlight caused. The driver got the
fun of shooting, and I always wanted to drive and shoot, but the
driver also had to get off his butt, get the jackrabbit and fling it
in the barrel because someone had to hold the light. I guess it was
even–steven.
“When
do I get to shoot?” I whined.
“When
hell freezes over!” Russ retorted.
“Hell
did freeze over,” I reminded him, “a few days ago when it was
forty below zero!”
Russ
let me drive. He was older and smarter, so he was the ‘boss of me.’
Only in his dreams, I thought, because physically I could whip his
butt and that made us equal. When we had hunted all the way to the
Twenty–five, we stopped at the hay stack. A few jackrabbits were
already in the hay stack’s trap.
“We
should shoot them.” Russ had the spotlight trained on one and the
jackrabbit was sitting there as pretty as a picture, ripe for the
taking.
“No,”
I have a better idea, I said, “Let’s use them as decoys. Come on,
if we can get the battery on top of the hay stack, then we can shoot
the jackrabbits like we were snipers from up there.” I can always
tell if Russell likes one of my ‘hare’ brained ideas and I could
really tell he liked this one. We collected twine that was always
lying around, tied several together, made a ‘cross tie sling’ for
the battery and with the other
500 more words tomorrow
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