Across a War-Tossed Sea (8 page)

“F
reddy knows how. Why can't you show me?”

“'Tisn't mine, Wes,” Charles whispered irritably, holding a shotgun just out of his little brother's reach. “That's why.”

They stood in the back porch mudroom with the Ratcliff boys, pulling on their coats and boots at five
A.M
. Despite the early hour, the boys chattered happily about going hunting. Mr. Ratcliff was letting them make some pocket money by hunting wild turkeys and quail off Curles Neck to sell for Thanksgiving dinners. Most Richmond city residents wouldn't be able to find traditional turkey to buy because farm-raised domestic ones were mostly being sent to troops overseas or on military bases in the United States. The Ratcliffs had a good stash of birdshot left even though shotgun shells were rationed. Mr. Ratcliff was a crack shot, able to take down crows sitting in trees with a .22 rifle. So the boys were hoping to make a bundle of cash to use for buying Christmas presents for one another.

The twins were chanting, “Turkey, turkey.” They didn't seem to mind that they and Wesley had been relegated to manning the dogs and carrying the kill.

Wesley, on the other hand, was mortified to be lumped in with seven-year-olds. “I'm big enough to hold a shotgun, you know,” Wesley whispered back.

“Look, Wes, a gun is dangerous,” Charles answered. “You shouldn't handle it unless you've been taught. Like Bobby's taught me.”

Despite their lowered voices, Ron overheard. “It's not like your stupid set of toy six-shooters, old chum,” he sniped. “What's that game you still play? Cowboys and Indians?”

The twins stopped chanting. Johnny looked like he actually might be interested in a Wild West game. But Jamie mimicked Ron's sneer.

Wesley felt his face flame up in embarrassment. Charles sighed. Wesley knew what Charles's raised eyebrows meant:
Come on, Wes, stand up for yourself so I don't have to this time.

But Mrs. Ratcliff interrupted the tense moment. “Boys,” she called from the kitchen, “come get your bag lunches. Don't want to get hungry out there on Turkey Bend, do you?”

Propping their guns beside the screened door, Bobby, Charles, and Ron shooed the twins inside and entered the kitchen behind them. Wesley lingered. He couldn't help himself. He reached out and picked up the shotgun Bobby had lent Charles.

It was heavy and cold, just a foot shy of being as tall as he was. Wesley hoisted the gun, resting the wooden butt against his shoulder. He struggled to balance it, gripping the well-oiled wooden body that supported the long steel barrel. The steel ring that encircled the trigger was oddly elegant and beckoned Wesley to wrap his fingers through it. He looked into the gun's small sight. Imagining he was a movie cowboy hiding in rocks from marauding Apaches, Wesley slowly pulled back the gun's hammer as if ready to shoot.

Oh, right, better make sure the safety latch is on, Wesley cautioned himself. Still holding the gun up—aimed, cocked, and ready to fire, with his finger on the trigger—he slid his thumb up and down until it found the small safety lever. Not really knowing which direction was on, which off, he pushed it. As he did, he bobbled the gun a bit, his finger tightening on the trigger.

KABLAM!

The shotgun roared. The kickback threw Wesley backward against the wall.

“Gawd Almighty!”

“What the blazes?”

“Hell's bells!”

Shouting, the Ratcliffs crowded into the room that for Wesley was swimming with stars. He rubbed the back of his head and tried to focus. Mostly he saw knees. Then Wesley looked up and realized the shotgun explosion had blasted a hole right through the screened door. “Oh no!” he cried.

Everyone seemed to talk at the same time.

“What a dope!” said Ron.

“Lord a' mercy,” cried Mrs. Ratcliff. “That could have gone through the wall into the kitchen.”

“Are you all right, honey?” Patsy asked.

“Bloody hell!” Charles grabbed his brother, pulled him to his feet, and patted him up and down, searching for bullet holes. He exhaled with relief and for a split second he and Wesley smiled at each other. Then Charles's attitude turned furious. He shook Wesley by his collar. “Didn't I tell you not to touch the gun?”

“Hold on a minute, Chuck. Give him some air.” Mr. Ratcliff reached out and propped Wesley up. “Mary Lee, look at his eyes. Seem kind of crossed to me. Think the boy's all right?”

Mrs. Ratcliff checked his arms and hands, assessed his face again, and then patted it gently. “He's fine, just shaken up a mite.” She smiled at Wesley. “Would have hated to send you home in a box, sugar.”

“We best get going, then. Time's a-wasting.” Mr. Ratcliff leaned over and picked up the shotgun. “Good thing it wasn't a double-barrel,” he joked.

“What? That's all you're going to say?” Ron pointed at the hole in the screened door. “That will cost a pretty penny to fix, Dad.”

“Hush up, Ron,” Bobby snapped.

Mr. Ratcliff examined the door. “I have more screening in the shed. We can repair that wood and paint it. Considering what could have happened there's not much damage done. Give you a chance to practice your carpentry skills, Ron.”

“But…But…” Ron sputtered.

“Son, I saw many a boy—gentle ones, bookish ones like Wesley here—make the exact same mistake in the Great War. They just shouldn't have been around guns to begin with. However, I do, as a matter of fact, have more to say.”

Mr. Ratcliff turned to the two oldest boys. “Why was that gun loaded in the house? Chuck, isn't that the gun we gave you to use?”

Charles's mouth dropped open and his face flushed red. “I…I…”

“It's my fault, sir,” Bobby spoke up. “I loaded it to show Chuck how. I wasn't thinking.”

It was a lie—a wonderful, selfless lie for friendship. It's why Wesley and all the boys admired Bobby so much. But Charles wouldn't let Bobby take the fall for him. “Bobby is trying to cover for me, Mr. Ratcliff. I did it myself.”

“Humph
.” Mr. Ratcliff considered the pair a moment. “You know a loaded gun in the house is dangerous? And plain old stupid?”

The two boys nodded.

“You're the oldest. I count on you two to be sensible, to set an example for the younger ones.”

The boys nodded.

“Never do that again.”

“We won't, sir,” Charles and Bobby replied in unison.

“See that you don't,” he finished sternly. “Let's go. We're going to miss our gobblers if we don't hurry.”

As the boys piled into the truck's flatbed, neither Charles nor Bobby would look at or speak to their younger brothers.

Mr. Ratcliff drove fast toward Curles Neck and the oxbow loop the river made around Turkey Island. The road's speed limit had been lowered to thirty-five miles per hour to conserve gas, but he pushed the rattletrap truck faster. It was critical for them to be in position before complete daybreak, when the turkeys could see them and flee.

Wesley hunkered down against the cold wind. The two setters, Flynn and Buster, lay down beside him, as if they anticipated the day's plan. The Ratcliffs would hunt turkey in the morning and quail in the late afternoon. Wesley was to keep the dogs quiet during the turkey hunt, then help them track quail later.

“Well, if I'm in the doghouse,” he whispered to them, “you're good company.” Wesley stroked the dogs' heads and watched the landscape whiz by. Raised in the crowded, bricked streets of London with its miniature, manicured flower-box gardens, Wesley was still entranced by the wild, overgrown beauty of Tidewater Virginia.

Tall trees stretched over the road to just barely touch one another, like the fingertips of dancers. In the summer, they made a wondrous choreography of swaying, light-dappled green. That early morning, however, only a few oaks clung to their autumn-brown leaves. The carrot-colored maples, golden hickories, and crimson dogwood had already shed most of theirs in windswept pirouettes of color.

Now the bare trees created a bleak latticework of black branches over the road. Wesley shivered and looked away to the roadside as the truck hurried past a bog with broken tree trunks rising out of it like rotted teeth. In warm months, those mini-swamps teemed with wild blue irises and pink water lilies, dragonflies and green turtles basking in sunlight along sticks protruding from the water. Now the bogs, like the trees, were barren nightmare material. They gave Wesley the creeps.

He'd be glad when the sun came up.

Mr. Ratcliff turned off the road and shifted into neutral to let the truck coast silently to a halt. There was the slimmest shard of golden light low on the horizon. Quickly and quietly, everyone scampered to the ground, pushing the doors closed to avoid giveaway slams. They were heading for a thick stand of oak trees Bobby had scouted the previous week. A large flock of turkeys was roosting in the gnarly trees at night, then eating fallen acorns in the early morning before moving to fields to look for insects. Bobby had explained to Wesley and Charles that it would be far easier to shoot the turkeys before they reached open ground, where the birds could run as fast as twenty-five miles per hour or fly away.

“Don't let those dogs bark,” Mr. Ratcliff whispered to Wesley as he, Bobby, and Ron turned to tiptoe into the woods, trailed by the twins carrying burlap sacks.

“Try not to make a fool of yourself again,” Charles added before following Bobby into the darkness.

Keeping two good hunting dogs quiet in woods salted with all sorts of animal scents was not easy. Wesley clung to their collars to keep them from leaping out of the flatbed to follow the Ratcliffs.

“I can't help it, boys,” he told them. He broke off the crusts of his PB&J sandwich to reward them for staying still. Wesley had seen foxhounds in the English countryside when his family went on holiday, but he knew very little about hunting dogs until coming to the States. Flynn and Buster were working dogs, trained to sniff out quail. But they never rushed in once they found their prey, no matter how much they trembled with excitement. They'd freeze, front paw lifted, their nose pointed straight toward the birds to show their human master where his quarry was. The hunter would scare the quails into flight, shooting them in the air. Only then would the dogs rush forward to find the fallen birds and carry them gently back, dropping them at their master's feet as other dogs might a ball, hoping for a game of fetch.

Trying to adopt their self-discipline, Wesley sat quietly, listening to the woods wake up. Leaves rustled as squirrels busied themselves collecting their final treasures for winter.
Wheat-
eater-wheat-eater-wheat
, Carolina wrens called back and forth. A pileated woodpecker hammered a tree trunk. Landing on the truck's roof, a cardinal cocked its head to eye Wesley and then flitted away, alarmed,
chip-chip-chip-chip
ping to warn his mate of intruders.

Finally, he just had to stretch, so Wesley hopped off the truck. He and the dogs headed for the woods in the opposite direction from where the Ratcliffs had disappeared. As they padded through the forest, Buster and Flynn suddenly pricked up their ears. Wesley strained to hear what they did.

From a long way away a sharp whistle cut through the air:
Quail-lee, quail-lee.

Quail! The birds were calling to one another to group in a covey for the morning.

The dogs whined and looked expectantly at Wesley as if to say,
You stupid bloke, let us do our jobs.

“We're supposed to stay here, boys,” he reasoned with them.

But the dogs quivered in anticipation of a hunt.

Quail-lee
.

Wesley knew the call meant quail were gathering to search the field for seed. By midday the quail would fall silent and head back into the forest's brambles, in a feeding pattern that was the exact opposite of turkeys'. The quail wouldn't call to one another again like this—making it easier for the Ratcliffs to find them—until evening. Maybe Wesley could make up for his shotgun gaffe by locating the covey now and saving Mr. Ratcliff the time of searching them out later.

“Come on, boys.” Wesley struck out, following the quail's morning revelry.

Quail-lee.

Wesley waded through briars and pushed past dangling grapevines to emerge onto a wide field tangled with dried-out wildflowers, tall grasses, and thistles.

Quail-lee
.

The dogs plunged into the grasses. Wesley waded after them.

Quail-lee.

The call was farther away now. Maybe his thrashing through the field had scared off the quail. He stopped. Bobby and the brothers could actually call back and forth with quail, especially in the spring when the males looked for mates, whistling
bob
white, bob-bob-white
. This autumn call was harder to imitate, the first part high and long, lifting and falling in pitch, the second lower and short, anxious-sounding.

He whistled.

After a moment, a quail called back.
Quail-lee
. And then another.
Quail-lee.

Wesley smiled, thrilled to be talking with birds. “Just like Doctor Dolittle,” he whispered to Buster and Flynn, who had now slowed to a stealthy creep.

The calls became closer and closer, seeming to surround him. Wesley had to be conversing with at least a dozen quail now. They were definitely converging on him. He tried not to think about the fact that the gentle little brown birds with their delicate white markings were destined for a Thanksgiving dinner table.

He'd been paralleling Turkey Island Creek. Now ahead of him, shimmering in silver reflections of the low rising sun was the James River oxbow. He paused to watch an eagle lift off from a tall snag on the riverbank and torque its white tail like a rudder to navigate the winds. So strange that both the Americans and the Nazis had the eagle for their symbol, he mused.