He said, "You called Paw and Hank and Zeke, you didn't holler for me. What you got there, Maw, huh?" His watery eyes were fixed on the bundle.

Maw Coy sighed deeply and sat down on a tree stump. "Now what you think I got there, Lem? I been a bringing your vittles to you every day since Paw and you boys started up this new still. Where's Paw and Zeke and Hank?"

Lem scratched himself with the stick he'd been whittling on. "They went off scoutin' around for the revenooers or maybe the Martins." He let his mouth fall open and peered wistfully into the woods. He added, "I wish I could shoot me a Martin, Maw. I wish I could. I sure wish I could shoot me a Martin."

The idea excited him. He brought his hulking body to its feet and went over to pick up an ancient shotgun from where it leaned against a mash barrel.

Maw Coy was taking corn pone, some cold fried salt pork, and a quart of black-strap molasses from her bundle and arranging it on the top of an empty keg. "You mind yourself with that gun now, Lem. Mind how you shot up your foot that time."

Lem didn't hear her, he was stroking the stock of the shotgun absently. "I could do it easy," he muttered. "I could shoot me a Martin easy. I sure could Maw. I'd show Hank and Zeke, I would."

"You forget about the Martins, son," Maw Coy said softly. "Yore my simple son—there's at least one in every family, mostly more—and it ain't fittin' that you get into fights. You got a strong back, strongest in the hills, but yore too simple, Lem."

"I ain't as simple as Jim Martin, Maw," Lem protested.

"Son, they don't come no more simple than you," his mother told him gently. "And mind that gun. You know how you bent the barrel of Zeke's Winchester back double that time, absent-minded like."

He stroked the gun stock, patted it, half in anger, half in protest. His lower lip hung down in a pout. "You stop talkin' thataway, Maw," he growled, "or I'll larrup you one."

Maw Coy didn't answer. She reckoned she'd better set off into the woods and see if she could locate the rest of the men folks, so they could eat.

Lem said under his breath, "I could shoot me a Martin real easy, I could."

To the Most High, the Glorious, the Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and 

 Prev. P 2/12 next