Pilgrims Read online

  little deep-dish apple pie!”

  The woman blew him a kiss and kept on walking.

  “We’ll see you later!” he yelled. “Cutie!”

  Gashouse Johnson rolled up the window and said to Tanner,

  “There goes my girl. Can you believe she’s fifty? Who would

  guess?”

  “I think I know her from school,” Tanner said, shyly.

  “Possible,” Gashouse said. “It is possible, because she does

  teach there sometimes on a substitute basis. She looks great,

  don’t you think? A good-looking woman. You’d never guess her

  age, right? As long as she keeps her shirt on, right?”

  Tanner flushed and leaned down to pat Snipe’s head. The

  dog woke up and panted gratefully, his breath hot and ripe.

  The man and the boy drove on, quietly. They drove out of

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  town and past the dump, past the cemetery, past the farms,

  past a cornfield with a fire engine parked beside it. The road

  became dirt, and they passed loudly over a cattle guard’s wide

  grate. Gashouse drove farther still, up the forlorn road. He took

  a sudden left onto a mining road, driving slowly on deep ruts

  that might have been dug by tires, but might, too, have been

  dug by water. Where the wood line stopped abruptly, they came

  out at the edge of a wide, flat dish of rock and mud, the rough

  grave of an abandoned strip mine.

  A few trucks were there already, lined up neatly, like cars at a

  drive-in. Men were talking in a small group, kicking at rocks,

  their dogs milling around beside their muddy feet. Gashouse

  and Tanner got out of the truck. Snipe followed, painfully.

  “Hey!” Gashouse said to Dick Clay. “Place your bets!”

  “Can’t,” Dick said. “No birds. Willis got shut down.”

  “By who? By the hell who?”

  “By . . .” Dick hesitated. “By the authorities.”

  “Well,” Gashouse said. “Don’t I just feel like a slapped butt?”

  “Happens.” Dick shrugged.

  “Not in twenty years, it hasn’t happened,” Gashouse said.

  “Willis got shut down by the authorities, did he? Son of a bitch.

  By what goddamn authorities?”

  The other men looked at one another . One of them coughed

  and said, “Just some officers of the law doing their job.”

  “Just some good old boys,” another man said. “Just some

  fellas enforcing the law, for once.”

  “It’s not against the law to shoot pigeons,” Tanner said.

  The men looked at him.

  “Gashouse?” Dick Clay asked quietly. “Is that Ed Rogers’s

  boy?”

  “Sure is.” Gashouse again put his big hand on Tanner’s head.

  “Ed don’t want his boy up here, Gashouse,” Dick said.

  “That’s not true, Dick. It’s Diane who don’t want the boy up

  here.”

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  “What’d you do? Kidnap him?”

  “I invited him,” Gashouse said. “I invited him to come

  up here and watch me stand in for his old man. I invited him

  to come up here and watch me shoot some birds for his old

  man.”

  The men looked at one another, looked at their boots, looked

  at their dogs.

  “I came here to shoot some pigeons, and by Christ, I’ll shoot

  them,” Gashouse said. “I’m calling up Willis. I aim to find out

  what the hell’s going on. See what this is all about. Authorities

  shutting him down. See if I can’t do something about it.”

  “Actually,” Dick said, “actually, it doesn’t really matter. No-

  body’s planning on showing up anyhow. On account of Ed

  being in the hospital. The pigeon shoots are pretty much can-

  celed for now.”

  “But I’m shooting for Ed,” Gashouse said, and smiled, as if

  he’d solved something. “I’m shooting for Ed, and any folks who normally bet on Ed Rogers, why, they can bet on me.”

  Dick said nothing.

  “For Christ sake, Dick. You know I’m shooting today. You

  lent me your goddamn gun, Dick.”

  “I got to tell you something,” Dick said, “because you’re my

  good friend. The truth is, Gashouse, the authorities didn’t shut

  down Willis. That’s the truth, Gashouse.”

  A few of the men started heading back to their trucks, in a

  sort of casual way.

  “Dick?” Gashouse said. “Where the hell are people going?”

  “Gashouse,” Dick said, “I will say this. And I’m only telling

  you what I’ve been hearing. This is not me talking. This is what

  the guys are saying. I told some guys that you wanted to shoot

  for Ed, and some guys said they would rather cancel the shoot.

  Some guys don’t think that a bet on you is much of a bet. Some

  guys think they might just want to stay home until we find

  someone else.”

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  The men stood quietly then, like mourners or surveyors.

  “Well,” Gashouse said finally. “Well, well, well. We won’t

  fault anyone for that. Will we, Tanner? Will we, son?”

  In Willis Lister’s barn, there were dozens of pigeons. The pi-

  geons were caged, sitting in the dust of old feathers and shit.

  The sound of all those birds was a collective gurgle, like some-

  thing thick about to come to a boil.

  “Dick Clay told me not to show up,” Willis Lister was ex-

  plaining to Gashouse Johnson. “On account of Ed. He told me

  they were canceling the pigeon shoots for a while.”

  “See, now,” Gashouse said, “I realize that. But I thought

  Tanner here might want to see me shoot for his dad. Tanner’s

  dad is in the hospital, you know.”

  “I know that.”

  “And I thought it might be a special thing for the kid to see a

  pigeon shoot. On account of the high esteem that all the guys

  have for his old man. I thought he might want to see me shoot

  some birds for his old man. On account of the high esteem I

  have for his dad. And the high esteem that I have for his

  mother.”

  The pigeon man squatted down and looked at Tanner. “I’m

  sorry,” he said, “about your father.” Willis was an old man. Still,

  his face was smooth and unmarked, except for a small scar the

  shape of a sickle, pink against his cheek and shiny as a fleck

  of mica.

  “Thank the man.” Gashouse nudged Tanner.

  “Thank you,” Tanner said.

  Willis stayed squatting. “Son,” he said, “your hair is really

  kicking today.” He took a comb from the bib pocket of his

  coveralls and offered it.

  “I’m okay,” Tanner said.

  Willis kept looking at him, waiting.

  Tanner said, “I already combed it today.”

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  “It’s really kicking, though. A boy should try to keep himself

  neat.”

  “I went to sleep on it last night and it was wet. I can’t fix it.”

  But Willis still held out the comb. Gashouse nudged Tanner

  once again. “Why don’t you use the man’s comb, son?”

  Tanner took the comb from Willis Lister’s hand and ran it
<
br />   through his hair once. Then he handed it back.

  Gashouse said, “Why don’t you thank the man for his offer of

  a comb?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome, son,” Willis said. “Don’t you look neater

  now?”

  Willis stood up and faced Gashouse. “What do you need

  here?”

  “Birds.”

  “Nobody’s up there to bet, Gashouse. There ain’t gonna be no

  shooting today.”

  “Don’t need betters,” Gashouse said, grinning. “I just need

  birds. I’ll shoot them right here.”

  Willis didn’t answer, and Gashouse stamped his foot and

  laughed loud enough to send the pigeons into a boil of talk.

  “Hey! I mean — not here! I’m not going to shoot your pigeons here in their damn cages. The boy didn’t come here to see me

  shoot birds in a cage! I’ll shoot a few of them in your yard. Just

  so the boy gets an idea.” He stopped laughing, found the hand-

  kerchief in his pocket, and blew his nose. Willis looked at him

  and also at Tanner, who was patting down his hair with both

  hands. Willis looked at Snipe, who was licking the wire door of

  an empty birdcage.

  “How many?” Willis asked. “How many birds for your little

  venture?”

  Gashouse returned the handkerchief to his pocket and pulled

  out a wallet, from which he took a twenty-dollar bill. “Can you

  give me four birds for twenty dollars? Can you do that, Willis?”

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  Willis looked pained. “Four birds? What’s four birds? I lose

  more birds than that to rats in a week.” He turned to Tanner.

  “How many pigeons you want to kill, son?”

  “Me?” Tanner looked nervously to Gashouse.

  “I’m shooting, Willis,” Gashouse said. “I’ll explain it to you

  again. Point is, I want the boy to see how his dad does it. Want

  the boy to see how his dad got so famous.”

  “How many birds?” Willis asked.

  “I only need to kill one, I guess.”

  “Hell, Gashouse, you can have one bird. What the hell is one bird to me?”

  Gashouse looked at his thumbnail carefully. “Problem is, it

  might take me a few birds to kill one . . .”

  “Christ, man.”

  “Come on now, Willis. It’s been a long damn time. I might

  miss the first bird or so.” He paused. “You know, I used to be a

  hell of a good damn shot when —”

  “You can have three birds,” Willis interrupted.

  “I used to be a hell of a shot.”

  “You can hit one bird in three, can’t you?”

  “My God,” Gashouse said. “We’d all better hope the hell so.”

  Willis went to the nearest cage, stepping over Snipe, who was

  still licking at a wire door as if it were gravy. He opened the trap

  and pulled out the birds one at a time — by a foot, by a wing —

  with a frown at the dust and down raised from the panic. He

  tucked a pigeon under each arm like a schoolbook and handed a

  third to Tanner. “Tuck his wings down,” Willis instructed, “so

  he don’t beat the hell out of himself.”

  Tanner followed the men out of the barn, carefully carrying

  the bird away from his body, as though it were something that

  might spill on him. He waited in the field with Willis while

  Gashouse went to the truck for his shotgun. Snipe sat in front

  of Willis Lister, looking hopefully at his pigeons.

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  “What do you think, dog?” Willis said. “You think I got a

  biscuit for you?”

  Then they were quiet. Tanner was miserably uneasy to be

  alone with Willis Lister. The grass in the yard was high, thick to

  the middle of Tanner’s shins, and damp. There was the kind of

  gray sky that can mean rain any minute or no rain for months.

  Tanner’s pigeon was hot and thick, bigger than the cradle of

  his two hands. Beside him, Willis breathed heavily from his

  mouth, like a deep sleeper, and after a long time said, in a low

  voice, “You think I got a biscuit for you, dog? That what you

  think?”

  Gashouse Johnson came back with the shotgun and shells.

  He knelt in the grass to load, and Willis said, “What the hell

  kind of shells you using? You planning on shooting bear out

  here?”

  Gashouse looked at the box and did not answer.

  “That’s not bird shot, man. You hit a bird with that stuff,

  you’ll be lucky to find the goddamn thing. You’ll blow the thing

  all to bits.”

  Gashouse loaded the shotgun and stood up.

  “You really planning on shooting those hand grenades?” Wil-

  lis asked.

  “You know,” Gashouse said, “I honestly don’t care what kind

  of shells these are. I think I’d just like to kill these birds and go on home.” He held the gun to his shoulder, waiting.

  “You know what boys like you do up at the pigeon shoots?”

  Willis said to Tanner. “There’s always a job up there for a boy

  your age. You think you can do a boy’s job?”

  “Sure,” Tanner guessed.

  “This is the boy’s job. You wait for the shooter to drop the

  bird out of the sky. Then you chase that bird down, and if it ain’t

  dead, you kill it off. Just a neck-wring’ll do it. You think you can

  do that easy job?”

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  Tanner looked at the fat bird in his hands.

  “That’s a boy’s job,” Willis said. “Okay. Get behind the

  man, son, lest he blows your goddamn head off with his lousy

  shooting.”

  Tanner backed up.

  “Okay,” Willis said, “let’s go.”

  Willis pulled one of the pigeons from under his arm and

  tossed it into the air. It fluttered low, over their heads.

  “Wait, now,” Willis told Gashouse. “Let her get some

  height.”

  The bird flew. It flew out and away from them, straight

  toward the trees at the end of the field. Gashouse shot once, a

  tremendous blast that knocked him over backward, almost into

  Tanner. The bird flew on, into the trees. Willis, still holding the

  second pigeon in his hands, looked at Gashouse, who was sit-

  ting in the tall wet grass, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Okay,” Willis said. “Ready?”

  “That gun’s a kicker,” Gashouse said. “Knock a guy right on

  his ass.”

  “It’s the shells,” Willis said. “Plant yourself better. Ready?”

  Gashouse stood and raised his gun. Willis tossed the second

  bird up, and it flew in the same line as the first had.

  “Now!” Willis shouted.

  Gashouse shot, missed, shot again, missed again. They

  watched the pigeon make it to the line of trees and van-

  ish. Snipe lay at Tanner’s feet, groaning unhappily from the

  blasts of noise. Willis Lister stared out toward the end of the

  field.

  “Let me ask you something,” Gashouse said. “Now, will those

  birds of yours eventually come back to your barn? Eventually? I

  don’t want you to lose two good birds for nothing.”

  Willis turned to Tan
ner. “When I tell you, I want you to toss

  that pigeon of yours up in the air. Not too hard. Ready? Now!

  Now!”

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  Tanner opened his hands and raised them. The bird shifted

  slightly but stayed put.

  “Go,” he whispered.

  Tanner jerked his hands, and the pigeon tumbled forward

  and out of his palms. It flew briefly, then settled on a rock in

  front of Willis Lister.

  “Shoo!” Willis waved his hat at the bird. “Shoo!”

  The bird flew a few feet and landed in the grass. Willis swore

  and picked it up. “Sick bird,” he said, and handed it to Tanner.

  “Go get another one. Leave this one in an empty cage.”

  Tanner walked back to the barn with the wet, heavy bird. He

  found an empty cage. The bird, when dropped inside, stayed

  where it fell, facing away from Tanner. He shut the wire door,

  which was still damp from Snipe’s mouth. In the other cages,

  the pigeons moved around, stepping and nudging one another

  for better positions. He found the cage with the fewest birds

  and, reaching in slowly, caught one by the foot. It fluttered

  horribly, and he dropped it. He shut his eyes, reached in again,

  grabbed a wing, and pulled the pigeon out. He ran with the

  flapping body tucked under his jacket, as if he had stolen it and

  was being chased.

  Gashouse Johnson and Willis Lister watched him coming,

  and when he was before them, Gashouse said, “Good boy,” and

  Willis took the bird.

  “Ready?” Willis said, and tossed the pigeon up and away

  from them. It circled, then flew.

  “Now,” Willis said. “Now!”

  Gashouse shot once, and the bird dropped. Straight to the

  grass. Snipe took off after the bird and found it more or less

  accidentally, by running over it. The pigeon was still alive. It had

  not fallen far from them. They walked over to it, quickly. It had

  lost a wing.

  “Get it,” Willis Lister said. Not to Gashouse. Not to Snipe.

  But to Tanner.

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  “Go on, get it,” he said. “Just a neck-wring’ll take care of it.”

  Tanner did not answer or move.

  Gashouse said, “Now your father, he could drop twenty birds

  in a row, just like that. How about that, son?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Willis Lister said, and squatted beside the

  bird. He lifted it just enough to get his hands around its neck

  and twist, and as he was doing this, the bird made one twist of