a pencil, for God's sake. All Raff has to do is to be a little bit careful. It's time he learned at least something about guns. It's time he took a little responsibility about things like that."
Raff was easing out of the room, thinking about where to hide his treasure in case this dispute turned out badly.
"I've told you a thousand times if I've told you once," Marcia came again at Ainesley, "I don't want him growing up like some kind of a savage. I want Raff to have a better life, and while I'm at it, when he gets older I want him to live in a better, safer place than we have around here."
"You mean you want to live with your goddamn fancy family in Mobile. My own people aren't good enough for you."
Then Ainesley caught himself. They couldn't afford to blow up with Raff in hearing range, and him the subject of the fight.
"I know how you feel," he said, "and I'm not going to take any offense. But let me ask you, use some common sense. We live here and not down there in Mobile, and Clayville's where I make our living."
Marcia tightened her mouth, struggling for equanimity and the right response.
Ainesley, seeing her pause, pressed the initiative. "Look here, half the boys in Clayville Scooter's age own a BB gun like this one. If we was living in downtown Mobile that's one thing, but we live here in Clayville, and Scooter's got a right to grow up in a normal way like other boys."
Ainesley and Marcia went on like this for a while, cooling off slowly. Raff was by that time in his room out of earshot, examining the Red Ryder, sensing he was going to keep it, thinking about the meaning of it all. Soldier in the army, Sergeant--no, make that Captain--Raphael Cody. A sniper, picking off charging enemy soldiers, machine guns rattling to the side. A hunter, having closed to within the killing range of a ten-point buck, hunter friends admiring him, watching as he took very...careful...aim. A man with power, a hero.
After a half hour more of debate, flare-ups, pauses, and back-and-forth, his parents reached a compromise and called him out. Raff could keep the gun if he used it only to shoot at targets set up on the backyard fence, with his father supervising.
Right after dinner Raff was out in the backyard with his Red Ryder. Ainesley showed him the simple procedure of firing an air gun. Pour the BBs into the chamber, pump the lever, aim, shoot, pump the lever, aim, shoot. Continue for up to 650 times before reloading.
Raff took quickly to this routine. The vestigial shame of the shotgun incident during the turkey hunt faded completely as his father guided him. The last residue of his earlier fear was also soon gone. He found deep pleasure in simply pulling a trigger, then seeing a physical impact far away. It was a kind of control he had never experienced. It was precise, and far better than slingshotting a stone.
He kept going the next day, this time without Ainesley and whenever Marcia was busying herself at some task away from the back door. His aim improved steadily. Raff, it turned out, was a born marksman. He thought himself one of those keen-eyed Southerners of olden times described to him by Ainesley.
Raphael's imagination soon led him from Red Ryder in the backyard to Red Ryder at Nokobee. He could be a real hunter! Maybe without actually killing anything, just stunning them and letting them recover. There were lots of small animals at Nokobee that were so elusive and fast it was next to impossible to catch one with your hands. Five-lined skinks and six-lined race runners, the sprinters among lizards, were so alert that almost as soon as you saw them they were gone--vanished into a woodpile or tangle of scrub. Green anole lizards were mostly seen perched on tree trunks. Like squirrels, they were able to scoot to the other side and up above you before you got close enough to grab them. Water snakes were poised to race into the lake shallows by the time you came within ten feet, and you almost never saw them again.
The escape strategies were hereditary. For millions of years their ancestors had been stalked by predators a great deal faster than Raff. Few of these experts in surveillance and escape had ever been caught by unaided human effort. Now maybe Raff could catch