Abbeville by Jack Fuller Page A

downstairs in the dark. But in the morning the thing mortified me, especially having to carry it past everyone to the bathroom, the yeasty smell coming up like shame. With my heel I pushed the pot farther back under the bed.
    I dressed and went downstairs empty-handed. Grandma was moving about the kitchen—having heard me stirring above her—putting Butternut slices into the old chrome toaster that only did one side at a time, retrieving a box of cereal from the pantry, pouring juice and milk.
    I sat down at the table where a plate of white-frosted cinnamon rolls lay on the shiny oilcloth table covering. I tore a chunk off one of the rolls and let it sweeten my morning.
    â€œYou can sit down, Grandma,” I said. “I’ll take care of myself.”
    â€œIf I sit down too much, I’ll rust,” she said.
    I grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and a paper napkin from a tin holder decorated with engravings of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Then I wolfed down a bowl of brightly colored Kix and drained the pastel milk. I was done just as Grandma finished buttering the toast, which I snatched as I scooted out of the room.
    â€œMind the crumbs,” Grandma called.
    I bounded up the stairs again, eating as I did and leaving a trail straight out of Hansel and Gretel. When I got to the bedroom, I put on my Keds and tied the laces. I was halfway down the stairs before I remembered the chamber pot. Even more awful than emptying it myself was the thought of Grandma or my mother doing it. So I returned to the bedroom, knelt down, and pulled it out. There wasn’t much inside, but I carried it carefully anyway, holding it out from my chest like a chalice. When I reached the back bedroom, I put it on the bureau and opened the window, looking in every direction to make sure nobody was watching. Then I lifted the pot over the sill and dumped its contents into the bushes below.
    That done, I raced back downstairs, past Grandma, and out the door. My destination was a shed next to an unused outhouse that stood next to the chicken coops. All these many years later, I can still smell those birds. I breathed through my mouth as I flipped open the latch and slipped into the shadows. When my eyes got used to the dark, I saw the weapons leaning against the plank wall: the plastic-and-tin Daisy Red Ryder BB gun that my father had taught me how to shoot on the prairie along the tracks and next to it the beautiful, wood-stocked, blued-barrel CO 2 pellet gun my parents had gotten me for my birthday. It could have passed for a .22, and over the first fifty yards or so it packed the wallop of a hunting rifle. It also had a clear advantage when it came to stealth, since the only report it made when it fired was a little puff of breath.
    I seized the pellet rifle and trotted off, holding it at port arms the way my father had taught me. We used to go through the whole Manual of Arms together, both the regular Army way and the flashier National Guard style. My father snapped the weapon smartly through right-shoulder, left-shoulder, order, and present arms, ending at parade rest. It was the first time I really could imagine that he had been a soldier. For myself, I liked the National Guard way. This left my father disconsolate.
    As I came out of the shed, Grampa was opposite me behind his mower.
    â€œGoing hunting?” he called.
    â€œNah,” I said. “Just messing around.”
    Grampa looked at me as if he still had enough boy in him to know better.
    They said you could find muskrats in the ditches along the cornfields north of town. They said you could find weasels. The bounty on these was higher than on crows, which were in any event too smart to let a boy sight in on them. You received payment by turning in thevarmint’s carcass at the general store. At least that was what my second cousin had told me, making it sound as full of glory as the National Guard. So I was determined to bag myself a