South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan

few lengths of light yarn.
    A faint eddy of breeze kicked up. Mitch immediately checked the tripod, to see the wind’s effect on the dangles.
    Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed Marcy walk around the house and approach halfway to the truck. Her curiosity had apparently got the better of her high-and-mighty snit. But he wasn’t watching the sway of her hips or the flash of her shins. He observed the way the thin material of her dress hung limp, moved only by the motion of her legs.
    No-wind day. Dead still. But the air was a long rain shadow; lots of moisture.
    Marcy called out, irritated, “This is bullshit what you’re up to. No-brain redneck bullshit, Darl; I’m telling you.”
    “For Chrissake, Marcy. Don’t be like that. Dwayne’s here,” Darl protested.
    Dwayne laughed, “Get-r-done, Darl, bring that woman to heel.”
    Marcy gave Dwayne her best Medusa glare, extended a pointed finger, like a curse, and declared, “I’m serious, goddamn it; I ain’t having this.”
    “Then get your holier-than-thou little ass back behind the house and let the men be,” Dwayne shouted back, less than amused. When Marcy spun on her heel and stomped out of sight, Dwayne gave Darl a reproving sidelong glance. “What the fuck, Darl?”
    Darl gritted his teeth and suffered Dwayne’s disapproval with a pained expression.
    Mitch kept his eyes lowered and ignored Marcy’s attempt to hex him. He took a tack cloth from his satchel, wiped down the barrel and the wooden stock. It was one of Hiram’s favorite rifles. Mitch had quietly borrowed it from the spacious gun cabinet at Kirby Creek.
    Shooting was a bonding hobby he’d shared with the old man. On a no-wind day, from a bench rest, he could reliably shoot the Enfield into a three-inch bull at two hundred yards.
    Then he removed from the satchel a tray containing wrapped paper cartridges; old Hiram’s private stock. He’d measured out the powder and made the rounds in a custom bullet mold, then ran it through a sizing die to achieve the absolute correct diameter.
    As he puttered with a cartridge, he thought out loud. “Ellie’s hired LaSalle Ector to stay out at the Kirby House.”
    Darl shrugged. “I heard LaSalle came back from Iraq so fucked up they didn’t give him his job back driving the ambulance. Maybe all that big jig is good for anymore is emptying bedpans…”
    “That ain’t it. She’s got a soft spot for LaSalle because of Robert. The old man’ll never leave the hospital. She’s getting ready to pull the plug. Sign one of those do-not-resuscitate orders,” Mitch said.
    “Woman is depressed. Her brother got killed in Iraq, her dad is stuck full of tubes…”
    Mitch thought about it and shook his head. “She don’t get depressed, she broods and then she gets mad.”
    “C’mon, she’s depressed,” Darl said. “No offense to Aunt Pearl, but all Miss Kirby’s sorority sisters from Ole Miss are gossiping behind her back, saying ‘I told you so,’ marrying some state-line redneck out of a roadhouse whore in Selmer, Tennessee…Poor woman’s probably standing in the bathroom right now staring at the pills in the cabinet.”
    “I doubt it,” Mitch said. Then, abruptly, he emptied his mind and stared at the target. “So what are we doing here?”
    “You’re going to shoot at two hundred, right?” Darl asked, gnawing his lip.
    “Yep,” Mitch said.
    “Okay then. Cold shot, supported,” Darl said, “you can snap in over the hood of the truck.” He closed the gun case and plopped down several sandbags on the hood.
    “Okay,” Mitch said. More serious now, he looked downrange at the target, leaned back to his rifle. Then, all business, he bit the end off the cartridge, poured powder and ball down the muzzle, then tucked in the paper. Ramrod in, then out, and returned to the pipe along the barrel.
    He bent over the rifle, chest and elbows on the warm hood of the truck, adjusting the sandbags on the case. Then he slipped on a