I was wanting to die ... these successive humiliations seemed too great to live through.
The grey light of morning filtering in.
Lan stood over my bed.
"—want to go hunting with me to-day?... shootin' blackbirds?"
"Yes, Uncle Lan," I assented, my mind divided between fear of him and eagerness to go.
In the kitchen we ate some fried eggs and drank our coffee in silence. Then we trudged on through the dew-wet fields, drenched to the knees as if having waded through a brook.
Lan bore his double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn, flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened through, and we went on ... still in silence. The silence began to make me tremble but I was glad, anyhow, that I had gone with him. I conjectured that he had brought me a-field to give me a final whipping—"to teach me to mind Granma."
"—had to bring you out here ... the women are too chicken-hearted—they stop me too soon...."
"—Pity your pa's away ... don't do to leave a kid alone with women folks ... they don't make him walk the chalk enough!"