"You don't seem so excited about it."
"Why don't I?" Bud snapped.
"Always before when deer season came you couldn't hardly sit still. Now you act like you'd rather not go."
"Oh shut up!" Bud said. Then, feeling remorseful, he turned to face Get. "Are you going deer hunting?"
"Everybody goes the first day and we got to get a deer because if we do"—Bud waited for what he knew was coming next—"we can sell another pig."
"I'm going to stay out and hunt for as long as I want to," Bud said loftily. "I'll hunt the whole season if I feel like it."
"I wish I could," Get said. "School, it's hard for me. But if I don't go, I fall behind, and if I fall behind . . ." He shrugged eloquently.
Bud thought of Mr. Thorne's saying that he thought it would be a very important part of Bud's education to hunt the black buck, but he still had no idea what Mr. Thorne really meant. There were a lot of things he did not understand, Bud decided as the bus stopped in front of the Bennetts' driveway.
"Good luck," he said to Get to make up for having snapped at him.
"Yeah," Get said listlessly.