Halfway through their shooting, the boys had replaced the glass jars with old rusty cans. The jars had made quite a mess on the bit of burlap they'd placed on the ground to catch the glass shards and make for easy removal from the yard, and they wanted to change targets before there was too much glass to account for. It was Alice's turn again. Howard stood at a 90 degree angle to Alice, far enough out of range, while Jack and Cricket hung back ten yards behind her, and Forrest brooded on the porch. Forrest had come in and out every hour or so to see what was going on.
Queue The Civil Wars - "I Had Me A Girl"
"Awlright, go on." Howard said.
Forrest, now standing at the very edge of the porch, closest to the action, scrunched up his brow.
Alice aimed, and pulled. BLAM! Another explosion, echoing throughout the yard, and a twanging sound as the slug punctured the old rusty can and knocked it a few feet in the air before letting it fall. Alice didn't wait for Howard to tell her to shoot again, she pulled the bolt to eject the cartridge and position the next round from the five round charger. She replaced the bolt and fired again. Four times. Quick, fluid movements, coupled with minor adjustments, each round producing a deafening crack and a complete obliteration of a rusty old can. His expression belied no particular sentiment, but internally, Forrest was shaking his head. That wasn't lucky shooting. She had been taught this skill very carefully by someone quite adept at it. The way in which she still managed to remain elegant and feminine, even with such power behind her trigger finger made his belly twist unpleasantly with a warm feeling that should have spread comfortably, but was instead met with resistance by the angry, brooding stance he'd adopted towards his brother. Getting so comfortable with her. Forrest recalled, not for the first time, that his encouragement where Alice was concerned came primarily from the people now at Blackwater Station with him, his brothers, Cricket, and Maggie. It was unlikely that Howard was actually attempting to make advances toward Alice, and far more likely that he was playing upon the fact that he knew Forrest would become jealous and forced to act.
"Shit! You can really throw lead!" Howard exclaimed, reaching down to his feet to pick up his jar and take another swig.
Alice laughed, bashfully, and ejected her last cartridge. Cricket and Jack were already scooping them up for her.
"Really," Howard asked, smiling at her as he brought the jar to his lips again. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"Well, for a man who owned far too much fur, my father objected to killing animals for sport. He wasn't bothered by others hunting, he just didn't particularly enjoy it himself. So most of our practice centered around target shooting." Bashfully, Alice returned to take her seat on the crate again, and Howard came closer, while Jack and Cricket went to set up again, digging through a burlap sack full of old cans they could line up on the shelf. Alice sighed.
"We should try moving targets next." She said.
Howard grinned, and laughed to himself, speaking to her out of earshot of the younger two boys.
"Whatchu wan do? Put an apple on Cricket's head and tell 'im to make a run for it?"
Alice's mouth dropped open.
"No!" She laughed, despite the nature of his suggestion, at the reference to William Tell.
"I have a clay launcher." She said simply. "And a few different types of target racks, and maybe a few other things. I'll have to look."
She had dumped most of her home and her life into her trunks carefully with respect to protecting each item, but without much regard for what was going into which trunk. She remembered Lettie's frequent admonishments that she really should catalogue what was going where, but the sickening numbness and raw ache that followed her father's death had left her all but deaf to most things other people said to her during that time.
Howard nodded at her, taking another sip. The afternoon sky was clear, and the temperature had started to climb into the higher forties. Alice took turns with Jack and Cricket, shooting when it was her turn, and remaining relatively quiet for whoever was up, so they could concentrate. But while Jack and Cricket were switching guns, Howard called over to Alice
"So your daddy didn' hunt. Do you?" Alice smiled.
"I'll shoot birds." She said. She was sitting on the crate, her rifle across her lap, pointed in a safe direction, her elbows on her knees and the heels of her hands up under her chin. "I try not to shoot anything with fur, but sometimes it can't be helped."
She thought of the day that a rabid coyote had come upon an accident that had occurred in which three massive logs had tumbled onto three workers, crushing one almost to death, and pinning the other two. Alice had heard the warning attached to the commonly held mountain belief that coyotes (among other animals, like big cats) could smell human blood and would be attracted to it. It was eleven twenty in the morning when Alice and her father had ridden to the disaster and her father had immediately leapt from his horse and hustled to help those who had first responded, attempting to deduce the best way to remove the logs from the workers, making sure that all three were equally safe while they tried to extract them. Alice had been fourteen. She'd had a different rifle then, but she had carried it across her back on their rides out for occasions such as this.
"Watch the parameter," her father had said. He was concerned about landslides and other natural occurrences such as other trees or roots being knocked asunder in the accident, and wanted his daughter to be able to warn them if any of these threats seemed imminent and they had to clear the area right away. The accident could result in a far worse disaster if the situation weren't managed properly. It was not long afterwards that she saw a snarling, menacing looking, very large coyote making his way towards the growing group of men who were trying to figure out how best to extract those men who were trapped beneath the falling limbs, and also lift them in the interim to alleviate the pressure on the bodies of the men trapped beneath. She could tell by the troubled way that he ambled that there was something terribly wrong with him. She didn't alert her father, she simply squeezed her horse, a Chestnut Warmblood at that time, into a walk that she directed around the pile of logs, placing herself between the men and the coyote, who despite his impairments had been moving quite quickly towards the assembly of victims and rescuers. Her horse sidled and shied, but she managed to steady him long enough to raise herself so she was standing up high over his ears, on the balls of her feet in her stirrups, her reins looped through her arm as she held her rifle with two hands. She aimed as best she could, but she thought perhaps she should be praying instead. When she fired, all she noticed at first was the reaction from her father and the workers, all quite startled. Her horse had jerked up his head and shied to the side a bit, but had otherwise remained rather calm. It was then that she had looked and the coyote had been reduced to a pile of fluff on the ground, and she was overwhelmed with a sense of guilt at what she had done. She had pitied the poor creature, who was so deranged by the rabies that was obviously ravaging his system. She decided then that what she had done was in part a merciful action, and put it from her mind, going to explain to her father what had happened.
It was the workers of the camp who, one month later, had presented her with her silver "Alice in Lumber Land" bracelet with the bark and leaves motif, the one she could most frequently be seen wearing. The one she was wearing now. She touched it, turning the ring around with her right hand, and thinking fondly. They had appreciated the risk she'd taken, even if it had only been for a smaller grouping of them. The coyote had become a rather large mantle that she often wore in the woods.
Alice came back to where she was. She'd always been known as a bit of a daydreamer, something that was dangerous when in her particular situation, holding a rifle. Howard was grinning at her, raising the jar to his lips yet again. "We go huntin' sometimes. You should come."
"For turkeys," she said.
Howard laughed. "Yeah, we can do a turkey shoot."
Alice smiled. "It's a deal." She said. She had the vague idea that Forrest was watching them quite intently, and that he had been for most of the afternoon. It was at that moment that he picked himself up and stocked inside, the sound of one of the screen doors snapping shut beside him as he came in.
Howard glowered at the doorway of the station.
"'scuse me," he said to Alice, and she nodded, turning her attention back to Cricket and Jack.
Howard took the porch steps up to the landing and headed inside the station, finding his brother behind the counter filling up his coffee mug, Maggie taking a break as there were no customers, sitting on a stool beside an open window, reading a book of short stories Alice had leant her. He came up to Forrest on the opposite side of the counter, put down his jar of shine and placed his palms flat down on the countertop.
"Awlright, For'st. What's eatin' ya?" Howard asked. His voice sounded like that of an irritated observer who has long endured a particular behavior that they simply cannot abide much longer. Forrest turned, his big frame taking up most of the surrounding area in the space he occupied. Maggie knew to mind her business and keep her face in her book. She could listen just fine as an invisible audience.
Forrest pointed with his right hand, aiming his finger outside towards where they'd been shooting. "Whatchu doin' out there?" He asked.
"Shootin." Howard said.
"Eyeah." Forrest said slowly. His eyes were steely as he stood opposite his brother. "But whatchu doin?"
"It's called fun, Forrest." Howard said. Forrest narrowed his eyes at his brother. He was trying to think of what he could say that wouldn't make him sound like a lovesick, jealous pup. Instead, he grunted a warning. He turned to stalk off but Howard followed him, not considering whether or not he was about to go too far.
"You want her attention all fer yerself. But you blow so cold with her, Forrest!" Howard called after his brother, walking after him.
"I enjoy her comp'ny, so does Maggie, so does Jack and so does Cricket. But we talk to her. You think she gon' wait around fer you to mumble at 'er every now'n then?"
Forrest turned around and walked towards Howard, stopping himself inches from his brother. While Forrest looked angry, Howard sighed, putting his hands on his hips and looking down, discouraged, but not backing down. "You know? Thing is, I think she will wait around for you. She got no other eyes for anyone else, which is why you look like such a sap." Howard shook his head again and turned around. "Poor girl."
Forrest, at this point, wasn't so angry as he had been, though his brother's verbal aggression had escalated. He was too concerned with, and surprised by what his brother was telling him. His face remained scrunched in an unpleasant position, but his eyes darted back and forth with his thoughts. Maybe it was, in fact, time. He'd brought her here to live so he could protect her, he'd bought her the horse so she'd be happy, and not lonely while he and the boys were busy. Now he thought for a moment, with pride, a swelling of his heart in his chest, and a bit of regret at having wasted time, that what Howard was telling him was true. He, Forrest, was what she seemed to everyone else to want more than any other thing, just as he did her. He'd been so blinded by his mission to make himself more worthy of her that he hadn't realized she already thought him so.
They both stopped, noticing that she had appeared on the porch, lifting the lid on the red Coca-Cola cooler the company had provided for the sales of their bottles. She lifted one out and opened it on the little bottle opener mounted to the side of the box, lifting her eyes for a moment to see Forrest facing her at the window. With a shy smile she waved, returning to the crate she'd been sitting on to enjoy the Virginia afternoon. Howard noticed that Forrest had remained stone still despite Alice's efforts to greet him, shook his head, and walked back out.
Forrest went into his office, sitting down in his chair. He raised his head to peek through the caged window on the side wall, making sure that there was no one around. He scratched at his scruff with his right hand, swinging back and forth in his chair uneasily. Forcing his hand wasn't something that generally worked in favor of whoever was making the attempt, but he was now concerned, based on Howard's one sided conversation with him, that he had been cold with Alice, and that she may in fact be wondering where he stood with her. All he'd been doing, all he'd been preparing for, included her. Was for her. But he supposed his brother was right. How could she have known? He reached into his rolltop desk, pulling out a secret compartment that slid out as it's own drawer. He carefully counted the money that was neatly stacked there, and the different newspaper clipping he'd seen with illustrations of what he'd been thinking of. He'd done a bit of reconnaissance in their travels to larger towns with larger selections of shops, but very little, though he knew exactly where he would go when he sought to find what he needed. He counted the money and replaced it and the clippings, then he turned back to business, immersing himself in moonshine and figures.