The Second Coming

boiler rim. You right, Mister Barrett! Was she even listening? And now the man finally looking down his cheek at him hugged alongside: Right?
    Yes sir. He waited only to be released from the hug.
    There was silence. They spoke no more of it. We know, don’t we, the silence said, that the man was somehow wounded by the same shot and there is nothing to be said about it.
    But how did he miss the bird? How did he wound himself?
    While the sheriff was taking care of the man in the swamp, the guide brought the two shotguns, a dead quail, and three empty shells into the dark clean room smelling of coal oil and newspaper and flour paste where the Negro woman was washing his face. She dried it and patted something light and feathery—spiderwebs?—on his cheek. He didn’t feel bad but his ear still roared. “H ere dey,” said the black youth. They yours and hisn. He looked down at the kitchen table at the two shotguns, the three empty Super-X shells, and the dead quail. This black boy was no guide. What guide would pick up empty shotgun shells? You didn’t see the other bird? he asked the guide. Ain’t no other bird, said the black boy. The white boy said: There were two singles and he shot twice and he never misses. The black boy said: Well he done missed this time. The white boy heard himself saying: You just didn’t find the bird, and getting angry and wondering: Why am I worrying about the second bird? Nawsuh, said the woman, whose black arms were sifted with flour. John sho find your bird if he was there. Look, he even found your bullets. Must have been the dogs got him.
    He looked at the Greener on the kitchen table in the shotgun cabin, sat down, broke the breech, and took out the one empty shell and set it next to the shells the guide had found. As he gazed he put one hand to his cheek, which had begun to bleed again, and covered his roaring ear.
    Now in a green forest glade near a pretty pink-and-green golf links, he touched his deafened ear. Did it still roar a little or was it the seashell roar of the silence of forest? Holding the three-iron in both hands he tested the spring of its steel shaft.
    It was as if the thirty years had passed and he had not ever left the Negro cabin but, strange to say, had only now got around to saying what he had not said for thirty years. Again he smelled the close clean smell of kerosene and warm newspaper.
    Now in Carolina in a glade in the white pines he said aloud: There was only one shell in the Greener, for some reason smiling a little and examining the three-iron closely as if it had a breech which could be broken, revealing the missing shell. But he only saw the green Winchester Super-X with its slightly wrinkled cylinder smelling of cordite. What happened to the other shell? Nothing. There was no other shell. I broke the breech of the Greener and there was only one shell. Why? Because he reloaded after the first shot. He shot the first single. Then there was a pause. It was then that I heard the geclick of the Greener breech opening and the gecluck of its closing. But why reload with one good shell left? That was all he needed for the second single if I missed it. Because he always liked to be ready. He liked to shoot quick and on the rise. And why, after the second shot, did he reload with only one shell?
    Because— He smiled at the three-iron which he held sprung like a bow in front of him.
    Because when he reloaded the last time, he knew he only needed one shot.
    But why reload at all? He had reloaded before the second shot. After the second shot, he still had a good shell in the second chamber.
    Wait a minute. Again he saw the sun reflected from something beyond the chestnut deadfall.
    What happened? Here’s what happened.
    He fired once at the first single. Geclick. Eject one shell and replace it. Gecluck.
    He fired the second time at the second single and also hit me. Geclick. Reload. Gecluck.
    Why reload if he knew he only needed one more shot? He still had a good shell in the second chamber.
    In the Carolina pine forest he closed his eyes and saw green Super-X shells lined up on the clean quilt in the Negro cabin.
    There were four shells.
    Faraway the golfers were shouting, their voices blowing away like me killdeer on the high skyey fairways. It was close and still in the glade. He was watching the three-iron as, held in front of him like a divining rod, it sank toward the earth. Ah, I’ve found it after all. The