The Lawyer Also Rises

In the big black car at the head of a line of black cars which were following the black car Dick espied the flimmering of a covey in the Texas underbrush, and he unstrapped his small shotgun and grabbed a handful of shells from the Suburban's large cupholder, crushing in a thick soft fist the paper cup from double tall half-caf latte he had despised. His old weak friend, tall and old and drained of strength understood the gesture and grabbed his own fowling piece and opened the door to touch the baked red soil with a clean $300 Italian cowboy boot. The rancher had done well and the quail were large and bright-eyed and in the correct proportion for which Dick and his friend had requested. Dick's heart gladdened. Dick's heart raced. Dick's heart began palpitating and a medical attendant pushed the surgically installed button which shocked him with great electric force and returned his heart to the ordinary rythym and he looked toward a bush on a small rise 10 or perhaps 15 yards away that would be the day's trek that he would lead, following the quail track, the little splayed chicken-like dashes in the red dust and the soil that lead to the bush where the quail would wait in silence. The barrel of the gun was cool and heavy and pregnant with violence. The air held a tension and the sun could not burn through it. Dick waved off the helicopter and then he closed the door and the little ding of the car door open warning ding dinged no more and there was only the bush and the quail and the 15 yards like a threaded ancient path through an unknown land.

His old weak friend who was tall and old and held the gun like an enormous black ball point pen stood there in the yellow sun in the dayglow orange vest and cast about his dull grey eyes. He appeared to be cheerful but confused and dull and weak and old and tall and he went east like an arthritic giraffe to Dick's right though the scrub and the brush and the red soil to the bush on the little hill, and his old weak friend held the gun which was a pen toward only a memory of quail, not the living quail which waited and breathed and schemed in the tangled branches within the bush.

Sensing the quail and in the smell of the red dust and sage and the diesel trucks on I-37 Dick sent his Secret agents into the Bush with the quail in a pincer movement designed to flush the quail to his right, and the thrill of seeing the young strong men in the black suits and their black sunglasses and holsters flapping, waving their arms and running and tripping and yelling 'Quaily! Quaily! through the tall grass toward the Bush, a move he had always used, a move which had always confused the quail. And the open quiet mind opened before him and there was no Middle East only the gun and the quail and the Bush and the men in the black suits runnning around waving their arms, and the image of the line of the path of the fire to be sped his heart until it was arrested by the pacemaker and Dick lifted his gun several inches above his stomach and watched for the beating of the wings and the line of the flying quail, Dick's eye closed to all which was not there like the Hippies and Osama Bin Laden and the endless spinning of layers of betrayals. Only The Bush and the quail and the shotgun, lethal and the summing clarity.

Before he heard the rustle of the tiny leaves he saw the movement, a quail in fear and flight and taking a line matched so well to the angle at which he held the shotgun there was almost no muscle movement in his arms that followed the quail in silence along the sky which turned from blue and sunwhite to dayglo orange when in the furrow of moment he fired knowing before the metallic click was heard that the hunted was downed.

"Arrgh!" said the quail which was not the quail, but his friend who was old and weak and tall and lying bleeding from the face and chest in the grass, the fresh red blood looking black on the dayglow vest. His friend clutched his face in agony with an gnarled soft hand his gun lying akimbo on his leg. Dick remembered that he sent men to be shot and die, and they did die, and here his friend laying in the tall grass on the red soil bleeding onto a dayglow vest and Dick had shot him.

"Call back the helicopter," Dick said, to a man in a black suit with a radio who looked alarmed. Dick was not alarmed. The clarity was that the shot was a perfect shot that had broken the silence and followed the quail with a lethal accuracy, and that his friend who was after all, tall, lay bleeding on the ground was a detail which was a fact as real as blood in red dust but was not the truth. A dozen vehicles and a hundred men and women broke into the peace where there was only the moaning and the rustling of leaves and the hunting was over, and he would return to his car, and he did, and found the fresh hot double-tall half-caf latte in the deep cupholder of the big black car, which he had known would be there and which he despised.