"I never learned," she told him.
"That's all right."
There wasn't time, of course,
although it seemed as though it
telescoped so that you might
put it all into one paragraph if
you could get it right.
There was a log house, chinked
white with mortar, on a hill
above the lake. There was a
bell on a pole by the door to
call the people in to meals.
Behind the house were fields
and behind the fields was the
timber. A line of lombardy
poplars ran from the house to
the dock. Other poplars ran
along the point. A road went up
to the hills along the edge of
the timber and along that road
he picked blackberries. Then
that log house was burned
down and all the guns that had
been on deer foot racks above
the open fire place were
burned and afterwards their
barrels, with the lead melted in
the magazines, and the stocks
burned away, lay out on the
heap of ashes that were used to
make lye for the big iron soap
kettles, and you asked
Grandfather if you could have
them to play with, and he said,
no. You see they were his guns
still and he never bought any
others. Nor did he hunt any
more. The house was rebuilt in
the same place out of lumber
now and painted white and
from its porch you saw the
poplars and the lake beyond;
but there were never any more
guns. The barrels of the guns
that had hung on the deer feet
on the wall of the log house lay
out there on the heap of ashes
and no one ever touched them.
In the Black Forest, after the
war, we rented a trout stream
and there were two ways to
walk to it. One was down the
valley from Triberg and
around the valley road in the
shade of the trees that
bordered the white road, and
then up a side road that went
up through the hills past many
small farms, with the
big Schwarzwald houses, until
that road crossed the stream.
That was where our fishing
began.
JOY FEELINGS | DECEMBER ISSUE
269