Vintage Ford by Richard Ford Page B

in flimsy shacks and stilt-houses along the single-lane road down from Violet, Louisiana. It was a famous place to me in the way that hunting camps can be famously mysterious and have a danger about them, and represent the good and the unknown that so rarely combine in life.
    My father had not come to get me as he’d said he would. Instead a yellow taxi with a light on top had stopped in front of our house and a driver came to the door and rang and told me that Mr. McKendall had sent him to drive me to Reggio—which was in St. Bernard Parish, and for all its wildness not really very far from the Garden District.
    â€œAnd is that really you?” my father said from in the boat, turning around, after I had stood on the end of the dock for a minute waiting for him to notice me. A small stunted-looking man with a large square head and wavy black hair and wearing coveralls was hauling canvas bags full of duck decoys down to the boat. Around the camp there was activity. Cars were arriving out of the darkness, their taillights brightening. Men’s voices were heard laughing. Someone had brought a dog that barked. And it was not cold, in spite of being the week before Christmas. The morning air felt heavy and velvety, and a light fog had risen off the bayou, which smelled as if oil or gasoline had been let into it. The mist clung to my hands and face, and made my hair under my cap feel soiled. “I’m sorry about the taxi ride,” my father said from the bow of the aluminum skiff. He was smiling in an exaggerated way. His teeth were very white, though he looked thin. His pale, fine hair was cut shorter and seemed yellower than I remembered it, and had a wider part on the side. It was odd, but I remember thinking—standing looking down at my father—that if he’d had an older brother, this would be what that brother would look like. Not good. Not happy or wholesome. And of course I realized he was drinking, even at that hour. The man in the coveralls brought down three shotgun cases and laid them in the boat. “This little
yat
rascal is Mr. Rey-nard Theriot, Junior,” my father said, motioning at the small, wavy-haired man. “There’re some people, in New Orleans, who know him as Fabrice, or the Fox. Or Fabree-chay. Take your pick.”
    I didn’t know what all this meant. But Renard Junior paused after setting the guns in the boat and looked at my father in an unfriendly way. He had a heavy, rucked brow, and even in the poor light his dark complexion made his eyes seem small and penetrating. Under his coveralls he was wearing a red shirt with tiny gold stars on it.
    â€œFabree-chay is a duck caller of surprising subtlety,” my father said too loudly. “Among, that is to say, his other talents. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fabrice? Did you say hello to my son, Buck, who’s a very fine boy?” My father flashed his big white-toothed smile around at me, and I could tell he was taunting Renard Junior, who did not speak to me but continued his job to load the boat. I wondered how much he knew about my father, and what he thought if he knew everything.
    â€œI couldn’t locate my proper hunting attire,” my father said, and looked down at the open front of his topcoat. He pulled it apart, and I could see he was wearing a tuxedo with a pink shirt, a bright-red bow tie and a pink carnation. He was also wearing white-and-black spectator shoes which were wrong for the Christmas season and in any case would be ruined once we were in the marsh. “I had them stored in the garage at mother’s,” he said, as if talking to himself. “This morning quite early I found I’d lost the key.” He looked at me, still smiling. “You have on very good brown things,” he said. I had just worn my khaki pants and shirt from school—minus the brass insignias—and black tennis shoes and an old canvas jacket and cap I found in a closet. This was