Eli Don't Hunt

I had no choice, Jane liked to tell her friends. Nobody else would come.Why not?

Deer season, said Jane.

Deer season. Of course.

Nobody would come. Nobody could. Nobody was around, I was told. Who told you?

The deputy. Deputy … Deputy … What's his name, again?

________

Treat. It was Deputy Treat who set Jane straight. She had walked into the kitchen with her shopping, found the small round hole in the middle of one of the glass panes in the window over the sink. She called the sheriff's number. They said somebody would be along. Jane waited in the front room. She wouldn't wait in the kitchen. The hole in the glass was level with her eyes as she stood at the window. She showed it to the deputy. She knew what it was.

"That's a bullet hole, isn't it?" Jane asked Treat.

"I'd say so." Treat turned and looked around the kitchen, up and down. The hole in the window glass was about the size you could pass an ordinary pencil through. There were glass crumbs on the sill and in the sink. Two long cracks went like spokes from the hole to the woodwork around the window pane.

"The window's finished," said Jane.

"Part of it, anyway," said the deputy.

"That glass will have to be replaced."

"Sure will."

"I'll have to get somebody out here."

"Why?" asked the deputy. "Look, you get a new piece of glass, drop it in there. Points. A little putty. Done. Put your husband on it. You've got a husband, don't you?"

"As a matter of fact," said Jane, "no. I'll have to call somebody."

"Good luck," said the deputy.

"Good luck? What do you mean?"

"Good luck getting anybody. Today. This week, the next couple of weeks. Nobody's around."

"Not around? Where are they?"

"Everybody's in camp."

"What camp?"

"Deer camp. This is deer season, you know."

"I guess I'd forgotten," said Jane.

"You bet," said Treat. "Rifle season. First day, today. Everybody's at deer camp. They're hunting. Nobody's around. Look there."

He stepped across the kitchen and bent to the floor at the wall opposite the window. He picked something off the floor, put it on the counter beside the sink. A small copper-colored cone, a little lopsided at the apex.

"That's the bullet?" Jane asked. "Just lying there, on the floor?"

"Sometimes they kind of run out of juice, bullets," said Treat. "No telling where a bullet will end up."

"I stand at that window," said Jane. "I'm at the sink right there. Every day. It could have killed me."

"It could have, but it didn't. You weren't here."

"I'll call Arthur. Arthur Tavistock. Do you know him?"

"Artie? Sure."

"He once came and fixed a window upstairs that the ice broke. Artie Tavistock. He could fix this."

"I don't doubt he could, except for what I said: he's in camp. He's in camp up on Mount Nebo with Cola and them."

"What about O'Hara? Rory O'Hara? He's a builder, isn't he?"

"He is. But he's up at camp with the others. He and Cola are cousins."

"What am I supposed to do, then?"

"I don't know what to tell you," Deputy Treat said. "Well, but, wait a minute. One thing you could do. You could try Eli."

"Eli? Eli Adams?"

The deputy nodded. "Call Eli," he said.

"Why call Eli? Isn't he in deer camp with the rest?"

"Eli don't hunt," said Treat. He grinned. "Never has. His old lady don't let him. Or, she didn't."

________

"Eli? Eli's like the village idiot, isn't he?" asked Bram.

"The village idiot?"

"Isn't he? You're talking about Eli Adams, right?"

"Of course he's not the village idiot," said Jane. "What a thing to say. What gave you that idea? Now, it's true, Eli probably didn't go to Princeton. But, then, neither did you...