Crossing Shot

I've never shot skeet, and I wouldn't be very good. I'm decent shooting something in the head at a hundred feet with a .22 rifle, and I can plink cans at twenty-five feet with an accurate pistol. But I'm not really a very good shot, I know people who can drill a bulls-eye at 600 yards with iron sights. I can't even see that far. I assume a skunk, running around in circles, and foaming at the mouth is rabid. I have a twelve gauge shotgun, a pump, that I had sawn down to barely legal, which I keep in the umbrella stand, number 4 shot, with the chamber empty. It only takes a second to pump and it's a menacing sound. The problem is I have to get closer to the animal because of the sawed off barrel. It's not a problem and I kill it, then have to bury the remains. I find that I know almost nothing about rabies, and make a note. The crows were bitching about something and I never did find out what it was. I've observed crows for a great many years and I think they sometimes bitch just to hear themselves. Last night I thought I might go to town today, but I sat around and finished reading a couple of library books, looked up the word "grace" in several dictionaries, had beans on toast for the first time in a while, and suddenly the day was gone. I need something to cook for the weekend, lamb shanks or pork neck bones, maybe some greens with fat-back, something. At the peak of my free-ranging pig days I had more pig heads than I could give away. Roy and I would make head-cheese and scrapple, pre-sold and in demand, late into the night, if either of us needed cash money. I had a five-year note on the farm, with a single annual payment. I'd raise livestock all year, beef, pigs, goats, then sell everything at auction (the auction was the big weekly event in rural Mississippi) to make my nut. Sausage, headcheese, scrapple, and homebrew, provided all the rest of the cash-flow. I built a few barns for other people, a couple of houses. Building came natural. You build a set, you build a house, there isn't that much space between. One of the last big sets I built, an outdoor production of Peter Grimes, in Maine; fucking maritime climate, fog rolling in, nothing was actually ever dry. I started thinking about houses, and ever since, I design houses in my head, staircases, showers; very few drawings, what I enjoy is just constructing things in my head. Took the Jeep into the dealer, for a factory recall, took a book in case I had to wait but they just had to replace two bolts in the dealer installed trailer hitch, and I was gone in twenty minutes. Stopped at the pub and Cory brought me a Scotch Egg, which is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep-fried, he had baked these (no fryer) and they were wonderful; sliced, served with a mustard sauce.