Michael Malone - Weebly

dangerous tests in later fields like the beachhead near
Caen in Normandy, where he had won his silver star
and steel pin. Back to a time when with his father and
his great-uncle William Bredforet, he had stood silent,
thigh-rooted in damp, still sedge, until a dog, now long
since dead, had rushed the silence, changed it to a whir
of ash-brown wings. "Get it!" Uncle William had
shouted. It was a Canada goose Ernest had shot, a
goose with white breast and black crown, the long
black neck limp like a dead snake. His reward had
been the burn of brandy from Uncle William's initialed
silver flask.
"The best part, you ask me, best part of any fool
sport, drinking after it." The small handsome man had
grinned, his moustache lively, his eyes like flowers in the
cold sunrise. On their way home through the woods
they had flushed a deer with white breast and black
crown of nubby antlers which spun leaping, then turned,
half hidden in close pines, to watch them, noisily and
speedlessly, go by. "Young buck!" whispered his greatuncle
Bredforet. "About your age, Ernie. Joke to think
of some creature out to make a trophy of your knobby