Weisbaum was beginning to get an awed look on his face. “Go on, hillbilly, keep firing.”
Behind the corporal and the recruit, the radioman was talking softly to the pits. “He’s in position… he’s aiming… he’s holdin—” The operator stopped talking and shook his handset and held it again to his ear. Jed fired. A split second later the radio burst into voice. “… Did it again,” the pit operator yelled excitedly.
Jed fired all twenty rounds into the exact same hole and the range firing came to a screeching halt. By the time he was on the final round, all other firing had stopped and range officers and safety NCO’s were gathered in a semicircle around the prone mountain boy.
Weisbaum pounded Jed on the back as the young recruit scrambled to his feet and dusted his fatigues. “Man, what an eye. Wait ‘til the old man sees this. Look,” he took Jed by the arm, “you shoot like this all the time back in them hills you come from?” Jed nodded. “I thought so,” Weisbaum cried happily. “Go sit down and take it easy. I want the old man to come out and see this.”
Jed smiled happily and walked off the firing line amidst the admiring stares of his fellow recruits. He flung himself on the ground in the shade of a stack of ammunition boxes and grinned to himself. Shucks, all that excitement over a little shooting. Back home he did it all the time. But it’d make Ma proud to know he could do something real good. He let his mind travel for the first time in weeks.
On the range road a few feet away, a convoy of trucks carrying another recruit company to the ranges farther down the line, suddenly spluttered and came to a stop as their engines, died.
“Ma,” Jed thought, “you busy?”
Behind the cabin in Bluebird Gulch, Ma Cromwell laid down the axe she had been splitting firewood with and closed her eyes. “ ‘Bout time you remembered your maw,” she replied. “You all right, Sonny?”
“I’m jest fine, Ma. An’ I did somethin’ good, too, Ma. I just showed these Army fellers what us Cromwells kin do with a rifle gun.”
Jed lay in the warm sun and let the light filter through his closed eyelids. He paid no attention to the clanging of truck hoods and the muttered curses of a half dozen truck drivers as they clambered over the front of their vehicles trying to figure out what was causing them to have engine trouble.
“What did you do, Sonny?” Ma asked.
“Tweren’t really nothing, Ma,” Jed replied. “I shot this here newfangled gun they gave me at a big ol’ target ‘n hit it, Ma. Honest, Ma, that black circle they got in that thing is jest ‘bout as big as the hind end of a black bear and it ain’t no further away than the bottom of the cornfield from the cabin door.”
In the range control tower, Corporal Weisbaum was getting madder every second.
“What’s the matter with that switchboard operator,” he screamed. “Don’t he hear the buzzer?” He shook the phone and roared again. Finally, he slapped it down on the hook. “Gimme that radio,” he said, reaching for the handset. The radio operator shook his head sadly. “No use, corp. It’s deader’n doornail. Don’t know what’s the matter. It just quit.”
Weisbaum looked around and spotted one of the regular jeep drivers standing at the foot of the tower. “Mahoney,” he yelled. “Get in your jeep and go back and get the old man. Tell him he’s gotta see Cromwell shoot. You can tell him what happened.”
The jeep driver started towards his vehicle. “And Mahoney,” Weisbaum yelled after him, “while you’re there, bring back another radio and tell that idiot on the switchboard we got wire trouble.” Mahoney nodded and went to his jeep.
Back at the cabin, Ma Cromwell wiped her face with her apron skirt. “Shore hot today,” she thought. “You hot there, too, Sonny?”
“Kinda hot, Ma,” Jed thought back. “Shore ain’t like home. Not bad though.”
“You gettin’ enough to eat, child?” Ma asked.
Jed frowned slightly and stepped up his mental output. A half mile down range and a thousand feet up, an Army helicopter heading for a maneuver area, coughed and quit. The blades went into autogyro as it sank quickly to earth.
Vehicles all over the post came to a spluttering stop and office lights and refrigerators went off.
“What did you say, Ma?” Jed asked. “Seemed like you got sorta weak.”
“ ‘Tain’t me,” Ma snorted. “Jest that nosy Miz Hawkins. She’s gotta listen in on everybody’s private talk up in these hills, seems like.” There was the feeling of an indignant gasp and then Ma’s thoughts came booming through. Jed relaxed and grinned. The chopper was almost on the ground when its engine caught fire once again and went surging up and forward. The surprised pilot fought to get control before he slammed into a low hill. Lights came back on and electrical equipment began running other than close to the range.
“Shouldn’t ought to talk like that, Ma,” Jed grinned. “She’s jest bein’ friendly like.”
“Hm-m-m,” Ma sniffed, “gettin’ so’s a body cain’t even talk with her own kinfolk without everybody in these parts listenin’ in.”
Mahoney got out of his jeep and walked back to the tower. “Jeep won’t start,” he called up to Weisbaum.
The corporal turned purple and leaned over the edge of the tower. “Ta hell with it then,” he roared. “Now get those bums back on the line. We got a whole platoon to shoot out and I want to see that hillbilly do the same thing in the standing position.
“Cromwell,” he bellowed, “get up on that line.”
Jed opened his eyes quickly and then shut them for another moment.
“Got to go, Ma,” he thought quickly, “that corporal feller’s yellin’ again. You take care, Ma.”
“I will, Sonny,” Ma thought back. “Mind your manners.”
Jed got up and hurried to the firing line. In the tower, the phone began ringing and the radio and telephone operators began reporting the equipment trouble they’d been having. On the road, one of the truck drivers halfheartedly stepped on the starter for the tenth time. The engine roared to life. The other drivers stopped and stared, then climbed down from fenders and front bumpers and tried their own starters. The trucks and their puzzled drivers left. Firing resumed.
That evening in the barracks, Harry Fisher complimented the mountain boy. “Nice shooting today, Jed,” he said, “I was on the radio in the pits while you were shooting. I don’t think anyone ever saw anything like that before.”
Jed smiled at his friend and bunkmate. “It’s easy to do, real easy Harry,” he said. “I reckon everyone could do it once they get the hang of it.”
Fisher smiled ruefully. “You’re looking at one guy who’ll never get the hang of it,” he said, “whatever the ‘hang of it’ might be.”
“Honest, Harry,” Jed said earnestly, “all you gotta do is jest think them bullets into that big black spot.”
Fisher laughed. “I could think like Socrates and never come close to…” He stopped and stared at Jed with a half-smile. “You know, Jed, you’re kind of weird sometimes. ‘Think the bullets.’ Come to think of it, though, that’s not the only weird thing. Did you know that everytime you were getting ready to shoot our radios went dead today?”
Jed frowned thoughtfully. “That’s funny. I ain’t never heard of that happenin’ afore. O’ course, we never had radios in Bluebird Gulch. Only thing we ever had trouble with wuz the ‘lectric light bulbs in Paulsburg the one-two times our folks went down there. Seems like them lights wuz goin’ out everytime one of us wuz mind-talkin’ with some homefolks.”
Harry stared puzzledly at the mountain boy.
“You know,” Jed tried to explain, “like when you might of fergot somethin’ someone wanted real bad from the store. Or mebbe like one time when Ma’n me wuz in the big store in Paulsburg and she wuz gettin’ some fancy cloth fer Miz Culpepper. Store didn’t have no fancy cloth like Miz Culpepper wanted, with big red flowers. Only had blue flowers. So Ma, she mind-asked Miz Culpepper if the blue ones would be all right. Every durned ‘lectric light bulb in that store went out.”