“Reckon so,” I said.

“Maybe we could hide him down here, come every day, feed and water him.”

“I don’t think so. He’d be at the mercy anything came along. Darn chiggers and ticks would eat him alive.” I’d thought of that because I could feel bites all over me and knew tonight I’d be spending some time with a lamp and tweezers, getting them off all kinds of places, bathing myself in kerosene, then rinsing. During the summer me and Tom ended up doing that near every evening. In fact, ticks were so thick they gathered on weed tops awaiting prey in such piles they bent the weed stalks over. Biting blackflies were thick in the woods, especially as you neared the river, and the chiggers were plentiful and hungry. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, the mosquitoes rose up in such a gathering they looked like a black cloud growing up from the bottoms.

To ward off the ticks and chiggers we tied kerosene-soaked rags around our ankles, but I can’t say it worked much, other than keeping the bugs off the rags themselves. The ticks and chiggers found their way onto your clothing and body, and by nightfall they had nested snugly into some of the more personal areas of your person, sucking blood, raising up red welts.

“It’s gettin’ dark,” Tom said.

“I know.”

I looked at Toby. There was mostly just a lump to see, lying there in the wheelbarrow covered by the dark. While I was looking he raised his head and his tail beat on the wooden bottom of the wheelbarrow a couple of times.

“Don’t think I can do it,” I said. “I think we ought to take him back to Daddy, show how he’s improved. He may have a broke back, but he can move his head and even his tail now, so his whole body ain’t dead. He don’t need killin’.”

“Daddy may not see it that way, though.”

“Reckon not, but I can’t just shoot him without trying to give him a chance. Heck, he treed six squirrels. Mama’ll be glad to see them squirrels. We’ll just take him back.”