Oh dear me, dear me! I had a sudden fever. Why hadn't Gianfranco left me in my blissful unconsciousness instead of laughingly stressing that today we had to compete with the best rifles in the United States?
I touched my forehead: fever sweat, I'm fresh like a Floridita Daiquiri. And even if I get a fever, I certainly cannot retire: we must be 5 against 5 and at the last moment a rifle could not be missing, which was me, who moreover today must shoot not well but very well, as Papa expected in his stubborn confidence in me.
While the team members were cast by lot, I thought back to the first time I came to the Club dei Cazadores de Cierro. Papa had shown me how to hold the rifle, how to look through the viewfinder, he had explained to me that one had to try to guess - from a slight click and the rustle of the wings - from which side a cage was opening to be ready, springy but safe on the legs slightly apart, to turn in the direction of the flight, immediately very fast because the pigeons were of the "correos*" type. You had to be careful and calm, he said.
I had done as he told me and my first run had immediately crashed. I had smacked the second, who had continued the flight swaying and then immediately was shot down by Papa, ready behind me. I had hit the fourth, failed the fifth, hit the sixth well, in short, a good average.
To celebrate my baptism of fire, Mary had opened her basket full of excellent morro-crabs, large prawns caught just outside the harbor and Papa, bottles of champagne. I was sitting on the ground in the sun, facing the veranda, and I was thinking of taking a picture of the board because Carlo and Nanuck would never have believed that I had hit so many pigeons, when Gianfranco came to sit...
* the word means "post" or "mail" in Spanish so I assume that she means a homing or carrier pigeon.
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