[0:02]Chapter 6, my Victor Hazel. The following Friday, we were, while we were having supper in the caravan, my father said, if it's all right with you, Danny, I'll be going out again tomorrow night.
[0:13]You mean poaching? Yes. Will it be Hazel's wood again? It'll always be Hazel's wood, he said.
[0:20]First because that's where all the feasants are, and second because I don't like Mr. Hazel one bit, and it's a pleasure to poach his birds.
[0:28]I must pause here to tell you something about Mr. Victor Hazel. He was a brewer of beers and he owned a huge brewery. He was rich beyond words, and his property stretched for miles along either side of the valley.
[0:40]All the land around us belonged to him, everything on both sides of the road, everything except the small patch of ground on which our filling station stood. That patch belonged to my father.
[0:51]It was a little island in the middle of the vast ocean of Mr. Hazel's estate. Mr. Victor Hazel was a roaring snob, and he tried desperately to get in with what he believed were the right kind of people.
[1:03]He hunted with the hounds and gave shooting parties and wore fancy waistcoats. Every week he drove his enormous silver Rolls-Royce past our filling station on the way to the brewery.
[1:13]As he flashed by, we could sometimes catch a glimpse of the great glistening beer face above the wheel, pink as a ham, all soft and inflamed from drinking too much beer.
[1:27]No, my father said, I do not like Mr. Hazel one little bit. I haven't forgotten the way he spoke to you last year when he came in for a fill up.
[1:37]I hadn't forgot it either. Mr. Hazel had pulled up alongside the pump in his glistening gleaming Rolls-Royce and had said to me, fill her up, and look sharp about it.
[1:47]I was about eight years old at the time. He didn't get out of the car, he just handed me the key to the cap of the patrol tank, and as he did so, he barked out,
[1:54]and keep your filthy little hands to yourself, you understand?
[1:59]I didn't understand at all, so I said, what do you mean, sir? There was a leather writing crop on the seat beside him. He picked it up and pointed it at me like a pistol.
[2:11]If you make any dirty finger marks on my paintwork, he said, I'll step right out of this car and give you a good hiding.
[2:20]My father was out of the workshop almost before Mr. Hazel had finished speaking. He strode up to the window of the car and placed his hands on the sill and leaned in.
[2:29]I don't like you speaking to my son like that, he said, his voice was dangerously soft.
[2:36]Mr. Hazel did not look at him. He sat quite still in the seat of his Rolls-Royce, his tiny piggy eyes staring straight ahead. There was a smug superior little smile around the corners of his mouth.
[2:47]You had no reason to threaten him, my father went on, he had done nothing wrong.
[2:53]Mr. Hazel continued to act as though my father wasn't there. Next time you threaten someone with a good hiding, I suggest you pick on a person your own size, my father said, like me, for instance.
[3:06]Mr. Hazel still did not move. Now go away, please, my father said, we do not wish to serve you.
[3:13]He took the key from my hand and tossed it through the window. The Rolls-Royce drove away fast in a cloud of dust.
[3:20]The very next day, an inspector from the local Department of Health arrived and said he had come to inspect our caravan. What do you want to inspect it for? My father said.
[3:30]To see if it's a fit place for humans to live, the man said, we don't allow people to live in dirty broken down shacks these days.
[3:37]My father showed him the inside of the caravan, which was spotlessly clean as always and as cozy as cozy could be.
[3:45]And in the end, the man had to admit there was nothing wrong with it.
[3:49]Soon after that, another inspector turned up and took a sample of patrol from one of our underground storage tanks. My father explained to me they were checking up on him to see if we were mixing some of our second grade patrol in with the first grade stuff, which is an old dodge practiced by crooked filling station owners.
[4:08]Of course, we were not doing this. Hardly a week went by without some local official dropping in to check on up on one thing or another, and there was a little doubt, my father said, that the long and powerful arm of Mr. Hazel was reaching out behind the scenes and trying to run us off our land.
[4:25]So all in all, you can see why it gave my father a certain pleasure to poach Mr. Victor Hazel's feasants. That night, we put the raisins into soak.
[4:35]The next day was poaching day, and don't think my father didn't know it. From the moment he got out of his bunk in the morning, the excitement began to build up inside him.
[4:46]This was a Saturday, so I was home from school and we spent most of the day in the workshop decarbonizing the cylinders of Mr. Pratchet's Austin 7.
[4:57]It was a great little car, built in 1933, a tiny miracle of a machine that still ran as sweetly as ever, though it was now more than 40 years old.
[5:08]My father said that these Austin 7s, better known in their time as baby Austins, were the first successful mini cars ever made.
[5:16]Mr. Pratchet, who owned a turkey farm near Aalsberry, was as proud as he could be of this one, and he always thought he always brought it into to us for repair.
[5:30]Working together, we released the valve springs and drew it out, and drew out the valves. We unscrewed the cylinder head nuts and lifted off the head itself.
[5:40]Then we began scraping the carbon from the inside of the head and from the tops of the pistons.
[5:46]I want to be away by 6 o'clock, my father said. Then I will get to the wood exactly at twilight.
[5:53]Why at twilight? I asked. Because at twilight, everything, everything inside the wood becomes veiled and shady.
[6:00]You can see to move around, but it's not so easy for someone else to see you, and when danger threatens you,
[6:09]you can always hide in the shadows, which are darker than a wolf's mouth.
[6:14]Why don't you wait until it gets really dark? I asked. Then you wouldn't be seen at all.
[6:20]You couldn't catch anything if you did that, he said. When night comes on, all the feasants fly up into the trees to roost.
[6:29]Feasants are just like other birds. They never sleep on the ground. Twilight, my father added, begins about 7:30 this week.
[6:37]And it and as it's at least an hour and a half walk to the wood, I must not leave here later than 6 o'clock.
[6:44]Are you going to use the sticky hat or will it be the horsehair stopper? I asked. Sticky hat, he said, I'm very fond of the sticky hat.
[6:53]When will you be back? About 10 o'clock, he said. 10:30 at the latest. I promise I'll be back by 10:30.
[7:00]You're quite sure you don't mind being left alone? Quite sure, I said. But you will be all right, won't you, Dad?
[7:07]Don't you worry about me, he said, putting his arm around my shoulders and giving me a hug. But you said there wasn't a man in your dad's village that didn't get a bit shot up by the keepers sooner or later.
[7:18]Ah, my father said, yes, I did say that, didn't I? But in those days, there were a lot more keepers in the woods than there are now. There were keepers behind almost every tree.
[7:29]How many are there now in Hazel's wood? Not too many, he said. Not too many at all.
[7:34]As the day wore on, I could see my father getting more and more impatient and excited. By 5 o'clock, we had finished work on the baby Austin and together we ran her up and down the road to test her out.
[7:46]At 5:30, we had an early supper of sausages and bacon, but my father, my father hardly ate anything at all.
[7:54]At 6 o'clock precisely, he kissed me goodbye and said, promise not to wait up for me, Danny. Put yourself to bed at 8:00 and go to sleep, right?
[8:03]He set off down the road and I stood on the platform of the caravan watching him go. I loved the way he moved.
[8:10]He had that long, loping stride, all countryman have, who are used to covering great distances on foot. He was wearing an old navy blue sweater and an even older cap on his head.
[8:22]He turned and waved to me. I waved back. Then he disappeared around a bend in the road.
