Lizard Tales (7 page)

When we finally got Jason back inside the house, she started stripping. Jason was still in his handcuffs. We were more excited than woodpeckers in a lumberyard. She took her shirt off and then she took off her pants. Then she turned around, picked up her things, and left. “My hour’s up,” she said while walking out the door. We were more confused than atheists at a tent revival and hotter than forty acres of burning stumps, but that’s one night none of us will ever forget.

You know, I learned a valuable lesson that night: Whoever said you can’t buy happiness must have been dead broke.

O
ne of my favorite things to do when I was growing up was to go hunting. I used to spend the summer picking tobacco leaves, hotter than a devil’s henchman caught in a wildfire, and dreaming of the upcoming days I could spend in the woods or the fields slinging bullets and arrows.

The week before deer season, I never could sleep. Most kids dreamed about bikes and games and girls; all I could see when I closed my eyes was racks and rubs, which made me happier than a fat puppy chasing a parked car. We might never have had much money, but we always had a freezer full of meat. Heck, I think we could have given it to Burger King their way, right away, anytime they ran low. If it flew, crawled, swam, or ran, we put bullets in it and spent many a night by the campfire swapping tall tales and remembering the one that got away. Fact is, every time I told my stories, the deer’s rack would grow quicker than Pinocchio’s nose at a women’s Weight Watchers meeting.

Of course, my passion for hunting grew—and with it, the desire to hunt different game and see different states became an obsession to me. I’d save most every dollar I made, and planned to one day go on a trip and take my pops, since he had spent so many days in the stand with me—days when I made more noise than a blind billy goat with bells on his horns at a Sunday-morning service. We’d leave with nothing but dreams of tomorrow. I had decided
that one day I was taking him to the place of no return for a country boy from the deep and dirty South: We was going north. Way north. So far up there you couldn’t find grits or cornbread.

So I started looking around. When you work the fields and grow up on a dirt road, there ain’t much you can afford. And I was tight with my money, too—tighter than a bull’s butt on fight night. But I found this ol’ boy way up in Maine that offered backcountry bear hunting; I figured this ol’ boy right here might just have the setup we was looking for. So I booked a bear-hunting trip just a few miles from the Canadian border. The ad said they had all the amenities of the backwoods and would provide a real hunting and outdoors-in-the-wild experience. I talked ol’ Pops into going—which was hard to do, ’cause he’s funny about leaving the area around the house. But with enough persuasion (in the form of a fresh batch of his ’shine), I got him loaded up and away we went.

Now, I didn’t know that Maine was basically on another continent. Heck, it took us more than twenty-four hours to drive there—and that was without taking any breaks. So by the time we pulled up, I was ready to pull my hair out. In fact, I would have rather driven a gasoline truck through a forest fire with a leaky valve. And if I had to hear any more of Pops’s stories, I swore I was gonna swallow my tongue and beg it to beat my guts out.

When we did get there, I was more excited than a fat baby looking at a chocolate cake. We turned into a driveway that was seven miles long. Now, I’m from the cut and lived my whole life in the Lick—where snails are gag gifts, not hors d’oeuvres. But going down this path worried me just a little. We came to a little shack in the middle of the forest, and this guy came out to meet us. He was a big
ol’ mountain man, and as soon as he spoke, I just knew that by the way his breath smelled he had to have just chewed the butthole out of a skunk. Then some girl came out behind him that was ugly enough to stop a bucket of calf slobber in midair. But I must say, they was some of the nicest people I had ever met—at least, I’m pretty sure they was people. They showed us around the place and we hit it off like birdshot in a baited field. The guy took me to a hole with four two-by-fours in a square around it and a bucket of sulfur, and he said, “This is our outhouse.” Now, like I said, I’m country, but at least we have walls on our outhouses so you don’t have to worry about the neighbors (or the fire ants) getting too nosy! Well, I just figured there were plenty of woods around, so we’d make do.

Next we walked over to this long hose attached to a pump handle. I followed the hose and it ran straight down to the stream. Mountain Man said, “This here is our shower.” I pumped that handle twice and the water that hit me was colder than a witch’s breast in a brass bra in the Arctic. I knew right then and there that a blind hog had a better chance of finding his shadow than I did of using that thing.

Our next stop was the sleeping quarters, which was a makeshift bunkhouse on a dirt floor. Now, I had spent the better part of my life roughing it, but I quickly realized that this was rougher than a cowboy’s rear end after wiping with 20-grit on the dusty trail. I also knew that if we were this deep in the woods and didn’t find a bear, he was sure to find us! That made me happier than a two-headed dog at a cat show.

Well, that night I was colder than an Eskimo’s butt on an ice toilet at Christmas, and was never so glad to see the sun coming up. The guide told us that you only hunt bears in the evening. So in the morning we’d go and bait
the stands and work the area, trying to see where the bears were moving. Now, I know there were days I probably could have failed my IQ test, but I didn’t see any need to go messing around on the ground near a bunch of bears. But since Pops always told me to be like a banana and hang in there with the bunch when we’re out of our element, I figured I’d tag along and at least see the countryside. But that guide had a better chance of nailing wet Jell-O to an oak tree than he did of getting me on the ground at a bait site.

As soon as we started out, I was pretty sure this fellow was riding a gravy train on biscuit wheels, ’cause we jumped into a four-door 2500 series Dodge truck and he hollered, “Let’s go to town!” Now, again, I’m no bear-hunting expert, but I was pretty sure the bait sites wouldn’t be on the main drag. So when he pulled into a Hardee’s forty-five miles away, in a town so small that the stoplight was a piece of colored construction paper that was green on one side and red on the other and directed by the wind, I was sure this guy must have been so dumb the only reason he got out of third grade was his momma gave him a crowbar.

He pulled up to the back of the restaurant by the grease vats—them great big ones that always sit by the Dumpster—and started filling up five-gallon buckets full of grease. Me and Pops just sat there in wonderment. But things really started getting interesting when he pulled up to a local doughnut shop and started rolling fifty-five-gallon barrels of old doughnuts up to the truck. He yelled, “Hey, do you mind getting out and helping me load these?”

I eased out of my seat, slightly apprehensive at what we were doing, knowing I wasn’t gonna go to some Podunk jail for heisting larger-than-life Cheerios. I finally broke down and said, “Bo, what in the world are we doing? Are we gonna bait bear or fetch our dinner?”

He just laughed and said, “Sonny, we’re picking up the bait! We’ve gotta swing by the gas station and get the lobster leftovers and add them to the mix. Then we put all this together and set it at the sites. Them bears will be all over this mush like bees on a honey-dipped hamburger.”

True to his word, we pulled into a gas station that had a little room where you could get Maine lobsters for four dollars apiece—they’d even steam ’em right there while you got your gas and stuff. First thing I did was jump on that like a beaver on a petrified tree, and I ate my fill of them red devils.

It was about then I decided that there was no way I was going in the woods with this cat. I was getting the impression he was crazier than a corn-fed ’coon on coke. We headed forty-five miles back into the cut and got to the first bait site. That’s when those lobsters started getting to me a bit. I probably should’ve stopped at one, but we didn’t have food like that down South (and I couldn’t afford it if we did). I told Mountain Man and Pops I was feeling like I’d been drug through the mud and left on the fence to dry, and I was just gonna hang out in the truck and wait for them to come back. I could tell from the look in his eyes that Pops was hotter than a gasoline-dipped hen at a chicken roast, but I just grinned and settled in for a short nap.

They took the four-wheeler off the trailer behind us and headed out into the bush, telling me they’d be back in about an hour. So I laid back in the seat and dozed off. I guess probably thirty minutes had passed when I heard the durndest noise. It sounded like a cow had eaten Astroturf, got constipated, and was moaning. I got out of the truck and started worrying. I didn’t know what sounds bears made, but if that was it, all the food in the back of the truck, and the fact that I was stuffed liked a Thanksgiving
turkey and reeking of lobster, probably wasn’t gonna fare too well for me. So I jumped out of the truck. The only thing I had with me was my skinning knife, but I figured if this was a bear and he wanted a meal, he’d better pack his lunch and put on some boots, ’cause this was gonna be an all-day, uphill battle.

The sound got closer. It was moving toward me. I got more nervous than a sugar-dipped pony on a hill of fire ants and settled in for the fight of my life. Just then, a head popped out of the trees … and then a body. I was squatted down at the front of the truck and that critter walked within five yards of me. But it wasn’t a bear—it was a baby moose! And it was cuter than a new puppy with his first spot.

Now, every moose I had seen up until then had been in magazines. They all had huge horns and looked like they could roll over a dump truck with a sneeze. But this fellow was no more than 250 pounds and looked like a little calf. He stopped, looked my way, and our eyes met. That’s when I had my first epiphany. I had always heard that an epiphany was a life-changing moment when everything becomes real clear, so I knew that I had just gotten the best idea I ever had. Looking back, if I had been any dumber, you’d have to tie a flag around my neck to keep the pigeons off. But I knew I was going to catch me a moose and raise him up; then, when he got to be world-class, I’d sell him to the highest bidder.

Since I was a football all-star and in great shape at the time, I knew that I’d have no problem overpowering this little rascal, tying up his feet, and waiting for Pops and the guide to come back so we could load him up. But two things never crossed my mind: the first being that it is highly illegal to keep a non-domesticated animal, and the second being it’s also illegal to take him across state
lines. But I set out after that thing running faster than an ugly girl’s blind date. Then, just like I was playing Donkey Kong, I had that moose in a headlock. It took me about three shakes of a mutt’s tail to figure out it was really the other way around: He had
me
in a headlock, and he was slinging me around like a naked stage diver at a KISS concert.

’Course, I would rather have been super-glued to a chimpanzee with a blowtorch in a room full of dynamite than to let go. I figured he’d tire down in just a minute. But the whole time, he was making this horrible howling sound that was curing my earlobes, so I knew I had to get him calmed down—and fast. I could just imagine me and this moose in the Lick, being the envy of the whole neighborhood: selling moose rides, moose antlers, moose pictures.