Stories (2011) (55 page)

The day grew hot and the trees held the hot and made it hotter
and made it hard to breathe, like sucking down wool and chunks of flannel.
Frank and Leroy sweated their clothes through and their hair turned to wet
strings. Black Joe, though sweaty, appeared as fresh as a virgin in spring.

“Where you get your hat?” Black Joe asked Leroy suddenly,
when they stopped for a swig from canteens.

“Seed salesman. My wife knocked him out and I kept the hat.”

“Huh, no shit?” Black Joe took off his big old hat and waved
around. “Bible salesman. He told me I was gonna go to hell, so I beat him up,
kept his hat. I shit in his Bible case.”

“Wow, that’s mean,” Frank said.

“Him telling me I’m going to hell, that make me real mad. I
tell you that to tell you not to forget my eleven-fifty. I’m big on payment.”

“You can count on us if we win,” Frank said.

“No. You owe me eleven-fifty win or lose.” Black Joe said,
putting his hat back carefully on his head, looking at the two smaller men like
a man about to pick a hen for neck wringing and Sunday dinner.

“Sure,” Frank said. “Eleven-fifty, win or lose. Eleven-fifty
when we get the pig and the mule.”

“Now that’s the deal as I see it,” Black Joe said. “I tell
women it’s eight dollars, that way I make some whisky money. Black Joe didn’t
get up yesterday. No, he didn’t. And when he gets up, he got Bible salesman’s
hat on.”

—————

They waded through the swamp and through the woods for some
time, and just before dark, Black Joe picked up on the mule’s unshod tracks. He
bent down and looked at them. He said, “We catch him, he’s gonna need trimming
and shoes. Not enough rock to wear them down. Soft sand and swamp. And here’s
the pig’s tracks. Hell, he’s big. Tracks say, three hundred pounds. Maybe
more.”

“That’s no pig,” Leroy said. “That’s a full-blown hog.”

“Damn,” Frank said. “They’re real.”

“But can he race?” Leroy said. “And will the pig cooperate?”

They followed the tracks until it turned dark. They threw up
a camp, made a fire, and made it big so the smoke was strong, as the mosquitoes
were everywhere and hungry and the smoke kept them off a little. They sat there
in the night before the fire, the smoke making them cough, watching it churn up
above them, through the trees. And up there, as if resting on a limb, was a
piece of the moon.

They built the fire up big one last time, turned into their
covers, and tried to sleep. Finally, they did, but before morning, Frank awoke,
his bladder full, his mind as sharp as if he had slept well. He got up and
stoked up the fire, and walked out a few paces in the dark and let it fly. When
he looked up to button his pants, he saw through the trees, across a stretch of
swamp water, something moving.

He looked carefully, because whatever it was had stopped. He
stood very still for a long time, and finally what he had seen moved again. He
thought at first it was a deer, but no. There was enough light from the early
rising sun knifing through the trees that he could now see clearly what it was.

The White Mule. It stood between two large trees, just
looking at him, its head held high, its tall ears alert. The mule was big.
Fifteen hands high, like Robert E. Lee, and it was big-chested, and its legs
were long. Something moved beside it.

The Spotted Pig. It was big and ugly, with one ear turned up
and one ear turned down. It grunted once, and the mule snorted, but neither
moved.

Frank wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t go tearing across
the stretch of swamp after them, since he didn’t know how deep it was, and what
might be waiting for him. Gators, snakes and sinkholes. And by the time he woke
up the others, the mule and hog would be gone. He just stood there instead,
staring at them. This went on for a long time, and finally the hog turned and
started moving away, behind some thicket. The mule tossed its head, turned and
followed.

My God, thought Frank. The mule is beautiful. And the hog,
he’s a pistol. He could tell that from the way it had grunted at him. He had
some strange feelings inside of him that he couldn’t explain. Some sensation of
having had a moment that was greater than any moment he had had before.

He thought it strange these thoughts came to him, but he
knew it was the sight of the mule and the hog that had stirred them. As he
walked back to the fire and lay down on his blankets, he tried to figure the
reason behind that, and only came up with a headache and more mosquito bites.

He closed his eyes and slept a little while longer, thinking
of the mule and the hog, and the way they were free and beautiful. And then he
thought of the race, and all of that went away, and when he awoke, it was to
the toe of Black Joe’s boot in his ribs.

“Time to do it,” Black Joe said.

Frank sat up. “I saw them.”

“What?” Leroy said, stirring out of his blankets. Frank told
them what he had seen, and how there was nothing he could do then. Told them
all this, but didn’t tell them how the mule and the hog had made him feel.

“Shit,” Leroy said. “You should have woke us.”

Black Joe shook his head. “No matter. We see over there
where they stood. See what tracks they leave us. Then we do the sneak on them.”

—————

They worked their way to the other side of the swamp,
swatting mosquitoes and killing a cottonmouth in the process, and when they got
to where the mule and the hog stood, they found tracks and mule droppings.

“You not full of shit, like Black Joe thinking,” Black Joe
said. “You really see them.”

“Yep,” Frank said.

Black Joe bent down and rubbed some of the mule shit between
his fingers, and smelled it. “Not more than a couple hours old.”

“Should have got us up,” Leroy said.

“Easier to track in the day,” Black Joe said. “They got
their place they stay. They got some hideout.”

The mosquitoes were not so bad now, and finally they came to
some clear areas, marshy, but clear, and they lost the tracks there, but Black
Joe said, “The two of them, they probably cross here. It’s a good spot. Pick
their tracks up in the trees over there, on the soft ground.”

When they crossed the marshy stretch, they came to a batch
of willows and looked around there. Black Joe was the one who found their
tracks.

“Here they go,” he said. “Here they go.”

They traveled through woods and more swamp, and from time to
time they lost the tracks, but Black Joe always found them. Sometimes Frank
couldn’t even see what Black Joe saw. But Black Joe saw something, because he
kept looking at the ground, stopping to stretch out on the earth, his face
close to it. Sometimes he would pinch the earth between finger and thumb, rub
it about. Frank wasn’t sure why he did that, and he didn’t ask. Like Leroy, he
just followed.

Mid-day, they came to a place that amazed Frank. Out there
in the middle of what should have been swamp, there was a great clear area, at
least a hundred acres. They found it when they came out of a stretch of shady
oaks. The air was sweeter there, in the trees, and the shadows were cooling,
and at the far edge was a drop of about fifty feet. Down below was the great
and natural pasture. A fire, brought on by heat or lightning, might have
cleared the place at some point in time. It had grown back without trees, just
tall green grass amongst a few rotting, ant-infested stumps. It was surrounded
by the oaks, high up on their side, and low down on the other. The oaks on the
far side stretched out and blended with sweet gums and black jack and hickory
and bursts of pines. From their vantage point they could see all of this, and
see the cool shadow on the other side amongst the trees.

A hawk sailed over it all, and Frank saw there was a snake
in its beak. Something stirred again inside of Frank, and he was sure it wasn’t
his last meal. “You’re part Indian,” Frank said to Black Joe. “That hawk and
that snake, does it mean something?”

“Means that snake is gonna get et,” Black Joe said. “Damn
trees. Don’t you know that make a lot of good hard lumber. Go quiet. Look
there.”

Coming out of the trees into the great pasture was the mule
and the hog. The hog led the way, and the mule followed close behind. They came
out into the sunlight, and pretty soon the hog began to root and the mule began
to graze.

“Got their own paradise,” Frank said.

“We’ll fix that,” Leroy said.

They waited there, sitting amongst the oaks, watching, and
late in the day the hog and the mule wandered off into the trees across the
way.

“Ain’t we gonna do something besides watch?” Leroy said.

“They leave, tomorrow they come back,” Black Joe said. “Got
their spot. Be back tomorrow. We’ll be ready for them.”

—————

Just before dark they came down from their place on a little
trail and crossed the pasture and walked over to where the mule and the hog had
come out of the trees. Black Joe looked around for some time, said, “Got a
path. Worked it out. Always the same. Same spot. Come through here, out into
the pasture. What we do is we get up in a tree. Or I get in tree with my rope,
and I rope the mule and tie him off and let him wear himself down.”

“He could kill himself, thrashing,” Frank said.

“Could kill myself, him thrashing. I think it best tie him
to a tree, folks.”

Frank translated Black Joe’s strange way of talking in his
head, said, “He dies, you don’t get the eleven-fifty.”

“Not how I understand it,” Black Joe said.

“That’s how it is,” Frank said, feeling as if he might be
asking for a knife in his belly, his guts spilled. Out here, no one would ever
know. Black Joe might think he could do that, kill Leroy too, take their money.
Course, they didn’t have any money. Not here. There was fifteen dollars buried in
a jar out back of the house, eleven-fifty of which would go to Black Joe, if he
didn’t kill them.

Black Joe studied Frank for a long moment. Frank shifted
from one foot to the other, trying not to do it, but unable to stop. “Okay,” Black
Joe said. “That will work up good enough.”

“What about Mr. Porky?” Leroy asked.

“That gonna be you two’s job. I rope damn mule, and you two,
you gonna rope damn pig. First, we got to smell like dirt.”

“What?” Frank said.

Black Joe rubbed himself down with dark soil. He had Frank
and Leroy rub themselves down with it. Leroy hated it and complained, but Frank
found the earth smelled like incoming rain, and he thought it pleasant. It felt
good on his skin, and he had a sudden strange thought, that when he died, he
would become one and the same as the earth, and he wondered how many dead
animals, maybe people, made up the dirt he had rubbed onto himself. He felt odd
thinking that way. He felt odd thinking in any way.

They slept for a while, then Black Joe kicked him and Leroy
awake. It was still dark when they rolled dirty out of their bedclothes.

“Couldn’t we have waited on the dirt?” Leroy said, climbing
out of his blankets. “It’s all in my bedroll.”

“Need time for dirt to like you good, so you smell like it,”
Black Joe said. “We put some more on now, rub in the hair good, then get
ready.”

“It’s still dark,” Frank said. “They gonna come in the dark?
How you know when they’re gonna come?”

“They come. But we gotta be ready. They have a good night in
farmer’s cornfields, they might come real soon, full bellies. Way ground reads,
they come here to stand and to wallow. Hog wallows all time, way ground looks.
And they shit all over. This their spot. They don’t get corn and peas and such,
they’ll be back here. Water not far from spot, and they got good grass. Under
the trees, hog has some acorns. Hogs like acorns. Wife, Sweetie, makes
sometimes coffee from acorns.”

“How about I make some regular coffee, made from coffee?”
Leroy said.

“Nope. We don’t want a smoke smell. Don’t want our smell.
Need to piss or shit, don’t let free here. Go across pasture there. Far side.
Dump over there. Piss over there. Use the heel of your shoe to cover it all.
Give it lots of dirt.”

“Walk all the way across?” Leroy said.

“Want hog and mule,” Black Joe said. “Walk all the way
across. Now, eat some jerky, do your shit over on other side. Put more dirt on.
And wait.”

The sun rose up and it got hot, and the dirt on their skins
itched, or at least Frank itched, and he could tell Leroy itched, but Black Joe,
he didn’t seem to. Sat silent. And when the early morning was eaten up by the
heat, Black Joe showed them places to be, and Black Joe, with his lasso,
climbed up into an oak and sat on a fat limb, his feet stretched along it, his
back against the trunk, the rope in his lap.

The place for Frank and Leroy to be was terrible. The dirt
they smeared on themselves came from long scoops they made. Then they lay down
in the scoops with their ropes, and Black Joe, before he climbed the tree,
tossed leaves and sticks and dirt and bits of mule and hog shit over them. The
way they lay, Frank and Leroy were twenty feet apart, on either side of what Black
Joe said was a trail the hog and mule traveled. It wasn’t much of a trail. A
bit of ruffled oak leaves, some wallows the hog had made.

The day crawled forward and so did the worms. They were all
around Frank, and it was all he could do not to jump up screaming. It wasn’t
that he was afraid of them. He had put many of them on hooks for fishing. But
to just lay there and have them squirm against your arm, your neck. And there
was something that bit. Something in the hog shit was Frank’s thought.

Frank heard a sound. A different sound. Being close to the
ground it seemed to move the earth. It was the slow careful plodding of the
mule’s hooves, and another sound. The hog, maybe.

They listened and waited and the sounds came closer, and
then Frank, lying there, trying not to tremble with anticipation, heard a
whizzing sound. The rope. And then there was a bray, and a scuffle sound.