Stories (2011) (56 page)

Frank lifted his head slightly.

Not ten feet from him was the great white mule, the rope
around its neck, the length of it stretching up into the tree. Frank could see Black
Joe. He had wrapped the rope around the limb and was holding on to it, tugging,
waiting for the mule to wear itself out.

The hog was bounding about near the mule, as if it might
jump up and grab the rope and chew it in two. It actually went up on its hind
legs once.

Frank knew it was time. He burst out of his hiding place,
and Leroy came out of his. The hog went straight for Leroy. Frank darted in
front of the leaping mule and threw his rope and caught the hog around the
neck. It turned instantly and went for him.

Leroy dove and grabbed the hog’s hind leg. The hog kicked
him in the face, but Leroy hung on. The hog dragged Leroy across the ground,
going for Frank, and as his rope become more slack, Frank darted for a tree.

By the time Frank arrived at the tree trunk, Leroy had
managed to put his rope around the hog’s hind leg, and now Frank and Leroy had
the hog in a kind of tug-of-war.

“Don’t hurt him now some,” Black Joe yelled from the tree.
“Got to keep him up for it. He’s the mule leader. Makes him run.”

“What the hell did he say?” Frank said.

“Don’t hurt the goddamn pig,” Leroy said.

“Ha,” Frank said, tying off his end of the rope to a tree
trunk. Leroy stretched his end, giving the hog a little slack, and tied off to
another tree. Nearby the mule leaped and kicked.

Leroy made a move to try and grab the rope on the mule up
short, but the mule whipped as if on a Yankee dollar, and kicked Leroy smooth
in the chest, launching him over the hog and into the brush. The hog would have
had him then, but the rope around its neck and back leg held it just short of
Leroy, but close enough a string of hog spittle and snot was flung across
Leroy’s face.

“Goddamn,” Leroy said, as he inched farther away from the
hog.

For a long while, they watched the mule kick and buck and
snort and snap its large teeth.

It was near nightfall when the mule, exhausted, settled down
on its front knees first, then rolled over on its side. The hog scooted across
the dirt and came to rest near the great mule, its snout resting on the mule’s
flank.

“I’ll be damned,” Leroy said. “The hog’s girlie or
something.”

It took three days to get back, because the mule wasn’t
cooperating, and the hog was no pushover either. They had to tie logs on either
side of the hog, so that he had to drag them. It wore the hog down, but it wore
the men down too, because the logs would tangle in vines and roughs, and
constantly had to be removed. The mule was hobbled loosely, so that it could
walk, but couldn’t bolt. The mule was led by Black Joe, and fastened around the
mule’s waist was a rope with two rope lines leading off to the rear. They were
in turn fastened to a heavy log that kept the mule from bolting forward to have
a taste of Black Joe, and to keep him, like the hog, worn down.

At night they left the logs on the critters, and built
make-do corrals of vines and limbs and bits of leather straps.

By the time they were out of the woods and the swamp, the
mule and the hog were covered in dirt and mud and such. The animals heaved as
they walked, and Frank feared they might keel over and die.

They made it though, and they took the mule up to Black Joe’s.
He had a corral there. It wasn’t much, but it was solid and it held the mule
in. The hog they put in a small pen. There was hardly room for the hog to turn
around. Now that the hog was well placed, Frank stood by the pen and studied
the animal. It looked at him with a feral eye. This wasn’t a hog who had been
slopped and watered. This was an animal who early on had escaped into the wild,
as a pig, and had made his way to adulthood. His spotted hide was covered in
scars, and though he had a coating of fat on him, his body was long and
muscular, and when the hog flexed its shoulders to startle a fly, those muscles
rolled beneath its skin like snakes beneath a tight-stretched blanket.

The mule, after the first day, began to perk up. But he
didn’t do much. Stood around mostly, and when they walked away for a distance,
it began to trot the corral, stopping often to look out at the hog pen, at his
friend. The mule made a sound, and the hog made a sound back.

“Damn, if I don’t think they’re talking to one another,”
Leroy said.

“Oh yeah. You can bet. They do that all right,” Black Joe
said.

—————

The race was coming closer, and within the week, Leroy and Black
Joe had the mule’s hooves trimmed, but no shoes. Decided he didn’t need them,
as the ground was soft this time of year. They got him saddled. Leroy got
bucked off and kicked and bitten once, a big plug was out of his right elbow.

“Mean one,” Black Joe said. “Real bastard, this mule.
Strong. He got the time, he eat Leroy.”

“Do you think he can run?” Frank asked.

“Time to see soon,” Black Joe said.

That night, when the saddling and bucking was done, the mule
began to wear down, let Black Joe stay on his back. As a reward, Black Joe fed
the mule well, but with only a little water. He fed the hog some pulled-up
weeds, a bit of corn, watered him.

“Want mule strong, but hog weak,” Black Joe said. “Don’t
want hog strong enough to go digging out of pen that’s for some sure.”

Frank listened to this, wondering where Black Joe had
learned his American.

Black Joe went in for the night, his two wives calling him
to supper. Leroy walked home. Frank saddled up Dobbin, but before he left, he
led the horse out to the corral and stared at the mule. There in the starlight,
the beams settled around the mule’s head, and made it very white. The mud was
gone now and the mule had been groomed, cleaned of briars and burrs from the
woods, and the beast looked magnificent. Once Frank had seen a book. It was the
only book he had ever seen other than the Bible, which his mother owned. But he
had seen this one in the window of the General Store downtown. He hadn’t opened
the book, just looked at it through the window. There on the cover was a white
horse with wings on its back. Well, the mule didn’t look like a horse, and it
didn’t have wings on its back, but it certainly had the bearing of the beast on
the book’s cover. Like maybe it was from somewhere else other than here; like
the sky had ripped open and the mule had ridden into this world through the
tear.

Frank led Dobbin over to the hog pen. There was nothing
beautiful about the spotted hog. It stared up at him, and the starlight filled
its eyes and made them sharp and bright as shrapnel.

As Frank was riding away, he heard the mule make a sound,
then the hog. They did it more than once, and were still doing it when he rode
out of earshot.

—————

It took some doing, and it took some time, and Frank, though
he did little but watch, felt as if he were going to work every day. It was a
new feeling for him. His old man often made him work, but as he grew older he
had quit, just like his father. The fields rarely got attention, and being
drunk became more important than hoeing corn and digging taters. But here he
was not only showing up early, but staying all day, handing harness and such to
Black Joe and Leroy, bringing out feed and pouring water.

In time Black Joe was able to saddle up the mule with no
more than a snort from the beast, and he could ride about the pen without the
mule turning to try and bite him or buck him. He even stopped kicking at Black
Joe and Leroy, who he hated, when they first entered the pen.

The hog watched all of this through the slats of his pen,
his beady eyes slanting tight, his battle-torn ears flicking at flies, his
curly tail curled even tighter. Frank wondered what the hog was thinking. He
was certain, whatever it was, was not good.

Soon enough, Black Joe had Frank enter the pen, climb up in
the saddle. Sensing a new rider, the mule threw him. But the second time he was
on board, the mule trotted him around the corral, running lightly with that
kind of rolling-barrel run mules have.

“He’s about ready for a run, he is,” Black Joe said.

Frank led the mule out of the pen and out to the road, Leroy
following. Black Joe led Dobbin. “See he’ll run that way. Not so fast at
first,” Black Joe said. “Me and this almost dead horse, we follow and find you,
you ain’t neck broke in some ditch somewheres.”

Cautiously, Frank climbed on the white mule’s back. He took
a deep breath, then, settling himself in the saddle, he gave the mule a kick.

The mule didn’t move.

He kicked again.

The mule trotted down the road about twenty feet, then
turned, dipped its head into the grass that grew alongside the red clay road,
and took a mouthful.

Frank kicked at the mule some more, but the mule wasn’t
having any. He did move, but just a bit. A few feet down the road, then across
the road and into the grass, amongst the trees, biting leaves off of them with
a sharp snap of his head, a smack of his teeth.

Black Joe trotted up on Dobbin.

“You ain’t going so fast.”

“Way I see it too,” Frank said. “He ain’t worth a shit.”

“We not bring the hog in on some business yet.”

“How’s that gonna work? I mean, how’s he gonna stay around
and not run off?”

“Maybe hog run off in goddamn woods and not see again, how
it may work. But, nothing else, hitch mule to plow or sell. You done paid me
eleven-fifty.”

“Your job isn’t done,” Frank said.

“You say, and may be right, but we got the one card, the
hog, you see. He don’t deal out with an ace, we got to call him a joker, and
call us assholes, and the mule, we got to make what we can. We have to, shoot
and eat the hog. Best, keep him up a few more days, put some corn in him, make
him better than what he is. Fatter. The mule, I told you ideas. Hell, eat mule
too if nothing other works out.”

They let the hog out of the pen.

Or rather, Leroy did. Just picked up the gate, and out came
the hog. The hog didn’t bolt. It bounded over to the mule, on which Frank was
mounted. The mule dipped its head, touched noses with the hog.

“I’ll be damned,” Frank said, thinking he had never had a
friend like that. Leroy was as close as it got, and he had to watch Leroy. He’d
cheat you. And if you had a goat, he might fuck it. Leroy was no real friend.
Frank felt lonesome.

Black Joe took the bridle on the mule away from Frank, and
led them out to the road. The hog trotted beside the mule.

“Now, story is, hog likes to run,” Black Joe said. “And when
he run, mule follows. And then hog, he falls off, not keeping up, and mule, he
got the arrow-sight then, run like someone put turpentine on his nut sack. Or
that the story as I hear it. You?”

“Pretty close,” Frank said.

Frank took the reins back, and the hog stood beside the
mule. Nothing happened.

“Gonna say go, is what I’m to do here now. And when I say,
you kick mule real goddamn hard. Me, I’m gonna stick boot in hog’s big ass.
Hear me now, Frank?”

“I do.”

“Signal will be me shouting when kick the hog’s ass, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Ready some.”

“Ready.”

Black Joe yelled, “Git, hog,” and kicked the hog in the ass
with all his might. The hog did a kind of hop, and bolted. A hog can move quick
for its size for a short distance, haul some serious freight, and the old
spotted hog, he was really fast, hauling the whole freight line. Frank expected
the hog to dart into the woods, and be long gone. But it didn’t. The hog
bounded down the road running for all it was worth, and before Frank could put
his heels to the mule, the mule leaped. That was the only way to describe it.
The mule did not seem cocked to fire, but suddenly it was a white bullet,
lunging forward so fast Frank nearly flew out of the saddle. But he clung, and
the mule ran, and the hog ran, and after a bit, the mule ducked its head and
the hog began to fade. But the mule was no longer following the hog. Not even
close. It snorted, and its nose appeared to get long and the ears laid back
flat. The mule jetted by the fat porker and stretched its legs wider, and Frank
could feel the wind whipping cool on his face. The body of the mule rolled like
a barrel, but man, my God, thought Frank, this sonofabitch can run.

There was one problem. Frank couldn’t turn him. When he felt
the mule had gone far enough, it just kept running, and no amount of tugging
led to response. That booger was gone. Frank just leaned forward over the
mule’s neck, hung on, and let him run.

Eventually the mule quit, just stopped, dipped its head to
the ground, then looked left and right. Trying to find the hog, Frank figured.
It was like the mule had gone into a kind of spell, and now he was out of it
and wanted his friend.

He could turn the mule then. He trotted it back down the
road, not trying to get it to run anymore, just letting it trot, and when it
came upon Black Joe and Leroy, standing in the road, the hog came out of the
woods and moseyed up beside the mule.

As Black Joe reached up and took the mule’s reins, he said,
“See that there. Hog and him are buddies. He stays around. He don’t want to run
off. Wants to be with mule. Hog a goddamn fool. Could be long gone, out in the
woods. Find some other wild hog and fuck it. Eat acorns. Die of old age. Now he
gonna get et sometime.”

“Dumb shit hog,” Leroy said.

The mule tugged at the reins, dipped its head. The hog and
the mule’s noses came together. The mule snorted. The hog made a kind of
squealing sound.

—————

They trained for several days the same way. The hog would
start, and then the mule would run. Fast. They put the mule up at night in the
corral, hobbled, and the hog, they didn’t have to pen him anymore. He stayed
with the mule by choice.