The Boar (2 page)

Even then, well-read and near-memorized, I hated to see them go. But we just didn’t have room in our little shack for me to turn into a magazine collector.

There I go again, chattering on like a squirrel in mating season. To get back to this time I’m telling you about, we were out at the woodpile working when all of a sudden the hounds started barking and we hear Doc Travis’s car coughing up the road.

We knew it was him right off. His Ford had a sound that didn’t remind you of any other. It seemed to me like it was going to blow up at any minute and toss parts all over East Texas and Northwestern Louisiana.

By the time Papa and I had laid our tools down and Ike had manhandled the last log into place, around the curve came Doc Travis, the Ford popping and sputtering.

He parked in the yard and got out, the hounds hopping around him like fleas trying to find a place to latch on. He was wearing his usual dust-filmed black hat and suit and his white shirt which was no longer a true white. It had been sweated in, dusted over, and washed with strong lye soap so often it had taken on a color somewhere between dirty-slush snow and spoiled-egg yolk yellow.

Papa slapped his hands clean on his overalls and walked over to meet him. Papa and Doc Travis shook hands for a long time.

“How’ya been, Leonard?” Doc Travis asked Papa.

“Can’t complain, not even a little bit,” Papa said.

“Good, real good.” Doc Travis turned to Ike and me. “You boys are looking fit enough. Growing like a couple of pigs.”

Mama came to the open door and called out to Doc Travis, “Well, if it ain’t that old freeloader come to visit.” She smiled and Doc Travis smiled back.

Mama was certainly something to smile about. Even four months pregnant with a fine sheen of sweat glistening on her face and a strand of strawberry-colored hair falling down on her forehead, she somehow managed to look fresh, clean, and happy.

“Good morning, Beth,” Doc Travis said. “Glad to see you can still spot a man that’s come for breakfast.”

Mama took off her old, gray apron, brushed the strand of hair off her forehead, and said, “Get in this house and eat something, you ole sawbones, or I’m going to sic the dogs on you, and you know what killers they are.”

Two of the dogs had already gone back under the house, and the other, a pup named Roger, was licking Doc Travis’s shoes cleaner than a shoe-shine boy could have done with a brush and a rag.

“Well,” Doc Travis said, “now that you got me scared, I don’t rightly think I can do much else other than that.”

Mama smiled wider. “All of you, get on in here.”

And the lot of us trooped into the house.

After Doc Travis had eaten, Mama offered all of us coffee. Doc Travis turned to Mama after sipping from his cup and said, “How’s the little mother?”

Mama patted her slightly round stomach and smiled. “Fine,” she said.

The baby was actually the reason Doc Travis came by so often. The year before she had lost one, and now that she was pregnant again, he came by to check on how she was feeling. So far she’d been doing real well, but Doc Travis had warned us to try and keep her away from stress and overwork, as she now had a natural leaning toward easy miscarriage.

But even before the baby, Doc Travis was a regular visitor. I don’t think there was any question that he enjoyed our company. Mama told me once that she sort of felt that we, along with maybe a dozen other families, were the kin folks he didn’t have.

Doc Travis emptied his cup, then, suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot,” he said. “Richard and Ike, out there in the car I got something for you two, and, Richard, there are a couple magazines you can have.”

Ike and I nearly knocked each other down getting out the door. The gift for both of us was a bag of peppermint candy. We got candy so seldom, we always managed to make it last by allowing ourselves only one piece a day to suck on. That bag of peppermints would last us a long time.

The magazines were really special this time. They weren’t the sort he usually brought me—
The Saturday Evening Post,
Sunday school magazines—they were thick things printed on cheap paper with shiny covers. I’d seen their kind before, and their bright artwork had always drawn me to the newsstands for a looksee. But I’d never asked Papa to buy me one. I knew it would break his heart not to be able to afford it.

I gave Ike the bag of candy to carry, and I held one of the magazines in either hand and looked at them. The left hand magazine read
Dime Detective
and it had a picture of a man wearing a brown suit and hat and holding a gun. The other was called
Black Mask,
and it was also a detective magazine. The cover was pretty much like the
Dime Detective,
a man with a gun.

When I brought them into the house, Mama looked at them and made a face. “You sure those things are healthy for a boy to read?” she asked Doc Travis.

“Best thing in the world for a boy to read,” he said.

Ike and I thanked Doc Travis, and Mama put the candy on the shelf and told us we could have a piece later on. I sat down by the window and put the magazines in my lap. I was just about to open one when Doc Travis said something that caught everyone’s attention.

“Leonard, I don’t know if I ought to tell you this, because if you get hurt I’m going to blame myself, but there’s one of them fairs supposed to be in Tyler this weekend. I’ve got to go over that way and see my aunt. If you’ve got a mind to ride over, you’re welcome to come along.”

Mama went slightly pale.

Papa nodded. “Thanks, Doc, I’d be obliged.”

I glanced at Ike. If he was thinking anything it didn’t show. That kid could have played poker with the devil and bluffed him out of his tail, hooves, and horns.

The concern with the fair was simple. Papa wrestled at them. Did it for money. He wasn’t big, but he was stout, broad-shouldered, and wiry. Over the years he’d gained quite a local reputation.

Prize money from those matches was usually pretty good. Anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars. That meant if you won, one night of wrestling could maybe earn you more than a season of farming.

It was rough and tumble business, however, and that’s why Mama was frightened. You never knew if Papa might come home with a broken rib, a leg disconnected, or worse.

And folks calling what Papa did wrestling, was misleading. It was more like brawling.

The rules, to say the least, were flexible. Wasn’t unusual for a match to contain a goodly amount of slugging, headbutting, and kicking. About the only thing that was off limits was eye-gouging and hitting below the belt, but I heard tell a right smart amount of that slipped in from time to time.

I think Papa was proud of the fact that he was good at it, but I think he was also a little ashamed. Once I heard him tell Mama that he sometimes felt like those Roman gladiators who fought each other so the crowd could enjoy seeing blood.

So I reckon he had mixed feelings. One thing for sure, he never let any of us go and see him wrestle. And I won’t lie about it none, I sure wish I had. I bet he was something to see.

Way it worked was the fair would usually have its own man. A well-fed, experienced toughie who took on all comers. This way the fair could draw a crowd at a nickel a head, and charge a quarter entry fee for the wrestlers. A local fellow didn’t usually stand a chance against the fair’s wrestler, and when the fair moved on a few days later, it was usually a bunch of nickels and a handful of quarters richer.

Papa, however, caused many a fair to move on shy its prize money and with a bad attitude toward its prize wrestler.

In favor of Mama, the subject was quickly dropped. Doc said, “You hear about Herman Hall’s prize hound?”

“Red?” Papa asked. Half the hounds in East Texas were named Red, but Herman Hall’s Red was special. It was generally agreed that he was probably the best coon dog in two counties.

“Dog got himself killed,” Doc Travis continued. “Was running a coon and cut a wild boar’s trail. I’m not talking about no Piney Woods Rooter either. I mean a big hog like from the old days.”

“Figured there were still some around,” Papa said, “but I haven’t heard tell of one in five or six years.”

“Red cut this boar’s trail the other night and started after it. Herman said he and his boys never saw the hog—not really. But they saw Red fly up in the moonlight, tossed over six feet. Then they saw a huge shape crash off through the bushes. It was so big Herman figured it was a young black bear, but when he went to check on Red, the dog was gutted, tore up like wet newspaper. They held their lanterns down to the ground and looked at the tracks. Big as a man’s hand, Herman said. And deep. Herman said from the looks of those tracks, and considering poor old Red’s wounds, that boar must have weighed over four hundred pounds and had tusks as big and sharp as daggers.”

“That’s awfully big for any wild hog.” Papa said.

“Yeah,” Doc Travis agreed, “but you know Herman.”

Doc Travis didn’t need to explain that. Herman Hall was one of the best hunters in the country. He knew the woods and he knew animals. He wasn’t known to exaggerate, not even a little. He was as sober honest as a hangman’s noose. If he said something was so, you could pretty well count on it being that way. Mr. Hall could be wrong, but not on purpose.

“Some are saying it’s the same boar that was here before. The one you were talking about five or six years ago. They say he’s come back.”

“Old Satan?”

“I’ve heard him called The Devil Boar too, but that’s the one.”

“Memory serves me,” Papa said, “they claimed the time before that it was the same hog come back. This would make three times, and that would make Old Satan darn near fifteen to twenty years old.”

“I’ve heard tell of hogs living that long,” Doc Travis said.

“In the wild?”

“Who knows how long some of them have lived. Ain’t nobody throwing birthday parties for them.”

Papa laughed. “Maybe we ought to bake Old Satan a cake, buy him a few presents. Maybe then he’d go away.”

“Ain’t you the funny one.” Mama said, giving Papa a playful slap on the shoulder.

“Well, if it is the same boar, things could get pretty nasty around here. Last time that hog rooted up a lot of farm land, killed chickens and small livestock, and even cut down old Jack Jeffer’s mule with them tusks, cut him right off at the legs like a tree. Then there was that old colored man that got all tore up.”

“Pharaoh,” Papa said. “Lives across the river from us. He was the best hunter in these parts until then. Wasn’t nothing he hadn’t hunted. Bear, wild cats, you name it. Hunted all over the United States, but that boar got the best of him.”

“He’s lucky to be alive. I’m the one worked on him. Wasn’t nothing I could do for his legs but sew them up. They were torn to ribbons, the muscles and nerves ruined.”

“He was sure some hunter,” Papa said wistfully.

“Ain’t he supposed to be a hundred and fifty years old?” Doc asked.

“What they say,” Papa said.

“One thing’s certain,” Mama said, “he knew my papa when he was a little boy and my papa’s papa when he was a boy. He’s old alright. He has at least one boy in his eighties.”

“Well, if you believe Pharaoh is a hundred and fifty years old, then maybe you’ll believe the story going around about Old Satan. About him being an Indian demon or the devil in disguise.”

“That old wives’ tale?” Papa said.

“There’s them that say he’s an old Caddo Indian medicine man that’s getting back at the whites by changing himself into a wild boar, a boar that can’t be killed by guns, but only with magic. Then there’s those partial to the devil story. Some of the backwoods preachers are especially fond of that one. Say the devil’s been let loose here on account of the way folks been living. Not getting to church regular enough and all.”

“Even preachers—especially preachers—get some danged fool ideas sometime,” Papa said.

After that their talk turned to other things, the weather, the bad times. I put up my magazines and Ike and I went out to finish the chores.

Hour or so later Doc Travis left, and Papa came out to the woodpile where we were finishing up. He sent Ike back to the house to help Mama, then we went out to the barn to hitch Clancy up for the day’s work at running the weedy middles out of the corn and cane.

When we had Clancy hitched, Papa held the lines, laid the Georgia Stock on its side and let the mule pull it down to the bottoms. On the way, Papa began to talk.

“What you reckon you’re going to do when you get older, son?”

I was taken aback. It had always struck me that it was understood what I was going to do. Keep right on working the farm. Growing what I could and getting by as best I could, same as Papa did. Now it occurred to me that I might have a choice, and with the question put before me, I realized I also had an answer.

“I’d like to write stories,” I said. The words seemed to leap out of my mouth unbound. The thought had probably been growing inside me for some time, but with Doc Travis bringing those magazines, and Papa asking me outright like that, the time was ripe for a decision.

Papa called “whoa” to Clancy, turned and looked at me. I had an awful sinking feeling that I had just given the wrong answer to his question.

“Say what?” he said.

For a moment I considered changing my answer, but I was afraid he’d actually heard me right, and was just checking to make sure. “I’d like to write stories,” I said again. “Like in the magazines Doc Travis brought me.”

“Stories?” Papa said.

“Yes sir.”

“Make up and write stories?”

“Yes sir.”

Papa was quiet for a moment, considering. I was beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable with my newfound career, and I could tell from the tone of Papa’s voice that he had considered me doing many a thing, but writing stories for magazines wasn’t one of them. After a moment, he said, “They pay folks for that? Making up stories?”

Now I hadn’t given this part of my career any thought. What if they didn’t pay you for writing stories? What if they were written for fun by rich folks who didn’t have nothing to do but lay around writing stories and reading books? I mean, who paid you for having fun? Only kind of work I’d ever known about wasn’t any fun at all. And there wasn’t much pay in it either, except that you got to go on eating.