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Authors: Joe R. Lansdale

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BOOK: The Boar
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Two

I was starved when I got to the house. I’d missed supper last night and I hadn’t had any breakfast. I was so hungry I could see cornbread walking on the ground.

First thing I did, however, was feed Clancy and turn him loose in the lot. Then, before getting a bite to eat, I got a shovel and an old tarp and went out to bury the dogs. I put them on the tarp and pulled them out to a spot near the bottoms. I dug a hole, wrapped them in the tarp and buried them. Since they’d always been close in life, I figured they wouldn’t mind each other’s company in death.

When I’d patted down the grave with the back of the shovel, I felt like crying, but nothing would happen. It was like I was all dried up inside. I said some words over the grave, just in case God had a place for dogs to go to, and went back to the house.

In the bread box I found a tin of cornbread. I cut a piece open, poured some ribbon cane inside it, and ate. Finally I finished off the whole pan that way. I was sitting at the table, feeling some better with my belly full, trying to come up with some sort of plan about Old Satan, when there was a knock on the door and I heard Abraham calling, “Hallo, the house.”

I went to the door and opened it.

“My lands,” Abraham said, “you look like someone whupped you with a mad rattlesnake.”

I was a mess. I was worn slap out and my clothes were darn near torn to pieces from all the limbs and brush that had snagged them when I was following after Roger and Old Satan. Doc Travis had taken a few minutes to clean some of my cuts up last night after he’d gotten Mama settled, but I still looked pretty ragged.

“We had a visit from Old Satan,” I said. “Come on in.” We went over to the table and sat down.

“So did we,” Abraham said. “He killed Jesse.”

“What?”

“Yeah. He come along not more than a couple hours after you left for home. Papa heard him grunting around and he went out to take a look, had his shotgun with him. That’s when we heard the squealing out at the hog lot, out at that special pen Grandpa built for Jesse. Then we heard Papa’s shotgun go off”

“Did he kill him?” I asked quickly. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he had or he hadn’t. It was awful strong in my head to do the deed myself.

“That’s the crazy part, Ricky. We was all scared to death about what was going on out there, but pretty soon Papa came back. His face was gray, and I tell you, he looked scared. I ain’t never known Papa to be scared of nothing.”

Nor had I. Abraham’s papa was six-four and weighed well over two hundred pounds, all of it muscle. I’d once seen him grab a bull by the horns and throw it down to keep it from going wild and busting through a fence. Let me tell you, that ain’t no easy task.

Abraham took a deep breath and went on. “Papa told us Old Satan had torn Jesse’s pen apart… and Jesse too. Said there wasn’t a thing he could do for Jesse cause it happened so fast. But Old Satan did run out in the open and Papa got a shot off, hit him broadside. Had to have hit him, he said, on account of they were so close and him using a shotgun and all. But the only thing it did to Old Satan was make him mad. He came after Papa, and Papa tossed the shotgun down and climbed on top the outhouse. That crazy hog rammed the door off it, like he was a bull or something, just butted it off. Shook the outhouse so bad Papa nearly fell off. Then, just as fast as he’d come, Old Satan went away. Papa said he was running crazy, zigzagging, hopping along like he was full of the devil or his guts were on fire.”

“He’s sure he hit him with that shotgun?”

“Didn’t know how he could have missed standing at that range.”

I thought about Mama and me taking a shot at Old Satan when we were standing at the door. I wondered if either of us had hit him. And if we had, I wondered why it hadn’t hurt him. Was he really a devil or demon? That didn’t make much sense, but then a hog like this one didn’t make much sense either.

“Where’s your mama and Ike?” Abraham asked.

I told him everything that had happened last night, and that I aimed to kill Old Satan myself. Today if I could.

“That’s what I come over here for, Ricky. I couldn’t tell Mama or Papa, they’d be against it. But I got to do this for Grandpa. It ain’t going to bring Jesse back, but I can make sure Old Satan don’t kill nothing else. Grandpa, he won’t even eat. Won’t get out of bed. He used to use his crutches to go out and hitch Jesse up, and have that hog pull him around places where them crutches wouldn’t carry him. That hog was his legs. Now he don’t even act like he wants to live.”

“I reckon we ought to form a pact,” I said.

“A what?”

“An agreement. I read about it in a story once, about these two fellows who were going to go off and make their fortunes and be kings. They signed a pact to do that, and to help each other.”

“We’re going hog hunting, Ricky, not fortune hunting.”

“Well, maybe we don’t need to sign nothing, but we’re going to shake on it.”

We clasped hands. “This is to the idea of killing Old Satan on account of the harm he’s done us,” I said. “We’re going to go after him and we ain’t going to come back until it’s done, and ain’t nothing going to stop us.”

“Deal,” Abraham said. But when we quit shaking, his face fell. “We got us one problem, Ricky. Neither of us know the first thing about hunting no wild hog.”

He had a point there.

And that’s how Uncle Pharaoh came into the picture.

If there was any person that ought to have been able to tell us how to hunt a wild boar, and Old Satan in particular, it was Uncle Pharaoh.

But would he?

We were afraid he wouldn’t. And worse yet, we were afraid if he didn’t help us, he’d spoil our hunt by telling Abraham’s mama and papa. It was, to say the least, a tricky situation.

Though we didn’t want to go against the best wishes of the adults, because of the whipping we might get over it, we were bound and determined to do what we intended. Old Satan was going to get hunted if we had to walk over every inch of bottom land and climb every tree in East Texas looking for him.

Still, it would be a whole lot easier if we had some notion of how a wild hog acted on the hunt and in the woods. Abraham and I weren’t green hunters, but Old Satan and a squirrel or possum were quite some different.

We didn’t go straight to see Uncle Pharaoh. We rode Clancy out to where I’d left Roger in the fork of the tree and buried him. Then we went to the tree house and left the shovel and Winchester there. That way, if the adults decided against our plans, they couldn’t take the rifle away from us. I didn’t tell Abraham, but no matter what happened with him and his folks, I was going after that hog. With Papa gone, Mama not able to stop me, and Doc Travis at least two or three days away from finding Papa, I had my chance to get Old Satan. I’d probably get a switching to end all switchings later, but that didn’t matter.

In the tree house I saw that Abraham had been busy since early morning on his shield. It was near finished and ready to hang on the wall. Though I figured since what happened last night, along with him getting up early to work on it before coming to see me, he had other plans for it first.

When we got to the Wilson house, it was as quiet as a funeral on Sunday morning. Most of the time the place sounded like it was being attacked by wild Indians on account of all the kids and Mrs. Wilson clanging pots and pans and bustling about, or yelling the little ones out of trouble. Not today. Jesse had been like one of the family and no one was feeling particularly lively.

Mr. Wilson had already gone off to do field work, but Mrs. Wilson was at the stove cooking lunch, working in a quiet way, not banging pan a’one.

When we came in she smiled and asked if I was staying to dinner. Since that cornbread and syrup had already burned itself out, I told her I reckoned I would.

I didn’t tell her about the boar and what he’d done, or about Mama being at Doc Travis’s.

“You heard about Jesse?” she said.

“Yes ma’am. I’m real sorry.”

I thought for a minute she was going to cry, but she turned back to her cooking. “We gonna be eating real soon,” she said.

“Grandpa still in bed?” Abraham asked.

“No, he’s out at that grave your papa dug for Jesse.”

We went out back, behind the barn, and there was Uncle Pharaoh leaning on his crutches looking at the fresh-dug ground.

“Grandpa,” Abraham said.

He lifted his head and looked at us. I never thought that Uncle Pharaoh could look any older, but I had been wrong. He looked on the dark side of two hundred that day, like a ragged scarecrow propped up on two sticks.

“Silly to be upset over an old pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said. “Bucky getting out here digging a grave a’fore daylight for an old pig, and him having to go to work too. Ain’t no sense in it, now is there?”

Neither of us knew what to say.

“No sense in it,” Uncle Pharaoh repeated.

“You can train another one,” I finally said.

The look Uncle Pharaoh gave me gave light to those old filmed-over eyes. “Ain’t no hog like Pig Jesse, you hear?”

“Yes sir.”

“He was special. Smarter than people. Better than most, especially some white folks I know.”

“He didn’t mean nothing by it,” Abraham said. “He’s just trying to cheer you up some.”

“Well, you ain’t so good at it, little white boy.”

“No sir, I guess I ain’t.”

“Old Satan come to his house last night too,” Abraham said. Uncle Pharaoh turned to look at me. “Tore his dogs up, and caused his mama to have to be hauled in to the doctor. She got such a strain she might lose the baby.”

“You the little white boy that’s Abraham’s friend?” Uncle Pharaoh said suddenly.

“Yes sir, I’m still the white boy that’s his friend.”

“I know’d that,” Uncle Pharaoh said, as if he hadn’t asked the question.

“What we want,” Abraham said, “is… is to know how to kill that hog.”

Uncle Pharaoh moved his crutches around so he was facing us head on. “How’s that?”

“We going to kill Old Satan, Grandpa. Me and Ricky, with or without your help, and ain’t nobody going to stop us. But we know you know more about hunting than a coon dog, so we want to know how to hunt Old Satan.”

“Ya’ll go fishing,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“No sir,” Abraham said, “and I don’t mean to sound like I’m sassing. But we’re going after that Old Satan on account of what he’s done.”

“Didn’t do nothing but kill an old pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said quickly.

“Ain’t no stopping us. If you tell us how or you don’t, we’re going to get him.”

Uncle Pharaoh stared at me until I thought my eyes would melt. “That the way it is with you, little white boy?”

“Yes sir, it is. I reckon I’m going to go after Old Satan if Abraham does or not.”

“I’m going all right,” Abraham said quickly. “I don’t care if Mama and Papa give me a whupping with a willow limb.”

“Old Satan, he ain’t like no regular wild pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“We know that, Uncle Pharaoh,” I said. “That’s why we’re talking to you.”

“Gonna need some dogs to do this right,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“We got a pen full of them,” Abraham said.

“Those ain’t no experienced hog-hunting dogs.”

“They’re all we got,” Abraham said. “And besides, there ain’t no experienced hog dogs in these parts.”

Uncle Pharaoh leaned on his crutches and looked at us for a long time, only I could tell he wasn’t really seeing us. He was considering.

“This ain’t like running no squirrel,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“No sir,” I said, “we know that. We ain’t got no thoughts that it’ll be easy and we ain’t going to be silly about it. What we need is expert advice on how to kill Old Satan. Then we’re going to go out there and do it.”

Uncle Pharaoh cracked a toothless smile. “I wish I had you boys’ legs, but I’m sure glad I ain’t as dumb. Old Satan, he’s the meanest critter I ever seen, and I’ve killed bears in Tennessee and once helped a fellow hunt down a hog-eating gator in Louisiana. This here’s a bad critter.”

“You saying you ain’t gonna help us?” I asked.

“I’m saying you be talking mighty big now, but when that Old Satan come out of the woods on you, him running fast as an old buck deer and mad as a bull, it’s a lot different than shooting some old lamp-blinded coon out of a tree.” He paused. “You boys bound and determined?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

He nodded his old head, and it looked to me that it might just fall off his neck. “Let’s go out to the smokehouse so we can talk. You boys gonna have to be learned something about wild hog hunting.”

Three

Uncle Pharaoh lit a lamp, closed the door of the smokehouse, and settled himself down on a bag of sweet taters. Abraham and I squatted on the ground. Big, netted, sweet-smelling hams hung over our heads and their aroma was so thick it almost made me dizzy. It sure made me hungry.

“Thing you got to remember,” Uncle Pharaoh started, “is this. You ain’t dealing with no farm hog. This ain’t even no everyday wild hog. This here is a devil hog. Smartest critter I ever seen. Hogs is smarter than dogs, and this hog is smarter than other hogs. This hog is also crazy. He’s got the devil in him, like some folks gets. The way Old Man Turner got it that time.”

Old Man Turner was one of the big river bottom stories. He’d always been a good fellow, a family man. One day he got up to go kill chickens, came back in the house with the axe and killed everyone in his family, then went down to the river and drowned himself. No one ever knew what set him off like that.

“This hog,” Uncle Pharaoh went on, “is like that only he ain’t gonna drown hisself. He just gonna keep on hurting and killing till someone or something kills him.”

“That something is going to be us,” Abraham said.

“You just listen, boy, I ain’t through talking. Now here’s how that Old Satan will do. He lives upriver, back there where the woods is the thickest and so’s the food. He eat anything. Other animals, bark off trees, you if he can.

“You boys take all the hounds we got and you hit up his trail. It gonna be kind of cold from last night, but not so much they ain’t gonna follow. Them dogs, they gonna act crazy cause they ain’t never chased no wild hog before. That trail they’re following gonna seem nutty, but it ain’t. All over the place, that’s the way that hog gonna run cause he ain’t right in the head. But he’s gonna go back into the deeps of them woods, back in there so deep you gonna need a cane knife to chop your way through.

BOOK: The Boar
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