Victory Over Japan (28 page)

“I want to go with you on the hunt tomorrow,” I heard Miss
Crystal saying. “I want to watch you hunt a Russian boar.”

In the morning some new troubles started. Miss Lauren Gail.
They were all around this big Mexican table eating breakfast and Miss Lauren Gail's with them now. She's Mr. Phelan's new wife. And
her little girls, Teresa and Lisalee. Miss Lauren Gail's in a bad mood about the car. “He told me he bought a secondhand car over
there,” she's saying to Mr. Harry. “He didn't tell me he bought it from the president of Mercedes-Benz. All he does is lie to
me. He lies when he could tell the truth. Crystal, remember that ring I wanted in that antique store in New Orleans, that I called you about? It was
only eight hundred dollars. Eight hundred dollars, that's all, and he said we couldn't afford it and now he turns up with this car. How much
did it cost, Phelan? I want to know how much it cost.”

“I don't want to hear any more about the car,” Mr.
Phelan said. “That's a business car, Lauren Gail. And anytime you don't like what's going on around here you just take your feet
out from underneath my table and hit the road…I mean it, Lauren…and take that expression off your face. I'm not going to watch you
pout all day. That's it…start crying…because then I'll just go pack for you myself.”

She straightened
up her face and Mr. Harry tried to change the subject. He always is the peacemaker. “How many groups you had down here, Phelan?” he said.
“Enough to start paying expenses?”

“We're doing okay. Rainey's got so much work he can't get
caught up. He's got four heads waiting in the freezer. It's going to go, Harry, don't worry about that…I mean it, Lauren
Gail,” he says, looking her way again. “Don't pull that stuff on me when I have company.” He's looking at her with his
mouth set in a line.

Miss Lauren Gail she don't say any more after that and it all passes. In a little while she take her
little girls and go off to her end of the house and Mr. Phelan he leads the way to show us around the ranch. We got to go see the stables and the
cisterns and the lookout tower and then he takes us to see the hunt animals. First we got to go look at the antelope. They're in this corral with
a barn behind it. “Haldeston shipped them from Wyoming,” Mr. Phelan's saying. “We lost three on the truck and a couple since
they got here. But they're all right. I think this crowd's going to make it. See that stallion over there. That's the horse.
That's the ringleader. I'm saving him for myself.”

“I thought you were letting them run,” Mr. Harry
said. “You told me you were going to keep them on the range.”

“In time,” Mr. Phelan said. “All in
good time. Got to get them fattened up first. Come on, let's go look at the boar. That's the cash crop this year.” He had the Russian
boars in a special pen about a mile from the house. We got to drive across a field to get there. It's this pen behind a stand of pine trees, all
surrounded by barb wire with some dogs outside and another fence around them. These dogs called mastiffs, all dusty and mean looking. Russian boar on
the inside and mastiffs on the outside.

There are six boar altogether. Two real small looking, the other ones look okay.
They're all milling around. They don't look like anything worth two thousand dollars to me, dead or alive. Just look like old wild pigs
anybody can see up around Crowley. Only these boar got gray fur, with black hair around their faces and legs. Where you get them from? I kept wanting to
ask but I don't say it, I just hold on to Crystal Anne and keep my eyes and ears open.

“You're charging people
two thousand dollars to shoot one of those things?” Miss Crystal says. “You've got to be kidding.”

“It costs a lot to keep them,” he says. “Have to air-condition the shed and God knows what else. They're very
delicate. It's hard to keep them healthy.”

“You've lost your mind, Phelan,” she says. “Do you
realize that?”

“Well, Sister,” he says, shutting the door to the pen and turning around to take us back.
“Nobody asked you to come down here and tell me how to live my life. I don't come up to New Orleans and stick my nose in your business, do
I?”

“You've gone too far, Phelan. These pigs are just too far.” She was right up to him now, almost
touching. There couldn't have been an inch between them. It's busting loose, I thought. It's getting out of hand. I held on to the
baby, holding in my breath. It was terrible, those mean-looking dogs leaning up against the fence and Miss Crystal, she's got this bad hangover
anyway, she's right up in his face threatening him on his own ranch.

“I'm not the same person you used to kick
around, Phelan,” she says. “I'm a powerful woman, strong and powerful. I wouldn't mess around with me if I was you. I'm a
different person than the one you used to know.”

“That may all be so, little sister,” he says. He hasn't
moved an inch. He is still as he can be. “On the other hand, it's the same wall you're up against.” I looked at him then and he
did sort of look like a wall. I guess Miss Crystal thought so too because she took the baby out of my arms and started walking back to the car, holding
up her head and swaying from side to side kind of devil-may-care.

We weren't in the big car this time. We were in a little
steel-covered jeep made in England. It was fitted out with all kinds of hunting things. We all squeezed back into it and headed back to the ranch. Jack
was driving. He's this black man Mr. Phelan took off to college with him when he was young. Call himself a chauffeur but he ain't no better
than a slave. “Jack was the first black man to go to Ole Miss,” Mr. Phelan's saying. “He was there a long time before James
Meredith, weren't you, Jack? Jack was a KA, lived in the house with me. We even had him a pin made. Jack, you still got your KA pin? I want you to
show it to Traceleen when we get back.” Jack didn't say a word, just grinning from ear to ear.

***

Then Mr. Phelan and Mr. Harry took the new car and drove off to San Antonio to get the men for the hunt and the rest of us spent the
afternoon in the air conditioning listening to Miss Lauren Gail talk about Mr. Phelan won't buy her anything. “Don't say anything to
the visitors about the pen with the boars in it,” he had said to me, taking me aside when he was leaving. “We pretend the boar just comes
charging out of nowhere. It makes it more exciting.”

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “I just came
along to ride in the car.”

Later that afternoon Mr. Phelan and Mr. Harry come back with these two men and they all sit
around and have drinks and hot pepper cheese and then they have this Mexican dinner. You ought to see that dining room. Forty feet long, fireplace on
either end. Every wall covered with animal heads, this big brown bear standing in one corner with his teeth showing and his claws out. Mr.
Phelan's third wife shot it in Tennessee. Got her picture in a gun magazine for doing it. They got the story framed beside the bear in this glass
frame that's really for holding recipe books. “Lauren Gail thought that up,” Mr. Phelan said. “She should have been a decorator.
Then she could have been in stores buying things all day long.” He hugged her to his side and she put on this sad look like what's she
supposed to do but take it.

In the middle of the room there's this big mahogany table and hand-carved chairs with chairseats
embroidered with Mr. Phelan's coat-of-arms. He had a picture of it on the wall too, painted to match the chairseats. He kept asking Mr. Harry
didn't he want him to get him a coat-of-arms for his house but Mr. Harry said no, he already had everything on his walls he needed.

These two men from Jackson they're having the time of their lives. One of the men was in the shoemaking business. He'd been
playing chess with Mr. Phelan before dinner and he kept talking about how smart Mr. Phelan was. That he hadn't ever played anybody could beat him
so fast. The other man, he used to have a tent factory but the government closed it down by driving him crazy telling him what all to do. He kept
complaining about the government doing different things to him and getting drunker and drunker and Mr. Phelan kept pouring him wine and egging him on.
“So I just closed the goddamn place and went to Vegas,” he kept saying. “Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em. I just closed it down and
went to Vegas. Fuck 'em. That's all I've got to say. Fuck 'em all.”

I took Crystal Anne and went off
to bed as soon as I could. I don't like her listening to talk like that. “Fock em, fock em, fock em,” she's saying. “Fock
em, fock em, fock em.” She parrot everything she hear. What's going to happen when she shows up at nursery school talking like that? I could
still hear them yelling while I'm walking down the hallway, talking all about the government and hunts they'd been on and what a wild
Russian boar will do to you if you only wound it and don't kill it right and how you have got to shoot it just so or you'll mess it up for
being stuffed. Mr. Phelan he was standing up when I left showing them a Russian boar nailed to a board, showing them where you have to make the bullets
go in so you won't mess up the face.

“We're going on that hunt tomorrow, Traceleen,” Miss Crystal said when
she came to get in bed with Crystal Anne and me. She just climbed right in with us. First time I'd ever sleep with a lady I work for. That's
how Miss Crystal is. Just act like she thinks she can make up the world. So she and Crystal Anne and me snuggle down into the covers. “Tomorrow
you will see me in action, Traceleen,” she said. “Crystal Anne, I want you to remember what's going to happen next.” I thought
it was the whiskey talking.

Now morning comes and they all have a breakfast of tequila and lemons and bread and butter. Mr. Phelan
insist that's the right thing for hunters to have before they start a hunt. Miss Crystal, she's drinking it with them. Then she and Mr.
Harry and one of the men from Jackson get into the English truck and Mr. Phelan and the other man and this one named Rainey that's the one stuffs
the animals, they're next in the jeep and Jack and me and Crystal Anne bringing up the rear in the number six hundred. Jack, he's got on his
cowboy hat and an African hunter's vest and he's been working on the bar. Got it fixed up more Mexican than we had it. Beer and tequila and
some homemade drinks I never did learn the name of. So then we're ready and the sun's lighting up this big Texas field, looked like they
hadn't had any rain in a year. Crystal Anne's she's real excited to be going somewhere so early in the morning and she's
reaching up in the front seat trying to get Jack's attention and pulling on his hat.

Off we go down that dirt road and out
onto the asphalt and then back onto dirt and up in front I can see Mr. Phelan standing up behind the wheel pointing out things and talking. We come to a
little used-up house by the road and we all stop and they come back to our car to get some more to drink and he's talking all about the boar and
how tricky they are. Them men from Jackson hanging on to his every word. He should have been a preacher. I've thought that before.

So we pack back up and this time we take off across a stubble-covered field and cross a little ditch on top of some two by fours
don't look like they'd hold a man much less a car, then we follow the ditch, it's supposed to be a creek but there's no water in
it. It looks to me like we're just driving around the ranch. I can't see that we've gone three miles from home. We have another stop
beside an old chimney that used to be a house and Mr. Phelan's got the binoculars out now, sighting through them and letting the men use them and
they're sweeping the country he calls it. Then Mr. Phelan keeps on looking and looking at a spot over near a stand of pine trees and finally he
takes down the binoculars and looks around on the ground for a while walking around and around in a circle looking for tracks. After a while he puts his
arm around the tent man's shoulders and the two of them come over to our car and fix a drink. “We'll use that stand over there by the
ridge. They've got to come this way sooner or later to get to water.” He pointed east. “Over there's the only water source, a
pond about a mile away. So we'll lay for them on the rise.” He licked his finger and stuck it up into the air. “Yeah, the breeze is
with us. They won't be able to smell us until they're here. They'll come before too long. They've got to have water. The only
tracks are two days old. You're lucky, Charlie. This breeze is going to win you a shot. You're a lucky man. I can tell that. I feel lucky
just being with you.” He leaned into the car. “Jack, you come over when we get set. Traceleen, you and the baby stay in the car. We're
going up to the stand.” His voice is real low now and he's pointing over to the east where the sun is getting up above the ground.
There's this little rise of land look like it was pushed up by a tractor. With a board screen like for a bullfight in a movie. They're all
real quiet now and put all the tequila glasses back in the car and take out all the guns and the men and Miss Crystal go walking off to the rise. Miss
Crystal, she's at the edge, look like she's holding back. Off in the distance is the stand of pine trees in front of the wild Russian boar
pen. I'm just hoping nobody will make a mistake and shoot at the car. “Now what's going to happen?” I ask Jack.

“Now the boys will let 'em wait awhile and get all hot and bothered. Then they'll let one of the boars go, back behind
the trees, and it'll come charging out and as soon as it sees people it'll come running at them. Them boars go crazy when you let 'em
loose, they'll run at anything.”

“Then what?” I said.

“Then Mr. Phelan'll
let somebody shoot and he'll shoot too in case they miss and then they'll keep letting them loose till everybody that paid gets to shoot
one. Then they'll be through and Rainey'll put the boars in a tarp and take them off to be stuffed unless somebody wants to drive home with
it tied to the hood of the jeep. Sometimes they do that.” He stretched his arms and opened up the door. “Well, let me get my rifle out the
trunk. He likes me to be standing by in case he should miss. You excuse me, Miss Traceleen. I got to get my gun out the trunk and load it up. I forgot
to have it loaded.” Then Jack pushes a button to open the trunk and he get out and goes around the back of the car to get his gun.