Strange Doin's in the Pine Hills

by Ardath Mayhar

  Abe jumped out onto the bank, only it was the yard fence, the bank being a hundred yards behind us in the middle of the flood, and tied his rope to a fencepost. “Here we are, Boy. You just wait right here, and I’ll go round and dig up my savings and be right back.” His eyes slid round at me and didn’t look quite sane.

  “I’m too tired to move, Sir,” I said. “You just get your stuff, and I’ll rest. It’ll take all we both can do to get us back up that creek.”

  Soon as he was gone around the house, I slid out of the boat and eased up the slope. It took a while, and once he looked out around the corner of the porch to see if I was still in the boat. Luckily, I’d propped up the bucket so it looked like a head leaning against the edge, and he didn’t go down to check. I stayed hidden in the bushes for a while to let my heart quit thumping, then I went on.

  When I peeped around the porch, he was digging hard. You could hear his shovel going “Shloop! Shloop!” in the mud, because the water had got around to that side of the house too. He was in an almighty hurry. I scootched down and watched. I don’t quite know why, but I just had to know what it was he was in such a hurry and a sweat about. He had to be living on Social Security, just like Pa and everybody else their age. I figured he couldn’t have saved up enough to amount to anything.

  When a shovelful of mud came out of that hole with something dark and solid on it, I perked up. It was a hunting jacket, as I could tell after it lay there a while and the rain washed off the mud. The kind with a bag in back for shot birds and shell-pockets across the front. Then Abe’s hand came up with a shotgun in it and laid it on the ground.

  I didn’t wait to see more. All of a sudden, I figured I’d better be back at the boat—or further still—when Abe came around the corner of that house. I made it a lot quicker than I’d come and leaned back in the boat as if I’d been dozing. Then I got to thinking.

  Whatever he was getting out of that hole, he’d likely send down the flood. Maybe he’d feel safe then. Maybe not.... The more I thought about going back up that creek with him bailing behind me, the less I liked the notion. I had a little money in my pocket. Probably about what that hunter had had. And nobody knew where I was or what I was doing.

  I eased out into the bushes and crept along until I found a likely log. It was half afloat, already, so I goosed it out into the current and held onto a stub of branch, with my head close under the side so it couldn’t be seen. That log and I whirled and twirled and twiddled down the creek with the rest of the stuff floating there until we lodged way down on Bobcat Ridge. I guess Abe never did know what happened to me.

  He must’ve tried to make it back in that boat, all by himself. We’ll never know, though. They didn’t look for him nearly as hard as they did for that hunter.

  ON THE STUMPS

  Every kind of misdeed can be found in the East Texas woods, from murder to burglary, but it is only in the past couple of decades that deep woods people have begun locking their doors. However—it is not a good idea to be caught inside somebody else’s house without a darn good reason.

  I never expected Stanbridge to be at home. On a bright, late-spring day down there in the river bottom country, he should’ve been out in his boat, setting lines or running nets or just lazing along with a cane pole in his hand and his hat over his eyes, letting the boat drift with the current. I’d like to have been doing that myself.

  But I’m a poor man. Have to keep plugging along, without any time taken off for playing around. Anybody who thinks thieving is easy work just never tried it. I have spent more time hiding in closets or under beds—even down a well, once—than you would ever believe. People do tend to come home at the damndest times!

  But Eph Stanbridge was steady as a clock. I’d watched him for two weeks, and every decent morning (and even a few that weren’t fit for man or beast) he was off down the river in that blue boat of his. He never came home until late in the evening, and sometimes it was full dark when he got there. I’d be all mosquito-bit, lying up in the woods watching for him.

  I’d done my homework carefully. There wasn’t a reason in the world why the job shouldn’t have gone off slick as a whistle.

  Eph lived so far at the back of beyond that he never worried about visitors even, much less burglars. He hadn’t any window blinds, being as there was nothing out there in the woods to look in at him at night but skunks or bobcats or water moccasins. It was easy for me to creep up to the window and watch him potter around the house. I knew that if I watched him for long enough, finally I’d see where he hid his money.

  And sure enough I did. It took ten days, and I was swollen up all over with chigger and mosquito bites. But he made a trip to town to sell his catfish to the café, and when he got home he went straight to the mantel over his fireplace. I could see plainly the way he reached down and pulled on the side piece over to the left, and it opened out just like a little door. He put a roll of bills into a wooden box.

  I couldn’t see what else was in the box, because of the angle, but I was willing to bet there were a lot more rolls of bills that had been dropped into that box over the years. Eph never spent a dime for anything but flour, sugar, coffee, and chewing tobacco.

  I picked a day so warm and sun-bright that you could have spread it like honey on toast. Nobody could stay home on a day like that unless he was sick enough to die. And sure enough, there was nobody in the house when I got there. His boat was gone too, along with the coils of trotline he kept on his little pier. Nothing ever looked safer. Mind you, I wasn’t careless. I went off down the Reed Slough road to the end and left my car there as if I’d gone fishing in a boat. Cut through the woods across the big flat in the river’s bend until I caught the track that runs alongside the water for miles. That took me right around behind Eph’s hog pen. His house was right up the twisty path, and I cut behind it, through the peach orchard and garden, and crept up to the back door.

  The house was as still as a big gray animal dozing in the sun. There wasn’t a speck of smoke left in the air, and I knew he’d cooked his breakfast long ago. The wood stove was cool.

  Still, I didn’t rush it. I went up on the back porch and called him, real loud. “Eph! You at home?” I had brought a length of trotline I could claim I’d found fastened to a floating log, and my excuse for being there would have been that I thought it might be his.

  He might have thought it was peculiar, as such things are usually finders’ keepers, but Eph was so easygoing he’d have accepted that. But there wasn’t any answer but a sort of echo through the empty rooms. The screen door was open. Nobody down in the river bottoms ever locks his door. Only the summer people in the lake houses downriver have to worry about being robbed—nobody else has anything much to steal.

  I pushed open the door; it screeched like a banshee. Nearly scared me out of my boots. The house was just about what you’d expect of an old bachelor. Plain as to furnishings, dusty as to tables and floors, but tidy too. He liked things in their own places, I could see. I liked that in a man.

  I went through the kitchen and up the wide hall down the middle of the house. The parlor where the hidey-hole was opened off to the right. The floor creaked and complained, no matter how lightly I tried to step, but there was nobody there to hear. It’s just that unnecessary noise makes any thief nervous.

  The parlor still held traces of Eph’s wife. There was a red plush sofa that was about twice as old as I was. The oil lamp hanging from a hook over the middle of that table was a pretty thing. I’d seen the like in catalogs—they call them Tiffany style, and this one had to be the real thing. But I hadn’t time to look around.

  Once you knew where to look, it wasn’t hard to find that mantel-door. The ten-inch pine plank that formed the surround had a notch cut into its back edge, easy to feel when you ran a finger down the cranny. I pulled it, and the thing swung out. It didn’t even squeak.

  I did.

  Four snakes came rippling out into the room. Two of them nailed me before I could
jump. Right through my leather lace-up boots. One was a diamond-back rattler that had to be six feet long. One was an ugly old moccasin the color of ash. The other two got away among the furniture before I could identify them, but I think one was a copperhead. Damn!

  I sat on the floor and took off the boots, though my legs were already swollen enough to make it a bad job. I split my pants legs so I could get to the bites—that was one big sucker of a rattler. There was an inch-wide gap between the fang marks.

  Tears were rolling down my face, and my heart was thumping away like a steam engine, trying to circulate that poison even faster. I knew I had to get it out, right now. I fumbled my pocket knife out and set the blade on the marks on my left leg. It was sharp, and a drop of blood beaded away as I closed my eyes and pushed the blade into my skin.

  My God!

  Without taking time to think, I cut again, across the first slash. The other leg got tended to before I had time to begin feeling the first one too bad. Then I was busy squeezing the poison out—anybody who tries to suck it is a fool.

  But I could feel it burning up the veins of my shins. You never get it all out, and with two snakes—different kinds at that!—there was just no way the easy method was going to work. I had to do something mighty fast, or Eph would come home to find a bloated corpse in his parlor.

  I’d seen a hacksaw in the hall, hanging on a hook with other tools. I crawled out and found it in the dimness. I didn’t need light for what I had to do; it was better not to see.

  I set the blade against my hairy shin, about six inches above the bite, and shivered for a minute before getting up the nerve to begin. But the burn was moving upward, and I knew I had to do it now. I bore down and sawed across my leg down into the flesh.

  Used to be that I’d trap for animals in the woods and around the creeks to earn school money. Many’s the time I’ve found a furry paw in a trap, and the rest of the beast would be long gone. I never thought how it would feel to chew off your own foot to go free.

  Now I knew.

  All my nerves were jangling so that my hands could hardly grip the saw. I shook like a willow in the wind, and when I hit the bone, that first time, I thought I was going to come to pieces, right there and then. You take all the worst sensations of a dentist’s drill going into a nerve and add it to the feeling of a broken bone, and that’s how it felt, only worse.

  I don’t know how I got through that first leg bone. The second was just sort of done by instinct, being as I was still in shock from the first. By the time both my lower legs were lying in puddles of blood on the pine planking of the floor, I was crying like a kid. I tied off both stumps with my galluses, but there was still a lot of blood, and I had to keep tightening those tourniquets to keep from bleeding to death then and there.

  When I finally pulled myself together and began thinking, I knew there was no way to get out of this clean. Even if I shut the mantel-door, Eph would know the minute he walked in the house that something terrible had happened, and he’d miss his snakes as soon as he looked in the hidey-hole.

  The money was still in place, of course, but he wasn’t going to be pleased. No matter how easygoing, nobody wants anyone pilfering around in his house, not to mention messing up his floor.

  I wondered if there was a way I could crawl off through the woods. I was getting pretty weak; still, I thought I’d give it a try, but I’d have to take the legs with me. I can’t think of a better way to identify a man than by his own legs. I tied them together with the trotline in my pocket, and then I set out crawling toward the kitchen, though I thought every time I moved that I would faint.

  But I almost died of shock when I scootched through the door. First thing I saw was two big feet in rubber boots under the kitchen table. I looked farther up, and there was Eph, smiling. I didn’t take that grin to be an easygoing one, either. His eyes were round and blue as china plates, and he looked like a cheerful old grampa, but I had a feeling he wasn’t one bit happy.

  “I knew you’d make it today,” he said. “Been feeling you watching me for a couple of weeks, now. Funny...you can’t fool a man who lives in the woods and on the water. And the fellows were so uneasy, I knew you’d probably come today.”

  “The fellows?” My voice sounded choked, even to me.

  “My friends who live in the wall. Jesse and Arthur and Percy and Steven. You let ’em out and they ran off, but they’ll be home again. Back in their nice dark place behind the fireplace. It’s remarkable how snakes like to live close to a fireplace; they keep lively all winter. Lots of company for an old man by himself.”

  I never had any fellow feeling for a man who liked snakes. There was always something strange about them. Something that made my skin crawl.

  I groaned and put my head into my hands for a minute. Then I looked up and asked, “You sending for the sheriff?”

  “Whyever for?” His voice was smooth as cream.

  “For coming into your house and trying to rob you.”

  He laughed. “I took out all the money as soon as I knew somebody was watching me. There wasn’t a thing in my hidey-hole except the boys.”

  I looked at my stumps, swollen like elephant legs at the ends of the trotline. Tears rolled down my face again. All this suffering, permanent crippling, for nothing at all! My stumps were throbbing now, and the poison that had got through to the rest of me was making me sick and groggy. My feet itched fiercely.

  “But you’ll have me put away! I’ll go to jail,” I wailed.

  “Now why should I do that?” The voice was cream with honey, now. “You didn’t steal anything. Just let out my pets, but they always come back. Anybody is welcome in my house—there’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, you’re never going to steal anything again. Are you?” Those blue eyes were stabbing right through me.

  I looked away, down at my bloody stumps. A legless thief—no, it didn’t look as if I ever would steal again.

  I shook my head.

  He poured a slug of white lightning down me to kill some of the pain. Then he lugged me out to his ancient pickup and took me to town to the hospital. He told the sheriff that I’d been snake-bit and cut off my legs to save my life, which was the Gospel truth. Said nothing at all about why I’d been out there. I agreed with everything, though by then I was mighty sick from the poison that got up into my system while I was sawing off my legs.

  So that’s what happened to my legs. That’s why I sell pencils on the street corner. Nice of you to ask. Not many do, these days. Everybody in town has heard the story by now. It’s only when visitors like you come that I get to tell it again.

  There’s the five o’clock whistle at the sawmill. Time to go back to my room. Why, thank you. Not everybody helps me gather up my stuff onto my cart. Neat job, isn’t it? I push it along with my crutches...see?

  Eph made it for me. He keeps an eye on me and comes to see me whenever he gets to town. Brings me fresh catfish too. I have the feeling that if I even so much as shortchange anybody, those round blue eyes will see it.

  Eph’s a good old man. Just don’t ever try to rob him.

  COON HUNT, WITH DISTRACTIONS

  Living out here in the woods, I used to lie in bed at night and listen to the coon hounds belling through the distant forest. I never wanted to follow them, but I did enjoy listening. Coon hunters find a lot of things, though maybe not so oddball as this one did.

  The hound gave a yip and took off through the moonlight. I sighed and sat under a hollow sweetgum tree and listened to Old Rupe go hollering through the thickets. That was no way to coon-hunt, really, but I had nobody to go with. There wasn’t even another dog to run with Rupe.

  But the fall nights were just too fine to spend indoors, no matter what Becky-Sue thought about it. Women just do not understand coon hunting.

  Rupe was a fine dog, old of course, but that just meant he made up in smart what he lacked in stamina. He might not be able to run clean out of the county and keep up with a young pack anymore, but let hi
m tangle with a big old boar coon and you’d see the fur fly.

  I could hear him, his voice belling clean and sure, as he trailed. The hills flow low and rounded between the river and the new freeway off to the west of my little farm, and sound carries for miles, the way the woods lie. I’d be able to hear when he treed the coon, and I was feeling just vinegary enough to go and smoke the animal out, if it took me all night. The moon was full, and I felt fit for anything.

  Almost anything.

  It was coming up on midnight when Rupe’s voice changed. Instead of the regular “Here I am and I’m going this way” peals, he sounded shrill. Almost frightened. Now his voice was telling me to come quick—he had hold of something he couldn’t figure out what to do with.

  I stood and shook the stiffness out, and then I headed toward the river. Rupe was still yelling for me to come, and all my years of school teaching hadn’t made me as slow as you would think. I did a lot of hunting and fishing. It made Becky-Sue furious, but I’d left teaching because I refused to spend my weekends in a suit and tie, toadying to trustees.

  That was why I left the job and came back to the farm. It took Becky-Sue six months to decide that she’d rather come with me than stay there in town all by herself teaching. She’d never admit it, but she’d had a bellyful of teaching too. She’s no idiot, and that seems to be what they want nowadays.

  Now I was running through the woods as if I was still twenty-five, instead of a good ten years older. I did my best, though, and the faster I ran, the harder Rupe yelled. I hightailed it down the animal tracks and through the thickets as if it was a jogging trail, which it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

  I hadn’t a gun—never carried one on my coon hunts—and as I ran I wondered if he’d found a big old granddaddy coon that was too big and smart for him to handle. I kept watch for a stout hickory sapling, because I knew there was no way I could lick one if Rupe couldn’t. Getting mauled by a coon is no joke—they can tear you to flinders. Not to mention what they can do to a dog.