A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  “He’s running again,” Daniels said. “Let’s head that way.”

  He took off at a fast walk, cutting back toward the east, and Rusty got up and turned after him. Jimmy’s daddy followed him, stepping between the trees and past sunken places that held cypress knees sometimes two feet high and black water, his wet feet squishing in the black muck. He’d already seen the hog highways. They were unbelievable. What was unbelievable was that all this wilderness was right under his nose and he hadn’t known about it. They’d seen some huge buck rubs. Daniels had said there were some giant deer in this river bottom, but it was posted, all seven hundred acres of it. Daniels knew the old man who owned the land and the old man was glad to see some of the hogs killed because they’d raised hell with his corn crop this year so badly that a guy had come out from the Oxford Eagle to take some pictures of the devastation, and they had run the picture on the front page in color. And Jimmy’s daddy remembered seeing it in a rack down at the store one day, the old man standing in the middle of his wrecked field, with stalks of corn torn down all around him, and the ground torn up from their ravages. Daniels thought there were hundreds of them down here. Maybe thousands. Nobody really knew. The river bottom was vast and they could go wherever they wanted. Jimmy’s daddy had seen so many fresh hog wallows that he’d stopped counting them.

  Daniels kept trotting along, the chrome leash chains he had fastened around his waist clicking against each other as he went. They’d brought six Plott hounds and one had suffered a deep cut the first time the hog stopped to fight, and Daniels always carried a first-aid kit and had put a dressing and some Neosporin on it, and had tied him to a tree until he could get back and help him out to the road where the trucks were parked. He’d already called the vet on his cell phone and the vet had said to bring him in whatever time it was and he’d sew him up. Another dog had gotten separated from them somehow and now there were only four to hold the hog until they could get there with their guns, but so far it hadn’t happened. Daniels was afraid it was a big one. He had already shot a black one this year that weighed 324 pounds at the deer-processing place on Bell River Road. He’d said its tusks were seven inches long and he was getting it mounted right now. He was carrying a Remington 12-gauge Magnum Express pump, loaded with three-and-a-half-inch Brenneke rifled slugs, and there was a revolver in a holster on his belt. Jimmy’s daddy had only gotten his Marlin back from the gunsmith yesterday and he hadn’t had time to shoot it. But the gunsmith had taken the scope off, saying the mounts were ruined anyway, and possibly the scope, too, but Jimmy’s daddy figured the factory iron sights were okay. He just hoped he got the chance to use it.

  Daniels stopped again and turned to Jimmy’s daddy.

  “I wish your friend would catch on back up with us so we’d know where he is. We get in there and have to shoot, and don’t know where he is …” He didn’t finish his sentence. He was listening for the dogs.

  Seaborn hadn’t caught up with them yet. He’d had to stop and take a shit about ten minutes back, of all times. Right in the middle of the race. He’d been lagging behind, almost out of sight, out of wind, sweating even with the snow falling. Jimmy’s daddy didn’t know where he was now.

  “He’ll catch up with us,” he said, not sure if that was true or not. Hell, maybe he’d gone back to the truck.

  “I hope so,” Daniels said. “I believe they’ve turned again. If they could ever get him hemmed up against the river, we might have a chance to get in there and get a shot.”

  There was that faint clamoring in the distance again, and it seemed to be getting louder. And then there was the sound of something running.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Rusty said, and raised his rifle about the same time Daniels raised his shotgun. Jimmy’s daddy heard the shotgun roar and Daniels’s shoulder rocked back, and Rusty stepped up beside him and leveled the .44 and it boomed twice. That was when Jimmy’s daddy saw it, black and huge, covered with mud, slobber coming from its mouth, tearing through the trees and vines out there about a hundred feet and moving a lot faster than Jimmy’s daddy would have thought a hog could run. They both missed it. And then it was gone.

  “Son of a bitch,” Daniels said. He ejected his empty and shucked another one into the chamber and put his safety on and looked over at Rusty. “I think I hit a damn tree,” he said.

  “I know I did,” Rusty said. Then he looked at Jimmy’s daddy. “Why didn’t you shoot?”

  “Hell. Time I seen him he was done gone.”

  “They gonna have to catch him and let us get a shot,” Daniels said. “Well, come on. We got to try and stay close.”

  “Is he as big as that one you shot?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “He looks bigger,” Daniels said.

  The dogs were getting closer and then Jimmy’s daddy could see them, black-and-brindle shapes loping toward them, and when they drew nearer he could see that some of them were bloody on their faces and legs and sides. But they didn’t stop. They swept past, their voices ringing in the woods and making the woods echo with their passing and sending a chill running down Jimmy’s daddy’s backbone. Jimmy’s daddy started running again.

  It was getting harder now. He was slowing down, and he could see Rusty and Daniels pulling away from him. They kept glancing back at him, but all he could do was wave for them to keep going. The ground was getting muckier, and sometimes there were holes where you could go up to your knee. Daniels had learned some way to navigate through this and keep going, and Rusty was right behind him, but Jimmy’s daddy was out of breath again and was afraid he was going to have to stop and rest. And finally he did. He stopped and bent over, holding his rifle, and he saw Daniels and Rusty stop and look back at him.

  “I’m coming!” he shouted, and he started moving toward them. Daniels said something to Rusty and they went on. Jimmy’s daddy stopped again. Holy shit. He hadn’t run this hard since tenth grade in football. Jesus. He was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. All them damn cigarettes. He bent over and heaved. If it hadn’t been so wet he would have sat down. And then he saw what looked like a fairly solid log and he walked over to it and did sit down. Damn. Shit. He pulled his rifle upright and rested the stock on the ground and leaned his head against the lower part of the barrel while he got his breath. He couldn’t even hear the dogs now.

  God. His legs were shaking. And he wanted to be there when it happened. He didn’t want to miss out. He wanted to stop here for a few minutes and maybe have a cigarette, but instead he pushed himself up and went the way they’d gone. He heard one of them say something up ahead of him somewhere, but there were thousands of trees and the sound seemed almost directionless, and he wasn’t sure which way to go. He kept walking and he couldn’t hear anything but his own feet squishing in the black mud. And hog tracks everywhere. More wallows. Jimmy’s daddy thought he could even smell them.

  And then he heard it: the hysterical squealing up ahead and the snarl of hounds. And he heard somebody yell. But the two sounds didn’t sound like they were coming from the same place. So he headed toward the sound of the dogs. There were vines and briars and he had to climb down in a ditch and up the other side, grabbing at the mud to pull himself up, trying to keep his rifle’s muzzle out of the mud, and when he got up on the other side he saw something that froze him. It was one of the Plotts, and he was crawling, and ten feet of his intestines were bloody on the ground with bits of leaves sticking to him and he was dragging them behind him.

  “Aw shit,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “Aw shit.”

  What would Daniels do? Take it back to the truck? Shoot it? How the hell was he going to get it back to the truck before it bled to death? And then the dog stopped moving and his eyes glazed over the same way the baby deer’s had done. So Jimmy’s daddy went on. His blood was racing and then he heard them fighting again. He ripped his way through the hanging vines and tried to bat away the clinging thorny vines and felt one of them rip his cheek. He dabbed the back of one hand against his face and
it came away slick with blood. Fuck it. And then he saw them. And it was something he would never forget. The hog had backed himself against the trunk of an enormous cypress and he was cutting at the dogs that had encircled him, dogs that were almost unrecognizable because of the mud on their hides, and they were dashing in and out and nipping at the hog. The lost dog had somehow found them so that there were four of them in a ring around the beast, who was enraged and snapping his jowls at the dogs, the hair raised on their backs, their fangs long and white and exposed. The hog had sunk to his hocks in the soft ground and he was struggling to keep his footing and still make a fight and it was still snowing. Every time he turned his head to cut at a dog, the other three rushed in and slashed at him with their teeth, and the hog was dripping blood from his face, and Jimmy’s daddy was scared of it just standing there looking at it. And it took him a moment to realize that he had a shot. He could hear Rusty and Daniels yelling, drawing closer, and with shaking hands he raised the rifle and cocked the hammer and sighted down the barrel and held the front sight on the hog’s chest, waiting for the dogs to move out of the way, and then in one brief flash the hog broke loose and was coming straight for him like the Russian boars in the video, squealing that high-pitched infuriated squeal Jimmy’s daddy had heard when his daddy castrated the little ones on their place so many years ago. So Jimmy’s daddy accidentally shot one of the dogs. He knew it the instant he pulled the trigger, because the dog screamed and flopped over like a broken doll and blood started spurting from his muddy coat. Gut shot. Steam rising from his shot guts into the cold air. He lay there and howled and the hog fought his way past the other dogs and turned and crashed through the under-growth, dragging vines with him, only two of them chasing him now, one of them quitting and whining and licking at his torn leg, and then walking back to stand looking at the dog that was shot, cowering, his tail between his trembling legs. A dog in shock. A dog looking his own death in the eye. Jimmy’s daddy stood there and looked at what he’d done and realized that he was nothing but a fuckup, would never be anything but a fuckup, and never had been anything but that. And then Daniels and Rusty and Seaborn walked up.

  At first, Daniels just stopped and stood there looking down at his mortally wounded dog. Then he looked up at Jimmy’s daddy. Daniels had turned white and he was shaking and he looked like he had murder on his mind. He handed his gun to Rusty. Seaborn just stood there.

  Daniels knelt next to the dog and put his hand around his muzzle, Jimmy’s daddy guessed to keep from being bitten.

  “What are you doing?” Rusty said to him. Daniels was unbuckling from the dog’s neck a band of wide brown leather, embossed with pointed chrome studs. A brass plate held Daniels’s name and phone number.

  “Getting my collar,” Daniels said. When he had it undone he pulled the strap from the buckle and none of them really saw him do it, but the revolver that had been on his belt was suddenly in his hand and he put the muzzle of it against the dog’s ear and the gun fired and it was incredibly loud there in the woods that had gone silent, and then the Plott’s brains were lying on the forest floor and he wasn’t howling anymore. Daniels stood up. He looked at Jimmy’s daddy and he looked down at his holster and he opened the cylinder of the handgun and rotated the cylinder around to the ejector rod and pushed the rod down and ejected the spent round and then carefully revolved an empty chamber in the cylinder back up to align with the barrel and closed the cylinder and put the gun in the holster and took his Remington pump back from Rusty. It was Jimmy’s daddy he looked at, but it was Rusty he spoke to.

  “You get that son of a bitch out of here before I kill him,” he said.

  Jimmy’s daddy didn’t know what in the hell to say. So he didn’t say anything. Daniels turned away from them, and within a minute he had disappeared into the woods. Jimmy’s daddy wished he could disappear somewhere himself. A deep hole in the ground would have been perfect.

  62

  Cleve took the small ax from the shed and they went out in the woods in their coats looking for a nice tree. Peter Rabbit was trailing along behind them. Seretha had been back for a while now and her belly was getting out there, but she had on a pair of Cleve’s rubber boots with her jeans and she seemed to enjoy tramping around in the snow from the way she was giggling and laughing. She’d tried to make a snowball to throw at him, but there wasn’t enough snow on the ground yet. And she’d been singing. He knew a woman’s homones went crazy when she was pregnant. He knew women had homones. He was glad men didn’t. They hadn’t talked about Montrel. He hoped they wouldn’t.

  They walked over to the pipeline through the naked winter woods and crossed through the light tan sage grass that was standing dead on it and climbed up one oak-covered ridge that was dusted with snow and he stood there looking down into a patch of cutover and saw some small cedars down there.

  “They’s some nice ones down yonder,” he said. He pointed toward them.

  “Let me go look at em,” she said. “You may not get the right one.”

  “Why, I will, too,” he said. “What, you the tree expert?”

  “I’m the tree expert,” she said, and went ahead of him, pushing some limbs aside, slipping and sliding on the snow. He grinned at her back. She’d already picked up some pinecones and stuffed them into the big pockets of her coat. She had a red bandanna tied around her head. She wanted some mistletoe if they could find it, too, but he wasn’t going to tease her about her not having anybody to kiss under it the way he used to when she was sixteen. She was past all that now. So he followed her down the hill, calling back to Peter Rabbit to come on. Peter Rabbit was more interested in trying to find some squirrels, but it was midafternoon and most of them were in their nests and dens, their trails as cold as the ground. So he came on.

  Cleve told her to be careful. He didn’t want her slipping in the snow and falling. He was already worrying about the baby, if it would be all right and everything. And he’d been worried about her, too, for a long time. She’d been vague about where she’d been. He thought maybe she’d been to see her mother in Flint, but she wouldn’t say. And he wasn’t going to push. He was too glad to have her back home. And he didn’t want her to leave again. In truth he’d thought he’d lost her the same way he’d lost Tyrone and Woodrow. When she didn’t let him hear from her for so long. Almost two months. Not a letter or nothing. But now she was back and it looked like maybe everything would be okay. They’d already gone and bought some baby clothes at Wal-Mart. He let her drive because she had a license. And could run him by the liquor store with no problem from city cops.

  He went carefully down the hill, holding the ax by the shaft just below the head, so that he could throw it safely away from himself if he slipped. But he didn’t. And neither did she. She used to climb every tree in the yard and had broken her arm falling out of one when she was a kid. That arm still looked a little crooked when she turned it a certain way. He wondered if it would be a boy or a girl. It didn’t matter to him. Either one would be fine. A boy was fine, a girl was fine.

  She pointed to a tree and he followed her as she went toward it. It was a nicely shaped cedar but he thought it was too tall to fit under the ceiling, since the ceiling was so low in his homemade house. They stood there looking at it. Seretha walked around it, pulling at the limbs, fluffing it. Then putting her hands on her hips and standing there to look at him.

  “That’s a nice one,” she said.

  “Look how big it is, though.”

  “I ain’t about to have no shrimp tree in my house,” she said.

  “Long way to drag it.”

  “Go get the truck, Ebenezer,” she said.

  He stood there looking at it. He knew it was too tall. But he also knew he’d chop down whichever one she wanted.

  “I guess maybe get it back to the house we could cut the bottom off of it,” he said. He looked up to see a hawk wheeling in the winter sky. Just floating. He looked at the tree again. With a little trimming it might fit.

>   “What you gonna put on it?” he said.

  “I’m gonna paint these pinecones white and hang on it. And hang some popcorn on it. And run back up to Wal-Mart and get some of them silver icicles. I saw some other day. Go on and cut it. I’ll hold them bottom limbs out of the way for you.”

  She did. Knelt and held the limbs back and allowed him to bend in, chop lightly at the tree, but the little ax was very sharp and it didn’t take long to bring it down. He had a rope in his pocket and he tied that to it. Then they both got a grip on the rope and started dragging it back up the hill. It was snowing again. Little sparrows were hopping around on the ground. And the wind had turned cold. But he had done this with his own father when he was a little boy. It had been snowing then, too. So there was again sweetness in his life.

  That night he sat in the dim kitchen with the warm stove out there in front of his sock feet. She’d made chicken and dumplings and he was cooking the corn bread that they would crumble up and put in a bowl. They had fresh milk to pour over it, a big white onion he’d soon slice, and she’d made some tea. You couldn’t ask for anything better than that. And you couldn’t ask for anything better than spending Christmas with some of your family. He’d bought her a watch that he’d already wrapped and hidden. She’d always wanted a watch. The tip of the tree was brushing the ceiling, but he’d made it fit, had sawed and hammered together a stand with a big nail in it that went into the center of the tree’s trunk on the bottom. She had already painted the pinecones white with some spray paint she’d bought uptown and now she had her sewing needle and her string of popcorn laid out on the kitchen table, working at it. Peter Rabbit was sleeping on his rug. They had the radio on a Memphis station and the man on the air said it looked like a pretty good chance for a white Christmas. Cleve hoped that was so. They had plenty of food and he had some whisky and beer and some cigarillos. He could stand a white Christmas.