by Donna Ingham
“Moon Pies,” repeated the big bad jackalope. “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” He just loved Moon Pies. “Looky here, Teeny,” he said, “look at all these tree stumps. You think you can catch them all?”
“You bet,” Teeny Tangerine Twirling Rope said, and she loosed the noose from around the first stump and started swinging it toward the next.
While she was thus engaged, the big bad jackalope high-tailed it over the next rise, and just as she’d said, there was Granddaddy Bubba’s place. The big bad jackalope hopped over to the window of Granddaddy Bubba’s cabin and peeked in. Granddaddy Bubba was just a-sittin’ there in his recliner watching a tractor pull on the TV.
The big bad jackalope thought to lure Granddaddy Bubba outside by tapping on the window to get his attention and then jumping up and down and making faces. And it worked. Granddaddy Bubba got to be more curious about who was outside than he was about who was going to win the tractor pull, so he left the cabin and commenced to follow the big bad jackalope all the way out to the tack shed. Whereupon the big bad jackalope lured Granddaddy Bubba inside, then ducked through the door into the barn, latched it, and doubled back to latch the outside door as well. So Granddaddy Bubba was trapped.
Then the big bad jackalope went back to Granddaddy Bubba’s cabin, took Granddaddy Bubba’s favorite leather vest with the fringe on it off the hook, put it on, and settled into the recliner in front of the TV. That’s just when Teeny Tangerine Twirling Rope showed up, knocked, and stepped inside.
She looked over toward the recliner and said, “Mercy, Granddaddy Bubba, what big old feet you have!”
“All the better to get down at a hoedown with you, darlin’. Come on over here.”
“And what’s that on top of your head?”
“Oh, the rabbit ears? Well, that just for better reception, don’t you see?”
“No, those other things. You’re looking kind of—I don’t know—horny.”
“Watch your mouth, girl. This is a family story,” the big bad jackalope said. “These are my antler antennae for picking up on Moon Pies, and you’ve got some in that basket. And I want them!”
With that he leaped to his feet and started chasing Teeny Tangerine Twirling Rope round and round and round the recliner until she was sure she was about to get caught. She was a-hoping for, a-wishing for, a-praying for a rescuer when BOOM! In through the door, with clipboard in hand and tape recorder at the ready, burst the fearless folklorist.
“Stop!” he shouted. “I have documented evidence from several sources in the field that you [and he pointed to the big bad jackalope] are a mythical beast. You do not exist!”
And just like that, the big bad jackalope began to shrink and become opaque and then transparent and then poof! He vaporized and was gone. And that, my friends, is how the Texas jackalopes became extinctified and why you see only pictures of them on those postcards in the little wire racks at truck stops or—sometimes—the remains of one stuffed and mounted over the bar in some Texas taverns. And that’s the truth.
Pedro y El Diablo
When I was teaching in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, I inherited an American literature class and the textbook someone else had already adopted. I looked through the table of contents and saw mostly the names of dead white guys. Most of my students were Hispanic. So I told them we were going to do a folklore project instead of the usual research paper. I asked them to bring a story from their culture—whether that be Mexican, Mexican-American, Texan, or something else—and explain how that story was representative of their culture. A student named David brought this story as representative of his Mexican-Texan border culture. We later found variants in the works of African-American author Zora Neale Hurston and in tellings from England, so the motif of mistaken identity is a widespread one. What this version has that the others do not, to my way of thinking, is the element of the compadres.
Way down in south Texas there were two old compadres. Now, compadre is one of those words that can’t truly be translated. It means more than “companion,” certainly, and even more than “friend.” It suggests the kind of relationship that builds over time and lasts forever.
These two men had known each other since they were boys and had moved steadily from being good amigos to being lifelong compadres. Even in their retirement years, they continued to do things together—pretty much the same things, the same way, every day.
They would meet each day on the road in front of their houses and walk to the cantina, where they would spend hours talking and telling stories and drinking cerveza and flirting with the waitress. Even as they walked together down the road, they were an odd-looking couple. The one was round and firm and fully packed. We’ll call him El Gordo. The other was just as skinny and wizened as his compadre was rotund.
Normally they knew their limits and would walk home while they still could, but this one day they had maybe one or two cervezas too many. So when they started home, they weren’t navigating very well. As a matter of fact, they were staggering from one side of the road to the other, and they soon grew weary, for it was a hot day.
About that time they arrived at a cemetery that was about halfway between the cantina and their houses. It was one of those lovely south Texas cemeteries with tall headstones—none of those little flat stones that are supposed to make the mowing easier. And the graves were decorated with statues and flowers, not just on the Day of the Dead but every day. So it was, on the whole, a very inviting place.
Even more inviting on this hot day was the shade just inside the low stone wall that surrounded the cemetery. So the two old compadres, without even saying a word to one another, just veered off the road, through the gate, and along the path inside the cemetery until they came to a particularly shady area with a thick patch of grass. They sat themselves down, leaned back against the stone wall, and promptly passed out.
We’re going to leave them there and go on down the road to the home of a young man named Pedro. Now Pedro had a good amigo named . . . well, to tell you the truth, nobody could remember his name because he was such an ornery little devil that everyone just called him El Diablo. On this particular day El Diablo came over to Pedro’s house.
“Hey, Pedro,” he called. “Come out. I have something to tell you.”
So Pedro came out, and El Diablo continued. “I have found this apple orchard, and the trees are full of apples, ripe ones.”
“Oh, no,” Pedro said. “I will not go with you to this orchard. Every time I go with you I get into trouble.”
“But listen,” El Diablo said, “we do not have to go into the orchard itself. You see, there are these trees planted right along the fence, and many of their branches are hanging over the fence right there by the road. The apples on those branches belong to everybody, don’t you see?”
Pedro was still not convinced, so El Diablo said, “Okay, Pedro, listen to this. If we go along the road and pick only those apples from the branches hanging over the fence—the apples that belong to everybody—we will be thinning the farmer’s tree, and the apples on the inside of the fence will get bigger so that the farmer will get a better price for them at market.”
“Oh,” Pedro said, “I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. If you are sure we will be helping the farmer by picking his apples, I will go with you.”
The boys found an old tow sack, or gunnysack, and set out for the orchard. It was just as El Diablo had said. The orchard was full of apple trees, and the trees were full of apples. And many of the branches of those trees planted along the fence were hanging over the fence right by the road. All the boys had to do was walk along the bar ditch and pick the apples and put them in their sack. By the time they reached the end of the fence row, the sack was full.
That is when El Diablo took one corner of the tow sack and Pedro took the other, and they ran—just in case the farmer didn’t appreciate what they had done for him by thinning his apple
trees. They ran and they ran and they ran and they ran until they were clear out of breath. Well, it so happened they stopped right outside that cemetery where the two old compadres were sleeping it off inside. The two boys decided they might as well divide up their apples right there on the spot, so they dumped the apples out on the ground and began to put them into two piles: “One for Pedro, one for El Diablo.”
About that time El Gordo woke up, and this is what he heard: “One for Pedro, one for El Diablo.”
He elbowed his compadre and said, “Listen!”
“One for Pedro, one for El Diablo.”
“It’s Saint Peter and the Devil,” he said. “They’re dividing up the souls in the cemetery!”
Then they heard Pedro say, “Well, that’s all of them.”
But then El Diablo said, “Oh no, see over there by the fence? There are two more. One of them is a nice big round one; the other one is sort of puny and shriveled up. I tell you what, Pedro, you take the nice big round one, and I will take the shriveled up one.”
“No, no, El Diablo, this was your idea. You take them both.” Hearing this, the two old compadres—considerably sobered up by now—jumped up and ran for the gate at the opposite end of the cemetery, never even looking back. They ran all the way home, and I have heard it said that from that day on neither of them ever touched another drop of alcohol for as long as he lived.
The Old Woman and the Robbers
Another traditional tale with the motif of mistaken identity is this one, with its roots in central Europe. It immigrated with early settlers and began taking on characteristics of the frontier. I have adapted it further and given it a Texas setting.
Way back a long time ago and way up in the Texas Hill Country, there lived an old woman. She lived all by herself in a log cabin, and she was what we call a creature of habit. That is, she did the same things the same way, day after day. She had a lot of good habits: She made her bed every morning and brushed her teeth after every meal and before bedtime, and she saved her money.
Yes sir, she saved her money and saved her money and saved her money ’til she was just about rich. She didn’t have a piggy bank, so she kept her coins—some of them gold coins—in an old cracked sugar bowl that wasn’t good for holding sugar anymore.
The time came when the coins started spilling out of the sugar bowl onto the counter, and she had to figure out what to do with her money to keep it safe. First she gathered up all the coins and put them in a leather pouch with drawstrings at the top so she could pull them up snug and the coins wouldn’t fall out. Then she had to decide where to hide the pouch. She looked around her little log cabin for a good hiding place.
As she looked at the stone chimney over her fireplace, she saw that one of the stones about halfway up was loose. So she climbed up and pulled that loose stone out and put her little bag of gold coins in the hole and then put the stone back and tamped it in so that you couldn’t even tell it had been loose. It was just like having a safe.
Then she sat down in front of her fireplace in her rocking chair and started rocking back and forth, back and forth. It made a creaking sound, her rocking chair did. That was another one of her habits, rocking in that rocking chair. She did that same thing every evening. And she would card her wool, pulling the carding combs back and forth, back and forth, in rhythm with her rocker. The carding combs made a scratching sound. Creaking and scratching. Creaking and scratching.
And then she’d yawn. Well, she was such a creature of habit that she would count her yawns. And when she’d yawned three times, she figured it was time to go to bed.
But she didn’t go straight to bed because she liked to have a little bedtime snack. She didn’t have milk and cookies, though. No, see, she had an old dried-up fish hanging on the wall right by her fireplace. He was just hanging there by his tail from a nail and looking out into the room with the one eye that showed. That’s why she called him Old One-Eye. Well, after she’d yawned that third time, the old woman would put her carding combs back in her basket, get up, walk over to get her butcher knife, and then cut a slice of fish jerky off of Old One-Eye. She did that every night. It was a habit. And then she’d brush her teeth and go to bed.
Well, some robbers heard about that old woman’s gold coins. And their leader was mean and bad and a fighter. Why, he’d been in so many fights that he’d had one of his eyes put out, so everyone called him Old One-Eye.
Now, Old One-Eye the robber got two other robbers, and they went up behind the old woman’s house and hid out in an arroyo there.
“You,” Old One-Eye said to one of the other robbers, “you go up there and spy on that old woman, and when she goes to bed, you come back down here and tell us. Then we’ll go up there and steal her gold.”
So the first robber went up and walked around the old woman’s house, trying to see in. Finally he found a place right beside the chimney where the chinking had fallen out from between the logs, and he peeked in. Sure enough, he could see the old woman sitting there in her rocking chair, carding her wool. Just creaking and scratching, creaking and scratching. Then she yawned. And she said, “Well, that’s one that’s come. Two more come, and it’ll be time for me to get my butcher knife.” And she looked over at Old One-Eye the fish.
But the robber was standing right outside the wall where she was looking, and he thought she was looking at him. So he jumped up and ran back down to the arroyo, hollering, “That old woman’s a witch! She looked right through that wall and saw me and said, ‘That’s one that’s come. Two more come, and it’ll be time for me to get my butcher knife.’ Let’s get out of here, fellows!”
Well, Old One-Eye the robber said, “Ah, she can’t see through that wall. I think you’re just scared.” So he pointed to the other robber and said, “You! You go up there and spy on that old woman, and when she goes to bed, you come back down here and tell us, and we’ll go up there and steal her gold.”
So the second robber did just like the first and found that place where the chinking had fallen out and looked in to spy on the old woman. Sure enough, there she sat in her rocking chair, carding her wool. Just creaking and scratching, creaking and scratching. Then she yawned. And she said, “Well, that’s two that’s come. One more comes and it’ll be time to get my butcher knife.” All the time she was looking at Old One-Eye the fish.
But the robber thought she was looking at him on the other side of that wall, so he jumped up and ran back down to the arroyo. “That old woman is a witch,” he hollered. “She looked through that wall and saw me and said, ‘That’s two that’s come. One more comes and it’ll be time to get my butcher knife.’ Please, let’s get out of here!”
“You two,” Old One-Eye the robber said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. I think you’re both just chicken! I guess if I want this job done right, I’ll have to do it myself.”
So Old One-Eye the robber went up to the old woman’s cabin and found that same place where the chinking had fallen out, and he put his one good eye up to that crack to spy on the old woman. Well, she hadn’t gone to bed yet. She was still sitting in that rocking chair, carding her wool. Just creaking and scratching, creaking and scratching.
Then she yawned. And she said, “Well, that’s three that’s come. I reckon it’s time for me to get my butcher knife and cut a chunk out of you, Old One-Eye.” Of course, she was looking at Old One-Eye the fish, but Old One-Eye the robber was standing right outside, and he thought she was talking to him! So he jumped up and ran down to the arroyo.
“I’m sorry, fellers,” he said. “You’re right. She is a witch. She looked right through that wall and saw me, and she called me by name. Let’s get out of here!” So the three robbers ran off and were never seen in those parts again.
And the old woman put her carding combs in a basket by her chair, got up out of that rocker, walked over to pick up her butcher knife, and then cut her a big old slice
of fish jerky. She put it in her mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it and then brushed her teeth and went to bed to get a good night’s sleep—just as was her habit.
Pretty Polly and Mr. Fox
Not so much a ghost story as a murder mystery, the European tale called “Bluebeard” or “The Robber Bridegroom” or “Mr. Fox” merged in this country with an old English and Scottish ballad first called “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight” and later “Pretty Polly.” Folklore collector Richard Chase points out that the “Mr. Fox” tale was well enough known in Shakespeare’s day to be mentioned in the first scene of the first act of Much Ado About Nothing, when Benedict says, “Like the old tale, my lord, ‘It is not so, nor ’twas it so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so!’ ” By the time she got to Texas, I figure the heroine of the story had become proactive enough to be a little bit like the girl detective Nancy Drew, whose adventures I read growing up. Although I have toned down the gorier details of the original European tale, some of the images in this story are still rather gruesome and therefore inappropriate for young readers.
One time there was this girl called Pretty Polly—and she was pretty. She wasn’t married and her folks were all dead, so she lived by herself. She was not only a pretty girl but a smart girl, too, and spunky.
One day a stranger came to town. Said his name was Fox. He was a pretty slick-looking fellow himself and had a good eye for the womenfolk, so he went to courting Pretty Polly right off. He’d come over every Saturday night, and they’d sit and talk. Then one day he asked her if she would meet him the next Saturday night under a big old live oak tree up on a limestone bluff. She said okay. Because she was a spunky girl. But after he left, she got to thinking about it and wondering why he was wanting her to meet him way out there in the middle of nowhere, and she decided she didn’t like it much. Because, like I say, she was a smart girl, too.
