Sweeter Than Tea

by Deborah Grace Staley

  “Thank you,” I whispered in Mama’s ear, fighting back more tears.

  “Whatever for?”

  A door opened behind us, and we both turned to watch the bride enter from the vestibule. Dressed in Mama’s wedding gown, I’d never seen Evangeline look more beautiful or happy, not since the day she first came to live with us. Her relaxed smile beamed out from behind the veil as she took her place beside Mama.

  The tears fell, and I let them, for I couldn’t think of anything that made me happier today than seeing that smile on Evangeline’s face. “For giving me a sister.”

  A Roasted Pig

  Tom Honea

  Cut Bank

  Early Spring 1910

  “Mr. Francis,” Earl Dupree broke the silence, “them wild hogs is been gittin’ worse through the winter. Comin’ out from the woods, rootin’ in the corn fields and such.”

  They had made the rounds of the fields adjacent to the house, the trading post, the barns. The horses sensed their day was nearly over, quickened their pace toward the compound.

  “Hup,” Francis Jennings sounded. “Boar? We never had wild boar in Ashe County that I know of.”

  The house itself was on the highest point of the slight rise. It faced the south and was ringed from north and west by mature oaks. Only the roof tops and chimneys, and the two ancient pin oaks between the trading post and the roadway, showed from Francis’ and Earl’s vantage point.

  “I been hunting that bottom land nigh on forty years now, Earl. Don’t remember seein’ no wild boar.”

  “These ain’t actual wild boar, Mr. Francis. These is hogs got out from the pens. Some from here on the place, some down on the Row, some at farms all around. Been down in that swamp, breedin’, ain’t no tellin’ how long. More of ’em ever year, gone wild.

  “They ain’t comin’ outta the bottom land. Been up toward White House, toward East Fork. ’Cept now they gittin’ closer, comin’ up in the fields. Be rootin’ up new corn soon’s we plant, it comes up . . . Preacher feller over on East Fork road seen ’im, big boar hog. Big as a short-legged horse, the man said.”

  They both laughed, neither of them believing the preacher.

  “And what is it you’re suggestin’, Earl?” Francis Jennings was ready to end the day, get on to home and family.

  “We don’t deal with these hogs now, Mr. Francis, it ain’t gonna be a pretty sight. Corn fields . . . vegetable gardens. Come May, won’t be nothin’ left. Might be we could git some dogs, go down in them woods, root ’em out, so to speak.”

  “Git some dogs? . . . Go lookin’ fer ’em?”

  “Yes sir. I hear ’ed a man down in Louis’ana’s got some hog dogs. Gentleman named Mr. LeCocq.”

  “LeCocq, huh? French fellow . . . Isaac, if I remember right. Isaac LeCocq. I’ll have a word with ’im, see can we borrow them dogs for a while.”

  They rode into the yard outside the horse barn. Fat Back rose, laboriously, from his perch at the double doors, took the reins of the two horses. Francis walked off toward the house, to Torie, the children. “Wild hogs,” he muttered under his breath.

  So it was arranged. Francis and Papa Thomas made the trip down into the edge of Louisiana, to the LeCocq farm.

  “Look like curs, LeCocq. How is it these dogs is hog dogs and them over yonder ain’t? How come mine ain’t?”

  “Ha.” It was more a burst of air than a laugh. “These dogs is trained. Them dogs yonder, yore dogs, most likely’ll go off chasin’ deer or possums or bobcats. These dogs is trained to stick to hogs, ain’t gonna git distracted.”

  “They’s four dogs there, Mr. Jennin’s,” Issac LeCocq said. “You welcome to ’em. They don’t come back, however, it’ll cost a Jersey yearling apiece.”

  “A yearling a piece? That’s a mite steep, LeCocq. I never heard of no dog was worth a Jersey cow.” Francis slapped his felt hat against his leg, wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  The debate, the bargaining went back and forth; it was spirited, but amicable, without animosity.

  LeCocq reminded Francis, “You got Jersey cows, I got hog dogs.”

  “You a hard man, LeCocq.”

  They shook hands.

  Francis loaded the dogs into a make-shift crate on the back of a farm wagon. They crossed the state line back into Mississippi, ran up the logging road parallel to the rivers back to Cut Bank.

  “Now, JJ,” Francis told his son, “we got to feed these dogs, might even play with ’em a little. We let ‘em loose lookin’ for them hogs, we don’t want ’em heading back to Louisiana, want ‘em thinkin’ this is home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  So JJ fed the dogs, morning and night. For the first several days he kept them in the pen reserved for bitch dogs in heat. Gradually he let them out for short periods, first one at a time, then two together, and finally the whole four of them.

  “I think we can take ’em in the woods now, Papa,” he said at supper that night.

  “You can call ’em in, can you? Git ’em back home?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy answered. There was pride in his voice, a smile.

  On the following Tuesday, Francis told Earl Dupree, “Tell Fat Back saddle us up some mules come mornin’. Leave at good daylight.”

  “Mules, Mr. Francis?”

  He laughed. “You too proud to be ridin’ a mule, Earl?”

  “Naw, sir. It’s jus’ you don’t ride mules much.”

  “Better’n a horse down in that swampy land. Don’t mind gittin’ their feet in the mud and muck, don’t mind pushin’ through all that tangle of briars and brambles.”

  “How many’ll we be needin’?”

  “Five. Me an’ you an’ JJ, and Papa wants to go.”

  “Mr. Thomas wants to go?”

  “It’ll do him good. You know how much he enjoys the woods. An’ we need one pack mule. Luke Denton an’ most likely his boy’ll be joinin’ us up past the school house. ’Course they got their own mules. And, Earl, bring that long-barrel twelve-gauge we keep in the horse barn. An’ a box a double-aughts.”

  Supper that night was strained, quiet. The sound of tin utensils clacking against dishes was louder than usual. JJ kept his elbows close to his sides, crossed his ankles, squeezed his knees together. He stirred his food, ate quickly, excused himself at the first possible opportunity.

  “I don’t like it a bit,” Torie said as soon as the boy was out of the room. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”

  “Books ain’t all a boy needs to know,” Francis answered. “Besides, we need to manage the dogs. He’s the one been feedin’ ’em, mindin’ ’em.”

  “It’s a bad precedent, Francis. He has enough trouble at school anyway. He’ll be thinking anything is an excuse not to go.”

  There was a long silence, then: “Well, it’s decided. I already told him he could go.”

  They rode from the barns east, toward the rivers. Five mules, three men, two white, one black, a twelve-year-old boy. They carried a canvas water bag each, a sack containing three syrup cans with corn bread, fried pork ribs, a jar of honey and a small arsenal of guns.

  For the better part of three days they scoured the woodlands, first east and then north of the farm. The Denton’s, father and son, joined them the first two days. Otis Butterbaugh on the third day. The first three days there had been some signs, but no hogs. Then, on a Thursday, the dogs found hogs, bayed. By the time the men and boys and mules fought their way through wet underbrush, the quarry was gone.

  At the end of a week they slogged through a cold spring rain, mud and muck. But luck was with them. They found a sow and a litter of half-grown piglets. Francis shot and killed the sow with the Mauser. JJ and Paul Denton caught six of the piglets, carried them home in croaker sacks.

  The dogs came home, tongues lolling. The sow
was field dressed, thrown across the pack mule’s broad back, carried to The Row and roasted through the long cool spring night.

  Saturday all of Cut Bank community gathered around the trading post. Friday’s rain had given way to a warm spring sun. Torie and Mama Jennings sold an abundance of Prince Albert tobacco and the new cola that had come on the market. Shotgun shells had sold out by mid-morning, unusual in the spring of the year. A rousing game of horseshoes drew a ring of spectators.

  “Goin’ out today, Mr. Francis?” someone asked. He was asked, “Goin’ lookin’ for them pigs? That boar? . . . It’s got to be a big ole boar in them woods somewhere.”

  Francis stuck his thumbs under his belt, leaned his shoulders back. “Them dogs are plum worn out,” he said. “Rest ’em a day or two. Give it another go on Monday. Might be needin’ some rest myself. I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

  “Some of us was thinkin’ we might go with you. Git in on the fun, you might say.” There was a general restiveness among the gathered neighbors.

  Francis ran his thumb and fingers of his left hand over his mustache, his chin and down his neck. He didn’t really want the woods full of gun totin’ farmers. Any self-respecting swine would be in the next county before the sun was up in the treetops.

  “We roastin’ a couple a-them shoats,” he told them. “Oughta be ready by mid-day . . . You fellers find some horseshoes, break out a couple ‘a checker boards and some dominoes. Have a tournament, sort of, something to eat later on.”

  “You should a seen them two boys chasin’ them pigs,” Otis told the gathered crowd. “You’d a-thought it was the county fair. Chasin’ a greased pig. Why, they’d jump on one, git they arms aroun’ it, wrap it up and it ’ud jus’ squirt out the other end. Chase starts all over again.” He tamped down the tobacco in his pipe.

  “Didn’t know you was there, Mr. Otis,” somebody offered. “Best we could tell them pigs was caught couple days ago. You was up in White House lookin’ to buy a pair a mules.”

  “Well,” he answered, hurruped, “was there the next day. Right there with ’em, wet, it rainin’ the whole day. Heard it first hand, practical did anyway. How they chased them pigs down, runnin’ through them vines and limbs, divin’ on the ground for ’em.”

  “Startin’ to sound like yore granddaddy, Mr. Otis, tellin’ all them stories.” The crowd hooted. “To hear him tell it, he near lost the war all by hisself. Didn’t need no help from General Lee . . . all them other fellers.”

  Otis Butterbaugh blew out a cloud of smoke, grabbed a horseshoe and flung it. “I don’t know why I bother tellin’ you fellers nothin’. Don’t none of you listen.” The thrown projectile hooked the iron pipe just along one edge, spun half around and clanked off to the left side.

  The afternoon grew warm, the first such of the season. Some kid from East Fork, he had stumbled onto the goings on inadvertently, won out at horseshoes.

  “We oughta kick his ass,” the oldest Hinds boy groused. “Send ’im up the road. Damn foreigner.”

  Nobody offered to help. The threat died in the cooling afternoon.

  Papa Thomas was declared dominoes champion. Checkers went on into the evening without a clear winner.

  “What you diggin’ there, Uncle Fats,” Francis asked the big black man on Monday morning.

  “Gittin’ ready for that boar hog, Mr. Francis.” He leaned on the shovel, wiped the sweat away with a bandana. “Diggin’ a pit, gonna cook ‘im.”

  Francis laughed. “We ain’t got ’im yet.”

  “You ‘a git ‘im. I know you gone git ’im.”

  By sundown Tuesday Fat Back had the pit dug, big enough to hold a full grown steer. He lined the sides of the pit with old tin roofing, built a ten-inch earthen berm around the perimeter. Field hands with post hole diggers burrowed into the packed earth at each end of the pit. Forked tree trunks, the size of a man’s thigh were dropped into the holes, tamped down.

  “You got some vinegar down to the store, Miss Torie?” Sadie asked.

  Torie looked up sharply from wiping the remains of a mid-day meal off two-year-old Mavis’ face. “Vinegar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Earl and Fat Back gonna roast that pig. They ever git ’im.”

  “And you need vinegar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Fat Back say vinegar, garlic. But I ain’t never seen no garlic, no lemon.”

  Torie laughed. “That’s getting a bit fancy, Sadie.”

  “Fat Back, he learn that kinda stuff down in Louis’ana, he was young. That time he run away from home, was down that way.”

  “And just what is Uncle Fats gonna do with this vinegar and garlic and lemon?”

  “Oh, it’s lot more stuff, Miss Torie. Onions and herbs and pepper. A whole lotta salt, he say.”

  “Hup,” Torie sounded. “Cider, maybe, not vinegar,” she said. “We got plenty good hard cider left.”

  It was Sadie’s turn to say, “Hup . . . ” Then she said, “Fat Back, he cleanin’ a old water trough, gonna put that pig in there. Mix all this stuff in a water barrel, pour it on top a that pig. Soak it all night, he say.”

  “Hot red peppers, Sadie. Forget the garlic. Use a lot of red peppers.”

  The dogs picked up a fresh trail that ran parallel to a slough. The tone of their clamor was different.

  “They found that boar hog, Mr. Francis,” Earl said, almost shouted. “They found ’em.”

  “You think, Earl? How do you know?”

  “Them dogs know. Jus’ listen at ’em. They knowin’ that ain’t no sow they trailin’, no buncha little pigs. Them dogs has smelt boar hog before.”

  “Is this gonna cost me a Jersey calf?” Francis asked.

  “Might be, Mr. Francis, might be.”

  They kicked the mules up, urged them, pushed them through the underbrush. There was no open trail. Even at the end of winter the vines and limbs presented a physical barrier. Muck from the recent rains sucked at the mules’ feet.

  “Hurry, Papa, hurry,” JJ called. “Them dogs’ll be needin’ help.”

  Earl swung the machete with a vengeance, cutting through the tangle. The baying of the dogs grew more frantic.

  They found the den dug into the bank of a slough, underneath the roots of an ancient water oak. Floods, for decades, had swelled the slough, making it a rushing torrent and washed away the dirt on the lower side. The exposed roots reached like extended, clawing fingers down into the slough, through the standing water and muck, into the dirt below. On the upper side, the roots were firmly anchored in terra firma. The tree itself grew straight up from the break between dry ground and the always wet, the difference in elevation a mere sixteen, maybe eighteen inches. The swine had gone in between the roots, burrowing underneath, ultimately dooming the ancient oak.

  The boar hog, when the dogs got there, was backed up against the den, his hind quarters and flanks wedged in between the protecting roots. The front of his body swayed side to side, feet planted just wider apart than the width of his shoulders. His head, hung low to the ground, swung with the front part of his body, left to right and back again, the curved tusk jutting up and out from the lower jaw.

  The dogs ran in hard against the animal, and like water breaking around a boulder in the shallow part of a stream, parted and went by on each side of the boar.

  “Lord, they got him cornered, Earl,” Francis shouted, slapped his mule on the rump, urging it on through the tangle. “He might be big as a short-legged horse. Jus’ listen at them dogs.” He surged forward, past Earl and his efforts to hack a path, mindless of the vines and limbs pulling at and cutting across his body. He lay low across the mule’s neck, forging his way forward.

  The dogs, coming in from the boar’s back and sides, fell down between the roots. They found no footing to come at him away from the head and tusk. Even climbing onto his back, h
is hide like armor against their bites, they were powerless to do him any damage. In frustration the youngest dog came at him head on.

  “No!” Francis yelled. Not that the young male dog would hear, or heed the warning if he did hear. The boar swung its head, caught the animal just behind the left shoulder as he tried at the last second to dodge out of the boar’s reach. The tusk ripped open the dog’s skin, down to the ribs, from the shoulder across the side and up into the middle of the dog’s back, laid it open. The animal seemed to hang in mid-air, then fell into the two inches of standing water.

  JJ, riding into the mix, sat on his mule paralyzed.

  “Git that dog outta that water,” Earl said.

  Suddenly both Earl and JJ were in the slough; JJ falling face down in to the muck, then up on hands and knees, cradling the wounded animal, moving him away from the fray; Earl pulling, beating back the other dogs from harm’s way. The mules pushed out sideways, backwards, away from the madness of the barrel-sized hog, the clambering dogs, the black man and boy sometimes standing, sometimes on hands and knees in the muck and water.

  “You awful close, Earl,” Francis called out. “Stay clear a them tusk. We ain’t wantin’ you ripped open. Stand back some. I need a clean shot at ’im.”

  Francis dismounted, pulled the Mauser from the saddle scabbard, worked his left arm through the sling and racked the bolt back, forward, sliding a cartridge into the chamber.

  The bullet struck the animal just above the right eye. In his excitement, Francis had pulled the line of fire up and to the right ever so slightly. The steel projectile rode up the front of the skull, between the bone and the skin, came out the top of the head ripping the hide open from the inside. The boar went to its knees, shook its head side to side, slinging blood. The dogs fought free from their tenuous constraint, rushed, in mass, the blooded prey. The wounded dog on the sidelines struggled to its feet, back into the maelstrom. The humans, expecting the shot to be fatal, stood frozen, transfixed for long seconds.

  “Shoot ’im again, Mr. Francis, shoot ’im again,” Earl said. He’s gonna kill all these dogs.”