It was starting to cool off as night fell, and I was glad for that. The woods held in that summer heat so bad it made you feel like a steamed fish. My hair was stuck to my forehead and ears like maybe it had been slicked down with lard. My shirt was plastered to me so tight I had to pinch it away from my skin, open it up, and let my hide breathe. I was covered in fresh scratches and there were burrs and brambles all over my pan:s. Ticks and chiggers were starting to work on my arm pits and privates.
We were in a circle clearing where lightning had struck and burned a patch, and you could see the sky clearly above us. The moon was rising, and though it wasn’t full, it was considerably brighter than last night.
Abraham unrolled his blanket and got out the tallow-fat lantern and lit it. It wasn’t much on light, but it made me feel less alone. Abraham and I had been so bushed we hadn’t even said a word.
“We’ll get him tomorrow, Ricky. You’ll see.” Abraham said, and he laid down on his blanket and rolled over on his side away from me. “Tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I said, and I rolled out my blanket with the intention of just lying down and looking at the moon a bit. But I fell asleep right off.
Six
When I awoke the moon was high and the tallow lantern had burned out. I was sweating, and it wasn’t because I was hot. I had dreamed about a Caddo medicine man, a man who looked even older than Uncle Pharaoh, but who was as spry as a youngster. He was naked and his eyes were like two balls of fire.
In the dream he ran through the bottoms, through the pines, fast as a deer. And finally he began to bend over as he ran, his hands touching the ground. The hands changed, became hog hooves, and his feet changed too, and suddenly he was running on all fours. A long straight tail, not like no farm hog’s curled tail, but like a wild boar’s tail, grew up out of him and stood straight up as he ran. The hair on his head began to run down his back and pretty soon he was covered with thick, black hair. His nose began to thicken and grow, turn into a snout. Teeth busted out of his lower jaw and turned to tusks. And when he turned his head, it was the face of Old Satan, and he was looking at me, tusks gleaming in the moonlight, those fireball eyes looking right through me, and he was on the charge.
That was when I came full awake to find the lantern burned out and the moon high.
Like it was some sort of magic, I touched the old Winchester, laid back and tried to sleep, but couldn’t.
I rolled on my side and looked at Abraham’s shape on his blanket. I could hear him snoring. The dogs were all around us, almost in the spots where they had first laid down. Bounder still hadn’t showed.
I closed my eyes and lay there awake, waiting to get started again.
I had a gut feeling that tomorrow was the big day.
Seven
It was about an hour or so before daylight when I called Abraham awake. He put some fresh tallow in the lantern and we had a cold breakfast of dried ham and canteen water. We gave the dogs some cracklings, then rolled everything into our blankets.
Abraham got the dogs back on the trail easy, and pretty soon they were tearing through the brush barking. I found that I had gotten powerfully sore from all that running yesterday, but as I started pushing and tearing my way through the brush I started working it out, and when the sun got up high enough for us to put out the lantern and wrap it up, I was feeling a lot better.
The thicket, however, had gotten worse. We had to get out the cane knives Uncle Pharaoh had given us and cut our way through. It was slow going, but it was slow on the dogs too and they weren’t able to stay so all-fired ahead of us.
That kind of underbrush went on most of the morning, but just before noon we broke into a clearing that was spotted here and there with big, old pecan trees. The dogs were clustered under one of those, barking, racking about like they had gone crazy.
When we got there and walked under the tree, we found Bounder. His paw hit me in the head and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
He was in the tree, draped over a limb and cut from gut to gill. He’d been dead at least half a day. That boar had caught him with a flick of its tusks, ripped him wide open and tossed him into the air, landing him over that limb. That limb was about six feet high and I figured Bounder weighed about forty to fifty pounds. I didn’t like to think about an animal like that, one that was strong enough to toss Bounder about like he was a pillow and cut him open with Bowie knife-sized tusks.
The ground underneath the pecan was so torn up it looked like a herd of cattle had stampeded through there. There was a lot of blood on the ground too, and I figured every drop of it was Bounders.
“Poor old dog,” Abraham said. “Poor Old Bounder.”
I helped Abraham pull the dog down and lay him under the tree.
“Want to bury him?” I asked.
“Let’s get on with it,” Abraham said, picking up the Winchester, spear and shield. He was so angry he was trembling. And me, I was still shook from finding Bounder that way.
I nodded. “I reckon it’s now or never. Let’s leave everything we don’t need behind. Just take the must stuff. We can move faster that way.”
“All right.” Abraham tossed the things he had just picked up on the ground, and slipped off his blanket pack. When we were ready to go, all we had was one cane knife, our canteens, some ham in our shirt pockets, a coil of rope, and our weapons, including Abraham’s spear and shield which he refused to leave behind. I knew there wasn’t any use arguing with him about it, though for the life of me, they seemed like nothing other than a nuisance.
The dogs got on the scent and we followed, feeling lighter, madder, and meaner. And hotter. The day had turned out something spiteful. Yesterday had been like a Norther compared to this. My head was itching and the chigger and tick bites were starting to sting and throb on account of sweat getting into them. There was hardly any wind at all and the trees were holding in the heat like a Dutch oven. I kind of had an idea how a baked tater must feel.
It was that lack of wind that made me realize just how close we were getting to Old Satan. It was the stink again. The one like spoiled clothes and rotting dead things. It was strong, real strong, and since we could smell it that easily with no real wind blowing, I knew we were closing the gap on him.
Abraham knew it too I could tell by the way he ran—faster, more eager.
The land got low and marshy and the pines gave way to willows and vines. Couple times eight-foot water moccasins crossed our path, slithered off into the undergrowth. One of them had a head the size of my kneecap.
I was deeper into the bottoms than I’d ever been. This was Old Satan’s country, his home.
His smell was getting so strong now, I felt like I was going to puke. I don’t know if it was the stink or the fear making me feel that way, but it was sure enough unpleasant.
Ahead of us the dogs were barking like their tails had been set on fire.
Suddenly, they began to bay. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard dogs bay. It can be the prettiest tune you’ve ever heard if the hound has a good mouth on him. But this was more like a funeral dirge, like a lost soul or those banshees I’ve heard tale about. You could feel the excitement and cold fear in their voices. They had finally got hold of what they’d been searching for, and they didn’t like it none. “We got him now!” Abraham said.
Before we could reach the hounds the baying stopped and we heard a yip, followed by sharp barking and another yipping cry.
The dogs didn’t just have Old Satan at bay anymore, the crafty devil had them at bay. He was trying to kill every dog in sight.
We pushed and kicked our way through a thicket and broke out into an animal trail. Lying smack dab in the middle of it was one of the dogs.
We didn’t have to check and see if he was dead. Nothing torn up that badly could be alive.
Jumping over the body, we kept after the fresh sound of barking as the dogs chased Old Satan again. He had stopped to kill then had started back deeper into the bottoms.
The ground turned ever marshier and a bunch of long-legged water birds flew up in front of us and frightened us out of a couple years’ growth. But we didn’t slow, just kept plodding. I felt like my ribs were trying to kick my sides out and the hot, stale air was cutting at my throat and chest like a rusty crosscut saw.
Finally we came to a bend in the river.
“The Sabine,” Abraham said. “Good grief, it loops way around here.” Then: “Where’s them dogs?”
Good question. Wasn’t a peep now. A sort of sour, tickling feeling ran around inside my belly. No sound, no dogs, I thought.
We pushed on, staying close to the river where there was a sort of trail, and shortly thereafter we came up on another one of the dogs. It was the young one again.
He was lying out under a gnarly old willow and his sides were puffing up like the head of an old spreadin’ adder. There was a thin, red slash across his right flank and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth like a fat razor strop.
“He’s all right,” I said, bending over and touching his side. “Cut ain’t deep. He’s just plain tuckered out.”
“I wonder if any of the hounds out there are alive?” Abraham said. He slapped a mosquito on his neck. “Old Satan’s just playing with us, like Grandpa said he would.”
Just about then the hounds started to bay again. They were less than a quarter mile away.
We ran after them, but the young dog, worn to a frazzle, didn’t move.
Eight
The baying didn’t move away. Old Satan was holding his ground, and we were closing.
We came to a clump of blackberry vines mixed in with some tangles of brush and we could tell the ruckus was coming from the center of that.
The baying stopped and the fight was on. We could hear the dogs growling and barking. And we could hear Old Satan too. Snorting, grunting, and squealing like this was about the best time he’d ever had.
We spread out like Uncle Pharaoh had told us. Abraham went right and I went left. Last I saw of Abraham, before I started beating my way through the briars and brush, he was holding his Winchester in his right hand, the spear and shield in his left.
Smacking me a path into the clearing with the rifle barrel, what I saw made my legs turn to stone.
I’d seen Old Satan at night, in the shadows, and had gotten a glimpse of his snout in lantern light, but it hadn’t given me any idea what he looked like.
I’d always heard that daylight had a way of sobering up a bad dream or the size of things. But not this time. In the day he just looked bigger and meaner, like some kind of evil river-bottom god.
And Doc Travis and Uncle Pharaoh were right. He wasn’t any farm hog gone wild. One look at him and you knew that. He was the real thing. A wild boar.
He was over eight feet long and thicker than the rain barrel out back of our house. Weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce—maybe as much as four fifty. There was a halo of swarming bugs around his head, attracted to him by the stink. He had ten-inch tusks that glittered in the sunlight like Papa’s shaving razor, and his wiry, black hair looked gunmetal blue. His clove feet were as big as a cow’s.
But those eyes. That’s the thing I recall best. They were so pink as to be nearly red, like watery blood. Those eyes alone were enough to make you think that what you were looking at wasn’t any ordinary hog, any ordinary wild boar for that matter. Those eves looked old and wise. In that instant, I believed Old Satan was indeed a devil or demon or an Indian medicine man who could shift shapes at will.
The dogs were nothing to him. Big fleas. A bother. No worse than the bugs buzzing around his head. They were bounding at him, snapping and barking. Old Satan would spin suddenly and send them flying. It was like he was playing with them, able to tusk them any time he took the notion.
One of the hounds jumped on his back, and Old Satan flicked that big body like it was a whip and sent the dog flying. The dog went halfway across the clearing and into the briars with a yelp.
And that’s when Old Satan saw me.
Up until then I had just stood there, not quite believing what I was seeing. Old Satan had been too busy having his fun with the dogs to notice me. I reckon, too, I’d been upwind of him.
Now, as he whirled to look at the tossed dog, he caught sight of me, standing there dumbfounded with a rifle in my hand.
From the look in his eyes I could tell the dog no longer interested him. He had what he wanted. Good old Richard Dale.
All this happened in seconds, of course, and what happened next happened in less than a second, but I remember every moment as if each had been painted on canvas and given me to study.
Glancing, I took in Abraham. He’d tossed the spear and shield aside to hack his way through the brush with the cane knife. So perfect was the circle he’d cut, it looked like he was looking through a huge Christmas wreath. Last I saw of him before the boar came, he was stepping through the hole he had made in the clearing.
Even while I noticed this at a glance I was lifting my rifle. As my finger tightened on the trigger, Old Satan moved.
All this in less than a heartbeat. And I tell you, the bullet I fired couldn’t have been moving faster than that devil-eyed monster. We were about twenty feet apart, and it was like he took one chest-high bound and was on me, leaping right down the barrel. His chest struck the rifle, jammed it back against me, and sent me reeling into the briars.
Only thing I could think of was what Uncle Pharaoh had said would happen if I missed or didn’t kill him. And the two things he said to do were out. It was too late to climb a tree and I couldn’t toss myself on the ground because I was hung up in the briars. Hung up like a fly in a spider’s web.
A black blur hit against my hip, and then I was flying up. Being tossed nearly four feet off the ground. I landed smack dab on top of that tight circle of briars, and then painfully slipped down inside them. They cushioned my fall some, but the barbs tore me up something awful. But not as bad as Old Satan’s tusks had. My hip felt as if someone were trying to plow a furrow through me.
Out of the tangle of vines I could see Old Satan. He came at me again, hit the brush and vines. I felt the impact of the blow, but there was just enough undergrowth around me so that he couldn’t get in a good lick or hook those tusks in me. It was close though. One of them grazed my shirt and slit it from mid-chest to collar, popping the buttons like popcorn. Had I been breathing out instead of in, I’d have been ripped open like poor Old Bounder.
I heard a rifle crack. A spurt of dust jumped off Old Satan’s rear, right flank. “Hey, hey, hey,” Abraham said, starting up a line of chatter. “Sooooie, soooie, come and get it. Sooooie, soooooie, you ole ugly thing.”
The shot and the noise turned Old Satan’s head. He looked at Abraham. Abraham was in the clearing hopping around like a horse on locoweed. He had his spear stuck up in the ground beside him now, and his shield lay against that. When he stopped hopping he was looking down the barrel of the Winchester at Old Satan.
The dogs had gotten back into the act again, but Old Satan wasn’t paying them any never mind. He wanted boy blood, and the boy he wanted now was Abraham. I could wait. I was that fly in his web and he’d come for me in his own good time.
Old Satan charged. Just a little grunt and he was off like a bullet. I heard the shot smack into Old Satan, but I didn’t see him slow. I saw Abraham drop the rifle, stoop and take hold of the spear and shield. He had one knee on the ground, the spear lifted. The sharp head of it glittered in the sunlight. Abraham’s tight face looked out from behind the shield.
Four hundred pounds of killer hog came down on him.
The spear hit Old Satan right, but it must not have gone deep enough.
It went right through the snout and into the chest, but when that hog came down that spear cracked like my Uncle Jack’s rheumatic elbow, and Old Satan was standing on top of the shield with Abraham stretched out beneath it. The shield was just long enough to cover Abraham—except for a little place near the t
op he hadn’t finished. His eyes and the bridge of his nose showed there.
Old Satan was standing on top of the shield trying his dangedest to hook his tusks in there and get to Abraham. Each time Old Satan’s head dipped down and came up, those tusks were streaming with dried hog hide from the shield. Another minute or two and there wouldn’t even be a stick frame left. Just Abraham. Lying out there in the open with a four-hundred-pound boar on his chest.
It hurt like the dickens, but I began to thrash my way out of the brush. My shirt and hair ripped out in patches as the sharp briars took hold of them. It didn’t do my hide any good either, but the pain from that was nothing compared to the pain that was growing in my hip. The numbness from the blow was getting less numb by the moment. Where it felt as if I was having a furrow plowed in me, it now felt as if I was having an irrigation ditch dug. There were little black spots swimming in front of my eyes like tadpoles.
The thorny vines ripped, and I fell out into the open. I began to crawl for the Winchester. It couldn’t have been but a few feet away, but the way I felt, it might as well have been in the next county.
The dogs were still nipping at Old Satan’s legs, but he wouldn’t come off the shield. They circled and snapped, but he stayed where he was, jumping up and down on the shield like a big spiteful kid. Every time that hog came down on the shield you could hear it crack and Abraham groan. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been funny.
I had the Winchester now. There was a wad of dirt and leaves in the end where I had dropped it. I pinched the stuff out, propped myself up on my side and an elbow, got a bead on Old Satan.
The hog was trying to get to Abraham’s face again when I fired. My aim was off. I missed the eye and hit the shoulder. I think it just made him madder.
Old Satan let out a squeal. He jumped off the shield and came for me as I cocked another round into the chamber. He came with his snout ducked, and where Abraham’s spear had gore in was a little blossom of blood and I aimed at that and fired. Then I dropped the gun, put my hands over my head and buried my face in the dirt.
The Boar Page 8
