Tate backed right off. “I certainly didn’t mean to be casting aspersions on your Pearl.” You could brag about your breed and bad-mouth another, but you never wanted to say something about a man’s specific dog. You might as well call his baby daughter ugly.
“No offense taken,” said Bobby. “I’m just saying that Pearl’s daddy, Louisiana Red, was some kind of talented dog, and Pearl’s inherited his genes, of course.”
“Now, Bobby, tell us about Louisiana Red,” said Early, signaling Tate for another round on him and taking on the role of host.
“Don’t y’all think we ought to get going, look for Miss Olive?” asked Cynthia.
But the men were already slipping into serious dog-bragging mode. “Well, you know redbones are superlative coon dogs,” said Bobby.
“Nothing finer than the sound of a redbone bawling when he picks up the scent of coon,” agreed Tate, trying to make up for even mentioning Sweet William’s black-and-tans in the same conversation as a redbone.
“That’s right,” said Early. “Nothing finer, except of course when they start to chopping when that coon is treed.”
“Y’all going to sit around talking about dogs when you ought to be out hunting Miss Olive? I’m telling you,” Cynthia said to her reflection in the mirror since there was no one else to say it to, “men are nuts.”
“Now, hush, sugar,” said Bobby, patting the stool beside him with a red glove. “Sit down here and listen, if you want to hear this man-talk.”
“Sure, sure, girlfriend.” Cynthia patted him right back on his fishnet-covered knee.
“And Red,” said Bobby, already too far in to stop, “was more superlative than most. In fact, not only could Red outhunt any coon dog in the whole free world—bluetick, redbone, black-and-tan, brown-and-black-and-white treeing Walkers, brindles—Red could cook.”
“Tell it, Bobby,” said Early the way you do when you’re encouraging a good preacher or a baaad jazzman. “Tell it about the cooking dog.”
“It was a sight,” said Bobby, “in fact, it was a privilege, to witness Red out hunting with my Uncle Clyde in the fall. That was the best time, when the coon season was open, you couldn’t get arrested for jumping the gun, and the woods are starting to dry up a little bit, so there’s kindling.”
“I ’spect it’s good for a dog to have some kindling, he’s going to do his cooking out in the woods,” said Tate. “Red do cook in the woods, don’t he, or he set himself up in the camp with the ladies, whomping out chili and sausage and eggs and french fries and steak served up on them red-and-white checked tablecloths?”
“He cooks in the woods,” said Bobby, ignoring the innuendo of exaggeration. “Now, you know, Red always was straight on coon from a pup up. That dog lived and breathed coon. You could put a fox in front of him, he’d look at you like you’d gone nuts. Cat. Chicken. He wasn’t interested in anything in the world except coon.”
“And the culinary arts,” said Tate.
“Tate, you better leave this man’s story alone,” warned Early. “Give him another beer.”
“Well, that’s true, what you say about the culinary,” said Bobby, leaning back and taking such a deep swig on his beer that his blond wig slipped back an inch or two, giving him a particularly slatternly look. “And the way Red got into that, he was on this real rough old coon one night, coon had been around the block more than once, had led Red up and down a creek, over and under a dozen fences, in and out of a well.”
“A well?” said Cynthia. “It must have not been very deep.”
“Oh, it was deep, all right,” said Bobby. “Forty foot, but that didn’t faze Red a bit. He was in and out of it so fast, he didn’t even get wet. It was the train that slowed him down.”
“The train?” asked Cynthia.
“Yep. See, that coon, when he got out of the well, he took off for this railroad bridge, and Red’s right on his tail, closing in, when the Midnight Special comes roaring through.”
“And made raccoon pancakes, and that’s where Red got the inspiration for his cooking,” said Cynthia.
Bobby went on like she hadn’t said a word. “And at the last minute, the locomotive’s bearing down on them both, going a hundred miles an hour, when the coon bails out over the side trestle, doing one of those perfect swan dives a hundred feet down into the water, barely made a ripple, and Red, he goes the other way, the dog jumps as high as he can in the air, when he comes down, he falls right into the exhaust pipe of the kitchen car of that train, and that was one hot dog for a minute, I’ll tell you, landing smack on the griddle, but he jumped right off that sizzling iron and into the head cook’s heart.”
Cynthia was fanning herself. “It’s getting awfully thick in here.”
“Yep,” said Bobby, “that cook knew a redbone when he saw one, and he kept Red right by his side all the way to Nashville. Taught Red everything he knew.”
“Is that where the cook lived, Nashville?” asked Early.
“No, that’s where Red skipped off the train, took a run by the Grand Ole Opry, heard himself righteous human bawling and chopping. Though my ownself I’d still rather hear a redbone hound giving out that mountain music on a crisp November night than have George Jones singing in my living room. Anyway, then, after he’d got himself an earful, Red came back on home, and that was when he commenced to cooking.”
“Red just walked home from Nashville to Hot Springs?” asked Cynthia.
Bobby looked at her like she’d gone stupid. “It’s only about five hundred miles. Any redbone worth his salt could do that in a breeze.”
“Now what exactly did the dog cook?” asked Early.
“Well,” said Bobby, “if Cynthia would stop interrupting”—and he reached over and patted her on the cheek—“I’d tell you.”
“Go on ahead,” said Cynthia. “My mouth is zipped. Of course, anytime y’all get through lying and want to go look for Miss Olive, I’m your woman.”
“Just a minute, darlin’,” said Bobby. “I’m almost through. Now, here’s what happened. When Red gets home, Uncle Clyde’s so happy to see him, he invites all his friends to go on this big hunt, and he’s clean forgotten it’s Aunt Vandy’s birthday and he’d promised to take her to the HoJo in Little Rock for fried clams. Well, she gets her nose out of joint, and says, Go on, all of y’all. But don’t come looking to me for grub. Y’all can all starve to death in those woods for all I care. Hope you do, in fact.”
Bobby looked at Cynthia, who just nodded at the mother wisdom of Aunt Vandy. Then he went on. “So off they go, Clyde and a whole mess of his friends, bringing six dogs apiece with ’em and about a case of sipping whiskey.”
“Now we’re talking hunting,” said Tate.
“And it’s one of those nights that nothing’s going right. It seems like it takes them three hours before they hear the first bawl. Plus it’s started to drizzle just a little bit, and the leaves are getting slippery, and what with one thing and another, old boys are starting to fall down, and Merle Moore, I remember this, Clyde said he fell in a bog, and it took four of them and two ropes to pull him out. ’Course, Merle weighed a good three hundred pounds. But it’s getting late, and the boys are taking not only drunk but tired and hungry, and Clyde’s starting to think Vandy’s put a curse on them.”
“Sounds like it to me,” said Tate, thinking of his Thelma.
“Anyway, all this while, before they heard the first bawl, those dogs have been all over the county. They’ve been up ridges, through fields, down a waterfall, rooting through the mud, treed themselves a four-point deer.”
Bobby paused a second, but no one rose to the bait.
“And then, finally, finally, those old boys heard the sweetest sound ever heard to man, well, almost the sweetest, depending on whether or not he has a loud or a quiet lady in his bed.”
At which, Cynthia, silent as a shark, grabbed a newspaper off the bar and slapped Bobby in the head with it.
Bobby didn’t flinch. “That sound I referre
d to, of course, was the sound of sixty hounds all chopping a good hundred barks a minute apiece. And the boys took out running like their pants was on fire, and before long they came up on this little clearing in the piney woods, and they couldn’t believe their eyes.”
“Are we getting to the climax, or is this the denouement?” asked Cynthia.
Bobby went right on. “Because those dogs had treed themselves five coons at once in five separate trees.”
“Jesus,” said Tate reverently, which let Early know that it was time to cut the bartender off. Anybody who believed a word of this story was definitely drunk.
“And it didn’t matter if those coons were up in those trees with their little hands over their eyes or not, which is what they’ll do to keep them from shining in the hunters’ lights, sooner or later, they all were shot. Shot clean. Because the dogs, following Red’s lead, just stepped back when their masters got there, like they were saying, Take it, Mr. Bubba.”
“Instead of chewing the live coon down to little bits of gristle and fur, which is what y’all usually like to see the dogs do?” said Cynthia.
“But the best part”—at this point Bobby stopped and stood, his wig slightly tilted, his lipstick smeared—“was that in the center of the clearing, there was a fire that the dogs had already made by means of running around and around and around so fast that they created sparks which lit the kindling under the wood which they’d stacked. And out to the edge of the fire buried in the dirt were sweet potatoes that they’d dug and collard greens that they’d pulled out of those fall fields they’d rambled through, washed them off in the waterfalls, steaming now in a wrapping of pine needles.”
“Holy shit,” Tate said reverently.
“Well, that’s not what Vandy said.” Bobby shook his head sadly as if he had to tell them something that was going to break their hearts. “Clyde got home and told her how successful the hunt had been, and what a superlative leader and provider Louisiana Red had been, and how proud of him he was, and Vandy said, If that dog had any kind of grit, he’d of made you some cornbread to eat with those greens.” Bobby paused dramatically for a count of 10. “So the next time Clyde took Red out, Red did that very thing. He tacked homemade cornbread with cracklings on to his menu.”
At which, the three men almost beat each other to death, pounding backs, slapping hands. Cynthia sat there, silently sipping her beer.
And when the hooting and the howling were finally over with, and the tears had been wiped, and the noses blown, and the final harump harumped, Cynthia said, “I know y’all think that’s real funny because of Vandy, right?”
“Now, Cynthia,” said Bobby. “That’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that Red was a superlative dog, which means Pearl’s come from some superlative stock.”
“Well, all I’ve got to say is my grandma used to have a dog that would make Pearl look like caterpillar snot.”
“Oooooooooh, watch out,” said Early.
“I think I’m going to go on in the back room and see about some, well, some things,” said Tate.
“You most certainly are not,” said Cynthia. “I sat here and listened to Bobby’s incredibly boring story about the incredibly boring sire of his incredibly boring Pearl, and now I’m going to tell about my grandma’s dog.”
“I thought you were in a god-awful hurry to get out there and find Olive,” said Bobby.
“I am, and we’re going to, but this is only going to take a minute, and then we’ll be on our way.” Cynthia sat up straight on her bar stool. “Here it is. My grandma had this cold-nose black-and-tan gyp named Rosie. Now, in case you don’t know what a cold-nose hound is, I’ll tell you. It’s a hound who can pick up on a cold trail that’s hours or even days old—which is what it sounds like we need this very day, since you, Bobby Adair, have been wasting all this time letting Olive’s trail get cold when you ought to have been out there looking for her instead of in here drinking beer, which is not worming you back into my good graces.”
“Yes, it is,” said Bobby. “Because you’re talking to me after two years of not.” He squeezed her upper arm, and she shrugged him off.
“Anyway, Grandma used to like to brag about her Rosie, which lots of folks thought was unseemly, especially because she was a woman. Until one rainy Sunday down at the store, this farmer’s saying as how he was feeding his cows in his upper pasture, up near the woods, and he saw an old gray wolf chasing a jack rabbit.”
“Wolf’s not good near your cows,” said Tate, who himself had never lived outside the city limits of Hot Springs.
“So the farmers all said, Dove, that was my grandma’s name, Dove, she was one-half Cherokee, this Rosie of yours you’re always saying is such a good cold-nose hound, why don’t you take her up to Farmer Jones’s upper pasture and see if she can find that wolf. Dove said she thought that was a good idea, she’d do that very thing.
“So all these old boys loaded themselves in their pickups, just sniggering and poking each other to beat the band, ’cause they figure they’ve called Dove’s bluff.
“They’re all standing around watching while Rosie circles the area where the wolf was last seen. Then after a couple of zigs and zags and circles and going this way and that, Rosie lets out a long bawl, puts her nose to the ground, and takes off down a draw and into a bottom.
“The old sons, they’re following Rosie by horseback and pickupback, laughing all the time, making fun. And there’s Dove, walking by her lonesome just as proud and silent as her full-Cherokee grandmothers through those swampy woods.
“Late that evening, sure enough, Rosie overtook that wolf. But he wasn’t a big old gray wolf. He was just a whimpering little old wolf pup.
“So, what you got to say for your Rosie, now? The old sons laughed and pointed and sniggered.
“And Grandma Dove, she looked straight at ’em with those big brown eyes of hers, and she said, Rosie has backtracked so far and so fast that she caught that old wolf back when it was still a pup.” With that, Cynthia stood and drew herself to her full five feet. “And that’s the truth, boys, if it ever was.”
They all chuckled, and then Bobby slipped off his stool, too, and threw his arm around Cynthia’s waist. “I concede anything and everything to the power of this wonderful young woman whom I love more than life itself.”
“Hear, hear!” Tate and Early raised their glasses high.
“And now,” said Bobby, pulling off his blond wig and throwing it on the bar, “anybody who wants to join me is welcome, I’ve got to saddle up and go find my grandma and my Sunliner that disappeared along with her.”
Sunliner? Early couldn’t believe his ears. Did Bobby who’d come to his rescue, who’d saved him from killing that fat policeman, did he say Sunliner?
24
“DID YOU SEE anybody in the house you took the Sunliner from?” Sam was asking Lateesha as they made their way in Sam’s BMW down the narrow gravel road into Greenwood Cemetery. They were looking for Fontaine.
“Nope,” said Lateesha. “I didn’t see a soul. There was another car in the carport, though. A silver Mercedes. A big one, about, oh, I’d say seven years old.”
Lateesha held up as many fingers, each of which bore a ring and was polished a different color. In fact, Lateesha was a kind of Rainbow Coalition all by herself. Her hair, done in a hundred little braids, was intertwined in a scarf of fuchsia and gold. Her blouse was peacock blue, and her micro-mini was the same fabric as her do-rag. The thin shapely legs that stretched for years from beneath her tiny skirt were covered in bright orange tights. Her high-top tennis shoes were purple.
She lit up the cemetery as they passed slabs of black granite, praying angels, ancient oak trees, until finally they came to a green cement-block house surrounded by rhododendrons.
Just as they pulled up, Fontaine stooped through the doorway. “Good Lord,” said Sam. He was the tallest person she’d ever seen close up.
“I told you he was a giant,” said Lateesha
. “He could pop your arm off and eat it for breakfast. That’s why I’m glad June wrote us this note.” She was clutching it in her hand. “Though he was really nice when I met him before.”
Sam stepped out and introduced herself to Fontaine, and they exchanged pleasantries, he in a voice that made the earth rumble beneath their feet. Sam said, “I understand you’re the chief caretaker here.”
“That’s right,” said Fontaine. “Been looking after the grounds, the folks, digging holes, oh, fourteen, fifteen years. There’s some nice people buried here. All white people, of course. But some nice white people.”
Sam stared down at her shoes, not knowing what else to do. White Southerners of a liberal bent spend a lot of time inspecting their footwear.
“Some famous ones, too,” said Fontaine. “Like Owney Madden, you know who he was?”
Sam nodded. “The bootlegger who was exiled here from New York.”
“That’s right!” Fontaine was pleased that she knew so much about his most famous charge. “Now tell me, what can I do for y’all?”
“You can do this, Fontaine,” said Lateesha, stepping up with June’s note and handing it to him.
Fontaine read it slowly, then started over and read it two more times, and then he said, “Well, I’d be happy to oblige you ladies, but I’m afraid I can’t hand that car over to you like my wife says here I ought to.”
“Why not?” said Lateesha. She stepped even closer to Fontaine, about to get in his face—that is if she’d been tall enough. Sam reached out to grab the back of her skirt.
“Well…” Fontaine pulled at his khaki work cap. “I’d love to, but, you see, that car’s already gone.”
“We brought you the car at two A.M., and here it is”—Lateesha checked her watch—“thirteen hours later, and you’re saying it’s gone. You told Early you were going to paint it. Now I for one don’t think you painted it and dried it and got it on the road, which was not your job in the first place, but Early’s, not that it was his car to begin with, in that amount of time, and I hate to call you a liar, Fontaine—”
He Was Her Man Page 17
