by Robert Ruark
In our neck of the woods we have what is called a razorback, a tame pig run wild and breeding to more wild hogs until he produces a wild animal every bit as mean as anything that started off in the swamps. He ain’t so big as one of those Russian-y boars they have in the mountains, but he’s just as ornery. He’s spread out through the east Carolinas all the way down through the Everglades in Florida.
The first thing we did on this notable expedition was to stop at Big Abner’s farm. Big Abner looked to be about seven feet tall. He was sort of purple black, weighed around two hundred and fifty pounds, and had about twenty children, or so it seemed. He also had several coveys of quail that used around his pea fields. He had some deer and turkey and foxes and wildcats that hung out in the big branch—swamp, that is—which ran through his property. And he had pigs. His eyes lit up when the Old Man asked him if he’d seen any lately.
“Yassuh, Cap’n,” he said. “Sho is. Dey’s a passel on ‘em usin’ down in de branch. One big old boar, too. I run him up t’other day, when I ‘uz mindin’ some traps, and he roar at me lak a lion. Got tushes on him turn right back to he eyes. Dat a mean hog. Got some mean sows wid him, too, and a whole mess o’ shoats. I lak mighty well git ahold a couple of dem shoats befo’ dey tough up lak de old feller.”
“We thought we’d give the boy here a pig hunt,” the Old Man said. “We got the hounds. But we need some mules and some young’uns. Come on over to the well and we’ll work this thing out.”
(The well, I knew, was where a half-gallon jug of scupper-nong wine dwelt in the cool depths. By-and-by the grown men came back smiling.)
“We’ll make us a camp,” the Old Man said, “and we’ll start out bright and early in the morning. We need a good night’s rest for this business. You have the young’uns ready before light, hey Abner?”
“Yassuh, Cap’m,” Big Abner said. “We be’s ready.”
We got back in the Liz and drove off the main road a few miles to a place we’d camped before, when we were after turkey or deer. It was on Abner’s land, and it was a place nobody else ever used, because Abner was very strict about keeping his land posted. He leased a lot of land, mostly for the turpentine rights, and he didn’t hold with strangers who were apt to set the broom grass alight with careless cigarettes and burn up a whole lot of valuable pitch pine.
It was lovely hunting country. There were big stands of tall longleaf pine, their boles chopped to make the pockets in which the big, waxy, grapelike clusters of sap gathered. If you knocked off one of these knobs of congealed sap it had the same consistency as chewing gum and was cleanly aromatic on the tongue. These big piny wood stands had very little under-growth beneath them, because their tall umbrella tops shut out the sun. The ground underneath these great trees was strewn with long brown needles, as clean as a carpet and as slippery as glass. The sun made little golden pools and flecks of light on this carpet, but mostly the shade was as somberly solemn as a church. It got very spooky along about dusk, when the doves began to complain and the night air started to turn gently cool.
The tall pine thickets held to the high ground, but their outskirts were cutover patches of scrubby oak and seedling pine, with a lot of old dead stuff on the ground, making little hummocks and high ridges of fallen trees, lichened stumps, and shiny green gallberry bushes. These islands, for they were literally islands, were where you found most of the quail, after you’d started them out of the broom grass or the corn fields or pea patches.
Vast sweeps of broom sedge, dotted with the occasional islands, made up a rolling yellow sea. The quail roosted in the broom, away from the varmints that inhabited the swamps. Sometimes they flushed from the fields and scattered in the broom, and anybody with a good single-bird dog could shoot his limit if he was a mind to and didn’t care about leaving any-thing for next year. But mostly the flushed birds pitched on sides of the swamps in the little islands, or sometimes flew straight through and dropped on the scrubby hills on the other side. They seldom lit in the big pine thickets—no cover—and even less seldom in the swamps—varmints.
But the deer and the wild pigs and the occasional wildcat haunted the swamps, as did the rare black bear. The deer and the pig fed out at night, wrecking the corn fields and rooting up the goobers. The pigs were particularly death on the pea fields, both peanut and black-eyed field peas, while the deer gourmandized young corn and the tender green rye.
“The plan of campaign,” the Old Man was saying now, “is to pick up some pig sign and start the dogs. Then we’ll send the pickaninnies in behind the dogs, some of them, and stake out some more on the flanks, and we’ll beat them pigs right out into the open. We’ll run ‘em into the grass and ride ‘em down on the mules. You, Boy,” he said to me, “you’re the head lancer. You’re the boss pigsticker.”
“What’ll I stick him with?” I asked. “I plumb forgot to bring my lance.”
“A pitchfork is plenty good enough to start with,” the Old Man said. “If a pig gets close enough to bite you a pitchfork is all you’ll need. Come in handy, especially if you fall off the mule.”
“What’ll you use?” I asked, kind of nervous. “Another pitch-fork?”
“Nope,” the Old Man replied. “I’m the head shikari of this shebang. I’m the native gunbearer. I’m too old for pitchforks. I’ll stick to this old pump gun of mine. Tom’s got his rifle and Pete’ll back you up with his double barrel. But a real classy pigsticker shouldn’t need any help from guns. It ain’t supposed to be sportin’, not the way I’ve read about it. Kipling wouldn’t approve of it for certain.”
Then everybody but me laughed again. It seemed to me that there was an awful lot of unnecessary laughing going on for a bunch of grown men. Mostly they were serious hunters, when it had to do with deer or ducks or quail or turkey, but every time anybody said “pig” somebody else snickered.
I won’t trouble you with the camp making, because one good camp is just like another. That is to say, I did most of the work, such as chopping wood, splitting kindling, going for water, and cutting pine tops for beds, while the men lazed around investigating something ripe-smelling in a fruit jar. We had a fine meal of corn bread, fried ham and eggs, and I went to sleep wondering what devilment these grown-up children had in store for me.
I only had a short dream to wait before somebody shook me awake in the chill dawn and I scrubbed the sleep out of my eyes with my knuckles. By the time I’d been to the branch for water Big Abner and his tribe had arrived. He had evidently drummed up some nieces and nephews, for what appeared to be an army of young black faces swarmed around him. At least a dozen dogs of indeterminate breed accompanied Big Abner’s relatives, and they were snapping and snarling amongst themselves. Old Bell and Blue, our borrowed hounds, looked sleepy-eyed and bored as the curs scuffled and yipped. Four mules, their ears drooping in the dawn’s shifting light, were wearing battle array of wooden working hames and saddle blanket, with the reins looped over the hames. I noticed then that each of Abner’s troop had a tin pot or pan of some description, and each carried a short club.
“Now,” the Old Man grinned, “the idea is that you and me and Pete will ride out to the far end of the swamp, and take up stations in the broom grass. Tom will take Bell and Blue and go to the pea patch and pick up some hog sign. The hogs will naturally go into the branch, and then we’ll turn the beaters and the other dogs a-loose. The beaters will pound on the pans and the other dogs will take up the trail, and if all goes well we’ll beat the pigs back out into the clear. I think.” The Old Man said in a loud aside to Pete and Tom, “I think this is the way you are supposed to do her. Personally, all I ever did was read about it in a book. If things go wrong I ain’t responsible.”
“What do I do in all this?” I asked. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut about wanting to go off to India to shoot tigers and Africa to shoot lions before I was too old to enjoy it.
“Why,” the Old Man said, “it’s the easiest thing in the world. You just kick the mule in the ribs and
charge the pig. The pig will be charging you, of course, if he’s worth the salt to cure him into a ham, and when you and the pig meet you kind of lean over the mule and stick him with the pitchfork. With all them hayfork tines I don’t see how you can miss him. If you should fall off the mule I’d try not to lose a-holt of that pitchfork. These pigs can turn mighty nasty if they think they got you cornered.”
I was mumbling when I climbed aboard the mule. Under that blanket the mule had a backbone any razorback hog would have been proud of. The mule turned his head and looked at me. He shook his head in what seemed to be disgust.
Tom took his mule by the reins and the dogs by their leads, and went off toward the pea field with his rifle tucked under one arm. Between the two hounds and the mule and the rifle he seemed to have considerable on his hands.
I had considerable on my hands, too, with this consarned mule. I never did put too much trust in horses, and none at all in mules, and this wall-eyed son of a roving jackass seemed to sense my lack of appreciation of his nobler qualities. He reminded me in some ways of a billy goat I had once, only he was bigger. And constructed a heap higher off the ground. They say mules have sure feet. This big gray critter stumbled and almost fell every time he took a step. It looked like half a mile from his back to the ground. Clutching the pitchfork with one hand, it was all I could do to hang onto him with the other.
We shambled along to the bottleneck end of the swamp, where the thick stuff cleared and emptied out onto the broom grass, and Pete and the Old Man didn’t seem to be doing much better than I was. Mules, I reckon, ain’t built to be ridden as a steady thing. Not even by Sancho Panza.
We got to the end of the swamp, and heard the dogs tune up and then settle into a steady belling as they hit a hot trail. The tune was loud and clear, and then suddenly was punctuated with angry growls and barks. Two rifle shots snapped in the keen morning air, and then there was a whole lot of yipping and yapping. Then came an unholy sound of pans and buckets being beaten with sticks, the clattering and banging relieved by squeals and growls and barking and yelling. I never heard such a mess of assorted noise in all my born days. There was a crashing of brush in the swamp on top of all the other noise, and I heard the Old Man let out a whoop and holler: “Get set! Here they come! “
And here they came, indeed. A couple of lengths ahead of the mob was a big old sow, with Blue hanging onto one ear and old Bell dug into another. The sow was making pretty good way in the grass, though, and she was squealing her head off, swinging her head from side to side while she tried to dislodge the dogs.
Behind the old sow came a litter of half-grown pigs, all squealing, and behind the pigs came all the fice dogs the Abner children had imported, and behind the dogs the Abner children were running, beating on the pots and pans and hollering fit to kill. Puffing behind the young’uns was Big Abner, and behind Big Abner was Tom, cussing steady and hauling away on his mule, which had its front feet braced and was giving Tom quite an argument.
One of the bigger pigs spied my mule and more or less charged it. I made a frantic stab at it with the pitchfork and missed, of course. The squealing pig ran between the mule’s legs and the mule bucked and I flew through the air to land with a thump on the ground. Just before I was engulfed by a flood of pigs, dogs, and Negro children I heard the Old Man yelling: “Whoa, you dumb fool!” and some more sulphury cuss words before he hit the ground with a thump, too. I didn’t see this happen, of course, being submerged in pigs and dogs, but Pete’s mule got its head and run off under a low-hanging tree branch and scraped Pete off, knocking him cold for a minute.
It was quite a party, I reckon. Some of the smaller dogs took ear-holds on some of the smaller pigs, and the squealing increased. The problem of separating the dogs from the pigs seemed insurmountable until Big Abner produced some crocus sacks, and the pigs were sort of decanted from the dogs into the tow sacks, where they continued to kick and squeal. The big dogs, Bell and Blue, finally slowed the old sow down to a walk. She was too big to handle, so Big Abner hit her over the head with a club and tied her feet while she was dreaming. All told it was a pretty good haul: a half-dozen prime pigs and one sow for Big Abner to pen up against hog-killing time.
“Where’s the boar?” I asked Tom, who finally came up without his mule. “Where’s your mule?”
“Tied the damn thing to a tree,” Tom said. “Shot the boar. He was too big to play with. Somebody might of got hurt. Wait’ll you see them tushes. Big as a elephant. Lay a dog—or you—open like you’d rip into a sack of meal. He took two, Ned,” Tom said to the Old Man. “I reckon him to be tougher’n a bear to kill dead.”
“Jest as well you shot him,” die Old Man said. “Our Bengal Lancer here, he fell off the mule right off, lost his lance, and got run over by the whole passel of hogs, dogs, and young’uns. I reckon that big old boar would of et hitn alive.”
“I reckon I ain’t the only one fell off a mule,” I said. “I saw you fall off, and Pete got scraped off. I reckon that big boar would have et you-all, too, if Tom hadn’t shot him in self-defense.”
“It was either that or climb a tree,” Tom muttered. “And not the first time, neither. I’d as live take on a panther as a big Pig.”
It turned out that the Old Man had told Tom to shoot the boar, because fun’s fun and he didn’t want any dogs or boys hurt in this horseplay, or pigplay, I reckon you’d call it. I understood why when we skinned out the pig. He had a hide on him nearly an inch thick. It was white like coconut meat under the thin black hair, but so tough Big Abner had to keep whetting his ripping knife when they were shucking off the hide. His tusks did curl up nearly to his nasty little eyes, but the tusks, Pete said, weren’t what did the damage. He dug with his tusks, but fought with a jaw tooth that whetted itself sharp against the underside of the tusk, and would slash you like a knife. With his bristly reddish mane that stuck up from behind his big head and ran all the way to his haunches down his sloping spine he was as nasty a looking wild animal as ever I saw.
I guess I was a pretty sight, when we got the mules, pigs, hounds, fice dogs, pickaninnies, and other hog hunters back to camp. I was full of mud where I’d been run over by the pack, and owned a fresh set of bruises where I’d been tromped on. Tom and Pete and the Old Man seemed to think I was a very funny sight, and they kept kidding me about losing my pitchfork until the joke wore itself out.
“I reckon this boy will never make a real pig hunter in the classic tradition,” the Old Man said that night, while fire warmed his feet and something else warmed his innards. “Some people are just born pig hunters; others ain’t. Our young feller here just ain’t a real dedicated pigsticker. We better give him back to the easy stuff, like birds. Certain sure thing I wouldn’t trust him with tigers and lions.”
I didn’t say much then, but I was thinking just how little it took to amuse grown people. I was thinking the same thing not so long ago in Africa, several lions and tigers later not to mention years. I was having a high old time trying to get a wart hog to come out of a hole, and I wondered bitterly how the Old Man would have managed it. This occurred to me when I was halfway up a thorn tree, after the pig did decide to come out of the hole. I reckoned I had finally become a pig hunter in the classic tradition, even if it was a little thorny coming down out of that tree.
22—Hold Perfection in Your Hand
There is a state of mind called October that always makes me remember a thing the Old Man once said about Christmas. “Christmas,” he said, “is best remembered as the day after tomorrow.”
A wealth of worldly sadness went into that one, but more than a treasury of truth. For some years now I have had my Aprils and Augusts, my Septembers and Februarys, but the only truly perfect month is October, because it is close enough to summer and close enough to Christmas and still not near enough to March to be rendered miserable. October is truly the month of the day after tomorrow.
I have been sitting here trying to recapture the elation of October and have been
stumped. Do you base it on carven pumpkins or the slavering eagerness of hunting dogs who can’t work until latish November or the fact that your pants hold their crease now that the unseasonable September weather has settled into cool crispness; persimmons wrinkling, perhaps, and the leaves glowing scarlet and gold against the pine green and the last of the grapes on the vines?
The Old Man said that October was the only perfect month of the year, because it was a month that really didn’t have to do anything to justify itself. All it held was present perfection, beautiful memory, and magnificent promise. The Old Man was a great hand for cataloguing the seasons, and I’m afraid some of it wore off on me. What he really hated was March, and he was kind of bored with August until it turned into September and all the summer people went back to where they belonged.
October in my neck of the woods was a time when you had got used to the calculated torment of school once more; I mean, to where education didn’t physically hurt you any longer. The football season had started, but you could still play a little sidebar baseball if you wanted to, because the World Series was still topical. And it was cold enough for a ceremonial fire at night.
We shook the bloom off the doves in September, but the trees were dropping sufficient leaves now so that you could see a squirrel, instead of just knowing he was there. We had had the big rails—the marsh hens—in the first nor’easters with the full-moon flooding tide. A few transient ducks—teal—were beginning to drop in, and you knew that the first really cold snap would fetch a mess of mallards.
Out in the back yard the dogs were going noisily, frustratedly mad. The high grass was dying, they knew, and the quail were calling, and the dogs were being restrained from hearing the pleasant sound of gunfire and savoring the wondrous odor of burnt powder on the late-afternoon air.
