BORN TROUBLE
by
Michael Allender
Copyright 2014 Michael Allender
(The third in a series of fourteen stories)
Born Trouble
(Story # 3)
Two-banger is missing again.
The purple-blue comforter of dusk is settling over our southeast Texas farm. The burgundy blooms of wine cups have folded their petals, and the lemon scented flowers of magnolias, just beginning to open, perfume the evening air. Tentative trills carry up from the stock pond, announcing the start of a lusty mating orgy of peepers. It's a languid time when regularly spaced "bzzeerps" from overhead draw the eye to the erratic flight of common nighthawks.
Dad has finished milking most of our cows, with only two others waiting for their turn at relief and feed, their tails switching rhythmically at flies. We should be ready to kick back, unwind a bit, and clean up, but the last stall, reserved for Two-banger, is empty.
Most cows prefer to stay close together, and when they're freshened, they generally head for the milking shed like clockwork, morning and evening. Two-banger, however, was of another sort. Her name was derived from a bout with mastitis that left two of her udder's quarters dry, and most farmers would not have put up with her. A cow, eating good grass and expensive feed, needs to produce. Dad, however, was of another sort as well.
"That droopy old cow's given me a fair amount of my living," he once explained to a neighbor when asked why he bothered with her. "I reckon she's earned a bit of indulgence." She needed it too, every time she wandered off in search of greener grass down by Peach Creek.
Usually it was my older brother Ben's job to fetch her home, and he relished the chore, hunting the elusive cow as he thought an Indian might. "It's not easy," he liked to tell me, shamelessly embellishing his story. "There're cow tracks galore down there, cause Banger's been everywhere. Hounder's no help; he just looks for squirrels or coon sight." Hounder was our multiple-crossbred, general-purpose black lab, long on the mixed pedigree, short on the purpose part. "Knowing how to read sign, that's the thing," Ben told me, and I'm sure it was he who later removed the clapper from the brass bell that hung around Banger's neck, evening the odds just a tad.
This late afternoon, however, as Ben started for the lower pasture, Dad spoke softly to him, and then called me from my place at the end of the chutes. "Think you can find Banger for me, Sweetheart?" he asked, still stripping the teats on the turgid udder in front of him. He asked casually, as though it was nothing, but my mind was a storm of images and possibilities. Me, alone, just a stone's throw from the wild side of the creek, looking for Two-banger.
"Oh, yes, I can!" I said, and I was away, my heels kicking up the dust.
"Be back before dark," I heard as I ducked through the fence, and then Ben caught me with a shout.
"What is it?" I said impatiently. "I have to hurry."
"Look for sharp tracks," he said. "They're the freshest." As though I needed reminding. "And keep your eyes peeled. Remember what else I told you was down there." I ignored the last remark, offered from a guarded corner of his mouth, and then headed into the world of responsibility, into Ben's world.
It took little time to find the break in the fence Two-banger had used for her escape, and only fifteen minutes later I was shooing and gently prodding the reluctant beast back toward the opening. The whole business had been a bit of a letdown, too easy and uneventful to live up to the colorful experience I had envisioned. Ben had painted an entirely different canvas, with tales of giant snakes and mysterious sounds that mimicked bullfrogs, but where were, he assured me, the mating calls of nocturnal mud dragons, some bigger than alligators. That's what he had been reminding me of. I could read sign as well, however, and the mud by the creek teemed with the squiggles of worms, the burrows of crawdads, and the delicate tracings of shorebirds. Raccoon tracks were there too, but the mud dragons, they were elusive.
Raccoon tracks though, they were almost as good, for these beady-eyed bandits were the favorite pets of neighboring children, and the scourge of mothers and fathers everywhere. "The only thing more trouble than a coon in the house is a man with a grudge and an empty jug of liquor", Mother used to say, and she should know about the latter, for an alcoholic father raised her. Up until then I don't think she ever had a raccoon in the house.
When Two-banger reached the break in the fence, she went through it with a fresh sense of urgency, her half-full udder flopping from side to side like a pumpkin in a sack as she headed for home. I was about to follow when I heard a high-pitched mewing that seemed to come out of thin air. I spent several minutes tracing the intermittent sound to a giant pin oak about fifty feet from the fence. Both Ben and I had previous experience with this tree, each of us having crawled part way into the cavernous opening in its six foot diameter base, only to back out quickly with large spider webs draped over our faces. It had a spooky quality in the best of light, its gnarled branches resembling the muscular, deformed arms of a forest Goliath, and they reached out with clawed fingers, each festooned with morbid drapes of Spanish moss. And now, as the day retreated over the horizon and several bullfrogs--or mud dragons--began to tune up along the creek, it seemed to pull me toward the secret it held in its bole. I moved to as though in a trance.
The plaintive cry coming from the tree had a comforting familiarity to it, but it wasn't until I gathered my courage and knelt down, poking my head into the opening, that I could place it. There, in the dark insulating confines of the big trunk, I could focus my hearing above the pounding of my heart, and I felt my face flush as I heard it again. Baby raccoons! No doubt. Ben had held one in his own hands only a year before, and we both watched spellbound as it accepted the bottle of milk my cousin, Audrey, offered it. It was her raccoon. How I had longed for one of my own. A fond memory came to mind of when Audrey's charge found Aunt Beatrice's flour stash and transformed itself into a ghost coon, soon after which it tried desperately to disappear as it careened down the hallway just ahead of a swishing broom. Even after it grew up and became considerably less friendly than an ideal pet should be, I was still sold on them.
A few days before Two-banger went missing, Ben had said he was going out with our dog Hounder to look for a nest, and now I had beaten him to the punch. There were rules on farms, some spoken and laid out plain as road maps, and others left to common sense and example. Two-banger would be home shortly, and I was expected to show up at about the same time. But I had disturbed the coon's nest, and if I left and didn't come back until the morning, mama coon would have those kits moved to some secret location that not even Ben and Hounder could locate. And even if he could find them, they'd be his then. A baby raccoon of my own! Maybe two or even three of them. This was rarefied air I was breathing, and I knew that in spite of Ben's jealousy, I would have at least one ally should Mom and Dad fail to appreciate the strength of my logic when I brought one home. Ben wanted one as much as I did.
Bendigo. His jaw was going to drop to the bottom of its hinge when I pulled the tiny bundle of black and white fur out from under my shirt and held it up triumphantly. If I got busy I could shinny up into the insides of that tree and be home with my prize before I was half missed. And if it took a little longer, Ben would be sent to fetch me, and could hold council on how best to spring the news on our parents. Oh, Lordy, how excited I was! All I had to do was convince myself that it was possible, crawling up into a dark tree when the sky was turning cobalt. I decided it wouldn't pay to stop and think too long.
I took a last long look across the pasture where Two-banger had flog-footed it for the barn, but she was gone. Anytime now help would be on the way. I sure hoped it would be Ben and not Dad. Back into the tree, and a q
uick look up revealed a measure of light, indicating another opening farther up the tree. At least if mama coon was up there too, she would have a way out. The cobwebs were still there, and as I pushed my hand in front of my face I could feel their sticky fabric and hear the faint crackle as they tore from their moorings. My shoes found rough toeholds in the heart of the tree, and by bracing my back on one side and feet on the other, I inch-wormed my way up, stopping frequently to claw at nameless, many-legged things that skittered over my face. The faint smell of soot assailed my nose, liberally mixed with ammonia and a musky odor.
The passage grew abruptly smaller. I had to use my hands and arms to haul my weight upward. At times my feet
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