The Boar

Joe R. Lansdale

Contents

- Preface

- Part One

- one

- two

- three

- four

- five

- six

- seven

- eight

- nine

- ten

- eleven

- twelve

- thirteen

- Part Two

- one

- two

- three

- four

- five

- six

- seven

- eight

- nine

- ten

- About the Author

Preface

I’ve always liked coming of age stories, and have written several. Some of them were for adults, a few, like this one, were designed, at least on the surface, to be for younger readers. But the theme is the same, and the way I write is the same, so I like to think this novel is for anyone willing to read it, adult, or young adult.

I became passionate about young adult fiction in the eighties, and because of that, I wrote this. For a while it was called Get Back, Satan, Satan being the wild boar in the novel, but that title didn’t stick, and the publisher who planned to publish it under that title didn’t publish it at all. That’s a long story and this isn’t the place for it.

I turned around several years later, intending to revise the novel, reread it, and found I liked it as it was. It was published under the current title, and published again some years later by another publisher, and like most of my work, published overseas. There is currently interest in it for a film and I co-wrote the screenplay.

I think of it as a novel of the thirties more than I think of it as a Young Adult novel. Frankly, all those categories just make me tired. A book is a book is a book. It either works for you or it doesn’t.

I didn’t grow up in the Great Depression, but my father and mother did, being somewhat older than most parents when I was born. They told me about the Great Depression, as did my grandmother on my mother’s side, my uncles, and people that my parents knew from that time. My brother, who is almost seventeen years older than me, was born during that era.

Due to my parent’s experiences we saved string, rubber bands, were fanatic about not wasting food, clothing, or anything, for that matter. This was all a holdover from the Great Depression, and from my view, good common sense.

Anyway, I knew about this era almost as if I had been there. I did do some research, but so little was necessary. The Great Depression was in my DNA. I had always wanted to write about it, and this was my first crack at it. Later I wrote The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and All the Earth Thrown to the Sky, another novel marketed as Young Adult, and I am currently working on another title that takes place during this era, The Edge of Dark Water.

All that matter is this: is it a good book.

I think it is. I’m prejudiced about that, I’m sure. But it seems to be a book that continues to garner positive attention from readers, year after year.

So, what I offer you is that book. The decision as to its worth is yours.

As a side note, I should mention that some of the characters in this novel appear briefly in my better-known novel, The Bottoms. I liked them and couldn’t let them go, so they have a brief moment on stage in that novel.

Happy reading.

Part One

One

This happened in the summer of 1933 in the Sabine River Bottoms of East Texas. Those that still remember call it the year of The Devil Boar.

It was also the year that Richard Harold Dale became a man at the not-so-ripe-age of fifteen.

I know, because I probably recall that year and The Devil Boar better than anyone else. I should. I’m Richard Harold Dale, and I still bear the scars.

Times were hard then. Real hard. The Depression was going on, and there just wasn’t much of a way to make a living.

I suppose, in many respects, us country- and river-bottom folk had it better than the city slickers. We’d always been poor, so when times got bad we didn’t notice quite as much as those who’d had steady jobs and lost them. Our family pretty well lived off the land, and always had, raising all we ate and selling the extra.

The extra was our main problem in the thirties. You couldn’t get much for it. People just didn’t have the money anymore.

Course, ‘33 wasn’t all that good a year for our crops either. What the heat didn’t kill, the insects ate. It was like all kinds of bugs from everywhere in the world had been passed the word that there was a free lunch being served in our fields and they ought to come on down, bring a friend and sit a spell, take in as much as they could eat.

And they did. They ate and ate and ate.

What was left was just enough to get by on, and if it was too tough for the heat to kill, and too untasty for the bugs to eat, you can bet we weren’t all that thrilled with it either. But it beat an empty belly.

For our meat supply we depended on hunting and fishing. The woods brought us squirrels, coons, rabbits, and possums. The Sabine supplied us with perch, bass, catfish, crawfish, and an occasional turtle. In other words if it could be eaten, we ate it.

In the past we’d raised a hog or two, but not that year. There just wasn’t enough extra to go around for feeding a pig. Stuff we might have thrown out for it to eat the year before we were eating and had pretty well convinced ourselves it was mighty good.

Just putting food on the table from meal to meal kept the entire family—which was Mama, and she was pregnant, Papa, Ike, my little brother, and me—hopping like toad frogs. It was that way for near everybody. In fact there was an old joke that went something like this: Fellow looks out the window and says, “Ma, times must be getting better.” And the lady asks, “Oh, why’s that, Pa?” And the fellow says back, “There ain’t but one man out there chasing a rabbit this morning.”

To tell the truth, I don’t remember those days as bad times. Busy maybe, but not bad. I was young and had the entire river bottoms of East Texas at my fingertips. I didn’t just read about adventures like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had, I lived them. Our house isn’t there anymore, but in those days it was deep in the woods at the end of a narrow, rutted, clay road about half a mile from a shallow spot in the river. If anyone came down that road, they were either coming to see us, or they were going to stop at our place to ask permission to leave their car or wagon and do some fishing. Papa always told them they could. And as he used to say, “The river ain’t ours to give permission about. The water you put a claim on today will have gone on down to Louisiana tomorrow.”

Since anyone coming down that road was going to have to stop and see us, we always got excited when we heard a car or wagon coming. Living where we did, we didn’t always make it to town regularly, and since we didn’t own a radio then, anyone that might be bearing gossip and news was always welcome.

In fact, thinking back on that year of 1933, the first thing I really remember about it was Doc Travis and his noisy Model B Ford.

Something he brought me that day, and the news he told us, changed my life forever.

Two

Papa, Ike, and me were outside, chopping wood. Papa was cutting some of the bigger logs into lengths, and I was using a hatchet to cut some of the smaller stuff into kindling. Ike was gathering up what we cut and stacking it in separate piles.

Ike was ten years going on thirty. Most of the time he seemed near grown. He was spunky as the dickens and as determined as a billy goat. Some of the logs Papa split were near big as Ike, even with them halved, but Ike would wrestle them into place like they were enemies that had to be whipped, or he’d die trying.

Mama used to say Ike was born to consider, and I reckon he was. He seldom said anything unless he had something to say.

Me, I’d blabber all day long about next to nothing. Every now and then when I got going, Papa would look over at me and say, “Take a break, boy.”

That would shut me up for a while, but pretty soon I’d be at it again, popping my lips together faster than a hummingbird could beat its wings. I loved talking better than anything, except reading. We didn’t own many books. The Bible, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and a book of his short stories, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Kipling, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, and my all time favorite, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. (It used to drive me wild that someone would give their son the middle name Rice. I wondered if he had brothers and sisters with the middle names Oats, Wheat, Corn, and Barley.) There was also a book on flower gardening.

I had read each of those books—including the one on flower gardening—at least half a dozen times. And that was another reason I liked seeing Doc Travis. He often brought me a magazine or two. Usually The Saturday Evening Post or Collier’s, but whatever it was, by the time I got through reading and rereading it, the pages had been turned so often they were as soft as tissue paper. Guess that was the reason they usually ended up in the outhouse.

Even then, well-read and near-memorized, I hated to see them go. But we just didn’t have room in our little shack for me to turn into a magazine collector.

There I go again, chattering on like a squirrel in mating season. To get back to this time I’m telling you about, we were out at the woodpile working when all of a sudden the hounds started barking and we hear Doc Travis’s car coughing up the road.

We knew it was him right off. His Ford had a sound that didn’t remind you of any other. It seemed to me like it was going to blow up at any minute and toss parts all over East Texas and Northwestern Louisiana.

By the time Papa and I had laid our tools down and Ike had manhandled the last log into place, around the curve came Doc Travis, the Ford popping and sputtering.

He parked in the yard and got out, the hounds hopping around him like fleas trying to find a place to latch on. He was wearing his usual dust-filmed black hat and suit and his white shirt which was no longer a true white. It had been sweated in, dusted over, and washed with strong lye soap so often it had taken on a color somewhere between dirty-slush snow and spoiled-egg yolk yellow.

Papa slapped his hands clean on his overalls and walked over to meet him. Papa and Doc Travis shook hands for a long time.

“How’ya been, Leonard?” Doc Travis asked Papa.

“Can’t complain, not even a little bit,” Papa said.

“Good, real good.” Doc Travis turned to Ike and me. “You boys are looking fit enough. Growing like a couple of pigs.”

Mama came to the open door and called out to Doc Travis, “Well, if it ain’t that old freeloader come to visit.” She smiled and Doc Travis smiled back.

Mama was certainly something to smile about. Even four months pregnant with a fine sheen of sweat glistening on her face and a strand of strawberry-colored hair falling down on her forehead, she somehow managed to look fresh, clean, and happy.

“Good morning, Beth,” Doc Travis said. “Glad to see you can still spot a man that’s come for breakfast.”

Mama took off her old, gray apron, brushed the strand of hair off her forehead, and said, “Get in this house and eat something, you ole sawbones, or I’m going to sic the dogs on you, and you know what killers they are.”

Two of the dogs had already gone back under the house, and the other, a pup named Roger, was licking Doc Travis’s shoes cleaner than a shoe-shine boy could have done with a brush and a rag.

“Well,” Doc Travis said, “now that you got me scared, I don’t rightly think I can do much else other than that.”

Mama smiled wider. “All of you, get on in here.”

And the lot of us trooped into the house.

Three

After Doc Travis had eaten, Mama offered all of us coffee. Doc Travis turned to Mama after sipping from his cup and said, “How’s the little mother?”

Mama patted her slightly round stomach and smiled. “Fine,” she said.

The baby was actually the reason Doc Travis came by so often. The year before she had lost one, and now that she was pregnant again, he came by to check on how she was feeling. So far she’d been doing real well, but Doc Travis had warned us to try and keep her away from stress and overwork, as she now had a natural leaning toward easy miscarriage.

But even before the baby, Doc Travis was a regular visitor. I don’t think there was any question that he enjoyed our company. Mama told me once that she sort of felt that we, along with maybe a dozen other families, were the kin folks he didn’t have.

Doc Travis emptied his cup, then, suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot,” he said. “Richard and Ike, out there in the car I got something for you two, and, Richard, there are a couple magazines you can have.”

Ike and I nearly knocked each other down getting out the door. The gift for both of us was a bag of peppermint candy. We got candy so seldom, we always managed to make it last by allowing ourselves only one piece a day to suck on. That bag of peppermints would last us a long time.

The magazines were really special this time. They weren’t the sort he usually brought me—The Saturday Evening Post, Sunday school magazines—they were thick things printed on cheap paper with shiny covers. I’d seen their kind before, and their bright artwork had always drawn me to the newsstands for a looksee. But I’d never asked Papa to buy me one. I knew it would break his heart not to be able to afford it.

I gave Ike the bag of candy to carry, and I held one of the magazines in either hand and looked at them. The left hand magazine read Dime Detective and it had a picture of a man wearing a brown suit and hat and holding a gun. The other was called Black Mask, and it was also a detective magazine. The cover was pretty much like the Dime Detective, a man with a gun.

When I brought them into the house, Mama looked at them and made a face. “You sure those things are healthy for a boy to read?” she asked Doc Travis.

“Best thing in the world for a boy to read,” he said.

Ike and I thanked Doc Travis, and Mama put the candy on the shelf and told us we could have a piece later on. I sat down by the window and put the magazines in my lap. I was just about to open one when Doc Travis said something that caught everyone’s attention.

“Leonard, I don’t know if I ought to tell you this, because if you get hurt I’m going to blame myself, but there’s one of them fairs supposed to be in Tyler this weekend. I’ve got to go over that way and see my aunt. If you’ve got a mind to ride over, you’re welcome to come along.”

Mama went slightly pale.

Papa nodded. “Thanks, Doc, I’d be obliged.”

I glanced at Ike. If he was thinking anything it didn’t show. That kid could have played poker with the devil and bluffed him out of his tail, hooves, and horns.

The concern with the fair was simple. Papa wrestled at them. Did it for money. He wasn’t big, but he was stout, broad-shouldered, and wiry. Over the years he’d gained quite a local reputation.

Prize money from those matches was usually pretty good. Anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars. That meant if you won, one night of wrestling could maybe earn you more than a season of farming.

It was rough and tumble business, however, and that’s why Mama was frightened. You never knew if Papa might come home with a broken rib, a leg disconnected, or worse.

And folks calling what Papa did wrestling, was misleading. It was more like brawling.

The rules, to say the least, were flexible. Wasn’t unusual for a match to contain a goodly amount of slugging, headbutting, and kicking. About the only thing that was off limits was eye-gouging and hitting below the belt, but I heard tell a right smart amount of that slipped in from time to time.

I think Papa was proud of the fact that he was good at it, but I think he was also a little ashamed. Once I heard him tell Mama that he sometimes felt like those Roman gladiators who fought each other so the crowd could enjoy seeing blood.

So I reckon he had mixed feelings. One thing for sure, he never let any of us go and see him wrestle. And I won’t lie about it none, I sure wish I had. I bet he was something to see.

Way it worked was the fair would usually have its own man. A well-fed, experienced toughie who took on all comers. This way the fair could draw a crowd at a nickel a head, and charge a quarter entry fee for the wrestlers. A local fellow didn’t usually stand a chance against the fair’s wrestler, and when the fair moved on a few days later, it was usually a bunch of nickels and a handful of quarters richer.

Papa, however, caused many a fair to move on shy its prize money and with a bad attitude toward its prize wrestler.

In favor of Mama, the subject was quickly dropped. Doc said, “You hear about Herman Hall’s prize hound?”

“Red?” Papa asked. Half the hounds in East Texas were named Red, but Herman Hall’s Red was special. It was generally agreed that he was probably the best coon dog in two counties.

“Dog got himself killed,” Doc Travis continued. “Was running a coon and cut a wild boar’s trail. I’m not talking about no Piney Woods Rooter either. I mean a big hog like from the old days.”

“Figured there were still some around,” Papa said, “but I haven’t heard tell of one in five or six years.”

“Red cut this boar’s trail the other night and started after it. Herman said he and his boys never saw the hog—not really. But they saw Red fly up in the moonlight, tossed over six feet. Then they saw a huge shape crash off through the bushes. It was so big Herman figured it was a young black bear, but when he went to check on Red, the dog was gutted, tore up like wet newspaper. They held their lanterns down to the ground and looked at the tracks. Big as a man’s hand, Herman said. And deep. Herman said from the looks of those tracks, and considering poor old Red’s wounds, that boar must have weighed over four hundred pounds and had tusks as big and sharp as daggers.”

“That’s awfully big for any wild hog.” Papa said.

“Yeah,” Doc Travis agreed, “but you know Herman.”

Doc Travis didn’t need to explain that. Herman Hall was one of the best hunters in the country. He knew the woods and he knew animals. He wasn’t known to exaggerate, not even a little. He was as sober honest as a hangman’s noose. If he said something was so, you could pretty well count on it being that way. Mr. Hall could be wrong, but not on purpose.

“Some are saying it’s the same boar that was here before. The one you were talking about five or six years ago. They say he’s come back.”

“Old Satan?”

“I’ve heard him called The Devil Boar too, but that’s the one.”

“Memory serves me,” Papa said, “they claimed the time before that it was the same hog come back. This would make three times, and that would make Old Satan darn near fifteen to twenty years old.”

“I’ve heard tell of hogs living that long,” Doc Travis said.

“In the wild?”

“Who knows how long some of them have lived. Ain’t nobody throwing birthday parties for them.”

Papa laughed. “Maybe we ought to bake Old Satan a cake, buy him a few presents. Maybe then he’d go away.”

“Ain’t you the funny one.” Mama said, giving Papa a playful slap on the shoulder.

“Well, if it is the same boar, things could get pretty nasty around here. Last time that hog rooted up a lot of farm land, killed chickens and small livestock, and even cut down old Jack Jeffer’s mule with them tusks, cut him right off at the legs like a tree. Then there was that old colored man that got all tore up.”

“Pharaoh,” Papa said. “Lives across the river from us. He was the best hunter in these parts until then. Wasn’t nothing he hadn’t hunted. Bear, wild cats, you name it. Hunted all over the United States, but that boar got the best of him.”

“He’s lucky to be alive. I’m the one worked on him. Wasn’t nothing I could do for his legs but sew them up. They were torn to ribbons, the muscles and nerves ruined.”

“He was sure some hunter,” Papa said wistfully.

“Ain’t he supposed to be a hundred and fifty years old?” Doc asked.

“What they say,” Papa said.

“One thing’s certain,” Mama said, “he knew my papa when he was a little boy and my papa’s papa when he was a boy. He’s old alright. He has at least one boy in his eighties.”

“Well, if you believe Pharaoh is a hundred and fifty years old, then maybe you’ll believe the story going around about Old Satan. About him being an Indian demon or the devil in disguise.”

“That old wives’ tale?” Papa said.

“There’s them that say he’s an old Caddo Indian medicine man that’s getting back at the whites by changing himself into a wild boar, a boar that can’t be killed by guns, but only with magic. Then there’s those partial to the devil story. Some of the backwoods preachers are especially fond of that one. Say the devil’s been let loose here on account of the way folks been living. Not getting to church regular enough and all.”

“Even preachers—especially preachers—get some danged fool ideas sometime,” Papa said.

After that their talk turned to other things, the weather, the bad times. I put up my magazines and Ike and I went out to finish the chores.

Four

Hour or so later Doc Travis left, and Papa came out to the woodpile where we were finishing up. He sent Ike back to the house to help Mama, then we went out to the barn to hitch Clancy up for the day’s work at running the weedy middles out of the corn and cane.

When we had Clancy hitched, Papa held the lines, laid the Georgia Stock on its side and let the mule pull it down to the bottoms. On the way, Papa began to talk.

“What you reckon you’re going to do when you get older, son?”

I was taken aback. It had always struck me that it was understood what I was going to do. Keep right on working the farm. Growing what I could and getting by as best I could, same as Papa did. Now it occurred to me that I might have a choice, and with the question put before me, I realized I also had an answer.

“I’d like to write stories,” I said. The words seemed to leap out of my mouth unbound. The thought had probably been growing inside me for some time, but with Doc Travis bringing those magazines, and Papa asking me outright like that, the time was ripe for a decision.

Papa called “whoa” to Clancy, turned and looked at me. I had an awful sinking feeling that I had just given the wrong answer to his question.

“Say what?” he said.

For a moment I considered changing my answer, but I was afraid he’d actually heard me right, and was just checking to make sure. “I’d like to write stories,” I said again. “Like in the magazines Doc Travis brought me.”

“Stories?” Papa said.

“Yes sir.”

“Make up and write stories?”

“Yes sir.”

Papa was quiet for a moment, considering. I was beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable with my newfound career, and I could tell from the tone of Papa’s voice that he had considered me doing many a thing, but writing stories for magazines wasn’t one of them. After a moment, he said, “They pay folks for that? Making up stories?”

Now I hadn’t given this part of my career any thought. What if they didn’t pay you for writing stories? What if they were written for fun by rich folks who didn’t have nothing to do but lay around writing stories and reading books? I mean, who paid you for having fun? Only kind of work I’d ever known about wasn’t any fun at all. And there wasn’t much pay in it either, except that you got to go on eating.

But I said bravely, “I reckon they do, Papa.”

Papa nodded. “Why you want to do that son? Write stories?”

“I just want to,” I said. “I feel like I just got to do it.” And that was true. The more I thought and talked about it, the more determined I was to be a writer. The idea was comfortable, like drinking a big cup of hot coffee on a cold morning and having it spread around inside your stomach.

I expected Papa to give me a talk on practicality, but he surprised me. “Well, son, if that’s what you want to do, I think you ought to start learning how it’s done. Guess you need more schooling than you’re getting, seeing how you’ve missed a heap.”

He wasn’t just jawing there. I had missed a lot of school. Living where we did, not having a car, and Papa needing me to help at home, there just wasn’t much chance for me to get into town for schooling. Sometimes, when cropping was done, or things were slow, I’d take the mule and ride in to get as many hours as I could. By the end of the year, though, it didn’t amount to much.

“I don’t know how we can manage that, Papa. You and Mama need me here.”

He didn’t answer me. “And don’t you need one of them writing machines that puts the words on paper?”

This hadn’t occurred to me. “Yes sir. I reckon I do.”

“You’d need to learn how to use it, providing you had one, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Course you got to have paper and stuff for the writing machine.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“You’ll need to know where to try and sell what you write.”

“Yes sir, I reckon I will.” I was beginning to think Papa was pointing out the potholes in my plan, trying to bring me down to earth, but what he said next made me realize he wasn’t.

“Now that I think about it, bet you could get the addresses of where to send stories off the magazines you read. Course, you got to keep in mind they may not buy stories from folks down here in Texas. Maybe all that stuff is written by Yankees, heaven forbid.”

“Like in New York?” I asked.

“Reckon so.”

We both just sort of stood there in dumb fascination for a moment. Thinking about New York, I guess. I knew that if I had to be a Yankee to write stories I was in trouble. New York might as well have been Egypt. I had about as much chance of going to either. Farthest I’d been from home was town, and that was only five miles away.

“Naw,” Papa said, “I don’t reckon they’d buy just from Yankees. That would be un-American.”

I could see the wisdom in that, and I nodded.

“Now, if you want to do that… write them stories, then it’s going to be up to you to do it. But I’m going to give you your chance, somehow. You hear?”

“Yes sir.”

Pausing, he moved his lips from side to side and looked off toward the bottoms. When he looked back at me there was a slight smile on his face. “Tell you what I’m thinking now, but this is just between us, hear?”

“Yes sir.”

“Not a word to anyone. Not Mama. Not Ike.”

“Not a word,” I promised.

“Well, son, I’m thinking that if the crop comes in good this year, or if I do real good at that wrestling match, I’m going to buy a car. We get that car and you can get into school quicker and easier, get on back to the house in time to help me and Ike with the rest of the chores.”

The idea of me driving a car to and from town really appealed to me, and the idea of schooling appealed to me even more. “That sounds like a real good idea, Papa.”

“Yes it does,” Papa had to admit, and he sort of nodded agreement with himself.

After a moment of looking out toward the bottoms again, he spoke, but didn’t quite look at me. “I don’t want you to end up scraping a living like I’ve done. Ain’t nothing wrong with farming if that’s what you want to be. But I didn’t never want to be no farmer. Make something out of yourself, son. I don’t care what, but something. If this writer thing is what you want, I’m going to help you get there. Hear me, now?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ike’s going to get his chance too, but there’s some time before he has to start worrying about that kind of thing. It’s more than high time you put a mind to it. I don’t know nothing but hard work, but you boys are going to have your chance if I have to put a hammerlock on Old Scratch himself.”

Finally he looked at me. His face was relaxed and he was wearing a smile. “Come on, let’s go run them middles before it gets too hot.”

Papa made a clicking sound with his tongue and Clancy began to move on out. On the way down to the bottoms I asked Papa if he thought Uncle Pharaoh was really a hundred and fifty years old.

“Suspect he might be,” Papa said. “Ain’t no way of telling for sure, but he’s been around longer than anyone else in these parts. Goes all the way back to slave days.”

“Was Uncle Pharaoh a slave?”

“Hear tell he was.”

“Ain’t he mad about it?”

“Don’t seem to be, but I’m sure he don’t recollect them times with great longing, if you know what I’m getting at.”

“Yes sir, I think I do.”

“Ain’t no man, black, white, brown, or polka-dotted wants another man deciding his bidding for him. A fellow likes to chose what he wants to do and where he wants to go–”

“Was Uncle Pharaoh really as good a hunter as they say?

“He was.”

“Better than Mr. Hall?’

“Can’t take nothing from Herman, he’s a mighty good hunter. Darn sight better than me, that’s for sure. But I reckon old Pharaoh was even better.”

Then I asked him the question that was really on my mind. “Papa, do you reckon that hog Doc Travis was telling about could be the same one they call Old Satan… or that he could be an Indian medicine man or the devil?”

Papa’s laugh made both me and Clancy jump. “Might be the same hog, son. That’s possible. But I can guarantee you that it ain’t no demon or devil. A hog is a hog, boy, and that’s all there is to it.”

Well, in one way Papa was right, but in another he was wrong.

Five

First sign of the devil I saw was the morning Papa left.

Just before daylight, Doc Travis showed up and had breakfast with us. Afterwards, Papa kissed Mama, shook hands with me and Ike, picked up his carpetbag, and went outside.

It was barely daylight, and already it was sticky hot. By noon the day would be a scorcher. The sort where the heat laid down on you like a wool blanket. I was already starting to look forward to fall.

When Papa was getting in the car, he called back to Mama, “See the boys do their chores, but see they get to be boys too.”

Mama smiled.

We stood in the yard and waved the Ford, Doc Travis, and Papa out of sight. The dogs barked until the sound of the Model B melted away.

Ike went to help Mama with the wash, and I went out to the barn to hitch up Clancy for a half-day’s work. That’s about all that was needed to finish running out the middles of the corn. After that, things would be pretty well laid by for a few days. We had two mules, but Clancy was the one that did all the heavy work. Felix had gotten too old. About the only time we used him was to hitch up to the wagon with Clancy. And since the only time we really needed the wagon was when we were going to town, that wasn’t often.

In his time Felix had been quite a worker, but Papa felt that he had earned a right to spend most of his time in the cool shade of the barn, or out in the lot under one of the big oak trees. It could hardly be said that Felix was a mule with a mission.

I gave both mules some grain and harnessed Clancy and hooked the trace chains to the singletree on the Georgia Stock. Then, laying the plow on its side, I picked up the lines and clucked Clancy out of the barn and through the lot. By the time we’d passed through the lot gate and I had locked it back, it was pretty solid daylight and as sticky hot as fresh-boiled sugar syrup.

A mule is a cantankerous critter, and unlike a horse, won’t work itself to death. And Clancy was all mule. On the way out to the field he was as lazy as government help. He’d plod along like he was going to his own hanging. But when he was presented with the rows of corn, he became a high stepper, ready to get in there and get it done so he could go back to the barn and attend to genuine mule business, which looked to me to be pretty simple. Lot of standing around and grain eating, mostly.

Papa liked Clancy to high step like that, because, like the mule, he hated the work and wanted to get it over with. I wasn’t overly fond of it either, but Papa’s legs were longer than mine and he could stand that quick walking better than I could. By the end of the day I’d be nearly at a dog trot and my legs would feel like a couple of amputated stumps.

But today, with the chance of wrapping up the work by or just before noon, I was more than willing. In fact, I was in high spirits and was singing me a song about Old Dan Tucker.

When I got to the last rows of corn, though, the words just turned to dust in my throat.

There wasn’t much left to plow. It looked like a square dance had been held there. Corn was ripped up by the roots and shredded and some of it had been knocked over and mashed as if out of sheer meanness.

Dropping the plow lines, I left Clancy standing in harness and walked out for a close look. I could see deep wallows and rooted-up places, and peppered all around in the soft dirt were tracks.

A cold chill went up my back like a wet finger and lifted the hair at the base of my scalp.

Those prints were near large as a big man’s hand and they were hog tracks. I didn’t have to do much figuring to know I was looking at the handiwork of Old Satan, The Devil Boar.

Six

It crossed my mind to tell Mama about the corn—and any other time I would have—but there was the problem with the baby. More than likely, I figured this wouldn’t be too hard on her to know, but I didn’t want to take a chance and find out. It wasn’t a total disaster to the corn crop, but it was a pretty good loss. Papa could have picked up quite a few dollars off those six rows of corn, or it would have made quite a few meals for us. Instead, some hog I didn’t even know, who might be a Caddo medicine man or the devil himself, had come out in the middle of the night and snacked on it. Those sorry dogs of ours that barked at everything hadn’t even whimpered this time.

I couldn’t figure that. Those dogs weren’t exactly bloodthirsty when it came to people, but they didn’t cotton to other critters being on our land, other than those owned by us. They wouldn’t even let a possum shortcut across our yard without barking him deaf or chasing him up a tree so Papa could shoot him and Mama could stew pot him.

The oldest of the dogs—Blue—wasn’t going to be hung for no picture, as he was the ugliest dog in creation, what with his ripped up ears and nose from all those coon hunts, but he could smell a drop of sweat on a gopher in the next county. So why hadn’t he smelled Old Satan?

Papa would probably have said the wind was blowing so that it carried Old Satan’s scent away from the house and the dogs. Or maybe he’d have said the hog smelled too much of the river mud from wallowing in the shallows.

And all those sounded right possible. Even likely. But there was an old saying that kept hopping around in my head like fresh frog legs in a skillet—”the luck of the devil.”

Disgusted and mad, I piled up all the wrecked corn stalks at the edge of the field so I could haul it up to the barn later on and feed it to the stock. Least that way it wouldn’t be totally wasted. This job took me about half as long as it would have taken me to plow out the rows, so I was through quite some time before midday.

I had Clancy drag the plow back to the barn and I hitched him up with a sled. We went back to the corn patch, and I loaded the stalks on the sled and hauled them out back of the barn and stacked them so they’d dry out good.

When that was done, I put the sled away, unharnessed Clancy, and groomed him. I groomed Felix too, just like he’d been working.

While I groomed, I thought again on telling Mama about what Old Satan had done to the corn, but I came right back to my first decision. It was best she didn’t know.

One part of me felt good about the fact that I was trying to do good and not upset her and cause problems with the baby, but another part of me felt like a dirty, low-down sneak-thief.

Figuring it was near dinnertime, I started up to the house. Ike was at the well drawing water.

“You done finished?” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“All of it?”

“All there is to do.”

Ike gave me a long, sly look. “Where’d you get them stalks you sledded up this way?”

Darn that Ike, he never missed a trick. “Listen here, Ike, Mama ain’t going to need to know about that.”

“Whatcha do, plow some of the corn down?”

“No,” I snapped, “I didn’t plow none of the corn down.”

“I was just remembering that time you let Felix get away from you and you plowed up half the bean patch.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and I’m remembering that time you weren’t supposed to be messing with him, and while Papa and I were picking tomatoes Felix drug you over two rows of tomatoes, stakes and all, and we had to have Doc Travis come out and put stitches—”

“You just don’t mention where I got my stitches. Hear?”

“Well, you hear this, Ike Dale. Old Satan done been in our bottom. He tore up some of our land, wrecked some of the corn. I ain’t saying nothing to Mama about it on account of the baby and all.”

Ike looked thoughtful. “I reckon that’s an all right idea,” he said. “You sure it’s Old Satan?”

“He didn’t leave no note with his name on it or nothing,” I said, “but he left some prints too big to be any old Piney Woods Rooter.”

“Maybe it ain’t hog tracks. Maybe it’s a cow, or something.”

“I ain’t no blamed Daniel Boone on sign,” I said, “but I know a pig’s tracks from a dadblamed cow’s. It’s Old Satan all right.”

Ike chewed on his bottom lip a moment. “You know what Doc Travis was saying? About Old Satan being an Indian medicine man or the devil… you reckon that’s true?”

“Papa says it ain’t.”

Ike eyed me slyly. “What do you say?”

“I say the same as Papa.” Though to be honest, I wasn’t entirely expressing my true feelings. Looking at those tracks had given me the awfullest sort of stirring.

“Did he spoil much?”

“Not too much.”

“Reckon he’ll be back?”

“I don’t know how a hog thinks,” I said. “Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. You listen here, though. Not a word to Mama, all right?”

“You sure you didn’t plow down that corn and make this here story up?”

“If you want to run on down to the patch for a looksee,” I said, “I’ll wait right here.”

I could see that he was considering it, but after a moment he said, “Naw, I believe you.”

“Not a word then?”

Ike crossed his heart. “Not a word.”

“This’ll be our secret until Papa gets home.”

“Indians couldn’t drag it out of me with torture.”

“Don’t reckon we’ll have to worry about that none,” I said. “Been a long time since they’ve attacked.”

“No need to get smart about it,” Ike said. “It’s the thought that counts.” He half-grinned at me, and I grinned back.

“Go on and wash up,” Ike said. “I was fixing to call you to dinner anyhow. There’s fresh water poured for you.”

I went out back of the house where the wash pan set on a basin. Fresh water was in it and a new bar of lye soap was beside it with a clean, folded towel.

I took off my shirt, shook it free of dust, and patted it from my pants. Then I used my hand and some water to slick my hair down. After washing up and drying, I put my shirt on and checked myself in the broken piece of mirror leaning up behind the wash pan. I decided I looked clean enough to go to Mama’s table.

Dinner was black-eyed peas, fried chicken, pan-fried cornbread, grits, and buttermilk. Pretty much the same meal we’d been having all week, but that didn’t hurt the taste any. Mama could have cooked a rotted log and made it taste good, even if she served it ten days in a row.

About halfway through the meal, Ike looked up and said, “I wonder what Papa’s eating.”

Mama reached over and rubbed his shaggy head. “I was wondering the same thing.”

“I reckon Papa’s doing just fine,” I said.

Mama smiled. “Figure you’re right, Richard. He’s doing just fine.”

When dinner was finished, we did dishes. Mama washing, me drying, and Ike stacking. Afterwards Mama gave Ike and me a piece of peppermint and sent us on our way. There wouldn’t be any serious chores to do until evening time.

I got my stacks of magazines and went out to the hay loft to read, and Ike got his pole and stuff and went fishing. The loft was pretty warm, but sometimes I liked that. The heat—and me cuddled down in the hay—would sometimes make me drowsy and I’d have some really good daydreams.

Today it wasn’t working though. I couldn’t even concentrate on my magazines the way I liked to. Kept thinking about those big tracks in the corn patch, about Old Satan.

After a bit I went to the open hay-loft door and looked out. Mama was standing way out from the house, in the middle of the road, looking down it. She stood there for a long time, like maybe if she looked hard enough she could see around the curves and through the pines, and all the way to the fair in Tyler.

Seven

On the day Papa was due home, Doc Travis drove up in the yard without him. We had all heard the dogs barking and heard the Ford popping and we had rushed out to meet them.

When Doc Travis got out of the car and Papa wasn’t with him, I could hear Mama drawing in her breath. All sorts of awful things went through my mind, horrible things that could have happened to Papa.

But when Doc Travis smiled at us I knew everything was okay.

“Leonard?” Mama asked softly.

“Fine, real fine. Whomped that fair fellow quicker than a duck can eat a June bug.”

“Where is he?” Mama asked. “Ain’t hurt none, is he?”

“Not hurt a lick,” Doc Travis said. “One of you boys get that box out of the car, will you? Something your Papa sent.”

Ike and I nearly knocked each other down trying to get to it, and when we found out how heavy and cumbersome it was, we decided to do it together.

“Bring it in to the kitchen table,” Mama said. “Doc, you want some coffee?”

“Ain’t going to leave without none. Pour it up, lady.”

They went inside and we followed, putting the big cardboard box in the center of the table.

“You boys be careful with that,” Doc Travis said. “And don’t look inside neither. Not yet.”

We all sat around the table and stared at the box for a moment.

“Where’s Leonard?” Mama asked.

“Tell you in good time, gal,” he said. “Now look here.” He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of money. He slapped it down on the table in front of Mama. “Two hundred dollars of the prize money.”

“Two hundred!” Mama said. “That’s the most money I’ve ever seen in one place.”

“Made more than that. Prize was about three hundred, but he spent some of it on what’s in the box and he had to keep some for living money.”

“Living money?” Mama asked.

“Uh huh. He not only beat that fair fellow, but he beat him so good, they fired their boy and took on Leonard.”

“He’s traveling with the fair?” Mama asked.

“For a few towns, if he don’t get licked,” Doc Travis said.

“He won’t get licked. Never,” Ike said.

“I don’t reckon he will either,” Doc Travis said. He turned back to Mama. “You see, he’s got a chance to make a thousand dollars or better.”

“A thousand dollars!” I said.

Doc Travis nodded. “That’s right.”

“Why it wouldn’t matter if our crop came in or not,” Mama said. “And if it did come in—”

“We’d be rich,” I said.

Mama looked over at me and smiled. “Not quite rich, but we wouldn’t have to live quite so close to the bone.” She turned back to Doc Travis. “You said he wasn’t hurt none?”

“Course he ain’t. They ain’t going to let an injured man wrestle for them. He’d lose all their money. Why you should have seen him take that fair fellow, and that rascal being twice the size of Leonard too. Leonard snatched that old boy’s foot out from under him, twisted him over on his belly and pinned him to the mat like a big bug.”

“Ha ha!” Ike barked suddenly and slammed his hand on the table. We all looked at him. That was the most excitement I’d seen out of him since he was eight and had accidentally set his overalls on fire playing with matches in the outhouse. He glanced around at us, sort of embarrassed. “Just couldn’t help myself,” he said.

We all laughed.

“When will he be home?” Mama asked.

“Don’t rightly know,” Doc Travis said. “Maybe a month or better. Guess that’s going to put you in a rough spot for a while, with the farming and all. But Leonard stands to make a bundle, and even if he don’t, he’s sure done all right so far.”

“We’ll be needing some things for the baby,” Mama said. She picked up the two hundred dollars, got up, and put it in the cookie jar. It had been months since it had had either cookies or money in it.

“What’s in the box?” Ike asked when Mama sat back down.

“I’ll do the honors there,” Doc Travis said, smiling. He pulled the box over to him and opened it. He reached in and brought out a soft, blue bundle and unfolded it. It was a long, beautiful dress. Mama’s mouth fell open.

“He… he got that for me?” she said.

“No,” Doc Travis said, “he sort of thought Ike might like it. Course he got it for you, cotton head. Blue is your favorite color, right?” He handed the dress to her.

She smiled, holding the dress against her. “Blue and green,” she said.

“Good, cause he got a green one too,” and with that Doc Travis’s hand darted into the box and whipped out a green dress.

“I’ll swan,” Mama said, and the sunlight coming through the window caught her eye, and for a moment it glistened.

“Course, if you’re going to wear them dresses,” Doc Travis said, “you got to have shoes to go with them, and he sent some of them too.” His hand went back to the box and came out holding a pair of black, shiny, lace-up shoes, just like Mama had swooned over so often in the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.

She took them and held them in front of her, and finally, gently, set them on the table. “He shouldn’t have spent all that money,” she said.

“Sure he should have,” Doc Travis said. “Now, these two squirts get a turn.”

Out of the box came a bright, red and black flannel shirt and a crisp, dark-blue pair of overalls for Ike. They were his first store-bought clothes. Up until then he’d only had hand-me-downs and things Mama sewed up from what cloth she could get from flour sacks and such.

“Them’s all mine?” Ike asked.

“Unless you want Richard to wear one leg of the overalls for good luck or something,” Doc Travis said.

Ike took the clothes and held them to him like they were a warm puppy. “Reckon I can try ‘em on?” Ike asked Mama. “Just to see how they wear, then I’ll take ‘em off.”

“You can,” Mama said. “But let’s see what else is in the box.”

“You’re next, Richard,” Doc Travis said. “Come on around here and get it out yourself.”

I went around and looked in the box. There was a small, flat box inside and I lifted it out. Beneath it was a bigger bundle wrapped in cloth.

“That’s yours too,” Doc Travis said, “but open this up first.”

Inside the box was a stack of magazines. Dime Detective, Black Mask, Weird Tales, and Doc Savage. I was instantly in hog heaven. Beneath the magazines was a pile of clean, white paper sheets. I figured they were padding.

“Now the other thing,” Doc Travis said.

I reached in and took hold of the bundle. It was heavy. I set it on the table and carefully unwrapped the cloth around it. When I saw what it was my mouth fell open. I suddenly knew what that pile of paper under the magazines was for.

They were for my new typewriter.

Eight

When Doc Travis finished his visit and drove away, I did the few chores that needed to be done, then went inside to look at my typewriter.

Ike had tried on his shirt and overalls, and now they had been folded and put away. Mama had tried on her dresses and shoes, and now they had been put away. It was my turn to try out my typewriter, something I wanted to do in private. I don’t know why, but I felt I had to be alone with it, that I had to do this without even Mama watching.

I took it in the back room where Ike and I slept and set it on the dresser and pulled up a chair and padded it with pillows. I put a sheet of paper in the machine and punched a key.

The letter I jumped onto the page.

I sat there and looked at it for a long time. Then, at will, I pushed key after key, and finally I quit just hitting them and started looking at what I was doing and began to make words.

It was like magic to me. Any thought that stirred in my head I could put on paper, and it would stare back at me.

For a while, I felt like a god with people and places at the command of my two, hard-punching fingers.

It was about as good a feeling as I ever had.

Nine

Twelve sheets of paper later, filled front to back with nothing that would have meant anything to anyone but me, I put the typewriter under the bed and the typed paper in the box between the clean sheets. Ike and Mama respected what was mine enough not to meddle, but I felt better about not putting it out where someone might read my secret thoughts and maybe snicker over them.

I went outside, tossed the chickens some cornbread crumbs, split some kindling for the stove, then asked Mama if I could go over and see Abraham. She told me she had nothing against it.

Abraham Wilson was my best friend. He was colored. He lived on the other side of the Sabine even deeper in the woods than we did. His father Buck Wilson was an A-l field hand, and he got fifty cents a day for work same as the whites. That was real good pay for colored, as they were usually lucky to get half as much.

Papa always thought that was a bad thing, and told me time and again that a man’s color ought not to have anything to do with his thinking or working. That had to do with the man.

All I knew was that I’d grown up with Abraham and we’d swum the river together and had sword duels with willow limbs and fished since we were old enough to wander off from the house by ourselves. His color didn’t seem to make none of those things less fun.

Abraham’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and a whole pack of brothers and sisters lived with him in a house about three times the size of ours, and better built to boot. Abraham’s papa was a fine carpenter, and he knew how to split logs and make lumber without having to tote them to the saw mill. He was as handy as a pocket on a shirt with that sort of thing.

Papa had plans to trade out something with Buck Wilson and get him to do some carpenter work on our shack. Papa was all thumbs when it came to building things. He was a good hunter and fisherman, a fair farmer, but just about the lousiest builder you ever did see. And I wasn’t any better. Anytime we built a fence or a hog pen, you dang near had to tie it to a tree so it would stand up.

I put some of the pulp magazines inside my shirt, got my .22, and called up the pup, Roger, to go with me, just in case we ran across some squirrels to pot.

Roger bounced along beside me for a bit, then when we got deep in the woods, he darted off the trail and scared up a flock of birds that darn near fluttered into my face before flying up through the pine and oak limbs to reach the sky.

As I walked, I sort of half-listened for Roger’s bark. If he found a squirrel his mouth would tell me. That dog wasn’t any seasoned hunter, but he was promising and blessed with one fine mouth. He had a sound for every animal he ran across. Papa could listen to him, Old Blue, or Tiny, and tell you exactly what sort of critter they were running, and I was getting so I wasn’t any slouch at it either.

After a while, we crossed the log bridge over the river and walked alongside the bank and deeper into the bottoms. The trees and brush got so thick along there, that at night it seemed like they were trying to push you into the water.

Good spell later, I came up on a rise that swelled off to the right of the river, and I hiked up there for a look. You could see the Wilson house from there, and closer up I could see old Uncle Pharaoh. Course he wasn’t any uncle of mine, but everyone I knew—except his own family— called him that. He was the hunter who’d lost his legs on account of meeting up with Old Satan, and after that happened, he built himself a low-slung cart and trained him a white farm hog to pull it. He got around the place like that, and once or twice even had the hog haul him to town, which wasn’t any short trip.

Uncle Pharaoh had a way with animals, especially hogs. He’d forgotten more about being a hog than most hogs had ever learned. Only hog that had ever outsmarted him was Old Satan.

He was in his cart now, and his hog, Jesse, was in harness, grunting happily along toward where the river looped around and ran by the Wilson house. Jesse looked to have put on fifty pounds since I’d last seen him, and that hadn’t been more than a month ago.

Uncle Pharaoh, black as a raisin and just as wrinkled, was lying down in the cart with his head propped up on a couple of big feather pillows. He had made a roof of willow sticks and flannel pieces to keep the sun off his head, and he had a big elephant ear leaf in his hand and was fanning himself. A fishing pole stuck up out of a slot at the rear of the cart and wagged back and forth as they rolled.

As usual, Jesse didn’t have any lines attached to him, and was working totally to Uncle Pharaoh’s voice.

When Jesse reached the river, Uncle Pharaoh barked out for him to whoa, and he did. Without a word from Uncle Pharaoh, I reckon Jesse would have jumped in the Sabine and tried to swim that cart over to the other side.

Jesse dipped his head and took a drink of the river, then slowly and carefully, he dropped down to lay still on the wet bank. Though I wasn’t close enough to hear for sure, I’d have bet a nickel—if I’d had one—that Jesse hadn’t even rattled his harness when he laid down.

Uncle Pharaoh put his leaf aside, reached his pole out of the slot, and holding his arm wide to avoid the flannel top, popped it. And out flew the weighted and baited line. It passed low and close over Jesse’s head and plunked in the water just shy of an old rotted tree stump—a good place for a channel cat to be laid up in cool, wet shadow. The cork bobbed and big ripples fanned wide on either side of the line.

For a moment I just stood there watching Uncle Pharaoh and Jesse, and thinking that they were some sight even for the Sabine River Bottoms, which was full of pretty strange sights. I figured it wasn’t everyday anywhere that you got to see a hundred and fifty year old man fishing for catfish from a half-lying-down position in a hog-drawn cart.

After a few more minutes of taking that sight in, I turned back to the trail and followed it around to where Uncle Pharaoh was parked. When I was pretty close on them, I said, “Howdy, Uncle Pharaoh.”

He cocked his head in my direction. “Howdy yourself, little white boy.” He smiled at me. There wasn't a tooth in his head, just withered gums that reminded me of dogchewed leather. “How is you?”

“Fine. How you been, Uncle Pharaoh?”

“Talk some quieter, little white boy. You frighten the fish. There’s an ole cat under that log I been trying to catch now for a year, but he’s too smart for me. Now, how has I been? Well, I’m a hundred and fifty years old, so you can figure that for yourself.”

If Uncle Pharaoh wasn’t that old, he had to be awful dadburned close. I’d never seen anyone that looked as old as he did. Even some pictures of dried up dead folks I’d seen, mummies, they were called, didn’t look as old as Uncle Pharaoh. He was shiny bald, toothless, and his eyes were an odd gray color, like maybe they’d been poked with pins to let the brown run out. His skin was more wrinkled than a raisin and it looked tough enough to have come off an old mule collar. His arms were knotty looking and his wrecked legs looked as twisted as bois d’ark limbs.

“You that little white boy that’s Abraham’s friend?”

“Yes sir, Uncle Pharaoh.” Uncle Pharaoh was like that. He didn’t see so good anymore and his mind had a habit of sort of wandering in and out on certain matters. Just about every time I came to visit, I had to reintroduce myself.

“That your hound?” he asked, because Roger had finally decided to join me. He came out of the woods panting, wet from having been in the river and his hair was full of cockleburs.

“Yes sir.”

Uncle Pharaoh nodded. “He won’t bother Pig Jesse none, will he?”

“No sir, he’s just a big ole pup. He ain’t real good at bothering squirrels yet.”

“He bother Pig Jesse, and Jesse tear his ears off. Part that worries me, is they get in a fight, Pig Jesse drag my butt all over creation in this here cart. You don’t let that happen, little white boy.”

“No sir, I won’t. Is Abraham up at the house?”

“Reckon he is. He’s drawing water.”

“Nice seeing you, Uncle Pharaoh.”

“Nice to see you, little white boy. Even if you is a bit muddy through these eyes.”

I went up the path, calling Roger after me. Just as Uncle Pharaoh had said, he was at the well, cranking up water and pouring it into a dishpan. He’d probably made quite a few trips because he was sweated up good.

“How’re you?” I called.

Abraham looked up from his work and grinned. “Well if it ain’t Ricky done come to help me haul water.”

“Where we hauling to?”

“The stove. Mama’s canning some beans.”

I unloaded my .22 and leaned it against the well, and took one end of the big dishpan while Abraham took the other. Roger bounded along between our legs until I thought I was going to fall down. I finally had to yell him out from under us.

We carried the pan into the smell of boiling beans and the lingering tang of hot-peppered cornbread, maybe a day or two old.

Mama Wilson was at the stove. She was wearing an old, faded blue dress made out of burlap sacks and she had a thick, white rag tied around her head. It was hot as the dickens in there on account of the cookstove, and Mama Wilson had a sheen of sweat on her black face that made the flesh look like rich cane syrup popping to a boil.

When she looked around and saw me a smile jumped on her face. “Little Ricky, how is you, and your folks?”

“We’re fine,” I said.

“Good. You boys pour that water in the cook pot there, then get me one more and you can go about your rat killing.”

We hefted the water up to the pot on the stove and poured it in. Mama Wilson opened the fire door and stoked up the flames with a long piece of pitch pine, then stuck a big hunk of split oak in there. Abraham and me made one more trip to the well, poured the water in the pot, then went out in the yard to cool off. We didn’t hang around long though. If you did, jobs that needed doing had a way of coming up.

I told Abraham about the magazines I had in my shirt, and after I got my .22 and hollered at Roger for chasing a chicken, we left out of there, the big pup sulking behind us.

We were on our way to the tree house.

Ten

That tree house was a corker. A year or so later, when I saw my first Tarzan movie, Tarzan and His Mate, I compared his tree house to ours, and I tell you, the Ape Man didn’t have a thing on us.

It was about a mile from Abraham’s place, built up in a nest of oak limbs that stuck out over the river in a spot that was as good a swimming hole as you could imagine. Plenty of cool, clear water about ten to fifteen feet deep. You could dive right off the edge of the tree house into it, and there was a rope you could climb up on when you were ready to make another jump.

The house had been built by Abraham’s papa and oldest brother—who was grown now and gone off somewhere—and they had built it to stay. It was big enough for a grown man to stand up in, to live in for that matter. It had a porch all the way around, doors on either side, and a trapdoor at the bottom.

We had all kinds of stuff in there. An old deck of cards so gummy from us handling them that you had to shake your fingers to make a card come loose when you wanted to lay it down. Couple cards with naked ladies on them. A half fruit jar of soured black berry wine that was too nasty for us to drink, but we kept it around on account of it made us feel more grown up. A bow and arrows that Abraham had made, each arrow topped with a real Indian arrowhead his middle brother had brought him back from Arkansas. And there was the spear.

The spear was Abraham’s pride and joy. He had learned from his great-grandfather, old Uncle Pharaoh, that he and his family were the kin of a great tribe of colored folks who’d once lived in Africa. Uncle Pharaoh didn’t recall what they were called anymore, but he said they was as tough as Comanche Indians. They killed big lions with nothing but a shield and a spear, and not from distance. They went right up to the lion, sassed him, and killed him face to face.

Uncle Pharaoh, who could still speak some of the African language when his mind was obliged to recall it, said they killed the lions by covering themselves with these long shields and taunting the critter until it jumped. When it was in the air, the hunter dropped to one knee, poked the spear around the edge of the shield, and let the lion come down on it.

Course even with that spear in it, Uncle Pharaoh said things could get mighty sticky after that. If the lion didn’t die right off, best bet was to lie on your back with the shield pulled down over you and hold tight. If any part of the hunter got out from beneath the shield, there was a good chance he’d go home without it, because a lion didn’t die easy. If the fellow was lucky, he’d be known from then on out as Gimp, Scar, or Lefty. If he wasn’t so lucky, then they’d be holding services of a sort for him that afternoon. Least that’s how Uncle Pharaoh told it, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.

Uncle Pharaoh was the one who taught Abraham how to make his spear. It was about eight feet long, made of hickory wood with the center wrapped in cured hog hide and the point was made out of two feet of filed-down cane knife. It was strong, yet it was flexible. I guess if a lion had been loose in our neck of the woods it would have been just the thing to have along. But since there wasn’t much call for it, it had a place of honor on the tree house wall. To go with it, Abraham was making a shield of willow limbs and bowed oak slats covered in hog hide. When it was finished it would hang behind the spear.

But this day I’m telling you about, Roger goes off in the woods to do dog stuff, and Abraham and I climbed up into the tree house. I put my .22 in the corner and we stripped off and went for a swim, diving off the porch and climbing up the rope time and again. If we’d had much more fun than we were having, I reckon they’d have needed to have us arrested.

After we’d gotten worn out, we climbed up into the tree house and put our clothes on. I got the magazines and handed them to Abraham for a look. He couldn’t read a lick, but those covers told a million stories alone. I figured it was the first time he’d seen magazines like that. He and his family didn’t go into town that often. The town had a way of pointing out that they were different, least in the eyes of the townsfolk. And people who’d speak to them in the bottoms expected them to step off the sidewalk in town.

“Where’d you get these?” Abraham asked.

“Papa,” and I told him about the wrestling match Papa had won. I told it so good you’d have thought I’d been there.

“These don’t look like them others,” Abraham said.

“I’ve read some of the stories,” I said, “and they ain’t like the others.”

“You going to read some or what?”

“I’ll read,” I said, and I was more than willing. Reading aloud was something I really enjoyed, even if I had to skip a word I didn’t know sometimes.

And Abraham enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed reading.

“What’s the name of these?” Abraham asked.

I held them up, one at a time, running my finger under the titles. Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze was the one that grabbed his fancy, and it was my favorite cover too. It had this big, gold-looking fellow with funny eyes and a lot of muscles wearing a shirt so torn up it wasn’t worth patching or making rag cloth and ought to been thrown away. He had this little black doll in his hand, and there were three guys wearing funny getups looking out at him from behind this post. They sure didn’t look happy about much.

“Read a story about the glowing fellow,” Abraham said.

“All right, but it’s a long one and I don’t reckon to finish it today.”

“We’ll do it like that other story that time, in parts. I liked wondering what was going to happen next.”

That had been a fun way of doing it. I’d gotten three issues of this Sunday school magazine with a story in it about four boys hunting for lost treasure in a cave. I read a piece each time Abraham and I could get together, and I never did tell him there was supposed to have been another issue that finished up the story. Instead, I just made up an ending. Reckon the fellow who wrote the story couldn’t have done any better than I did. I know Abraham sure liked it. He said he thought the last part was the best, especially the stuff about the pirates and the cavalry and all.

By the end of the day, I’d nearly read a third of the Doc Savage story, and it was a doozy. The place I found to stop was where this fellow was about to cut a silken cord Doc was hanging onto, dropping him eighty stories to the pavement. I figured when I got home I’d have to take a peek, just to make sure Doc made it.

We talked over the story for a while and tried to figure out how Doc was going to get out of his mess, and by the time we’d gotten some ideas and decided hands down that Doc was our hero, it was near dark.

I put the magazines inside my shirt, and when I was buttoning up, Abraham said, “You gonna come back pretty quick and finish reading it?”

“Soon as I can. If it hangs around the house too long, it’ll end up in the outhouse.”

“Outhouse?”

“We ain’t got no room for a magazine collection,” I said.

Abraham pursed his lips. “That ain’t no good place for stories to end up. We ain’t never had no magazines like these.”

I had to nod to that.

“I got an idea, Ricky. Leave them here. Yeah, that’s it. Bring them here and we’ll start our own one of them things where they keep books.”

“Library?”

“Yeah, one of them.”

“Good,” I said. “Real good.”

“We can start right now, and later on I’ll build us some shelves along the walls and we can put everything we get worth keeping up there. And it’ll keep you from going home today and reading the story, cause oncet you get it read I don’t know when you’ll come back.”

Abraham had a point there. When I got home and started finding out what happened to Doc, chance was I’d read the whole thing. Kind of a halfway idea I had anyway.

“Well, all right. I reckon they’re in as good a place here as anywhere. It’s drier than our house.”

“There you go.”

I unbuttoned my shirt, and with only a tiny bit of reluctance about not finding out what happened to Doc tonight, I handed the magazines over to Abraham who promptly put them in a stack in the corner.

“I got to run along home now,” I said. “There’s a few chores I got to do yet, and I told Mama I’d be home by now.”

“I got things to do too,” Abraham said. “Feed the hogs and Jesse.”

“Ain’t Jesse a hog?” I asked.

“Just in the way he looks,” Abraham said.

We closed up the shutters on the windows, I got my .22, and we went down. Roger wasn’t anywhere in sight, and calls and whistles didn’t bring him out.

“Darn his hide,” I said.

“What was he supposed to do?” Abraham said. “Lay here under this tree all day waiting on us? He didn’t even have nothing to read, nor nobody to read to him.”

“Ha, ha,” I said.

“That mutt done gone home, Ricky, and there ain’t no cause to fret about it. You come to our place and get some pitch for torches. It’s darn near dead solid dark. You get along home and that old pup is going to be there waiting for you. Mark my words.”

“So’s Mama,” I said, “and probably with a switch. I think I’d better just run on from here.”

“You’re going to get a whipping anyway, so you might as well get some pitch pine. You’ll go halfway to our house on your way back anyway. Few minutes ain’t going to make no difference.”

“Reckon you’re right,” I said.

I tried to call up that fool dog again, but no luck. “All right, let’s head on out,” I said.

We started for Abraham’s house at a trot. When we got there he got me some matches and some sticks of pitch pine, and I headed out for home fast as my feet would travel and the dark would let me.

Eleven

The trail was nothing new. I’d traveled it by day and by night, with and without torches. But there was no denying I was glad for having let Abraham talk me into going by his place for the pitch sticks. It was a partial moon night, and the woods were so thick not much light was squeezing in. It was, as Papa says, as dark as a banker’s heart.

Pitch pine has a lot of sap in it. A stick will flicker and blaze and put off enough smoke to choke a good-sized horse, but it’s a slow burner, and it doesn’t throw out a lot of light. It sort of kicks it out in sputtering starts, and those flare-ups make all kinds of shadows.

I guess on account of that Doc Savage story I was jumpy. Those shadows looked like all manner of things to me, even though I knew better. So when the sound came my nerves were already set off just right and I nearly jumped three feet high. Something was crashing through the brush, and behind it came a bark. It was Roger, I’d recognize his voice anywhere. But the type of bark I didn’t know. Whatever it was he was chasing was new to him. And from the sound of that brush crashing down, big.

The crashing and barking came closer and closer. It was going to break the trail any minute. Shoving the blazing pitch stick into the center of the trail, I found me a sweetgum on the other side and got behind it. If Roger had him an eating animal, I was going to drop it for the stewpot. Mama might even be in a better mood if I brought home some meat.

The crashing sound was still coming, and getting louder, but Roger had quit barking. I got down on one knee behind the gum and put my .22 around the edge of it and got it steady, ready to shoot. There was enough light there in the trail, that when the critter broke cover I’d be able to get a good look at it, decide what it was, and then, if need be, get off a shot. Provided, of course, Roger wasn’t right on its tail.

Closer it came, the more certain I was that it had to be a big old coon, in spite of the fact I hadn’t recognized Roger’s coon bark.

When I was sure it was about ready to break trail, I cocked back the hammer on the .22, and suddenly, the brush burst open.

And there, for a brief moment in the flickering pitch light, was Roger! He seemed to explode out of the brush, tongue lagging from his mouth like a wet sock, eyes wild, running so hard his front and back legs were nearly knocking together.

Roger hadn’t been chasing anything. It was chasing him.

As he disappeared into the shadows and brush on my side of the trail, the thing that was chasing him came into view, and even before I could see it, I could smell it. It was an odor like three weeks of spoiled laundry, dead animals and angry skunks. A wall of stink so strong and thick you could darn near drive a nail in it.

Then it broke trail. I got only a glimpse before its chest hit the pitch pine and sent it spinning and smoldering into the dirt, but I knew what that huge, dark, red-eyed shape had been.

It was the boar. Old Satan.

I was so startled I forgot the gun. By the time I remembered it, Old Satan had pounded through the brush after Roger and was gone.

My heart was beating so hard I thought the buttons would pop off my shirt. I lowered the hammer on the .22 and went after the pitch stick Old Satan had trampled into the trail.

I had to light a match to find it, but when I did, and had shook the dirt off, I saw that there was a little red bead of fire on it. I whipped the stick through the air a few times until it blazed up, then I went over to where Roger and Old Satan had parted the brush like a barber’s comb.

The brambles and vines were so thick on that side, there wasn’t any going around them. If I was going to follow, I’d have to go the way they went, and be sure that my torch didn’t catch the tangle on fire. If it did, I’d be a goner, not to mention maybe half the Sabine bottoms.

There was only one way. I took a good long look down that brambly tunnel, then put the pitch torch under my foot and crunched it out. I clutched the .22 tight, began to crawl forward, the vines and brambles and brush clutching at and catching my hair and clothes till I thought I’d scream. It was like being inside a cave, it was so dark in there, and I kept thinking, What if Old Satan decides to come back this same way? I could just imagine looking up any minute to see two red eyes coming down on me like a twin lighted locomotive.

But that didn’t happen. I finally came clear of the bramble patch and out into a clearing where I could stand. There weren’t any branches touching together overhead, and there was enough moonlight for me to see pretty good, if there had been anything to see. The wind rustled through the limbs and undergrowth and churned up some leaves that flowed in a quick circle and fluttered to the floor of the clearing like singed moths.

Roger yelped.

Across the clearing from me, from behind a patch of brambles; he flew up, straight up, like a strong man had grabbed him and tossed him as high as he could.

When he came down it was at the edge of the clearing, one of his hind legs partly in the brambles. Then came a sound from the underbrush like I hoped never to hear again. An ear-ringing squeal like a wild laugh caught in a madman’s throat. And when the squeal died off it was followed by a bunch of gruntings and crashings, the sound of Old Satan moving invisibly, but loudly away.

Twelve

Roger was dead. Old Satan had used those tusks like bowie knives.

I sat down beside Roger, put the .22 across my knees, and let out a scream to match the squeal Old Satan had made. Then I cried.

Finally I looked off in the direction Old Satan had gone and said aloud, “You’re mine, you old devil. All mine.”

There wasn’t anything left for me to do. I couldn’t trail Old Satan in the dark, and if I did, I wouldn’t have much chance against him with a .22. I’d have to keep my promise to that bull hog later. Only thing left to do was for me to go on home.

Roger was too heavy for me to lug back to the house, so I put him in the fork of a hickory tree so nothing could bother him. Later I’d come back and give him a proper burial here in the clearing.

I worked my way through the brambles again, and when I got to the trail, I pulled another stick of pitch pine out of my belt and lit it. My face was soaked with tears and blood from brush cuts and my shirt was spotted with Roger’s blood. I was afraid that when Mama saw me I’d frighten her to death.

I was on my last stick of pitch when I reached the end of the trail and it broke out into our bottom land. Our corn and cane rose up against the night sky like rows of feathered Indian lances.

Just as I was about to step into the clearing two things happened that made my skin prick up all over the way a cold drop of rainwater down your collar will do.

My nose filled with a sour stink and I heard a soft grunting noise.

I looked over my shoulder, down the trail.

Nothing, but I thought I heard some sticks crack. Then again, it could have been the corn rustling in the moonlight.

Stepping lightly, I started toward our field and home. There was no doubt in my mind that Old Satan was out there. That he had come back to finish the job he’d missed out on. Roger hadn’t been enough. He wanted to kill me too.

I thought about how Roger’s body had been torn up and I remembered Doc Travis saying that some thought the boar couldn’t be killed with guns, only magic. Not that it mattered much either way. The .22 would be about like trying to chop down an old oak with a dull spoon. Still, it was something. I clutched the rifle tighter and began to trot.

The moonlight wasn’t much, but out from beneath the trees it was enough. The pitch stick had gone out, but it didn’t seem wise for me to stop and light it, not if Old Satan was behind me. I needed every second I could get to make tracks. Course, if it was Old Satan back there, it might not matter how much of a lead I got. The story on hogs was that their size could fool you. They could run as fast as a deer for short distances.

I quit trotting and started to run. By the time I reached the cane and started pushing through it, I was near out of breath.

It was slower going through the crops instead of up the trail, but I figured I’d have a better chance of making it if Old Satan couldn’t see me outlined out there in the moonlight. This way he had to find me.

I was out of the cane and into the corn rows, clumsily pushing through them, when I heard the noise. Or thought I did.

Over my heavy breathing and the wind I wasn’t even sure it was there. Maybe I had imagined it. But it sounded as if something was pushing through the cane and corn behind me.

I didn’t stop to listen and make sure. I was too scared that I’d be right, and that I’d lose precious time.

The corn patch seemed to go on forever, and the long, green leaves acted as if they were trying to reach out and grab me. Like maybe they were in cahoots with Old Satan and were going to hold me until he got there.

Even though I didn’t want to think about it, all sorts of horrible thoughts about hogs kept going through my mind. When I was about five or six I’d heard this story about Old Man Simpson. About how his heart had played out on him one day while he was out slopping the pigs, and by the time they found him, the critters had eaten him down to the bones.

I could just imagine Mama or Ike looking for me and finding nothing but some clothes scraps, a .22, and a pile of well-picked bones out here in the corn patch.

Those thoughts put iron in my legs. I broke out of the corn and scrambled up the rise, falling once to my knee and tearing a hole in my overalls. But I didn’t drop the .22. My grip on it was so tight my hand was starting to hurt.

As I started loping across the clearing toward the house, I was sure I heard Old Satan bursting out of the corn behind me, grunting his way up the rise.

The lamplight oozing out of the windows of our shack had never looked so inviting.

When I was halfway across the clearing to our house, the words just seemed to leap out of my mouth without me having much to say about it. “Mama, Mama!”

The door opened. Light fell out and Mama behind it. She had Papa’s old Winchester in her hands. “Mama!” I screamed. “Don’t let it get me!”

I saw her hunch forward, looking into the blackness behind me. The next instant I was by her side, turning, my .22 pointing out at… nothing.

There was only the night and the wind.

I started to laugh. Darn if I knew what was funny, but I started to laugh. The whole thing had been my imagination. Old Satan hadn’t followed me after killing Roger. It had just been my silly head playing tricks on me.

“Richard,” Mama said, “what’s wrong, boy?”

“Nothing,” I said, still laughing like an idiot. “Noth…”

Then, out of the dark, like a solid, rolling shadow with two glowing coals in its center, moving lickety-split across the clearing, came a shape.

“Old Satan!” I screamed.

Mama and I raised our guns and fired. The next thing I knew, Mama was pushing me inside and following quick behind me, slamming the door and throwing the bolt.

About the same time the dogs began to growl and bark. I could hear them running out from beneath the house. This was followed by a bunch of loud whelps and whines. Then silence.

I began to tremble. I knew that Old Satan had whipped, and probably killed, the dogs in less time than it took to say his name.

With a trembling hand, I dug another shell out of my pocket and managed to load the .22 without dropping it.

Ike came out of the back room then. His eyes were as big as persimmons.

He started to say something.

“Sssshhh,” Mama warned.

Ike looked at me. I put a hand on his shoulder, mouthed the words, “It’s okay.”

We stood that way for a long time. The silence was broken by Mama levering another shell into the Winchester and going over to the door to listen.

She put her ear to the door and I looked her a question.

She shrugged and shook her head.

“Maybe he’s gone,” I finally said.

“Who?” Ike asked.

“Old Satan,” I said.

“Sssshhh,” Mama said.

Mama kept her ear to the door listening. She must have stayed that way for at least five minutes.

Finally, sighing, she stood up straight and turned to us, smiling. “I reckon he’s gone,” she said softly.

And that’s when one of the planks on the door split wide open.

Mama screamed, whirled back away from the door.

Startled, I swung the barrel of the .22 up and hit the overhanging lamp, sent it swinging. The room seemed to weave between light and shadow.

The planking on the door cracked wider, and this time something poked through. A long, leathery, black snout that showed only an instant before Mama fired the Winchester at it.

There was a loud grunt that sounded more mad than in pain, and the snout disappeared.

Mama backed toward the table, tried to lean her hip against it. She dropped the rifle and crumpled to the floor. When we got over to her, she was holding herself up on one elbow.

“The baby,” she said, “the baby.”

She rolled over on her back and put her hand to her stomach.

“It’ll be all right, Mama,” I said. “All right. We’ll get you to Doc Travis right now.”

“Old Satan,” she said.

“Gone. You hit him good,” I said.

But the truth was, I wasn’t so sure.

Thirteen

I knew I had to get Mama to town and to Doc Travis, and to do that I had to hitch the wagon up. That meant going outside to the barn. Not something I was anxious to do. But there was no choice.

The cabin still smelled of Old Satan’s stink, and even though he’d only pushed his snout into the room, his odor clung to the place like molasses to a deep-grain board.

“Ike,” I said, “get a rag and dampen it. Put it on Mama’s forehead.”

Mama was starting to bead up with sweat, and it didn’t take a doctor to see she was in fierce pain.

I picked up the Winchester and went to the door to look out through the hole Old Satan had made.

My fear was that soon as I put my eye to that hole his snout would dart through with those big sharp tusks gleaming in the lamplight, or maybe worse, he’d put one big red eye up there to match mine.

But now that the lantern had quit swinging, I felt a bit braver. Nothing like a good, strong light to harden the nerves, Papa always said.

“Anything?” Ike said.

I looked back. He was bending over Mama, touching the damp rag to her forehead. Mama had closed her eyes and was breathing heavy.

“Nothing,” I said. “But that don’t mean he’s gone.”

“She’s hot,” Ike said. “Real hot, like she’s on fire.”

“We got to get her to the doctor. Listen here, I’m going out to the barn—”

“You can’t!”

“I gotta. Now shut up and listen, Ike. I’m going out to the barn. I’m going to take the Winchester in case I meet up with him. I’m going to go out through the window over the dish counter. That way I won’t have to open the door and give Old Satan a chance to get in. I think that window is too high for him to get his fat self through. But when I go out, you close it and throw the bolt.”

“How you going to get back in?”

“If I get the wagon, I ain’t going to need back in. I’ll pull it up to the door, and we’ll load Mama in the back. When you get her comfortable there, you get some pillows and blankets and have them ready so we can make a bed for her.”

“I can run faster than you can. I ought to go.”

“Yeah, but you can’t hitch up a wagon faster than I can, can you?”

Ike finally shook his head. “Guess not.”

“All right now, do what I told you about the window and the blankets.”

Ike nodded.

I took in a deep breath, swallowed, climbed up on the dish counter, unbolted the window, and flung back the shutters. All I could see was the night and the woods, and high up, the stars and a little piece of moon.

Outside it was quiet, except for some frogs croaking and some crickets kicking up a hoedown tune. Way off I could hear some kind of night cry, a bird probably.

The wind had slowed down, but it was still strong enough to lift my hair and rustle the corn and cane in the bottom land.

“Looks okay,” I said.

“He could be just around the corner of the house,” Ike said. “And them hogs can run fast.”

“Don’t remind me, all right? Now you do as I ask.”

I took in another gulp of air and swung myself out the window. I landed softly, the Winchester stock pushed up against my shoulder. I looked left and right, bringing the barrel of the rifle around, ready to fire should Old Satan come roaring around the corner.

He didn’t, however, but a frog hopped on my shoe and startled me. For an instant I wanted to jump back through the window.

But it was too late for that. Ike had closed the shutters, and the sound of that bolt sliding into place gave me an idea of how the Thanksgiving-turkey-to-be must feel when he hears Papa practicing with the axe and chopping block. Both sounds were pretty final.

I looked out at the barn. When I had chores to do, it always seemed too close. Now it seemed too far away.

Creeping to the edge of the house, holding the rifle at ready, I took a gander around the corner. Nothing. The coast was clear.

One more deep breath and I bolted.

Old Satan didn’t come out of the dark after me. Nor did I smell his stink on the air.

I lifted the bar on the barn doors, went inside, and closed them. I still had some matches on me, and I used one to light the lantern.

It took me longer to hitch up Clancy and Felix than I expected. My hands were shaking, and they were both cantankerous about late night work.

Finally the job was done and I went over to open the doors. I did that by holding the rifle at ready and kicking them open.

For a moment, I stood there looking at and listening to the night.

When I turned my back to go to the wagon, a cold strip of fear a foot wide ran up my spine. I climbed up on the seat, laid the rifle across my knees, took hold of the lines, and called out to the mules.

The sound of them grunting and the harness rattling seemed as loud as the old dinner bell Mama used to use. I felt sure the noise would bring Old Satan. But it didn’t.

By the time I reached the yard and pulled up close to the front door, my face was slicked over with sweat, and it felt cold, like someone had dowsed me with ice water.

The two dogs, both dead and looking every bit as torn up as Roger, lay by the door. I felt like I needed to be sick, but I didn’t have time for that.

So Ike and Mama wouldn’t have to look at the dogs, I pulled them around to the side of the house. Then I went back to the door and called out to Ike.

After a moment, I saw movement through the hole Old Satan had made, and the door opened. I went inside without closing the door and bent over Mama. She looked bad, real bad.

“Mama,” I said.

“She don’t answer no more,” Ike said. “Just lays there.”

I got down on one knee and took hold of her hand. “It’s going to be all right, Mama,” I said. Her fingers trembled against the back of my hand, soft and weak as the fluttering wings of a dying butterfly.

I placed Mama’s hand on her stomach and looked at Ike. “Let’s get a move on,” I said.

Ike made Mama a pallet in the wagon bed, and I watched over him with the rifle. When he was finished, we managed a blanket under her and used that to carry her out to the wagon.

To do that, I had to put the rifle aside, and I was sure that was when Old Satan would show up. Just come melting out of the night like he had earlier when I had decided he wasn’t behind me at all, and that it was only my imagination.

But our luck held. We got her loaded in the back and Ike climbed in beside her. I crawled up on the seat, put the rifle across my lap, and took hold of the lines.

“Giddup,” I said, and we began the long, slow trip to Mud Creek.

On the way, and more than once, I heard something big crashing in the brush beside the road. But I never saw anything, and after a time the noises stopped.

Finally the clay road turned firmer where it had been packed down for automobiles. By the time we reached the Mud Creek bridge, Mama had worsened. She had gotten a chill. Ike covered her with a couple of blankets and held her hand.

“She’s got the shakes something awful, Richard,” Ike said.

“We’ll make it,” I said. But Mama wasn’t the only one in trouble. Felix’s sides were heaving and he was starting to stagger. It looked as if he might keel over and die at any moment. I had no choice but to slow down to a trot.

The last half mile seemed like the longest part of the trip. By the time I pulled up in front of Doc Travis’s place, Felix was stumbling and Mama’s teeth were chattering together like the shaking of a rattlesnake’s tail.

Jumping down from the wagon, I raced upstairs to the room over Doc Travis’s office. I was yelling before my fist started knocking.

Doc Travis came pronto. He was pulling on his robe when he stepped out of the doorway and onto the porch.

“It’s Mama,” I said. “She’s bad off. Old Satan’s given us a scare tonight.”

“Let me by, son,” Doc Travis said, and tying the belt of his robe, he went down the steps and I followed after.

Part Two

One

I slept that night in a chair and Ike slept on the floor on the blankets from the wagon. It wasn’t a good sleep I had, and it wasn’t just due to the chair. I was worried sick about Mama, about the baby. I also determined something. I was going to kill Old Satan.

It wasn’t like I didn’t owe it to him. He’d killed my dogs, chased me through the woods, and caused Mama to fall ill, not to mention he’d wrecked some of our corn. If ever a critter had earned him a killing, it was Old Satan. Demon or not, I was going to get him. I had been certain of it when he killed Roger, but if the idea had lagged any, or might have lagged any in the future, what he had made happen to Mama had signed his death warrant.

Doc Travis came out of the back room, and since I was only half-dozing, it woke me up. It was near dawn and a few rays of sunlight were creeping into the room, falling over Doc Travis. It was the first time I’d ever really noticed just how old Doc Travis looked.

I got up from the chair and went over to him.

“I thought you was sleeping.” he said softly.

“Can’t, not soundly anyway. How’s Mama?”

“Resting good now.”

“She going to be all right?”

“I think so.”

“The baby?”

“I don’t know, Richard, just to be honest with you. I think we need to get Leonard back here. I’m going to send out some feelers today, find someone who can hunt him down for me. Till he gets back, I want you boys and your mama to stay here with me.”

“Thanks, Doc Travis, only I can’t stay. Mama and Ike ought to, but I got to go back to the house. I got some things to do.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Like what?”

“Bury the dogs.”

“What else?”

“Whatever needs to be done.”

“You ain’t thinking about hunting down Old Satan now, are you boy?”

When I didn’t answer, he went on. “That ain’t no pen pig, boy.”

“I know that, sir”

“Yeah, reckon you do. But I’m figuring you’re thinking about trying to hunt that old hog down.”

“If it happened to your family, wouldn’t you?”

“Reckon so. But why don’t you wait until your Papa gets back?”

“Might be a few days. That hog could hurt someone before then.”

“You, maybe.”

“You going to make me stay here?”

Doc Travis shrugged. “I don’t rightly see how. You’re darn near a man now, son. And I figure if I tried to make you stay you’d just slip off and do what you’re going to do anyway. But I’m asking you not to. If something happened to you… well, you think your mama is bad off now… I don’t know if she could take that blow.”

“Ain’t nothing going to happen to me.”

“You got that arranged with Old Satan, son?”

“Doc, I got to do what I got to do. Papa told me to watch over the place. I’m the man of the house now. That hog’s hurt too many already.”

“You’re bound and determined?”

I licked my lips. “No way around it, sir.”

Doc Travis nodded. “You’re more like your Papa every day. Never could tell that hardhead a darn thing either once he made up his mind. But I’ll say this now. I’m against it, and I’m advising against it. You go out to the house if you must, bury the dogs, and forget this boar. Wait until your papa gets home. Promise me you’ll think about it. Promise.”

“All right, I’ll think about it.”

“I mean really think about it.”

“I will. I’m going to go on now. I’ll leave the wagon, but I’ll ride Clancy back. When I get finished doing what I got to do I’ll bring him back. Or maybe Ike and Mama can rent a mule or something.”

“You just take the wagon. I’ll worry about them getting home.”

“It’s Felix I’m thinking about. I don’t think one night’s rest is enough for that old mule.”

Doc Travis nodded. “Have it your way.”

“Take care of Ike and Mama for me.”

“You know I will. And son, leave that Old Satan alone. You think over what I’m saying. That hog is crazy and a born killer. It tore up the best hunter in these parts and left him a cripple. Men have tried to kill it for years without luck. Not putting you down, son, but don’t get to thinking that a youngster like yourself can kill a demon like that.”

“I’ll think on it hard,” I said.

I got the Winchester, got Clancy out of the back lot, and borrowed one of Doc Travis’s old bridles from the tack room. Doc Travis hadn’t had a horse in years, and the bridle was stiff and hard to use. But I found some oil and used that to limber it up some. I fitted it on Clancy, patted Felix good-bye, and went out of the lot leading the mule.

When we reached the street, I turned to look up at Doc Travis’s place. He was standing at the top of the stairs.

“I don’t like what you’re doing, son. I ought to make you stay.”

“No disrespect sir, but it’s like you say. You couldn’t.”

I pulled myself and the Winchester onto Clancy’s back and clucked to him. We started toward home.

“Shoot straight, darn you,” Doc Travis called after me. “You hear, shoot straight?”

I waved a hand over my shoulder without looking back. The sun was coming up and it made the red clay street look like it was on fire. I put my heels to Clancy’s flanks and we began to trot.

Two

I was starved when I got to the house. I’d missed supper last night and I hadn’t had any breakfast. I was so hungry I could see cornbread walking on the ground.

First thing I did, however, was feed Clancy and turn him loose in the lot. Then, before getting a bite to eat, I got a shovel and an old tarp and went out to bury the dogs. I put them on the tarp and pulled them out to a spot near the bottoms. I dug a hole, wrapped them in the tarp and buried them. Since they’d always been close in life, I figured they wouldn’t mind each other’s company in death.

When I’d patted down the grave with the back of the shovel, I felt like crying, but nothing would happen. It was like I was all dried up inside. I said some words over the grave, just in case God had a place for dogs to go to, and went back to the house.

In the bread box I found a tin of cornbread. I cut a piece open, poured some ribbon cane inside it, and ate. Finally I finished off the whole pan that way. I was sitting at the table, feeling some better with my belly full, trying to come up with some sort of plan about Old Satan, when there was a knock on the door and I heard Abraham calling, “Hallo, the house.”

I went to the door and opened it.

“My lands,” Abraham said, “you look like someone whupped you with a mad rattlesnake.”

I was a mess. I was worn slap out and my clothes were darn near torn to pieces from all the limbs and brush that had snagged them when I was following after Roger and Old Satan. Doc Travis had taken a few minutes to clean some of my cuts up last night after he’d gotten Mama settled, but I still looked pretty ragged.

“We had a visit from Old Satan,” I said. “Come on in.” We went over to the table and sat down.

“So did we,” Abraham said. “He killed Jesse.”

“What?”

“Yeah. He come along not more than a couple hours after you left for home. Papa heard him grunting around and he went out to take a look, had his shotgun with him. That’s when we heard the squealing out at the hog lot, out at that special pen Grandpa built for Jesse. Then we heard Papa’s shotgun go off”

“Did he kill him?” I asked quickly. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he had or he hadn’t. It was awful strong in my head to do the deed myself.

“That’s the crazy part, Ricky. We was all scared to death about what was going on out there, but pretty soon Papa came back. His face was gray, and I tell you, he looked scared. I ain’t never known Papa to be scared of nothing.”

Nor had I. Abraham’s papa was six-four and weighed well over two hundred pounds, all of it muscle. I’d once seen him grab a bull by the horns and throw it down to keep it from going wild and busting through a fence. Let me tell you, that ain’t no easy task.

Abraham took a deep breath and went on. “Papa told us Old Satan had torn Jesse’s pen apart… and Jesse too. Said there wasn’t a thing he could do for Jesse cause it happened so fast. But Old Satan did run out in the open and Papa got a shot off, hit him broadside. Had to have hit him, he said, on account of they were so close and him using a shotgun and all. But the only thing it did to Old Satan was make him mad. He came after Papa, and Papa tossed the shotgun down and climbed on top the outhouse. That crazy hog rammed the door off it, like he was a bull or something, just butted it off. Shook the outhouse so bad Papa nearly fell off. Then, just as fast as he’d come, Old Satan went away. Papa said he was running crazy, zigzagging, hopping along like he was full of the devil or his guts were on fire.”

“He’s sure he hit him with that shotgun?”

“Didn’t know how he could have missed standing at that range.”

I thought about Mama and me taking a shot at Old Satan when we were standing at the door. I wondered if either of us had hit him. And if we had, I wondered why it hadn’t hurt him. Was he really a devil or demon? That didn’t make much sense, but then a hog like this one didn’t make much sense either.

“Where’s your mama and Ike?” Abraham asked.

I told him everything that had happened last night, and that I aimed to kill Old Satan myself. Today if I could.

“That’s what I come over here for, Ricky. I couldn’t tell Mama or Papa, they’d be against it. But I got to do this for Grandpa. It ain’t going to bring Jesse back, but I can make sure Old Satan don’t kill nothing else. Grandpa, he won’t even eat. Won’t get out of bed. He used to use his crutches to go out and hitch Jesse up, and have that hog pull him around places where them crutches wouldn’t carry him. That hog was his legs. Now he don’t even act like he wants to live.”

“I reckon we ought to form a pact,” I said.

“A what?”

“An agreement. I read about it in a story once, about these two fellows who were going to go off and make their fortunes and be kings. They signed a pact to do that, and to help each other.”

“We’re going hog hunting, Ricky, not fortune hunting.”

“Well, maybe we don’t need to sign nothing, but we’re going to shake on it.”

We clasped hands. “This is to the idea of killing Old Satan on account of the harm he’s done us,” I said. “We’re going to go after him and we ain’t going to come back until it’s done, and ain’t nothing going to stop us.”

“Deal,” Abraham said. But when we quit shaking, his face fell. “We got us one problem, Ricky. Neither of us know the first thing about hunting no wild hog.”

He had a point there.

And that’s how Uncle Pharaoh came into the picture.

If there was any person that ought to have been able to tell us how to hunt a wild boar, and Old Satan in particular, it was Uncle Pharaoh.

But would he?

We were afraid he wouldn’t. And worse yet, we were afraid if he didn’t help us, he’d spoil our hunt by telling Abraham’s mama and papa. It was, to say the least, a tricky situation.

Though we didn’t want to go against the best wishes of the adults, because of the whipping we might get over it, we were bound and determined to do what we intended. Old Satan was going to get hunted if we had to walk over every inch of bottom land and climb every tree in East Texas looking for him.

Still, it would be a whole lot easier if we had some notion of how a wild hog acted on the hunt and in the woods. Abraham and I weren’t green hunters, but Old Satan and a squirrel or possum were quite some different.

We didn’t go straight to see Uncle Pharaoh. We rode Clancy out to where I’d left Roger in the fork of the tree and buried him. Then we went to the tree house and left the shovel and Winchester there. That way, if the adults decided against our plans, they couldn’t take the rifle away from us. I didn’t tell Abraham, but no matter what happened with him and his folks, I was going after that hog. With Papa gone, Mama not able to stop me, and Doc Travis at least two or three days away from finding Papa, I had my chance to get Old Satan. I’d probably get a switching to end all switchings later, but that didn’t matter.

In the tree house I saw that Abraham had been busy since early morning on his shield. It was near finished and ready to hang on the wall. Though I figured since what happened last night, along with him getting up early to work on it before coming to see me, he had other plans for it first.

When we got to the Wilson house, it was as quiet as a funeral on Sunday morning. Most of the time the place sounded like it was being attacked by wild Indians on account of all the kids and Mrs. Wilson clanging pots and pans and bustling about, or yelling the little ones out of trouble. Not today. Jesse had been like one of the family and no one was feeling particularly lively.

Mr. Wilson had already gone off to do field work, but Mrs. Wilson was at the stove cooking lunch, working in a quiet way, not banging pan a’one.

When we came in she smiled and asked if I was staying to dinner. Since that cornbread and syrup had already burned itself out, I told her I reckoned I would.

I didn’t tell her about the boar and what he’d done, or about Mama being at Doc Travis’s.

“You heard about Jesse?” she said.

“Yes ma’am. I’m real sorry.”

I thought for a minute she was going to cry, but she turned back to her cooking. “We gonna be eating real soon,” she said.

“Grandpa still in bed?” Abraham asked.

“No, he’s out at that grave your papa dug for Jesse.”

We went out back, behind the barn, and there was Uncle Pharaoh leaning on his crutches looking at the fresh-dug ground.

“Grandpa,” Abraham said.

He lifted his head and looked at us. I never thought that Uncle Pharaoh could look any older, but I had been wrong. He looked on the dark side of two hundred that day, like a ragged scarecrow propped up on two sticks.

“Silly to be upset over an old pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said. “Bucky getting out here digging a grave a’fore daylight for an old pig, and him having to go to work too. Ain’t no sense in it, now is there?”

Neither of us knew what to say.

“No sense in it,” Uncle Pharaoh repeated.

“You can train another one,” I finally said.

The look Uncle Pharaoh gave me gave light to those old filmed-over eyes. “Ain’t no hog like Pig Jesse, you hear?”

“Yes sir.”

“He was special. Smarter than people. Better than most, especially some white folks I know.”

“He didn’t mean nothing by it,” Abraham said. “He’s just trying to cheer you up some.”

“Well, you ain’t so good at it, little white boy.”

“No sir, I guess I ain’t.”

“Old Satan come to his house last night too,” Abraham said. Uncle Pharaoh turned to look at me. “Tore his dogs up, and caused his mama to have to be hauled in to the doctor. She got such a strain she might lose the baby.”

“You the little white boy that’s Abraham’s friend?” Uncle Pharaoh said suddenly.

“Yes sir, I’m still the white boy that’s his friend.”

“I know’d that,” Uncle Pharaoh said, as if he hadn’t asked the question.

“What we want,” Abraham said, “is… is to know how to kill that hog.”

Uncle Pharaoh moved his crutches around so he was facing us head on. “How’s that?”

“We going to kill Old Satan, Grandpa. Me and Ricky, with or without your help, and ain’t nobody going to stop us. But we know you know more about hunting than a coon dog, so we want to know how to hunt Old Satan.”

“Ya’ll go fishing,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“No sir,” Abraham said, “and I don’t mean to sound like I’m sassing. But we’re going after that Old Satan on account of what he’s done.”

“Didn’t do nothing but kill an old pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said quickly.

“Ain’t no stopping us. If you tell us how or you don’t, we’re going to get him.”

Uncle Pharaoh stared at me until I thought my eyes would melt. “That the way it is with you, little white boy?”

“Yes sir, it is. I reckon I’m going to go after Old Satan if Abraham does or not.”

“I’m going all right,” Abraham said quickly. “I don’t care if Mama and Papa give me a whupping with a willow limb.”

“Old Satan, he ain’t like no regular wild pig,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“We know that, Uncle Pharaoh,” I said. “That’s why we’re talking to you.”

“Gonna need some dogs to do this right,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“We got a pen full of them,” Abraham said.

“Those ain’t no experienced hog-hunting dogs.”

“They’re all we got,” Abraham said. “And besides, there ain’t no experienced hog dogs in these parts.”

Uncle Pharaoh leaned on his crutches and looked at us for a long time, only I could tell he wasn’t really seeing us. He was considering.

“This ain’t like running no squirrel,” Uncle Pharaoh said.

“No sir,” I said, “we know that. We ain’t got no thoughts that it’ll be easy and we ain’t going to be silly about it. What we need is expert advice on how to kill Old Satan. Then we’re going to go out there and do it.”

Uncle Pharaoh cracked a toothless smile. “I wish I had you boys’ legs, but I’m sure glad I ain’t as dumb. Old Satan, he’s the meanest critter I ever seen, and I’ve killed bears in Tennessee and once helped a fellow hunt down a hog-eating gator in Louisiana. This here’s a bad critter.”

“You saying you ain’t gonna help us?” I asked.

“I’m saying you be talking mighty big now, but when that Old Satan come out of the woods on you, him running fast as an old buck deer and mad as a bull, it’s a lot different than shooting some old lamp-blinded coon out of a tree.” He paused. “You boys bound and determined?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

He nodded his old head, and it looked to me that it might just fall off his neck. “Let’s go out to the smokehouse so we can talk. You boys gonna have to be learned something about wild hog hunting.”

Three

Uncle Pharaoh lit a lamp, closed the door of the smokehouse, and settled himself down on a bag of sweet taters. Abraham and I squatted on the ground. Big, netted, sweet-smelling hams hung over our heads and their aroma was so thick it almost made me dizzy. It sure made me hungry.

“Thing you got to remember,” Uncle Pharaoh started, “is this. You ain’t dealing with no farm hog. This ain’t even no everyday wild hog. This here is a devil hog. Smartest critter I ever seen. Hogs is smarter than dogs, and this hog is smarter than other hogs. This hog is also crazy. He’s got the devil in him, like some folks gets. The way Old Man Turner got it that time.”

Old Man Turner was one of the big river bottom stories. He’d always been a good fellow, a family man. One day he got up to go kill chickens, came back in the house with the axe and killed everyone in his family, then went down to the river and drowned himself. No one ever knew what set him off like that.

“This hog,” Uncle Pharaoh went on, “is like that only he ain’t gonna drown hisself. He just gonna keep on hurting and killing till someone or something kills him.”

“That something is going to be us,” Abraham said.

“You just listen, boy, I ain’t through talking. Now here’s how that Old Satan will do. He lives upriver, back there where the woods is the thickest and so’s the food. He eat anything. Other animals, bark off trees, you if he can.

“You boys take all the hounds we got and you hit up his trail. It gonna be kind of cold from last night, but not so much they ain’t gonna follow. Them dogs, they gonna act crazy cause they ain’t never chased no wild hog before. That trail they’re following gonna seem nutty, but it ain’t. All over the place, that’s the way that hog gonna run cause he ain’t right in the head. But he’s gonna go back into the deeps of them woods, back in there so deep you gonna need a cane knife to chop your way through.

“Now them dogs, they gonna get to that hog first and they gonna close in on him, and he’s gonna let them. But they ain’t gonna turn him back toward your guns. Old Satan, he’s too smart for that. He’s gonna keep leading them dogs deeper into the bottoms, and then, when them dogs ain’t expecting it, he’s gonna turn and raise a ruckus. They ain’t gonna be able to move him another inch in any direction if he don’t want to go. He’s gonna pull up tight somewhere, and then he’s gonna whup them dogs like a stepchild. That’s all gonna happen so fast those dogs ain’t gonna have time to raise much sand. It’ll be over before you can say Cooter Brown.

“You hear what I’m telling you boys? He’s gonna kill every one of them dogs if you don’t get there. When you hear them throw up their ruckus, you better haul your little butts and get in there on him, and even then, you may be too late. They gonna be dogs flying every kinda way. So you gonna have to stay right on them dogs’ tails, and they gonna run you down. The closer they get, harder they gonna be to call up. Ain’t even the horn will bring them in. They ain’t having but one thing on their minds then, and that’s get that old boar. Only when they found him they gonna wish they’d wandered off squirrel hunting.”

“We’ll stay on them, Grandpa,” Abraham said.

“Well, if you gonna get the old hog, you got to, but on the other hand, when you catch up with him, things gonna be worse for you than the dogs. You see, them old boars they got powers. They can smell better a coon dog and they can see the wind and all its colors. They make an Indian tracker look like a joker. He’s gonna know you’re coming long before you get there and he’s gonna plan on it. Lay a trap just like a man. That’s why you got to get there while he’s busy with them dogs.

“Now, if you do get there, he’s gonna see you, and he’s gonna toss them dogs off like a duck tosses water. Ain’t gonna mean nothing to him. He’s gonna pick you out, and he’s coming straight for you. You not gonna believe how fast he is.”

“I would, Uncle Pharaoh. I seen him in action,” and I told him all about being chased and such.

“That wasn’t nothing, little white boy. He be playing with you then. But you come up on him after them dogs done took him on, he’s gonna be madder than a slapped Cajun and there’s gonna be the blood-lust in his eye. Ain’t nothing this old hog enjoy better than tearing folks apart, and he can do it like’n you was an old rotted Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Them tusks is like the sharpest knives ever been made.

“So now you’ll come up on him and them dogs’ll be tossed all around like cornshucks, and he’ll come for you boys, you hear?”

We nodded.

“He’ll tear a path through anything they is in his way, and if you don’t get him in that instant you got, he gonna toss you around till they ain’t nothing left but the bloody rags on your back.”

He was trying to scare us out of it, I could tell, but I could also tell he wasn’t lying. And truth was, the idea of hunting Old Satan was sounding less appealing by the moment. But when I thought of the dogs and of Mama, my determination came back.

“What you boys do is spread out. That way he ain’t gonna be able to get to both of you so easy. You come at him from different sides, but don’t get yourself in no position where you shoot one another’s brains out. You hearing?”

We nodded.

“He’ll pick one of you and he’ll come. Won’t be nothing but a black blur, and if you take him on at night, God help you but you better have plenty of lantern light and a good night eye. That’s his time, the night. He can come out of the dark before you know there’s anything there.

“Old boar will duck his head when he gets after you, and that head gonna be the first thing you want to shoot cause it’s the easiest to hit with him running like that. But don’t you do it. That hog’s hide tougher than this here wall.” And with that Uncle Pharaoh doubled up his gnarled fist and swung it back against the smokehouse wall with a solid thunk. When he put his hand back in his lap it was bleeding, but he didn’t take notice and we didn’t say a word. “No, that old wall ain’t tough enough. You could shoot a bullet through that. You can’t hardly shoot one through old boar’s head. His hide all over is so tough a .22 would just bounce off and a bigger rifle might do the same. And this hog, he’s old and tougher even than others.”

“That why Papa’s shotgun didn’t stop him?” Abraham said.

“That shot was birdshot, baby man,” Uncle Pharaoh answered, “and with that hide of Old Satan’s, it was like tossing a handful of gravel at him.”

“If you can’t aim for the head,” I said, “what do you aim for, the chest?”

“His chest gonna be covered by that long old snout of his, and his shoulders sticking out ain’t nothing but bone hard as a middle-buster. You got one good way to go. Aim at that snout about halfway and shoot. That puts the shot about even with old boar’s heart, and it’ll go through that soft snout and hit him in the heart, if you’re a good shot and lucky. Other one of you might get a chance to shoot too, and if the hog is sideways to you, aim for the eye.”

“What then, Grandpa?”

“Then? Then it’s all over, baby man. One of you is through. They ain’t gonna be a time for a second shot unless the other one of you gets a round off. And if it ain’t that heart shot, chances are even if it’s a good’n, one that hurts him or is gonna cause him to die later, it ain’t gonna kill him before he starts tearing ya’ll up. So the best you can do is toss that gun down and make like an ole possum up the nearest tree. And if they ain’t no tree, you just throw yourself down on the ground and pull your legs together and put your hands over your head and try to act like a grub worm by burying up in that earth. If you lucky, you might live. That’s what I did, though I didn’t come home with my legs working.”

“Did you hit him good when you shot?” I asked.

Uncle Pharaoh smiled that toothless smile. “Now what you think, little white boy? If I hit him good I wouldn’t have to have these here crutches.” The smile went away and he leaned forward. The lamplight jumped around on his shiny black face. “Tell you true, boys, when I got that shot off—and I’m a good shot, or was when my eyes wasn’t milked over—I thought I got him sure enough on the button, but he must’ve tossed hisself some and I had to gone and hit him on the shoulder. But by the time I saw he wasn’t going to drop, he was darn near in my pants pocket. So you boys see what I’m telling you? You shoot and you scramble. Don’t stand there seeing if you got him, cause if you done put one through his heart, he can keep coming and tear you up in pieces before he falls, and your mamas don’t want no little boys in pieces. Shoot and scramble, hear me?”

“Yes sir,” we said together.

“Still want to hunt that Old Satan?” he asked.

It was a little slower in coming, but it was almost together when we said,“Yes sir.”

Uncle Pharaoh shook his head. “You that bound and determined, then you gonna do it, or I’m gonna lock you in this here smokehouse till you get over the notion.”

I wasn’t sure he was joking then. I said, “You can lock me in here till I have to eat every ham on the place, and when you open that door I’m still going after Old Satan.”

Uncle Pharaoh stared at me for a full minute before his mouth broke into a grin that looked like a slit in old leather. “I declare, you boys more stubborn than I was at your age. Almost.”

About then the dinner bell rang and I heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice calling, “Ya’ll come eat.”

Four

I full expected Uncle Pharaoh to tell Mrs. Wilson what we had in mind and try and put a damper on things, but he didn’t say a word. He just sat at the table and ate and passed the black-eyed peas and cornbread and never even looked up.

When we were finished eating, he said, “You boys come on outside, I got some things to talk to you about.”

First thing we did was go back out to the smokehouse, but this time Uncle Pharaoh said, “Wait right here.” When he came back out on his crutches he had a long burlap-wrapped thing under his arm. It was a Winchester, a better one than the one I had and it was so well taken care of it looked brand new except for a long gash near the end of the stock. He pointed that out and said, “That there was put in it by Old Satan day he crippled me up. His tusks almost went clean through it. But that don’t hurt the way this shoots none. He handed it to Abraham. “And what about you?” he said, tossing the empty burlap bag down.

“I got an old Winchester,” I said. “It’s hid out.”

“All right. Now lets get you boys some possibles thrown together, then you better take the dogs and get on out before it gets too late.”

“Or Papa gets home,” Abraham said.

“Or that.”

“What you going to tell Papa?” Abraham asked.

“Why the truth of course—I don’t know where you are or why the dogs is gone.”

We both smiled at him.

“Little boys, you get that Old Satan. For yourselfs, for me, and for Jesse. But you bring yourselfs back in one piece. And if you get scared, get to figuring you ain’t ready to meet up with Old Satan, you come on back here and not a person gonna say a word about that. Ain’t no one gonna know besides me. You can just tell the folks you went off coon hunting.”

“You don’t need to worry about us,” I said.

“Yes I do,” Uncle Pharaoh said, “but I know when a person has gotten bound and willing on something, and you boys ain’t gonna be men with me making decisions. Ya’ll nearly growed. When I was your age I done was.”

Uncle Pharaoh helped us put together what he called possibles, or a bag of food and camping supplies. We wrapped the stuff up in a couple of blankets and strapped them on our backs. Then we went out to the dog pens. When Uncle Pharaoh was sure no one was looking, he set them loose. They hit up Old Satan’s smell right off, headed off toward the river and the woods.

“You boys done remember all I told you. The dogs gonna run foolish for a while till Old Satan takes up a straight trail, then as they get closer they’re gonna start to bark, and when they find him, you gonna know it. You got the hunting horn?”

Abraham had it over his shoulder on a strap. He took hold and lifted it up. “Right here.”

“Get on then, and mind yourself. Don’t let the dogs get too big a lead on you. Smell of that hog gonna be the strongest thing in the woods and they’re gonna stay on it, moving up river until they find him. When they do, hell gonna break loose and you boys best be there and shoot true if you want to bring any of them dogs back alive.”

We started trotting after the dogs. When I glanced back at Uncle Pharaoh, he looked like a scarecrow held up by two sticks again. He looked old, very, very old.

When we got near the tree house, Abraham called up the dogs with the horn. All five of them came except Bounder. He was the oldest and the lead dog, and from what Abraham said, didn’t feel he had to mind the horn anymore.

I climbed up and brought down the Winchester and what Abraham had asked for. His spear and near-finished shield. We took a water break, rested our legs a minute, and yelled the dogs back to the hunt. It didn’t take much persuading. I’d never seen a bunch of dogs so excited. They ran way out ahead of us barking, moving up river the way Uncle Pharaoh said they would.

I glanced over at Abraham. He had the spear behind his shield and was holding them both with his left hand. In his right he carried the Winchester. The hunting horn was bouncing against his hip and the blanket tied to his back was flapping.

A rush of excitement pumped through me. By golly, we weren’t just reading about Doc Savage and his adventures, we were having an adventure of our own. We were hunting the most dangerous animal that had ever run loose in the Sabine River Bottoms. Old Satan.

Five

Every now and then we could hear Bounder call out. He was ahead of all the others, but he had a good mouth on him and he could be heard above the others when he ran, even when he was farther away.

About an hour later we were so shagged down we had to stop and lean against a tree and rest. Abraham was even too winded to blow on the horn and call the dogs off, and by the time he did get to it, only two of the dogs came up. They looked almost as bad winded as we were, and we could see that they had been in the river because they were wet and covered to the chest in mud.

“Old Satan’s crossed the river and the dogs have followed,” Abraham said.

“Looks that way,” I said. “Come on,” and we were off again, the two dogs moving out ahead and losing us in minutes.

We came to a place in the Sabine where the water was knee deep, and that’s where we caught up with the dogs. They ran along the edge for a moment, sniffing the ground before they jumped in and swam across. On the other side they darted along the bank until they picked up the trail again, then disappeared into the woods barking.

Abraham and I took off our shoes, rolled up our pants legs and waded across. On the other side, while I was putting on my shoes, I saw Old Satan’s tracks. I reckoned them to be a day old, but they were still firmly formed there in the soft ground along the bank. I pointed them out to Abraham.

“Big,” Abraham said. “Real big.”

We started after the sound of the dogs barking. For a while they had seemed to move left to right in a wide pattern, but now they were pretty near straight ahead and had been for some time. Old Satan had given up his zigzagging and was laying a straight trail.

Finally we came up on one of the dogs, the youngest of the bunch. He was lying on his side all tuckered out. His side rose and fell quickly.

“Just bushed good,” Abraham said.

“Me too.” I sat down on the ground by the dog and laid the Winchester across my lap.

“Notice something different?” Abraham asked.

“What?”

“Listen.”

I understood then. The dogs had been barking in the distance, but now their bark had changed. “They’ve found Old Satan?”

“Maybe,” Abraham said.

We got to our feet and stumbled after. The sound of the barking did not move away from us. We were closing in on the dogs.

When we finally caught up with them they were running in circles, across the trail into the woods and back across the trail. As we watched, the dog we had left behind finally caught up with us. He just sat down between us and thumped his tail every now and then.

“They gone crazy?” I said.

“No, that Old Satan has made a booger trail. He’s crossed and crossed over his path here. Maybe day old stuff with a new trail. They’ll figure it eventually.”

After a few minutes Bounder barked out in the woods and the other dogs followed. “There,” Abraham said. “They’ve picked up the clear trail.”

“Old Satan knows we’re following him?”

“I reckon we’re about on to him,” Abraham said. “Grandpa said he was smart as, or smarter than, a man. He’s laying him a trail like a convict being chased by hounds, but I reckon we’re closing. He can’t outsmart Old Bounder.”

And we were off and running through the blamed woods again.

Old Satan hadn’t been as close as Abraham had thought, and we finally had to stop about sundown. Abraham called up the dogs with his horn, and they all came, except Bounder. We couldn’t hear him barking anymore either. He was long gone. We got some of the cracklings Uncle Pharaoh had given us out of our possibles and fed the dogs, then we had some strips of smoked ham. It tasted better than any ham I’d ever eaten.

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 top 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.

His stink hit me before he did. I could hear him skidding up, I felt his weight slam into the top of my head… and nothing happened.

Slowly I took my hands down and raised my head. I was nose to nose with the varmint. His tusks were sticking up on either side of my face. My shot had killed him and he had fallen and belly slid right up to me.

I looked into his eyes. They were open. They were still the same color, but different now. The devil had gone out of them, and all that was left was a big dead hog.

Nine

Strange. That’s how I felt. Strange.

Abraham tossed his shield off and came over. He let out a whoop and hopped around the clearing. “You got him, Ricky, you got him.”

I felt bad enough without Abraham hopping around. It was making me sick to watch him. I managed to sit up, my hands between my legs, half slumped over.

“We got him,” I said. “You and me, Abraham. Just like we said we would.”

“Every hunter in East Texas been after this old hog,” Abraham said. “And we got him, Ricky. Me and you.”

I looked at Old Satan. Up close I could see that he was covered in scars and there were fresh wounds made by me and Abraham.

“Just looks like an old, dead hog now,” I said. “Not like no Indian medicine man, demon, or devil. Just a dead hog.”

“Well,” Abraham said, “before he got dead, he sure made a lot of other things dead, and I figure he planned on a long career. So don’t you go and start feeling sorry for him.”

Abraham bent down over him. “He’s an old one all right. Bet he’s old as they say. And all scarred up.”

“I don’t feel so good,” I said.

“Oooie, Ricky, you’re losing a lot of blood.”

“You noticed,” I said. My pants leg was ripped from knee to hip and my leg was covered in blood. Abraham took off his shirt, tore it up, and tied off my cut. Not hard enough to stop the flow of blood, but enough to keep it from gushing.

“He didn’t get a main pipe,” Abraham said, “but he got you some good.”

“It ain’t good in my book,” I said. I was starting to feel light headed. Things suddenly seemed funny. “You goofy thing. You and that shield and spear stuff. You ain’t no African.”

“Hadn’t been for that rickety shield, you’d be getting my dead body down from one of them tree limbs over by the river. That hog would have tossed me like wet wash.”

The silly feeling went away and was replaced by pain. “I don’t think I’m going to be walking back, Abraham. I ain’t sure I’m going to be going back at all.”

“You going to make it back. That river, that’s how we’ll go. Ain’t neither one of us going to walk. I’ll take the cane knife, hack some small trees down and use the rope to make a raft. Float us home in a lot less than half the time it took us to go through the woods.”

“I ain’t going to be much help.”

“You ain’t going to be no help. Lay down there and rest while I get to work.”

I laid down next to the boar. His stink filled my head, but I was too weak to move.

Abraham went away and a little later I heard the cane knife hacking. I thought about Old Satan. He had killed a lot of things, caused a lot of pain, and I had hated him. Now, somehow, I just felt sorry for him. He was only being what he was meant to be. A wild hog gone touchy in the head.

Whatever, he was gone and the Sabine River Bottoms had most likely seen the last of his kind for good. The dark god of the forest was dead.

Ten

There’s not much left to tell, really. Abraham made a raft and he got me on it and we floated down to the Wilson place. The dogs, including the young tired one, came home on their own.

As for the trip, well, I don’t remember much of it. I kept passing out, and what times I was awake, I recall looking up into Abraham’s sweaty, smiling face as he held me on that little raft.

Next day a team of men followed Abraham’s directions to Old Satan. They gutted him and skinned him right there. The meat wasn’t any good to eat by then, least not for people, but the dogs enjoyed it. But before all that, they brought a scale with them and they weighed him. He was four hundred and forty-eight pounds. His tusks were ten inches long and sharp as a sabre. I could have told them that much, and the place on my hip could have testified.

The dogs may have gotten the hog himself, but Abraham got the hide to rebuild his shield with, and I got the tusks. I keep them in the box with my typing paper. I use them as paper weights.

After that time, I guess I thought of myself as a man. If it was true or not. I had faced a mad killer and bested him. I had gotten a wound as a badge, a wound that sometimes aches in cold weather and left me with an ugly set of scars on my hip. And I had been saved by a friend and had returned the favor. What more could you ask?

Let’s see, what else?

Not much left to tell. As I’ve said, the crops didn’t do good that year. The heat and the bugs were awful. But Papa made enough money wrestling so that we not only got through the year, we bought a car and I started going to school more often.

Uncle Pharaoh lived another three years, got him a hog named Phil and trained him to the cart. He never missed a chance to tell a stranger, or even someone who had heard it a dozen times, about how Abraham and I killed The Devil Boar. He told the story so good, you would have sworn he was with us. I know this, I never missed hearing him tell it if I could.

Abraham came to visit me while I healed up, and I read Doc Savage and every magazine we had aloud. They all went back to the tree house when I finished, and they’re there still.

Oh yeah, Mama and Ike came home with a brand new baby sister. Her name is Melinda.

Also, as you can see, I learned to type pretty good. But that’s pushing ahead of this time I’m telling you about, and has nothing at all to do with the summer of ‘33, when, with Abraham Wilson, I hunted down and killed Old Satan, The Devil Boar.

About the Author

With more than thirty books to his credit, Joe R. Lansdale is the Champion Mojo Storyteller. He’s been called “an immense talent” by Booklist; “a born storyteller” by Robert Bloch; and The New York Times Book Review declares he has “a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”

He’s won umpty-ump awards, including sixteen Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the “Shot in the Dark” International Crime Writer’s Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book Award. He’s got the most decorated mantle in all of Nacogdoches!

Lansdale lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, writer and editor.

Find him online at www.JoeRLansdale.com.

Also by Joe R. Lansdale

“Hap Collins and Leonard Pine” mysteries

Savage Season (1990)
Mucho Mojo (1994)
Two-Bear Mambo (1995)
Bad Chili (1997)
Rumble Tumble (1998)
Veil’s Visit(1999)
Captains Outrageous (2001)
Vanilla Ride (2009)
Hyenas (a novella) (2011)
Devil Red (2011)
Blue to the Bone (???)

The “Drive-In” series

The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas (1988)
The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels (1989)
The Drive-In: A Double-Feature (1997, omnibus)
The Drive-In: The Bus Tour (2005) (limited edition)

The “Ned the Seal” trilogy

Zeppelins West (2001)
Flaming London (2006)
Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal (2010)
The Sky Done Ripped (release date unknown)

Other novels

Act of Love (1980)
Texas Night Riders (1983) (published under the pseudonym Ray Slater)
Dead in the West (1986) (written in 1980)
Magic Wagon (1986)
The Nightrunners (1987)
Cold in July (1989)
Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (1995) (with Edgar Rice Burroughs)
The Boar (1998)
Freezer Burn (1999)
Waltz of Shadows (1999)
Something Lumber This Way Comes (1999) (Children's book)
The Big Blow (2000)
Blood Dance (2000)
The Bottoms (2000)
A Fine Dark Line (2002)
Sunset and Sawdust (2004)
Lost Echoes (2007)
Leather Maiden (2008)
Under the Warrior Sun (2010)

…And that's not counting the pseudonymous novels, the short stories, the chapbooks, anthologies, graphic novels, comic books and all the rest. Get the full story at www.JoeRLansdale.com.

Copyright

The Boar was first published by Subterranean in 1998. This digital edition (v1.0) was published in 2011 by Gere Donovan Press.

If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy—they are reasonably priced, and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.

Copyright © 1998 by Joe R. Lansdale, www.JoeRLansdale.com.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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