Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

“You can count on us, we win,” Frank said.

“No. You owe me eleven-fifty win or lose.” Nigger Joe said this, putting his hat back carefully on his head, looking at the two smaller men like a man about to pick a hen for neck wringing and Sunday dinner.

“Sure,” Frank said. “Eleven-fifty, win or lose. Eleven-fifty when we get the pig and the mule.”

“Now that’s the deal as I see it,” Nigger Joe said. “I tell women it’s eight dollars, that way I make some whisky money. Nigger Joe didn’t get up yesterday. No he didn’t. And when he gets up, he’s got Bible salesman’s hat on.”

Frank thought: What? What the hell does that mean?

They waded through the swamp and through the woods for some time, and just before dark, Nigger Joe picked up on the mule’s unshod tracks. He bent down and looked at them. He said, “We catch him, he’s gonna need trimming and shoes. Not enough rock to wear them down. Soft sand and swamp. And here’s the pig’s tracks. Hell, he’s big. Tracks say, three hundred pounds. Maybe more.”

“That’s no pig,” Leroy said. “That’s a full blown hog.”

“Damn,” Frank said. “They’re real.”

“But can he race?” Leroy said. “And will the pig co-operate?”

They followed the tracks until it turned dark. They threw up a camp, made a fire, and made it big so the smoke was strong, as the mosquitoes were everywhere and hungry and the smoke kept them off a little. They sat there in the night before the fire, the smoke making them cough, watching it churn up above them, through the trees. And up there, as if resting on a limb, was a piece of the moon.

They built the fire up big one last time, turned into their covers, and tried to sleep. Finally, they did, but before morning, Frank awoke, his bladder full, his mind as sharp as if he had slept well. He got up and stoked up the fire, and walked out a few paces in the dark and let it fly. When he looked up to button his pants, he saw through the trees, across a stretch of swamp water, something moving.

He looked carefully, because whatever it was had stopped. He stood very still for a long time, and finally what he had seen moved again. He thought at first it was a deer, but no. There was enough light from the early rising sun shining through the trees that he could now see clearly what it was.

The White Mule. It stood between two large trees, just looking at him, its head held high, its tall ears alert. The mule was big. Fifteen hands high, like Robert E. Lee, and it was big chested, and its legs were long. Something moved beside it.

The Spotted Pig. It was big and ugly, with one ear turned up and one ear turned down. It grunted once, and the mule snorted, but neither moved.

Frank wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t go tearing across the stretch of swamp after them, since he didn’t know how deep it was, and what might be waiting for him. Gators, snakes and sink holes. And by the time he woke up the others, the mule and hog would be gone. He just stood there instead, staring at them. This went on for a long time, and finally the hog turned and started moving away, behind some thicket. The mule tossed its head, turned and followed.

My God, thought Frank. The mule is beautiful. And the hog, he’s a pistol. He could tell that from the way it had grunted at him. He had some strange feelings inside of him that he couldn’t explain. Some sensation of having had a moment that was greater than any moment he had had before.

He walked back to the fire and lay down on his blankets, tried to figure the reason behind the feeling, but only came up with a headache and more mosquito bites. He closed his eyes and slept a little while longer, thinking of the mule and the hog, and the way they were free and beautiful. Then he was awakened by the toe of Nigger Joe’s boot in his ribs.

“Time to do it,” Nigger Joe said.

Frank sat up. “I saw them.”

“What?” Leroy said, stirring out of his blankets.

Frank told them what he had seen, and how there was nothing he could do then. Told them all this, but didn’t tell them how the mule and the hog had made him feel.

“Shit,” Leroy said. “You should have woke us.”

Nigger Joe shook his head. “No matter. We see over there where they stood. See what tracks they leave us. Then we do the sneak on them.”

They worked their way to the other side of the swamp, swatting mosquitoes and killing a cottonmouth in the process, and when they got to where the mule and the hog stood, they found tracks and mule droppings.

“You not full of shit, like Nigger Joe thinking,” Nigger Joe said. “You really see them.”

“Yep,” Frank said.

Nigger Joe bent down and rubbed some of the mule shit between his fingers, and smelled it. “Not more than a couple hours old.”

“Should have got us up,” Leroy said.

“Easier to track in the day,” Nigger Joe said. “They got their place they stay. They got some hideout.”

The mosquitoes were not so bad now, and finally they came to some clear areas, marshy, but clear, and they lost the tracks there, but Nigger Joe said, “The two of them, they probably cross here. It’s a good spot. Pick their tracks up in the trees over there, on the soft ground.”

When the crossed the marshy stretch, they came to a batch of willows and looked around there. Nigger Joe was the one who found their tracks.

“Here they go,” he said. “Here they go.”

They traveled through woods and more swamp, and from time to time they lost the tracks, but Nigger Joe always found them again. Sometimes Frank couldn’t even see what Nigger Joe saw. But Nigger Joe saw something, because he kept looking at the ground, stopping to stretch out on the earth, his face close to it. Sometimes he would pinch the earth between finger and thumb, rub it about. Frank wasn’t sure why he did that, and he didn’t ask. Like Leroy, he just followed.

Midday, they came to a place that amazed Frank. Out there in the middle of what should have been swamp, there was a great clear area, at least a hundred acres. They found it when they came out of a stretch of shady oaks. The air was sweeter there, in the trees, and the shadows were cooling, and at the far edge was a drop of about fifty feet. Down below was the great and natural pasture. A fire, brought on by heat or lightning, might have cleared the place at some point in time. It had grown back without trees, just tall green grass amongst a few rotting, ant-infested stumps. It was surrounded by the oaks, high up on their side, and low down on the other. The oaks on the far side stretched out and blended with sweet gums and black jack and hickory and bursts of pines. From their vantage point they could see all of this, and see the cool shadow on the other side amongst the trees.

A hawk sailed over it all, and Frank saw there was a snake in its beak. Something stirred again inside of Frank, and he was sure it wasn’t his last meal. “You’re part Indian,” Frank said to Nigger Joe. “That hawk and that snake, does it mean something?”

“Means that snake is gonna get et,” Nigger Joe said. “Damn trees. Don’t you know that make a lot of good hard lumber… Go quiet. Look there.”

Coming out of the trees into the great pasture was the mule and the hog. The hog lead the way, and the mule followed close behind. They came out into the sunlight, and pretty soon the hog began to root and the mule began to graze.

“Got their own paradise,” Frank said.

“We’ll fix that,” Leroy said.

They waited there, sitting amongst the oaks, watching, and late in the day the hog and the mule wandered off into the trees across the way.

“Ain’t we gonna do something besides watch?” Leroy said.

“They leave, tomorrow they come back,” Nigger Joe said. “Got their spot. Be back tomorrow. We’ll be ready for them.”