Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

At night they left the logs on the critters, and built make-do corrals of vines and limbs and bits of leather straps.

By the time they were out of the woods and the swamp, the mule and the hog were covered in dirt and mud and such. The animals heaved as they walked, and Frank feared they might keel over and die.

They made it though, and they took the mule up to Nigger Joe’s. He had a corral there. It wasn’t much, but it was solid and it held the mule in. The hog they put in a small pen. There was hardly room for the hog to turn around. Now that the hog was well placed, Frank stood by the pen and studied the animal. The beast looked at him with a feral eye. This wasn’t a hog who had been slopped and watered. This was an animal who early on had escaped into the wild, as a pig, and had made his way to adulthood. The hog’s spotted hide was covered in scars, and though he had a coating of fat on him, his body was long and muscular, and when the critter flexed its shoulders to startle a fly, muscles rolled beneath its skin like snakes beneath a tight-stretched blanket.

The mule, after the first day, began to perk up. But he didn’t do much. Stood around mostly, and when they walked away for a distance, it began to trot the corral, stopping often to look out at his friend in the hog pen. The mule made a sound, and the hog made a sound back.

“Damn, if I don’t think they’re talking to one another,” Leroy said.

“Oh yeah. You can bet. They do that all right,” Nigger Joe said.

The race was coming closer, and within the week, Leroy and Nigger Joe had the mule’s hooves trimmed, but no shoes. Decided he didn’t need them, as the ground was soft this time of year. They got him saddled. Leroy got bucked off and kicked and bitten once, a big plug was out of his right elbow.

“Mean one,” Nigger Joe said. “Real bastard, this mule. Strong. He got the time, he eat Leroy.”

“Do you think he can run?” Frank asked.

“Time to see soon,” Nigger Joe said.

That night, when the saddling and bucking was done, the mule began to wear down, let Nigger Joe stay on his back. As a reward, Nigger Joe fed the mule well on grain, but gave him only a little water. He fed the hog some pulled-up weeds, a bit of corn, watered him.

“Want mule strong, but hog weak,” Nigger Joe said. “Don’t want hog strong enough to do digging out of pen that’s for some sure.”

Frank listened to this, wondering where Nigger Joe had learned his American.

Nigger Joe went in for the night, his two wives calling him to supper. Leroy walked home. Frank saddled up Dobbin, but before he left, he led the horse out to the corral and stared at the mule. There in the starlight, the beams settled around the mule’s head, and made it very white. The mud was gone now and the mule had been groomed, cleaned of briars and burrs from the woods, and the beast looked magnificent. Once Frank had seen a book. It was the only book he had ever seen other than the Bible, which his mother owned. But he had seen this one in the window of the General Store downtown. He hadn’t opened the book, just looked at it through the window. There on the cover was a white horse with wings on its back. Well, the mule didn’t look like a horse, and it didn’t have wings on its back, but it certainly had the bearing of the beast on the book’s cover. Like maybe it was from somewhere else other than here; like the sky had ripped open and the mule had ridden into this world through the tear.

Frank led Dobbin over to the hog pen. There was nothing beautiful about the spotted hog. It stared up at him, and the starlight filled its eyes and made them sharp and bright as shrapnel.

As Frank was riding away, he heard the mule make a sound, then the hog. They did it more than once, and were still doing it when he rode out of earshot.

It took some doing, and it took some time, and Frank, though he did little but watch, felt as if he were going to work every day. It was a new feeling for him. His Old Man often made him work, but as he grew older he had quit, just like his father. The fields rarely got attention, and being drunk became more important than hoeing corn and digging taters. But here he was not only showing up early, but staying all day, handing harness and such to Nigger Joe and Leroy, bringing out feed and pouring water.

In time Nigger Joe was able to saddle up the mule with no more than a snort from the beast, and he could ride about the pen without the mule turning to try and bite him or buck him. He even stopped kicking at Nigger Joe and Leroy, who he hated, when they first entered the pen.

The hog watched all of this through the slats of his pen, his beady eyes slanting tight, its battle-torn ears flicking at flies, its curly tail curled even tighter. Frank wondered what the hog was thinking. He was certain, whatever it was, was not good.

Soon enough, Nigger Joe had Frank enter the pen, climb up in the saddle. Sensing a new rider, the mule threw him. But the second time he was on board, the mule trotted him around the corral, running lightly with that kind of rolling barrel run mules have.

“He’s about ready for a run, he is,” Nigger Joe said.

Frank led the mule out of the pen and out to the road, Leroy following. Nigger Joe led Dobbin. “See he’ll run that way. Not so fast at first,” Nigger Joe said. “Me and this almost dead horse, we follow and find you, you ain’t neck broke in some ditch somewheres.”

Cautiously, Frank climbed on the white mule’s back. He took a deep breath, then settling himself in the saddle, he gave the mule a kick.

The mule didn’t move.

He kicked again.

The mule trotted down the road about twenty feet, then turned, dipped its head into the grass that grew alongside the red clay road, and took a mouthful.

Frank kicked at the mule some more, but the mule wasn’t having any. He only moved a few feet down the road, then across the road and into the grass, amongst the trees, biting leaves off of them with a sharp snap of his head, a smack of his teeth.

Nigger Joe trotted up on Dobbin.

“You ain’t going so fast.”

“Way I see it too,” Frank said. “He ain’t worth a shit.”

“We not bring the hog in on some business yet.”

“How’s that gonna work? I mean, how’s he gonna stay around and not run off.”

“Maybe hog run off in goddamn woods and not see again, how it may work. But, nothing else, hitch mule to plow or sell. You done paid me eleven-fifty.”

“Your job isn’t done,” Frank said.

“You say, and may be right, but we got the one card, the hog, you see. He don’t deal out with an ace, we got to call him a joker, and call us assholes, and the mule, we got to make what we can. We have to, shoot and eat the hog. Best, keep him up a few more days, put some corn in him, make him better than what he is. Fatter. The mule, I told you ideas. Hell, eat mule too if nothing other works out.”

They let the hog out of the pen.

Or rather Leroy did. Just picked up the gate, and out came the hog. The hog didn’t bolt. It bounded over to the mule, on which Frank was mounted. The mule dipped its head, touched noses with the hog.

“I’ll be damn,” Frank said, thinking he had never had a friend like that. Leroy was as close as it got, and he had to watch Leroy. He’d cheat you. And if you had a goat, he might fuck it. Leroy was no real friend. Frank thought Leroy was like most things in his life, just something to make do till the real thing came along, and so far, he was still waiting. It made Frank feel lonesome.

Nigger Joe took the bridle on the mule away from Frank, and led them out to the road. The hog trotted beside the mule.

“Now, story is, hog likes to run,” Nigger Joe said. “And when he run, mule follows. And then hog, he falls off, not keeping up, and mule, he got the arrow-sight then, run like someone put turpentine on his nut sack. Or that the story as I hear it. You?”