Chris Offutt - Kentucky Straight - Stories

Clabe and Wayne rode double with Clabe’s dog following behind. They found Jim clearing land. He laughed at his brothers-in-law weighing the horse down, the sweat-foam sticking to their pants. Jim propped a double-bit ax across his shoulder and came down the slope. Clabe’s muzzle-loader and Wayne’s pistol took the smile square away from him.

“Dorothy,” Jim said.

“She’s all right,” said Clabe.

They slid off the horse and rubbed the inside of the pants legs. The dog jumped on Clabe’s boot, pink tongue hanging sideways. He pushed it down and moved away.

“It’s the baby, then,” Jim said.

“Up on Flatgap,” said Clabe.

“Bad?”

“Don’t get no worser.”

“How?”

“Bear.”

Jim swung at the dog, and sank the ax in the ground to the handle. The dog squalled across the clay dirt yard, spraying blood. Its yellow tail lay beside the buried ax head. Jim went in the house for his flintlock rifle and Wayne squatted beside the dog tail.

“Never did see one off a dog,” he said.

“Get your eyes full,” Clabe said.

“Might mean something.”

“By God, you’re getting bad off as an old cure-witch, trying to read a dog’s hind end.”

“Ought not to make fun,” Wayne said. “Might come back on you.”

Wayne spat between his legs, took off his belt, and ran it through the loops the opposite way. Clabe watched and didn’t laugh. Used to, everybody went by sign and peculiar weather. I’ve carpentered that way myself. Fresh-cut green wood’ll bow, cup, or warp all depending on where the moon’s at. You take and build by the moon and your rafters will bend with the earth. I got that off my grandpaw and a keener man never hammered lumber. One time a board wouldn’t fit and he told me to trim it, and I asked him how much to cut.

“A frog over,” he said.

“What size frog?”

“Regular.”

“Facing in or away?”

“Crossways.”

“Stretched out or humped up?”

“It’s ready to jump, boy. You’re slow as Christmas.”

He built three houses that way and they’re still yet lived in, the standingest houses you ever did see. They’ll outlast these hills.

Well, them boys set off for Flatgap Ridge. They left the horse at the house and took Clabe’s dog and a bluetick Jim owned. The spring woods were greening slow, only the oaks holding back. Clabe whispered to Wayne.

“Don’t tell Jim about the baby’s head. We’ll get it when he ain’t looking close. You seen the way he done that dog.”

“About like Peter, ain’t he.”

“What?” Clabe said. “Who?”

“When the man told Peter about Jesus getting caught, Peter cut his ear off.”

“His own?”

“No. The man who said it.”

“I ain’t got time to argue the Book with you. Just don’t let on to Jim, hear.”

On top of the ridge, Jim found bear tracks and the place it ran out of the woods at. Leaves were kicked up and branches broke. He knelt in the path beside a patch of sticky red dirt. “My little girl,” he said. “My baby Rose.”

Clabe and Wayne looked in hollow logs, down a groundhog hole, and under berry thickets but couldn’t find the head. Jim put both hands in the blood and rubbed it on his gun barrel. His voice came cruel. “Don’t a one of you take a shot when we find that bear. It’s mine to kill.” He raised the rifle and tipped his head back, screaming a terrible sound. “Whistle up them dogs,” he said. “And lay back from me.”

To be much count, a hunting dog has got to be raised careful. One of my uncles treated dogs better than his own children, loving on his pups like a bird does eggs. When he was to hunt, these dogs ate better than family. His kids got scraps. Now this same uncle was a hard one in the woods. If a dog lost trail and circled back to him, my uncle didn’t think nothing of killing that dog. He’d just shoot it and go on, leave it lay for the buzzards. His kids all growed up fine.

Jim’s bluetick trailed the bear off the ridge, straight down the hill to a gully. Fresh prints held groundwater under a black willow. Wayne and Clabe were right smart back of Jim, and the late-day sun cut low along the hill. They followed the creek to a fork where another holler carried spring rain through the woods. Jim started climbing at an angle to the slope. The land rose steep to a rocky knob, and loose shale showered down from his boots. He waited on a ledge for Wayne and Clabe.

“Bad place to come on a bear,” Clabe said.

“It’s tracking panther,” Jim said. “They favor cliff holes to live in.”

Wayne spat and watched it fall sixty yards to the soft earth. “Cat ain’t fit to eat,” he said.

“It’s not cat we’re here for.” Jim’s voice was cold as a creek rock. “You two go that way. I’ll sneak up on his other side. Clabe, you keep that rifle still. I want the first shot.”

What happened after, there’s no way to tell it nice. Many a man’s got a hunting story and some make killing out to be fun. It ain’t. It’s easy and hard both at once, but one thing it’s not is fun. It’s just killing.

Jim climbed to the top and circled through brush. The dogs growled ahead of him. That bear was standing on its hind legs with its back against a big chunk of limestone. Its mouth hung wide and snarling, bloody fur matted below the chin, its front paws spread to hug or hit. The bear batted the bluetick so hard, it flew into a shagbark hickory and broke its back. Other dog jumped for the bear’s throat but latched onto its shoulder instead. The bear fought fierce, trying to sling the dog off. Jim came in close. Straight across the knob from him, Clabe leaned against a tree to steady his aim. He was hid by shadows, and waiting on Jim to shoot first.

Jim aimed real careful but the bear dropped to all fours. Jim’s shot went over the bear and hit Clabe, who went down like a stuck hog. Wayne fired his pistol six times. Shot the dog. Shot the tip of the bear’s nose off. Other four bullets rattled tree leaves back through the woods. Bear reared again, mad.

Jim got his rifle loaded and this time he hit that bear square in the heart. It lit down and moved towards Jim, who stood there, reloading. Bear was going slow and bleeding mean. Jim laid the gun barrel right against the bear’s eyeball. He shot and the woods got real quiet. For a long spell there wasn’t a blown leaf to be heard. Jim started in laughing and pretty soon it turned into tears and he was crying. He laid smack on that bear’s humped-up back and cried worse than a child pushed off tit by a new baby.

The top of the rock was a mess with dogs, bear, and men laying thick in the dirt. Clabe was shot through the back of his arm and into his side. Arm muscle had slowed the bullet down some. He told Wayne to make sure and get the baby’s head. Wayne nodded, holding his brother’s hand.

Jim slit the bear’s throat. He went to the broke-back dog whimpering in the brush and cut its throat. Then he moved to Wayne and Clabe.

“Stay away from him,” Wayne said. “It ain’t that bad.”

“Bear get him, too?”

“You shot him.”

“I never.”

“We done what we come for,” Clabe said. “Patch this hole in me and let’s get to the house.”

The ball had hooked around a rib and wasn’t too hard for Jim to pry out. He stuck a pinch of gunpowder in the wound. He took the flint from his gun and sparked it, and the powder burnt the bullet hole shut. Black smoke rose from Clabe’s shirt. He passed out cold.

It was close to dark and they had to get off the cliff while they could still yet see. Wayne went to the bear and gutted it like a deer. A stink blew out. He wiped his palms in dirt so the knife wouldn’t slide from his grip. He found the belly-bag, pulled it out, and sliced it open. Inside was a dark lump the size of a squash. Wayne tucked it in the gunnysack tied to his waist.