Home from the Hill (8 page)

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“Tell me a story, please, Chauncey. Please. Tell about the time Papa killed the wild boar. Tell it, Chauncey. Please.”

“I should think you would know dat story by dis time.”

He would sit very silent and give Chauncey time to grumble and sigh and say with mock begrudging, “Oh, ver' well den. I see it ain't no help for it.”

Then he would announce his title:

How Cap'm Wade Hunnicutt Kill the Las' Wile Boar in Eas' Texas

“Well, I tole you many times how the trappers from all roun Sulphur Bottom come to yo Papa an they say, ‘Cap'm, it is something stealin from our traps. You the man to help us out.' An Cap'm he say, ‘I see whut I kin do'.”

The story never varied a word, so Theron chanted it in his mind, and sometimes out loud:

“So he oiled up his gun and he put on his stalking boots and—”

“So he oil up his gun an he put on his stawkin boots an he go for his ole Chauncey.” (Chauncey had been Old Chauncey even as a young man, for it was a title he had earned early, a certificate of reliability, such as is given a dog or a cunning old fox or a long-run locomotive, people speaking of Old Queen or Old Red or Old Ninety-seven. He was very proud of his title, a haughty old man and the only Negro Theron ever knew who did not mister white men. Oh, he mistered some, those who in his estimation were not men at all, the ones who were not hunters; and none dared take exception to being called by their given names by “that nigger of the Captain's.”) “Well, all this bout them trappers was unbeknownst to yo's truly. Cap'm say we goin huntin so I desume we goin after squirrels. So I never paid no mind till we's done down in the woods. Then I take notice he carrying that ole Winchester thutty-thutty you see before you in that cabinet right dis minute. Now as you very well know, that ain't for squirrels. Oh-oh, says I to myself. Well, but whutever it is, ain't I with the one man that can git me out of there again? Yes. But let me tell you, boy, when you git way off down in there even Cap'm Wade Hunnicutt look like jes barely enough to bring you out again. An jes you try to keep step with that man. Lord, I druther pick wet cotton. Well, we come up on the first track. I look at them clove-footed prints an I say to myself, ‘Now, Chauncey,' (jes to make sure it was me I was talkin to) ‘Chauncey, ain't no cows strayed off down in this part of the world, is it?' To look at them tracks you would swear it was the devil hisself. Well, when it come to me whut it really was, then I wush it was the devil. I jes plopped right down. ‘O.K., Chauncey,' say Cap'm, ‘you can choose yo pick—come along with me, else wait on me here.' Well, Lord, I reckon I druther come up on a wile boar an him with me than have the boar come up on me by my lonesome. So off we go again. Well, we follow them tracks till about the middle of the afternoon. We standin on the edge of a little clearin, when all-a-sudden Cap'm whisper to me, ‘Chauncey, let's see how fast you can shinny up that tree.' You may think I stayed to be tole twice, but you got another think comin. But when I git up an look down again, there he is, the one man that can git me out of here, still down on the groun. Now we huntin upwind, so on comes the boar unsuspectin, an fore long you can hear him. Snortin an puffin an gruntin an crashin along, sound like he's big as a steam locomotive. 'Twas a long, still, hot summer's day an you could smell that pig a-comin: smelt like burnt flesh an feathers. An hit'd been a long dry spell that summer, so when he come into the clearin he was red, solid red, all over, cause he couldn' find hisself no mud to waller in an he was covered with tiny drops of blood coming outa ever' pore stead of sweat, an so it was gnats an flies buzzin all over him an he was half crazy they was aggravatin him so. Oh, I tell you, he looks plumb sweet up there on the wall to whut he looked that day. His tushes don't sparkle nothin now to whut they did then, cause then he hone em fresh ever' day gainst a rock an file em to a nice point an strop em gainst a tree. Well, he come into the clearin an he sniff an he look an he stop. ‘Ugh?' he go, as if to say, ‘Whut is this come traipsin on my claim?' Cap'm stand there lookin him over an never bat a eyelash. Pig comes on an I prayin, ‘Lord, won't he never raise his gun an shoot that thing!' Now Pig sees Man. ‘Uuuuuuuugh!' he go, an he paw up some dirt an he th'ow his head up in the air an bare his tushes an then he put his head down to charge. An still Cap'm stand there lookin. An then he rushes him, an you never saw nothing so fast in yo life! An not till he's three-quarters cross that little clearin does Cap'm raise his ole Winchester an fire. My Lord, he missed! Cap'm Wade Hunnicutt shoot at a big thing like that an miss! Well, I knowed it was all up with me, an I was so mis'able I didn't much care. I closed my eyes. Then I open em. An I see Cap'm hoppin aside an spinnin aroun an that pig rushin past him like a loco bull. An he hadn't missed. The blood was spurtin out of that pig, only it didn't phaze him. Oh Lord, I couldn' look an I couldn' keep from lookin. An whut do I see this time? That great big ole hawg jist about this far from yo papa comin like a bolt of lightnin an him not movin a hair, if you please! Wellsir—”

And then, like as not, he would stop, yawn maybe, take out his pipe, his can of Prince Albert, fill the pipe and pack it carefully and test it and search himself all over for a match, finally find one with half a stem and spend two or three minutes striking it on his lifted ham, then suck in the smoke and heave it out until he disappeared behind it, and then maybe he would get up to leave.

“Well? Well?” Theron would gasp.

“Huh? Well, whut?” he would say, as though astonished to find a small white boy in his presence.

“What? Why, what happened then?”

“Whut happen then? Why,” he would say, and grin and look at the big boar's head over the mantel, “why, you know puffeckly well whut happen den.”

He got his first rifle on his fourteenth birthday. His father taught him to shoot, to take a deep breath and let out half of it, to squeeze the trigger slowly, to lay his cheek snug against the stock, to keep both eyes open. When it rained that winter and spring they fired into the fireplace down the length of the long room, using a charred log for a backstop, and the crack of the rifle resounded throughout the house. In good weather they went into the fields, where they set up rows of brown Skeet & Garrett snuff bottles which they found in abundance on Chauncey's and Melba's garbage dump. He shot always from longer distances. It got so he seldom missed. Then he would set a bottle against a stump and walk away from it until his father said, “Now!” whereupon he would spin and fire. He learned to hit two out of three bottles tossed into the air. One day he went alone. Before that day was over he could toss the bottle himself, raise the rifle to his shoulder, and be sure of shattering the bottle as it hung poised at the height of its flight that one instant before beginning to drop.

One day his father, who had become a little more respectful of the game laws now that Theron was with him, said, “Squirrel season opens a week from today. On opening day we'll go.”

9

He told his mother about it while he skinned the squirrels.

Above the hind feet he made a cut all around, then he slipped the blade under the skin and down the legs drew slits that met in the crotch. He sliced through the tail bones, then with one foot holding down the tail, peeled out the silvery-red body. With a quick shallow jab he then slit down the belly, ripped out the entrails and flung them over the fence against which two hounds strained, eager but quiet. Turning, he caught his mother's glance and he smiled with embarrassed pride.

He placed the raw carcass on the newspaper in the row where the others lay already darkening in the sun and wind, and he wiped the gore from his hands on the fur of the ones remaining. He picked out the largest squirrel and plied its stiffened joints. “This one is mine,” he said. “My first. Or rather, the first that I did as I should have. I could tell Papa knew it was a big one from the noise it made in the cane. He didn't say, and yet I knew he meant for me to take this one. That's how it is in the woods. You understand each other without speaking. I shot well on this one, see?”

At first they had done none of the sly stalking he had imagined they would. His father scorned to use a dog for hunting squirrels. He believed in the method known as still-hunting. “You don't go after them,” he said. “Not as long as you can help it. You make them come to you.” And so they had sat leaning against a sweetgum tree on the edge of a canebrake, both chewing wads of the sticky, resinous-tasting sweetgum.

“I didn't want to hurt his feelings by not seeming to like it,” said Theron. “Besides, he didn't want me to know he'd given it to me to keep me from falling asleep. As if I could!”

For it was just past four in the morning. It was that expectant time in the woods when the night sounds have just died away and the day sounds not quite started up, and when the trees, as they darken and solidify with the coming of the light, seem to grow up around you. He had known he must not talk and had felt proud of resisting such a strong urge to talk as he felt. In the advancing light he had watched the rifle grow distinct upon his lap, feeling now for the first time that it really belonged to him.

He had seen his first squirrel at daybreak. It seemed to have been there just waiting for him. Day had come as a rain blows up; there was a distant rustle high in the treetops and the wind came down in whiffs, warm then cool. Then the sun was up. You knew it not by seeing, for the thick-leaved redoaks, small leaves but thick already in May there in Sulphur Bottom, the tall scalybark hickories, and the tall, long-needled pines would admit the sun for only a few hours in the middle of the day. You knew it by the commencement of sounds. From afar off came three rapid crow calls, like the sound of an old person clearing his throat on getting out of bed, and the woods close around were jerked awake by the testy yammering of a pecker-wood.

His father had whispered, “Hear that?” and he nodded, though he had no idea which of the many sounds he heard was the meaningful one.

It was then he saw his squirrel. No telling how long it had been there, watching him with no sign of fright, but merely with a mild interest, fanning his tail as he hung head down, head stuck out at a right angle to his body, on the trunk of a hickory forty feet away.

“I was watching Papa, not the squirrel,” he said. “And I was afraid I'd spoil my shot because I was almost laughing aloud at how clever I was.”

Then the squirrel turned and started up the tree and he forgot all his training, forgot to let out his breath, pulled violently on the trigger and sighted not only not with both eyes open, but—“Like a baby! I told myself in the very instant of doing it,”—with both shut.

Despite all this, he had hit it. With disbelief he watched the squirrel stop, quiver, then slip downwards, clawing at the bark, then catch itself by one paw and hang quivering, then drop to the ground. By this time he was on his feet, running.

Bending over the still-quivering squirrel, watching the blood trickle through its fur, he sensed the commotion overhead. He looked up. The tree had become like a cherry tree full of birds. Squirrels were everywhere, dashing distractedly up and down branches, running down the trunk and almost on top of him before wheeling with a frantic scratching of claws and swirling up again to the big leafy nest high in a fork of the limbs. One big old boar squirrel was hopping up and down in place on a limb and screeching with a noise like a buzz saw cutting through a knot. He turned to go for his rifle, knew it was useless, and realized that his father had known all along that the first squirrel was there and had not fired but waited because he knew all these others were there too. So he stood and listened to them leaping into the nearby trees with a noise like rocks thrown through the leaves, until all was still. He knew then how still the big woods could be, how much life there had been in what before he had thought was stillness.

He had two humiliations yet to come. His father had left the rifle as he had tossed it: pointed straight at him and with the safety off. That the gun was a single-shot made this harmless but hardly excusable. He had violated the first, most important rule of the woods.

“I thought then of what you had told me,” he said to his mother. “That accidents happen to the best. And I remembered how I had answered—that I wasn't going to get hurt. I was sick. It never occurred to me you could have been thinking
I
might hurt somebody.”

He had reloaded then and sat reproaching himself, glad that his father at least said nothing, at least gave him the credit of realizing what he had done. He knew now that shooting the squirrel, jumping the gun, bad as it was, had not been his worst blunder. After shooting it he should have kept still, just have left it where it fell. He should have shot well enough, and known it, especially having only a single-shot rifle, to be sure the squirrel was going to stay where it fell. After no more disturbance than the shot the others would have come out soon to feed and play. But he had broken stand and, like an untrained bird dog pup, had flushed a covey to get a single. He supposed they were sitting yet, instead of moving on and taking up another stand, so he could do just what he was doing—reproach himself with what a mess he had made of things.

And then—perhaps it was another of those things you understood, without being told, in the woods—he realized that his father had known every thought in his head, every move, every mistake he would make, knew the impulse to be his own man that would overcome him when he saw his first squirrel, and had allowed him to go ahead. But instead of feeling that his father had let him misbehave in order to mortify him, he felt suddenly filled with love at the understanding of him it showed. He saw his father for a moment as a boy, really as himself, and it gave him a feeling of the deep affinity between them.