Zion (3 page)

So Tom stood his ground and saw Sloan pull to his knees and spit out a line of bloody phlegm. He watched the man almost a minute, trying to ascertain if there was any fight left in him. Sloan started staggering back to his Scout.

Thinking the threat was over, Tom went inside the store.

“Howdy, Hardin,” Jack Beam said.

“I’d like a hundred pound sack of heavy grain,” Tom said to the storekeeper. The place smelled of mothballs and fertilizer. His hands trembled.

Beam stood behind the counter. He wore a striped railroad engineer’s cap, overalls, and a starched long sleeve shirt. “All right,” he said, writing on a gray receipt pad. “You been doing okay, Hardin? I say, you look a bit flustered.”

“I was fine until recently.”

“Yeah. Why’s that?”

“I had to knock the fire out of Sloan Parnell on your front steps.”

“No kidding? I saw Parnell and some half-dressed girl out yonder earlier.” Beam looked up from his receipt pad.

“I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with him,” Tom said.

“He’s got that bad Parnell blood in him is all. They’re rich and inbred as a coop of speckled chickens. All of ’em is so damned scared somebody outside the family might steal their money. He’s just like his old daddy, P.T. ‘The Drunk’ Parnell, a trifling cur of a man, if you were to solicit my honest opinion. I hate like hell to see a Parnell come in here on account they’re always trying to beat me out of something I’ve got.”

“Well, that’s according to their nature.”

“That’s the Lord’s own truth. You think you’re going to have trouble with him when you go back to your truck?” Beam asked. He turned around and picked up a worn Fox double barrel shotgun from where it was leaned against the wall. He popped open the breech and checked the two sixteen gauge shells, the brass showing.

“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble. He’s probably long gone by now. I rattled him pretty good. Might have broken his nose.”

“I’d be pleased to run him off or call the law or something, but the law won’t do nothing.”

“No, not much around here.”

He leaned the shotgun against the wall again. “It’ll come to two and a quarter.”

Tom paid him in cash.

Beam called his helper. “Go get Mr. Hardin a sack of heavy grain and load it on his truck.”

When the feed store man carried the sack to Tom’s truck a minute later, there was no sign of Sloan Parnell and his International Scout or the LeBlanc woman.

Tom stood on the street looking around. Cars passed. A Mercury honked, and the driver waved. Staring down the street, Tom wondered how he’d found himself in such a strange period in parish history.

Tom tried to avoid trouble. He stayed away from Milltown for a few days. He wanted to keep the peace, but the pines kept burning in and around Zion. Among the locals, there were debates about how far the fires were heading, whether or not the killing of the pines was escalating to an outright war and if the casual blows would turn deadly. Tom began to worry about it himself, not knowing if he would face a risk greater than a tussle with a spoiled rich man.

He never went into the woods unarmed out of general fear, and he worked with his neighbor, James Luke Cate, as they attempted to catch the rest of their missing hogs and cows. James Luke was the husband of Tom’s first cousin once removed, Nelda, and he was Tom’s primary hunting partner. James Luke was originally from Slaughter, Louisiana, a dying little hamlet north of Baton Rouge. He and Nelda lived a mile south of the Hardins on Lower Louth Road. For all practical purposes, he was Tom’s best friend.

James Luke swore to Tom that he wanted blood vengeance against the Parnells and the men killing the hardwoods and banning the livestock. He had a number of hogs and cows in the woods himself, and he was dead set against giving them away at the auction. Tom also knew that James Luke constantly passed along the rumor that Fitz-Blackwell had bought off the Louisiana Wildlife Commission, and he claimed this was the reason they’d sent game wardens to hassle the hunters and farmers. He told Tom that he’d placed Sloan Parnell in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on his deer rifle one day, and he regretted not shooting him in the woods. Tom downplayed the declaration, thinking that perhaps James Luke was just talking trash after too much beer one evening.

But Tom wasn’t an outlaw, and the harassment by the authorities was only a mild inconvenience. Until recently, he had never even seen a game warden north of the landing at Lizard Bayou. Now, however, the pine forests of Zion, Kilgore, Milltown, Packwood Corners, and Watermelon were teeming with wardens from all over the state. It reminded him of the FBI during the summer when they searched for the three missing civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi. It seemed like there were authorities behind every bush.

Financially, the parish stock law served a hard blow to Tom and the other small farmers. Because Tom owned a mere twenty acres, more than half of which was thick forest, he couldn’t graze two dozen cows and one hundred head of hogs on such a small tract. The new ordinance showed that the open range farmers were no match for the money doled out under the table by a multinational timber company. And everyone knew that Louisiana police jurors, the governing council for the parish, weren’t champions of virtue. They usually followed whatever pot was sweetest. The number of farmers was already diminishing. Men were leaving the woods and farms to work in the oil industry along the Mississippi River. But the stock law was the death knell, Tom thought, the end of local men being sustained from the land.

He knew things were off kilter. It seemed to be getting harder and harder to make ends meet. His father had homesteaded the land and rarely held down a public job outside of the farm and forest, except for taking intermittent odd jobs as a carpenter. Now Tom needed to hold down a full-time job, as well as working the little farm and livestock operation. He believed the day might come when his own son would have to work two jobs off the home place, and his wife would need to leave the house for public work. Afterwards, ends still wouldn’t meet, and he couldn’t imagine what might happen to his grandchildren in this economic paradise.

Tom decided to do the only thing he knew to do: try to catch the animals and take them to the auction in Ruthberry. Selling them to the highest bidder in a flooded livestock market would barely cover his expenses. Tom was more than a little tempted to leave the hogs in the woods.

It bothered him to know that Sloan was in line to be named to the plant superintendent post at Fitz-Blackwell’s big lumber mill in the center of neighboring Louisburg Parish. A plant manager was a white hat job, one where he’d dress in a coat and tie for work, a position of power and privilege in the region. Sloan was nothing more than a political appointee for the mill, a man with adequate connections to make things go smoothly in the parish.

After Brownlow’s visit and the latest altercation with Sloan, Tom grew angrier by the day. To be accused of setting fires by the marshal was an affront to his integrity. In a manner of speaking, it was a slap in the face, an insult that was a violation of goodwill between local men. There was a certain amount of dignity afforded by years of relations and established character, and this had been thrown by the wayside.

One morning while eating his wife’s cooking, a fried egg and some grits, Tom listened to the Swap-n-Shopper on the radio. The caller said that he was selling his cattle and would take almost any offer for them, no price beyond consideration. He recognized the cracking voice and the phone number. It was Mr. Leo Mullins, an elderly World War I veteran whose cattle were his livelihood. The ungodly thieves, Tom thought. If they treat us like a bunch of criminals, maybe we should start acting like criminals. At the table, he stiffened and pushed the half-eaten plate away from his chest.

Earlier in the week Tom had driven over to the old Weathersby farm to see if some of the hogs a neighbor had penned up were some of his stock. It was nearing dusk when he left, and he drove through a patch of land owned by Fitz-Blackwell. Smoldering fires burned on both sides of the road, smoke everywhere like a bad haze. He came to a checkpoint where two game wardens and a state forestry investigator stood, and they made him get out of his truck. They searched the inside, under the seat, behind the seat, in the glove box and the bed for anything connected to arson. They found nothing but held him up for twenty minutes asking him questions. The lack of respect enraged Tom. By the time they were done, it was too dark to deal with the penned hogs, and he had to turn around and go back home.

So he began to entertain ways to get even with the timber companies. And though James Luke had never come out and said he was one of the arsonists, Tom figured he’d done some of the burning in the woods. His whereabouts were often questionable, and Tom suspected that James Luke was seeing a woman at the state highway barn where he worked as a safety supervisor. Perhaps he was both burning pines and running around on Nelda. Tom couldn’t say for sure.

Sara walked into the room and asked, “Tom, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, leaving the kitchen table for the barn. If he’d been inclined to drink like his long passed away uncles, he would have gotten a bottle of whiskey, and if he’d been a violent man, he would have done more than just contemplate ways to seek revenge.

James Luke had asked Tom to go raccoon hunting later that evening. At dark, Tom saddled old Sam, slipping his Winchester .22 magnum rifle into his large leather scabbard, which swallowed the small rifle. The horse stood tied to one of the posts on the front porch of the house, both of his eyes closed and one back hoof propped up to rest.

Tom sat in the kitchen doing the crossword puzzle in Friday’s
States-Item
newspaper. He listened to the radio playing The North Carolina Ramblers, Uncle Dave Macon, Jimmie Rodgers, and The Stanley Brothers. The station played Earl Scruggs and his “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” one of Tom’s favorites. It grew later and later as he waited for James Luke to arrive on horseback to go hunting. Sara and Wesley had gone to bed, and after he’d finished the puzzle, he sat reading a history book and listening to old-time music for what seemed like the longest time.

Finally, James Luke knocked on the back door.

Tom could see him in the window as he stood on the steps. He opened the door.

His buddy was dressed in his work clothes. “Let’s go find us a coon,” James Luke said.

“It’s ten o’clock,” Tom said. “I was about to unsaddle Sam. I’ve been a little concerned about you, and I almost called your house, but I was afraid I’d wake up Nelda. What happened?”

“I had some things to do tonight, a few errands to run.”

Tom looked into the darkness. “It sure is smoky out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t suspect I ought to ask.” Tom shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t. Let’s go turn the hounds loose a little ways to the east of Boss Gibson’s place, and we’ll make it a short hunt if we can.”

“Good. That’ll work.”

Out in the yard, Tom and James Luke climbed on their horses. Tom rode Sam, and James Luke straddled Diablo. The two men hunted in the woods north of Tom’s house for a while. James Luke’s black and tan coonhounds treed once, and Tom shot a big sow raccoon out of the top of a gum tree. Then the two men called it a night, heading home.

Back at Tom’s barn, they skinned the animal, James Luke saving the hide to sell. Tom said he’d put the carcass in his freezer, one foot left attached to prove that it wasn’t a common housecat. He planned to offer it to the Widow Ruby Lazarus who lived just down the road. She was an elderly woman without any pension who survived on the charity of neighbors and family members. She had a great love for any wild game folks brought her, and she’d trade preserves or pies for raccoons. In the late winter, Tom would bring her half of a hog to help her sustain herself through the winter months. That is, if he had any hogs left on the place.

It was a quarter to one. After turning his horse out to pasture, Tom went inside to go to bed. James Luke returned home on horseback, riding in the darkness, his two hounds trailing.

On Saturday morning, Tom, Wesley, and James Luke rode the horses through the Big Natalbany River swamp with six dogs, five of them baying curs. James Luke rode with a bullwhip in his hand, which he would pop occasionally, making the sharp sound of a rifle as the cotton popper at the end of the leather plait broke the sound barrier. Wesley rode one of James Luke’s horses, a thinly built Welsh pony not quite as large as a mature horse. The boy weighed eighty-five pounds and the horse fit him well. In fact, he was the only person who ever rode the little horse. James Luke had offered to let Wesley have the horse as a Christmas present the year before, but Tom declined, not wanting to accept such an expensive gift from James Luke.

The curs were loose, but Jubal trailed Tom’s horse tethered to a rope. Tom usually kept him on a rope leash because he would catch animals at inopportune times, sometimes the wrong animal, perhaps even a human, friend or foe. Tom was thankful that it was dry out, because otherwise the horses were apt to bog down in the muddy flats that followed alongside the river.

They’d caught a half-dozen hogs where they foraged in some bait corn on the ground near a livestock pen in the woods, the swine now loaded into a pipe stock trailer hitched to the bumper of Tom’s truck. The pigs’ ears were already notched with Tom’s mark, a flat tip cut off of the right ear and three notches on the left.

“At this rate, hell will stop taking sinners by the time we catch all our damned hogs,” James Luke said. He inspected the pigs in the back of the stock trailer, his hands gripping the pipe walls.

“Yeah, it doesn’t look real promising,” Tom said, scraping a briar from a boot heel with a stick.

“The hogs are getting real wary of the sound of a pickup truck,” James Luke said.

“They hear us and start running the other way. I guess we’ll need to get the jump on them somehow or another, start doing more than just baiting and chasing them with the dogs. Maybe set up some kind of trapdoor pens or something.” Tom slapped the side of the trailer and a hog squealed as if hit by an electric jolt. “I just don’t know. There are so many folks in the woods gathering hogs that they’re really stirred-up. Wouldn’t it be something if we missed the deadline and ended up in jail for trespassing on posted land?”

James Luke shook his head, lit an unfiltered Camel with a white-tipped kitchen match. “That’ll be the end of it all. If they don’t like the fire in the woods now, somebody’s house’ll get torched. They keep pushing me, and somebody pays in blood.”

“At least we have these few to carry to the sale. That’s enough for today,” Tom said.

Wesley walked over to them. “Pops, you care if I load the horses into the trailer?” he asked.

“No, but don’t let the red hog out. Push him into the front compartment with a stick and latch the gate,” Tom said. “If you need help, holler.”

There was a good-sized red boar locked up alone in James Luke’s stock trailer. The trailer was hooked to the back of his 1958 Chevrolet pickup.

Tom and James Luke stood beside the trailer attached to Tom’s truck. They were talking, trying to figure out how to catch the remaining hogs, and how Tom was going to make a living once the hogs were out of the woods and sold. The dogs were tied in the bed of Tom’s truck that was parked in the shade of a live oak tree where the men stood.

A few minutes later, Wesley screamed. When Tom turned and looked toward the bumper-hitch trailer, he could see that Wesley had a two hundred pound boar by a leg and it was dragging him out of the trailer, pulling him like a mad bull.

“Damn it,” James Luke hollered.

But the hog had not gotten away. Instead, it turned on Wesley, knocking him down, making a skillful attack. The hog had no tusks, but his jaws were razor sharp and as hard as cast iron.

In the seconds before the men ran over to help him, Tom had the presence of mind to release his hog dog from the bed of his truck, the place where he was tethered to a rope leash. “Get ’em, Jubal. Catch ’em,” Tom yelled.

The dog made a beeline toward the boy in the back of the open trailer, never barking. Jubal passed James Luke who was already running. In a flying leap, the Catahoula bulldog lunged into the back of the trailer as silent as a sniper, and it appeared at first that he was mauling Wesley. As fast as the strike of a poisonous snake, the dog grabbed the boar by the ear in a snarling jump. The red hog began to squeal like he was being skinned alive, and he shook the dog that was locked on his ear. Jubal was thrown from side to side, and both the dog and hog fell out of the back of the trailer and onto the ground, but the dog never let go.

James Luke picked the boy up by the arms while Jubal stayed clamped to the wayward pig, the squeals ear-piercing. The two men checked on Wesley. His clothes were covered with rank hog and cattle feces. “Son, you all right?” James Luke asked.

“I think so, Uncle Jimmy,” said the boy.

Tom tried to brush off Wesley’s shirt and could see that he was scraped but otherwise in good shape.

Then James Luke fought to hobble the hog’s legs with leather straps while the dog kept his teeth locked onto a bloody ear, the animal squealing even more, but unable to get away. Once the men got the animal’s legs secured, Tom called the dog off and snapped a rope leash to Jubal’s collar, praising him for the faithful work, rubbing his ears and head.

“Can I kick the hog?” Wesley said, as he stared at the tied up boar on the ground, his legs in fetters.

“I think you’d better not,” Tom said.

“Just once, Pops?”

“Not even once.”

The immobile boar was laid out like a sack of feed in the compartment in the front of James Luke’s steel stock trailer. They loaded the horses into the trailer behind where the hog lay bound.

Jubal rode in the back of Tom’s truck with the other curs, all of them fastened on lines near the cab so they wouldn’t fight each other.

After pulling out a fresh shirt from behind the truck seat and giving it to Wesley, Tom let the boy drive his truck. Tom rode beside him. Wesley sat atop a two by twelve pine board and a worn copy of the 1960 Sears and Roebuck catalog. Tom cautioned him to drive slowly on the gravel road, being careful not to jostle the pigs, which squealed as the truck traveled the rutted roadway.

“Am I driving okay, Pops?” Wesley asked, a smile on his face that seemed as wide as the windshield.

“You’re doing fine, son,” Tom said.