“We had this dog, part Catahoula Cur — you ever heard of them?”
“State dog of Louisiana,” Hoyt said.
“Looks kind of prehistoric,” Skeet said. “They breed them over in the Catahoula Swamp in Louisiana. Well, this dog was a cross between a Catahoula Cur and a pit bull, and that’s the best pig dog they is. Like a compact Doberman. They can run like a deer dog and they’re tough and strong as a pit bull. And they got that streak of meanness they need, because a boar is just mean as hell.” Skeet said he’d seen an African boar fight a whole pack of lions on TV one night, did we see that? Lions tore the boar to bits, but he fought the whole time. “I mean you couldn’t hardly see the boar for all the lion asses stuck up in the air over him, tails swishing, ripping him up, twenty lions or more,” Skeet said. They had pieces of him scattered around the savanna in seconds, but there was his old head, tusking blindly even as one of the lions licked at his heart. Skeet took another bite of barbecue and chewed, looking off down the grassy slope at the tussling boy and dogs.
“This dog Titus and I had, we bought him off a fellow down there said he was the best dog he’d ever seen for catching a hog, and he was right.” Titus nodded in agreement. “We got out in the swamp with him, and bim, he was off on a trail, and ran us all over that swamp for about an hour, and never quit until he run down that hog.
“We come up on him out in this little clearing, and he’s got this big old hog by the snout, holding his head down on the ground, hog snorting and grunting and his eyes leaking bile. I mean, that dog had him. But then we come to find out how we got this wonder dog at such a bargain.”
“I had a preacher sell me a blind dog one time,” Hoyt said. “Said how hot he was for a rabbit, and cheap. Sumbitch when I let loose the leash took off flying after a rabbit and run right into an oak tree, knocked hisself cold.”
Everybody laughed at that.
“Preacher said, ‘I never said he wasn’t blind,’ ” Hoyt said.
“Well, this dog wasn’t blind,” Skeet said, “not literally, but you might could say he had a blind spot. He would run the hog down, like he’s supposed to do, then take it by the snout and hold its old head down, so you can go up and hog-tie him and take him in. Way they do down there, like Bailey’s doing here, they castrate them and pen them up, let the meat sweeten awhile before they kill ’em.
“But this dog, once you grabbed the hog by the hind legs and begun to tie him, thought his job was done, and he lets go.”
Skeet paused here, looking around at us. “So there was old Titus, gentlemen, playing wheelbarrow with a wild pig that’s trying to twist around and rip his nuts off with one of them tusks. I mean that son of a bitch is mean, eyes all bloodshot, foaming at the mouth. That meat ain’t too tough, is it?”
Everyone mumbled in the negative.
“Ain’t gamy, is it?”
Naw, uhn-uh.
“So finally Titus jumped around close to a tree, lets go of the hog and hops up into it, and I’m already behind one and peeping out, and the hog jabbed his tuskers at the tree Titus was in for a minute and then shot out through the woods again, and the dog — he’d been jumping around and barking and growling and nipping at the hog — took out after him again. So Titus climbed down and we ran after them.”
“Dog was good at catching the hog,” Titus said.
“That’s right,” Skeet said. “Just didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation, once he’d done it. Actually, the way I see it, the dog figured that once the man touched the hog, then he had taken possession of the hog, see, and his job — the dog’s was over.
“Anyway, you can imagine, Titus wasn’t going near that hog held by that dog again, so one of these fellows we’re with tries it, and the same thing happens, two more times: As soon as the man touched the hog, the dog let go. And it was starting to get dark. But this fellow, name was Beauregard or something—”
“Beaucarte,” Titus said.
“—he comes up with a plan. And the next time the dog has the hog down, he manages with some kind of knot to hog-tie the hog without actually touching the hog, and the dog’s watching his every move, you know, and looking into his eyes every now and then, thinking, Why the hell ain’t he taking hold of this hog, but he holds on just fine till it’s done. But then when the guy starts to drag the hog over to this pole we go’n carry him out on, the dog — since the man hasn’t actually touched the hog at all with his hands, now — he’s still hanging on, and pulling backwards and growling like a pup holding on to a sock. Damn hog is squawling in pain and starting to buck.”
Skeet stopped here a minute to chow down on his barbecue before it got cold, and we waited on him. Bailey seemed distant, looking out over the lake, sitting still, not eating any barbecue himself.
“So the guy stops and looks back at that dog, and you could see him thinking about it. Just standing there looking at that dog. And we were tired, boy, I mean we’d been running through that damn swamp all day, and we was give out. And I could see the guy thinking about it, thinking all he had to do was reach down and touch that hog one time, and the dog would let go. And you could see the dog looking at him, still chomped down on the hog’s nose, looking up at the guy as if to say, Well, you go’n touch the hog or ain’t you? And that’s when the guy pulls his.44 Redhawk out, cocks it, and blows the son of a bitch away.”
“The hog?” says Jack McAdams, sounding hopeful. Skeet shakes his head.
“The dog,” he says.
“Your dog?” Hoyt says.
“That’s right,” Skeet said. “All in all, I guess he was doing me a favor.”
Everybody stopped eating, looking at Skeet, who finished up the little bit of barbecue on his plate and sopped up the sauce and grease with a piece of white bread. He rattled the ice chips and water in the bottom of his cup and drained the sugar-whiskey water, and I saw Russell note this and slip back into the house for more drinks.
“I guess he let go then,” Bailey said quietly, sunk deeply into his Adirondack. “The dog.”
“No,” Skeet said, “he didn’t.
“He was a mess, head all blown away, but his jaws still clamped on that nose in a death grip. He was rigor-mortised onto that hog. You can imagine the state of mind of the hog right then, that.44 laid down the ridge of his nose and going boom, shooting blue flame, and that dog’s head opening up, blood and brains and bone all over him, dog teeth clamping down even more on his nose. Hog went crazy. He jumped up and thrashed his head around, screaming in pain, shook the ropes almost free, and started hobbling and belly-crawling around this little clearing we were in. And he was dragging the dog around, flopping it around, and it wadn’t anything now but a set of teeth attached to a carcass, just a body and jaws.
“Meanwhile old Beaucarte’s feet had gotten tangled in the ropes and so there they all were, thrashing around in the near-dark, stinking swamp with a wild hog, a dead dog, and this damn cracker trying to aim his hand-cannon at the hog just to make it all stop, and finally he shot it, the hog. By then it was almost dark, and everything was still as the eye of hurricane, and the air smelled of gunpowder smoke and blood and something strange like sulfur, with the swamp rot and the gore and the sinking feeling we all had with a hunt gone wrong, and a good dog with just one flaw now dead, and everybody felt bad about it, especially this long, skinny Beaucarte.