“Dónde le duele?” Esteban asked where it hurt.
“My leg. No puedo over el pierna., I need a doctor. Listen, kid, I’m about to slip under any second now. Puedo usted un médico?”
Esteban nodded slowly.
A cool wind blew through the camp. It was darker now.
“Hayviento,” Cole said, shivering, holding his arm tight to his body and clutching his shirt.
Esteban tossed him a blanket.
“Me llamo, Cole.” He passed the rifle butt-first to the boy. “My jeep is near the water hole. Just press the button and talk. Please.”
The boy held the rifle and said nothing.
Cole closed his eyes, felt consciousness slipping away.
“Lo siento,” he heard the whispered words of the boy.
Turtle
The boards of the house were gray like those of so many old barns. The overhang of the front porch was supported in part, if not whole by two four-by-fours which stood out because of their light brown freshness. The house sat off the ground on pillars of chipped brick. Chickens walked around under there.
A dark man sat on the porch, his complexion highlighted by his white tractor cap. The cap was crisp and new. His name was Bubba Johnson. He scratched at his cheek while he watched me approach.
“How’s it going, Bubba?” I asked.
“Okay, Dan. How you doin’?”
“Just fine.”
He started to pull himself from his rocker. “Let me get you a chair.”
“Stay there,” I said. “I’ll just sit right here.” I sat on the porch with my feet riding down the steps. “Your corn is looking real good.”
“Yeah, but it got cockaburrs in it. Been out there most of the day. On my knees.”
“Is that your soybeans back that way?”
“No, that’s Theodore Cheesboro’s.”
“I didn’t think your property went that far.”
“Well, that ain’t his property neither,” he laughed. “I don’t know whose it is. Probably belong to some white fella in Rock Hill. But it ain’t Theodore’s.”
I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket and shook one high. I pulled it out with my mouth, tilted the pack toward Bubba.
He shook his head.
“Smart,” I said. I struck a match on the cinderblock step and lit up. “I read where they closed one of the mills. The one where you work?”
“‘Fraid so.” He was momentarily silent. “I might go work at Industrial. I been there already for a physical.” He looked out over the corn. “They closed her up, all right.”
“You like turtle?” I asked.
“Turtle meat?”
“I killed one last week. Cut him up and froze him. I was thinking I’d fry some up tonight.”
“I love turtle.”
“Come on over.”
“I will.”
He wiped perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s a hot one, ain’t it?”
“Sure is,” I said, “but it seems to be cooling off a bit.”
“Yeah, it’s gonna rain. We need it, too.”
I tossed my half-smoked cigarette out into the yard.
“Wanna see some babies?” he asked.
I looked at him.
“Pigs. Wanna see some baby pigs?”
“Sure.”
Bubba was shoeless. He started down the steps past me.
“You want your boots?” I asked.
“Don’t need’ em.”
We walked around the house. We passed his tractor parked out back.
“I hear you got yourself a tractor?’ he said.
“Yep. It’s a ‘49. Needs some work.”
“A Ford?”
“Right.”
“I believe I know the model. Good machine if you get her running.”
The pigs began to squeal loudly.
“I wonder what all that’s about,” he said and we walked faster down the hill toward the pens.
Closer, I could see the little pigs bunching up against their outstretched mother and just outside the pen a lone little pig trying to get back in.
“So, that’s what the commotion is,” Bubba said. “Why don’t you grab him, Dan, and stick him back in there. I’m barefoot.”
I walked around the pen and chased the little guy until I cornered him against the side of the feed shed. I grabbed him by his back legs and tossed him over the wire.
“There you go,” said Bubba.
“How many you got?” I slapped my hands clean on my jeans.
“Ten. You think you might wanna try some pigs?”
“Raising ’em?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll try anything. Maybe.”
He laughed.
He turned and headed back to the house. I followed. We walked past a large uprooted tree. I stopped to look.
“Storm did that,” he said.
“Damn. When was that?”
“That big one, about a month or so ago.”
“Hunh.”
“Well, that tree didn’t have real deep roots, no way. See.” He pointed.
“Still, it’s a big tree. Must have been some wind. You’re lucky it fell that way.”
“You heard the story about the slave woman and the bad storm?”
“No.”
“They say there was this slave woman who was real scared of thunder and lightning and every time a storm would brew up she’d run up to the white people’s house. Well, this real bad storm come up and she went running up there. She had to stay in the kitchen and back then, you know, the kitchen was sometimes sorta off the house, just sorta attached. Well, this big wind come up and picked up the kitchen and carried it down the road and the slave woman got kilt.”
“Some wind,” I said.
“Yeah. If she had stayed home and not gone runnin’ to them white folks, she’d have been all right.”
A flash of lightning turned both our heads south.
“Bad-looking cloud,” I said.
“It don’t look real friendly.”
We walked on down the dirt drive to my car. A skyrocket split the darkening sky.
“You’d think people would stop selling those damn things,” I said.
“People ain’t got good sense. Fella told me, this fella works at the fireworks place, he told me that people come in there and spend thirty, forty dollars.”
“Phew.”
“I saw a burnt spot in the field cross the highway down that way.” He pointed. “I bet it was some fireworks which done it. Dangerous.”
“I hear you.” I opened my car door. “See you tonight.”
“Probably after the storm.”
The storm was short-lived. I dropped some shortening into the skillet and watched it slide around and melt. Bubba’s truck came roaring up. He needed a muffler.
“Come on in!” I shouted. “Back here in the kitchen. Where the big wind can get us.”
He laughed, hung his cap on a nail. He had a bottle with him. He set it on the table, then pulled a chair around and sat in it backwards, straddling it.
“That ain’t Scotch,” I said, pointing to his bottle.
“Sure ain’t. This here is white liquor. The last batch I ever made.”
“When was that?”
“Fifteen years ago.” He rubbed his face. “Got some glasses?”
I pulled a couple of glasses down and put them on the table.
“You can’t even taste this stuff till it goes down,” he said.
“Where was this still?” I asked, dropping the first pieces of turtle into the pan.
“I used to keep ’em near runnin’ water.”
“Like the branch near the old canal?” I asked. “Down below Old Tuck’s place?”
“Yeah.” He gave me a baffled look.
“I found one of your stills once. Well, the vat. I pissed in it.”
“Good for it,” he said and laughed.
“If you say so.”
“I’ll tell you when I stopped drinkin’ that stuff.”