Mastodonia (4 page)

“But that wasn't what I was talking about. I wasn't asking for the sharing as a gift. I meant a partnership. You don't want to go back to teaching. You want to keep on with the dig and I think you should. You are onto something important and it shouldn't be interrupted. If I could help a little so you wouldn't have to leave …”

“No,” I said harshly. “Don't go any further. No, I wouldn't have it. You're offering to finance me and I won't have it.”

“You make it sound so terrible,” she said. “As if I had proposed something horrible. I'm not trying to take you over, Asa. It isn't that. I have faith in you, is all, and it's a shame that you have to …”

“It's big business offering to bail out the underprivileged,” I said angrily. “Damn it, Rila, I will not be patronized.”

“I'm sorry, then, that I mentioned it. I had hoped you'd understand.”

“Goddamn it, why did you have to mention it? You should know me better than that. It all was going so fine and now …”

“Asa, remember the last time. The horrible fight we had. It ruined twenty years for us. Let us not let that happen again.”

“Fight? I don't remember any fight.”

“I was the one who was angry that time. You had gone off with a couple of the men and got plastered, neglecting me. You tried to explain, you tried to say you were sorry, but I wouldn't listen. It was the last day at the dig or the next to the last day and I never had the time to get over being angry. We can't let something like that happen now. At least, I don't want it to. How about you?”

“No,” I said, “neither do I want that to happen. But I can't take money from you. No matter how well off you are, how little you would miss it.”

“Not well off,” she said. “And, again, I'm sorry. Can't we just forget it? And can I stay around for another little while?”

“As long as you wish,” I told her. “Forever, if you want to.”

“How about your friends and neighbors—will they talk about us?”

“You're damn right they'll talk about us. A place like Willow Bend hasn't much to talk about; they grab at any little thing.”

“You don't seem concerned.”

“Why should I be? I'm that nutty Steele kid, who came back to the old hometown, and they're suspicious of me and resentful of me and the most of them don't like me. They're friendly, certainly, but they talk about me behind my back. They don't like anyone who isn't bogged down in their particular brand of mediocrity. It's defensive, I suppose. In front of anyone who left the town and came back short of utter defeat, they feel naked and inferior. They are acutely aware of their provincialism. That is the way it is. So, unless you are concerned about yourself, don't give it another thought.”

“I am not at all concerned,” she said, “and if you are thinking of making an honest woman of me …”

“The thought,” I told her, “has not crossed my mind.”

SIX

“So you want to know about the coon that isn't any coon,” Ezra Hopkins said to Rila. “It took me, God knows, long enough to find out that it wasn't any coon.”

“You're sure it's not a coon?”

“Miss, I'm sure of that. Trouble is, I don't know what it is. If old Ranger here could only talk, maybe he could tell you more than I can.”

He pulled at the ears of the gaunt hound that lay beside his chair. Ranger blinked his eyes lazily; he liked to have his ears pulled.

“We could bring Hiram here some time,” I said. “He could talk with Ranger. He claims that he can talk with Bowser. He talks with Bowser all the time.”

“Well, now,” said Ezra, “I won't argue with that. There'd been a time I would have, but not any more.”

“Let's not talk about Hiram and Bowser now,” said Rila. “Please go ahead and tell me of this coon.”

“Boy and man,” said Ezra, “I have ranged these hills. For more than fifty years. There have been some changes other places, but not many of them here. This land isn't fit for farming. It mostly stands on edge. Some parts of it are used to run cattle in, but even cattle don't get no farther into the hills than they have to go. Time to time someone tries to do some logging, but it never amounts to much, because they lose money trying to get the timber out of here once it has been cut. So, all these years, these hills have been my hills. Them and the things that are in them. Legally, I own the few useless acres that this shack stands on, but, in another way, I own it all.”

“You love the hills,” said Rila.

“Well, I suppose I do. Loving comes from knowing and I know these hills. I could show you things you never would believe. I know a place where the pink lady's slippers grow and the pink ones are wild for sure. The yellow ones will stand some tampering with, although not very much; the pink ones won't stand tampering at all. Turn some cattle into a place where the pink ones bloom and in a couple of seasons, they are gone. Pick more than a few of them and they are gone. People say you don't find them any more, that there are no more in these hills. But I tell you, miss, I know where there is a patch of them. I don't tell no one where and I don't pick them and I don't tramp around among them. I let them strictly be. I just stand off a ways and look at them and think of the pity of it—that once these hills were covered by them, but not any more. And I know where a she-fox has her den, hidden well away. She has raised six litters there, and once the cubs are grown a bit, they come out and play around the den, little awkward things that fight among themselves, play fighting, that is, wrestling and tusseling, and I have a place where I can sit and watch them. I think the old she-fox must know that I am there, but she doesn't seem to mind. After all these years, she knows I mean no harm.”

The shack crouched against the steep hillside just above a stream that dashed and chattered down its rocky bed. Trees crowded close and a short distance up the hill from the shack, a rocky outcropping thrust out of the sloping earth. The chairs in which we sat, in front of the shack, had their back legs sawed short to equalize the slope. A pail and washbasin stood on a bench beside the open door. Against one wall of the shack was ranged a pile of firewood. Smoke streamed lazily from the chimney.

“I am comfortable here,” said Ezra. “Being comfortable comes from not wanting much. Folks up in town will tell you that I'm worthless and I suppose I am, but who are they to measure worth? They say I do some drinking and that is the honest truth. Couple of times a year I go off on a bender, but I never hurt no one. I never cheated anyone that I can think of. I've never told a lie. I have one real bad failing. I talk too much, but that comes from hardly ever seeing anyone to talk with. When someone does come visiting, it seems that I can't stop. But enough of that. You came to hear about Ranger's pal.”

“Asa never told me that creature was Ranger's pal.”

“Oh, he's Ranger's pal all right.”

“But you and Ranger hunt him.”

“Maybe at one time, but not any more. In my younger days, I was a hunter and a trapper. But I haven't done any of either for several years. I hung up my traps with a feeling of shame that I had ever used them. I still knock over a squirrel every now and then for stew and a rabbit or a grouse. I still hunt some, but only as the Indians hunted: for meat to fill the pot. There are times when I don't even do that, when I stay my hand. I suppose that as a predator, I have the right to hunt—at least, that is what I tell myself—but I do not have the license to kill, without cause or reason, my brothers of the woods. Of all the hunting, I liked coon hunting best. Have you ever hunted coon?”

“No, I never have,” said Rila. “I've never hunted anything.”

“You hunt coon only in the fall. The dog runs the coon until he puts him up a tree, then you try to locate him in the tree and shoot him. Mostly for his pelt, or, what is worse, for the sport of it—if you can call killing sport. Although when I killed coon, I killed not for the pelt alone, but for eating, too. There are people who believe that coon are not fit to eat, but, I tell you, they are wrong. It's not the hunting though; it's the crispness of the autumn night, the sharp briskness of the air, the smell of fallen leaves, the closeness that you feel with nature. That and the thrill of the hunt; for I do admit there is a thrill in hunting.

“But there finally came a time, when Ranger was a pup—and he's an old dog now—that I quit killing coon. I did not quit the hunting, but I quit the killing. Ranger went out of nights and we hunted coon. When he put one up a tree, I would hunt it out and aim the gun at it, but I did not pull the trigger. Hunting without shooting, without killing. Ranger didn't understand at first, but finally he did. I thought that not killing, I might ruin him, but he understood. Dogs can understand a lot if you are patient with them.

“So we hunted without killing, Ranger and I, and, in time, I became aware that there was one coon which led us a sterner chase than any of the others. He knew all the tricks of the hunted and many nights, Ranger was unable to bring him to a tree. Oftener and oftener we ran him, as if he delighted in the chase as much as we—an old buck coon that had become our equal or more than our equal and who was using us as much as we were using him, laughing at us all the while, playing games with us. I admired him, of course. You are compelled to admire a worthy opponent who plays the game as skillfully, or perhaps more skillfully, than you do. But I became a bit angry at him, as well. He was just too good; he was making fools of us. So, finally, not by any conscious decision, but by degrees, I found myself ready, in regard to this particular coon, to abandon my rule to never kill another coon. If Ranger could tree and hold him and I could find him in the tree, I'd kill him and prove, once and for all, which was the better, he or us. You understand that coon hunting is done only in the fall, but that was not true with this particular coon. Many times, in other months of the year, Ranger ran him alone, and there were nights when I'd go out as well. It became a never-ending game between Ranger and the coon, and occasionally I joined in, no matter what the season.”

“How are you sure it was a coon?” asked Rila. “Ranger might have been running something else—a fox, a wolf.”

Ezra said stiffly, “Ranger would never have hunted anything but a coon. He's a coon hunter; he comes of a long line of coon dogs.”

I said to Rila, “Ezra's right. A coon dog is a coon dog. If he runs a rabbit or a fox, he's worthless as a coon dog.”

“So you never saw this coon,” Rila said to Ezra, “and you never killed him.”

“But I did. See him, I mean. It was one night, several years ago. Ranger put him up near morning, four o'clock or so, and I finally spotted him, a shape against the sky, crouched on a limb near the top of the tree, making himself flat against the limb, hoping he'd not be seen. I raised the gun, but I was breathing so hard from my run that I couldn't take good aim. The muzzle just kept going around and around in little circles. So I lowered the gun and waited until I was breathing easier and he stayed there, crouched on his limb. He must have known that I was there, but he never stirred. Then, finally, I raised the gun again and the aim was steady. I had my finger on the trigger, but I never pulled it. It must have been a minute that I had him in the sights and my finger on the trigger, ready to pull, but I didn't pull. I don't know what happened. Looking back on it, I imagine I thought of all the nights of running and how it would be all gone if I pulled the trigger. How, instead of a respected opponent, I'd have no more than a furry body, and how neither one of us again could have the fun of hunting or of being hunted. I don't remember thinking this, but it must have been what I thought, and when I was at the end of thinking, I brought the gun down. When I put the gun down, the coon up in the tree turned his head and looked at me.

“Now, here's a funny thing. The tree was tall and the coon was well up in its top. The night was not exactly dark—the sky was brightening with the coming dawn—but the coon was still too far away and the night still too dark to see distinctly the face of any coon. And yet, when he turned his head, I saw his face and it was not a coon's face. It was more like a cat's face, although it was not a cat's face, either. It had whiskers like a cat and even from the distance where I stood, I could see the whiskers. Its face was fat and round and still—this is awful hard to tell and make it sound reasonable—and still it was a sort of bony face, like a skull that was fleshed out. Its eyes were big and round, unblinking, like an owl's eyes. I should have been scared out of my britches. But I wasn't. I just stood there, looking back at this catlike face, surprised, of course, but not as surprised as I might have been. I believe that all along, without admitting it to myself, without saying it out loud, I had known this thing we had been chasing wasn't any coon. Then it grinned at me. Don't ask me how it grinned or how I knew it grinned. I saw no teeth, I'm certain, but I knew it grinned. It had the feeling of a grin. Not a grin at having beaten me and Ranger, but a grin of good fellowship, a grin that said, ‘Haven't we been having an awful lot of fun?' And so, I tucked my gun underneath my arm and headed back for home, with Ranger following me.”

“There's one thing wrong,” said Rila. “You said that Ranger is a coon dog and will hunt nothing but a coon.”

“That puzzled me, too,” said Ezra. “There were times when I wondered an awful lot about it. That's why, I suppose, I wouldn't admit to myself that it wasn't any coon, even when I must have known it wasn't. But since that night I told you about, Ranger has run him many times, and sometimes I've joined in for the simple fun of it. I've seen old Catface around the place, peering at me from a bush or tree, and when he knows I see him, he always grins at me. A grin of good fellowship; nothing mean in it. You have seen him, Asa?”