He Was Her Man (22 page)

“That ain’t right, man,” said Early, shaking his head. “And you know, it occurs to me that you put yourself in an awful lot of jeopardy, snuggling right up to Archie like that to save me from committing murder. He could have recognized you, man. I’m telling you, I owe you a big one.” Early reached over and grabbed Bobby’s red-gloved hand again.

“No, you don’t owe me a thing,” said Bobby. “Any human being with a shred of graciousness would have done exactly the same thing.”

“Nawh, now, I do,” Early insisted. “There’s anything you want, you tell me.” Early lowered his voice. “I got connections.”

Tate’s eyes rolled. Jack Graham, the same connection Early was bitching about earlier, now he’s bragging on him.

“Well,” said Bobby, “I
am
real worried about my grandma.”

“Olive?” said Cynthia. “What’s wrong with Olive?”

“I can’t find her,” said Bobby. “When I got out to her place this morning, there’s Pearl, worrying and whining. No Mamaw. Pearl and I looked her for a while with this real nice lady named Sam who came along, but we didn’t find hide nor hair of her.”

A woman named Sam? Wasn’t that who Jack said he’d mistaken for Mickey Steele? But Early didn’t want to think about that now. “Who’s Pearl?” he asked instead.

“Pearl? Well, Pearl,” said Bobby, his voice softening the same way it did when he spoke Cynthia’s name aloud, which was the last thing he’d done for the past two years right before he went to sleep, “Pearl’s my dog. I left her with Mamaw when I got sent over to Cummins. Pearl’s a redbone hound. Anybody can find Mamaw, she can.”

“You think maybe Olive went off with Miss Loydell?” asked Cynthia. “The two of them are always traipsing off places together. Though Miss Loydell hasn’t said anything about their going off until June. I water her plants, keep an eye on things, when she’s away.”

“Nope,” said Bobby. “I talked with Miss Loydell just a little while ago. She’s looking for Mamaw herself, said she didn’t show up at a party she’s supposed to last night. Said she asked your daddy”—he turned to Cynthia—“to drive by her house and check on her, but she doesn’t think he did.”

“I’m going to kill that man,” Cynthia said. Then she looked embarrassed, considering what she’d said about violence not two minutes earlier.

“You think we ought to go get Sweet William’s black-and-tans, you want to hunt for her?” asked Tate. “They’re the best trackers in the county.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bobby.

“It wouldn’t be any trouble at all,” said Early. “And I know Sweet William wouldn’t mind. He’s got so old, he doesn’t run those dogs nearly as much as he ought to.”

“What I’m saying is, thank you very kindly, but Pearl’s the best tracker in the county, and if any dog can find Mamaw, it’ll be Pearl that does.”

Tate backed right off. “I certainly didn’t mean to be casting aspersions on your Pearl.” You could brag about your breed and bad-mouth another, but you never wanted to say something about a man’s
specific
dog. You might as well call his baby daughter ugly.

“No offense taken,” said Bobby. “I’m just saying that Pearl’s daddy, Louisiana Red, was some kind of talented dog, and Pearl’s inherited his genes, of course.”

“Now, Bobby, tell us about Louisiana Red,” said Early, signaling Tate for another round on him and taking on the role of host.

“Don’t y’all think we ought to get going, look for Miss Olive?” asked Cynthia.

But the men were already slipping into serious dog-bragging mode. “Well, you know redbones are superlative coon dogs,” said Bobby.

“Nothing finer than the sound of a redbone bawling when he picks up the scent of coon,” agreed Tate, trying to make up for even mentioning Sweet William’s black-and-tans in the same conversation as a redbone.

“That’s right,” said Early. “Nothing finer, except of course when they start to chopping when that coon is treed.”

“Y’all going to sit around talking about dogs when you ought to be out hunting Miss Olive? I’m telling you,” Cynthia said to her reflection in the mirror since there was no one else to say it to, “men are nuts.”

“Now, hush, sugar,” said Bobby, patting the stool beside him with a red glove. “Sit down here and listen, if you want to hear this man-talk.”

“Sure, sure, girlfriend.” Cynthia patted him right back on his fishnet-covered knee.

“And Red,” said Bobby, already too far in to stop, “was more superlative than most. In fact, not only could Red outhunt any coon dog in the whole free world—bluetick, redbone, black-and-tan, brown-and-black-and-white treeing Walkers, brindles—Red could cook.”

“Tell it, Bobby,” said Early the way you do when you’re encouraging a good preacher or a baaad jazzman. “Tell it about the cooking dog.”

“It was a sight,” said Bobby, “in fact, it was a privilege, to witness Red out hunting with my Uncle Clyde in the fall. That was the best time, when the coon season was open, you couldn’t get arrested for jumping the gun, and the woods are starting to dry up a little bit, so there’s kindling.”

“I ’spect it’s good for a dog to have some kindling, he’s going to do his cooking out in the woods,” said Tate. “Red do cook in the woods, don’t he, or he set himself up in the camp with the ladies, whomping out chili and sausage and eggs and french fries and steak served up on them red-and-white checked tablecloths?”

“He cooks in the woods,” said Bobby, ignoring the innuendo of exaggeration. “Now, you know, Red always was straight on coon from a pup up. That dog lived and breathed coon. You could put a fox in front of him, he’d look at you like you’d gone nuts. Cat. Chicken. He wasn’t interested in anything in the world except coon.”

“And the culinary arts,” said Tate.

“Tate, you better leave this man’s story alone,” warned Early. “Give him another beer.”

“Well, that’s true, what you say about the culinary,” said Bobby, leaning back and taking such a deep swig on his beer that his blond wig slipped back an inch or two, giving him a particularly slatternly look. “And the way Red got into that, he was on this real rough old coon one night, coon had been around the block more than once, had led Red up and down a creek, over and under a dozen fences, in and out of a well.”

“A well?” said Cynthia. “It must have not been very deep.”

“Oh, it was deep, all right,” said Bobby. “Forty foot, but that didn’t faze Red a bit. He was in and out of it so fast, he didn’t even get wet. It was the train that slowed him down.”

“The train?” asked Cynthia.

“Yep. See, that coon, when he got out of the well, he took off for this railroad bridge, and Red’s right on his tail, closing in, when the Midnight Special comes roaring through.”

“And made raccoon pancakes, and that’s where Red got the inspiration for his cooking,” said Cynthia.

Bobby went on like she hadn’t said a word. “And at the last minute, the locomotive’s bearing down on them both, going a hundred miles an hour, when the coon bails out over the side trestle, doing one of those perfect swan dives a hundred feet down into the water, barely made a ripple, and Red, he goes the other way, the dog jumps as high as he can in the air, when he comes down, he falls right into the exhaust pipe of the kitchen car of that train, and that was one hot dog for a minute, I’ll tell you, landing smack on the griddle, but he jumped right off that sizzling iron and into the head cook’s heart.”

Cynthia was fanning herself. “It’s getting awfully thick in here.”

“Yep,” said Bobby, “that cook knew a redbone when he saw one, and he kept Red right by his side all the way to Nashville. Taught Red everything he knew.”

“Is that where the cook lived, Nashville?” asked Early.

“No, that’s where Red skipped off the train, took a run by the Grand Ole Opry, heard himself righteous human bawling and chopping. Though my ownself I’d still rather hear a redbone hound giving out that mountain music on a crisp November night than have George Jones singing in my living room. Anyway, then, after he’d got himself an earful, Red came back on home, and that was when he commenced to cooking.”

“Red just walked home from Nashville to Hot Springs?” asked Cynthia.

Bobby looked at her like she’d gone stupid. “It’s only about five hundred miles. Any redbone worth his salt could do that in a breeze.”

“Now what exactly did the dog cook?” asked Early.

“Well,” said Bobby, “if Cynthia would stop interrupting”—and he reached over and patted her on the cheek—“I’d tell you.”

“Go on ahead,” said Cynthia. “My mouth is zipped. Of course, anytime y’all get through lying and want to go look for Miss Olive, I’m your woman.”

“Just a minute, darlin’,” said Bobby. “I’m almost through. Now, here’s what happened. When Red gets home, Uncle Clyde’s so happy to see him, he invites all his friends to go on this big hunt, and he’s clean forgotten it’s Aunt Vandy’s birthday and he’d promised to take her to the HoJo in Little Rock for fried clams. Well, she gets her nose out of joint, and says, Go on, all of y’all. But don’t come looking to me for grub. Y’all can all starve to death in those woods for all I care. Hope you do, in fact.”

Bobby looked at Cynthia, who just nodded at the mother wisdom of Aunt Vandy. Then he went on. “So off they go, Clyde and a whole mess of his friends, bringing six dogs apiece with ’em and about a case of sipping whiskey.”

“Now we’re talking hunting,” said Tate.

“And it’s one of those nights that nothing’s going right. It seems like it takes them three hours before they hear the first bawl. Plus it’s started to drizzle just a little bit, and the leaves are getting slippery, and what with one thing and another, old boys are starting to fall down, and Merle Moore, I remember this, Clyde said he fell in a bog, and it took four of them and two ropes to pull him out. ’Course, Merle weighed a good three hundred pounds. But it’s getting late, and the boys are taking not only drunk but tired and hungry, and Clyde’s starting to think Vandy’s put a curse on them.”

“Sounds like it to me,” said Tate, thinking of his Thelma.

“Anyway, all this while, before they heard the first bawl, those dogs have been all over the county. They’ve been up ridges, through fields, down a waterfall, rooting through the mud, treed themselves a four-point deer.”

Bobby paused a second, but no one rose to the bait.

“And then, finally, finally, those old boys heard the sweetest sound ever heard to man, well, almost the sweetest, depending on whether or not he has a loud or a quiet lady in his bed.”

At which, Cynthia, silent as a shark, grabbed a newspaper off the bar and slapped Bobby in the head with it.

Bobby didn’t flinch. “That sound I referred to, of course, was the sound of sixty hounds all chopping a good hundred barks a minute apiece. And the boys took out running like their pants was on fire, and before long they came up on this little clearing in the piney woods, and they couldn’t believe their eyes.”

“Are we getting to the climax, or is this the denouement?” asked Cynthia.

Bobby went right on. “Because those dogs had treed themselves five coons at once in five separate trees.”

“Jesus,” said Tate reverently, which let Early know that it was time to cut the bartender off. Anybody who believed a word of this story was definitely drunk.

“And it didn’t matter if those coons were up in those trees with their little hands over their eyes or not, which is what they’ll do to keep them from shining in the hunters’ lights, sooner or later, they all were shot. Shot clean. Because the dogs, following Red’s lead, just stepped back when their masters got there, like they were saying, Take it, Mr. Bubba.”

“Instead of chewing the live coon down to little bits of gristle and fur, which is what y’all usually like to see the dogs do?” said Cynthia.

“But the best part”—at this point Bobby stopped and stood, his wig slightly tilted, his lipstick smeared—“was that in the center of the clearing, there was a fire that the dogs had already made by means of running around and around and around so fast that they created sparks which lit the kindling under the wood which they’d stacked. And out to the edge of the fire buried in the dirt were sweet potatoes that they’d dug and collard greens that they’d pulled out of those fall fields they’d rambled through, washed them off in the waterfalls, steaming now in a wrapping of pine needles.”

“Holy shit,” Tate said reverently.

“Well, that’s not what Vandy said.” Bobby shook his head sadly as if he had to tell them something that was going to break their hearts. “Clyde got home and told her how successful the hunt had been, and what a superlative leader and provider Louisiana Red had been, and how proud of him he was, and Vandy said, If that dog had any kind of grit, he’d of made you some cornbread to eat with those greens.” Bobby paused dramatically for a count of 10. “So the next time Clyde took Red out, Red did that very thing. He tacked homemade cornbread with cracklings on to his menu.”

At which, the three men almost beat each other to death, pounding backs, slapping hands. Cynthia sat there, silently sipping her beer.

And when the hooting and the howling were finally over with, and the tears had been wiped, and the noses blown, and the final harump harumped, Cynthia said, “I know y’all think that’s real funny because of Vandy, right?”

“Now, Cynthia,” said Bobby. “That’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that Red was a superlative dog, which means Pearl’s come from some superlative stock.”

“Well, all I’ve got to say is my grandma used to have a dog that would make Pearl look like caterpillar snot.”

“Oooooooooh, watch out,” said Early.

“I think I’m going to go on in the back room and see about some, well, some
things
,”
said Tate.

“You most certainly are not,” said Cynthia. “I sat here and listened to Bobby’s incredibly boring story about the incredibly boring sire of his incredibly boring Pearl, and now I’m going to tell about my grandma’s dog.”