This podcast may not be suitable for young listeners. Steve Lily Journal entry number
nine, Squatch Operators, Hook and I love Chinese buffets. Lewis doesn't,
but sometimes we can talk him into suffering through some egg rolls and lomaine.
I had just filled my plate was doing a balancing act walking back to the
table, hoping none of it will slide off in the floor. I made
it to the table missing only one piece of sweet and sour chicken. Lewis
took a long look at my plate. You eat like a pig, Steve,
Well, I'm hungry. If I ate like that, I'd weigh three
hundred pounds, Lewis said, shaking his head. You are away three hundred
pounds, Lewis, I said, and shoveled a big scoop a general so
chicken in my mouth. Four hundred. Then Lewis said, Grannie, give
it a year or two, you'll hit four hundred. I said, laughing.
How did this conversation turn to me? Said Louis. Steve, how
do you not put on weight eating all that shit? Asked Huk Good metabolism.
The big man rolled his eyes and started for the buffet, but not
before he said next time, I'm picking where we eat. We had been
away for two days. A job came up in northeast Darkansas that promised four
squatches, maybe more. We were sanctioned to kill as many as we saw,
and we did our research on Monday, and we killed the squatches on
Tuesday, well almost all of them. It was now seven pm, and
we were already back in Memphis and fifteen thousand dollars wealthier than we were this
morning. We would have been twenty thousand dollars richer. But hook let an
old female go. I was starvin' as usual, an so was hooked,
And so we stopped at a new Chinese buffet on Union Avenue that we had
never tried. It was a straight shot after coming east over the New Bridge.
An I'd been wont to try an four bites into my meal, I
was glad we stopped. The hunt in Arkansas had not been flagged as urgent
until last Saturday. Most of the squatches in that area stayed in the small
strip of timber that grows in the Saint Francis River basin. Northeast Arkansas is
stripped of woodlands to make way for rice and bean fields. The closer you
get to the Saint Francis, the more expensive it is to prep the land
for ag products. The area is full of one hundred year old timber and
it floods all the time. There's enough timber left to provide habitat for a
small number of squatches. For the most part, we always have work.
Right now, I have files on my laptop with Intel on four clans that
aren't causing any problems at the moment. If these files are not flagged as
urgent, we can do our job on our timetable. And this gig in
Arkansas would be the most difficult out of the five jobs we had at the
time, difficult due to the Saint Francis River basin. We elected to get
this tough one out of the way and then we could go make some easy
money. Things would change rapidly on this clan through that week, though.
The Saint Francis is a tributary of the Mississippi that dumps into the Big River
south of Memphis. At its headwaters in Missouri, it's a clear mountain stream.
The closer it gets to the Mississippi, the muddier it gets, and
by the time the waters reach hard World, Missouri the water spreads out into
a nasty snake in festive swath of unattractive landscape. While in the basin the
remaining timber is small by comparison to the Delta wetlands we know so well.
It is a highly concentrated system of river channel, beaver huts and several flood
controlled ditches. The maze of ditches will confuse a man if he's not familiar
with the area. Luckily, it's only a short boat ride at most in
any direction to find civilization. You can get lost, but not for long
if you keep your cool. The area of natural bottom land is a narrow
strip reaching south from card Well to Mark Tree, Arkansas. And it's a
fairly long strip of woods, but you could walk the width of it in
half a day. The intel we had on this small clan was that for
some reason they had begun leaving the timber, going as far as Lepanto to
raid the locals trash cans and a few who own chickens, and the many
who own dogs. Everybody in this area has a dog. Just drive a
gravel road and you'll see them all chained up in the backyard behind every single
wide Dogs are the poor man security system, the Eye and the Sky has
known about this clan for months. This group of mute varmints has been classified
as docile, not causing any trouble in the local area. Well, that
changed when an older woman called the law claiming a neighborhood poisoned her dog.
The sheriff's men had little doubt a meth head living down the road from the
old woman had done something with a little dog, but they couldn't prove it.
They had been out to the house to help settle some disputes, and
the case was forgotten the next day until another resident of the area reported that
all of her chickens had been taken from the pen. Only a few feathers
remained littering the ground. The chicken caper was written off as a predator doing
what they do. However, the family claimed that they had seen two giant
men. They looked like football players with their uniforms on, said the woman
running away in the cotton field. Her husband had popped off a few rounds
from a shotgun to speed them on their way. Still nothing that would lead
anyone to think there was anything happening out of the ordinary, and over a
three week period reports were filed from multiple disturbances. Trash cans had not only
been turned over, but destroyed shredded to be more accurate. Several dogs had
vanished and some were prized retrievers at duck Hunters had spent thousands on the event
that moved this clan from docile to hostile was a report from a man who
left his house early that morning on his way to his duck lease. The
report read that he was traveling at a fast clip on a Gravel County road
when out of nowhere, two large mail squatches popped out of the ditch.
He didn't know what they were at first, but he would later. The
driver said that he could have stopped, but he could see clearly the big
things were carrying more than one dog under each arm. Knowing there was a
dog theft crime spree happening in the area, he felt it was his civic
duty to speed up rather than to slow down to miss the strange animal in
his headlights. He clipped one of the thieves, knocking it into the left
hand ditch, causing it to drop several dogs. Apparently the squatch had not
appreciated the gesture because it got up out of the ditch approached the now terrified
driver and slammed its fist down on the hood of the truck. There was
a photograph of the vehicle and the file, and I had to laugh when
I saw that the truck had to be towed. The beast had punched down
so hard that the Chevy engine block had been punched out of the truck downward,
breaking the engine mounts, and coming to rest on the gravel road.
The truck's bed angled up at forty five degrees with the boat still attached.
The driver claimed he pissed all over himself, and had he known these were
animals and not crackheads stealing dogs, his civic minded action of speeding up would
have been more thought out. Apparently, the squatch lost interest in the now
destroyed metal thing with lights and fled the scene through a muddy bean filled The
dead dogs were left on the road. The driver claimed without a doubt that
these were big foots, after he had thought about it for a while.
He'd sent him with his own goddamn eyes, he said. Of course,
he was dismissed as the usual yo ass is crazy treatment, and he left
the building after giving his statement, muttering the ever repeated words I hear from
these witnesses. I know what the hell I saw. It Ain't nobody going
to change my mind. The event was in our area of operations, so
we got the notice informing us that the clan had gone rogue and we needed
to get on this pretty quick. The red light was blinking letting us know
the group was hostile, and the job went from go get it when you
can to go get it done now, Steve, you're gonna eat that egg
roll, asked Lewis. Oh you like Chinese now, I said Lewis,
Grinn's growing on me. We finished up and paid. At the door,
Lewis was rubbing his belly. I guess he got enough to eat. We
were at the trailer park thirty minutes later and Lewis walked into his trailer and
Hook left in his big SUV. I think Hook had to work a shift
at the Golden Tush. That's a strip club on Lamar Avenue in Memphis.
It's owned by the MC in a roundabout way, and working there as his
contribution to their calls, among other things. I don't know how he works
his regular hours and still does this squatch killing gig. And I think he
was extra tired. Tonight Hook had done most of the work in Arkansas,
and it happened to work out that way. It wasn't by design. From
our resources, we knew where the squatches were holed up. To get there,
we would have to navigate through the various drainage ditches to a spot that
would put us close and then we would walk or wade the last mile.
Getting there was tricky. Duck season was in the Saint Francis area from the
Arkansas state line all the way to the Mississippi would be covered up with duck
hunters. However, in this area, hunters were required to hunt from a
permanent blind and it's a good old boys system, and honestly, they act
like little kids over their duck blinds. If anyone approaches or motors buying a
boat, they raised hell. We didn't give a shit about that, but
it did mean that we would be noticed taking the most upfront approach. We
didn't get to the area we needed to get to by being stealthy. I
fired up my fifty horse Yamaha and we ran through that ditch system fully planed
out and wide open, and when we ran close by a spread of decoys,
the hunters would start raising hell and firing their shotguns in the air.
We just waved and smiled and just kept on going. In this clan,
there were three males and one female, one alpha, one smaller beta,
a juvenile male, and a childbearing female. We eased on to a muddy
bank, which we thought was the closest point to their nest, and I
opened my trusty laptop. The satellite image showed only one remained in the nest,
and it was in the middle of the day. They should have been
all there sleeping well. After discussing the matter, we decided to hit them
early the next morning when they returned to the nest. It was typically a
bad move to go into a nest in the middle of the day. Was
several unaccounted for squatches, but we've done it before. To make sure,
though, I widened the screen to see if I could make out the missing
three. All I got was hunters and various blinds around the swamp. The
squatches had either gone underground, which would be very difficult to do in this
terrain, or they were somewhere else doing whatever the hell they do in the
daylight. There is no way to know when these things throw us a curve.
We just have to roll with the punches. Lewis suggested that we wait
until dark, after the hunters had left the area. We could monitor the
nest an still maybe get a shot at the whole clan after dark. We
all agreed. Now I watched the screen. Louis got comfortable and he fell
asleep, but Hook was fidgetty and he couldn't sit still. Hook, sit
your ass down, boy, said Louis. You gonna wear a trail walkin
back and forth like that? Yeah, maybe I had too much coffee this
mornin'. Steve, you got any hits to the south. I need to
take a walk, said Huk. I'm not seeing anything. Don't go too
far. An check on the radio in thirty minutes, so we know you're
old k all right, Huk, with his rifle pinned up, an ready
strolled off into the swamp. I hop'd he wouldn't go out of sight,
but he did. No big deal. I guess Hook is a big boy,
an knows his way around these areas. Plus, a communication gear we
used has a two mile range. An it wouldn't be dark for several hours.
When I opened the door to my trailer, Lily burst out an damned
near tackle me. A friend in the park had been watching after Lily.
And when I'm out for more than a day, a phone calls. All
it takes and Angela, the woman who lives two doors down, She's always
happy to look after my dog. Everyone in the park loves this dog,
especially the kids. There are a couple of assholes here who don't like dogs.
Lily knows who they are and she avoids them. After greeting me,
Lily burned a trail around to the front down the road, and she caught
Louis before he got up on his porch. I could hear Louis a Lily
playing that far away. Lily would be let into Louis's house and she might
not come home for hours. Now I needed to get some sleep, so
I walked down to get her. Now stop by Angela's and I paid her
for watching Lily. Steve, you don't owe anything for letting that dog out.
I'm tired of taking your money for nothing. Just take the cash,
woman, don't make me have to put you in your place, I said,
affectionately. Oh, I'm real scared, you big pushover. I wantted
a twin up and thumped it in on her kitchen table, and then I
left. You're an asshole, Steve, she said. Lily had been locked
up in the house most of the day, so I clipped a leash on
her as we walked off Lewis's porch. Steve, you can leave her here
if you won't, said Lewis. I need to walk some energy off of
her. You two can have a sleepover lad of this week. I said,
all right, I'm gonna remind you. Our normal route around the area
was a thirty minute stroll that usually did the trick, but tonight she wanted
to go longer than normal. An hour later we walked back into the trailer
park. The old man who lived three trailers down from me walked out to
talk. Now, he was one of these guys who knew everything about everything,
a walk in dictionary. He is a permanent resident here, not like
the transients who move in with lawn chairs and a card table, pay the
first month's rent and are soon evicted four months later because they stopped paying.
Now all James had lived here for years before I ever showed up. Emotionally,
he left everyone alone. I guess everybody had become tired of his no
at all disposition. Obviously I had not learned, and he came for me
three out of five times that I pulled into the drive. A conversation with
him would go something like this, Hey, what you got there? Well,
it's a dear. Where'd you kill him in the woods? Well that's
a pretty small deer man. That's one hundred and eighty pound ten point dear?
What are you talking about? Yeah, I don't waste bullets on a
little dear like that. You just don't know where they are? Oh?
Really, well, where are they? I asked? They in the woods?
He said? Or how many ducks you got today? I got a
limit strowning looking ducks. Did you kill him in the park? Yeah?
Or what's doing here with this day? Well? I'm replacing this handrail.
You ever built handrails before? Yeah, don't look like it. You get
the picture. We all know one or two of these smart ass people who
run their thumbs and their suspenders. Everything you do. You're a dumbass.
And he's done it bigger and better. I hate him, But what do
you do to add to my hatred for this grimy old man? He had
done some time in the joint for almost killing his old lady several years ago.
Since then, I was told he beat up a couple more after he
got out. He would sweet talk him, spending a little money on him.
He'd move him in, and when he couldn't control him, he'd whooped
the shit out of him. He was too old now to attract a woman
of any kind. Even the ones who lived for that urmoil avoided this household.
But that's all I thought about whenever I saw him, and I figured
he needed his ass kick. But I wasn't going to jail for that,
so I let him run his mouth and I avoided him when I could.
Lily and I sped up, and I was doing my best to beat him
to the porch and in the door, but the crabby, old shit old
man caught me. Lily bolted in the door. She hated him too.
You boys been hunting, he said, Yeah, I don't see no,
dear. We didn't have any luck. Don't surprise me none, all right,
none, y'all know how to find dear. You're wasting your damn time.
Probably if y'all grew up in my day, you'd know how to do
it. An then I dun know where an idea popped in my head?
Now I don't know where it came from, but I've blurted it out before
I thought. I tell you what, old man, I said, I'm
headin up to Arkansas day after tomorrow. I got an extra permit for a
two day huntin Saint Francis Bottoms. Won't you go with me and show me
a few things? They ain't no deer in Arkansas, the big dear over
round Savannah on the Tennessee River. What the hell you wasting your time for
over in Arkansas, I I said, I hate to miss a shot at
learnin from the best them. License over there's too expensive anyway. Well,
I lied, now, I said, I told you I had an extra
permit, and that's all you need. Well, somebody stole my rifle.
Fucking crackheads. I got a rifle you can use. It's already z e
rode in. What is it? It's two forty three? That ain't no
damn rifle. I need a bigger one than that, all right, I
got a seven mag you can use. Might be too much rifle for you,
though, you don't know nothing. Boy, He rubbed his old yellow
fingers through his filthy beard and thought for a minute, what time are we
leaving? Be right here to day after tomorrow at three am sharp? Well,
I see you. Then you better feed me too. You know,
these hunting lessons ain't cheap, he said, and he walked off to his
trailer. I walked inside and I sat down at the table, and an
evil grin creeped across my face. I was gonna fix this asshole. It
was late and I was still wide away. I didn't need to be at
work the next day, so I made a pot of coffee. Now.
I picked up the phone to call Hook and check on him. Loud music
blared in the background when he answered. Hook was doing whatever he does at
the strip club. You o K, brother, I asked, why are
you askin me that dumb ass question? Steve, you're actin like my old
lady. He said, Well, I'm just checkin', I said, apparently
you're fine. Go get some sleep when you can. I'm off for three
days after this. I'll sleep all day tomorrow. Talk to you later this
week. Don't call me, I'll call you, said the big biker an.
The line went dead two days ago when Huck walked off to take his
stroll an the Saint Francis River bottoms because he was fidgetty. I became worried
when he hadn't checked in for a couple of hours, so actin like his
old lady, I guess. I called him on the radio, and his
reply in my earpiece were only clicks. Now when dangerous close. We have
a mic clicks system that lets the other know that we can't talk. The
series of clicks I got back from Hook were that he was observing a squatchin
couldn't make any noise. Later he filled me in on what had happened.
Thirty minutes into his stroll through the cotton mouthed nest and the mud, he
walked up on a large beaver hut. He found a stump, and he
sat down, and he waited to watch the busy beavers move in and out
of the hut. Things like that are relaxing to us guys. To sit
an watch things around you while you being quiet is an activity many in this
culture need to develop. The beavers never showed up, but the top of
the beaver hut looked strange though Hook had looked at it for a long time,
and to him it looked like a pile of moss piled on top of
the hut. Well, beavers don't typically do that. And he sat still
and he watched it. It's a trait you developed hunting these things, but
you gotta do it with your ears open to everything around you. Danger can
come from any direction. Hook watched the object for several minutes, and when
it finally moved, only a slight movement of which body part he didn't know.
It wasn't a pile of organic trash after all, it was one of
the mails squatches layin on top of a beaver hut. Well, this is
not necessarily a strange behavior. These swamp squatches will hide an wait motionless for
hours, waiting on pray. They also do it to go undetected by humans.
For Hook to do anything now would be a mistake. He needed to
make sure it wasn't watching him. If it was, then this was a
century, and that meant Mail number two was close by. An alarm from
a century brings the others in fast, So being still enacting like he hadn't
seen the squatch was the best move at the time. So Hook went into
bird watching mode like he had no idea the squatch was there. Slowly and
silently, Hook stepped back and lowered himself behind the trunk of a large joke.
The squatch never moved, and with his rifle on a secure rest against
the trunk, he looked through the scope. Now the image of the squatch
was clear, and the beast was turned away, watching something on the far
side of the beaver hut. It wasn't long before shots rang out on the
other side of the squatch. It was a steady staccato of shotguns into the
air, followed by dog whistles and people yelling. A group of duck hunters
was beyond Hook's line of sight, and that's what the squatch was watching.
That meant the other mail was beyond the beaver hut too. The Hook could
finally talk to me. The silence had been broken. He quietly explained what
was happening, and that the squatch was still on the beaver hut but was
now sitting up. And then he told me his plan. It sounded like
a good plan to me. Would finish this job before dark and we'd be
home in our beds at night. Hook's plan unfolded perfectly except for one detail.
With the squats now sitting up, Hook had a clear shot at it.
He waited until we let him know that we were close to the nest.
Once the shooting started, that's where the other mail and the juvenile would
head. I clicked the mic three times in a specific cadence, and thirty
seconds later, Hook's rifle boomed in the distance. He later told us it
was one of the most gratifying shots he had ever made. The thirty caliber
round hit the base of the beast's skull dead center. The big hook lurched
straight forward and hovered there for a second, and then it flopped backwards and
its head down toward the water facing Hook. The image of that nasty thing's
jaw flopped back over its forehead was a piece of art. Well, I
knew what he meant. Knowing the other mail would be coming, Hook turned
and headed straight for the nest, stopping a hundred yards shy and stepping into
some brush so he could catch the mail number two and hopefully the juvenile as
they ran past. Louis and I had worked our way around the other side
of the nest and spread out to put some distance between us. We were
looking for the female, but she wasn't there. I looked over at Louis
and shrugged, and he did the same. Where the hell was this female?
Two hundred yards away? The ouf of mail ran past Hook, with
the juvenile not far behind. Hook told us over the radio that the big
mail was headed for the nest and for Lewis and I to take it down
while he sat up on the juvenile that was lagging behind. Louis and I
ran full speed toward the nest, and we caught the big mail as he
approached. Three shots from each rifle took him down within a second. Hook's
rifle told us that the juvenile was now down too, and then we heard
Hook shoot in another direction, not far out of line from the nest.
The female that we thought was in the nest had exited at some point and
was coming at Hook. He clipped her in the shoulder, and then she
dodged and rolled, and she was gone in a flash. We all met
up at the nest and Hook had two heads in his sack. He was
muddy and tired from wading out to that beaver hut and claiming the head of
the first kill. Lewis was removing the giant melon of the big male that
we had just killed. Hook told us about missing the female and that we
now had a wounded squatch in the woods. We couldn't leave her there.
There was no greater danger to humans than a crippled squatch close to human development.
We waited all night watching that nest, but that female never showed up.
By three the next afternoon, none of us could stand the cold anymore.
We were hungry and wet and tired, so we gave it up now.
After working our way back to the boat, we wove through the ditches
to the bridge from which we had launched. We loaded the boat and headed
for the Chinese buffet on Union Avenue. We would have to make another trip
back to take down the wounded female. Thursday morning, at three am,
I walked out to start my truck, and there sat that asshole I had
invited on a quote of deer hunting to Saint Francis River Bottoms. The temperature
was fifteen degrees. He had his old nineteen sixties era hunting gear on.
His current attire was a pair of levized jeans, a heavy McCloud style coat
complete with the faked sheepwool of pel, a big ass elm or fud looking
orange hat, and some lace up fake leather boots. Where's my rifle.
It's my rifle, and it's in a truck. Let me take a look
at it. Getting a truck, I said, you got any coffee?
Nope. We hadn't been in the truck ten minutes and he had smoked three
cigarettes, thumping ashes in my floorboard. We were heading for the old Bridge
when he said I need some breakfast. I reached back into the back floorboard
and pulled out a Hostess fruit pie that had been there since the summer.
It was squashed flat and had dirt all over it, and I handed it
over to him. Well. He waved his hand away at the pie and
he said, I need a hot breakfast. It's this or nothing. We
got to get to the woods. I said, you don't know nothing about
hunting. I'm fixing to show you. Yeah, you about to learn something
about hunting. I thought to myself for an hour, I heard about how
stupid we are and how much we didn't know about hunting, and he was
about to show me what a real man did in the woods. That was
the problem. According to James, we were from a sissy generation. We'd
all been raised up soft. None of us could drink as much as him,
hunt as good as him, work as hard as him, and we
couldn't hold a woman because we treated them too good. Give him a pair
of new underwear every year Christmas, he said, they'll love you forever and
the rest of the year. Keep their asses in lying, and don't ever
take no shut off a woman, otherwise they don't respect you. It's all
right to slap one when she won't do right. So that's what was wrong
with my generation. I wanted to ask him how his kids made out in
life, but if he had the same views on treating kids like he did
women, I probably would have shot him right there on the side of Highway
sixty three. Nope, better not provoking any more of this blubber and idiots
philosophy's own life. He was about to learn his lesson, and there was
no need for me to do or say anything. You always hunt out of
a boat, he said, while I backed it off in the water.
I don't hunt out of a boat. It gets me to where I want
to hunt. When he saw me pulling on my waiters, he said,
are we going to be in water? Yep? Better put your waiters on.
I ain't got no, waiters, You're gonna have to put me out
on the bank. Well, that's not a problem, I said, grinning
in my mind. I could have reached the spot where we sat in the
boat earlier in the week and twenty minutes, but instead I rowed that cranky
old bastard around through the maze of ditches and channels for an hour. I
wanted him to get real cold and feel like he was lost the Finally I
cut the motor and let the bow slide up to a steep bank, and
there was a shallow a bank twenty yards down, but I wanted to watch
him climb up the short bluff. I'm sure enough. It took him forever,
and by the time he was firmly on land, he was covered in
mud and soaking wet. Starting the motor, I clicked it in reverse and
backed out and trolled twenty yards to the little sandbar down the bank. Now
casually walked out of the boat. When my head lights hit him, he
stood there, water dripping from the sleeves of that ridiculous coat. Hit his
fist on his hips like an old woman. Here's a rifle, I said,
and dropped it on the bank, still in the case. It's loaded.
Nothing in the chamber. You got five rounds, it's all I had.
I only need one bullet, damn it. I'm heading down the bank
to another spot. Kill one of those big deer you've been bragging, abrout.
I can't wait. Before I pulled away, I tossed a small fabric
bundle of burlap onto the bank behind a big oat. I knew he would
set up there. That old man wasn't gonna move from that spot. Inside
the burlout Bunnele was a scent glanand we had cut out of the juvenile.
Yeah, squatches do half scent glands. They are the nastiest, filthiest creature
God ever made to begin with. But those scent glands, boy, they
sent it over the top. They smell worse than any gland from any animal
on the planet. And it's my opinion that's how they know each other.
Humans can't smell the difference, but the squatches can. And it would draw
his mother no matter what condition her wound was in, assuming she was still
alive, and chances were she was. It's the maternal instinct. She hadn't
seen him in a few days, and once she caught wind of her teenage
son. She would come straight to that shit head sitting under that big oat.
That's exactly where I wanted her to go. A ways down the bank,
I got out and worked my way back to a place I could set
up with the old man in view. He was my bait. It was
still dark and I could move freely in the woods with my NVGs without fear
of him seeing me. It was still early and there was no wind to
carry the scent, so I took my time and I found a good spot
with a clear field of fire. I waited for either the sun to rise
or the wind to take junior scent through those bottoms. It didn't matter to
me when it happened. I was ready, and I'd wait all day if
I needed to for that bitch to come in, and that old man could
just sit there and suffer for all I care. It wasn't long and I
could see the eastern horizon beginning to lighten a bit. It is the time
of day when your night vision begins to fade and the daylight eyes are needed
to see. There's a period of thirty minutes where it's not dark and it's
not life. Your eyes can't gather the signals to tell your brain what you're
sin and it is not a good time to shoot anything. That's exactly what
old wife beater James was experiencing at that moment. I wasn't. I had
my NVGs and they worked fine in the twilight phase, and when there was
enough sunlight, I could flip them up and my eyes would adjust within a
minute. His would take longer. After turning the NVGs off, I raised
my scope and I watched the old man. He was still standing by the
oak. I'd watched him for a while while panting the woods, watching for
movement. The rifle leaned against a tree and he stood there, wrapping his
wet arms as far over his shoulders as he could, trying his best to
retain warmth. He was shivering, and he smoked cigarette after cigarette. It's
a great deer hunting strategy. I thought, you're a real tough guy,
I whispered. He kept looking back around the tree. I knew he was
smelling the odor from that scent glad. I think it was making him sick.
It does me. For a minute, I felt a tinge of guilt
for bringing him, but the thought of him beating up those women through the
ears cleared my conscience real fast. This guy had it coming. I wasn't
the appointed dispenser of justice for his deeds. It just happened to be a
great idea the last minute, and I was going with it. My head
was panning the woods around me again when I heard him begin to move and
make noises. He had removed the rifle from the soft case and leaned it
against the tree, And when I looked back over at him, he was
pulling that rifle up, trying to get a shell shoved in the chamber.
After fumbling with that, he couldn't find the safety. He would look up
into the woods and then fidget with the rifles some more. He was becoming
frantic. My first thought was that he really did see a deer and was
about to run this hunt. But when I followed his line of sight to
where he was looking, I saw her coming. The sun was in his
face and she must have been silhouetted coming through the trees. The sun was
to my left, making her harder to see. I raised my rifle and
I found her in my scope. I could have taken her down at any
time. She didn't know I was there. She had been drawn to the
scent and was now looking at the jittery old man, trying to find the
safety owner's rifle. When he found it, he raised it quickly and he
snapped the trigger without aiming. The firing pin fell, but the rifle didn't
go off. All five rounds looked normal, but they were missing primers and
powder. I didn't want that goofball. Having live rounds in the woods with
me us had just added to his terror, and that's what I wanted.
When this ugly female had crept to a point where she knew her cover was
blown, she charged him. I swear he sounded like a terrified old maid
when he screamed. She was a few feet from reaching him when I squeezed
off the round, hitting her in the neck below where I wanted the round
to go. It still severed her spine and she fell limp like a sack
of bones, only a foot from Old James. Now a female had the
upper hand on this old man, and I often wondered how big of a
man he felt while he was squealing like a girl in terror. The old
gal was still alive, but immobile. Shit Head was in the fetal position
against a tree with his arms covering his head. Now I watched through my
scope as he kicked at her, trying to move her away while he cried.
And then I figured he had had enough, and I walked over and
put a bullet in her head with my pistol, and then helped him to
his feet. He didn't stand there long before collapsing back into the mud.
Come on, get up, it's over, I said. He looked up
at me from the ground with water filled eyes, but couldn't spit the words
out. So we sat there for an hour and neither of us said anything.
He did watch me take the head of that female and stuff it in
a toatsack. That seemed to bring more tears to the old man. I'll
be down here in the boat when you're ready to go, unless you still
want to show me how to deer hunt, I said. Another hour crept
by before I saw him begin to get up out of the mud. The
man looked like hell, his face covered in mud and his clothes filthy.
He was shaking, red faced and eyes swollen. He slipped a few times
working his way to the boat. I guess I could have helped him in.
I didn't see the point This was a real man, according to him,
A real man fight monsters, right. I figured this real man could
get in the boat by his own damn himself. You gave me a bad
rifle. It wouldn't shoot, he said finally, now sitting in the boat.
I had changed the bullets out after picking it up from the mud.
There ain't nothing wrong with this rifle, I said, and I handed it
to him. Go on, pop one off. He sat there on the
front deck and stared at the rifle, and then it slipped from his hands
and fell to the floor. I picked it up. The seven mag boom
through the forest. Maybe you don't know how to work one, I said.
Now I started the boat and backed away from the bank. I smelled
something horrible. Have you shipped your pants? I said. He couldn't even
look at me. He didn't speak on the way home, and when I
pulled into my drive he wouldn't get out of the tree. I walked over
and opened his door and tried to pull him out. Where's my house right
there, I said, pointing in that direction. You need to go clean
your drawers and get a bath. He stumbled to his door and finally found
his key, and he went inside. The lights never came on. Angela
walked up and she told me she had looked in on Lily that day.
I'd forgotten to ask her to do that. I never forget those things.
And I thanked her, and she whispered to me that she thinks Lily loves
her as much as me. Lily loves everybody. Angela, I said,
she doesn't like that old bastard you just dropped off? She said, are
you two buddies now? Say it ain't so, Steve. He is the
meanest old coat I've ever met. Do you know how he treats women and
kids where I buddies. But he won't be bothering people anymore. Trust me
on that. Angela grinned, and she pulled me down down to her size
and she kissed me on the cheek. You need a shave, Steve,
she said, and then she walked to her trailer. I called Lewis and
Hook, telling them I had taken care of the old hag in Arkansas and
to make that payday twenty k instead of fifteen K. Well, they were
happy with that, but a little piss that. I went on my own.
I told them it was an easy job. There were no worries.
The next day was the last day of my week off, and there was
still Saturday and Sunday. My plan was to do nothing until Monday at work,
but read books and watch football. There was some game on TV Sunday,
and I was half paying attention while I ate some spectacular red beans and
rice with Lewis in my kitchen and out my front window we saw an ambulance
roll past with light swirling. We walked outside and then from the back to
the front yard to see which meth head had overdosed. The ambulance had stopped
at James's house. Now I wondered if he was dead from all that excitement,
but he wasn't. They wheeled him out on a cart. He was
strapped down to the bed. I couldn't make out all his ranting, but
when he saw me he went nuts. That sun bitches. He was pointing
at me. Lewis looked over at me strangely. Why is he pointing at
you, Steve? I'll tell you later, I said, And while they
lifted him in the ambulance, he was screaming and pointing at me. That
sun of bitch tried to feed me to a gorilla arrest him. Now arrest
him. I snickered and got some satisfaction knowing that he was going to probably
go to the mental wing of a public hospital, probably the same hospital that
he had sent the three innocent women after keeping them in line, as he
put it. Old James never returned to the trailer park. I don't know
what happened to him. And when I told Hook and Lewis the story later
in the week, they laughed at asses off, and then they both started
thinking of people that they wanted to invite on one of our hunts. We
all know those people, don't we