Uncle Anse was always a goddamn wild man. Once, he cut the finger off some fat bastard that owed him money for weed so he could sell the ring on that finger to make up what the fat bastard owed. He showed me that dried up finger jerky while we were sitting down at the Huddle House eating eggs. I almost puked and Anse said that college had made me soft. He called me a pussy and put that goddamn well-seasoned finger back in the front pocket of his bib overalls. So, like I said, uncle Anse was a goddamn wild man.
When he wasn’t tending to his weed crop, or selling it, he was hunting and/or fishing. He said he had never bought a single piece of store meat in his life ‘cept for the sausage he sometimes ate at the Huddle House. Aunt Linda had about a thousand recipes for venison and rabbit and quail and bluegill and always had something simmering on the stove or baking in the oven. She never did work or anything, just kept house and cooked. They never did have any kids. I think it was her fault cause I know for a stone-sure fact that Anse had a couple of cinnamon babies by his extra woman over in the settlement. I never once heard him say nothing bad about black folks as a whole. I don’t know if he’s what the philosophers would call a true egalitarian or if he’s just that open minded when it comes to vagina. He told me that old gal could cook even better than Linda and sometimes he had to eat two suppers in the same day so nobody got their feelings hurt. I saw her once or twice. Her ass was as wide as a single-bit ax handle. Anse always liked ‘em that way, all of ‘em, white and black.
They, as in the local potheads, said Anse grew the best weed in the geographic confines of the old confederacy. I never did smoke none of it. I guess I just didn’t like the smell of it. Lord knows my daddy burned up his share of it and then some, but not just weed, which would have been ok since even the deacons and dentists around here smoke it. He got hard into that piss-smelling methamphetamine that finally killed his dumb ass. He and uncle Anse were brothers. Anse never did sell daddy none of that crystal shit. He wouldn’t make it or or even burn it. He tried to get daddy to quit with it and even beat his dealer with a pick handle till one of his eyes fell out and he left town holding that damn eye against his cheek with a handkerchief.
It didn’t matter though. Daddy just went over to Jacksonville and bought it from some other white-trash piece of shit. I guess after mama left right after he got back from that fucking Afghan sandbox Bush sent him to, he just didn’t give much of a shit anymore. Anyway, when he died, me and Uncle Anse went and dug his grave ourselves out in the National Forest on that ridge where he used to cluck and yelp up turkeys every spring before the Army and the meth finally got him.
Those last two months he looked like one of those Yankee soldiers you see in pictures from Andersonville prison during the Civil War. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. I carried the shovels and pickaxes and Anse hauled him over his shoulder all the way up that mountain wrapped up in a canvas painter’s tarp. It took us three hours digging through all those rocks and tree roots. When we finished, I covered his face and chest with one of Granny’s old string quilts and we filled up the hole on top of him with that old Alabama red clay and then rolled a big-ass rock over him so the varmints couldn’t get at him.
I said a few words over him. He always liked the 91st Psalm and got me to read it to him several times after he got real bad, that part about the terror of the night and the arrow that flieth in the day. That was almost two years ago.
Well, a few weeks ago Anse called me up to see If wanted to take a trip way down south and camp on the Conecuh river and hunt hogs for a few days. Anse owns four big Plot hounds that will run just about anything. One of them Plots is mixed with some kind of bulldog and will grab hold of one of them hogs by the ear or neck and hold it till Anse can get there and stab it with his old sixteen inch Garand bayonet.
I started to say no cause I went with him and daddy one time before he got sick and they drug me through the mud for a whole goddamn week. They didn’t even bring any damn food, so I had to go out and shoot a doe before us and them damn dogs could even eat our first bite. I didn’t kill one till the second day and Anse told me, “boy, you could go to a pussy eatin’ contest and end up sucking a dick.”
See, nobody in town even knew I was gay, and so when he said that I told him, “Anse, you know I’m actually queer right?”
I don’t know why I said it, but I just had to tell somebody. I knew I couldn’t tell my daddy.
He looked at me for what musta been a full minute and then said, “I wouldn’t go telling just anyone else around about that or you’ll end up getting drug behind a truck or tractor.”
“So you don’t care?” I said.
“Fuck no,” he replied. “That just leaves more pussy around Cleburne county for me. Besides, If you aint no better at finding dick than you are at finding deer you won’t never get none no way.”
Well, anyway, I called Anse back and told him to pick me up on the way out. I rationalized that missing just a few days hearing what some hired pedagogue had to say wouldn’t hurt my Grade Point Average.
Before I crawled up in the cab of Anse’s truck, I looked in his big Igloo cooler, and just as I expected, he didn’t have one scrap of food in it, just about fifty bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a half gallon of moonshine on ice.
We drove for about four hours till we got to the same sandy camping spot as the last time I went. We started out late that afternoon and it was already dark and raining when we got there. We had to set up the tent in that freezing-ass drizzle. I was soaked to the bone. Anse made a fire in the little camp stove he brought, and although we didn’t have even a fucking egg to fry, he did think to bring enough dry hickory wrapped in a tarp so that we wouldn’t feeze to death and we could smoke some meat if and when we killed it. After about an hour, the tent was warm enough to sleep, but Anse was snoring so loud I had to go through my pack and find the ear plugs that I use for shooting.
It seemed like I had only been asleep for a few minutes when Anse kicked the shit out of my leg and told me, “rise up and get your four o’clock PBR.”
I don’t even like beer but I was thirsty.
We drank a couple of PBRs and then got on our hunting clothes. I toted daddy’s old 35 Marlin, but Anse didn’t carry nothing but that half-sword he had stuck down in his old three-hole army belt. We set the dogs outta their crates, and after they sniffed and pissed, they took off down the trail and into the slough adjacent to the river. The edges of the swamp were crusted with ice, and when Old Badger, the one with the bulldog blood, waded off into that mess and the ice water hit his ball-sack, he stopped and backed up like he had a slow reverse gear.
Old Lucy had the best nose and no nuts, so she jumped right in first. Old Badger and the others followed.
She struck something right off the bat. She has the highest pitched squeal you ever heard. Anse said he knew it was a hog by the way they were taking on. Anse kept on yelling “I hear ya. Talk to ‘em. Hit on in dare.”
All the while, that cold-ass muddy water was almost up to the top of our chest waders.
The pack and the hog they were following got away from us. We could barely hear their voices. Anse was all nervous about it cause he said if they hemmed up an old boar, and we didn’t get there fast enough, then he might kill one of the hounds.
We trudged along in the direction they were headed for about an hour before we heard them howling again.
Anse took off running as best as he could. It was all I could do to keep up with him and he’s a damn sight older and heavier than me.
By the time we got to where they had him bayed, it was clear that the fight had been going on for quite a spell. The ground in front of that old poplar looked like it had been plowed up with hooves and paws deep enough to plant taters in.
The old bastard they had cornered was one of the biggest I ever saw, maybe 600 pounds of humped-back muscle covered with black wire hairs and sporting tusks about nine inches on the bottom and about four on the top. Old Bager had him by the cheek and was trying to hold him while Lucy and the others ran in taking nips at his ass as he turned in circles trying to knock and drag Old Badger off on the trees. When we got close we could see that the boar had already ripped Old Badgers sides real deep and a glob of his intestines hung out more than a foot, looking like a purplish gray rope.
When Anse saw the shape he was in, he pulled out that bayonet and jumped a straddle of that bastard and commenced stabbing him in his spine and neck. I tried to squeeze off a shot with daddy’s rifle but couldn’t do it out of fear that I might hit Anse or one of the hounds. I saw that Anse had severed the big artery in the pig’s neck and the blood shot out in jets everytime his heart pumped. Finally, the old bastard seemed to slow and then slumped forward in the mud. He shuddered a few times and then died.
After that, we could see just how bad of shape Old Badger was in. It wasn’t just his side and guts, he was cut and broken all over. In spite of all his wounds, he wouldn’t turn loose of that Boar’s cheek till Anse rubbed some snuff in his nostrils.
I wanted to tell Anse that it was too late for that tough old hound, but he picked him up, laid him on a dry place up the woods, and commenced to trying to gently push his guts back in the hole and stop the blood from the other cuts. I told him that I had some fishing line back at camp and that I believed I could straighten out a hook and sew him up if he could make it that far. I’ll be damned if he didn’t leave that hog, and his pack, and his blade, behind and wrap that dog in his expensive Carhart coat and carry him the four or five miles back to the truck.
When we got back, I took the bottle of Moonshine and used it to clean out the deepest of Old Badger’s cuts. He didn’t so much as even whine. I straightened out a number two Eagle Claw with a pair of pliers and fashioned a needle with an old mill bastard file Anse used to sharpen his axes, all the while Anse telling me to. “hurry the fuck up.”
I started sewing up the hole in his side but he bled out before I could finish. Old Badger just looked around as if to see the woods one last time or to remember his palace in them and then he was gone.
We dug a deep hole in that dirt, sand, and roots, wrapped him in Anse’s fancy coat, and covered him up with dirt, sand, and rocks.
We went back and cut tenderloins out of that old boar and I fried ‘em up in a skillet for us and the remaining dogs. We stayed there four more nights before heading back to Cleburne county.
[Image Credit : Photo by Donald Teel on Unsplash ]
by 
Alan Caldwell
Latest posts by Alan Caldwell (see all)
- Towhee - May 26, 2026
- October 1888 - January 3, 2025
- Fifty Cent Steak - August 2, 2024
0 Comments