Rancid poured us each a big steaming cup of coffee, first politely blowing the dust out of Birdy’s cup. I could see that Rancid was using his best manners; he usually wiped the dust out of a cup with his shirttail, if he wiped it out at all. Birdy was sort of a finicky guy, though, and didn’t seem to fully appreciate Rancid’s notion of hygiene. He sneaked me a look that was half question and half accusation.
Rancid set the table with a variety of tin plates, pint jars for glasses, and various other vessels that defied identification. Then he got ready to serve up his surprise. I had experienced enough of Rancid’s surprises that my anticipation was mixed with a good measure of anxiety. After all, I didn’t want him to serve my friends something they didn’t like. Much to my relief, the surprise turned out to be the tiny little cutlets that Rancid favored so much. They were delicious too, and Retch and Birdy just couldn’t seem to get enough of them. The fried wild mushrooms were good too, and added just the right amount of excitement to the meal—for me, at least, since I knew Rancid wasn’t all that knowledgeable about his wild mushrooms.
“You’re positive these mushrooms ain’t poisonous?” I asked.
“Why shore ah’m positive. B’sides, ah always fries up a batch beforehand and feeds ’em to maw dog, jist to test ’em out. Hyar, Sport! Come show these fellers you ain’t dead! Sport! Gol-dang, whar is thet dog? He always comes when I call. Wall, no matter. Hyar, let me give you another heppin’ of mushrooms.”
“Here, Sport!” Retch called.
“Sport! Sport!” Birdy yelled.
“Ain’t no use calling Sport,” I said, giving my friends a serious look. “He ain’t going to come.”
Rancid shook his head sadly, “No, ah’m afraid he ain’t.”
“How come he ain’t?” Birdy asked in a quavering voice.
“Because there ain’t no Sport,” I said. “Rancid doesn’t have a dog.”
We had a good laugh over Rancid’s joke and after that we all loosened up, and Rancid had a dose from his jug of rheumatism medicine.
“How is that medicine for rheumatism, Rancid?” Birdy asked, dropping all pretense of formality. “My grandmother’s got it pretty bad.”
“Wall, ah don’t know how it would work fer your granny,” Rancid said. “But it shore works fer me. Ah don’t have a bit of rheumatism.”
We talked way late into the evening, about everything from Rancid’s miraculous medicine to why girls and boys don’t get to sit together on the bus, the best way to sight in a rifle, and ghosts, several of which Rancid claimed to have seen. He said one of the ghosts had raised such huge goose bumps on him that they left his skin loose all over when they finally died down.
“Speakin’ of ghosts,” Rancid said. “You know thet b’ar what went an’ kilt Ginger Ann’s pig?”
“Killed her pig?” Birdy asked.
“Yeah,” Rancid went on. “Wall, ah shore hope thet warn’t a ghost b’ar. Ah seed a ghost b’ar only once, but even thet was a time too many. A trapper named Fitz was runnin’ a line back up in the Cabinet Mountains. One fall, he hauled some provisions in to his cabin an’ didn’t come back. Ah went up into the mountains to look fer him. Whan ah come down off the trail in to the Boulder Crick Basin, it started to snow real heavy. All of a sudden, this great big shape rises up ahead of me, must a been ten foot tall. Than the snow let up fer jist a instant and ah seed it was a monster b’ar. Had fangs on it long as railroad spikes and claws the size of ice tongs. Ah could see right through the critter! Wall, sar, ah figgered the only thang to do was to pump about three thutty-ought-six slugs right through it jist to make shore it was really a ghost b’ar, but by the time I got a cartridge in the chamber maw feet had already carried me out of shootin’ range. Both maw feet is yeller-bellied cowards when it comes to ghost b’ars.”
“Geez!” Birdy said.
“Holy cow!” Retch gasped.
“Never did find ol’ Fitz,” Rancid went on. “Ah figger the ghost b’ar must of got him. Shore hope thet b’ar what killed Ginger Ann’s pig ain’t a ghost b’ar.”
“Killed her pig?” Birdy said.
“Rancid, I thought you said the bear’s tracks were big around as dinner plates,” I said. “A ghost bear wouldn’t make tracks.”
“Mebby so, mebby not,” Rancid said. “But if it did, they would be big around as dinner plates.”
Shortly thereafter we turned in for the night. Retch and Birdy and I made our bed on the floor, stripped down to our underwear, and climbed under the pile of hides. Rancid got into his bunk and blew out the kerosene lamp as Retch and Birdy studied him with fascination.
“Uh, Rancid,” Birdy said after a bit. “Aren’t you, uh, gonna take off your boots and clothes?”
“What fer?” Rancid said. “Jist have to put them back on ag’in in the mornin’.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” Birdy said. “I never thought of it that way before.”
“That was sure a good supper you fixed us, Rancid,” Retch said as we lay there staring up into the dark.
“It sure was,” I said, pleased with the fine meal Rancid had cooked in honor of my friends’ visit. I was glad that neither Retch nor Birdy had thought to ask what the surprise was.
Early the next morning, Rancid hauled us up to Ginger Ann’s ranch, and Retch and Birdy and I hiked up the mountain in search of the bear, leaving Rancid to visit with Ginger Ann. Ginger Ann ran the ranch by herself and frequently suggested to Rancid that she wouldn’t mind having a big, strong, energetic man around to help with all the work. Rancid would tell her that if he ever came across such a man, she would be the first to know. I’ve always thought that Rancid and Ginger Ann probably had one of the world’s first meaningful relationships.
The three of us bear hunters climbed steadily for an hour, crossed the ridge of the mountain, and then dropped over into a shallow basin on the far side, where Rancid had told us he thought the bear would be hanging out. We found a set of bear tracks, but they were only about the size of pie plates. Still, they seemed plenty large enough, about the size that makes you turn around every so often to make sure nothing is sneaking up on you from behind.
“Maybe we should spread out a bit,” I suggested in a whisper as we worked our way through high brush.
“Good idea,” Retch whispered back. “There, how’s that?”
“Fine,” I said. “Now you’re not bumping my arm. Could you spread out a bit too, Birdy?”
“Woof?”
“Did you say ‘woof’?”
“No, I thought you did.”
“I didn’t say ‘woof.’”
At that moment what had said “woof” reared up on its hind legs a short distance ahead of us and turned in a slow circle, testing the air with its snout.
“A WARSH TUB?” Rancid Crabtree said, spilling his coffee on Ginger Ann’s table. “Its haid was as big as a warsh tub?”
“Choke! Gasp! Wheeze!” I said. “Yes . . . gasp . . . big . . . gasp . . . as a wash tub!”
“Eyes . . . wheeze . . . like red fire!” Retch added.
“Could see . . . choke . . . right . . . gasp . . . through it!” Birdy put in.
“How long ago was you seed it?” Rancid asked, thoughtfully scratching the stubble on his jaw.
“About . . . gasp . . . five minutes ago . . . gasp . . . in that basin . . . choke . . . on the other side of the mountain!”
Ginger Ann smiled at Rancid. “Sounds like that ghost bear you’re always talking about. You’d better get a rifle, and go see if it really is a ghost bear.”
Rancid glared at her in his comical bug-eyed manner. “Wall, dang if ah would, woman, if ah had the time. But ah jist thought of some important business ah near forgot about. Mebby next week . . . ”
Later that fall, Ginger Ann herself killed a bear on the mountain. She said its head wasn’t as big as a wash tub but more the size of a milk pail. Its eyes weren’t like red fire, either, and as far as she could tell, the bear was impossible to see through. That was h
ow we knew it wasn’t the same bear that had reared up practically on top of us. For all I know, the ghost bear is still prowling around up on Ginger Ann’s mountain, even though nobody has reported seeing it since.
Riding the bus back to school on Monday morning, Retch and Birdy both agreed that they had had a fine time and had learned a whole lot from the weekend spent in the country with Rancid Crabtree.
“Say, what was them delicious little cutlets Rancid fed us for supper?” Retch asked as we bounced along in the back of the bus.
“Yeah, they were good,” Birdy said. “What were they?”
I told them about the surprise, and they reacted exactly the way I had expected.
Fortunately, we were only a couple of miles from school at the time. Even then I myself probably could have ridden the rest of the way on the bus, if that dirty little Rupert hadn’t helped Ed pry my fingers off the seat leg.
A Lake Too Far
S
ome hunters and anglers tend to think of birders as wimps, persons afraid of adventure. Far from it! I hunt and fish, but I also bird, and I’m a macho kind of guy, if ever there was one. Birding can lead to some tough adventures. Here’s an example.
Once while searching for exotic birds to watch, my friend Retch Sweeney and I were walking down a beach on an island off the coast of Australia. Suddenly, we came upon a lady relaxing on a chaise longue and calmly reading a book. She wore not a stitch! This was not the sort of situation we were accustomed to finding ourselves in on a beach, although an occurrence apparently not that rare on islands off a coast of Australia. Retch and I gave a startled jump and took off running, I guess because both of us thought we had wandered into some place we were not supposed to be. I do remember the lady lowering her book and glowering at us. As I recall, Retch had gasped out some colorful expression. To show how shocked I was, I didn’t even notice the title of the book the lady was reading. It was a small paperback, though, I’m pretty sure about that. So how many hunters and anglers run into a naked lady on a beach? Not that many, I bet.
Whoa! I started writing about how tough birding is and drifted off into recollection. Not only am I a very macho birder, I’m easily distracted. Here I was thinking about birds one second and a naked lady on a beach the next. My mind had even gone blank for a second, but I remember now. The naked lady occurred on the same trip in which Bun and I had heard about a lake in the far Outback of Australia. It was reported to contain a huge population of exotic birds. We figured that in one fell swoop we could triple our life lists with all the birds of Australia.
I asked the manager at a car rental place in Sydney how to get to the lake. “We’re birders,” I told him.
“Sorry to hear that, mate,” he said. “How come you want to go to Far Outback Lake?”
I can’t remember the lake’s actual name, but it was something like that, only in Australian.
“We like adventure,” Bun told him.
The man nodded. “You’ll get your fill of it out there.”
“Can you tell us how to find it?”
“You can’t miss it. There’s only one road goes in that direction.”
“I see,” I said. “How do I find that road?”
“Take your first turn to the right after you cross the Blue Mountains.”
“And how far then to the lake?”
“About 500 miles, but the people who live out that way drive it pretty fast. You, on the other hand, might not want to go much over eighty. One thing I should mention, though. The traffic on the road is two-lane.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” I said.
“The road is one-lane.”
“That bothers me,” I said.
“Yep, that does bother some folks new to the area. The way it works, say you got two cars approaching each other from opposite directions. The driver headed north drops his two left tires in the ditch on his side and the driver headed south drops his two left tires into the ditch on his side, and the two cars pass each other just fine. The highway department has smoothed out the ditches on each side to accommodate passing.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry yourself about passing, son. You’ll get use to it in no time.”
“Right.”
Australia’s Blue Mountains are as pretty as any you’ll see in the United States, and we took most of a day driving over them. I was occasionally distracted by the screeching as we rounded some of the sharp curves. I personally don’t recall screeching myself, but Bun handled that task well enough on her own. The next time we go adventuring in Australia, we will definitely go by train. So I am happy we had the opportunity to see some of that continent’s mountains in all their pristine beauty while we were still young.
Oh, I should mention here that we completed our journey over the Blues with the car in the same perfect condition in which we had rented it.
Shortly after we arrived at the turnoff, we came to a combination of connected buildings consisting of a gas station, café, and motel, all neatly fitted together. As I recall, the price of regular gas was about thirty-five cents per gallon, to give you an idea of how far in the past this was. An attractive lady came out and pumped the gas, checked the oil, and washed the windshield—that gives you another idea of how far back in the past it was.
We then went into the café to eat. A lady identical to the one at the gas station came out to take our order, except this lady wore an apron. After she left, I started to hum the theme song from The Twilight Zone, but Bun shushed me. I assumed the gas station lady had a twin. It was also my impression that the waitress also did all the cooking.
After dinner, we walked next door to the motel. A third identical lady came out of the back of the building to rent us a room. As far as I could determine, a set of triplets ran the whole complex. It was really quite astonishing that three women could handle this entire operation by themselves, but Australians are a tough and vigorous people, and I don’t recall a single time we came across a person who might be regarded as a sluggard.
As I was checking out the next morning, one of the motel triplets asked what had brought us out that way.
“We’re birders,” I told her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
At one small ranch town, we went into a general store to buy an authentic Australian cowboy hat so I would resemble the other hardened individuals we met along the way. The clerk who waited on us recognized me as an American right off—I don’t know how—and started asking all kinds of questions about life in the United States. I was happy to oblige. Soon, a small crowd had gathered around to listen to my lecture, and I could tell they were impressed, despite a certain rude scoffing from my spouse. After they heard we were on our way to Far Outback Lake to look at birds, though, they seemed to lose interest. Apparently, bird watching is not a big outdoor activity in the Australian Outback.
As the rental car manager had explained, the road to Far Outback Lake consisted of a fairly smooth layer of dirt that sloped gradually into the ditch on each side. The standard procedure for passing consisted of each driver putting the two tires on the left side of his car down in the ditch shortly before passing. The driver in the approaching car often slowed down to 80 miles an hour or so. (You have to travel very fast if you want to get anywhere in Australia.) I never quite got the hang of passing head-on traffic at eighty miles an hour, so as soon as I spotted another vehicle approaching, I headed for the ditch, and we sat there until the other driver shot by in the opposite ditch. You might think that one would become accustomed to this method of passing head-on traffic, and one does, of course, but not until one is a nervous wreck.
Here I should mention something about Outback vehicles. Each of them seems to come equipped with thick iron bars in front of the radiator. Rental cars from Sydney, such as ours, do not come equipped with such bars. Early on, I asked one of the Outback residents about this accessory.
“Oh, you mean roo-bars.”
“Roo-bars?” I said.
; “Yes, indeed. Out here, you quite often hit kangaroos while driving. The roo-bars keep the beasts from wiping out your vehicle.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I certainly have no intention of hitting a kangaroo.”
“Good luck with that, mate.”
After traveling 500 or so miles across Australia, we at last arrived at what appeared to be a sandy desert. It looked like the sort of place where we might find a lake, and I sent Bun into a gas-station-café-and-motel combination to ask for directions. I would have gone in myself, but I was afraid I might run into one of the triplets.
When Bun returned, she reported that she had asked the lady at the counter where we might find the lake. The lady pointed to the sand outside the window and said, “That’s it.”
“Oh, dear,” Bun said to her. “We drove all this way to see the birds.”
The lady shook her head. “No birds here, I’m afraid. You should have come after a wet.”
“When was the last wet?” Bun asked.
“Seven years ago.”
We eventually met up with Retch and his wife. They don’t care much for birding but had been exploring expensive restaurants and numerous resorts near Sydney. They had no trouble persuading Bun to give up birding in exchange for their kind of adventure. Some people simply aren’t cut out for the hazards of serious birding.
Oh, I should also report on the condition of the rental car when I turned it in. Both headlights and the windshield were broken. All the wheel covers had been knocked off, and there were multiple dents randomly distributed about the car. Most of the trim was still intact, if somewhat rearranged. Bun’s faculties were also pretty much intact, if somewhat rearranged. Most of the damage was concealed under numerous layers of dirt. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to add several extra layers of insurance on the car, so the car rental company would be made whole.
Bun said, “You better clean off all that kangaroo blood.”
The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories Page 7