by Brian Hodge
The story his papa told him was the farmer who owned the mule, and no one could ever put a name to who that farmer was, had supposedly found the mule wouldn’t work if the pig wasn’t around, leading him between the rows. The pig was in front, the mule plowed fine. The pig wasn’t there, the mule wouldn’t plow.
This caused the farmer to come up with an even better idea. What would the mule do if the pig was made to run? So the farmer got the mule all saddled, and had one of his boys put the pig out front of the mule and swat it with a knotted plow line, and away went the pig and away went the white mule. The pig pretty soon veered off, but the mule, once set to run, couldn’t stop, and would race so fast that the only way it halted was when it was tuckered out. Then it would go back to the start, and look for its pig. Never failed.
One night the mule broke loose, kicked the pig’s pen down, and he and the pig, like Jesse and Frank James, headed for the hills. Went into the East Texas greenery and wound in amongst the trees, and were lost to the farmer. Only to be seen after that in glimpses and in stories that might or might not be true. Stories about how they raided corn fields and ate the corn and how the mule kicked down pens and let hogs and goats and cattle go free.
The White Mule and The Spotted Pig. Out there. On the run. Doing whatever it was that white mules and spotted pigs did when they weren’t raiding crops and freeing critters.
Frank thought on this for a long time, saddled up Dobbin and rode over to Leroy’s place. When Frank arrived, Leroy was out in the yard on his back, unconscious, the seed salesman’s hat spun off to the side and being moved around by a curious chicken. Finding Leroy like this didn’t frighten Frank any. He often found Leroy that way, cold as a wedge from drink, or the missus having snuck up behind him with a stick of stove wood. They were rowdy, Leroy’s bunch.
The missus came out on the porch and shook her fist at Frank, and not knowing anything else to do, he waved. She spat a stream of brown tobacco off the porch in his direction and went inside. A moment later one of the kids bellowed from being whapped, and there was a sound like someone slamming a big fish on flat ground. Then silence.
Frank bent down and shook Leroy awake. Leroy cursed, and Frank dragged him over to an overturned bucket and sat him up on it, asked him, “What happened?”
“Missus come up behind me. I’ve got so I don’t watch my back enough.”
“Why’d she do it?”
“Just her way. She has spells.”
“You all right?”
“I got a headache.”
Frank went straight to business. “I come to say maybe we ain’t out of the mule business.”
“What you mean?”
Frank told him about the mule and the pig, about his idea.
“Oh, yeah. Mule and pig are real. I’ve seen em once myself. Out hunting. I looked up, and there they were at the end of a trail, just watching. I was so startled, I just stood there looking at them.”
“What did they do?”
“Well, Frank, they ran off. What do you think? But it was kind of funny. They didn’t get in no hurry, just turned and went around the trail, showing me their ass,
the pig’s tail curled up and a little swishy, and the mule swatting his like at flies. They just went around that curve in the trail, behind some oaks and blackberry vines, and they was gone. I tracked them a bit, but they got down in a stream and walked it. I could find their tracks in the stream with my hands, but pretty soon the whole stream was brown with mud, and they come out of it somewhere I didn’t find, and they was gone like a swamp fog come noon.”
“Was the mule really white?”
“Dirty a bit, but white. Even from where I was standing, just bits of light coming in through the trees, I could see he had pink eyes. Story is, that’s why he don’t like to come out in day much, likes to stay in the trees, and do his crop raiding at night. Say the sun hurts his skin.”
“That could be a drawback.”
“You act like you got him in a pen somewhere.”
“I’d like to see if I could get hold of him. Story is, he can run, and he needs the pig to do it.”
“That’s the story. But stories ain’t always true. I even heard stories about how the pig rides the mule, and that the mule is stump broke, and the pig climbs up on a stump and diddles the mule in the ass. I’ve heard all manner of tale, and ain’t maybe none of it got so much as a nut of truth in it. Still, it’s one of them ideas that kind of appeals to me. Course, you know, we might catch that mule and he might not can run at all. Maybe all he can do is sneak around in the woods and eat corn crops.”
“Well, it’s all the idea I got,” Frank said, and the thought of that worried Frank more than a little. He considered his knack for clinging to bad notions like a rutting dog hanging onto a fella’s leg. But, like the dog, he was determined to finish what he started.
“So what you’re saying here,” Leroy said, “is you want to capture the mule, and the pig, so the mule has got his help mate. And you want to ride the mule in the race?”
“That’s what I said.”
Leroy paused for a moment, rubbed the knot on the back of his noggin. “I think we should get Nigger Joe to help us track him. We want him, that’s the way we do it. Nigger Joe catches him, and we’ll break him, and you can ride him.”
Nigger Joe was part Indian and part Irish and part Negro. His skin was somewhere between brown and red and he had a red cast to his kinky hair and strawberry freckles and bright green eyes. But the black blood named him, and he himself went by the name, Nigger Joe.
He was supposed to be able to track a bird across the sky, a fart across the yard. He had two women that lived with him and he called them his wives. One of them was a Negro, and the other one was part Negro and Cherokee. He called the black one Sweetie, the red and black one Pie.
When Frank and Leroy rode up double on Dobbin, and stopped in Nigger Joe’s yard, a rooster was fucking one of the hens. It was a quick matter, and a moment later the rooster was strutting across the yard like he was ten foot tall and bullet proof.
They got off Dobbin, and no sooner had they hit the ground, then Nigger Joe was beside them, tall and broad shouldered with his freckled face.
“Damn, man,” Frank said, “where did you come from?”
Nigger Joe pointed in an easterly direction.
“Shit,” Leroy said, “coming up on a man like that could make him bust a heart.”
“Want something?” Nigger Joe asked.
“Yeah,” Leroy said. “We want you to help track the White Mule and the Spotted Pig, cause Frank here, he’s going to race him.”
“Pig or mule?” Nigger Joe asked.
“The mule,” Leroy said. “He’s gonna ride the mule.”
“Eat the pig?”
“Well,” Leroy said, continuing his role as spokesman, “not right away. But there could come a point.”
“He eats the pig, I get half of pig,” Nigger Joe said.
“If he eats it, yeah,” Leroy said. “Shit, he eats the mule, he’ll give you half of that.”
“My women like mule meat,” Nigger Joe said. “I’ve eat it, but it don’t agree with me. Horse is better,” and to strengthen his statement, he gave Dobbin a look over.
“We was thinking,” Leroy said, “we could hire you to find the mule and the pig, capture them with us.”
“What was you thinking of giving me, besides half the critters if you eat them?”
“How about ten dollars?”
“How about twelve?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven-fifty.”
Leroy looked at Frank. Frank sighed and nodded, stuck out his hand. Nigger Joe shook it, then shook Leroy’s hand.
Nigger Joe said, “Now, mule runs like the rock, that ain’t my fault. I get the eleven-fifty anyway.”
Frank nodded.
“Okay, tomorrow morning,” Nigger Joe said, “just before light, we’ll go look for him real serious and then some.”
“Thing does come to me,” Frank said, “is haven’t other folks tried to get hold of this mule and pig before? Why are you so confident.”
Nigger Joe nodded. “They weren’t Nigger Joe.”
“You could have tracked them before on your own,” Frank said. “Why now?”
Nigger Joe looked at Frank. “Eleven-fifty.”
In the pre-dawn light, down in the swamp, the fog moved through the trees like someone slow-pulling strands of cotton from cotton boles. It wound its way amongst the limbs that were low down, along the ground. There were wisps of it on the water, right near the bank, and as Frank and Leroy and Nigger Joe stood there, they saw what looked like dozens of sticks rise up in the swamp water and move along briskly.
Nigger Jim said, “Cottonmouth snakes. They going with they heads up, looking for anything foolish enough to get out there. You swimming out there now, pretty quick you be bit good and plenty and swole up like old tick. Only you burst all over and spill green poison, and die. Seen it happen.”
“Ain’t planning on swimming,” Frank said.
“Watch your feet,” Nigger Joe said. “Them snakes is thick this year. Them cottons and them copperheads. Cottons, they always mad.”
“We’ve seen snakes,” Leroy said.
“I know it,” Nigger Joe said, “but where we go, they are more than a few, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Back there where mule and pig hides, it’s thick in snakes and blackberry vines. And the trees thick like the wool on a sheep. It a goat or a sheep you fucked?”
“For Christsakes,” Leroy said. “You heard that too?”
“Wives talk about it when they see you yesterday. There the man who fuck a sheep, or a goat, or some such. Say you ain’t a man can get pussy.”
“Oh, hell,” Leroy said.
“So, tell me some,” Nigger Joe said. “Which was it, now?”
“Goat,” Leroy said.
“That is big nasty,” Nigger Joe said, and started walking, leading them along a narrow trail by the water. Frank watched the cottonmouth snakes swim on ahead, their evil heads sticking up like some sort of water devil erections.
The day grew hot and the trees held the hot and made it hotter and made it hard to breathe, like sucking down wool and chunks of flannel. Frank and Leroy sweated their clothes through and their hair turned to wet strings. Nigger Joe, though sweaty, appeared as fresh as a virgin in spring.
“Where you get your hat?” Nigger Joe asked Leroy suddenly, when they stopped for a swig from canteens.
“Seed salesman. My wife knocked him out and I kept the hat.”
“Huh, no shit?” Nigger Joe took off his big old hat and waved around. “Bible salesman. He told me I was gonna go to hell, so I beat him up, kept his hat. I shit in his Bible case.”
“Wow, that’s mean,” Frank said.
“Him telling me I’m going to hell, that make me real mad. I tell you that to tell you not to forget my eleven-fifty. I’m big on payment.”
“You can count on us, we win,” Frank said.
“No. You owe me eleven-fifty win or lose.” Nigger Joe said this, putting his hat back carefully on his head, looking at the two smaller men like a man about to pick a hen for neck wringing and Sunday dinner.
“Sure,” Frank said. “Eleven-fifty, win or lose. Eleven-fifty when we get the pig and the mule.”
“Now that’s the deal as I see it,” Nigger Joe said. “I tell women it’s eight dollars, that way I make some whisky money. Nigger Joe didn’t get up yesterday. No he didn’t. And when he gets up, he got Bible salesman’s hat on.”
They waded through the swamp and through the woods for some time, and just before dark, Nigger Joe picked up on the mule’s unshod tracks. He bent down and looked at them. He said, “We catch him, he’s gonna need trimming and shoes. Not enough rock to wear them down. Soft sand and swamp. And here’s the pig’s tracks. Hell, he’s big. Tracks say, three hundred pounds. Maybe more.”
“That’s no pig,” Leroy said. “That’s a full-blown hog.”
“Damn,” Frank said. “They’re real.”
“But can he race?” Leroy said. “And will the pig co-operate?”
They followed the tracks until it turned dark. They threw up a camp, made a fire, and made it big so the smoke was strong, as the mosquitoes were everywhere and hungry and the smoke kept them off a little. They sat there in the night before the fire, the smoke making them cough, watching it churn up above them, through the trees. And up there, as if resting on a limb, was a piece of the moon.
They built the fire up big one last time, turned into their covers, and tried to sleep. Finally, they did, but before morning, Frank awoke, his bladder full, his mind as sharp as if he had slept well. He got up and stoked up the fire, and walked out a few paces in the dark and let it fly. When he looked up to button his pants, he saw through the trees, across a stretch of swamp water, something moving.
He looked carefully, because whatever it was had stopped. He stood very still for a long time, and finally what he had seen moved again. He thought at first it was a deer, but no. There was enough light from the early rising sun knifing through the trees that he could now see clearly what it was.
The White Mule. It stood between two large trees, just looking at him, its head held high, its tall ears alert. The mule was big. Fifteen hands high, like Robert E. Lee, and it was big chested, and its legs were long. Something moved beside it.
The Spotted Pig. It was big and ugly, with one ear turned up and one ear turned down. It grunted once, and the mule snorted, but neither moved.
Frank wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t go tearing across the stretch of swamp after them, since he didn’t know how deep it was, and what might be waiting for
him. Gators, snakes and sink holes. And by the time he woke up the others, the mule and hog would be gone. He just stood there instead, staring at them. This went on for a long time, and finally the hog turned and started moving away, behind some thicket. The mule tossed its head, turned and followed.
My God, thought Frank. The mule is beautiful. And the hog, he’s a pistol. He could tell that from the way it had grunted at him. He had some strange feelings inside of him that he couldn’t explain. Some sensation of having had a moment that was greater than any moment he had had before.
He thought it strange these thoughts came to him, but he knew it was the sight of the mule and the hog that had stirred them. As he walked back to the fire and lay down on his blankets, he tried to figure the reason behind that, and only came up with a headache and more mosquito bites.
He closed his eyes and slept a little while longer, thinking of the mule and the hog, and the way they were free and beautiful. And then he thought of the race, and all of that went away, and when he awoke, it was to the toe of Nigger Joe’s boot in his ribs.
“Time to do it,” Nigger Joe said.
Frank sat up. “I saw them.”
“What?” Leroy said, stirring out of his blankets.
Frank told them what he had seen, and how there was nothing he could do then. Told them all this, but didn’t tell them how the mule and the hog had made him feel.
“Shit,” Leroy said. “You should have woke us.”
Nigger Joe shook his head. “No matter. We see over there where they stood. See what tracks they leave us. Then we do the sneak on them.”
They worked their way to the other side of the swamp, swatting mosquitoes and killing a cottonmouth in the process, and when they got to where the mule and the hog stood, they found tracks and mule droppings.
“You not full of shit, like Nigger Joe thinking,” Nigger Joe said. “You really see them.”
“Yep,” Frank said.
Nigger Joe bent down and rubbed some of the mule shit between his fingers, and smelled it. “Not more than a couple hours old.”
“Should have got us up,” Leroy said.
“Easier to track in the day,” Nigger Joe said. “They got their place they stay. They got some hideout.”
When the crossed the marshy stretch, they came to a batch of willows and looked around there. Nigger Joe was the one who found their tracks.
“Here they go,” he said. “Here they go.”
They traveled through woods and more swamp, and from time to time they lost the tracks, but Nigger Joe always found them. Sometimes Frank couldn’t even see what Nigger Joe saw. But Nigger Joe saw something, because he kept looking at the ground, stopping to stretch out on the earth, his face close to it. Sometimes he would pinch the earth between finger and thumb, rub it about. Frank wasn’t sure why he did that, and he didn’t ask. Like Leroy, he just followed.
Mid-day, they came to a place that amazed Frank. Out there in the middle of what should have been swamp, there was a great, clear area, at least a hundred acres. They found it when they came out of a stretch of shady oaks. The air was sweeter there, in the trees, and the shadows were cooling, and at the far edge was a drop of about fifty feet. Down below was the great and natural pasture. A fire, brought on by heat or lightning, might have cleared the place at some point in time. It had grown back without trees, just tall, green grass amongst a few rotting, ant-infested stumps. It was surrounded by the oaks, high up on their side, and low down on the other. The oaks on the far side stretched out and blended with sweetgums and black jack and hickory and bursts of pines. From their vantage point they could see all of this, and see the cool shadow on the other side amongst the trees.
A hawk sailed over it all, and Frank saw there was a snake in its beak. Something stirred again inside of Frank, and he was sure it wasn’t his last meal. “You’re part Indian,” Frank said to Nigger Joe. “That hawk and that snake, does it mean something?”
“Means that snake is gonna get et,” Nigger Joe said. “Damn trees. Don’t you know that make a lot of good hard lumber… Go quiet. Look there.”