by Steve Vernon
Closing my eyes and listening to Coyote’s story I could almost hear that lonesome woman singing her song.
To the ears of my imagination that lonesome woman sounded more than just a little bit like my Mom.
“So what happened then?” I asked.
“Well Old Man Death, he heard the song and its music called to him just as surely as a southern dream calls to the bump on the front of a wild Canadian goose bill. Old Man Death just walked up to her porch and she told him that if he didn’t take her there and then that she was going to keep on singing until the world filled up with tears and drowned.”
“So what did he do?”
“What could he do? If the world all drowned he’d be out of the death business – on account of everybody getting suddenly drowned,” Coyote said. “So he took her with him on down the road to the kingdom of death.”
“Three weeks later a raging swamp fever hit that area and Little Billy took sick and he lay on his bed and he dreamed of wildfire and furnace coal. The heat roared up in him from out of bones and he sweated so much that his sweat soaked the floors clear of his mother’s tears. Finally Old Man Death had nothing to do but to walk on up to Little Billy’s house and take Little Billy down the road with him too.”
WHAT???
“He doesn’t die too?” I said. “That isn’t fair!”
“Who said death was supposed to be fair?” Coyote asked. “Death is nothing more than a single card in a deck that we each have to turn over – one card at a time – until we reach that final card and the game is done.”
I thought about my Dad lying out there in that desert – blown to ribbons by that baby carriage full of high explosives and roofing nails.
Sometimes it is sunny and sometimes it rains.
“So what happened next,” I asked sullenly.
“Old Shuck had his own idea about where Little Billy was going to go,” Coyote said. “When Old Man Death walked onto the porch Old Shuck was standing there and waiting for him. That dog growled a growl that would terrify a thunderstorm into sunshine. “
“Did he chase Death away?” I asked. “Did he save Little Billy?”
I was really getting worried.
“I didn’t say that,” Coyote said. “The truth of it was that Old Man Death wasn’t afraid of that Old Dog Shuck. He knew that he just to reach out his hand and Old Shuck would be struck just as dead as graveyard dirt. A single puff of Old Man Death’s freezer-cold breath would have iced the very flesh of Shuck from off of his old dog bones – but Old Man Death truly admired the courage that the old dog was showing.”
“That’s an awfully good dog you’ve got there boy – Old Man Death said to Little Billy,” Coyote went on. “And while he was saying that he blew just enough of his breath onto Little Billy just enough for that fever up and stepped straight out of Little Billy’s bones quicker than you could say spit on a stick.”
Coyote kept on talking and I just followed him right on inside that story until I might as well have been standing there on Little Billy’s front porch right directly next to Coyote – the two of us listening to what Old Man Death had to say.
“Do you think that you would sell that dog to me?” Old Man Death asked. “I’d sure like to have him as my own.”
“Well that depends on what you want to pay for him,” Little Billy replied. “I’m kind of thinking that nothing you offer is going to be enough. Right now Old Shuck is all I have left of my family.”
“The price is your life,” Old Man Death said. “If that dog comes with me than you have to got to get up and shake this fever from out of your bones and live to about a hundred and three years of age – give or take a day or two.”
Little Billy didn’t know what to say – but Old Shuck knew exactly what needed to be done.
“That dog walked right on up to Old Man Death and he licked Death’s bony fingers with his long pink tongue,” Coyote kept on talking. “And the salt of the dead man’s bones worked its way into Old Shuck’s bloodstream and right then and right there he became Death’s very own dog.”
“So I guess that Death sweat works just a little bit like Giant Tears do,” I said, thinking back to Old Nanna Bijou, back in Thunder Bay – laying in a pool of his own tears and slowly turning into a mountain.
“I guess it does,” Coyote agreed with a knowing grin. “Just a little bit.”
And then Coyote slid right back into his story.
“So when ever Old Man Death knows that he has to make himself a house call,” Coyote went on telling. “He sends Old Shuck ahead to let people know that it’s time to go. Old Shuck is what some folks call a psychopomp – a messenger of Death. It was Old Shuck’s job to let families know that it is time for the saying of goodbyes. He lets people know when they have to go and make casserole and when they have to get their church clothes cleaned and pressed. He lets people know that Old Man Death is coming close behind.”
I shivered just a little.
Coyote smiled like that shiver was what he had been trying for in the first place.
He winked at me and Bigfoot grinned and just exactly before I giggled out loud when I realized just how scared silly I had really been – the grandfather of all hound dogs barked outside The Prophet’s door.
“It sounds like we’ve got company,” Bigfoot said, with a grin.
“Let’s just pretend that we’re not home,” Coyote suggested. “It’s probably just a salesman looking to sell us some toilet brushes.”
But of course Bigfoot did not listen to Coyote’s suggestion.
Instead, he got up and opened the door.
It wasn’t Death at the door – and it wasn’t a traveling toilet brush salesman. It was something a whole lot worse than either of those two combined.
It was Old Shuck.
He had heard Coyote tell his story told and Old Shuck had come running.
As big as life and twice as ugly.
Chapter Twenty – Death Dog Beat Down
Can you just try and picture a pit bull crossed with a purple hippopotamus?
“I hate dogs,” Bigfoot growled. “Especially big purple ones.”
Then once you’ve got that purple pit bull hippo successfully crossed throw in a mouth full of teeth that sort of looked like they were carved out enamel-coated mountain peaks. Add a hide full of muscle and whale-meat, a set of eyebrows that looked as if they needed to watered and mowed regularly.
Then throw in a heavy handed helping of all-around size and enough of a body mass so that picture basically needs its very own postal code.
Now you’re getting the idea of what Old Shuck REALLY looked like.
“What’s wrong with dogs?” Coyote asked, sounding a little hurt. “I mean, besides the big and the mean and all those teeth?”
Old Shuck growled right back.
He didn’t sound as if Bigfoot’s growling had intimidated him one little bit.
“Dogs are two-faced,” Bigfoot said. “One moment they are all wagging tail and loll-the-tongue – but you forget to feed them their dinner and the wolf-memory creeps on in and all of a sudden it’s a WHOLE different kind of story.”
Old Shuck growled a little bit louder.
“Do you know what I figure?” I asked aloud to no one in particular. “I think that Old Shuck has just figured out that whole dinner problem – and I am pretty sure that we are it!”
Old Shuck growled again.
I think he might have been agreeing with me.
“I want you to distract him,” Bigfoot told Coyote. “Then I’ll make my move.”
“How about if you make your move first and I’ll just stand here and act distracted,” Coyote replied. “I’m awfully good at acting distracted.”
Meanwhile, Old Shuck just sat there looking about as B-I-G as a giant purple hippo dog could look.
Let me tell you, he was awfully good at that too.
In fact, in addition to his own postal code I think th
at dog might have had a gravitational field of his very own.
“I don’t want you to catch him,” Bigfoot told Coyote. “I just want you to sort of flush him out – not that you’d know all that much about flushing.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, trying to step back enough to put the two of them between me and that garage-sized canine.”
“So how good are you at staying out of the way?” Bigfoot asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean just shut up, stand there and do nothing,” Bigfoot said. “Okay?”
That hurt my feelings a bit – but I guess I really couldn’t blame him. After all, he was the expert monster fighter.
I was just some little kid.
What the heck could I do?
Nothing.
“I can do that,” I said – even though it hurt to say it. “You want me to do nothing than that’s just exactly what I will do.”
“I am still waiting for you to explain that wisecrack about me not flushing,” Coyote complained to Bigfoot. “I’ll have you know that we coyotes are by nature true and total masters of simple basic hygiene.”
“Maybe so,” Bigfoot allowed. “But your toilet habits leave a WHOLE lot to be desired – or do you REALLY imagine that your beneath-the-tail tastes anything remotely like sugar plums and sweet butter?”
By about this point Old Shuck had got bored with our company. He stood up – which was a little like watching a Greyhound bus grow its own set of legs and wag its tailpipe – and then he wandered over to a clump of trees and began delicately anointing them with a dirty gentle lemonade.
Yes sir – for a giant purple dog, Old Shuck definitely had class.
“All right mangy foot,” Bigfoot said to Coyote. “Here’s what we’ll do. You run into that thicket of jack pines and flush him out like I told you to. You head him my way and I’ll jump on him as he goes running past me.”
“What about me?” The Prophet asked. “I want to help too.”
“How are you at shutting up, Winnie?” Bigfoot asked. “You just park yourself right where you are at and I will let you know when we need something.”
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” The Prophet said.
I kind of half-agreed with The Prophet – that WASN’T a very nice thing for Bigfoot to have said to The Prophet.
“No one ever said that I was especially nice,” Bigfoot said. “Now you just do what I told you and you sit there and shut the heck up.”
So that’s just what the Prophet did – but I am pretty certain that giant pink flying Winnebago was sulking as well – and I was pretty sure I saw a few streaks of windshield washer fluid tearing up around the corners of his front windshield – and I guess I couldn’t blame him if he really was crying.
Bigfoot had been awfully rough on him after all.
I knew just what he felt like.
“Do you have any intelligent suggestions on just how I am supposed to aim that big purple dog in any other direction other than the one he feels like going in?” Coyote asked. “Providing he doesn’t take it into his wedge-shaped head to run directly at me?”
“That’s exactly what I am counting on,” Bigfoot said. “You just get him running at you and then I’ll surprise him from behind.”
“Just once,” Coyote grumbled. “Just freaking once I would like to take a shot at that whole surprising from behind department.”
“That’s my particular area of expertise,” Bigfoot pointed out. “You are sort of good at running and I am very good at surprising – ESPECIALLY from behind.”
So Coyote went on in to flush the Death Dog out of the jack pine thicket.
He kind of sneaked up on Old Shuck.
I’m not quite sure how he did it. One moment he was sitting there beside us and the very next he had sort of moved on and blended into the shadows of the pine trees.
“I will give him that,” Bigfoot said to me. “Mangy or not, that Coyote is as stealthy as all get out.”
By now Old Shuck had completely vanished into that thicket of jack pine faster than a playing card at a magician’s convention. I am guessing that Coyote was still following him but I couldn’t really be sure because by then he was completely invisible.
The plan was working – which, in hindsight, was ALWAYS a bad sign.
All at once Old Shuck came charging out of that thicket of jack pines baying in a voice so loud and deep and cranky that it sounded as if somebody had dropped a rusted-out iron woodstove down a three hundred foot coal mine shaft about four or five thousand times in a row.
I am talking deep-down thunder-yelling, earthquake-rumbling, kettle drum demolitions.
The big old death-dog sounded as if he had swallowed a tribe full of motorcycles and had spit out each of the mufflers.
Coyote was running close behind the death-dog.
In fact, Coyote had hold of Old Shuck’s tail.
I could see him hanging on as Old Shuck ran straight past us.
Coyote was stuck straight out in the wind like Old Shuck had gone and grown himself his very own fur-covered flea-bitten exhaust pipe.
“GEE-RON-AH-HOO-HAW!” Bigfoot shouted, leaping straight up into the air like he was part-kangaroo and part rocket-powered pogo stick. He landed on top of the death dog – with his arms and his legs spread wide as if he were attempting to straddle the Grand Canyon and a half.
Yes sir, I have got to give credit to that Sasquatch.
He was definitely big on offence.
He looked pretty darned impressive but judging from the way that Old Shuck took his weight in stride he was having no more effect on that big old death dog than a piece of dandelion fluff alighting upon the left antler of a three billion year old bull moose.
However, Bigfoot’s distraction did give Coyote a chance to shift his grip a little and to bite down even harder on Old Shuck’s tail – which worked just fine until Old Shuck took it into his head to sit down.
Right directly on top of Coyote.
It did make an awfully interesting sound – when that big black death-dog’s bottom end squashed down on top of Coyote’s all-over end. It kind of sounded a little like the world’s largest nuclear amoeba splashing down upon a Godzilla-sized water balloon.
I’m not saying that it sounded pretty.
Still, the fact that Old Shuck was now sitting directly upon Coyote did not seem to bother Bigfoot one little bit. In fact, it almost seemed to cheer him up. He hammered the death dog about three or four times with the side of his big hairy fist before Old Shuck performed a most amazing sort of a maneuver that went sort of like this.
On the fifth time that Bigfoot hauled one of his big hairy fists back, Old Shuck turned and opened his mouth and when Bigfoot swung he hit nothing but a set of wide open death dog jaws. His arm sort of slid elbow-deep down into Old Shuck’s mouth.
“Can you hold him like that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure who’s actually doing the holding,” Bigfoot admitted, swinging his other big hairy fist down again. “It’s either him or me, I guess.”
“Aim for a molar!” I suggested.
Old Shuck closed his mouth down even harder on Bigfoot’s arm. I couldn’t tell if he was chewing or not.
“I think I found that molar you were talking about,” Bigfoot said. “Only it might be somewhere sunk into my right arm wrist bone.”
It sure didn’t look good for our side.
Bigfoot was trapped elbow-deep in Old Shuck’s mouth.
Coyote was busy being squashed.
And then the big death dog began to slurp.
FLOOP!
Bigfoot slid into the big dog’s mouth just a little further. It was a little like watching a very fat man slurp down a very large strand of spaghetti – except it wasn’t a fat man doing the slurping – it was a big fat dog. And it wasn’t a strand of spaghetti that it was slurping.
It was the right arm of a Cape Breton B
igfoot.
Bigfoot did his very best to resist the big dog’s irresistible suction, using his free left arm to hammer on the right side of Old Shuck’s head but Old Shuck just ignored the hammering and inhaled again.
FLOOP!
Bigfoot’s arm disappeared even deeper into Old Shuck’s mouth; only by now Bigfoot was buried up to his shoulder in dog mouth.
“Okay,” Bigfoot said. “This REALLY sucks.”
And then Old Shuck inhaled again.
FLOOP!
It would have been funny, if I hadn’t been so terrified.
Bigfoot’s head was buried completely inside of Old Shuck’s mouth.
He looked a little like a lion tamer stuck in permanent epic fail mode.
“Hum-mum-um-num-um-num,” Bigfoot said – which sounded an awful lot like “I’m stuck. Get me out of here before he decides to chew.”
Which was followed by another swallow.
FLOOP!
It wasn’t too hard to see where this going to end up.
A couple of more swallows and Bigfoot was going to discover the hidden secrets of canine digestion – from the inside out.
Old Shuck was going to swallow Bigfoot whole.
I turned and I ran.
Straight for the mystical pink Winnebago.
Chapter Twenty One – Me, Doing Something
Just shut up and and stand there and do nothing was exactly what Bigfoot had told me to do – but I had to do something.
So to start with I ran for the big pink Winnebago. I opened the door, jumped in and then I slammed the door behind me.
“Hey!” the Prophet shouted. “Easy on the paint job.”
Only I wasn’t all that worried about his paint job.
“Bigfoot is in trouble,” I said. “So is Coyote.”
That didn’t seem to impress the Prophet one little bit.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you must be mistaking me for somebody who might actually give a hydro-electric beaver dam.”
“They are your friends, aren’t they?” I asked. “I heard you say that very thing, right out loud, not too long ago.”