Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  “And that’s all?”

  “That’s all. So far.”

  “So was it a child, or—?”

  “Grown woman. Well, she was twenty-one. Attacked about a mile from her home. Fair number of other homes scattered about the area, so it’s sort of an emergency.”

  Cates let out a long, slow breath. He wasn’t entirely surprised someone had finally been killed by a wild hog; he’d seen them do plenty of damage, and always assumed it was just a matter of time. He expected it to be a child, though; a hog big enough to take down an adult was more dangerous than he liked to imagine. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Jack had seen nothing on the local news sites about it; he checked them every morning, and had Internet alerts set up that would let him know when any story appeared that might fall under his purview. He definitely tried to keep up with damage done by wild hogs, the most pernicious and insidiously destructive invasive species he knew. “That a fact? I didn’t hear anything about it.”

  “You are now, I reckon.”

  “Then I reckon,” he said, slightly mocking Darwin’s drawl, “I need to come over there and take a look.”

  “We’d sure appreciate it if you did.” Darwin passed on his cell phone number, and the Rogerses’ address.

  Cates hung up. Georgina, having returned from her errand, stood waiting for him to move so she could sit down. “You can’t do every job around here, Jack.”

  “Sure I can,” he said as he stood. “I just wouldn’t look as pretty as you doing it.”

  “Not when you look that serious. What was that about?”

  “Another feral hog problem.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Worse than that. If they’re right, this one might’ve killed somebody.”

  “What?” she said, eyes wide.

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t hear anything about that, and I always watch the news while I’m making the kids’ breakfast.”

  “Me, neither. But that was the highway patrol, and they wouldn’t call if they weren’t pretty certain.”

  She sat down at her desk. “That’s a first, isn’t it?”

  “As far as I know.” Wild and feral pigs were a large and growing problem, but Jack had never heard of a fatal attack before, let alone one in which the pig had consumed an entire adult body. But if the trooper was right about the size of the track, then the pig in question was bigger than anything he’d ever encountered, and definitely posed a danger. Not to mention a number of questions as well, beginning with, where did it come from?

  “So what are you going to do?” Georgina asked.

  “First I’m going to drive over there and see what they’ve got.”

  “Where is ‘over there’?”

  “Cloud County.”

  Georgina looked up sharply. “That’s where those emus got loose, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Against all odds, a feral population of emus had settled there, living in the hollows and small valleys and by all accounts thriving. Cates couldn’t imagine how they survived the mountain winters, but there was no denying their presence. At least, unlike wild hogs, they hadn’t spread beyond the county boundaries, and hadn’t yet attacked anyone.

  “That’s also where the Tufa live, you know,” she almost whispered.

  “Is it a secret?” Jack whispered back.

  “No, it’s just … I always heard it was bad luck to talk about them out loud.”

  “Bad luck,” he repeated skeptically.

  “You’re not from around here, Jack. There’s some strange stories about them. They say they’re part black, and that they brought a bunch of magic from Africa when they came over here. My grandpappy used to tell me that they’d steal children and eat ’em if you didn’t say your prayers at night.”

  “Okay, first, I don’t care what their race is. Second, I’m from Covington, which is not exactly a foreign country.”

  “It’s West Tennessee, not East,” she said seriously.

  “And third, do you really believe in magic?”

  “I don’t know about that, but my cousin Beaurine told me she knew a woman who tried to cheat a Tufa man who’d done some work for her. The Tufa made some kind of hand sign at her, and told her she’d soon die from choking on her lying tongue. Well, about a month later, that woman dropped over from a heart attack, and when the doctors got to her, they found out she had swallowed her tongue. What do you say about that?”

  “I’d say that I need a little more than thirdhand gossip to get my worry up.” He headed back to his office.

  “That isn’t all I’ve heard, Jack,” she called after him.

  “That’s all I’ve got time for,” he responded.

  Jack closed the door and nudged the mouse on his computer. The screen came alive with the TWRA home page, which featured an image of a feral hog in one corner. Clicking on that link took you to a page that contained history—the story of how the animals were never native to Tennessee, and had been illegally introduced all over the state for hunting—and the little video that explained the state’s approach to eradicating them. Mostly it involved setting up corral traps that captured whole herds, which were then destroyed. In fact, it was illegal to do anything other than kill a trapped wild pig.

  But there was another contingency plan, one Jack had put together on the sly with a few trusted friends, then presented to his TWRA superiors when it was ready to go. He opened his e-mail and typed in three addresses, then in the subject line, put WHOMP.

  In the body of the message, he put a photo of an eye-patched David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury, from a TV movie long before Samuel L. Jackson had made the role his own. Beneath that he added the line, WHOMP, Assemble.

  Ten minutes later, he looked at his computer screen, where a Skype conference call had been set up. Two men and a woman looked back at him.

  “It’s finally happened,” he said. “A goddamn wild hog has killed somebody.”

  One of the men let out a low whistle. The other said, “Are you sure?”

  “I am,” the woman said. “I know the family. My mama went over there to sit with them yesterday right after it happened.”

  “I’m going there right now to confirm it,” Jack said. “But assuming it’s true, we’ll need to get right on it. Are you all available?”

  They nodded.

  WHOMP—the Wild Hog Offensive Management Program—was a semiofficial organization Jack had set up when he first took this job. Experience told him that, with growing populations of both feral pigs and human beings, it was inevitable that someone would be seriously hurt or killed. He recruited these three for their expertise, knowing that if a hog did kill someone, it would need to be found, and eliminated, as quickly as possible.

  So he had Dolph Pettit, the man who used to hold Jack’s job before he retired to Gatlinburg; Max McMaynus, a veterinarian and expert on Tennessee wildlife from Jackson; and Bronwyn Chess, an army veteran in addition to being a full-blooded Tufa, something that now seemed like a huge asset, since they’d be operating in Cloud County.

  Together, they would efficiently track, contain, and eliminate any porcine threat to human safety. And they’d do it discreetly, to avoid attracting other hunters who might be less diligent about hunting near people. In their previous four times in the field, eliminating hogs that had killed dogs, cats, and livestock, things had gone perfectly. They’d killed over three dozen feral hogs, and actually driven them completely out of certain areas. At least for a while.

  “I’ll be in touch tonight after I know for certain what we’re up against,” Jack said. “We’ll make plans for tomorrow.”

  “Have to be a mighty big hog to kill someone,” Dolph said. He was African American, with silver touching the temples of his hair and deep smile lines. In his career with the state, he’d personally killed over a thousand wild and feral pigs, and plenty more since retiring. “I knew some folks who got their legs and feet tore up good, but never anybody killed. I
reckon if one of them tusks hit an artery and she bled out, that might do it.”

  “Not enough body found to tell,” Jack said. “At least according to what the police told me.”

  “She was twenty-one years old, and hiking a trail that went through her own backyard,” Bronwyn said. Her anger was palpable. “She was a sweet girl who had a whole life ahead of her. Let’s not forget that with all this clinical talk about bodies and remains, okay?”

  “Apologies, ma’am,” Dolph said sincerely. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “And I’m not mad at you, Mr. Pettit,” she said. “Just at a universe that would let this happen. Jack, I may see you out there today. We’re taking some food over to the Rogerses’.”

  “Got it,” Jack said. “The rest of you, keep your ears open. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I know more.”

  They all signed off, and Jack sat back in his chair thoughtfully. He jumped as his phone rang. “Cates,” he answered.

  “Sounds like we got a problem, young man,” Dolph said.

  Jack did his internship under Dolph back in the early 2000s, and the experience taught him more than any class or textbook. He watched how the older man interacted with people, especially the ones he gave tickets and summons. Many white hunters weren’t happy about being caught by an African American, but Dolph had a natural authority and common sense that either defused their racism or intimidated them into not expressing it.

  “Remember one thing, young man,” Dolph told him on his first day in Dolph’s old job. “You have to live with these people long after that fine is paid or that suspension runs out. Treat ’em that way.”

  And even though Jack had held the post for several years now, he still treated Dolph as a superior, both in work and their personal relationship. “We do, indeed,” he said. “A big problem, and a pig problem.”

  “How sure are you about this?”

  “The trooper who called me sounded pretty sure.”

  “It ain’t that ole Pafford boy, is it?”

  “No, his name was … let me see … Darwin.”

  “That’s good. Trooper Pafford was a piece of bad news on rye bread. Come to think of it, I think he’s dead. Which is good news for everybody except maybe his dog, if he had one.”

  “I’ll know more about the situation after I see for myself.”

  “I didn’t want to say this on the conference call with the others, but I’d be more inclined to think it’s a long pig rather than a wild pig.”

  “What’s a long pig?”

  “It’s what cannibals call human beings.”

  “Ah.”

  “Might be hard to come up with a better way of disposing of a body than feeding it to the hogs. If there was a bullet in there, or a knife wound, or even poison, that’d make it pretty hard to find.”

  “Yeah, that crossed my mind, too. But since the state troopers say it’s a pig, I wanted you guys on alert.” He started to say something else, then stopped.

  Dolph sensed it. “What?”

  “Well … this all happened over near Needsville. You know what that means.”

  “Ah. Them Tufa.”

  “Yeah. I haven’t dealt with ’em much before.”

  “That army girl you had on your conference call is a Tufa.”

  “And that’s the only one I know.” He’d met Bronwyn at a shooting range outside Unicorn, where she’d been teaching her tiny daughter how to handle the smallest bolt-action .22 rifle Jack had ever seen. The little girl, beneath ear protection that looked as big as her, had taken the whole thing very seriously, and Jack had struck up a conversation with her mother. When he asked her why she’d come all the way to a range instead of just going out behind her house, she’d said she wanted the girl, whose name escaped him at the moment, to hear lots of other gunfire so she wouldn’t be afraid of it. “I don’t know that I’ve been over to Needsville five times in the last six years,” Jack added.

  “Hell, I stayed away as much as I could, too.”

  “Why?”

  There was a pause while Dolph mustered his answer. “You may think less of me for this answer, Jack, but they flat-out give me the creeps.”

  “Even Bronwyn?”

  “Well, all pretty girls make me nervous,” he chuckled. “But yeah, even her.”

  “How so?”

  “They won’t tell you shit, not really. They make these weird hand signs to each other when they think no one’s watching. And they sing all the damn time.”

  “Sing? Like hymns, you mean?”

  “Naw, ain’t you ever noticed? There ain’t a church in that county. Not even one of them snake-handling churches like they have over in Campbell County.”

  Jack bit back most of his sarcasm and said, “Thanks, Dolph. If I get cursed, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Now, don’t be a smart-ass, youngster. I can still turn you over my knee and give you the whuppin’ your daddy should’ve given you.”

  Jack smiled. “I bet you could, Dolph.”

  “You just watch yourself, and keep in touch.”

  “That I’ll do. Thanks a bunch.”

  He hung up and leaned back in his chair. The more he thought about it, the more he suspected that this situation did not actually involve wild pigs, or if so, only tangentially. They were unpleasant invasive creatures who needed to be eradicated for the damage they did to the environment, but as a rule, they weren’t killers. If a woman had died, he suspected there was ultimately a human hand involved in that.

  But luckily, if that turned out to be the case, then it was not his problem.

  6

  “Did you hear about Kera Rogers?” Ginny Vipperman asked as she opened her locker at the Cloud County Consolidated High School. Classes were about to begin, and she loaded the textbooks she’d need for first period into her backpack. It was still early in the school year, and she hadn’t gotten the routine down yet.

  At the locker beside her, her best friend, Janet Harper, said, “Yeah, I heard she was killed.”

  “Oh, that’s not the juicy part. She was eaten.”

  Janet’s eyes opened wide. “What? Like, by a bear?”

  “No, by a pig. A giant wild pig killed her and ate her.” Ginny was almost gleeful with the news, not because she lacked empathy, but because it was so rare that she was able to impress her friend.

  Janet was, even by Tufa standards, a musical prodigy, possibly on a scale with Mozart; she could play anything, had written songs and operas and even symphonies, and although she was only seventeen, was the best picker in the county. Her all-female band, Little Trouble Girls, was a growing YouTube sensation, and as soon as they all turned eighteen, Janet planned for them to start gigging all over the Southeast. Ginny, who played bass in the band, could hardly wait.

  Janet had also been named editor of the school’s newspaper, the Raven’s Caw. Ginny expected her passion for that to fade just as every other nonmusical interest had done, but it hadn’t happened yet. Janet had seen His Girl Friday on cable late one night, and now fast-talking, no-nonsense Hildy Johnson was her role model. Janet said, “So where did this happen? Who found the body? What are they doing?”

  “You left out ‘why,’” Ginny said.

  “Come on, spill.”

  “That’s really all I know. I heard my parents talking about it this morning. They shut up as soon as I came downstairs.”

  The five-minute warning bell sounded, and the hallways began to empty as students went to their classes. Janet growled her frustration. “I should be tracking this down, and instead we’ve got stupid algebra in five minutes.”

  “They offer stupid algebra? And here I was thinking it was the smart kind,” Ginny deadpanned.

  Janet wrinkled her nose at her in mock annoyance. “All right, thank you for the tip. Maybe during study hall, I can find out some things. The Caw has to cover this.”

  “Why? Kera hasn’t been here in years. She was a senior when we were freshmen.”

  “Because t
here won’t be anyone else writing about it. No one will talk to the Weekly Horn over in Unicorn, so it’ll just be a form obituary.”

  “And you think people will talk to you?” Ginny said dubiously. “Why?”

  “Because I’m a fucking charmer,” Janet said, then turned on her heel and headed to class. Ginny shook her head and followed.

  * * *

  Jack Cates felt his stomach churn at the sight of the remains, small and insubstantial as they were, resting in a plastic bag on a table in the fire station kitchen. From the time he was a boy running shirtless and barefoot through the woods, he’d trained himself to imagine the entire animal based on the smallest clues: footprints, scat, tufts of fur, stray feathers. It was a skill he couldn’t turn off, even when he wanted to. In college, he made an internal game out of identifying who left items of clothing behind in the dorm laundry room, and got so good at it, people started calling him “Sherlock.” So now those two fingers and a thumb grew, in his mind, into the young woman whose pictures he’d been shown beaming proudly at her high school graduation, waving with a beer in her hand, and looking pensive in close-up as she hugged her dog. It made him sad, and angry, and sick.

  But at least it settled one thing. Whatever killed her, pigs definitely ate her. And that meant they had to be dealt with at once.

  The phone beside the door rang. It was an old rotary design, one of the few things that survived the fire that ironically destroyed the previous fire station.

  “Excuse me,” Bliss said, and answered it. “Fire department,” she said softly, as if it would be rude to speak too loudly.

  After listening for a moment, she said, “Okay, Mrs. Bundy, let me ask you one thing. Is the snake in your basement on fire? No? Then you should probably call Mr. Castellaw, he handles animal control for the county. Okay. Bye.”

  She returned to stand beside Jack. “Done?”

  “More than.”

  She put the plastic bag back into the fire department freezer.

  He looked back down to his phone. Bliss’s photographs of the tracks took on an ominous feel, like something lurked in the woods just outside the station, waiting to strike. Again, he had no trouble imagining it in the flesh, scaling up from the hoof to the foot, all the way to the entire beast. The only surprise was accepting just how massive this particular wild pig must be.