Reunion at Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  “I don’t actually have it in hand. It’s in my pond, but by God, it’s not gonna be there long.”

  Derbert nodded, as if he completely understood the situation, although the story was still a little vague for his liking. He took another bite of sandwich, then slid off the stool and walked to the rack where an assortment of chips were on display to be sold, chose a bag of corn chips and sauntered back to the stool just as I came from the back of the store.

  “I found them. Put ‘em on the ticket.”

  Derbert nodded, frowning slightly as he added the cost of the box of shells to the growing list of charges that I was always making.

  As soon as I began backing out of the drive, I just know Derbert grabbed the remote and switched channels back to Days of Our Lives.

  * * * *

  “Okay, you flat-assed little varmint, stick your nose out of the water again, and you’re gonna wind up plucking buckshot out of your tail.”

  It was a fine promise, and one I had every intention of carrying out, but the day was getting hot and laying flat on my belly on the pond dam was starting to get uncomfortable as hell. Besides that, I could feel ants crawling up my pant legs and across the back of my neck. Convinced that I might come to a certain amount of harm from the ants and the heat of the sun, I decided to make a move and headed for a tall grove of laurel near the edge of the pond. There was plenty of shade, and I could prop the barrel of my gun in the big shrubs to steady my aim. I slipped the barrel of the shotgun in a comfortable position, took careful aim toward the beaver lodge, and settled down to wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  I waited so long that my feet were numb and my knees were about to give out. I kept thinking how I’d been meaning to take off that extra thirty pounds I’d been carrying for close to ten years. Then I thought of the old commode under the tree in my front yard and wished I had it right now. It would make a real fine chair to sit in while I waited for the beaver to show.

  By the time four o’clock came around, sweat was coming out from under my John Deere ‘gimme’ cap and running into my eyes. I was as miserable as a man could be. Early September in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia can be hotter than high Hell.

  “I know you’re there. Come on, you little water skunk. Show yourself.”

  No sooner had the words come out of my mouth than that beaver’s head popped up like a cork float on a fishing line. At last, I thought, and steadied my aim.

  The beaver swam out from under the woody dome and then crawled on top of the lodge like a big brown tick readying for a nice afternoon nap.

  Like shooting sitting ducks.

  My finger curled around the trigger of my daddy’s old shotgun as I lined him up in my sites. And that was when I made my first mistake.

  In my eagerness, I leaned forward and as I did, impaled my belly on the sharp stob of a broken laurel branch. It was the pain, coupled with the shock, that caused my shot to go wild, which of course pushed the stob in a little deeper.

  “Ohmigod! Christallmighty!”

  I jerked backward in reflex, which caused me to stumble into a clutch of briars. Thorns pierced my back and butt. I was caught just as tight in that laurel and briars as the tar baby had been caught in Brer’ Rabbit’s briar patch. I stood there bleeding and cussing while the beaver slipped into the water and disappeared from view.

  With no small amount of patience, I set to freeing myself, then limped slowly toward the house, dragging Daddy’s gun behind me. I needed some antiseptic and a good pair of tweezers and knew I had neither. This meant another trip to Derbert at the I Probably Got It.

  * * * *

  Derbert was stacking cans of motor oil onto a shelf when he heard the bell over the door jingle. He turned just in time to see me coming inside. The front of my shirt was dotted with droplets of what appeared to be drying blood, and when I ambled past where Derbert was standing, he could see that my backside looked about the same.

  I looked like a man who’d been buckshot, both coming and going.

  “Lord a’ mercy, Orville Gene, what happened to you?”

  I didn’t want to go into details, so I shrugged it off. “Nothin’ much. Got any Mercurochrome?”

  Derbert scooted behind the counter and lifted a small bottle of the reddish-pink medicine from a shelf.

  “And some tweezers?”

  Derbert frowned and then rummaged through a drawer beneath the counter.

  “I ain’t got any for sale, but I’ll loan you these,” he said.

  I didn’t want to let on that it was paining me to reach for the stuff, so I waited until he bagged up the items and put the bag in my hand.

  “Put it on the ticket, old buddy.”

  Derbert nodded an okay, then watched me as I limped back toward the truck. He couldn’t figure out what was going on at my place. If I’d been shooting at that beaver as I’d claimed I was going to do, then how in blazes had I managed to shoot myself in the belly and the butt, and all at the same time?

  Derbert, being the busybody that he was, couldn’t keep the news to himself. He picked up the phone. He had just enough time to tell his neighbor, Foxer Atlas, about what he’d just seen. Foxer was a right good hand with woodworking and such. Maybe he’d get a notion to carve out a laughing beaver in my honor and sell it for a fine penny on reunion day.

  Or maybe Derbert just couldn’t resist talking.

  * * * *

  I was stark naked and standing in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, trying to pick thorns out of my chest and back, but with little success. Finally, I tossed the tweezers aside and then stood and stared at myself, wondering how I’d come to this. It wasn’t so much that I minded turning forty last year, or that my fine, hard physique had gone to jelly-soft flesh. And I didn’t mind that these days I had more skin on my head than I had hair, or that I was probably never going to find a woman who suited me enough to get married. But it did gall me no end that I’d failed to dislodge that danged beaver from his pond.

  If I’d known what Derbert was about, I would have been even more distressed.

  * * * *

  The next morning, I was careful as I crawled out of bed. The thorns that I hadn’t been able to get out were red and sore. I staggered to the mirror, scratching at the hair circling my belly button. I frowned at my image.

  “Well, I look like crap.”

  Having stated the obvious, I swabbed the thorn punctures with some more Mercurochrome and said a few choice curse words as I put on some clean clothes. I knew enough about beavers to know that once you shoot at them, you’ll never be able to get a good second shot again. Beavers aren’t all that good to look at and even less tasty to eat, but they’re smart. However, I had options. Plenty of options.

  The trap I’d borrowed from Smokey Lincoln last night was certain to do the job. With him being a forest ranger and all, I figured he knew most of what there was to know about the woods and wood critters. I also thought that Smokey would volunteer to set the trap for me, but all he did was show me how to do it myself. It was one of those new kinds that only catches the beaver and doesn’t hurt him. What was the world coming to?

  After a hearty breakfast, I called old Duke, and we made our way to the pond. I was still a bit sore, but moving around fine under the pain and pretty optimistic about what I was about to do.

  When we reached the pond, Duke took to barking at the beaver lodge, as if he’d just noticed it was there, and to make matters worse, he wouldn’t stop. I knew for a fact that he’d been swimming in the pond on a regular basis, ‘cause he always came back to the house wet, so I wasn’t too impressed with his attitude. Sort of a “too little, too late” guard dog stunt.

  I chunked a stick at him and told him to shut the hell up. Duke took the hint and wandered off into the trees. Later, I heard him thundering through the brush and figured some rabbit had seen its last sunrise.

  I waded into the water and began going about the
business of securing the cage with some bait I fastened the long end of the chain to a big stake just like Smokey told me to do, then drove the stake deep into the mud. The next step was to set the trap on a little hummock of debris so I waded out about eight feet from the lodge. I set the cage up and positioned the trap door. I was just about to move back when the water behind me commenced to a fierce churning, coupled with a series of excited barks.

  I knew it was Duke. Without turning around, I started to give him what for when I looked up and found myself eyeball to eyeball with the beaver, hisself.

  It was hard to say who got the most excited, Duke, the beaver, or me. There was this moment where everything sort of slid into slow motion. I thought of the trap and reached for old Duke as the beaver hit the water with his tail.

  A huge plume of water splashed in my face as Duke jumped in the middle of my back. I staggered forward, flailed wildly, grabbed the trap for balance, then staggered backward to steady myself, and fell down, the cage going with me. I felt a crunch. The sound of the trap door was slightly muffled by the water, but there was nothing quiet about the pain radiating up my ankle and toward my knee.

  “Christ all mighty! Oh Lordy. Oh no!”

  I was chin deep in water, sitting in mud, with my ankle caught fast in Smokey Lincoln’s trap. Duke seemed to think it was all a big game and commenced to licking me in the face. I grabbed at the chain, but I’d done too good a job fastening it down and it wouldn’t come loose. I wished it had been a mite longer—at least long enough to strangle old Duke. He took a big drink of water then bounded out of the pond, pausing only long enough to shake himself dry before giving chase at something else in the woods. As I watched him disappear, I thought of Lassie.

  Lassie always went for help in situations like this.

  Something told me old Duke wasn’t geared quite that way.

  It set me to wondering how long it took to die from a beaver trap and decided I’d rather not have the title of my obituary read Stupid Is As Stupid Does.

  I managed to drag myself upright and tried to get my foot out of the trap while keeping an eye out for the beaver, which by the way, was a lot bigger up close than he appeared to be from across the pond.

  After ten minutes of sweating profusely—which I didn’t know a man could do while soaking wet—and cursing at the top of my lungs to keep from crying—because a grown man shouldn’t cry—I managed to drag myself and the big cage out of the pond. Using one of the willow branches the beaver had chewed off as a pry bar, I did get my boot out of the trap’s door, then proceeded to beat the piss out of said trap for a good five minutes with that branch, just because I needed to hit something, and it was the closest thing within reach.

  I thought about tossing the trap in the pond, but since it belonged to Smokey Lincoln, I threw the cage over my shoulder instead and hobbled my way up the hill.

  By the time I got to the house, Duke was asleep beside the commode and my ankle was so swollen that I had to cut the boot off my foot. I sat on the porch step, contemplating the loss of a good pair of boots and knew that my troubles were only beginning. I needed to doctor my ankle, and there wasn’t a drop of liniment in the house. This meant another trip to the I Probably Got It.

  Too weary to bother changing clothes, I hobbled into the house to get a bedroom slipper, got my daddy’s old cane out of the hall closet, and headed back out the door, wishing I’d taken a snort of corn liquor before I set about making the short drive to the four-corner crossroad where Derbert had his store. It was between me and Mossy Creek, and unless I was in need of a lot of groceries, I rarely drove all the way into town.

  Especially when I expected to be laughed at.

  * * * *

  Derbert was watching The Young and the Restless when my pickup turned off the road in front of his store. I glimpsed him grab the remote and turn off the TV.

  “Dadgumit,” Derbert muttered as I walked in. “You, again.”

  When he saw the condition of my clothes and the fact that I was walking with a cane, he came off the stool and headed for the door, holding it wide as I hobbled in. “Have mercy, boy! What happened to you?”

  I just shook my head, unwilling to go into details. “That beaver is meaner than he looked.”

  Derbert’s eyes bugged. “You mean to tell me that beaver did this to you?”

  I chose not to mention that I’d done most of it to myself. “Hey, Derbert, you got any liniment left over from last Fourth of July when the Fiesty Felines from Bigelow ran that marathon past here?”

  Derbert thought for a moment, smiling. “God bless sports bras,” he said, as he headed for the back of the store. He must have been remembering the very buxom females from Bigelow’s Aerobic Center for Mature Women, who’d thundered past his store that day.

  I followed him because sitting was still uncomfortable, although I thought the remaining thorns in my butt had probably benefited from the dunking I’d just taken. The way I figured it, they’d eventually fester up and pop out, or take root. Either way, I wasn’t asking anybody to pick stickers out of my behind.

  “Yep, here’s that liniment,” Derbert said. “How much you want?”

  “The biggest you got.”

  Derbert handed it over. “That must be some beaver. He’s drawed blood on you and has now got you so crippled you can’t even walk. You’re liable to run up quite a bill before you get rid of that pest.”

  I ignored the hint about paying any on his bill, and Derbert was forced to “put it on the ticket” with all the other charges I’d been making.

  However, as soon as I left, Derbert apparently couldn’t let the latest news pass without sharing it, and must have been back on the phone to Foxer Atlas, who then passed the information on to Eleanor Abercrombie when she came to pick up her Don’t Pick The Flowers sign that she’d hired him to paint. She was sick and tired of everyone messing up her fine display of annuals in the town square and figured if people didn’t have enough upbringing not to mess in the flower beds with the reunion festivities coming up, then what they needed was a sign.

  By the time Eleanor was through telling the story to Sue Ora and Katie Bell down at The Mossy Creek Gazette, the scratches from the thorns had become real wounds, and the cane I had been using had turned into a pair of crutches, and the beaver’s presence had taken on a threat that could even spill over into the town itself. One never could be too careful about beavers.

  Katie Bell knew what the headline for her weekly column would be as she gathered up her camera and headed out to my place. As my mother used to say, “A picture was worth a thousand words.” The way Katie must have figured it, getting a picture of the monster’s lodge would be a fine accompaniment for the gossipy piece she was going to write. Maybe she could even get me to stand on the shore with my bandages and crutches, if I wasn’t too crippled up. I could see it all now.

  ORVILLE GENE SIMPLE OUTWITTED BY DENIZEN OF THE DEEP

  Maybe the story would even get picked up by the Associated Press.

  Fortunately, I was not at home when Katie Bell drove up, and she had to settle for a shot of the pond with the two felled trees and the beaver lodge, minus the beaver, of course. She left in a hurry, anxious to get the film developed and unaware that I was still over at Smokey Lincoln’s place, returning the trap.

  “How did the trap work?” Smokey asked.

  I didn’t want to let on too much about what had happened, although I knew he was staring at my foot.

  “Not so good. The durned thing didn’t work right. New fangled junk. Humane trap, my fanny. What it did to my foot wasn’t humane.”

  Smokey nodded like he wasn’t going to argue the point, especially with a man who looked like he’d come out on the bad side of a pissed off bobcat.

  “So, what are you going to do now?” Smokey asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m thinkin’ of blasting him out. Might get me some dynamite. I don’t plan to kill him, just make his ears ring.”

  Smokey frow
ned. “Before you get too violent, I heard tell of something else you might want to try. Can’t say how well it works, but there’s more than one old-timer I’ve heard swear by it.”

  By now, I was desperate. I was willing to try anything, especially if it didn’t hurt.

  “What’s that?” I asked, then wondered why Smokey gave me such a funny look.

  Suddenly, he leaned forward in a confidential manner. “They say that if you put your scent all over his lodge, it will insult him enough that he’ll get up and move.”

  I snorted before I thought and then took out my hanky and pretended to be blowing my nose. It wasn’t nice to be disdainful of a man who was just trying to help, even if the suggestion—and the man—were sort of dumb. I mean, last year Smokey Lincoln had been stupid enough to let Tag Garner steal Maggie Hart’s affections from under Smokey’s nose. And Tag had a blue streak in his hair.

  “Scent? How is a fella supposed to put scent on a lodge?” I asked. “Bury his underwear on it or somethin’?”

  Smokey shook his head. “Nope, but you’re on the right track. What you do is . . . the next time you got to make a trip to the outhouse, do it on top of his lodge instead.”

  I heard my voice rising a couple of octaves, even as I was trying to stop it, but it was too late. “You mean I’m supposed to do my . . . my . . . business . . . on top of the beaver lodge . . . out in the water . . . in front of God and ever’body? No way! Anyone heard I did somethin’ like that, and they’d have me committed.”

  Smokey shrugged. “Well, don’t say I never told you. Anyway, thanks for bringing back my trap. Sorry it didn’t work.”

  I got in my car and drove away, but I couldn’t get his advice out of my mind. It sounded stupid, but a little poop on the lodge was a lot cheaper than dynamite. And, considering the luck I’d been having, probably safer, as well. Considering the fact that I’ve always been regular as clockwork, the business of doing my business on the beaver lodge didn’t pose any kind of a problem that I could see.

  So, on my way back home, I pulled in to the I Probably Got It.

  “Hey, Derbert. Gimme about six rolls of toilet paper and put ‘em on the ticket, will ya?”