blew them and mixed them up. Rupert was clearly outlined near a pathetic persimmon tree from which the mule had stripped the persimmons and much of the leaves.
Frank thought Rupert looked quite noble up there, his mule ears standing high in outline against the redness of the sun behind the dark trees. The world seemed strange and beautiful, as if just created. In that moment Frank felt much older than his years and not so fresh as the world seemed, but ancient and worn like the old Indian pottery he had found while plowing through what had once been great Indian mounds. And now, even as he watched, he noted the sun seemed to darken, as if it were a hot wound turning black from infection. The wind cooled and began to whistle. Frank turned his head to the north and watched as clouds pushed across the fading sky. In an instant, all the light was gone and there were just shadows, spitting and twisting in the heavens and filling the hard-blowing wind with the aroma of wet dirt.
When Frank turned again to note Rupert, the mule was still there, but was now little more than a peculiar shape next to the ragged persimmon tree. Had Frank not known it was the mule, he might well have mistaken it for a peculiar rise in the terrain, or a fallen tree lying at an odd angle.
The storm was from the north and blowing west. Thunder boomed and lightning cracked in the dirty sky like snap beans, popped and fizzled like a doused campfire. In that moment, the shadow Frank knew to be Rupert, lifted its head, and pointed its dark muzzle toward the sky, as if in defiance. A bolt of lightning, crooked as a dog’s hind leg, jumped from the heavens and dove for the mule, striking him a perfect white-hot blow on the tip of his nose, making him glow, causing Frank to think that he had in fact seen the inside of the mule light up with all its bones in a row. Then Rupert’s head exploded, his body blazed, the persimmon leaped to flames, and the mule fell over in a swirl of heavenly fire and a cannon shot of flying mule shit. The corpse caught a patch of dried grass a blaze. The flames burned in a perfect circle around the corpse and blinked out, leaving a circle of smoke rising skyward.
“Goddamn,” Frank said. “Shit.”
The clouds split open, and pissed all over the hillside, and not a drop, not one goddamn drop, was thrown away from the hill. The rain just covered that spot, put out the mule and the persimmon tree with a sizzling sound, then passed on, taking darkness, rain, and cool wind with it.
Frank stood there for a long time, looking up the hill, watching his hundred dollars crackle and smoke. Pretty soon the smell from the grilled mule floated down the hill and filled his nostrils.
“Shit,” Frank said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Late morning, when Frank could finally drag himself out of bed, he went out and caught the horse, Dobbin, hitched him to a single tree and fastened on some chains, and drove him out to where the mule lay. He hooked one of the mule’s hind legs to the rigging and Dobbin dragged the corpse up the hill, between the trees, to the other side. Frank figured he’d just let the body rot there, on the other side of the hill where there was less chance of the wind carrying the smell.
After that, Frank moped around for a few days, drank enough to see weasels again, and then had an idea. His idea was to seek out Leroy, who had been Rupert’s trainer. See if he could work a deal with him.
Frank rode Dobbin over to Leroy’s place, which was even nastier than his own due to the yard being full not only of chickens and goats, but children. Leroy had five of them, and when Frank rode up, he saw them right away, running about, raising hell in the yard, one of them minus pants, his little johnson flopping about like a grub worm on a hot griddle. Leroy’s old lady was on the porch, fat and greasy with her hair tied up. She was yelling at the kids and telling them how she was going to kill them and feed them to the chickens. One of the boys, the ten-year-old, ran by the porch whooping, and the Mrs., moving deftly for such a big woman, scrambled to the edge of the porch, stuck her foot out, caught him one just above the waist and sent him tumbling. He went down hard. She laughed like a lunatic. The boy got up with a bloody nose and ran off across the yard and into the woods, screaming.
Frank climbed down from Dobbin and went over to Leroy who was sitting on a bucket in the front yard whittling a green limb with a knife big enough to sword fight. Leroy was watching his son retreat into the greenery. As Frank came up, leading Dobbin, Leroy said, “Does that all the time. Sometimes, though, she’ll throw something at him. Good thing wasn’t nothing lying about. She’s got a pretty good throwin’ arm on her. Seen her hit a seed salesman with a tossed frying pan from the porch there to about where the road meets the property. Knocked him down and knocked his hat off. Scattered his seed samples, which the chickens ate. Must have laid there for an hour afore he got up and wandered off. Forgot his hat. Got it on my head right now, though I had to put me some newspaper in the band to make it fit.”
Wasn’t nothing Frank could say to that, so he said, “‘Leroy, Rupert got hit by lightning. Right in the head.”
“The head?”
“Wouldn’t have mattered had it been the ass. It killed him deader than a post and burned him up.”
“Damn. That there is a shame,” Leroy said, and stopped whittling. He pushed the seed salesman’s hat up on his forehead to reveal some forks of greasy brown hair. Leroy studied Frank. “Is there something I can do for you? Or you come around to visit?”
“I’m thinking you might could help me get a mule and get back in the race.”
“Mules cost.”
“I know. Thought we might could come up with something. And if we could, and we won, I’d give you a quarter of the prize money.”
“I get a quarter for grooming folks’ critters in town.”
“I mean a quarter of a hundred. Twenty-five dollars.”
“I see. Well, I am your man for animals. I got a knack. I can talk to them like I was one of them. Except for chickens. Ain’t no one can talk to chickens.”
“They’re birds.”
“That there is the problem. They ain’t animal enough.”
“I know you run in the circles of them that own or know about mules.” Frank said. “Why I thought you maybe could help me.”
Leroy took off the seed salesman’s hat, put it on his knee, threw his knife in the dirt, let the whittling stick fall from his hand. “I could sneak up on an idea or two. Old Man Torrence, he’s got a mule he’s looking to sale. And by his claim, it’s a runner. He ain’t never ridden it himself, but he’s had it ridden. Says it can run.”
“There’s that buying stuff again. I ain’t got no real money.”
“Takes money to make money.”
“Takes money to have money.”
Leroy put the seed salesman’s hat back on. “You know, we might could ask him if he’d rent out his mule. Race is a ways off yet, so we could get some good practice in. You being about a hundred and twenty-five pounds, you’re light enough to make a good rider.”
“I’ve ridden a lot. I was ready on Rupert, reckon I can get ready on another mule.”
“Deal we might have to make is, we won the race, we bought the mule afterwards. That might be the way he’d do it.”
“Buy the mule?”
“At a fair price.”
“How fair?”
“Say twenty-five dollars.”
“That’s a big slice of the prize money. And a mule for twenty-five, that’s cheap.”
“I know Torrence got the mule cheap. Fella that owed him made a deal. Besides, times is hard. So they’re selling cheap. Cost more, we can make extra money on side bets. Bet on ourselves. Or if we don’t think we got a chance, we bet against ourselves.”
“I don’t know. We lose, it could be said we did it on purpose.”
“I can get someone to bet for us.”
“Only if we bet to win. I ain’t never won nothing or done nothing right in my life, and I figure this here might be my chance.”
“You gettin’ Jesus?”
“I’m gettin’ tired,” Frank said.
There are no real mountains in East Texas, and only a few hills of consequence, but Old Man Torrence lived at the top of a big hill that was called with a kind of braggarts lie, Barrow Dog Mountain. Frank had no idea who Barrow or Dog were, but that was what the big hill had been called for as long as he remembered, probably well
