“Oh. Yeah, he come in here yesterday, said he wanted to hunt turkey. Bought a huntin’ vest and some eats.”
Sam looked at him. “He doesn’t own a gun.”
“He didn’t when he come up on the porch. Talk to the clerk about it.”
After a while, the bald clerk came back inside, sweaty and sour-smelling. “Hep you?”
“I’m looking for a boy.”
“Who you, then?”
“Aw, he’s all right!” yelled the red-faced man.
“Well, sold him some cheese and potted meat and crackers and a toy compass. And a used shotgun.”
“Aw, hell. I was afraid of that. What kind?”
“A old double-barrel wore-out Parker. Ten-gauge with rabbit ears.”
“What kind of shells did you sell him?”
“Feller that traded it to me give me the shells, and I passed ’em on with the gun. About a dozen.”
“What size shot?”
“Hell, I don’t know. They was old goose loads. Maybe number-two shot with black powder under ’em.”
“Good lord.”
“It was none of my business, but I knew he wasn’t no hunter, least not much of one. Kind of a city-lookin’ kid.”
“Well, when did he leave?”
“I let him sleep on the porch out on the cotton. He left about a half hour after I opened up at six. Give him some syrup and bread for breakfast. I saw him start off due south into the woods.”
“Is there a trail?”
Everybody laughed, and the third man’s feet fell off the stove’s fenders. “Not much of one. We all pretty much stay out of the south woods. Louisiana’s got a state prison a few miles in there against the river and there ain’t no tellin’ who you could meet up with, if you know what I mean.”
One of the men said, “You goin’ after him?”
“I guess so.”
“You own a compass?”
Sam reached into his khakis and pulled it out. “I’ve been back in there before.”
“You got my sympathy,” said the hound’s face.
“I was on a horse.”
“Well, well,” the red-faced man said and spat into a box of sawdust next to the stove. “You got him now?”
“I’m on foot.”
The man stood up. “You need to see my brother, then.”
Sam looked at the clerk, who shrugged. “What for?”
The man lay a spotted hand on his arm. “Come on, he’s down the street.”
Sam followed him half a mile to a dog-trot house, and the fellow who came out had the same sun-botched face as his escort.
“Buzz. Who you got there?”
“Fellow needs a animal.”
“I got a pig he can have.”
“Does it come with a saddle?”
The brothers smacked hands and chucked shoulders and then stood side by side looking down off the unpainted porch to where Sam stood in the chicken-bald yard.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” he began. He explained what he wanted to do and the horse trader gave his brother a doubtful look.
“I should of knowed you wasn’t bringin’ around somebody with cash in his jeans.”
His brother shrugged.
“I can only sell you a animal. I don’t rent, there ain’t no sense in it. But when and if you get out of that terrible country”-he nodded his shaggy head to the south-“I’ll buy it back less what you skint off him in there.”
Sam tried to remember how much was in his wallet, how much a pair of train tickets would cost to get him and the boy down to New Orleans. “What can you sell one for?”
“I got an Appaloosa that’s tough and is good on short hills and mud. He’s thirty-five dollars.”
“God, I can’t afford that.”
The horse trader blinked. “Somehow I thought not. Well, I got a old mare, then, slow, but she won’t spook. You can’t make no time through those woods nohow. She’s twenty dollars cash money.”
“Maybe. What else?”
“I got a couple trained mustangs, but if you ain’t a real good horseman, they’ll kill you dead, ’cause they’ll do what you tell ’em even if you spur ’em into quicksand or off a drop. Now, I got a retired dray horse with heart trouble you can have for fourteen dollars, but once you get in the woods he won’t fit between trees.”
“Let me see him.”
The trader looked at his brother and shook his head. “Let’s us go around back, then.”
On the way to the barn, an animal in the pasture caught Sam’s eye, an oversized mule a hand and a half taller than most and gray as fog. “What’s the story on that one?”
The horse trader looked everywhere except at the mule. “What one?”
Sam pointed.
“Oh. That’s a hinny. Biggest I ever saw. I got him in a trade last year and done sold him and took him back three times. That one’s too smart to ride.”
“How’s that?”
“Aw, he just knows better than anybody that gets on him. If you could just figure out how he thinks, he’d be a good animal. But you can’t make him do a damn thing he don’t want to.”
“He’s sort of white.”
“Yeah. Folks around here think that means bad luck.”
“Can I try him out?”
The man turned and looked at him. “Why would you want to?”
Sam looked out into the field and the mule looked back, rolling his ears forward. “I rode a mule like him to school.”
The horse trader spat out the side of his mouth. “This one’ll take you to school, all right.”
They got a rain-hard saddle out of the barn, and Sam asked for a thick blanket when he saw it. He cinched it on, leaning against the animal while he worked, rubbing the mule over before clipping a cloth saddlebag on the back. The roller-mouthpiece bridle he passed slowly over the ears, which stayed relaxed, though the mule looked at him carefully. Sam talked to the animal and patted him. “You got a crupper for this saddle?”
“Naw. I got a old double rig in there somewheres if you’re scared of that one.” He motioned to his brokeback barn.
“Let me see something.” He walked to the fence and got a length of mildewed plowline hanging there and tied one end to the saddle horn and walked around behind the mule to the other side, pulling the rope and rolling it up the animal’s legs and quarters. The mule watched him but barely moved a hoof. Then he took the line off and put it back on the fence. He mounted up and started the mule off in a straight line, turned him, backed him, and made him trot a bit. Getting off, he left the reins on the ground and walked away. The mule looked at the gate and back at Sam, but didn’t move.
Sam climbed on the fence. “What’s wrong with him, then?”
“A man can’t get in that animal’s head. Some you can beat, some you can treat, but that one don’t respond to neither. To be fair, he’s done good for me, but everybody else tells me he’ll stop sometime and might as well be a stump. Worse, he’ll keep going even if you pull his head off. Just won’t stop for nothing.”
“Does he have good wind?”
“Oh, hell, yes. He’ll climb a tree and yodel at the top, but that might not be what you told him to do.”
“How much?”
“Ten dollars.” He spat. “Eleven if you bring him back.”
