Rumble Tumble

8

“We can go outside for these,” Haskel said. “I use the range in back for the heavy shit.”

Leonard and I each carried a rifle and Haskel carried the sawed-off and the revolvers and ammunition in a cloth bag. He walked us out the door, down the trail, and over near the hog pens. He put the bag down, broke open the double-barrel and took two shells out of his overalls pocket and pushed them into the gun.

“Watch this,” Haskel said, and suddenly he turned toward the hog pen and cut down with both barrels. There was a sound like God letting a big one and the fence splintered. When the smoke and dirt and hog shit cleared, both hogs lay with their feet in the air.

“Goddamn,” Leonard said. “Wasn’t any call for that.”

“Gonna eat ’em anyway,” Haskel said, opening the shotgun and popping out the shells. “Soon as I get you two packin’, I’ll get my woman to help crank them sonofabitches up with the wrecker and we’ll scrape ’em. Scrapin’ a hog beats scaldin’ any day. Still got to use lots of hot water, but it ain’t quite the work. Come here, now.”

We followed Haskel down the trail to a spot at the base of the barn. “Ya’ll want telescopic sights for these?”

“No,” Leonard said.

“Might ought to have ’em,” Haskel said.

Leonard shook his head.

Haskel said, “See them bumps on the hill out there?”

We nodded.

He swapped his shotgun for the rifle Leonard was carrying.

“Watch this.” Haskel jerked the rifle up and fired and cocked and fired in rapid succession. The bumps on the hill went away. “Come on out with me now,” Haskel said.

As we walked we could smell yet another awful stench. It wasn’t the outhouse and it wasn’t the pigs; it was something long dead and rotting. It was more armadillo carcasses. They were spread at the base of the little sand hill, and at the top of the hill we saw what Haskel had been shooting. The heads off buried armadillos. We stood at the top of the hill, and all around the spots where the exploded heads stuck out of the dirt there were bones and fragments of skulls and brains, and down on the far side of the hill were wire cages. All but one of the cages was empty. It housed a frightened armadillo that kept darting from one end to the other.

“Were those armadillos alive?” Leonard asked.

“Ain’t no fun shootin’ a dead’n,” Haskel said. “Fuckers root up everything. Figure this is how they pay.”

“They’re just doin’ what their instincts tell ’em,” Leonard said.

“Reckon so,” Haskel said. “But so am I.”

Leonard carefully laid the shotgun down, then I heard the wind, but I didn’t see the punch. It was a right cross, I think, and it caught Haskel on the left side of his cheek and it made a cracking sound, and Haskel seemed to leap away from the hill. He hit the ground at its base, rolled and lay on his face. I was amazed to see that the rifle Haskel had been holding was in Leonard’s left hand. He had snatched the weapon and punched Haskel in less time than it took to spit.

Leonard raised his knuckles to his mouth and sucked on them. I went down the hill to see if Haskel was dead. I lifted his head up and dirt fell out of his mouth. I set him up, got behind him and pulled the little revolver out of his overalls pocket and gave him a couple of whacks on the back with the palm of my hand. He coughed and rolled his eyes.

“You fugger,” Haskel said.

Leonard came down the hill and got out his wallet. He looked at me and sighed, took out the bills. There were a lot of them, large bills. Hundreds. I knew he had gotten them out of the bank for this gun buy, that it was a chunk of the money from the recent sell of his uncle’s old house.

Leonard pushed the bills down the front of Haskel’s overalls. “Here’s the money for the weapons and ammo, shitwipe. We’ll pick them up on the way out. That diller in the cage down there, I’ve tossed in another fifty, so I’m taking him with me. Cage too. Any of your friends, or you, show up to bother us on account of this, I want you to know they’re gonna miss all future meals. And I can find my way back here too, and I do, it won’t be to try and sell you no vacuum cleaner. You happen to wake up when I’m through with you, it’ll be with a tube in your nose and a shit bag strapped to your hip.”

“Azoles,” Haskel said, then stretched out on the ground and turned his head to the side and lay still.

I emptied Haskel’s revolver, dropping the shells in my hand. I put the shells in my pocket and leaned down and put the gun back in Haskel’s pocket. I picked up the cloth bag on my way away from there.

Leonard got the armadillo cage, carried it down the hill with one hand, the rifle in the other, the shotgun tucked under his arm. Down at the barn, we went inside and I got the notepad with our names on it and bent it in half and shoved it in my back pocket. We gathered up the guns and the ammo.

We went out to the truck. Leonard put the dillo in the truck bed. I stepped over the dead possum and got inside the truck with my weapons and ammo. Leonard went around and opened the driver’s door and put the guns and ammunition he was carrying inside.

Sherilee, without her finger in her nose for a change, sort of materialized. She said to Leonard, “Ain’t that our armadillo?”

“I bought him,” Leonard said, closing the door and leaning against his truck.

“Pa traps ’em.”

“Uh huh.”

“Where’s Pa?”

“He got a little tired. He’s up on the hill there, resting.”

“In the dirt?”

“He was sort of overcome with exhaustion.”

“You hit him didn’t you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Sometimes he hits me. He knocked me out oncet with a shoe.”

“Just consider that one for you,” Leonard said, “and call it even.”

“He ain’t so bad sometimes,” the little girl said.

“You ought to tell someone about the hogs. Haskel shot ’em.”

“He does that sometimes,” said the little girl. “When they get big.”

“Well, they ain’t gonna get no bigger.”

“Reckon not.”

Leonard gave the little girl a pat on the head and drove us out of there. When we reached the main road, we saw Haskel’s two boys walking. They had cane fishing poles on their shoulders and sullen looks on their dirty faces. They didn’t wave at us.

When we had gone a few miles down the road, Leonard pulled over to the side, got the cage out of the back of the pickup and walked into the woods, set it on the ground, and opened it.

The armadillo sat quietly, looking at the open space. Lovebugs buzzed around our heads and caught in our hair and clothes.

“Go on and git,” Leonard said.

The armadillo did not go on and git.

Leonard picked up a stick and poked at the armadillo’s rear end, but the beast didn’t seem any more ready to leave. Leonard picked up the cage and gently poured the armadillo onto the ground. The armadillo landed on its feet and turned its head and sniffed the air. It appeared to be in shock, and considering what had happened to his relatives, I couldn’t blame him.

“Now, you go on and stay out of trouble,” Leonard said.

The armadillo moved slightly so that it stood next to Leonard’s leg. It made a snuffling sound, as if smelling Leonard’s socks, or maybe working up to a good cry.

Leonard picked up the cage, and we went back to the truck. When Leonard put the cage in the truck bed, we looked up to see the dillo had followed us to the edge of the woods.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” I said.

“No, me either. I reckon the little fella don’t know he’s comin’ or goin’.”

Leonard went around and got in the truck, started up, and drove off. I looked in the side mirror, said, “He’s standing in the middle of the road.”

“Dammit,” Leonard said. He found a spot to pull around, went back and parked, got out and grabbed the cage. He opened it and set it on the ground in front of the dillo. The beast ambled into the cage and lay down. Leonard closed the cage and put the armadillo in the truck bed and got back behind the wheel, paused to pull lovebugs from his hair and toss them out the window.

“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Leonard said, rolling up the window. “Couldn’t leave him though. He’d probably end up caught again, target practice for Haskel.”

“Probably. Think Haskel is going to hunt us down and kill us?”

“You destroyed the record.”

“Haskel could have memorized our names.”

“Let him come see us, then.”

“That was one hell of a punch you hit Haskel with.”

“Actually, I must be getting old. Skin on my knuckles scraped worse than usual.”

“Can you still get your pecker up?”

“I can hang an American flag on it and wave it.”

“Then you’re not getting old.”

“What’re you snickerin’ about?”

“Your dillo.”

“What about him?”

“Neat,” I said. “You’ve got an heir.”