The Boar Read Free

bet he was something to see.
    Way it worked was the fair would usually have its own man. A well-fed, experienced toughie who took on all comers. This way the fair could draw a crowd at a nickel a head, and charge a quarter entry fee for the wrestlers. A local fellow didn’t usually stand a chance against the fair’s wrestler, and when the fair moved on a few days later, it was usually a bunch of nickels and a handful of quarters richer.
    Papa, however, caused many a fair to move on shy its prize money and with a bad attitude toward its prize wrestler.
    In favor of Mama, the subject was quickly dropped. Doc said, “You hear about Herman Hall’s prize hound?”
    “Red?” Papa asked. Half the hounds in East Texas were named Red, but Herman Hall’s Red was special. It was generally agreed that he was probably the best coon dog in two counties.
    “Dog got himself killed,” Doc Travis continued. “Was running a coon and cut a wild boar’s trail. I’m not talking about no Piney Woods Rooter either. I mean a big hog like from the old days.”
    “Figured there were still some around,” Papa said, “but I haven’t heard tell of one in five or six years.”
    “Red cut this boar’s trail the other night and started after it. Herman said he and his boys never saw the hog—not really. But they saw Red fly up in the moonlight, tossed over six feet. Then they saw a huge shape crash off through the bushes. It was so big Herman figured it was a young black bear, but when he went to check on Red, the dog was gutted, tore up like wet newspaper. They held their lanterns down to the ground and looked at the tracks. Big as a man’s hand, Herman said. And deep. Herman said from the looks of those tracks, and considering poor old Red’s wounds, that boar must have weighed over four hundred pounds and had tusks as big and sharp as daggers.”
    “That’s awfully big for any wild hog.” Papa said.
    “Yeah,” Doc Travis agreed, “but you know Herman.”
    Doc Travis didn’t need to explain that. Herman Hall was one of the best hunters in the country. He knew the woods and he knew animals. He wasn’t known to exaggerate, not even a little. He was as sober honest as a hangman’s noose. If he said something was so, you could pretty well count on it being that way. Mr. Hall could be wrong, but not on purpose.
    “Some are saying it’s the same boar that was here before. The one you were talking about five or six years ago. They say he’s come back.”
    “Old Satan?”
    “I’ve heard him called The Devil Boar too, but that’s the one.”
    “Memory serves me,” Papa said, “they claimed the time before that it was the same hog come back. This would make three times, and that would make Old Satan darn near fifteen to twenty years old.”
    “I’ve heard tell of hogs living that long,” Doc Travis said.
    “In the wild?”
    “Who knows how long some of them have lived. Ain’t nobody throwing birthday parties for them.”
    Papa laughed. “Maybe we ought to bake Old Satan a cake, buy him a few presents. Maybe then he’d go away.”
    “Ain’t you the funny one.” Mama said, giving Papa a playful slap on the shoulder.
    “Well, if it is the same boar, things could get pretty nasty around here. Last time that hog rooted up a lot of farm land, killed chickens and small livestock, and even cut down old Jack Jeffer’s mule with them tusks, cut him right off at the legs like a tree. Then there was that old colored man that got all tore up.”
    “Pharaoh,” Papa said. “Lives across the river from us. He was the best hunter in these parts until then. Wasn’t nothing he hadn’t hunted. Bear, wild cats, you name it. Hunted all over the United States, but that boar got the best of him.”
    “He’s lucky to be alive. I’m the one worked on him. Wasn’t nothing I could do for his legs but sew them up. They were torn to ribbons, the muscles and nerves ruined.”
    “He was sure some hunter,” Papa said