The Boar Read Free Page A

wistfully.
    “Ain’t he supposed to be a hundred and fifty years old?” Doc asked.
    “What they say,” Papa said.
    “One thing’s certain,” Mama said, “he knew my papa when he was a little boy and my papa’s papa when he was a boy. He’s old alright. He has at least one boy in his eighties.”
    “Well, if you believe Pharaoh is a hundred and fifty years old, then maybe you’ll believe the story going around about Old Satan. About him being an Indian demon or the devil in disguise.”
    “That old wives’ tale?” Papa said.
    “There’s them that say he’s an old Caddo Indian medicine man that’s getting back at the whites by changing himself into a wild boar, a boar that can’t be killed by guns, but only with magic. Then there’s those partial to the devil story. Some of the backwoods preachers are especially fond of that one. Say the devil’s been let loose here on account of the way folks been living. Not getting to church regular enough and all.”
    “Even preachers—especially preachers—get some danged fool ideas sometime,” Papa said.
    After that their talk turned to other things, the weather, the bad times. I put up my magazines and Ike and I went out to finish the chores.

Four
    Hour or so later Doc Travis left, and Papa came out to the woodpile where we were finishing up. He sent Ike back to the house to help Mama, then we went out to the barn to hitch Clancy up for the day’s work at running the weedy middles out of the corn and cane.
    When we had Clancy hitched, Papa held the lines, laid the Georgia Stock on its side and let the mule pull it down to the bottoms. On the way, Papa began to talk.
    “What you reckon you’re going to do when you get older, son?”
    I was taken aback. It had always struck me that it was understood what I was going to do. Keep right on working the farm. Growing what I could and getting by as best I could, same as Papa did. Now it occurred to me that I might have a choice, and with the question put before me, I realized I also had an answer.
    “I’d like to write stories,” I said. The words seemed to leap out of my mouth unbound. The thought had probably been growing inside me for some time, but with Doc Travis bringing those magazines, and Papa asking me outright like that, the time was ripe for a decision.
    Papa called “whoa” to Clancy, turned and looked at me. I had an awful sinking feeling that I had just given the wrong answer to his question.
    “Say what?” he said.
    For a moment I considered changing my answer, but I was afraid he’d actually heard me right, and was just checking to make sure. “I’d like to write stories,” I said again. “Like in the magazines Doc Travis brought me.”
    “Stories?” Papa said.
    “Yes sir.”
    “Make up and write stories?”
    “Yes sir.”
    Papa was quiet for a moment, considering. I was beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable with my newfound career, and I could tell from the tone of Papa’s voice that he had considered me doing many a thing, but writing stories for magazines wasn’t one of them. After a moment, he said, “They pay folks for that? Making up stories?”
    Now I hadn’t given this part of my career any thought. What if they didn’t pay you for writing stories? What if they were written for fun by rich folks who didn’t have nothing to do but lay around writing stories and reading books? I mean, who paid you for having fun? Only kind of work I’d ever known about wasn’t any fun at all. And there wasn’t much pay in it either, except that you got to go on eating.
    But I said bravely, “I reckon they do, Papa.”
    Papa nodded. “Why you want to do that son? Write stories?”
    “I just want to,” I said. “I feel like I just got to do it.” And that was true. The more I thought and talked about it, the more determined I was to be a writer. The idea was comfortable, like drinking a big cup of hot coffee on a cold morning and having it spread around inside your stomach.
    I