The Dead Don't Dance (18 page)

One fellow in the back raised his hand. “No, sir.”

“All right, Frank, me either. You're with me. Anybody else?” Nobody spoke. At that, Mr. Carter bounced off his dog box onto the tailgate and hit the ground at a trot. Sixteen truck engines started at one time amid a cloud of white exhaust and the pang and smack of glass-packs. Mr. Carter's old Ford slowly led the procession out of the parking lot.

That scene would make a great commercial. Represented there were about fifteen models and years of Ford and Chevy's best work trucks, all in varying degrees of worn out. All we'd need is a Bob Seger, Alan Jackson, or George Strait song, and we'd fit right in with Monday night football.

The commercial proceeded down Highway 42 until we got to McSweeney's Fork, turned right down South Salk Road, and drove four miles to Gunter's Hole, where we eased under the huge live oak limbs bordering the edge of the swamp.

Around Digger, the Salkehatchie is mythical. Everybody knows the stories. Confederate gold. Lost lovers. Indians. World War II German spies. Vietnamese foot soldiers. Eighteen-foot alligators. You name it, it's buried there. Somewhere beneath the slow-moving black water, the hundred-foot cypress trees, the hanging moss, and the swamp stench, there's a story to go along with most every idea you could have about a swamp. If you can think it, it's probably already been mythified.

Every coon hunter in the Salk is required to have two things: a radio and a partner, the idea being that if you get lost, at least you'll be able to talk to folks on the outside, and you won't be lonely. It happens about once a year. Rarely does anybody spend the night in the swamp, but several times they've walked out some ten or fifteen miles from where they walked in. The swamp itself is forty square miles of the exact same thing. Landmarks are difficult to make. Nobody “knows” the swamp, not even Mr. Carter. He's pretty good around the edges, most of us are, but we know our limits. Amos and I are as good as anyone. We've dug for a lot of Confederate gold in our days, even built a few
Swiss Family Robinson
forts in the cedars, but even we know where our experience stops and the swamp takes over.

And one more thing. When the sun goes down in the Salk, “dark” takes on a whole new meaning. It may be clear and starlight bright outside, but you step one foot inside that swamp, underneath the canopy, and it's a different story. No matter how familiar you might be with a particular area of the swamp, when dark comes, you turn around, try and find your way out, and things look real different. No matter how well you've marked it, orange surveyor's tape, breadcrumbs, or what, the darkness will make you doubt.

At Gunter's Hole, Mr. Carter unlatched the box doors, letting Badger and Sally catapult off the tailgate. The two bounded off into the darkness. We stood outside in the cold, engines idling, feet shuffling, listening to single barks like submarine pings as they faded a half mile, then a mile, then a little more. Talking was over. If you needed to communicate, you used hand signals, or worst case, you whispered.

Mr. Carter does not tolerate talking while he's listening to Badger. Varying tones are more difficult to pick up the farther he gets from the edge of the swamp. After a few minutes I could tell no audible difference in Badger's bark, yet a smile began to crease Mr. Carter's face. I had learned long ago that Mr. Carter's face could tell me far more than Badger's bark.

One second after Mr. Carter's crease reached a full smile, Badger broke into an all-out hound wail—a totally different bark. It sounded like a cross between death and ecstasy, telling Mr. Carter that its nose had found what it'd been sniffing for. Mr. Carter had his hand on the dog box, so when Badger broke, he unleashed the second latch, and five dogs disappeared like four-legged ghosts into the swamp. The only trace of the dogs was the deafening chase bark. All the hunters cut their engines and hit their hunting lights.

Mr. Carter looked at me and said, “D.S., grab my Winchester.”

I did. As kids, Amos and I had shot a dozen or so raccoons, more than a hundred squirrels, and a thousand aluminum cans with Mr. Carter's Model 61 Winchester. I knew this rifle.

A coon-dog fight is a brutal thing, and the coon usually wins if you aren't careful. That's where Mr. Carter comes in. He's seen many a blind dog following a coon fight, and he hates to see his dogs hurt. Even Gus. Grabbing a handful of dog leashes, Mr. Carter immediately sloshed into the swamp, following the dogs.

The mossy grass was frozen and crunchy, and a thin layer of ice covered the floor. Amos and I filed behind him, as did everyone else, and we slipped into the swamp with seven dogs, at least one raccoon, and about seven million candlepower of artificial light, thanks in large part to John Billingsly and the rest of the coal miner convention. We lit up the underside of the canopy like a runway. Wherever we looked was bright as day. Wherever we didn't look was an abyss.

One more thing about the Salk: you don't want to step where you haven't first looked. We followed Mr. Carter, who, despite his seventy-four years of age, moved pretty well. As the barking got louder, his pace quickened. After twenty-two minutes, we neared the tree, and Mr. Carter was almost running. Ice and black water were splashing everywhere.

Reaching the tree, he immediately tied up Badger and handed Sally to Jimmy, because if he didn't tie up Badger, the other dogs would never fight that coon. Gus, maybe, but the young dogs didn't have a chance. Badger is vicious when it comes to coons, and he never shares a fight with another dog. If he finds the coon, it's his to fight with. Go find your own coon.

Having tied up Badger, we backed up and started our laser light show in the trees above us while Gus and the four younger dogs stood against the base of the tree, barking. You'd think spotting a coon in a tree would be no big deal. Just shine and light up two orangish-yellow eyes. But old coons didn't get to be old coons in the Salkehatchie by being stupid. After a few minutes, Amos spotted a hole in the canopy where the moon was shining through. A rare sight. Rarer still was the fact that it was shining through silver-gray hair. The coon was sixty to eighty feet up, perched atop a short cedar limb, looking somewhere between scared and comfortable.

Amos turned to me, looked as if he was about to ask me a question, and then held out his hand, into which I placed his dad's Model 61. At Mr. Carter's command, all the hunters cut their lights, save one. His. He shined, and Amos shot. An effective tandem. Amos hit the coon exactly where he intended—square in the left rear hindquarter—and it started falling.

You'd think that a wounded coon that just fell forty to eighty feet, with the air knocked out of it, probably suffering a couple of broken ribs, maybe even a concussion, wild-eyed-scared, and facing six or eight bluetick hounds, would roll over and give up or just lie there and die.

Not hardly. The coon hits the ground, bounces three to four feet, swings at the first three dogs he sees, and takes five eyes with him. Young dogs usually get hurt because they stick their noses too close to the coon's reach.

We can meet, shake hands, pat backs, sip coffee, pull on hip waders, hang an assortment of lights around our necks, reach the swamp, release all the dogs, trek to the foot of a two-hundred- year-old cypress, and the thing on the back of everyone's mind is not the lights, the dogs, the chase, or even getting lost in the swamp, but the coon—and what he will do when he hits the ground.

No matter which way you slice it, if the dogs tree the coon, chances are that the coon is going to get the worse end of the deal. But for every one time we catch a coon, he makes nine escapes. I'm amazed at that thing that happens between a coon that's escaping and a hound whose job it is not to let him escape. Nature versus nature. A bluetick hound has the best nose on the planet, but a coon is one of the only animals that washes its food, and it can climb trees taller than Jack's beanstalk. I have walked away from the base of many a cypress tree, knowing full well there was a perfectly good raccoon at the top of it. We simply couldn't see it. The fit have a tendency to survive.

This coon bounced off five or six limbs on its way down and landed with a thud. When it hit, it bounced, hissed, bared its teeth, swiped, landed again, and launched into Gus, whose crossed eyes straightened for a split second. He dodged the swipe, hunkered, sprang, and locked onto the coon's head, taking a good cut in the neck.

Fight over.

Two of the younger dogs each grabbed a hind leg and began chewing. The other two went for the body. The coon, half-dead from its descent, a quarter more from Amos's shot, and an eighth more from Gus's locked jaw, used its last eighth and took one final swipe at the dogs closest to him. Both took a good cut across the nose, and Jake was cut pretty deep around his right eye. Mr. Carter watched in quiet but ready judgment, taking notes and considering his training.

Gus sank down in the mud and laid both his front paws over what was left of the coon, which had long since stopped breathing. His locked jaw had not moved from where he first sank it. Mr. Carter told Gus to “release,” which he did, and the coon lay motionless amid a circle of dogs, men, and blood-smeared sheets of ice floating in the water. Mr. Carter gently poked the coon in the eye with his rifle barrel to see if it blinked. If it did, he'd pull the trigger.

The air smelled of peat moss, coon, and dog. In more than twenty years of coon hunting, I had never looked away. But tonight the sight of blood, flesh, and a corpse was too much. Some blood had hit me in the face and dribbled down my cheek. I wiped it off and studied my fingers. The blood was red, warm, and sticky. The cold air quickly caked it, causing it to stiffen on my face like paint. It seeped into the cracks of my palm and the wrinkles in my wrist. When I wiped my face a second time, I caught a whiff of it.

“You coming, pal?” Amos asked.

“Yeah, just a second.”

Amos took a handkerchief from his back pocket, dipped it in the swamp, and said, “Here, this'll help.”

The water was cold, clean, and smelled of cypress roots. I scrubbed my face with Amos's handkerchief, then knelt to dip it in the Salk and rinse it out.

“Keep it,” he said, nodding his head.

I dipped and rinsed it twice more. The water dripped off my face and made small ripples that raced around my legs as I squatted in the water. I closed my eyes and shivered as the cold took its place. I dipped my hands into the water and splashed my face. The water ran off my cheeks and down my neck. Some of it dripped back into the Salk and rippled about me. I stood up, exhaled a big white cloud of cold air, and wiped my face with my sleeve.

When I looked around, Mr. Carter and the procession were almost out of sight, and John Billingsly was bringing up the rear. Amos stood a few feet off, studying me quietly. Wrapped in the Salk, with the smell of swamp water sweetened with coon blood and dog sweat rising up around us, Amos said, “Hey, pal, you okay?”

The moon was high and bright now, glistening off the water like a spotlight. I looked down, saw my dark and distorted reflection, and spoke.

“The doctor told Maggs she could start pushing. She pushed, and I counted. Around three, the baby's head showed. Not all the way out, just where I could see the top of it. Then the doctor's face turned white. His eyes looked like half-dollars, and he ordered a nurse to go get some machine.

“Maggie looked at me with tired eyes. I tried to comfort her, but I had no idea what was going on. The doctor told Maggie to keep pushing while he put this suction thing on my son's head. A minute or two later, my son's head popped out. It was all smashed and blue.

“Maggie couldn't see it, but she could see my face. I don't know what my face said, but whatever it was, it probably wasn't what Maggie needed. At that point, two nurses pushed me aside and started pushing down on her stomach, trying to force the baby out. I held Maggie's head in my arms. She was tired. Real tired. The nurses kept pushing, and the doctor was barking orders everywhere. People were running all over the place. I heard a big gush and splash, and the doctor handed my son to a nurse.

“The doctor was tugging on the cord that was still inside Maggie. Blood was pouring out. Maggie's eyes closed, and she went limp.”

One of the dogs barked somewhere, quickly answered by another farther north.

“On a table next to the wall, the nurse and doctors kept working on our baby. Pumping his chest, putting this mask over his mouth. He was blue and limp. Maggie's eyes opened again, she saw him, how blue he was, and . . . started crying. Then her face went white and her eyes rolled back in her head and she threw up all over. That was the last time I saw her eyes open.”

Amos shifted uneasily, and his lip quivered as his feet sank further into the muck below.

“A doctor came flying into the room, tying one of those masks around his face, and pushed me out of the way. I crumpled in the corner, lying in Maggie's blood. One doctor injected something into her arm. Another one tried to stop the bleeding. I felt numb. Maggie's blood pressure plummeted. Then I heard the paddles of the resuscitator and the doctors yelling, ‘Clear!' My son's arms flew straight up in the air. His body bucked and then fell still and limp. The delivery doctor was sewing like crazy. After a few minutes, the doctors pulled their masks off and looked at the clock. They wrapped him in a blanket. Nobody even bothered to wipe off all the white stuff. I never held him. They didn't offer, and I didn't think to ask.

“Maggie stabilized a little bit. I stood up and noticed my hands. They were stiff and sticky, and so was my face. I leaned over Maggie. She had vomit in her hair. I grabbed a towel and wiped her face and cheeks and around her ears. I propped her head up on a pillow and tucked her hair behind her ears. The doctor just kept watching her monitor.”

The tail end of the light parade had completely disappeared, allowing the darkness to return and silently surround us. I strained my eyes for any glimmer of light but saw none. The night grew thick, the canopy pressed in, and I felt alone.