The Boar Read Online Free

was relaxed and he was wearing a smile. “Come on, let’s go run them middles before it gets too hot.”
    Papa made a clicking sound with his tongue and Clancy began to move on out. On the way down to the bottoms I asked Papa if he thought Uncle Pharaoh was really a hundred and fifty years old.
    “Suspect he might be,” Papa said. “Ain’t no way of telling for sure, but he’s been around longer than anyone else in these parts. Goes all the way back to slave days.”
    “Was Uncle Pharaoh a slave?”
    “Hear tell he was.”
    “Ain’t he mad about it?”
    “Don’t seem to be, but I’m sure he don’t recollect them times with great longing, if you know what I’m getting at.”
    “Yes sir, I think I do.”
    “Ain’t no man, black, white, brown, or polka-dotted wants another man deciding his bidding for him. A fellow likes to chose what he wants to do and where he wants to go–”
    “Was Uncle Pharaoh really as good a hunter as they say?
    “He was.”
    “Better than Mr. Hall?’
    “Can’t take nothing from Herman, he’s a mighty good hunter. Darn sight better than me, that’s for sure. But I reckon old Pharaoh was even better.”
    Then I asked him the question that was really on my mind. “Papa, do you reckon that hog Doc Travis was telling about could be the same one they call Old Satan… or that he could be an Indian medicine man or the devil?”
    Papa’s laugh made both me and Clancy jump. “Might be the same hog, son. That’s possible. But I can guarantee you that it ain’t no demon or devil. A hog is a hog, boy, and that’s all there is to it.”
    Well, in one way Papa was right, but in another he was wrong.

Five
    First sign of the devil I saw was the morning Papa left.
    Just before daylight, Doc Travis showed up and had breakfast with us. Afterwards, Papa kissed Mama, shook hands with me and Ike, picked up his carpetbag, and went outside.
    It was barely daylight, and already it was sticky hot. By noon the day would be a scorcher. The sort where the heat laid down on you like a wool blanket. I was already starting to look forward to fall.
    When Papa was getting in the car, he called back to Mama, “See the boys do their chores, but see they get to be boys too.”
    Mama smiled.
    We stood in the yard and waved the Ford, Doc Travis, and Papa out of sight. The dogs barked until the sound of the Model B melted away.
    Ike went to help Mama with the wash, and I went out to the barn to hitch up Clancy for a half-day’s work. That’s about all that was needed to finish running out the middles of the corn. After that, things would be pretty well laid by for a few days. We had two mules, but Clancy was the one that did all the heavy work. Felix had gotten too old. About the only time we used him was to hitch up to the wagon with Clancy. And since the only time we really needed the wagon was when we were going to town, that wasn’t often.
    In his time Felix had been quite a worker, but Papa felt that he had earned a right to spend most of his time in the cool shade of the barn, or out in the lot under one of the big oak trees. It could hardly be said that Felix was a mule with a mission.
    I gave both mules some grain and harnessed Clancy and hooked the trace chains to the singletree on the Georgia Stock. Then, laying the plow on its side, I picked up the lines and clucked Clancy out of the barn and through the lot. By the time we’d passed through the lot gate and I had locked it back, it was pretty solid daylight and as sticky hot as fresh-boiled sugar syrup.
    A mule is a cantankerous critter, and unlike a horse, won’t work itself to death. And Clancy was all mule. On the way out to the field he was as lazy as government help. He’d plod along like he was going to his own hanging. But when he was presented with the rows of corn, he became a high stepper, ready to get in there and get it done so he could go back to the barn and attend to genuine mule business, which looked to me to be pretty