Hike
Sometime shortly after the moon landing, my scout troop went on a hike.
Our scoutmaster was Mr. Davenport who we called Mr. D.
Mr. D drank bourbon enthusiastically. His hobby sometimes spawned ideas for new troop activities. Some of these ideas were great, like the time we all went to Ruby Falls.
This hike wasn’t one of those. We were tramping through an ordinary Georgia scrub pine forest on a hot day in August.
With Mr. D was his buddy whose name was, aptly, “Buddy”. Buddy was our assistant scoutmaster. They were further ahead on the trail, but more-or-less within view.
A creek intersected our trek at various points and Allen, a kid with buck teeth tinged green from poor hygiene, always felt that creeks were a signal to fill his canteen.
“Yeah, fill’er up, stupid!” snarled Poochie. “You’ll get the worms and die. Chug-a-lug!”
Poochie was tall and bloated with a permanent sneer and wore his blonde hair in a waxed flat top just like his daddy, the school principal.
No one liked Poochie. He knew this and didn’t care because he didn’t need to. Besides, we were all ten years old, and he was already eleven, having had to repeat a grade. His father had not been pleased.
Allen stood pigeon-toed and stared dully. “How come?”
“Because, dumbo, this creek’s got all kindsa junk in it like oil and dookie, that’s how come. People flush their commodes and stuff and it goes in there. All the bathrooms in town is aimed right here.”
Poochie was right: the creek was polluted, but not from his imagined sources.
“Aw shut up, fatso, you don’t know anything!” This was from the pugnacious Ronnie. Small though he was, everyone knew Ronnie would throw a punch for almost any reason. Poochie glared at him silently.
“Henh henh henh!” Allen giggled, happy to see Poochie bested.
Poochie hissed “You better shut your stupid trap, you little freak. I’ll tell my daddy and you’ll get es-pelled!”
This sudden vision shook Allen from his dirty teeth all the way to the meager salary he would make later in life from selling insurance.
Now Randy spoke: “When we lived in Cocoa Beach, that water was clean. My girlfriend Monica used to get so scared when we were on my surfboard ‘cuz I’d hang ten and she’d grab me and yell ‘Randy I’m scared!’ See ‘cuz she was behind me on my surfboard. Sometimes there was sharks.”
No one bothered to comment. Randy was a Yankee, a transplant from New Jersey whose dad came south to work at Lockheed. We were all pretty sure Randy had never been to Florida, much less been on a surfboard. His accent was more turnpike than surf. There was no Monica, not then nor twenty years after, when he became a celebrated photographer.
“You boys actin’ up back there?” Mr. D called out.
“No, Mr. D, Poochie’s just explaining pollution to us,” I called back.
“You a real smart-alec ain’t you, four-eyes?” snarled Poochie.
“I might be,” I said.
Ronnie laughed, low and menacing. Poochie shut up again.
“Look, y’all, a snapping turtle!” Dennis yelled, pointing at a rusty medium-sized turtle at the water’s edge.
Dennis, who was later murdered at age 23 in a cliché drug-deal-gone-bad, had a father who seemed too old to us. Dennis’ toothless dad would cheer him on at Little League games, shouting “C’mun, chun, hup ‘em!”
“You better not touch it!” Poochie ordered.
“Why not, principal’s boy?” sneered Dennis.
“‘Cause it’ll bite your finger! And when it does, you’ll have to wait for a thunderstorm before it’ll open its jaws again, that’s why! That’s what my daddy says.”
“Your daddy doesn’t know nothing,” Lloyd spat.
Lloyd seldom spoke and had darkness around him, because Lloyd’s daddy didn’t know much either except how to drink and beat up Lloyd and Lloyd’s mom on weekends.
Several years later, after taking judo classes at the Y, Lloyd came home one day and calmly beat his father almost to death. The local police filed no charges.
Lloyd and his mom moved out soon after. He studied auto repair at the vocational tech and became a master mechanic, married and had three kids, then retired after selling his three garages to a national chain.
“Well, my daddy must know somethin’, seeing he’s the principal of our school. Your daddy is…”
No one spoke or moved.
“My daddy is what?” Lloyd said slowly.
“Nothin’, nothin’, it wasn’t nothin’.”
“Go on ahead and tell me what my daddy is, fat boy. ‘Your daddy is…’ That’s what you was sayin’ so finish it. Finish it, by God, and let’s see what happens.” Lloyd’s face was cloudy. He seemed suddenly much older.
“Hey, whut’s goin’ on back yonder, you boys?” yelled Mr. D. “Y’all cussing? No cussing in Scouts!”
“Yeah, what’s goin’ on, boys?” mimicked Buddy. He and Mr. D were clearly working their way through a bottle, this being the reason they stayed ahead of us.
I called out “We’re fine Mr. D, just looking at a turtle.”
“How come Attaway is the one always answers me? Rest of you boys a-doin’ something? He coverin’ up for you?”
Poochie, trembling, cleared his throat. “Naw Mr. D, it’s like Murray said, we found a turtle.”
This time Buddy called out. “Awright, well don’t touch it. It bites ya, you got to wait ’til it thunders to let go.”
“That’s some bull, Buddy” Mr. D slurred.
“It’s the gospel! My old man said so.”
“Hell. Pass that bottle on back here now.”
Our circle of scouts, still stopped and tense, was startled by Randy’s sudden squeal: “Look, a buncha cars!”
We all advanced toward Randy who now stood at the edge of a clearing dotted with rusty shapes, baked brown by years of weather. The trail had led to an abandoned junkyard. We walked slowly, examining the various remnants of Detroit’s legacy. None of us knew much about cars at this point, but no one was about to admit it.
“That’s a Chevy II right there” I said, proudly pointing to a ’62 Fairlane.
“There’s a Oldsmobile over here with no doors.” said Ronnie, patting a Chrysler New Yorker.
“Hey, guys, here’s a T-bird. My dad had one just like this when we lived in Florida, except his was red with a convertible top!” Randy crowed. Randy, sadly, was correctly pointing to a wrecked Thunderbird. Times like these gave his tales troubling touches of legitimacy.
Poochie warned “Well, one thing I know is y’all better not try to get in one a’ them cars, ’cause snakes like to hide in ‘em!” Poochie just couldn’t shed his imagined authority. “You’re liable to get bit and die. My dad–EEEEE-UNGH!”
We stared at Poochie who had doubled over, clutching his ear. I looked around for Lloyd, finding him standing near me and staring as well.
Ronnie, with his quick temper, had rushed over and sucker-punched Poochie in the left ear. Ronnie had no taste for further advice.
Ronnie would show this same kind of impatience years after when he formed a militia in the hills of North Carolina and declared sovereignty on his plot of land, a long gray beard flowing down his belly.
“You tell Mr. D and I’ll beat the crap outta you after we get back, you hear me?” Ronnie whispered to Poochie. Poochie nodded his head quickly, tears dribbling from his eyes.
These were different from the tears he cried in shame when his father was found guilty of embezzling school funds two years later. Different, too, were the tears Poochie would shed after he moved to south Georgia, entered local politics, and was eventually convicted of misconduct with a minor.
The sense of sudden motion had penetrated the blurred consciousness of Mr. D and Buddy and now they headed towards us, haltingly.
“Awright, now you boys, I want to know what y’all’re up to right now. Attaway? Seems like you got all the answers today. What happened?”
“Um, we were just looking at all these cool old cars, Mr. D.” I quickly looked around and picked up a steering wheel lying nearby. Holding it in front of me, I tried a little cabaret:
“Well, it was a tough race, but at least we crossed the finish line! Ha ha ha!”
It didn’t land. Mr. D and Buddy stared at me, both swaying slightly.
“Izzat s’posed to be funny, Attaway?” said Mr. D.
“Yeah, Atta… Att… Atwater” slurred sycophant Buddy, “Thass some kinda comedy?”
Poochie spoke: “Mr. D, I was lookin’ in this Falcon over here and I thought I seen a snake, so I jumped back and banged my head on the door. That’s all.”
Mr. D stared at Poochie, then at the rest of us. “Mmmm hmmm. Ok.” Mr. D really didn’t want to know.
Buddy sputtered out “I bet you he DID see a snake, ’cause them bastards– sorry boys–I mean them copperheads loves to hide in junk cars.”
A horrified shriek now came from across the clearing.
“Godamighty! What’n the world!” Mr. D and Buddy turned and began to run toward the sound, followed by the scouts.
Just past a derelict Dodge truck stood Allen, still screaming. Several feet away lay a large indistinct shape.
As the group approached, a fetid odor hit us like a wall.
Mr. D shouted at Allen. “Get away from there boy! Get over here, now!”
Allen, whimpering and shaking, scurried over to the group. He had clearly wet his pants.
We advanced slowly as a group, peering at the shape straight ahead. As we grew closer, the smell became unbearable.
“HE’S ALL CUT OPEN!” Allen squealed.
It was a huge pig on its side. It had begun to decay but was still largely intact. Its head was alive with flies.
Every one of us had seen dead animals in the woods, many times. A few of us may have seen dead people as well, but dead animals in the woods were common.
This pig had been slit open from its throat to its groin. Its entrails were gone. The simple butchery of it seemed raw and savage.
“What on earth- why’n the world would somebody butcher a pig out here, clean it, and just leave it? That must be 400 pounds of meat right there, just a-wastin’!” The senselessness of wasted ham and bacon threatened to overwhelm Mr. D.
Buddy, looking a little green, forgot where he was. He took a big gulp from the fifth of whisky in his hand, surprising no one but Mr. D who snatched it away with a sharp scowl.
Mr. D looked around at all of us, shook his head, then took a slug from the bottle himself.
“Just shameful. Lordy lord.”
Allen, who had stopped whimpering, was now aware of, and shamed by, the stain on his pants. Ronnie looked at him.
“Heck, Allen, ‘least it wasn’t a number two!”
Everyone, including Mr. D and Buddy, began to snicker, then Allen joined in.
It was now late afternoon and the air had cooled just a bit.
“Well, this hike’s been a little different, huh boys?” asked Mr. D. “I b’lieve we’d best head back now. Next time maybe we’ll hike up at the lake, what y’all think?”
A lake hike was a good hike. We could swim. No eviscerated corpses. We all cheered.
“Ok, everybody here?” asked Mr. D.
“Everybody but the junior principal,” sneered Ronnie.
“Knock it off, Mays. Where’s Denson at?”
“Poochie’s still over there.” I answered.
Poochie was on his knees, staring into the cavity of the butchered pig. His face was fixed in dull horror.
Mr. D sighed. “Go get him.”
