I finished my dope and set it down and made like I was fixin to leave then and Kirby, he says, stit grinnin kind of, You mean, Uncle Ather, that you can tell one painter from anothern by its squall?
Well, I said, I don’t reckon I can so good any more. He grinned right big at that.
But, I says, since I seen this’n t’other night I guess it jest don’t worry me none.
Well, they all jumped up with somethin to ast then, how big it was and all. I was already half out the door, but I figured to give em somethin to think about while they walked home, so I turned to em and I says, Why it ain’t more’n a kitten. It’s right up here in the gap not even dusk-dark t’other night I seen it scoot crost the road. Old Scout was layin there on the concrete. Now he’s fell off some of late but used to be he come a good bit higher’n my knee — to where you jest could straddle him, and weighed better’n a hunderd pound. So I looked around and I seen him there and I jest pointed to him and I said, Why he ain’t a whole lot bigger’n Scout here, and said em a good night and went on.
Down the small panes of glass behind the old man’s chair the sun lowered, casting his head in silhouette and illumining his white hair with a prophetic translucence. A little later he rose and went to the table and lit the lamp.
You boys care for some … here, jest a minute. He excused himself and went flapping off to the kitchen from where issued in a moment sounds of cupboards and glassware. When he came back he was carrying two glasses and a cup, a mason jar of some dark red liquid. Here, he said, handing them each a glass. He unscrewed the lid of the jar and poured their glasses. A heavy and evil-looking potion the color of iodine. Muskydine wine, he said. Bet you-all ain’t never had none.
It beaded black and sinister in the soft lampglow. He settled himself in his rocker and filled his cup, watching them taste it.
Mighty fine, Warn said.
Yessir, said the boy.
They sipped their wine with the solemnity of communicants, troglodytes gathered in some firelit cave. The lamp guttered in a draft of wind and their shadows, ponderous and bearlike upon the wall, weaved in unison.
Uncle Ather, said the boy, was they really painters back then?
Warn’s face, a harlequin mask etched in black and orange by the lamplight, turned to the old man. Tell him about that’n, Uncle Ather, he said. That’n you had.
Uncle Ather had already started. Oh yes, he said, allaying doubt with an upthrust of his chin. Yes, they was, long time back. When I was a young feller, workin on the road crew at that time, I caught one.
Caught one?
Yep. He smiled mysteriously. Shore did. Caught him with my bare hands, and I got the scars to prove it. Here he extended a leathery thumb for inspection. The boy slid from his chair and bent studiously over it.
Right here, the old man said, pointing to a place on the inside just above the web. See?
Yes, he said. The skin was wrinkled like an old purse; in that myriad cross-hatching any line could have been a scar. He sat back down and the old man chuckled throatily.
Yessir, he said. He was a vicious critter. Must of weighed all of five pound.
Warn laughed softly. The boy raised his head. The old man sat complacent and mischievous in his rocker, his eyes dancing.
Well, he said, this is what happent. They was a place called Goose Gap — it’s up t’wards Wears Valley. Well, it was when we was blastin in there. Bill Munroe, he’s dead now, he went up right after, soon as rock quit fallin, and then he hollered for me to come up and look see. They’s stit lots of smoke and dust and I couldn’t see too good but I got on up a little ways and directly I seen he’s holdin up somethin. Looked like a groundhog or a little old dog. When I got to where he was at I seen what it was. I hadn’t never seen one afore and it was all tore up and bloody, but I knowed right off what it was. Bill, he couldn’t make nothin out of it. What it was was a painter kit.
We started up through them rocks and directly we come up on anothern. It wadn’t tore up as bad and Bill allowed as to how it must not of been blowed as fer and so we was headed right. Anyway it turned out he was right and in a little bit we come up on the den-hole. It was all blowed out in the front and about a yard and a half of bones layin all around, and back in the back under some rocks we found this’n, the third’n, he’s alive and mewlin jest about like a housecat.
Old Bill, he backed off some, said that old she-painter might be around. Well, I was younger’n him and likely didn’t have as good sense, so in I goes and grabs the little feller up by the scruff of the neck. That’s when he hung his tushes in my thumb here. I turnt loose right fast, I’ll tell ye. Well, I figured a minute, and then I took off my shirt and scotched him up in that and brought him on home with me.
Here the old man paused and helped himself to a chew of tobacco from a huge paper pouch. I lived five mile this side of Sevierville then, he continued. I — you boys don’t chew, do ye? no — I had bought me a place off a man named Delozier — twenty acres, mostly sidehill and not much of a house neither, a old piece of a barn … I was married then and that was my first place so I reckon I was kindly what you might say proud of it. I kep some hogs and chickens and later on I had me a cow and a wore-out mule, put me in some corn … I never had nothin, ain’t got nothin now, but I figured it was a start. I wadn’t a whole lot older’n you fellers, nineteen, I think I was. But anyway what I was fixin to tell was about that painter. I brought him on home and give him to Ellen. She took to it right off, kep it in a box and give it milk and sech as that. It got to where it’d folly her around the house like a everday walkin-around cat. It wadn’t but about the size of a cat too … I recollect he’s speckled kindly like a bobcat. Well, they’s even a feller come out from the newspaper and wrote it up about us havin him; folks come from pret-near everwhere to see him.
I reckon it was about two weeks we’d had him when one evenin I heard one of the hogs squeal. I got the lannern and went out but I couldn’t find nothin wrong and went on back in and never thought no more about it. Well, next mornin they’s a hog gone. I hadn’t never heard of nobody stealin hogs but I figured maybe they’s hog thieves jest like ary other kind, up in Sevier County leastwise as that was purty woolly country at that time. But they wadn’t a whole lot I could do about it, not knowin where to even start lookin. Then two nights later anothern of em went. Well, I says, they gettin slicker now. The secont one never even squealt.
Next night I laid up on the roof of the house with the shotgun — a old single-barrel muzzleloader and me with not enough money to buy caps with even — I was usin matchheads and cottonseed hulls — and here’s somebody stealin my hogs. So I laid up there all night, no further’n from here to the porch yonder from that hogpen. I never seed nothin nor heard nothin. Come mornin I never even looked at the hogs even. Then when she, Ellen, went out later on and slopped em she come back in and she says, Ather, they’s another hog gone.
I was settin in a chair about half asleep and I come from there. I don’t recollect how many hogs it was that we had but seven or eight I reckon anyway, and I run out and counted em and come up short one more hog. I’d been mad afore but now I was scared.