White Mule, Spotted Pig

Frank’s papa, the summer of nineteen hundred and nine, told him
right before he died that he had a good chance to win the annual
Camp Rapture mule race. He told Frank this ’cause he needed money
to keep getting drunk, and he wasn’t about to ride no mule himself,
fat as he was. If the old man had known he was about to die, Frank
figured he would have saved his breath on the race talk and asked for
whisky instead, maybe a chaw. But as it was, he said it, and it planted
in Frank’s head the desire to ride and win.
Frank hated that about himself. Once a thing got into his head he
couldn’t derail it. He was on the track then, and had to see it to the
end. Course, that could be a good trait, but problem was, and Frank
knew it, the only things that normally caught up in his head like that
and pushed him were bad ideas. Even if he could sense their badness,
he couldn’t seem to stop their running forward and dragging him with
them. He also thought his mama had been right when she told him
once that their family was like shit on shoes, the stink of it followed
them wherever they went.
But this idea. Winning a mule race. Well, that had some good sides
to it. Mainly money.
He thought about what his papa said, and how he said it, and then
how, within a few moments, the old man grabbed the bed sheets,
moaned once, dribbled some drool, and was gone to wherever it was
he was supposed to go, probably a stool next to the devil at fireside.
He didn’t leave Frank nothing but an old rundown place with a bit
of dried-out corn crop, a mule, a horse with one foot in the grave and
the other on a slick spot. And his very own shit to clean out of the
sheets, ’cause when the old man let go and departed, he left Frank that
present, which was the only kind he had ever given. Something dirty.
Something painful. Something shitty.
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Frank had to burn the mattress and set fire to the bedclothes, so
there really wasn’t any real cleaning about it. Then he dug a big hole,
and cut roots to do it. Next he had to wrap the old man’s naked body
in a dirty canvas and put him down and cover him up. It took some
work, ’cause the old man must have weighed three hundred pounds,
and he wasn’t one inch taller than five three if he was wearing boots
with dried cow shit on the heels and paper tucked inside them to jack
his height. Dragging him along on his dead ass from the house had
damn near caused one of Frank’s balls to swell up and pop out.
Finished with the burying, Frank leaned against a sickly sweet gum
tree and rolled himself a smoke, and thought: Shit, I should have
dragged the old man over here on the tarp. Or maybe hitched him
up to the mule and dragged his naked ass face down through the dirt.
That would have been the way to go, not pulling his guts out.
But, it was done now, and as always, he had used his brain late in
the game.
Frank scratched a match on a thumbnail and lit a rolled cigarette
and leaned on a sickly sweet gum and smoked and considered. It wasn’t
that he was all that fond of his old man, but damn if he still didn’t in
some way want to make him proud, or rather be proud to his memory.
He thought: Funny, him not being worth a damn, and me still wanting
to please him. Funnier yet, considering the old man used to beat him
like a Tom-Tom. Frank had seen him knock mama down once and put
his foot on the back of her neck and use his belt to beat her ass while
he cussed her for having burned the cornbread. It wasn’t the only beating
she got, but it was damn sure the champion.
It was shortly after that she decamped with the good horse, a bag
of cornmeal, some dried meat and a butcher knife. She also managed,
with what Frank thought must have been incredible aim, to piss in
one of his old man’s liquor jugs. This was discovered by the old man
after he took a good strong bolt of the liquor. Cheap as the stuff was
he drank, Frank was surprised he could tell the difference, that he had
turned out to be such a fine judge of shit liquor.
Papa had ridden out after her on the mule but hadn’t found her,
which wasn’t a surprise, because the only thing Papa had been good at
tracking was a whisky bottle or some whore, provided she was practically
tied down and didn’t cost much. He probably tracked the whores
he messed with by the stench.
Back from the hunt, drunk and pissed and empty-handed, Papa had
said it was bad enough Frank’s mama was a horse and meal thief, but
214 | Joe R. Lansdale
at least she hadn’t taken the mule, and frankly, she wasn’t that good a
cook anyhow.
The mule’s name was Rupert, and he could run like his tail was on
fire. Papa had actually thought about the mule as a contender for a
while, and had put out a little money to have him trained by Leroy,
who though short in many departments, and known for having been
caught fucking a goat by a half dozen hunters, was pretty good with
mules and horses. Perhaps, it could be said he had a way with goats as
well. One thing was certain, none of Leroy’s stock had testified to the
contrary, and only the nanny goats were known to be nervous.
The night after Frank buried his pa, he got in some corn squeezings,
and got drunk enough to imagine weasels crawling out from under the
floorboards. To clear his head and to relieve his bladder, he went out to
do something on his father’s grave that would never pass for flowers.
He stood there watering, thinking about the prize money and what he
would do with it. He looked at the house and the barn and the lot, out
to where he could see the dead corn standing in rows like dehydrated
soldiers. The house leaned to the left, and one of the windowsills was
near on the ground. When he slept at night, he slept on a bed with
one side jacked up with flat rocks so that it was high enough and even
enough he wouldn’t roll out of bed. The barn had one side missing and
the land was all rutted from runoff, and had never been terraced.
With the exception of the hill where they grazed their bit of stock,
the place was void of grass, and all it brought to mind was brown
things and dead things, though there were a few bedraggled chickens
who wandered the yard like wild Indians, taking what they could
find, even eating one another should one of them keel over dead from
starvation or exhaustion. Frank had seen a half dozen chickens go at a
weak one lying on the ground, tearing him apart with the chicken still
cawing, kicking a leg. It hadn’t lasted long. About like a dozen miners
at a free lunch table.
Frank smoked his cigarette and thought if he could win that race,
he would move away from this shit pile. Sell it to some fool. Move into
town and get a job that would keep him. Never again would he look
up a mule’s ass or fit his hands around the handles on a plow. He was
thinking on this while looking up the hill at his mule, Rupert.
The hill was surrounded by a rickety rail fence within which the
mule resided primarily on the honor system. At the top of the hill
was a bunch of oaks and pines and assorted survivor trees. As Frank
watched the sun fall down behind the hill, it seemed as if the limbs of
white mule, spotted pig | 215
the trees wadded together into a crawling shadow, way the wind blew
them and mixed them up. Rupert was clearly outlined near a pathetic
persimmon tree from which the mule had stripped the persimmons
and much of the leaves.
Frank thought Rupert looked quite noble up there, his mule ears
standing high in outline against the redness of the sun behind the
dark trees. The world seemed strange and beautiful, as if just created.
In that moment Frank felt much older than his years and not so fresh
as the world seemed, but ancient and worn like the old Indian pottery
he had found while plowing through what had once been great Indian
mounds. And now, even as he watched, he noted the sun seemed to
darken, as if it were a hot wound turning black from infection. The
wind cooled and began to whistle. Frank turned his head to the north
and watched as clouds pushed across the fading sky. In instants, all the
light was gone and there were just shadows, spitting and twisting in
the heavens and filling the hard-blowing wind with the aroma of wet
dirt.
When Frank turned again to note Rupert, the mule was still there,
but was now little more than a peculiar shape next to the ragged persimmon
tree. Had Frank not known it was the mule, he might well
have mistaken it for a peculiar rise in the terrain, or a fallen tree lying
at an odd angle.
The storm was from the north and blowing west. Thunder boomed
and lightning cracked in the dirty sky like snap beans, popped and
fizzled like a pissed-on campfire. In that moment, the shadow Frank
knew to be Rupert lifted its head, and pointed its dark snout toward
the sky, as if in defiance. A bolt of lightning, crooked as a dog’s hind
leg, and accompanied by a bass-drum blow of thunder, jumped from
the heavens and dove for the mule, striking him a perfect white-hot
blow on the tip of his nose, making him glow, causing Frank to think
that he had in fact seen the inside of the mule light up with all its
bones in a row. Then Rupert’s head exploded, his body blazed, the persimmon
leaped to flames, and the mule fell over in a swirl of heavenly
fire and a cannon shot of flying mule shit. The corpse caught a patch
of dried grass ablaze. The flames burned in a perfect circle around the
corpse and blinked out, leaving a circle of smoke rising skyward.
“Goddamn,” Frank said. “Shit.”
The cloud split open, let loose of its bladder, pissed all over the
hillside and the mule, and not a drop, not one goddamn drop, was
thrown away from the hill. The rain just covered that spot, put out the
216 | Joe R. Lansdale
mule and the persimmon tree with a sizzling sound, then passed on,
taking darkness, rain, and cool wind with it.
Frank stood there for a long time, looking up the hill, watching his
hundred dollars crackle and smoke. Pretty soon the smell from the
grilled mule floated down the hill and filled his nostrils.
“Shit,” Frank said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Late morning, when Frank could finally drag himself out of bed, he
went out and caught up the horse, Dobbin, hitched him to a singletree
and some chains, drove him out to where the mule lay. He hooked
one of the mule’s hind legs to the rigging, and Dobbin dragged the
corpse up the hill, between the trees, to the other side. Frank figured
he’d just let the body rot there, and being on the other side of the hill,
there was less chance of the wind carrying down the smell.
After that, he moped around for a few days, drank enough to see
weasels again, and then had an idea. His idea was to seek out Leroy,
who had been used to train Rupert. See if he could work a deal with
him.
Frank rode Dobbin over to Leroy’s place, which was as nasty as his
own. More so, due to the yard being full not only of chickens and
goats, but children. He had five of them, and when Frank rode up, he
saw them right away, running about, raising hell in the yard, one of
them minus pants, his little johnson flopping about like a grub worm
on a hot griddle. He could see Leroy’s old lady on the porch, fat and
nasty with her hair tied up. She was yelling at the kids and telling
them how she was going to kill them and feed them to the chickens.
One of the boys, the ten-year-old, ran by the porch whooping, and the
Mrs., moving deftly for such a big woman, scrambled to the edge of
the porch, stuck her foot out, caught him one just above the waist and
sent him tumbling. He went down hard. She laughed like a lunatic.
The boy got up with a bloody nose and ran off across the yard and into
the woods, screaming.
Frank climbed down from Dobbin and went over to Leroy, who was
sitting on a bucket in the front yard whittling a green limb with a knife
big enough to sword fight. Leroy was watching his son retreat into the
greenery. As Frank came up, leading Dobbin, Leroy said, “Does that all
the time. Sometimes, though, she’ll throw something at him. Good
thing wasn’t nothing lying about. She’s got a pretty good throwin’
arm on her. Seen her hit a seed salesman with a tossed frying pan from
the porch there to about where the road meets the property. Knocked
him down and knocked his hat off. Scattered his seed samples, which
white mule, spotted pig | 217
the chickens ate. Must have laid there for an hour afore he got up and
wandered off. Forgot his hat. Got it on my head right now, though I
had to put me some newspaper in the band to make it fit.”
Wasn’t nothing Frank could say to that, so he said, “Leroy, Rupert
got hit by lightning. Right in the head.”
“The head?”
“Wouldn’t have mattered had it been the ass. It killed him deader
than a post and burned him up.”
“Damn. That there is a shame,” Leroy said, and stopped whittling.
He pushed the seed salesman’s hat up on his forehead to reveal some
forks of greasy brown hair. Leroy studied Frank. “Is there something I
can do for you? Or you come around to visit?”
“I’m thinking you might could help me get a mule and get back in
the race.”
“Mules cost.”
“I know. Thought we might could come up with something. And if
we could, and we won, I’d give you a quarter of the prize money.”
“I get a quarter for grooming folks’ critters in town.”
“I mean a quarter of a hundred. Twenty-five dollars.”
“I see. Well, I am your man for animals. I got a knack. I can talk to
them like I was one of them. Except for chickens. Ain’t no one can talk
to chickens.”
“They’re birds.”
“That there is the problem. They ain’t animal enough.”
Frank thought about Leroy and the fucked goat. Wondered what
Leroy had said to the goat as way of wooing it. Had he told her something
special? I think you got a good-looking face? I love the way your
tail wiggles when you walk? It was a mystery that Frank actually wasn’t
all that anxious to unravel.
“I know you run in the circles of them that own or know about
mules,” Frank said. “Why I thought you maybe could help me.”
Leroy took off the seed salesman’s hat, put it on his knee, threw
his knife in the dirt, let the whittling stick fall from his hand. “I could
sneak up on an idea or two. Old man Torrence, he’s got a mule he’s
looking to sell. And by his claim, it’s a runner. He ain’t never ridden it
himself, but he’s had it ridden. Says it can run.”
“There’s that buying stuff again. I ain’t got no real money.”
“Takes money to make money.”
“Takes money to have money.”
Leroy put the seed salesman’s hat back on. “You know, we might
218 | Joe R. Lansdale
could ask him if he’d rent out his mule. Race is a ways off yet, so
we could get some good practice in. You being about a hundred and
twenty-five pounds, you’d make a good rider.”
“I’ve ridden a lot. I was ready on Rupert, reckon I can get ready on
another mule.”
“Deal we might have to make is, we won the race, we bought the
mule afterwards. That might be the way he’d do it.”
“Buy the mule?”
“At a fair price.”
“How fair?”
“Say twenty-five dollars.”
“That’s a big slice of the prize money. And a mule for twenty-five,
that’s cheap.”
“I know Torrence got the mule cheap. Fella that owed him made a
deal. Besides, times is hard. So they’re selling cheap. Cost more, we can
make extra money on side bets. Bet on ourselves. Or if we don’t think
we got a chance, we bet against ourselves.”
“I don’t know. We lose, it could be said we did it on purpose.”
“I can get someone to bet for us.”
“Only if we bet to win. I ain’t never won nothing or done nothing
right in my life, and I figure this here might be my chance.”
“You gettin’ Jesus?”
“I’m gettin’ tired,” Frank said.
—————
There are no real mountains in East Texas, and only a few hills of consequence,
but Old Man Torrence lived at the top of a big hill that was
called with a kind of braggart’s lie, Barrow Dog Mountain. Frank had
no idea who Barrow or Dog were, but that was what the big hill had
been called for as long as he remembered, probably well before he was
born. There was a ridge at the top of it that overlooked the road below.
Frank found it an impressive sight as he and Leroy rode in on Dobbin,
he at the reins, Leroy behind him.
It was pretty on top of the hill too. The air smelled good, and flowers
grew all about in red, blue and yellow blooms, and the cloudless sky
was so blue you felt as if a great lake were falling down from the heavens.
Trees fanned out bright green on either side of the path, and near
the top, on a flat section, was Old Man Torrence’s place. It was made
of cured logs, and he had a fine chicken coop that was built straight
and true. There were hog pens and a nice barn of thick cured logs with
white mule, spotted pig | 219
a roof that had all of its roofing slats. There was a sizable garden that
rolled along the top of the hill, full of tall bright green cornstalks, so tall
they shaded the rows between them. There was no grass between the
rows, and the dirt there looked freshly laid by. Squash and all manner
of vegetables exploded out of the ground alongside the corn, and there
were little clumps of beans and peas growing in long pretty rows.
In a large pen next to the barn was a fifteen-hands-high chocolatecolored
mule, prettiest thing Frank had ever seen in the mule-flesh
department. Its ears stood up straight, and it gave Frank and Leroy a
snort as they rode in.
“He’s a big one,” Leroy said.
“Won’t he be slow, being that big?” Frank asked.
“Big mule’s also got big muscles, he’s worked right. And he looks
to have been worked right. Got enough muscles, he can haul some
freight. Might be fast as Rupert.”
“Sure faster right now,” Frank said.
As they rode up, they saw Old Man Torrence on the front porch
with his wife and three kids, two boys and a girl. Torrence was a fat,
ruddy-faced man. His wife was a little plump, but pretty. His kids were
all nice looking and they had their hair combed and, unlike Leroy’s
kids, looked clean. As if they might bathe daily. As they got closer,
Frank could see that none of the kids looked whacked on. They seemed
to be laughing at something the mother was saying. It certainly was
different than from his own upbringing, different from Leroy’s place.
Wasn’t anyone tripping anyone, cussing, tossing frying pans, threatening
to cripple one another or put out an eye. Thinking on this, Frank
felt something twist around inside of him like some kind of serpent
looking for a rock to slide under. He and Leroy got off Dobbin and tied
him to a little hitching post that was built out front of the house, took
off their hats, and walked up to the steps.
After being offered lemonade, which they turned down, Old Man
Torrence came off the porch, ruffling one of his kids’ hair as he did.
He smiled back at his wife, and then walked with Frank and Leroy out
toward the mule pen, Leroy explaining what they had in mind.
“You want to rent my mule? What if I wanted to run him?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Leroy said. “It hadn’t occurred to me you
might. You ain’t never before, though I heard tell he was a mule could
be run.”
“It’s a good mule,” Torrence said. “Real fast.”
“You’ve ridden him?” Frank asked.
220 | Joe R. Lansdale
“No. I haven’t had the pleasure. But my brother and his boys have.
They borrow him from time to time, and they thought on running
him this year. Nothing serious. Just a thought. They say he can really
cover ground.”
“Frank here,” Leroy said, “he plans on entering, and we would rent
your mule. If we win, we could give you a bit of the prize money. What
say we rent him for ten, and if he wins, we give you another fifteen.
That way you pick up twenty-five dollars.”
Frank was listening to all this, thinking: and then I owe Leroy his
share; this purse I haven’t won is getting smaller and smaller.
“And what if you don’t win?” Torrence said.
“You’ve made ten dollars,” Leroy said.
“And I got to take the chance my mule might go lame or get hurt
or some such. I don’t know. Ten dollars, that’s not a lot of money for
what you’re asking. It ain’t even your mule.”
“Which is why we’re offering the ten dollars,” Leroy said.
They went over and leaned on the fence and looked at the great
mule, watched his muscles roll beneath his chocolate flesh as he trotted
nervously about the pen.
“He looks excitable,” Frank said.
“Robert E. Lee has just got a lot of energy is all,” Torrence said.
“He’s named Robert E. Lee?” Frank asked.
“Best damn general ever lived. Tell you boys what. You give me
twenty-five, and another twenty-five if he wins, and you got a deal.”
“But I give you that, and Leroy his share, I don’t have nothing
hardly left.”
“You ain’t got nothing at all right now,” Torrence said.
“How’s about,” Leroy said, “we do it this way. We give you fifteen,
and another fifteen if he wins. That’s thirty. Now that’s fair for a rented
mule. Hell, we might could go shopping, buy a mule for twenty-five,
and even if he don’t win, we got a mule. He don’t race worth a damn,
we could put him to plow.”
Old Man Torrence pursed his lips. “That sounds good. All right,” he
said, sticking out his hand, “deal.”
“Well, now,” Frank said, not taking the hand. “Before I shake on
that, I’d like to make sure he can run. Let me ride him.”
Old Man Torrence withdrew his hand and wiped it on his pants as
if something had gotten on his palm. “I reckon I could do that, but
seeing how we don’t have a deal yet, and ain’t no fifteen dollars has
changed hands, how’s about I ride him for you. So you can see.”
white mule, spotted pig | 221
Frank and Leroy agreed, and watched from the fence as Torrence
got the equipment and saddled up Robert E. Lee. Torrence walked Robert
E. Lee out of the lot, and onto a pasture atop the hill, where the
overhang was. The pasture was huge and the grass was as green as Ireland.
It was all fenced in with barbed wire strung tight between deeply
planted posts.
“I’ll ride him around in a loop. Once slow, and then real fast toward
the edge of the overhang there, then cut back before we get there. I
ain’t got a pocket watch, so you’ll have to be your own judge.”
Torrence swung into the saddle. “You boys ready?”
“Let’er rip,” Leroy said.
Old Man Torrence gave Robert E. Lee his heels. The mule shot off so
fast that Old Man Torrence’s hat flew off, and Leroy, in sympathy, took
hold of the brim of the seed salesman’s hat, as if Robert E. Lee’s lunge
might blow it off his head.
“Goddamn,” Leroy said. “Look how low that mule is to the ground.
He’s gonna have the grass touching his belly.”
And so the mule ran, and as it neared the barbed-wire fence, Old
Man Torrence gave him a tug, to turn him. But, Robert E. Lee wasn’t
having any. His speed picked up, and the barbed-wire fence came
closer.
Leroy said, “Uh-oh.”
Robert E. Lee hit the fence hard. So hard it caused his head to dip
over the top wire and his ass to rise up as if he might be planning a
headstand. Over the mule flipped, tearing loose the fence, causing a
strand of wire to snap and strike Old Man Torrence, and then Torrence
was thrown ahead of the tumbling mule. Over the overhang. Out of
sight. The mule did in fact do a headstand, landed hard that way, its
hind legs high in the air, wiggling. For a moment, it seemed as if he
might hang there, and then, Robert E. Lee lost his headstand and went
over after his owner.
“Damn,” Leroy said.
“Damn,” Frank said.
They both ran toward the broken fence. When they got there Frank
hesitated, not able to look. He glanced away, back across the bright
green field.
Leroy scooted up to the cliff’s edge and took a gander, studied what
he saw for a long time.
“Well?” Frank said, finally turning his head back to Leroy.
“Robert E. Lee just met his Gettysburg. And Old Man Torrence is
222 | Joe R. Lansdale
somewhere between Gettysburg and Robert E. Lee. Actually, you can’t
tell which is which. Mule, Gettysburg, or Old Man Torrence. It’s all
kind of bunched up.”
When Frank and Leroy got down there, which took some considerable
time, as they worked their way down a little trail on foot, they
discovered that Old Man Torrence had been lucky in a fashion. He had
landed in sand, and the force of Robert E. Lee’s body had driven him
down deep into it, his nose poking up and out enough to take in air.
Robert E. Lee was as dead as a three-penny nail, and his tail was stuck
up in the air and bent over like a flag that had been broken at the staff.
The wind moved the hairs on it a little.
Frank and Leroy went about digging Old Man Torrence out, starting
first with his head so he could really breathe well. When Torrence spat
enough sand out of his mouth, he looked up and said, “You sonsofbitches.
This is your fault.”
“Our fault?” Leroy said. “You was riding him.”
“You goat-fucking sonofabitch, get me out of here.”
Leroy’s body sagged a little. “I knew that was gonna get around good.
Ain’t nobody keeps a secret. There was only that one time too, and
them hunters had to come up on me.”
They dug Torrence out from under the mule, and Frank went up the
trail and got Old Dobbin and rode to the doctor. When Frank got back
with the sawbones, Torrence was none the happier to see him. Leroy
had gone off to the side to sit by himself, which to Frank meant the
goat had come up again.
Old Man Torrence was mostly all right, but he blamed Frank and
Leroy, especially Leroy, from then on. And he walked in a way that
when he stepped with his right leg, it always looked as if he were about
to bend over and tie his shoe. Even in later years, when Frank saw him,
he went out of his way to avoid him, and Leroy dodged him like the
smallpox, not wanting to hear reference to the goat.
But in that moment in time, the important thing to Frank was simply
that he was still without a mule. And the race was coming closer.
That night, as Frank lay in his sagging bed, looking out from it at
the angled wall of the room, listening to the crickets saw their fiddles
outside and inside the house, he closed his eyes and remembered how
Old Man Torrence’s place had looked. He saw himself sitting with the
pretty plump wife and the clean, polite kids. Then he saw himself with
the wife inside that pretty house, on the bed, and he imagined that for
a long time.
white mule, spotted pig | 223
It was a pleasant thought, the wife and the bed, but even more
pleasant was imagining Torrence’s place as his. All that greenery and
high-growing corn and blooming squash and thick pea and bean vines
dripping with vegetables. The house and the barn and the pasture.
And in his dream, the big mule, alive, not yet a confusion of bones and
flesh and fur, the tail a broken flag.
He thought then of his mother, and the only way he could remember
her was with her hair tied back and her face sweaty and both of
her eyes blacked. That was how she had looked the last time he had
seen her, right before she run off with a horse and some cornmeal and
a butcher knife. He wondered where she was, and if she now lived in
a place where the buildings were straight and the grass was green and
the corn was tall.
After a while he got up and peed out the window, and smelled the
aroma of other nights drifting up from the ground he had poisoned
with his water, and thought: I am better than Papa. He just peed in the
corner of the room and shit out the window, splattering it all down
the side of the house. I don’t do that. I pee out the window, but I don’t
shit, and I don’t pee in the corner. That’s a step up. I go outside for the
messy business. And if I had a good house, I wouldn’t do this. I’d use
the slop jar. I’d go to the privy.
That didn’t stop him from finishing his pee, thinking about what he
would do or ought to do as far as his toilet habits went. Besides, peeing
was the one thing he was really good at. He could piss like a horse and
from a goodly distance. He had even won money on his ability. It was
the one thing his father had been proud of. “My son, Frank. He can
piss like a racehorse. Get it out, Frank. Show them.”
And he would.
But, compared to what he wanted out of life, his ability to throw
water from his johnson didn’t seem all that wonderful right then.
Frank thought he ought to call a halt to his racing plans, but like
so many of his ideas, he couldn’t let it go. It blossomed inside of him
until he was filled with it. Then he was obsessed with an even wilder
plan. A story he had heard came back to him, and ran ’round inside his
head like a greased pig.
He would find the White Mule and capture it and run it. It was a
mule he could have for free, and it was known to be fast, if wild. And,
of course, he would have to capture its companion, the Spotted Pig.
Though, he figured, by now, the pig was no longer a pig, but a hog, and
the mule would be three, maybe four years old.
224 | Joe R. Lansdale
If they really existed.
It was a story he had heard for the last three years or so, and it was
told for the truth by them who told him, his Papa among them. But if
drinking made him see weasels oozing out of the floorboards, it might
have made Papa see white mules and spotted pigs on parade. But the
story wasn’t just Papa’s story. He had heard it from others, and it went
like this:
Once upon a time, there was this pretty white mule with pink eyes,
and the mule was fine and strong and set to the plow early on, but he
didn’t take to it. Not at all. But the odder part of the story was that the
mule took up with a farm pig, and they became friends. There was no
explaining it. It happened now and then, a horse or mule adopting
their own pet, and that was what had happened with the white mule
and the spotted pig.
When Frank had asked his Papa, why would a mule take up with a
pig, his father had said: “Ain’t no explaining. Why the hell did I take
up with your mother?”
Frank thought the question went the other way, but the tale fascinated
him, and his papa was just drunk enough to be in a good mood.
Another pint swallowed, he’d be kicking his ass or his mama’s. But he
pushed while he could, trying to get the goods on the tale, since outside
of worrying about dying corn and sagging barns, there wasn’t that
much in life that thrilled him.
The story his papa told him was the farmer who owned the mule,
and no one could ever put a name to who that farmer was, had supposedly
found the mule wouldn’t work if the pig wasn’t around, leading
him between the rows. The pig was in front, the mule plowed fine. The
pig wasn’t there, the mule wouldn’t plow.
This caused the farmer to come up with an even better idea. What
would the mule do if the pig was made to run? So the farmer got the
mule all saddled, and had one of his boys put the pig out front of the
mule and swat it with a knotted plow line, and away went the pig and
away went the white mule. The pig pretty soon veered off, but the
mule, once set to run, couldn’t stop, and would race so fast that the
only way it halted was when it was tuckered out. Then it would go
back to the start, and look for its pig. Never failed.
One night the mule broke loose, kicked the pig’s pen down, and he
and the pig, like Jesse and Frank James, headed for the hills. Went into
the East Texas greenery and wound in amongst the trees, and were lost
to the farmer. Only to be seen after that in glimpses and in stories that
white mule, spotted pig | 225
might or might not be true. Stories about how they raided cornfields
and ate the corn and how the mule kicked down pens and let hogs and
goats and cattle go free.
The White Mule and the Spotted Pig. Out there. On the run. Doing
whatever it was that white mules and spotted pigs did when they
weren’t raiding crops and freeing critters.
Frank thought on this for a long time, saddled up Dobbin and rode
over to Leroy’s place. When Frank arrived, Leroy was out in the yard
on his back, unconscious, the seed salesman’s hat spun off to the side,
and was being moved around by a curious chicken. Finding Leroy like
this didn’t frighten Frank any. He often found Leroy that way, cold as
a wedge from drink, or the missus having snuck up behind him with a
stick of stove wood. They were rowdy, Leroy’s bunch.
The missus came out on the porch and shook her fist at Frank, and
not knowing anything else to do, he waved. She spat a stream of brown
tobacco off the porch in his direction and went inside. A moment later
one of the kids bellowed from being whapped, and there was a sound
like someone slamming a big fish on flat ground. Then silence.
Frank bent down and shook Leroy awake. Leroy cursed, and Frank
dragged him over to an overturned bucket and sat him up on it, asked
him, “What happened?”
“Missus come up behind me. I’ve got so I don’t watch my back
enough.”
“Why’d she do it?”
“Just her way. She has spells.”
“You all right?”
“I got a headache.”
Frank went straight to business. “I come to say maybe we ain’t out
of the mule business.”
“What you mean?”
Frank told him about the mule and the pig, about his idea.
“Oh, yeah. Mule and pig are real. I’ve seen ’em once myself. Out
hunting. I looked up, and there they were at the end of a trail, just
watching. I was so startled, I just stood there looking at them.”
“What did they do?”
“Well, Frank, they ran off. What do you think? But it was kind of
funny. They didn’t get in no hurry, just turned and went around the
trail, showing me their ass, the pig’s tail curled up and a little swishy,
and the mule swatting his like at flies. They just went around that
curve in the trail, behind some oaks and blackberry vines, and they
226 | Joe R. Lansdale
was gone. I tracked them a bit, but they got down in a stream and
walked it. I could find their tracks in the stream with my hands, but
pretty soon the whole stream was brown with mud, and they come
out of it somewhere I didn’t find, and they was gone like a swamp fog
come noon.”
“Was the mule really white?”
“Dirty a bit, but white. Even from where I was standing, just bits of
light coming in through the trees, I could see he had pink eyes. Story
is, that’s why he don’t like to come out in day much, likes to stay in the
trees, and do his crop raiding at night. Say the sun hurts his skin.”
“That could be a drawback.”
“You act like you got him in a pen somewhere.”
“I’d like to see if I could get hold of him. Story is, he can run, and he
needs the pig to do it.”
“That’s the story. But stories ain’t always true. I even heard stories
about how the pig rides the mule, and that the mule is stump broke,
and the pig climbs up on a stump and diddles the mule in the ass. I’ve
heard all manner of tale, and ain’t maybe none of it got so much as
a nut of truth in it. Still, it’s one of them ideas that kind of appeals to
me. Course, you know, we might catch that mule and he might not
can run at all. Maybe all he can do is sneak around in the woods and
eat corn crops.”
“Well, it’s all the idea I got,” Frank said, and the thought of that
worried Frank more than a little. He considered on his knack for clinging
to bad notions like a rutting dog hanging on to a fella’s leg. But,
like the dog, he was determined to finish what he started.
“So what you’re saying here,” Leroy said, “is you want to capture
the mule, and the pig, so the mule has got his helpmate. And you want
to ride the mule in the race?”
“That’s what I said.”
Leroy paused for a moment, rubbed the knot on the back of his noggin.
“I think we should get Nigger Joe to help us track him. We want
him, that’s the way we do it. Nigger Joe catches him, and we’ll break
him, and you can ride him.”
Nigger Joe was part Indian and part Irish and part Negro. His skin
was somewhere between brown and red and he had a red cast to his
kinky hair and strawberry freckles and bright green eyes. But the black
blood named him, and he himself went by the name Nigger Joe.
He was supposed to be able to track a bird across the sky, a fart across
the yard. He had two women that lived with him and he called them his
white mule, spotted pig | 227
wives. One of them was a Negro, and the other one was part Negro and
Cherokee. He called the black one Sweetie, the red and black one Pie.
When Frank and Leroy rode up double on Dobbin, and stopped in
Nigger Joe’s yard, a rooster was fucking one of the hens. It was a quick
matter, and a moment later the rooster was strutting across the yard
like he was ten foot tall and bullet proof.
They got off Dobbin, and no sooner had they hit the ground, than
Nigger Joe was beside them, tall and broad shouldered with his freckled
face.
“Damn, man,” Frank said, “where did you come from?”
Nigger Joe pointed in an easterly direction.
“Shit,” Leroy said, “coming up on a man like that could make him
bust a heart.”
“Want something?” Nigger Joe asked.
“Yeah,” Leroy said. “We want you to help track the White Mule and
the Spotted Pig, ’cause Frank here, he’s going to race him.”
“Pig or mule?” Nigger Joe asked.
“The mule,” Leroy said. “He’s gonna ride the mule.”
“Eat the pig?”
“Well,” Leroy said, continuing his role as spokesman, “not right
away. But there could come a point.”
“He eats the pig, I get half of pig,” Nigger Joe said.
“If he eats it, yeah,” Leroy said. “Shit, he eats the mule, he’ll give
you half of that.”
“My women like mule meat,” Nigger Joe said. “I’ve eat it, but it
don’t agree with me. Horse is better,” and to strengthen his statement,
he gave Dobbin a look over.
“We was thinking,” Leroy said, “we could hire you to find the mule
and the pig, capture them with us.”
“What was you thinking of giving me, besides half the critters if you
eat them?”
“How about ten dollars?”
“How about twelve?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven-fifty.”
Leroy looked at Frank. Frank sighed and nodded, stuck out his hand.
Nigger Joe shook it, then shook Leroy’s hand.
Nigger Joe said, “Now, mule runs like the rock, that ain’t my fault. I get
the eleven-fifty anyway.”
Frank nodded.
228 | Joe R. Lansdale
“Okay, tomorrow morning,” Nigger Joe said, “just before light, we’ll
go look for him real serious and then some.”
“Thing does come to me,” Frank said, “is haven’t other folks tried to
get hold of this mule and pig before? Why are you so confident?”
Nigger Joe nodded. “They weren’t Nigger Joe.”
“You could have tracked them before on your own,” Frank said.
“Why now?”
Nigger Joe looked at Frank. “Eleven-fifty.”
—————
In the pre-dawn light, down in the swamp, the fog moved through
the trees like someone slow-pulling strands of cotton from cotton
bolls. It wound its way amongst the limbs that were low down, along
the ground. There were wisps of it on the water, right near the bank,
and as Frank and Leroy and Nigger Joe stood there, they saw what
looked like dozens of sticks rise up in the swamp water and move
along briskly.
Nigger Jim said, “Cottonmouth snakes. They going with they heads
up, looking for anything foolish enough to get out there. You swimming
out there now, pretty quick you be bit good and plenty and swole
up like old tick. Only you burst all over and spill green poison, and die.
Seen it happen.”
“Ain’t planning on swimming,” Frank said.
“Watch your feet,” Nigger Joe said. “Them snakes is thick this year.
Them cottons and them copperheads. Cottons, they always mad.”
“We’ve seen snakes,” Leroy said.
“I know it,” Nigger Joe said, “but where we go, they are more than a
few, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Back there where mule and pig
hides, it’s thick in snakes and blackberry vines. And the trees thick like
the wool on a sheep. It a goat or a sheep you fucked?”
“For Christ sakes,” Leroy said. “You heard that too?”
“Wives talk about it when they see you yesterday. There the man
who fuck a sheep, or a goat, or some such. Say you ain’t a man can get
pussy.”
“Oh, hell,” Leroy said.
“So, tell me some,” Nigger Joe said. “Which was it, now?”
“Goat,” Leroy said.
“That is big nasty,” Nigger Joe said, and started walking, leading
them along a narrow trail by the water. Frank watched the cottonmouth
white mule, spotted pig | 229
snakes swim on ahead, their evil heads sticking up like some sort of
water-devil erections.
The day grew hot and the trees held the hot and made it hotter
and made it hard to breathe, like sucking down wool and chunks of
flannel. Frank and Leroy sweated their clothes through and their hair
turned to wet strings. Nigger Joe, though sweaty, appeared as fresh as a
virgin in spring.
“Where you get your hat?” Nigger Joe asked Leroy suddenly, when
they stopped for a swig from canteens.
“Seed salesman. My wife knocked him out and I kept the hat.”
“Huh, no shit?” Nigger Joe took off his big old hat and waved
around. “Bible salesman. He told me I was gonna go to hell, so I beat
him up, kept his hat. I shit in his Bible case.”
“Wow, that’s mean,” Frank said.
“Him telling me I’m going to hell, that make me real mad. I tell you
that to tell you not to forget my eleven-fifty. I’m big on payment.”
“You can count on us if we win,” Frank said.
“No. You owe me eleven-fifty win or lose.” Nigger Joe said, putting
his hat back carefully on his head, looking at the two smaller men like
a man about to pick a hen for neck wringing and Sunday dinner.
“Sure,” Frank said. “Eleven-fifty, win or lose. Eleven-fifty when we
get the pig and the mule.”
“Now that’s the deal as I see it,” Nigger Joe said. “I tell women it’s
eight dollars, that way I make some whisky money. Nigger Joe didn’t
get up yesterday. No, he didn’t. And when he gets up, he got Bible
salesman’s hat on.”
—————
They waded through the swamp and through the woods for some time,
and just before dark, Nigger Joe picked up on the mule’s unshod tracks.
He bent down and looked at them. He said, “We catch him, he’s gonna
need trimming and shoes. Not enough rock to wear them down. Soft
sand and swamp. And here’s the pig’s tracks. Hell, he’s big. Tracks say,
three hundred pounds. Maybe more.”
“That’s no pig,” Leroy said. “That’s a full-blown hog.”
“Damn,” Frank said. “They’re real.”
“But can he race?” Leroy said. “And will the pig cooperate?”
They followed the tracks until it turned dark. They threw up a
camp, made a fire, and made it big so the smoke was strong, as the
230 | Joe R. Lansdale
mosquitoes were everywhere and hungry and the smoke kept them off
a little. They sat there in the night before the fire, the smoke making
them cough, watching it churn up above them, through the trees. And
up there, as if resting on a limb, was a piece of the moon.
They built the fire up big one last time, turned into their covers, and
tried to sleep. Finally, they did, but before morning, Frank awoke, his
bladder full, his mind as sharp as if he had slept well. He got up and
stoked up the fire, and walked out a few paces in the dark and let it
fly. When he looked up to button his pants, he saw through the trees,
across a stretch of swamp water, something moving.
He looked carefully, because whatever it was had stopped. He stood
very still for a long time, and finally what he had seen moved again.
He thought at first it was a deer, but no. There was enough light from
the early rising sun knifing through the trees that he could now see
clearly what it was.
The White Mule. It stood between two large trees, just looking at
him, its head held high, its tall ears alert. The mule was big. Fifteen
hands high, like Robert E. Lee, and it was big-chested, and its legs were
long. Something moved beside it.
The Spotted Pig. It was big and ugly, with one ear turned up and one
ear turned down. It grunted once, and the mule snorted, but neither
moved.
Frank wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t go tearing across the
stretch of swamp after them, since he didn’t know how deep it was,
and what might be waiting for him. Gators, snakes and sinkholes. And
by the time he woke up the others, the mule and hog would be gone.
He just stood there instead, staring at them. This went on for a long
time, and finally the hog turned and started moving away, behind
some thicket. The mule tossed its head, turned and followed.
My God, thought Frank. The mule is beautiful. And the hog, he’s a
pistol. He could tell that from the way it had grunted at him. He had
some strange feelings inside of him that he couldn’t explain. Some
sensation of having had a moment that was greater than any moment
he had had before.
He thought it strange these thoughts came to him, but he knew it
was the sight of the mule and the hog that had stirred them. As he
walked back to the fire and lay down on his blankets, he tried to figure
the reason behind that, and only came up with a headache and more
mosquito bites.
He closed his eyes and slept a little while longer, thinking of the
white mule, spotted pig | 231
mule and the hog, and the way they were free and beautiful. And then
he thought of the race, and all of that went away, and when he awoke,
it was to the toe of Nigger Joe’s boot in his ribs.
“Time to do it,” Nigger Joe said.
Frank sat up. “I saw them.”
“What?” Leroy said, stirring out of his blankets.
Frank told them what he had seen, and how there was nothing he
could do then. Told them all this, but didn’t tell them how the mule
and the hog had made him feel.
“Shit,” Leroy said. “You should have woke us.”
Nigger Joe shook his head. “No matter. We see over there where
they stood. See what tracks they leave us. Then we do the sneak on
them.”
—————
They worked their way to the other side of the swamp, swatting mosquitoes
and killing a cottonmouth in the process, and when they got
to where the mule and the hog stood, they found tracks and mule
droppings.
“You not full of shit, like Nigger Joe thinking,” Nigger Joe said. “You
really see them.”
“Yep,” Frank said.
Nigger Joe bent down and rubbed some of the mule shit between
his fingers, and smelled it. “Not more than a couple hours old.”
“Should have got us up,” Leroy said.
“Easier to track in the day,” Nigger Joe said. “They got their place
they stay. They got some hideout.”
The mosquitoes were not so bad now, and finally they came to some
clear areas, marshy, but clear, and they lost the tracks there, but Nigger
Joe said, “The two of them, they probably cross here. It’s a good spot.
Pick their tracks up in the trees over there, on the soft ground.”
When they crossed the marshy stretch, they came to a batch of willows
and looked around there. Nigger Joe was the one who found their
tracks.
“Here they go,” he said. “Here they go.”
They traveled through woods and more swamp, and from time to
time they lost the tracks, but Nigger Joe always found them. Sometimes
Frank couldn’t even see what Nigger Joe saw. But Nigger Joe saw
something, because he kept looking at the ground, stopping to stretch
out on the earth, his face close to it. Sometimes he would pinch the
232 | Joe R. Lansdale
earth between finger and thumb, rub it about. Frank wasn’t sure why
he did that, and he didn’t ask. Like Leroy, he just followed.
Mid-day, they came to a place that amazed Frank. Out there in the
middle of what should have been swamp, there was a great clear area,
at least a hundred acres. They found it when they came out of a stretch
of shady oaks. The air was sweeter there, in the trees, and the shadows
were cooling, and at the far edge was a drop of about fifty feet. Down
below was the great and natural pasture. A fire, brought on by heat or
lightning, might have cleared the place at some point in time. It had
grown back without trees, just tall green grass amongst a few rotting,
ant-infested stumps. It was surrounded by the oaks, high up on their
side, and low down on the other. The oaks on the far side stretched out
and blended with sweet gums and black jack and hickory and bursts of
pines. From their vantage point they could see all of this, and see the
cool shadow on the other side amongst the trees.
A hawk sailed over it all, and Frank saw there was a snake in its beak.
Something stirred again inside of Frank, and he was sure it wasn’t his
last meal. “You’re part Indian,” Frank said to Nigger Joe. “That hawk
and that snake, does it mean something?”
“Means that snake is gonna get et,” Nigger Joe said. “Damn trees.
Don’t you know that make a lot of good hard lumber. Go quiet. Look
there.”
Coming out of the trees into the great pasture was the mule and the
hog. The hog led the way, and the mule followed close behind. They
came out into the sunlight, and pretty soon the hog began to root and
the mule began to graze.
“Got their own paradise,” Frank said.
“We’ll fix that,” Leroy said.
They waited there, sitting amongst the oaks, watching, and late in
the day the hog and the mule wandered off into the trees across the
way.
“Ain’t we gonna do something besides watch?” Leroy said.
“They leave, tomorrow they come back,” Nigger Joe said. “Got their
spot. Be back tomorrow. We’ll be ready for them.”
—————
Just before dark they came down from their place on a little trail and
crossed the pasture and walked over to where the mule and the hog
had come out of the trees. Nigger Joe looked around for some time,
said, “Got a path. Worked it out. Always the same. Same spot. Come
white mule, spotted pig | 233
through here, out into the pasture. What we do is we get up in a tree.
Or I get in tree with my rope, and I rope the mule and tie him off and
let him wear himself down.”
“He could kill himself, thrashing,” Frank said.
“Could kill myself, him thrashing. I think it best tie him to a tree,
folks.”
Frank translated Nigger Joe’s strange way of talking in his head, said,
“He dies, you don’t get the eleven-fifty.”
“Not how I understand it,” Nigger Joe said.
“That’s how it is,” Frank said, feeling as if he might be asking for a
knife in his belly, his guts spilled. Out here, no one would ever know.
Nigger Joe might think he could do that, kill Leroy too, take their
money. Course, they didn’t have any money. Not here. There was fifteen
dollars buried in a jar out back of the house, eleven-fifty of which
would go to Nigger Joe, if he didn’t kill them.
Nigger Joe studied Frank for a long moment. Frank shifted from one
foot to the other, trying not to do it, but unable to stop. “Okay,” Nigger
Joe said. “That will work up good enough.”
“What about Mr. Porky?” Leroy asked.
“That gonna be you two’s job. I rope damn mule, and you two, you
gonna rope damn pig. First, we got to smell like dirt.”
“What?” Frank said.
Nigger Joe rubbed himself down with dark soil. He had Frank and
Leroy rub themselves down with it. Leroy hated it and complained, but
Frank found the earth smelled like incoming rain, and he thought it
pleasant. It felt good on his skin, and he had a sudden strange thought,
that when he died, he would become one and the same as the earth,
and he wondered how many dead animals, maybe people, made up
the dirt he had rubbed onto himself. He felt odd thinking that way. He
felt odd thinking in any way.
They slept for a while, then Nigger Joe kicked him and Leroy awake.
It was still dark when they rolled dirty out of their bedclothes.
“Couldn’t we have waited on the dirt?” Leroy said, climbing out of
his blankets. “It’s all in my bedroll.”
“Need time for dirt to like you good, so you smell like it,” Nigger
Joe said. “We put some more on now, rub in the hair good, then get
ready.”
“It’s still dark,” Frank said. “They gonna come in the dark? How you
know when they’re gonna come?”
“They come. But we gotta be ready. They have a good night in
234 | Joe R. Lansdale
farmer’s cornfields, they might come real soon, full bellies. Way ground
reads, they come here to stand and to wallow. Hog wallows all time,
way ground looks. And they shit all over. This their spot. They don’t get
corn and peas and such, they’ll be back here. Water not far from spot,
and they got good grass. Under the trees, hog has some acorns. Hogs
like acorns. Wife, Sweetie, makes sometimes coffee from acorns.”
“How about I make some regular coffee, made from coffee?” Leroy
said.
“Nope. We don’t want a smoke smell. Don’t want our smell. Need to
piss or shit, don’t let free here. Go across pasture there. Far side. Dump
over there. Piss over there. Use the heel of your shoe to cover it all.
Give it lots of dirt.”
“Walk all the way across?” Leroy said.
“Want hog and mule,” Nigger Joe said. “Walk all the way across.
Now, eat some jerky, do your shit over on other side. Put more dirt on.
And wait.”
The sun rose up and it got hot, and the dirt on their skins itched,
or at least Frank itched, and he could tell Leroy itched, but Nigger Joe,
he didn’t seem to. Sat silent. And when the early morning was eaten
up by the heat, Nigger Joe showed them places to be, and Nigger Joe,
with his lasso, climbed up into an oak and sat on a fat limb, his feet
stretched along it, his back against the trunk, the rope in his lap.
The place for Frank and Leroy to be was terrible. The dirt they
smeared on themselves came from long scoops they made. Then they
lay down in the scoops with their ropes, and Nigger Joe, before he
climbed the tree, tossed leaves and sticks and dirt and bits of mule and
hog shit over them. The way they lay, Frank and Leroy were twenty
feet apart, on either side of what Nigger Joe said was a trail the hog
and mule traveled. It wasn’t much of a trail. A bit of ruffled oak leaves,
some wallows the hog had made.
The day crawled forward and so did the worms. They were all around
Frank, and it was all he could do not to jump up screaming. It wasn’t
that he was afraid of them. He had put many of them on hooks for
fishing. But to just lay there and have them squirm against your arm,
your neck. And there was something that bit. Something in the hog
shit was Frank’s thought.
Frank heard a sound. A different sound. Being close to the ground
it seemed to move the earth. It was the slow careful plodding of the
mule’s hooves, and another sound. The hog, maybe.
They listened and waited and the sounds came closer, and then
white mule, spotted pig | 235
Frank, lying there, trying not to tremble with anticipation, heard a
whizzing sound. The rope. And then there was a bray, and a scuffle
sound.
Frank lifted his head slightly.
Not ten feet from him was the great white mule, the rope around its
neck, the length of it stretching up into the tree. Frank could see Nigger
Joe. He had wrapped the rope around the limb and was holding on
to it, tugging, waiting for the mule to wear itself out.
The hog was bounding about near the mule, as if it might jump up
and grab the rope and chew it in two. It actually went up on its hind
legs once.
Frank knew it was time. He burst out of his hiding place, and Leroy
came out of his. The hog went straight for Leroy. Frank darted in front
of the leaping mule and threw his rope and caught the hog around the
neck. It turned instantly and went for him.
Leroy dove and grabbed the hog’s hind leg. The hog kicked him in
the face, but Leroy hung on. The hog dragged Leroy across the ground,
going for Frank, and as his rope become more slack, Frank darted for a
tree.
By the time Frank arrived at the tree trunk, Leroy had managed to
put his rope around the hog’s hind leg, and now Frank and Leroy had
the hog in a kind of tug-of-war.
“Don’t hurt him now some,” Nigger Joe yelled from the tree. “Got
to keep him up for it. He’s the mule leader. Makes him run.”
“What the hell did he say?” Frank said.
“Don’t hurt the goddamn pig,” Leroy said.
“Ha,” Frank said, tying off his end of the rope to a tree trunk. Leroy
stretched his end, giving the hog a little slack, and tied off to another
tree. Nearby the mule leaped and kicked.
Leroy made a move to try and grab the rope on the mule up short,
but the mule whipped as if on a Yankee dollar, and kicked Leroy smooth
in the chest, launching him over the hog and into the brush. The hog
would have had him then, but the rope around its neck and back leg
held it just short of Leroy, but close enough a string of hog spittle and
snot was flung across Leroy’s face.
“Goddamn,” Leroy said, as he inched farther away from the hog.
For a long while, they watched the mule kick and buck and snort
and snap its large teeth.
It was near nightfall when the mule, exhausted, settled down on its
front knees first, then rolled over on its side. The hog scooted across
236 | Joe R. Lansdale
the dirt and came to rest near the great mule, its snout resting on the
mule’s flank.
“I’ll be damned,” Leroy said. “The hog’s girlie or something.”
It took three days to get back, because the mule wasn’t cooperating,
and the hog was no pushover either. They had to tie logs on either
side of the hog, so that he had to drag them. It wore the hog down,
but it wore the men down too, because the logs would tangle in vines
and roughs, and constantly had to be removed. The mule was hobbled
loosely, so that it could walk, but couldn’t bolt. The mule was led by
Nigger Joe, and fastened around the mule’s waist was a rope with two
rope lines leading off to the rear. They were in turn fastened to a heavy
log that kept the mule from bolting forward to have a taste of Nigger
Joe, and to keep him, like the hog, worn down.
At night they left the logs on the critters, and built make-do corrals
of vines and limbs and bits of leather straps.
By the time they were out of the woods and the swamp, the mule
and the hog were covered in dirt and mud and such. The animals
heaved as they walked, and Frank feared they might keel over and
die.
They made it though, and they took the mule up to Nigger Joe’s.
He had a corral there. It wasn’t much, but it was solid and it held the
mule in. The hog they put in a small pen. There was hardly room
for the hog to turn around. Now that the hog was well placed, Frank
stood by the pen and studied the animal. It looked at him with a feral
eye. This wasn’t a hog who had been slopped and watered. This was
an animal who early on had escaped into the wild, as a pig, and had
made his way to adulthood. His spotted hide was covered in scars,
and though he had a coating of fat on him, his body was long and
muscular, and when the hog flexed its shoulders to startle a fly, those
muscles rolled beneath its skin like snakes beneath a tight-stretched
blanket.
The mule, after the first day, began to perk up. But he didn’t do
much. Stood around mostly, and when they walked away for a distance,
it began to trot the corral, stopping often to look out at the hog
pen, at his friend. The mule made a sound, and the hog made a sound
back.
“Damn, if I don’t think they’re talking to one another,” Leroy said.
“Oh yeah. You can bet. They do that all right,” Nigger Joe said.
white mule, spotted pig | 237
—————
The race was coming closer, and within the week, Leroy and Nigger Joe
had the mule’s hooves trimmed, but no shoes. Decided he didn’t need
them, as the ground was soft this time of year. They got him saddled.
Leroy got bucked off and kicked and bitten once, a big plug was out of
his right elbow.
“Mean one,” Nigger Joe said. “Real bastard, this mule. Strong. He
got the time, he eat Leroy.”
“Do you think he can run?” Frank asked.
“Time to see soon,” Nigger Joe said.
That night, when the saddling and bucking was done, the mule
began to wear down, let Nigger Joe stay on his back. As a reward, Nigger
Joe fed the mule well, but with only a little water. He fed the hog
some pulled-up weeds, a bit of corn, watered him.
“Want mule strong, but hog weak,” Nigger Joe said. “Don’t want
hog strong enough to go digging out of pen that’s for some sure.”
Frank listened to this, wondering where Nigger Joe had learned his
American.
Nigger Joe went in for the night, his two wives calling him to supper.
Leroy walked home. Frank saddled up Dobbin, but before he left,
he led the horse out to the corral and stared at the mule. There in
the starlight, the beams settled around the mule’s head, and made it
very white. The mud was gone now and the mule had been groomed,
cleaned of briars and burrs from the woods, and the beast looked magnificent.
Once Frank had seen a book. It was the only book he had ever
seen other than the Bible, which his mother owned. But he had seen
this one in the window of the General Store downtown. He hadn’t
opened the book, just looked at it through the window. There on the
cover was a white horse with wings on its back. Well, the mule didn’t
look like a horse, and it didn’t have wings on its back, but it certainly
had the bearing of the beast on the book’s cover. Like maybe it was
from somewhere else other than here; like the sky had ripped open
and the mule had ridden into this world through the tear.
Frank led Dobbin over to the hog pen. There was nothing beautiful
about the spotted hog. It stared up at him, and the starlight filled its
eyes and made them sharp and bright as shrapnel.
As Frank was riding away, he heard the mule make a sound, then
the hog. They did it more than once, and were still doing it when he
rode out of earshot.
238 | Joe R. Lansdale
—————
It took some doing, and it took some time, and Frank, though he did
little but watch, felt as if he were going to work every day. It was a new
feeling for him. His old man often made him work, but as he grew
older he had quit, just like his father. The fields rarely got attention,
and being drunk became more important than hoeing corn and digging
taters. But here he was not only showing up early, but staying all
day, handing harness and such to Nigger Joe and Leroy, bringing out
feed and pouring water.
In time Nigger Joe was able to saddle up the mule with no more
than a snort from the beast, and he could ride about the pen without
the mule turning to try and bite him or buck him. He even stopped
kicking at Nigger Joe and Leroy, who he hated, when they first entered
the pen.
The hog watched all of this through the slats of his pen, his beady
eyes slanting tight, his battle-torn ears flicking at flies, his curly tail
curled even tighter. Frank wondered what the hog was thinking. He
was certain, whatever it was, was not good.
Soon enough, Nigger Joe had Frank enter the pen, climb up in the
saddle. Sensing a new rider, the mule threw him. But the second time
he was on board, the mule trotted him around the corral, running
lightly with that kind of rolling-barrel run mules have.
“He’s about ready for a run, he is,” Nigger Joe said.
Frank led the mule out of the pen and out to the road, Leroy following.
Nigger Joe led Dobbin. “See he’ll run that way. Not so fast at first,”
Nigger Joe said. “Me and this almost dead horse, we follow and find
you, you ain’t neck broke in some ditch somewheres.”
Cautiously, Frank climbed on the white mule’s back. He took a deep
breath, then, settling himself in the saddle, he gave the mule a kick.
The mule didn’t move.
He kicked again.
The mule trotted down the road about twenty feet, then turned,
dipped its head into the grass that grew alongside the red clay road,
and took a mouthful.
Frank kicked at the mule some more, but the mule wasn’t having
any. He did move, but just a bit. A few feet down the road, then across
the road and into the grass, amongst the trees, biting leaves off of them
with a sharp snap of his head, a smack of his teeth.
Nigger Joe trotted up on Dobbin.
white mule, spotted pig | 239
“You ain’t going so fast.”
“Way I see it too,” Frank said. “He ain’t worth a shit.”
“We not bring the hog in on some business yet.”
“How’s that gonna work? I mean, how’s he gonna stay around and
not run off?”
“Maybe hog run off in goddamn woods and not see again, how it
may work. But, nothing else, hitch mule to plow or sell. You done paid
me eleven-fifty.”
“Your job isn’t done,” Frank said.
“You say, and may be right, but we got the one card, the hog, you
see. He don’t deal out with an ace, we got to call him a joker, and call
us assholes, and the mule, we got to make what we can. We have to,
shoot and eat the hog. Best, keep him up a few more days, put some
corn in him, make him better than what he is. Fatter. The mule, I told
you ideas. Hell, eat mule too if nothing other works out.”
They let the hog out of the pen.
Or rather, Leroy did. Just picked up the gate, and out came the hog.
The hog didn’t bolt. It bounded over to the mule, on which Frank was
mounted. The mule dipped its head, touched noses with the hog.
“I’ll be damned,” Frank said, thinking he had never had a friend like
that. Leroy was as close as it got, and he had to watch Leroy. He’d cheat
you. And if you had a goat, he might fuck it. Leroy was no real friend.
Frank felt lonesome.
Nigger Joe took the bridle on the mule away from Frank, and led
them out to the road. The hog trotted beside the mule.
“Now, story is, hog likes to run,” Nigger Joe said. “And when he run,
mule follows. And then hog, he falls off, not keeping up, and mule, he
got the arrow-sight then, run like someone put turpentine on his nut
sack. Or that the story as I hear it. You?”
“Pretty close,” Frank said.
Frank took the reins back, and the hog stood beside the mule. Nothing
happened.
“Gonna say go, is what I’m to do here now. And when I say, you
kick mule real goddamn hard. Me, I’m gonna stick boot in hog’s big
ass. Hear me now, Frank?”
“I do.”
“Signal will be me shouting when kick the hog’s ass, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Ready some.”
240 | Joe R. Lansdale
“Ready.”
Nigger Joe yelled, “Git, hog,” and kicked the hog in the ass with
all his might. The hog did a kind of hop, and bolted. A hog can move
quick for its size for a short distance, haul some serious freight, and
the old spotted hog, he was really fast, hauling the whole freight line.
Frank expected the hog to dart into the woods, and be long gone.
But it didn’t. The hog bounded down the road running for all it was
worth, and before Frank could put his heels to the mule, the mule
leaped. That was the only way to describe it. The mule did not seem
cocked to fire, but suddenly it was a white bullet, lunging forward so
fast Frank nearly flew out of the saddle. But he clung, and the mule
ran, and the hog ran, and after a bit, the mule ducked its head and
the hog began to fade. But the mule was no longer following the hog.
Not even close. It snorted, and its nose appeared to get long and the
ears laid back flat. The mule jetted by the fat porker and stretched its
legs wider, and Frank could feel the wind whipping cool on his face.
The body of the mule rolled like a barrel, but man, my God, thought
Frank, this sonofabitch can run.
There was one problem. Frank couldn’t turn him. When he felt the
mule had gone far enough, it just kept running, and no amount of tugging
led to response. That booger was gone. Frank just leaned forward
over the mule’s neck, hung on, and let him run.
Eventually the mule quit, just stopped, dipped its head to the
ground, then looked left and right. Trying to find the hog, Frank figured.
It was like the mule had gone into a kind of spell, and now he
was out of it and wanted his friend.
He could turn the mule then. He trotted it back down the road, not
trying to get it to run anymore, just letting it trot, and when it came
upon Nigger Joe and Leroy, standing in the road, the hog came out of
the woods and moseyed up beside the mule.
As Nigger Joe reached up and took the mule’s reins, he said, “See
that there. Hog and him are buddies. He stays around. He don’t want
to run off. Wants to be with mule. Hog a goddamn fool. Could be long
gone, out in the woods. Find some other wild hog and fuck it. Eat
acorns. Die of old age. Now he gonna get et sometime.”
“Dumb shit hog,” Leroy said.
The mule tugged at the reins, dipped its head. The hog and the
mule’s noses came together. The mule snorted. The hog made a kind
of squealing sound.
white mule, spotted pig | 241
—————
They trained for several days the same way. The hog would start, and
then the mule would run. Fast. They put the mule up at night in the
corral, hobbled, and the hog, they didn’t have to pen him anymore.
He stayed with the mule by choice.
One day, after practice, Frank said, “He seems pretty fast.”
“Never have seen so fast,” Nigger Joe said. “He’s moving way
good.”
“Do you think he can win?” Leroy said.
“He can win, they let us bring hog in. No hog. Not much on the
run. Got to have hog. But there’s one mule give him trouble. Dynamite.
He runs fast too. Might can run faster.”
“You think?”
“Could be. I hear he can go lickity split. Tomorrow, we find out,
hey?”
—————
The world was made of men and mules and dogs and one hog. There
were women too, most of them with parasols. Some sitting in the
rows of chairs at the starting line, their legs tucked together primly,
their dresses pulled down tight to the ankles. The air smelled of early
summer morning and hot mule shit and sweat and perfume, cigar
smoke, beer and farts. Down from it all, in tents, were other women
who smelled different and wore less clothes. The women with parasols
would not catch their eye, but some of the men would, many when
their wives or girls were not looking.
Frank was not interested. He couldn’t think of anything but the
race. Leroy was with him, and of course, Nigger Joe. They brought the
mule in, Nigger Joe leading him. Frank on Old Dobbin, Leroy riding
double. And the hog, loose, on its own, strutting as if he were the one
throwing the whole damn shindig.
The mules at the gathering were not getting along. There were bites
and snorts and kicks. The mules could kick backwards, and they could
kick out sideways like cattle. You had to watch them.
White Mule was surprisingly docile. It was as if his balls had been
clipped. He walked with his head down, the pig trotting beside him.
As they neared the forming line of mules, Frank looked at them.
Most were smaller than the white mule, but there was one that was
bigger, jet black, and had a roaming eye, as if he might be searching
242 | Joe R. Lansdale
for victims. He had a big hard-on and it was throbbing in the sunlight
like a fat cottonmouth.
“That mule there, big-dicked one,” Nigger Joe said, pausing. “He
the kind get a hard-on he gonna race or fight, maybe quicker than the
fuck, you see. He’s the one to watch. Anything that like the running or
fighting better than pussy, him, you got to keep the eye on.”
“That’s Dynamite,” Leroy said. “Got all kinds of mule muscle, that’s
for sure.”
White Mule saw Dynamite, lifted his head high and threw back his
ears and snorted.
“Oh, yeah,” said Leroy. “There’s some shit between them already.”
“Somebody gonna outrun somebody or fuck other in ass, that’s
what I tell you for sure. Maybe they fight some too. Whole big blanket
of business here.”
White Mule wanted to trot, and Nigger Joe had to run a little to keep
up with him. They went right through a clutch of mules about to be
lined up, and moved quickly so that White Mule was standing beside
Dynamite. The two mules looked at one another and snorted. In that
moment, the owner of Dynamite slipped blinders on Dynamite’s head,
tossing off the old bridle to a partner.
The spotted hog slid in between the feet of his mule, stood with his
head poking out beneath his buddy’s legs, looking up with his ugly
face, flaring his nostrils, narrowing his cave-dark eyes.
Dynamite’s owner was Levi Crone, one big gent in a dirty white
shirt with the sleeves ripped out. He had a big red face and big fat muscles
and a belly like a big iron wash pot. He wore a hat you could have
bathed in. He was as tall as Nigger Joe, six foot two or more. Hands like
hams, feet like boats. He looked at the White Mule, said, “That ain’t
the story mule, is it?”
“One and the same,” Frank said, as if he had raised the white mule
from a colt.
“I heard someone had him. That he had been caught. Catch and
train him?”
“Me and my partners.”
“You mean Leroy and the nigger?”
“Yeah.”
“That the hog in the stories, too, I guess?”
“Yep,” Frank said.
“What’s he for? A stepstool?”
white mule, spotted pig | 243
“He runs with the mule. For a ways.”
“That ain’t allowed.”
“Where say can’t do it, huh?” Nigger Joe asked.
Crone thought. “Nowhere, but it stands to reason.”
“What about rule can’t run with the dick hard?” Nigger Joe said,
pointing at Dynamite’s member.
“Ain’t no rule like that,” Crone said. “Mule can’t help that.”
“Ain’t no rule about goddamn hog none either,” Nigger Joe said.
“It don’t matter,” Crone said. “You got this mule from hell, given to
you by the goddamn red-assed devil his ownself, and you got the pork
chop there too from the same place, it ain’t gonna matter. Dynamite
here, he’s gonna outrun him. Gets finished, he’ll fuck your mule in the
ass and shit a turd on him.”
“Care to make a bet on the side some?” Nigger Joe said.
“Sure,” Crone said. “I’ll bet you all till my money runs out. That ain’t
good enough, I’ll arm wrestle you or body wrestle you or see which of
us can shoot jack-off the farthest. You name it, speckled nigger.”
Nigger Joe studied Crone as if he might be thinking about where to
make all the prime cuts, but he finally just grinned, got out ten of the
eleven-fifty he had been paid. “There mine. You got some holders?”
“Ten dollars. I got sight of it, and I got your word, which better be
good,” Crone said.
“Where’s your money?” Leroy said.
Crone pulled out a wad from his front pocket, presented it with
open palm as if he might be giving a teacher an apple. He looked at
Leroy, said, “You gonna trade a goat? I hear you like goats.”
“Okay,” Leroy said. “Okay. I fucked a goddamn goat. What of it?”
Crone laughed at him. He shook the money at Nigger Joe. “Good
enough?”
“Okay,” Nigger Joe said.
“Here’s three dollars,” Frank said, dug in his pocket, held it so Crone
could see.
Crone nodded.
Frank slipped the money back in his pocket.
“Well,” Leroy said. “I ain’t got shit, so I just throw out my best
wishes.”
“You boys could bet the mule,” Crone said.
“That could be an idea,” Leroy said.
“No,” Frank said. “We won’t do that.”
244 | Joe R. Lansdale
“Ain’t we partners?” Leroy said, taking off his seed salesman’s hat.
“We got a deal,” Frank said, “but I’m the one paid Nigger Joe for
catching and training. So, I decide. And that’s about as partner as we
get.”
Leroy shrugged, put the seed salesman’s hat back on.
—————
The mules lined up and it was difficult to make them stay the line.
Dynamite, still toting serious business on the undercarriage, lined up
by White Mule, stood at least a shoulder above him. Both wore blinders
now, but they turned their heads and looked at one another. Dynamite
snapped at the white mule and missed. White Mule snapped back
at Dynamite’s nose, grazing him. He threw a little kick sideways that
made Dynamite shuffle to his right.
There was yelling from the judges, threats of disqualification,
though no one expected that. The crowd had already figured this race
out. White Mule, the forest legend, and Dynamite, of the swinging big
dick, they were the two to watch.
Leroy and Nigger Joe had pulled the hog back with a rope, but now
they brought him out and let him stand in front of his mule. They
had to talk to the judges on the matter, explain. There wasn’t any rule
for or against it. One judge said he didn’t like the idea. One said the
hog would get trampled to death anyway. Another said, shit, why not.
Final decision, they let the hog stay in the race.
So the mules and the hog and the riders lined up, the hog just
slightly to the side of the white mule. The hog looked over its shoulder
at Nigger Joe standing behind him. By now the hog knew what was
coming. A swift kick in the ass.
Frank climbed up on the white mule, and a little guy with a face like
a timber axe climbed up on Crone’s mule, Dynamite.
Out front of the line was a little bald man in a loose shirt and suspenders
holding up his high-water pants, showing his scuffed and
broken-laced boots. He had a pistol in his hand. He has a voice loud as
Nester on the Greek line.
“Now, we got us a mule race today, ladies and gentlemen. And
there will be no cheatin’, or there will be disqualification, and a buttbeating
you can count on to be remembered by everyone, ’specially
the cheater. What I want now, line of mules and riders, is a clean race.
This here path is wide enough for all twenty of you, and you can’t
fan too much to the right or left, as we got folks all along the run
white mule, spotted pig | 245
watching. You got to keep up pretty tight. Now, there might be some
biting and kicking, and that’s to be expected. From the mules. You
riders got to be civil. Or mostly. A little out of line is all right, but no
knives or guns or such. Everyone understand and ain’t got no questions,
let up a shout.”
A shout came from the line. The mules stirred, stepped back, stepped
forward.
“Anybody don’t understand what I just said? Anyone not speak
Texan or ’Merican here that’s gonna race?”
No response.
“All right, then. Watch women and children, and try not to run
over the men or the whores neither. I’m gonna step over there to the
side, and I’m gonna raise this pistol, and when you hear the shot, there
you go. May the best mule and the best rider win. Oh, yeah. We got a
hog in the race too. He ain’t supposed to stay long. Just kind of lead.
No problems with that from anybody, is there?”
There were no complaints.
“All right, then.”
The judge stepped briskly to the side of the road and raised his old
worn .36 Navy at the sky and got an important look on his face. Nigger
Joe removed the rope from the pig’s neck and found a solid position
between mules and behind the hog. He cocked his foot back.
The judge fired his pistol. Nigger Joe kicked the hog in the ass. The
mule line charged forward.
The hog, running for all it was worth, surged forward as well, taking
the lead even. White Mule and Dynamite ran dead even. The mules
ran so hard a cloud of dust was thrown up. The mules and the men
and the hog were swallowed by it. Frank, seeing nothing but dust,
coughed and cursed and lay tight against the white mule’s neck, and
squinted his eyes. He feared, without the white mule being able to see
the hog, he might bolt. Maybe run into another mule, throw him into
a stampede, get him stomped flat. But as they ran the cloud moved
behind them, and when Frank came coughing out of the cloud, he was
amazed to see the hog was well out in front, running as if he could go
like that all the way to Mexico.
To his right, Frank saw Dynamite and his little axe-faced rider. The
rider looked at him and smiled with gritty teeth. “You gonna get run
into a hole, shit breath.”
“Shitass,” Frank said. It was the best he could come up with, but he
threw it out with meaning.
246 | Joe R. Lansdale
Dynamite was leading the pack now, leaving the white mule and
the others behind, throwing dust in their faces. White Mule saw Dynamite
start to straighten out in front of him, and he moved left, nearly
knocking against a mule on that side. Frank figured it was so he could
see the hog. The hog was moving his spotted ass on down the line.
“Git him, White Mule,” Frank said, and leaned close to the mule’s
left ear, rubbed the side of the mule’s neck, then rested his head close
on his mane. The white mule focused on the hog and started hauling
some ass. He went lower and his strides got longer and the barrel back
and belly rolled. When Frank looked up, the hog was bolting left,
across the path of a dozen mules, just making it off the trail before
taking a tumble under hooves. He fell, rolled over and over in the
grass.
Frank thought: Shit, White Mule, he’s gonna bolt, gonna go after
the hog. But, nope, he was true to the trail, and closing on Dynamite.
The spell was on. And now the other mules were moving up too, taking
a whipping, getting their sides slapped hard enough Frank could
hear it, thinking it sounded like Papa’s belt on his back.
“Come on, White Mule. You don’t need no hittin’, don’t need no
hard heels. You got to outrun that hard dick for your own sake.”
It was as if White Mule understood him. White Mule dropped lower
and his strides got longer yet. Frank clung for all he was worth, fearing
the saddle might twist and lose him.
But no, Leroy, for all his goat-fucking and seed salesman’s hat stealing,
could fasten harness better than anyone that walked.
The trail became shady as they moved into a line of oaks on either
side of the road. For a long moment the shadows were so thick they
ran in near darkness. Then there were patches of lights through the
leaves and the dust was lying closer to the ground and the road was
sun-baked and harder and showing clay the color of a poison-ivy rash.
Scattered here and there along the road were viewers. A few in chairs.
Most standing.
Frank ventured a look over his shoulder. The other mules and riders
were way back, and some of them were already starting to falter. He
noticed a couple of the mules were riderless, and one had broken rank
with its rider and was off trail, cutting across the grass, heading toward
the creek that twisted down amongst a line of willow trees.
As White Mule closed on Dynamite, the mule took a snapping bite
at Dynamite’s tail, jerking its head back with teeth full of tail hair.
Dynamite tried to turn and look, but his rider pulled his head back
white mule, spotted pig | 247
into line. White Mule lunged forward, going even lower than before.
Lower than Frank had ever seen him go. Lower than he thought he
could go. Now White Mule was pulling up on Dynamite’s left. Dynamite’s
rider jerked Dynamite back into the path in front of White
Mule. Frank wheeled his mount to the right side of Dynamite. In midrun,
Dynamite wheeled and kicked, hit White Mule in the side hard
enough there was an explosion of breath that made Frank think his
mule would go down.
Dynamite pulled ahead.
White Mule was not so low now. He was even staggering a little as
he ran.
“Easy, boy,” Frank said. “You can do it. You’re the best goddamn
mule ever ran a road.”
White Mule began to run evenly again, or as even as a mule can run.
He began to stretch out again, going low. Frank was surprised to see
they were closing on Dynamite.
Frank looked back.
No one was in sight. Just a few twists of dust, a ripple of heat waves.
It was White Mule and Dynamite, all the way.
As Frank and White Mule passed Dynamite, Frank noted Dynamite
didn’t run with a hard-on anymore. Dynamite’s rider let the mule turn
its head and snap at White Mule. Frank, without really thinking about
it, slipped his foot from the saddle and kicked the mule in the jaw.
“Hey,” yelled Dynamite’s rider. “Stop that.”
“Hey, shitass,” Frank said. “You better watch that limb.”
Dynamite and his rider had let White Mule push them to the right
side of the road, near the trees, and a low-hanging hickory limb was
right in line with them. The rider ducked it by a half inch, losing only
his cap.
Shouldn’t have told him, thought Frank. What he was hoping was
to say something smart just as the limb caught the bastard. That would
have made it choice, seeing the little axe-faced shit take it in the teeth.
But he had outsmarted his ownself.
“Fuck,” Frank said.
Now they were thundering around a bend, and there were lots of
people there, along both sides. There had been a spot of people here
and there, along the way, but now they were everywhere.
Must be getting to the end of it, thought Frank.
Dynamite had lost a step for a moment, allowing White Mule to
move ahead, but now he was closing again. Frank looked up. He could
248 | Joe R. Lansdale
see that a long red ribbon was stretched across in front of them. It was
almost the end.
Dynamite lit a fuse.
He came up hard and on the left, and began to pass. The axe-faced
rider slapped out with the long bridle and caught Frank across the
face.
“You goddamn turd,” Frank said, and slashed out with his own bridle,
missing by six inches. Dynamite and Axe-Face pulled ahead.
Frank turned his attention back to the finish line. Thought: this is
it. White Mule was any lower to the ground he’d have a belly full of
gravel, stretched out any farther, he’d come apart. He’s gonna be second.
And no prize.
“You done what you could,” Frank said, putting his mouth close to
the bobbing head of the mule, rubbing the side of his neck with the
tips of his fingers.
White Mule brought out the reinforcements. He was low and he was
stretched, but now his legs were moving even faster, and for a long,
strange moment, Frank thought the mule had sprung wings, like that
horse he had seen on the front of the book so long ago. There didn’t
feel like there was any ground beneath them.
Frank couldn’t believe it. Dynamite was falling behind, snorting
and blowing, his body lathering up as if he were soaped.
White Mule leaped through the red ribbon a full three lengths
ahead to win.
Frank let White Mule run past the watchers, on until he slowed and
began to trot, and then walk. He let the mule go on like that for some
time, then he gently pulled the reins and got out of the saddle. He
walked the mule a while. Then he stopped and unbuttoned the belly
band. He slid the saddle into the dirt. He pulled the bridle off of the
mule’s head.
The mule turned and looked at him.
“You done your part,” Frank said, and swung the bridle gently
against the mule’s ass. “Go on.”
White Mule sort of skipped forward and began running down the
road, then turned into the trees. And was gone.
Frank walked all the way back to the beginning of the race, the
viewers amazed he was without his mule.
But he was still the winner.
“You let him go?” Leroy said. “After all we went through, you let
him go?”
white mule, spotted pig | 249
“Yep,” Frank said.
Nigger Joe shook his head. “Could have run him again. Plowed him.
Ate him.”
Frank took his prize money from the judges and side bet from Crone,
paid Leroy his money, watched Nigger Joe follow Crone away from the
race’s starting line, on out to Crone’s horse and wagon. Dynamite, his
head down, was being led to the wagon by Axe-Face.
Frank knew what was coming. Nigger Joe had not been paid, and
on top of that, he was ill tempered. As Frank watched, Nigger Joe hit
Crone and knocked him flat. No one did anything.
Black man or not, you didn’t mess with Nigger Joe.
Nigger Joe took his money from Crone’s wallet, punched the axefaced
rider in the nose for the hell of it, and walked back in their
direction.
Frank didn’t wait. He went over to where the hog lay on the grass.
His front and back legs had been tied and a kid about thirteen was
poking him with a stick. Frank slapped the kid in the back of the head,
knocking his hat off. The kid bolted like a deer.
Frank got Dobbin and called Nigger Joe over. “Help me.”
Nigger Joe and Frank loaded the hog across the back of Dobbin as
if he were a sack of potatoes. Heavy as the porker was, it was accomplished
with some difficulty, the hog’s head hanging down on one
side, his feet on the other. The hog seemed defeated. He hardly even
squirmed.
“Misses that mule,” Nigger Joe said.
“You and me got our business done, Joe?” Frank asked.
Nigger Joe nodded.
Frank took Dobbin’s reins and started leading him away.
“Wait,” Leroy said.
Frank turned on him. “No. I’m through with you. You and me.
We’re quits.”
“What?” Leroy said.
Frank pulled at the reins and kept walking. He glanced back once
to see Leroy standing where they had last spoke, standing in the road
looking at him, wearing the seed salesman’s hat.
Frank put the hog in the old hog pen at his place and fed him good.
Then he ate and poured out all the liquor he had, and waited until
dark. When it came he sat on a large rock out back of the house. The
wind carried the urine smell of all those out-the-window pees to his
nostrils. He kept his place.
250 | Joe R. Lansdale
The moon was near full that night and it had risen high above the
world and its light was bright and silver. Even the old ugly place looked
good under that light.
Frank sat there for a long time, finally dozed. He was awakened by
the sound of wood cracking. He snapped his head up and looked out
at the hog pen. The mule was there. He was kicking at the slats of the
pen, trying to free his friend.
Frank got up and walked out there. The mule saw him, ran back a
few paces, stared at him.
“Knew you’d show,” Frank said. “Just wanted to see you one more
time. Today, buddy, you had wings.”
The mule turned its head and snorted.
Frank lifted the gate to the pen and the hog ran out. The hog stopped
beside the mule and they both looked at Frank.
“It’s all right,” Frank said. “I ain’t gonna try and stop you.”
The mule dipped its nose to the hog’s snout and they pressed them
together. Frank smiled. The mule and the hog wheeled suddenly, as if
by agreed signal, and raced toward the rickety rail fence near the hill.
The mule, with one beautiful leap, jumped the fence, seemed pinned
in the air for a long time, held there by the rays of the moon. The way
the rays fell, for a strange short instant, it seemed as if he were sprouting
gossamer wings.
The hog wiggled under the bottom rail and the two of them ran
across the pasture, between the trees and out of sight. Frank didn’t
have to go look to know that the mule had jumped the other side of
the fence as well, that the hog had worked his way under. And that
they were gone.
When the sun came up and Frank was sure there was no wind, he
put a match to a broom’s straw and used it to start the house afire, then
the barn and the rotten outbuildings. He kicked the slats on the hog
pen until one side of it fell down.
He went out to where Dobbin was tied to a tree, saddled and ready
to go. He mounted him and turned his head toward the rail fence and
the hill. He looked at it for a long time. He gave a gentle nudge to Dobbin
with his heels and started out of there, on down toward the road and town.