Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (3) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

April 1922, continued

They both knew the time to catch a hog was dawn or dusk. Hogs were predictable; they laid up in the palmetto heads during the day, after going to water around dawn. Then they went back to water at dusk, before spending the night rooting for food. Pretty soon they’d be up and about, and Guy and Red had already scouted a palmetto break where a herd of hogs had worn tracks down to a creek that fed into Blue Cypress Lake called Mudfish Slough. The spot was south of the lake and west of the clearing, and still a good ways from the Middleton place.
    A family by that name lived on the west shore of Blue Cypress, over towards Trim’s Creek. They’d lived there since Christ was a carpenter, back when the lake was called Lake Wilmington. Red reckoned they just might be the rightful owners of the cypress he and Guy were stealin’.
    For all that, they were known to be a right ornery bunch, particularly old Harlan Middleton, who was said to have once killed a man for fishing on his property. They were a clan of swamp rats what generally didn’t care for folks whether they were stealing or not. Story was they married their sisters, there were so few people anywhere around.
    Closest anything was Jackass Junction, which wasn’t nothin’ but where Jernigan Road, coming south from Orlando, which had once been known as Jernigan, met Hesperides Road coming east out of Lake Wales. Red figured it was a good idea to steer clear of the west side, and that the hogs they’d be hunting were far enough away no Middletons would hear a gunshot and come looking for poachers with blood in their eye.

They set up to await the hogs

It was just after sundown when they circled to the east of the palmetto patch they were scouting. Mudfish Slough flowed north here towards the lake, and the hog trail ran west from the palmettos to the creek. They came up to the trail from the east, slogging through the tall spring grass, their boots squishing into the marshy soil, and set up behind a fallen tree to await the hogs.
    The wind right now was from the west, instead of the normal steady easterlies over on the coast, so the hogs wouldn’t catch their scent. They were wily bastards, and the smell of unwashed men would send them scurrying but fast.
    Red had Guy’s 1897 Parker Brothers twelve-gauge side-by-side. It said “Pigeon” right on the thirty-inch Damascus barrels but with a full choke and Number One Buckshot it made a fine hog or deer gun.

1897 Parker Brothers 12-guage “Pigeon”

    They didn’t have long to wait. Guy let Red do the shooting, as he was the better shot and hadn’t had half the ’shine Guy’d had that day. The bull hog came sniffing out first, and when he decided they were safe he grunted a bit and the sows and piglets shuffled out, practically in line.
    Red grinned to himself; it’s just what wild hogs did. Like shooting fish in a barrel. He lined up on what looked to be a half-grown sow, the best eating, and let fly. A cloud of powder smoke flew up for a second, to be hauled off by the west wind to behind them. It was a fair hit, the sow went down like a dropped sack of corn, and the rest ran about squealing in consternation.
    When the smoke cleared, they went over and looked at their dinner. It was a sow, weighing in at less than a hundred pounds, without too much razorback stock from the looks of her.
    The larger domestic hogs that got loose had interbred with the native “razorback” Piney Rooters, a mean-assed breed of spike-hackled pigs that had rarely run even a hundred pounds without the domestic blood. They had longer snouts, bigger tusks, and an attitude that made a rattlesnake look right neighborly by comparison. They carried more weight in their hunched shoulders and less on their bellies, and large herds had been known to kill a man and his dogs, or even his horse, and eat them all.
    They also didn’t taste near as good as the domestics, as they tended to eat rougher, acorns, palmetto roots and suchlike, that made their meat rank and gamey. Guy slapped Red on the shoulder with a big smile.

The hit hadn’t bloodied the meat

    “Damn good shootin’, little brother! And only one barrel.” The buckshot, which was sixteen pellets of about .30 caliber each, had caught the sow mostly in the neck, but a couple pellets had hit just behind the pig’s right front leg, which when butchering was known as the “hand.” She might have bled out from the neck hits but one pellet had cut right through the “blade” and probably had hit her heart. The shot was doubly good, having not only dropped her before she could run off but the placement of the hit hadn’t bloodshot the majority of the meat.
    Guy pulled his pocket flask and they both took a slash, laughing and slapping each other in glee like the boys they were, in anticipation of a good meal.
    Then Guy pulled his sheath knife and got to work. First, they dragged the dead sow over to the tree, where a branch stood up high enough to tie a bit of rope on a back leg and string her up hanging upside down. Normally they would have dug a hole under her to catch the guts, but out here it made no sense. They’d be gone in an hour so the smell and flies were no problem, and it was far enough from their camp that it wouldn’t draw unwanted attention from the odd black bear, panther or bobcat.
    Another of Guy’s many talents was butchering. He cut the throat, allowing the blood to flow freely onto the ground. He skillfully slit the belly open without cutting into the stomach and intestines, which still reeked despite being whole. He cut the heart free and saw that the one pellet that struck the blade had hit the main arteries above the heart rather than the organ itself. “Damn good shootin,” he said, almost to himself.
    He smelled it, pronounced it “tol’able,” and laid it aside on the clean fresh grass. He cut the head off, then went at the skin, and in no time had a clean carcass. Small as she was, he said they could drag her back to camp whole.
    They tied the short piece of rope to her two rear hooves, placed the heart back in the chest cavity, and each with a hand on the rope set to sliding her across the slick grass back east towards the cypress head where their cutting was.
    Red had the Parker across his shoulder as they made their way through the creeping dusk.

Red did as he was told

By the time they arrived it was full dark and Red built up the fire until Guy could see. They hung her high and proper from an oak limb, and Guy set about cutting her into pieces. “Get that heart and get it into some water with a handful of salt,” he said, and Red did as he was told.
    Most pig innards were nasty, but a young sow’s heart often made good eating. He dipped some water from the nearby creek and put the heart in the pot the greens had been in, throwing in a goodly portion of salt from their supplies in the lean-to.
    Guy cut up a hand from the sow and tossed the pieces in with the heart. While they waited for the pork to cook, Guy dipped out some boiled peanuts and they happily popped them open, blowing on them as they seared their fingers, chewing the soft inner meat and sucking the salty water from the shells. They dropped the shells into the fire, where they hissed and crackled as they burned.
    When they’d eaten a good bit of the boiled pork and split the pig heart, they each took a couple slashes off the jug from the cab of the truck. “Reckon I need to refill that jug a’fore we get going, later,” Guy said.
    Red give him a look that took him back a little. “What?,” said Guy, “I ain’t a’gonna be drivin, you are.”
    “I know it, Guy, but God dammit, you know I don’t like drinkin’ when we’re on the road. Lawmen could be out an’ about and snatch us up jes’ fer possession.”
    Guy’s face twisted up. “How many lawmen you seen the last three runs?”

Lawmen could be out anytime

    Red shook his head. “Don’t make no never mind, they could be out any time, lookin’ fer bootleggers, and there goes all our hard work down the drain. An’ hell, we might get shot fer our trouble.”
    Guy spit in disgust, “Nah, the hell with that noise.” He took the jug over to the still and poured it full from the storage can that sat off to the side. When he’d replaced it behind the seat of the truck, they strung the rest of the pig carcass up in a tree to discourage varmints and turned in, each wrapping in their old green wool Army blankets that would be hot but would help keep off some of the mosquitoes.
    Red drank an extra ladle of water, so he’d be sure to have to get up later in the night to pee. Then they would break down the still, load it up and be on the road a good couple hours before daylight.

Half asleep, Red knew he’d have to be up soon to pee and get going, maybe even take a shit. He wasn’t used to eating so much meat at once, and it was tellin’ on him. But he wasn’t quite ready. Just a few more winks, he thought, and he’d be right as rain.
    Yet something wasn’t right. There was light coming into the shack, but it couldn’t be dawn yet, maybe more like four o’clock. Then he heard the crackling from the fire. What the hell, was Guy up, burning? Why in damnation would he do that?
    He’d just looked over to see Guy, and hear him snoring, when a gunshot crashed across the clearing. They both bolted up, Red with his hand on the Smith and Wesson and Guy with the Parker in his hands, when a voice called out.
    “Don’t do nothin’ stupid boys, we got scatterguns throwed right down on ya. Jus’ drop that hog leg, son.”
    As his vision cleared, he saw two men—old men—standing on either side of the fire, far enough apart so one shotgun blast couldn’t take them both out. The one who’d fired had a long-barrel shotgun pointed up to the trees.
    Guy said, under his breath, “Shee-it. We gonna die.”
    Right then, a branch hit with the warning shot cracked and fell between them, and they all jumped, even the men with the drop on the boys.

“No need for nobody to get shot”

    “Easy now!” the man said, looking both at the Dedges and his own companion. “No need fer nobody to get shot fer nothin!”
    “Ok, mister, we ain’t gonna make no move, ’specially not with them shotguns on us. We’s sure enough sorry to be trespassin’. Didn’t know nobody was ’round here,” which was a bald-faced lie, and the man looked like he damn well knew it. “Didn’t mean no harm.”
    “Oh, I reckon you’re a’trespassin’ aw’right, but not on my land. This here land belongs to a feller name of Howey, from up Apopka way. Good damn thang for you he ain’t here, too, or he’d a shot y’all just for seein’ ya. Man owns half a’ God-damn Florida from what I hear, and a more o’nrey sumbitch ain’t never shit between two shoes. My land’s around the west side there, by Blue Cypress and Trim’s Creeks.”
    And just like that Red knew who they were talking to.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens