‘Want some?’ Pigeon asked.
‘I ain’t eating or drinking nothing that came out of the garbage,’ Weed said.
‘How you know it came out of the garbage?’
“Cause I seen people like you digging things outta the garbage. You go around with shopping carts and don’t live anywhere.’
‘I live here,’ Pigeon said. ‘That’s somewhere, isn’t it? Get your butt closer. I’ll show you something.’
Weed tried to block our the smell as he walked all the way to the blanket Pigeon sat on. Pigeon reached into a pocket of his ragged Army jacket and showed Weed a Baggie filled with something.
‘Peanut butter crackers,’ Pigeon confided in his rough, raspy voice. ‘Didn’t come outta the trash. The soup kitchen downtown is where.’
‘You swear?’ Weed said as his stomach begged him to help out a little.
Pigeon nodded.
‘I gotta bottle of water that’s never been opened. Soup kitchen again. I guess I can share with a little lost boy.’
‘I’m not lost,’ Weed said.
Bubba was. The minute the dogs had been cut loose, Half Shell had taken off through the woods in one direction while Smudge and Tree Buster had gone in another. The dogs crashed through underbrush for a good ten minutes before Half Shell barked three times. ‘STRIKE, HALF SHELL!1 Bubba hollered. The crashing in Smudge’s direction stopped. Bubba started running as best he could, breaking branches so he could find his way back, stepping over logs and wading through creeks, his headlamp clearing the way. He stamped and crackled, hoping if there was a snake in the area, it would think twice about getting near all that noise. Bubba’s heart was pounding and he was gasping for breath as he followed the sound of his dog.
Half Shell’s front paws were up an old pine tree and she was barking and bawling, her tail wagging, when Bubba appeared. Bubba had no doubt that Half Shell had either backtracked and followed the scent of where the coon had been instead of where the coon was going, or Half Shell had found yet one more slick tree that no more had a coon in it than an iceberg had sugarcane. Bubba shone his submersible Super SabreLite up into the branches, sweeping the beam from high to low, disappointed but not surprised.
He dug out two iridescently painted pearls on a string and whirled them over his head. He flung them as high as they would go and was relieved when they snagged halfway up the pine tree. He shone his light on them and they glowed yellow, two perfect coon eyes. Bubba’s heart swelled with euphoria as Half Shell continued barking at nothing and Tree Buster crashed in on them, Smudge right behind him.
‘TREE, HALF SHELL!’ Bubba yelled.
‘No way,’ Smudge said, trying to catch his breath and sweating.
‘Look for yourself.’
Bubba shone the light on the bright yellow eyes high up in the black branches of the tree.
‘If there’s a coon up there, then how come Tree Buster’s just sitting here and isn’t trying to tree it, too,’ Smudge declared as Tree Buster panted and stared.
‘That’s your problem, good buddy,’ Bubba said. ‘And you can’t tell me you don’t see it.’
‘I see it,’ Smudge had to admit. ‘Damn thing sure is crouched up there at a funny angle. Looks like he’s sideways.’
Bubba got out his score card.
‘A hundred points for the strike and another hundred and twenty-five for the tree,’ he said, jotting the numbers in the Tree column.
Smudge was sullen. They put the dogs back on the leashes and walked through the woods for five minutes. Smudge started the timer and again they let the dogs loose. Tree Buster bolted off as if he knew something. Half Shell disappeared no more than a hundred feet into the woods before she hit a creek and barked three times.
‘STRIKE, HALF SHELL!’ Bubba let loose his battle cry.
Tree Buster barked three times much farther away.
‘STRIKE, TREE BUSTER!’ Smudge yelled.
The two men went after their dogs. Bubba almost tripped over a root and stepped into a hole as he tried not to think about snakes. It was on his mind that if Smudge caught on to what Bubba was doing, Smudge might just leave Bubba out here. Hunters would find Bubba’s skeleton years later.