A Goose Hollow Memory

Rusty the Walker Hound
C R Williams

The best friend I ever had was named Rusty.  He was a Walker Hound from a litter of puppies that my uncle B. T. Lee’s dog had. B. T. and his uncles and brothers used the big Walkers for coon hunting. 

I must have acquired Rusty when I was about 3 going on 4.  I think we may have been living in Pearlington, Ms, at the time.  When he was a puppy, he developed this habit of crawling up under the house whenever he was tired; tired of me that is.  As long as he was a puppy I would just crawl up under the house and drag him out by a leg.  Once I had him, I would hoist him up by his two back legs and flop him onto my shoulder, carrying him around like a sack of potatoes.  Oh, but my Big MawMaw could not stand to see me do that.  She would holler for everyone in earshot, “Oh, that boy is gonna’ kill that dog.  He’s too rough with him.”  Little Rusty never complained, even though grandma was right about the rough treatment I gave him.

Getting him out from under the house as a puppy was easy.  But not so once he was full grown.  He weighed more than me then.  After he got big he was my horse.  We were Roy Rogers and Trigger.  However, he would quickly tire of playing rodeo and under the house he would go. Still, he never complained, growled or snapped at me.  He was a good buddy, my best friend, and the best companion a little boy could have.

He was also my partner in crime.  In Goose Hollow, Asylum Creek was a rock throw from the dead end of Erin Street.  My protective mother had warned me to never go down to that creek or there would be dire consequences, which usually came in the form of a privet switch (a Eurasian deciduous shrub {Ligustrum vulgarer} of the olive family with semi-evergreen leaves and small white flowers that is widely used for hedges).  Now Asylum Creek was usually a dry creek bed with steep, brushy banks of about 3 or 4 feet and just yards wide that may have had a trickle of water (or septic sewer effluent) flowing in places.  Just the kind of place an adventurous five- or six-year-old would love to explore. 

(The town got around to installing a sewer collection system and water treating facility about 1960/1961, if I remember rightly. Up till then, Jackson was just a little stinky town like so many others of the era. A concrete catch basin was put in the ground in the middle of our dead end road directly in front of our house. It was of tremendous size, at least from the perspective of a small boy. I saw it as something else for imaginative exploration, but was also put on the forbiden list of things to not do.)

However, I do remember seeing Asylum Creek in wet seasons, during heavy rains turn into a brimming full, fast flowing torrent.  I suppose Mom could imagine me getting to close and falling into something like that.  A grown man probably could not have survived it, much less a little boy.

The Creek was also a snaky looking place.  I do remember Dad killing a “chicken snake”, that lived along the creek banks, under our neighbor’s rabbit cage.  Plus, there were other dangers there that were unknown to little explorers.  There was one I never thought about at the time until I ran across one years later while squirrel hunting with my dad on a lower section of the creek.  A good many of the lunatics in the state hospital had grounds privileges and every now and then one of them might be exploring the creek.  For the most part I think most were harmless, but it could have been a parent’s nightmare to have had their child be the one to find out.

One overcast, drizzly spring day I put on my new, little yellow rain coat with its strong scent of rubber, black metal clip fasteners and its matching hood and my little, rubber boots to go out and test out my rain gear.  Mom allowed this but with her usual warning to “Stay in the yard!”  That warning went in one ear and out the other.  Me and rusty went exploring.

I do not remember how much time had passed, or how far we had gone, but after a while I heard someone calling out my name.  They were headed down the creek in my direction.  “Oh, Lord if I am caught on this creek I am in trouble,” was all I could think.  Off into the bushes that covered a sandy bar on the inside of a bend in the creek I scooted.  Squatting down with Rusty setting beside me we could barely see through the leafy green tangle as Nelson Watson came striding into view calling for me.  Rusty and I were quiet as jailbirds on the loose as we watched Mr. Nelson go by.  Once we could not hear the crunch of sand and gravel under his footsteps, we cut out of that brush pile and hoofed it to the house as quickly and as quietly as we could.

We just sat on the steps to the front door stoop and waited.

“Where have you been?”  The voice behind the screen door belonged to my very disgruntled mother.  I turned to look into that stern face with its blazing eyes.  I mustered up all the innocence of a child and said, “I been playing here in the yard.”

“Why didn’t you answer me when I called?  I did not see you any where in this yard.”

“I don’t know. Me and Rusty been playing all around here and Mr. Havard’s yard.”

Good old Rusty stayed by my side lightly panting.  I supposed we were both a little winded beating it back to the yard and trying not to be seen doing it.  He calmly exuded the essence of devotion and looked as nonchalantly as if he had just awakened from a nap under the house.  He was my buddy and we were gonna’ sink or swim together on this one!

Nelson Watson reappeared from out of the creek.  Wearing a big grin he said, “I see you found him.  Guess he wasn’t down on the creek after all.”

Mom accepted Nelson’s appraisal of the situation and let it go at that.  She thanked him for his time and effort.  I got off with a grim, “You better come the next time I call you, you here?” 

For the rest of the day I was under a kind of unspoken house arrest.  I knew better than to push my luck.  Mom was suspicious and she was right.  I think Nelson Watson probably knew too. 

This incident is the first I can ever recall of telling a lie.  I may have fibbed and made up stories before this, but this one stuck with me.  It is the first time I recall lying to avoid unpleasant consequences in disobeying my parents.  Parents laid down the law.  I had broken a cardinal law, and got away with it.

As for my accomplice, he was taking it easy under the house.

#

Walkers are good dogs. Good hunting dogs used mostly for coon hunting.  There were quite a few men in town that wanted Rusty.  Some had approached dad about buying Rusty.  He would tell them, “The dog is just a pet for the boy.  He won’t hunt.”  Yet, some believed dad was holding out on them.  There were a few times Rusty came up missing.  Sometimes for a week and once for a month.  But he would eventually come back home.  At lease twice he came back home dragging a rope on one occasion and a chain another time.  The rope might may have broke, or was gnawed in two; the chain was attached to a stake.

I believe it was “Shack” Johnson who drove up to the house while I was playing in the yard.  He got out of his car and preceded to tell me, “I want to buy that dog.  I’ll give you $20 dollars for him.”  He pulled out his fat, old wallet from his hip pocket, pulled out a twenty dollar bill and put it in my hand. 

Shack was an older fellow who went to our church.  I was surprised and taken aback, dumbfounded.  As he started putting Rusty into his car.  I ran inside and hurriedly told mom that a man had given me this (showing her the bill) and that he was taking Rusty.  I did not want him to take Rusty.

Mom took the twenty and nearly flew out the door.  I stood by the front door and just watched.  I do not remember what was said, but mom was the kind with a definite sense of right and wrong and if you were doing wrong she was going to let you know in no uncertain terms.  I breathed a sigh of relief when the bill went back into the wallet and Rusty met me as I jumped down the steps to the yard.  Whatever mom may have said to Shack, after that, other would be covetous people lost interest in Rusty.  He was my dog and the whole town knew it.

With all the interest in Rusty’s “hunting ability” my dad’s younger brother Bobby suggested that they take the dog out to the woods and see what he would do.  Of course, I was somewhat reluctant, but as long as I could go to keep my eye on Rusty it would be OK.  We put rusty in the trunk of Bobby’s old car.  They tied down the trunk to where it was partially open but where Rusty could not get out.  I do not remember the model but the car was an old, black 1940’s type, far older than me, but probably not as old as Bobby.  He was born in 1938.

We drove out onto the Woodville Road about 3 or 4 miles.  I believe we were just north of the Hundred Cedars Dairy and the Spillman place and on the east side of the gravel road.  Dad and Uncle Bobby let Rusty out of the trunk and he did take to the woods, trotting around with his nose to the ground.  The timber had not been cut in a while and the woods were open with not a lot of undergrowth.  I cannot remember what time of year it was, but it could have been September or October; still warm enough for short pants and short-sleeved shirts.

After about fifteen minutes I believe one of the men said, “Well, he’s curious about something.  Could be anything — rabbit, squirrel, deer or whatever.”  I believe it may have been Dad because he was surprised Rusty even showed interest and ranged out in front us as he did.  He was always of the opinion the dog would just hang around our feet.

“Well, let’s see if he is gun shy,” Bobby said.  “Watch him while I shoot my shotgun up into the trees.”

Bobby took a bead on the upper limbs of a tall pine and pulled the trigger.  Boy, was it loud.  I believe it was the first time I was standing right next to someone shooting a shotgun.  It was a hell of a lot louder than the guns the TV cowboys used!

That shot not only shattered the silence, it shattered my world as I saw Rusty disappear over the next piney hill and out of sight as fast as he could run.  I never saw Rusty again.

“Guess you were right, Buddy.  He ain’t a hunting dog.  I have never seen a dog run so fast in all my life.”  Bobby looked down at me.  “We’ll find him.  Don’t worry.”

We spent the rest of the evening, even into dark, driving up and down the road looking, stopping, calling, and looking some more.  I was devastatingly sad.  I wanted my dog.  They reassured me that he would turn up; we would look again tomorrow.  I could not know at the time that those two brothers probably felt pretty low.  Only after becoming an adult could I understand that some of the worst pain an adult can feel is the hurt that he can cause a child to feel.

For most of the next week when he got off work in the evenings, Bobby would come get me and we would go look for Rusty.  We would make a few passes up and down the road, stop and call in a few places, but to no avail.  In later years Mom and Dad would say that Rusty did come back, but that is not how I remember it.  Like my playmates, Deborah and Diane, Rusty was gone.  I would just have to move on.  If I merit a place in Heaven, Rusty is the first one I want to see when I get there; or like Will Rogers said, “If dogs don’t go to heaven, I want to go where they go.”

My dad used to carry a picture of Rusty in his wallet along with mom and us kids.  I often wondered why he did that.  It was a picture of Rusty by himself, standing, angled slightly away from the camera.  He had the serious look of a hunting hound at attention waiting for the sound of the hunting horn or the command to “go get ‘em!”