"She's one of them Carnahans from Thicket Ridge," I said.

      Momma quit shelling peas. "Johnny Ray Lincecum, that gal's white trash. You keep yore skinny hide away from Thicket Ridge."

      We weren't white trash. My great-grandpappy owned the land where the lake is now. He lost it in the Great Depression, and they dammed up the bayou and made a lake, and as far as we Lincecums were concerned, it belonged to us. If somebody didn't catch any fish, we had a deep-freeze filled with catfish fillets in milk jugs and they were five dollars a gallon. If we knew that somebody real well, white perch or bass fillets were ten dollars a gallon. I had a live-box down under a cypress tree out in the lake, and if them city-slickers didn't catch anything with their twenty thousand dollar bass boats, I'd sell them something they could hang on their wall for three dollars a pound. Had eight hundred dollars hid in a fruit-jar under the junk in the barn.

      "Yes, ma'am," I told Momma and gave that gal the biggest grin I could muster.

      The car went down that rutted gravel road and the trunk lid bounced up and down and clang!-clang!-clang!-pow!-banged against the bottom of the boat until it crossed over Lincecum Ridge, headed for the lake. We went back to shelling peas and throwing hulls in a pile on the floor. Out by the front gate, three or four hungry hogs stared through the fence, waiting on the pile.

      My sisters, Suzie Mae--she was sixteen, a year younger than me--and Minnie Mae--she was fifteen--sat in chairs on the other side of Momma. They had dish pans heaped with purple-hull peas in their laps and two city boys from over in Jena sitting on the edge of the porch, staring at their bosoms and trying to look up their dresses without Momma knowing. But Momma knew what those boys wanted, I figured, and I knew for sure. If I could get everybody off the porch but the city boys, I planned on showing them the crack in the wall and, after dark, charging them five dollars for a peek.

      "Yonder comes cousin Hoss and cousin Jessie Bill," Momma said, looking up over the peas in her lap. "Johnny Ray, if they catch a bunch of catfish in their traps, go help clean 'em; they'll give us a mess for supper."

      They gave us a wave when they went by. Hoss's real name was Jimmy Bill but it sounded too much like Jessie Bill, and every time you'd holler for one, the other one would come. So everybody called him "Hoss." He was driving, as usual. Jessie Bill was drunk, as usual.

      They had an old Ford pick-up with a camper shell on back, and they'd painted the whole thing house-paint-blue with a brush. I'd put Hoss a tape-player in the dash, and even though he wasn't but about ten years old when Hank Williams died, he'd been grieving ever since and that was all he ever played--full volume. It'd blowed out the speakers and gave ole Hank's voice even more twang than it already had. Kicking up dust and bouncing, waving, and twanging, "Yore cheating heart will pine some day," they crossed the ridge, headed for the lake.

      They never went anywhere without a sack of fried chicken or catfish, and they threw the bones in the floorboards of the house-paint-Ford. Momma's ole yellow dog jumped off the porch, slid through a hole in the fence, and trotted after them. He disappeared in the dust, headed for a bone. We went back to shelling peas, and the city boys went back to grinning and gawking up dresses.

      About a dozen gawks and a bushel later, Momma said, "Yonder comes the mailman."

      Now that was unusual. The mailboxes were out by the black-topped road. Somebody, we all figured, had important news, and we wondered who it was and hoped it was us and meant money. The mailman had a little white car, and he stopped it out by the gate and the hogs, waited for the dust to settle, and got out. "I'm lookin' for Jimmy Bill and Jessie Bill Lincecum," he said in his best government-man impression. "Got a letter they got to sign for."

      Who in the world would send them a certified letter? I wondered. They bought beer and chicken with cash, so it couldn't've been a hot check, and they didn't owe anybody any money because nobody in his right mind would give them credit.

      "Who's it from?" Momma asked, trying to look like she didn't really care.

      "Can't say," he said, trying to look important.

      "They're down at the landing," I told him. "Should be off the lake by now."

      He left in a cloud of dust, headed for the landing. We went back to shelling peas and gawking and wondering and waiting, knowing Hoss and Jessie Bill couldn't read. A few minutes later, the mailman drove by, not waving and not letting Lincecums or dust delay the completion of his appointed rounds. The yellow dog trotted up, growled at the hogs, crawled through the fence, and lay down in the yard, licking his chops. Finally, up drove Hoss and Jessie Bill.

      They parked the house-paint-Ford, sat their beer cans on the dash so as not to offend Momma--she had the Holy Ghost--and got out. Jessie Bill was way too thin, and nearly every chance Momma got she tried to feed him peas and cornbread. He came through the gate, looking like a staggering scarecrow. Hoss followed, kicked a squealing shoat out of the way, and they stopped at the edge of the porch. "Howdy," Hoss said.

      That was my hog he had kicked, and I didn't like it but wasn't much I could do about it; Hoss was a big man. Biggest Lincecum ever, far as I knew. Mean, too; loved fighting more than drinking beer.

      His belly looked like my sisters' would in nine months if the city boys got what they wanted, and the overalls he lived in were cut off at the knees. He was naked except for the overalls. His face and the rest of him sprouted hair, and an ugly red scar ran from one of his shoulders and down his arm where Jessie Bill had worked him over with a knife and Momma'd sewed it up with a needle and thread. Him and Jessie Bill'd got in a fight over a soft-shelled turtle they caught in a net. One of them wanted to eat it, and the other one wanted to sell it. I don't know which was which, but Jessie Bill won.

      Hoss stood there waiting for Momma to speak, his hairy legs poking out the bottom of the cut off overalls, a white envelope sticking out of the pocket of the greasy bib, and Jessie Bill swaying beside him. Hoss took a bath only when it rained while he was out in the lake and that hadn't happened in a while. Jessie Bill's breath could wither bitter-weeds.

      "Howdy," Momma finally said, nose wrinkled, fingers still shelling. "Catch a bunch of catfish?"

      "Yep," Hoss told her, and his whiskered face took on a sudden, solemn, government appearance. "We got a telegram."

      "Lord have mercy!" echoed around the porch, and everybody looked back and forth at each other in amazement.

      "No, Hoss," I said, "it's a certified letter."

      "Nope," he informed me, "it's a telegram."

      "Don't sass your cousin," Momma ordered. "He knows a telegram when he sees one. Besides, it probably means money."

      Jessie Bill exhaled, filling the air with a smell like month-old beer. "Yep, it's a telegram; money for shore. Mailman said it was from Columbus, Mississippi."

      I decided not to argue. Besides, it might really mean money because the only person we knew in Mississippi was Uncle Larry Joe Lincecum, and he was rich, owned a circus.

      "Where's Columbus, Mississippi?" Hoss asked.

      Everybody looked at me. "About three hundred miles from here," I told them. "All the way to the other side of Mississippi."

      "Y'all's Uncle Larry Joe lives there," Momma said. "He's rich; owns a circus."

      "Want me to read the telegram?" I asked Hoss, trying my best not to sound anxious.

      "Well, left my glasses at home, so go ahead."

      He pulled the certified letter from the greasy bib, handed it to me, and I glanced at the return address. "It's from a lawyer."

      Jessie Bill eyed his suddenly worried brother. "Uncle Larry Joe ain't suing us, is he, Hoss?"

      "Y'all owe him any money?" Momma asked.

      "Nope," Hoss said, "can't be that. He wouldn't loan us any."

      I opened the letter and started reading it aloud:

Dear Misters Jimmy Bill and Jessie Bill Lincecum: It is my sad duty to inform you of the death of your beloved uncle, Larry Joe Lincecum. As executor of his estate, it is my official duty to also inform you that he left a last will and testament on file in my office and named you both as sole heirs of all his worldly possessions----

      "Woo-ee!" Hoss and Jessie Bill shouted and started dancing a jig in the front yard. "We're rich! We're rich! Thank you Lord! Thank you Lord!"

      The faces of everybody on the porch fell, including the city boys' and mine. I'd never laid eyes on Larry Joe Lincecum that I could remember, but, by golly, he was my uncle, too. I looked down at the letter. "Wait!" I said. "There's more!"

However, as executor of your uncle's estate, I must inform you that it consists only of a trained bear which he wrestled at lounges and sideshows. I urgently request your immediate attention to this matter and that you claim your inheritance as soon as humanly possible.

      "It's signed," I said, "William W. Williams the Third, Attorney-at-Law."

      Nobody said anything. Jessie Bill finally asked his brother, "Hoss, we ain't rich?"

      "Nah," he said, face down, looking toward his belly.

      I handed him the letter, and they went out the gate, paupers again.

      "Y'all need help cleaning them catfish?" Momma asked.

      Hearts broke, having gone from poor to rich and back again in thirty seconds, they said nothing. I jumped off the porch and ran and climbed in the back of the house-paint-Ford. Hank twanging, "Did you hear that lonesome whip-pore-Will? He sounds too blue to fly," from the front and catfish squirming, croaking, and trying to breath air in five-gallon buckets around me in the back, we bounced up the gravel road and stopped at their house.

      We dumped the buckets of fish in a wheelbarrow, and Hoss rolled it in the yard, fighting off hogs. Over on their kitchen table permanently stuck in a corner of the yard near the water hose and hogs, we started cleaning catfish. Jessie Bill skinned the fish, and Hoss chopped off heads, pulled out guts, and pitched them over the fence. I sliced off fillets and dropped them in a pan of ice. "Hoss," I asked, watching a catfish head gasp for air with no place to put it, "y'all gonna go get that bear?"

      Hoss threw the gasping head over the fence and started a squealing fight. "Nah," he said, "what we gonna do with a bear? I don't like bears."

      "Hoss, you ever wrestled a bear?"

      He didn't answer for a second and looked like he suddenly got mad. "Yep," he finally said, "in a bar over in Tullos. Damn that bear stunk!"

      I wondered how he could tell. "What'd it cost to wrestle that bear?" I asked, wondering about something else.

      "Ten dollars," he told me and sliced off another head.

      "That bear whupped his ass," Jessie Bill informed me through a gulp of beer, "an' ain't no man ever done it!"

      "Shore did," Hoss admitted with a mean look in his eye. "One good swipe with that paw and he knocked me slap out of the ring. If I'd lasted ten minutes, I'd've won a hundred dollars."

      "Anybody beat that bear?"

      "Nope," they both agreed, "nobody even come close."

      "How many tried?"

      "Well, let's see now," Hoss thought out loud. "There was them Thompson twins from over on Possum Point . . . them three Haily boys from Jena, and---"

      "All four of them Murphrey boys from Ferriday," Jessie Bill interrupted, "and the Jackson cousins from Tullos, and . . ."

      They talked and I counted. After they finished, opened another beer and started cleaning catfish again, I said, "Hoss, that bear whipped fifteen men at ten dollars each."

      "Yep," he said, "shore did."

      I waited, hoping my meaning would soak into their heads. It didn't. "Hoss," I finally said, "that bear made whoever owned it a hundred and fifty dollars for one night's work, and he didn't do the work. The bear did."

      "Yep," he said again, "shore did."

      I thought I would have to spell it out, but he drew back his hand, ready to throw, and then stopped, the gasping head suspended beside his. "Hey," he said, his mouth looking like it was moving with the fish's, "we don't make that much in a week on catfish and hogs."

      "Yep," I then said, "and y'all do all the work."

      Hoss threw the head. "Johnny Ray, you got a driver's license?"

      "Yep," I said, "shore do."

      "Jessie Bill," Hoss said, "we rich."

      We left before daylight the next morning, me driving, Jessie Bill in the middle, and Hoss--thank you Lord--on the other side. They'd stuffed fried chicken and catfish in a pillow case--it was nearly clean--and put it on top of the junk on the dash. The truck didn't have a rear window, and as we drove away, Jessie Bill reached back, pulled two beers from an ice chest next to the cab, popped the top on one, and handed the other one to Hoss. Jessie Bill drank; Hoss sipped, and that's how we left Louisiana: them drinking beer and all of us eating fish and chicken and throwing cans and bones in the floorboards and listening to ole Hank twang.

      Somewhere in Mississippi we stopped for gas and a case of beer and a road map. About noon, I parked the truck in front of a glass and concrete building and we got out and walked inside. It was swanky as a whorehouse, but I'd only been in one and it really wasn't swanky at all. But this place was. It had trees and bushes growing inside it, big soft chairs that looked like nobody ever sat in them, and more lights on one wall than we had in our whole house. Hoss and Jessie Bill didn't even look around. They headed straight for a big brown desk and a blond-haired lady with a bosom like my momma's and sisters'.

      She looked up. Her mouth dropped open. Hoss hung his thumbs in the bib of his overalls, poked his belly out, and stated, government-like: "I'm Jimmy Bill Lincecum."

      Her mouth dropped lower. "Yes, yes, may I . . . may I help you?"

      "Yep. We heirs. This here's my brother, Jessie Bill Lincecum. We come to git our bear."

      "B-b-bear?"

      "Yep. Bear," Hoss said.

      "Yep. Bear," Jessie Bill agreed and belched.

      Her face started turning green. I took the certified letter out of Hoss's bib and handed it to her. "We need to see Mister William W. Williams the Third."

      She glanced at the letter. "P-please," she said, "have a seat . . . over there."

      She handed the letter back, pointed to a couch way on the other side of the room, and we walked to it and sat down. She picked up her telephone.

      "Hoss," Jessie Bill asked, "when we git rich, can we buy us a couch like this?"

      "Yep," Hoss answered, "and we might git an office, a telephone, and a purty gal like that to answer it."

      The lady whispered something in the phone, hung it up, and sat there like she was waiting on somebody to have a baby. Her eyes moved back and forth from us to a fancy wood door. In a minute, it opened, and out stepped a fellow that had to be William W. Williams the Third.

      We could have sold all our hogs and the fish in our freezer and still not have enough money to buy his suit and shoes. He had slicked-back gray hair and a smile on his face like a Pennycost preacher. But his face changed because all of a sudden he looked at us like we were ghosts. He walked to us, mouth open, and stuck out his hand. "I'm . . . I'm Bill Williams," he said.

      We got up and shook his hand; it felt like a catfish.

      "Pleased to meet you," Hoss said, belly way out, cut off overalls pulled above his knees. "I'm Jimmy Bill Lincecum, and this here's Jessie Bill Lincecum. We come to git our bear."

      William W. Williams the Third's nose suddenly crinkled like he'd smelled something that'd been dead for a while. He backed away from Hoss, turned, and walked real fast to the blond-haired lady's desk. "Miss Jones! The Lincecum file!"

      She fumbled through a cabinet behind her, finally found a manila folder, and took it out. The folder dropped, papers scattered everywhere, and William W. Williams the Third eyed the front door, hoping, I figured, nobody'd come in. The lady found a paper, put it on her desk, and, "Here," she mumbled. "Sign here."

      "They can't write," I told her.

      "We got a mark," Hoss told her.

      "Mark it!" William W. Williams the Third told them.

      They did, and me and the lady witnessed it. You couldn't read her signature because her hand shook so bad, but I signed my name in big letters, giving the J in Johnny a fancy loop.

      "Where's our bear?" Hoss asked.

      "At the veterinarian," William W. Williams the Third said. "They're boarding her. There's a bill . . ."

      "Ain't got no money," Hoss lied and patted the bib of his overalls. "This here letter didn't say nothin' about paying. When you an heir, you don't pay, you git!"

      The front door opened, and in walked a lady with silver hair, gold rings, and diamonds hanging everywhere. William W. Williams the Third looked at her, then at us. "I'll pay it! Miss Jones! Call the veterinarian!"

      She did, and he told me how to get to the vet's office. When we left, I glanced back. She had her blond head down on the big brown desk and William W. Williams the Third and the silver-haired lady were sitting on the edge of it, staring after us as we walked out the door.

      I found the office, and the vet took us in the back. There sat the bear in a cage. "She was in bad shape," the vet said.

      My dreams of a sack of money went out the window in a bag of bones. That bear was skinnier than any of our hogs, ate up with the mange, and had almost no hair at all. Where she had rubbed and scratched at the mange, she was covered with sores. She looked at me with them big eyes, and I forgot about money and never felt so sorry for anything as I did for that bear.

      "She had worms," the vet said, "and the worse case of mange I've ever treated. But," he added, "with time and proper care, she'll recover."

      I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.

      "Would you like to let her out?" the vet asked. "She's very tame."

      Hoss and Jessie Bill eased back. The vet opened the door. The bear stepped out, licked my hand, and rubbed her mangy side against my leg. "Here's her muzzle," the vet said, "don't wrestle her for a long time--let her recover--and don't wrestle her without it." His face turned angry. "She has no teeth, or claws either, but her jaws could break someone's arm."

      "Why don't she have teeth?" I asked. "Is she old?"

      "No, she's only about four years old. She doesn't have any teeth because your uncle had them removed, along with her claws."

      The woods around Lincecum Ridge had a few bears, and I knew they had to have claws to dig grubs out of the ground and rotten logs. If Uncle Larry Joe Lincecum had been alive, I would have whispered in Hoss's ear that Uncle Larry Joe said he stunk.

      "Will it hurt to wrestle her?" I asked. "I mean . . . after she's well."

      "No, not at all. When she recovers her strength, she'll probably enjoy it. Here's her leash." He fastened the collar around the bear's neck and handed me the end of the chain. "She'll follow you around like a dog."

      I led her outside, and she followed more like a huge puppy than a dog. Hoss lowered the tail-gate on the house-paint-Ford and the bear jumped inside. "Please," the vet told me, "take care of her."

      "Mister," I answered, meaning every word, "she's gonna be treated better than most of the people on Lincecum Ridge."

      We hadn't hardly got out of the parking lot when the bear poked her head through the rear window and licked my ear and grunted. I got a fried catfish out of the pillow case and stuck it in her mouth. She swallowed it whole.

      And that's the way we went through Mississippi. The bear had her head stuck between mine and Jessie Bill's, watching through the windshield at where we went instead of looking out the back at where we'd been. I fed her every catfish and piece of chicken in the pillow-case, and I made Jessie Bill pick up the bones on the floorboards and give them to her. She crunched them with her gums and ate the floorboards clean except for cans. When she needed a drink, she raised the lid on the ice-chest with her nose. Hoss and Jessie Bill drank beer and counted and spent money they hadn't made yet.

      "We gonna be rich," they both agreed.

      "Gonna git me a crew-cab-Ford with four-wheel-drive and ever song Hank ever sung," Hoss said.

      We whizzed through Natchez, Mississippi, as the sun got low, crossed the bridge, and stopped in Vidalia, Louisiana, for gas, beer, and chicken--twenty gallons, three cases, and two buckets.

      About an hour later, we zoomed down the black-topped road, turned at the mailboxes, and stopped at Hoss and Jessie Bill's house. Momma was smiling from the porch, and my sisters were in the swing, swinging high. The city boys sat on the floor, getting a real good gawk.

      I got out. Hoss got out. Jessie Bill fell out in a clatter of cans. I ran around the back of the house-paint-Ford and let out the bear.

      Some hogs walked up, took one look and a sniff and headed for the woods, squealing. The city boys had quit gawking and had their noses in the air. "That," one of them said, losing all chances of a peek through the crack, "is the sorriest looking animal I've ever seen."

      Hoss opened the gate, and I led the bear into the yard. We left Jessie Bill sleeping in beer cans and gravel.

      "Johnny Ray," Momma said, "that bear ain't gonna live. You ought to shoot it and put it out of its misery."

      "No, Momma," I told her, "I'll take care of it."

      She looked at me for a long time. "Okay," she said, "I'll go fix it some medicine."

      She left, stepping fast, and my sisters followed her, the city boys behind them with their city hands on my sisters' country behinds. I figured I was gonna be an uncle for sure.

      Hoss went inside, plopped down in a chair, and started snoring. I led the bear inside, kicked a path through the beer cans and empty fried chicken boxes, and headed for the kitchen with the bear, aiming to find her something to eat. She found it herself; fish and chicken bones were everywhere.

      The bear crunched bones, and a few minutes later the screen door opened and there stood one of the city boys, his eyes wide in amazement at the trash and a gallon milk jug black with Momma's medicine in his hand. I took it from him and said, more than half-way meaning it: "If my sister gets pregnant, I'm gonna feed you to that bear."

      He left. I found a rag, soused it in the used motor-oil and sulfur, and started doctoring the bear's skin while she nosed through the trash. She finally got full and stretched out on the couch, adding a little more grease to what was already there. I heard a car on the gravel road, looked out the door and saw the lights of the city boys' car, heading for the city. Maybe, I hoped, I wasn't going to be an uncle after all.

      I dug through a closet, found a sheet that didn't stink, wrapped it around me against the mosquitoes, and went to sleep in the porch-swing. In the middle of the night, I heard Hoss yell, "Hey, bear! Git yore ass off my couch!"

      The bear whimpered, and then she growled and I heard her shuffling trash, making a bed. Hoss had kicked her off the couch. I wished she had teeth.

      Just as the sun came up, the bear licked me in the ear. "Good morning, bear," I said and scratched her ears. She lay her head on my belly like the biggest dog you ever saw.

      I slept in the swing for a week, doctoring the bear three or four times a day and feeding her anything I could find. I helped clean catfish every afternoon, and I'd make sure the bear ate just as much head and guts as the hogs. Every chance I got, I slipped her a fillet. Every chance Hoss got, he'd kick her.

      By the end of the week, people would stop and get out of their cars and trucks and hang over the fence, watching the bear crunch catfish heads with her gums. She got stronger, and we started wrestling. I'd put a hammer-lock around her neck, and she'd shake me off like I was a baby. It never crossed my mind to put the muzzle on her. Hoss never stopped kicking her.

      After a month, along about the end of summer, the bear had gained weight and started growing hair. And we got a bigger audience. People would back pick-up trucks up to the fence, sit on the tail-gates, and watch the bear crunch catfish heads and wrestle with me. Hoss and Jessie Bill sold all their fillets without having to freeze them in jugs, and everybody gave them beer. So I guess they were rich after all. But Hoss hated the bear for some reason I couldn't understand.

      At the end of summer, right before school started, I found out why.

      The Thompson twins were in the back of a pick-up, drinking beer. "Say, Hoss," one of them asked, "didn't I see a bear whip yore ass in a bar in Tullos?"

      Hoss had a catfish head in his right hand. He threw it and it thudded hard against the side of a hog. He had a glare in his eyes I'd never seen before. "Yep," he said, "and right after that I whipped yores, then yore brother's, and I gave y'all fifteen minutes to rest and whipped you both together. Wanna try it again?"

      "Nope," they both said real fast, and the mouthy one added, "Must be hard on a fellow to know he can whip just about anybody and can't whip a bear."

      Hoss's fists clenched, and the blood and guts of the head-less catfish in his left hand squirted from between his fingers. He threw the dripping mess to the hogs. "Johnny Ray," he said, "put the muzzle on the bear."

      With tears in my eyes, I did as Hoss ordered. "Please, bear," I whispered in her ear, "let Hoss win."

      But the bear turned, knowing the meaning of the muzzle, and Hoss walked up and pushed me away. Then he kicked her in the side. She roared with pain and charged, but so did Hoss. They met with a crash, rolling over in the dirt, the bear trying to bite and tear at Hoss through the muzzle, and Hoss trying to get his arm around her neck and throw her.

      Then Hoss jumped up. They glared at each other, both breathing hard. Suddenly, the bear stood on her hind legs, shook her head back and forth trying to shake off the muzzle, and let out an ear-splitting roar. They charged again.

      Hoss's shoulder hit the bear in the chest, and she teetered backward and swung her paw. Hoss flew through the air, hit the fence and fell. We thought the match was over, but it turned into a fight. Hoss shook his head, jumped up, and came back swinging his fists.

      Again and again he pounded blows into the bear's chest. She roared, in pain now, and a paw flashed with lightning speed and smashed into the side of Hoss's head. He hit the fence again, broke a post, and fell limp as a dead snake on the sagging wire.

      The bear, wanting to tear Hoss to pieces, prepared to charge, but I leaped between them and begging, pleading, calmed her down. Hoss groaned and rolled off the wire.

      Rubbing the bear's trembling sides, I glared at the people in the trucks and gathered at the fence. "Get out," I ordered, "and don't come back."

      They left, and Hoss crawled inside the house. Scared more than I'd ever been in my life, I waited in the yard with the bear and listened through the screen door at Hoss cussing and chugging down beer and throwing the cans against the wall. Jessie Bill stood at the catfish-cleaning table, drinking beer and staying out of the way.

      "Johnny Ray," he told me real low, "Hoss is gonna kill that bear."

      "No, he ain't," I said, braver than I really felt.

      I found a broke axe-handle in the junk in the yard, laid it beside me on the porch, and shaking with fear, hugged the bear and waited. Lord, I wished she had teeth and claws.

      A can hit the wall, and Hoss started kicking trash. I let go of the bear and put both hands on the axe-handle. The screen door crashed open, slammed shut, and there stood Hoss, swaying worse than Jessie Bill and holding a double-barreled shotgun. "Don't!" I screamed, and he raised the gun.

      I jumped up and smashed my shoulder into his belly. He fell back against the screen door, and "BLAM!" the shotgun fired and blew a hole in the roof of the porch. The bear jumped the sagging fence and took off for the woods like a scared rabbit.

      The back of Hoss's hand walloped me across the nose and I hit the floor, bleeding. The shotgun raised but I couldn't move and "BLAM!" it fired again. The bear yelped with pain and jumped the gravel road. I could hear it out in the bushes, crying something awful. Then it ran, and the pitiful cries faded.

      Hoss stood there swaying, the shotgun in the crook of his arm and a satisfied grin across his drunken face. I got up, behind him, and swung the axe-handle again.

      "CR-RACK!" it broke across the back of his head and he hit the floor like a brain-shot hog. I hoped it had killed him, but it didn't. I could hear him moaning.

      "Bear!" I yelled and ran for the woods. "Bear! Come back!"

      I searched all night, yelling and stopping every once in a while to wipe my eyes. But I didn't find the bear, and I never went back to Hoss and Jessie Bill's. For a long time, they'd pass our house on the gravel road and not even wave.

      Fall came, school started, my last year, and I searched for the bear every evening. Finally, I gave her up for dead. One day, the summer I graduated, I headed through the woods for Thicket Ridge. It was two miles from our place to the Carnahan's, but by then, that girl and I had a path. Jennie Lou was her name, and we'd meet half-way. Old man Carnahan didn't want her fooling around with Lincecums.

      But I left early and walked past the half-way point. Near the Carnahan house, off in the woods, I saw Jennie Lou feeding the biggest, blackest hog I every saw. "Bear!" I screamed.

      She charged. We crashed into each other and fell over in the leaves. I started hugging and she started licking. She had gained a hundred pounds and was covered with the slickest hair I ever saw. We wrestled around under the trees until I couldn't get my breath.

      Sitting on the ground, the bear still licking my ears and wanting to wrestle, I looked up at Jennie Lou. "How'd you find her?"

      "I heard her whimpering in the woods the morning after Hoss shot her," the girl I then knew I loved said. "I fixed some medicine and doctored her. She stays out in the woods somewhere, and I feed her."

      "Why didn't you tell me?"

      Her hand reached over, gently scratching the bear between the ears. "Afraid, I guess. I didn't want Hoss to find out."

      We sat beneath an oak, the bear sleeping between us while we rubbed her silky fur. After a long while, she got up, yawned, and licked us both in the face. Then she shuffled away. We watched her disappear through patches of sunlight filtering through the trees and glistening from her fur.

      Jennie Lou looked over at me, her eyes shining. "She's pregnant . . . and so am I."

      I got home late that night and sat on the front porch, darkness surrounding me as I rocked gently back and forth in Momma's chair and rubbed the yellow dog. The moon slowly rose out of the woods, cast a pale glow over the gravel road and the sleeping hogs, and painted a golden, shimmering path across the water of Lincecum Bayou Lake.

      The yellow dog stood up, stretched, and, like he could count, looked for a long moment toward the dim, sleeping forms out in the gravel. Then he growled at something he could see in the shadows at the edge of the woods, turned, and placed his head in my lap.

      "Yellow Dog," I said, "when I've got enough money in the fruit jar to buy a pick-up with a camper shell, me and Jennie Lou and our baby and that bear and her baby are gonna hit the road. And we ain't never coming back to Lincecum Ridge."

      I slipped inside and went to bed, leaving the yellow dog guarding hogs and watching shadows.

      Momma called out in the dark: "That you, Johnny Ray?"

      "Yes, ma'am."

      "You been over on Thicket Ridge?"

      "Yes, ma'am." Then I said, "Momma, I'm gonna marry Jennie Lou Carnahan."

      "That's good," Momma said. "She comes from a fine family."