Fup

In thirty-two Sundays of hunting, they found Lockjaw twice. The first time, Fup's crazed quacking scared him up early, and Tiny only had time for a single shot at 250 yards. At the sound of the rifleshot, Lockjaw went rolling down the hill. But when Tiny and Fup finally worked their way over to where they'd seen him go down, there was no sign of Lockjaw. No body, no blood. Fup picked up the trail immediately but lost it at the bottom of the draw where it hit McKensie Creek. They searched up and down the creek on both sides till well after noon but found no sign. Fup was so exhausted Tiny had to carry her home.

The second time they saw Lockjaw, Lockjaw had seen them first, circled back on his tracks, lay down to wait in a tanoak thicket, and when they passed, he charged, slashing at Tiny's legs and missing, but knocking him down, and literally ru

Granddaddy met them at the kitchen door. "You don't even have to tell me you saw that pig… I know you did."

"What makes you so sure?" Tiny asked.

"Because every time you see him, you come home carrying Fup."

Fup hissed.

Tiny glowered, then smiled.

Granddaddy hooted.

Lockjaw, tired with the exertion, picked his way along the creek to the tangle of dug-out redwood roots where he enjoyed snoozing on hot afternoons. He gave a few deep grunts along the way, sounding his satisfaction. Being pursued by a huge strange duck and a giant kid every seventh day was an a

4 The Second Heart

Although he never said anything, and used his need for sleep and sweet dreams as his excuse, Granddaddy Jake didn't like the Sunday morning pig hunt, didn't like it at all. It bothered him that Tiny was becoming obsessed with killing Lockjaw. Hunting was one thing, killing another, and obsession in any form was, to Granddaddy's experience, utterly treacherous; you couldn't be born if you wouldn't let go, and very few people could deliver themselves of obsession. The tight excited flash in Tiny's eyes disturbed him with its helplessness. He blessed Fup for accompanying Tiny, for despite her intensity she was slow, and together they only covered about an eighth as much territory as he could have alone or with dogs. Granddaddy, in his i

Joh

Granddaddy had sensed it before Joh

On the third evening he took a deep breath and turned to Jake: "Let me tell you about my name, Seven Moons. I added the Joh

From that first visit until he died six years later, Joh

Another time, he'd swept his hand across the landscape, and said, "Yarrrg, you white men did a lot to take it from us, but nothing to deserve it. You desire to tame everything, but if you just stand still and feel for a moment you would know how everything yearns to be wild." He spat. "And all these people with fences, fences, fences. Isn't the whole point to keep nothing in and nothing out? But I know you understand this Jake, for you have no fences, and devote your life to making whiskey and keeping still, and those are noble activities, worthy of a man's spirit."

The statement had haunted Jake when Tiny started building fences. But when Tiny had turned his hunt for Lockjaw into an obsessive ritual, what haunted Jake to his core were the last words he remembered Seven Moons saying to him.

Jake had walked out the ridge with him to say goodbye, and just before they'd parted Seven Moons had pointed at some fresh pig rooting and flashed a stupendous smile: "Ah, there we see hope-the domestic gone wild. Pigs are so lovely. Their bodies are made to hold up the sky. I wouldn't mind being a pig sometime… a big ol' crazy boar. That would be great."

Granddaddy Jake couldn't get it out of his mind, so he finally told Tiny what he thought might be the case, that Lockjaw was the reembodied spirit of Joh