ࡱ> 8:7 *bjbjVV 40<<"@@  (******#J**?j(( U0X**@ I: THE TRAGEDY OF WOODROW MONROE By Jeremiah Shelor By the end, the bear had become a belligerent drunk, and most everyone agreed something needed to be done. A .22 caliber round to a bear is a bee sting, so the sheriff had to fire a shotgun through its forehead. Boggy was upset, of course, seeing its ears twitch forward to listen in on the pump action, hearing the thud of 400 furry pounds gone limp; Woodrow (he named it Woodrow) had been his best friend ever since hed found him on a bear hunt up near Beckley and raised him up from a cub. So angry was Boggy, in fact, that he protested outside the county courthouse for three days, decrying the over-reaching arm of government until he lost his voice, and then continuing in silence for another day after that. But really, young and hot headed though he was, some part of Boggy knew he was as much to blame as anyone for what happened to his bear, and that he never should have gotten Woodrow drunk in the first place. Up till then, Boggy and Woodrow had made a name for themselves making illegal deliveries of alcohol for Woofer, who ran a fish fry/distillery/beer joint at the top of the mountain. State troopers as far north as Richmond were telling stories about Boggy and Woodrow racing around in their modified jet-black 1926 Model T pickup, Boggy with his elbow hanging out the window, munching on an apple with calculated nonchalance, Woodrow hunched over, paws clutching the wheel as he surveyed the road ahead, a monsoon of gravel dust perpetually chasing them. The sheriff knew, of course, that Boggy had rigged his truck so he could drive from the passengers seat while Woodrow sat in the drivers side and played with the wheel (Boggy would show him how it worked when he delivered his liquor to him at the station), but the select few state troopers who dared to patrol through that part of the mountains didnt know what to think. Whenever some hapless deputy passed through, his report back to police headquarters would generally go something like: Sarge, you aint gonna believe this, but while Is down there I saw a bear driving a pickup. And I could a sworn hes a eatin a fish, too. I tried to pull him over, but the son of a bitch out-ran me! And so for a time, life was beautiful for the two young miscreants, unencumbered and reckless, roaming wild along the gravel highways, approaching in mere seconds, whirring past like a yellow jacket nicking your earlobe, then disappearing just as fast into the far distance. To anyone on the road, whether on foot, on horseback, or in a vehicle, that Model T pickup became an apparition, an image flickering so fast you could never be sure what you saw, like a ghost hiding in the shadows where the sides of the mountains converged. Obviously, they had to stop sometimes, too. In between deliveries, they spent most of their time at Woofers. He had his place set up by the side of a narrow muddy road twenty-five miles from the closest town, at the edge of a hill so steep it seemed like the whole building (and there wasnt much to it) could tip over and go tumbling down at any second. For the fish fry side of his business, Woofer farmed his own trout using a series of concrete ponds and aqueducts built diagonally back and forth along the hillside all the way down to the river running along the hollow. For the alcohol distribution side, he had a distillery in a secret room in his basement, its entrance disguised by a cinderblock door with a faucet built into it. But this was just insurance. Woofer wasnt terribly worried about getting raided; hed worked out an arrangement with the sheriff whereby he supplied peach brandy free of charge, and in return the sheriff would warn him long before any more anally-retentive lawmen came sniffing around his place. Woofers always seemed to attract strange characters, which made sense. Woofer himself was strange: a short, wiry old man with wild gray hair and a bushy mustache the color and shape of a woolly worm, who always wore an apron covered in blood and grease stains and kept a one eyed tabby cat named Billy that slept on the bar and fed off scraps of fish and fried cornmeal. And accordingly, Woofers place was strange: the stray cats darting out from under the porch when you walked up the front steps, the thick film of grease and fish oil coating the barstools and chestnut paneling, the rusty ice box full of Coke and gutted fish sitting under the window overlooking the valley, and, most afternoons and every Sunday evening, a black bear hunched over at the end of the bar, nursing a pint. Boggy and Woodrow would shuffle in, screen door creaking behind them, and sit down. Woofer would go to the basement and pull them a couple of pints from the barrels theyd just delivered. What do you say, wild man? hed say, setting the glasses on the counter. Not much, I reckon. And Boggy would down half the pint. Woodrow never bothered with pleasantries. Hed wrap both sets of claws around the glass, turn it up on its end, drink the whole thing, shake it a couple times, clean out the inside with his tongue, and then toss it aside. For a while, Woofer enjoyed the novelty of having a forest-born regular but soon tired of cleaning up all the broken glass. Unfortunately, bears develop a hankering for beer the same as humans, and Woodrow, being an intelligent creature, quickly developed a connection between the amount of ruckus he made and the amount of beer Woofer would give him to keep him quiet. Woodrow would get drunk and break glasses and knock over chairs, Woofer would fuss at Boggy, and Boggy would tell him to take it up with the bear, reassuring him that Woodrow was a reasonable creature. Woofer knew he couldnt keep letting the bear tear up his place, and he might have just made Boggy lock the beast in his truck had he not witnessed Woodrow fall into a drunken stupor one night and smear Billys tabby cat guts all over the bar. A few hours later the sheriff came into work to find Woofer waiting outside his office, misty-eyed and hysterical, speckles of kitty detritus dotting his face and apron. The subsequent chase stretched across three counties. Go down to Hillbottom Caf, buy Wiley Hubbard a plate of pancakes, and hell give you the whole accountabout how fast Woodrow and Boggy were going, how if you didnt know better youd swear that Model T wasnt even touching the ground, how at any moment you wouldnt have been the least bit surprised to see them come up over a hill and just fly off into that crimson-streaked sunset like some chariot of fire. Pay for old Wileys coffee, and hell tell you how it took them till late in the night but that the sheriff and his deputies finally cornered Boggy and Woodrow near the peak of Belchers Mountain, how that bear looked blacker than coal in their headlights, how when it made its final stand it towered so high over the sheriff it wouldve cast a shadow all the way to North Carolina. Hell swear on the Bible that if you go there now you can still hear the gunshot echoing back and forth between that mountain and the next one. And if you let him keep going, hell tell you about the look in Boggys eyes, the way his nostrils flared, how they had to keep him locked in the jail for two weeks fearing what he might do if they let him out. Not long after Boggy started his protest. As soon as they let him go, he disappeared without a word, then came back in the morning and stood on the courthouse lawn on the back of his buddys mule. When the sheriff told him he couldnt have a hoofed animal in town unless he was hauling it on a vehicle, he walked the mule onto his truck bed and, still sitting on the mule as it stood on the back of his truck, which he parked on the lawn just outside the courthouse, resumed his protest. The sheriff figured Boggy would eventually wear himself out, but on the third day, when Boggy still hadnt budged, he decided hed have to go and talk to him. Folks across the street watched as the sheriff calmly approached Boggys truck. He talked to him for a good ten minutes, leaning against the cab, every so often turning to spit, and the whole time Boggy didnt move or say a word. But when the sheriff said what hed had to say and left, Boggy got down off that mule, hopped in the passengers seat and drove off. The sheriff never told anyone what he said to Boggy that day, but after that no one saw him in town again. Some think he drove to the top of Belchers Mountain and put a bullet through his eardrum. Others say he just built a shack down near Pemberton Dam and was so happy there he didnt need to leave. 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