Robert Bogan Austin, Texas
HUNTER'S HORN
The slow spiral twisted from a cow's head
half a century back, pushed out by heat
in the pastures and pine woods of East Texas.
Ben C., mother's brother, found the cow dead
down by Kickapoo creek near the farm they moved to
on the Chandler-Brownsboro road, when the Crash broke
the Paducah bank and left Granddaddy jobless.
Ben C., thirteen then, jerked the mudstained horn
loose from the spoiled skull and brought it home,
a boy's trophy of passage and hunter's luck.
With an axe he chopped off the horn's foul root and
soaked it till he saw the promise of amber and jet.
Then he boiled it daylong in an iron kettle
hanging out back over black walnut coals
that grumbled, fumed and unrolled an acre of smoke
stretched like muslin above bull nettle and sassafras.
Digging the pith took hours of scraping and grubbing
with rusty spike and knife whetted daily --
chores and math first, then blisters and knuckle nicks.
He sawed off the dull point, gouged a cup there
for lips. Rounding the rim, honing edges,
gauging and testing the bore, he shaped a mouthpiece.
The first blows wheezed and hissed like a hassled goose.
He scowled and blew himself winded and fat-lipped,
the hound's high whine the loudest sound around.
Next day he'd go back at it, jaw set
red hair raining sweat onto acorns and dust.
Couple weeks he got it right then all work paused.
Ben Senior pitched the scoop in a feedsack
stood up and looked around. In the kitchen Ara
turned her face and smiled. Hound pointed, head cocked.
Ben C. kissed the horn's hard mouth and blew globes
that rolled downhill through blackgum and chinquapin
and filled Kickapoo bottom like nightfall.
He roamed the sand bluffs and lowlands with Blue,
a boy his age, his closest friend, whose shack
sat by the road, and whose name came from surprising
eyes that shone like noon through walnut branches.
Ben C. blew low tones from the cow lot and
before long here came Blue, ready with rifle and knife.
They knew where to wait for elusive deer, where to track
grey fox and rare red wolf, where to look for bear.
They ranged as far as Juanquipin, running hounds
and traplines round swamps to the Neches river.
They brought home squirrel and coon, dove, quail and gobbler.
After each hunt the horn howled from the tall pines
at the foot of the hill where wild iris hides,
sounding more forlorn than the Katy trains
that wailed at Gault crossing on Chandler road.
A boy can find what counts and keep it alive
till the man can inherit the boy's luck and invention.
Ben C. grew wise in books as well as woods,
as eager for cubes as for riding calves with cousins
through jasmine and sweet william, or leading his sisters
to wild candy harvests of ribbon cane.
The horn kept emerging. He rubbed ivory
out of amber and drilled a hole for a leather strap.
His name began to emerge in raised letters.
He finished Tyler High and worked a year
to save the cash for Texas A. and M.,
making blade break sod behind a red mule's rump.
Then he left for college. Ara, Ben, and the sisters
ached for Aggie holidays. Blue did too.
When he hitched home for Christmas his sophomore year
the hound heard him first. It yelped down the lane,
a red dust plume caught like a burr in its tail.
His family embraced him, sealing their brief reunion.
The four room shack on the clay hill was whole again.
Later, he carried the shelved horn out to the dark
and blew a frigid fugue for Blue: short blasts
that said, I'm home; long blasts that said, tomorrow.
After news and stories were traded, presents shared
and set aside, baked hen bones picked clean of meat
and tossed to the hound, Ben C. left for Dallas
to see a football game with friends from Tyler,
thumbing a ride with an oil field hand from Kilgore.
As they came to Terrell, a bus swerved into their lane.
The fast black coupe dodged right, dropping two tubes
into deep shoulder mud. The driver panicked,
flooring gas not brake, jerking the wheel to the left.
Tires lurched back to the pavement, spun across crazy
down an embankment, flipping dash over axle.
Ben C. shot from the airborne Dodge, red hair
ablaze, brass-button jacket wagging disaster.
Stunned, incoherent from shock, having left crates toppled and
porch chairs rocking, their breath white flags in the damp,
witnesses claimed his body flew roof high
and flopped like a wrung-neck hen when it finally landed.
By New Years he lay deep in the hard red clay
near the oaks at Pleasant Ridge Church outside Alba.
Most of his things they gave away. Not the horn.
Twenty years later, a boy myself, I admired it,
holding its slow polished twist in my hand,
running fingers over raised unfinished letters,
listening to terse answers about Ben C.,
the uncle I'd never know, lost son and brother.
I could only glimpse a shadow, a soft chill
that froze the faces of those who shared his absence.
Grandmother survived her son by four decades,
and when Granddaddy Ben moved to a nursing home,
his son's horn came to me, the oldest grandson.
Ben died late one October when sweetgums shoot
galaxies of saffron stars, raw fall winds fan
the maple's crimson fire, and sumac seeds
droop in rusty clusters like dried blood.
The day we carried Ben to Pleasant Ridge
and laid him next to Ara and Ben C.,
I took the unfamiliar horn to my deck
and forced hoarse noises from its ragged bell.
Hollow shrieks and growls grew to a bright cry
that flew to the far lake shore and bounced back
from a bank of pines, ringing faint counterpoint
to the dark solid baritone pitch I discovered.
The horn, trembling in my fist, boomed its full range
over grey water, spreading a somber largo
like autumn mist across the mirrored morning.
It bellowed till eyes were moist and lips numb, and
when it ceased, its timbre hung in the slow air,
drifting like pungent smoke through hushed bare branches.
I still bring out Ben C.'s horn when I need it
to signal hours of passage, to signal arrival,
or to conjure squandered time and altered worlds.
Remembering men survive in what boys find,
I make that rugged trumpet hoot through pine.
robertbogan@sbcglobal.net © 2004 Robert Bogan