The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels) by R.O. Barton Page B

horror movie. Maybe he was lying about the cat to protect me, but to this day, I don’t like horror movies.
    The brothers, all having sons, leased 3,000 acres down in Avoyelles Parish south of Marksville, from a logging company and built a long-roomed deer camp with a kitchen room attached to the back and an outhouse, just a short walk into the trees.
    The camps had no running water, so they built cisterns to catch the frequent rains. I’ve never forgotten the imagined fear of a little boy, afraid he was going to fall into the spider infested black hole cut into the seat of the outhouse, or the satisfying surprise of the fresh, slick, thirst-quenching taste of rainwater.    
    This is where my uncles started my cousins and me squirrel and rabbit hunting, and then we graduated to deer.
    We called the big old swamp bucks, “mossy backs”. The Tuckers weren’t the type of men to hang stuffed animal heads in their homes. The racks of the big mossy backs were nailed outside the camp, from left to right under the roof, from one end to the other.
    This is where I learned about the saying “You ain’t ever been lost lest you’ve drunk water from a hoof print.” In the swamp the only for sure good water is what the rain has left in a hoof print. I was once lost for 18 hours. I’ve never been lost again. It taught me to look behind me, as much as in front of me. The swamp all looks the same, but if you look behind yourself enough and study a little, when you need to go back, it looks familiar.
    Like in life, it’s good to remember where you came from. It may help keep you from losing your way.
    During those years of my life when the very fiber of my being was seasoned with the hard deep darkness of abuse and braised with the searing white heat of violence, my only saving grace was the time spent with Margie or alone in a Louisiana swamp.
    So, I, more so than my brother, was bitten by the swamp bug. I was either in a swamp slipping up on a mossy back or on the bayous, or the hidden sloked lagoons with names like Laccasiene, Lockityboo, or Coulinwaugh, fishing for bass, bream, and sacalait. Or, I could be found at sunrise, on Catahoula Lake, trying to feel my father’s hand on my shoulder, while I watched . . .  “The Parade.”
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 12
     
    Nashville, TN-December 11 th , Present Day
     
    The waitress (is that politically correct or should it be server?) arrived with my water and lemon, and said she would return with the buttered hot water cornbread I’d forgotten they made here. The pieces of cornbread were almost as dangerous as Krispy Kreme Donuts. I made the sign of the cross with my fingers and shook my head, which rated a pretty smile as she left me to my reverie.
    I thought of my first introduction to the art of pistoleroing.
     
    Louisiana, 1963
     
    When I was 13, I had the chance of seeing Mr. Bob Grayson from Cheneyville, Louisiana, put on a shooting exhibition at the National Guard Armory. Mr. Grayson was the man who taught many of the movie stars out in Hollywood how to do the western quick draw. I thought it was about the greatest thing I had ever seen. I knew I wanted to be like that. To be able to draw a six gun, and with a wax bullet, shoot off a playing card lying flat on someone’s shoulder, and do it so fast you couldn’t see my hand move.
    One instant Grayson’s hand was by his side, the next, the gun was in his hand roaring like it had a life of its own and he was just holding on. I hung around afterwards and met him. Later I started hitching rides with anyone I could down to Cheneyville, about 30 miles south of Alec, where he owned a store on the left side of the road to Baton Rouge that sold gas and homemade pecan pies his wife made.
    I pestered him until one day he had me play a game he called knuckles. He put his right fist out, then told me to put my right fist against his, knuckles to knuckles. He then said he was going to raise his fist up and rap the back of my hand