SLEWFOOT SALLY AND THE FLYING MULE
"It ain't that we set out to grow crazy folks around here," said Solomon Peat. He paused to spit neatly into an empty snuff can and set the lid back on tightly. A real gentleman was Solomon, not given to messing up his surroundings with tobacco-spit.
"Just seems to be somethin' in the ground or in the water that makes this old county turn up peculiar people. Why, I could point you at a dozen, right here in Possum Creek, that do things you wouldn't believe. Not bad things, you understand, just things that ain't done the way anybody else in the whole entire world would ever think to do 'em." He stared about at the conglomeration of kids and passers-by who cluttered the porch of the general store.
Nobody raised any objection to his statement, so he went on. "You take Thomas Pendleton, for instance, who rigged up a windmill to milk his cow."
That roused a rustle of interest among the youngest of his listeners, and he settled back, grinning, into his hickory-splint chair. "True as Gospel! Got one of these here milking machines that one of the dairies got rid of when they all went to the automatic equipment. Then bought him a little decompressor and a gover'ment surplus generator, and he milked old Blue-Spot with his windmill, pretty as you please."
"Well, that's just a matter of figuring out and rigging up," said the young salesman, who had finished dickering with Mrs. Bragg inside the store and was drinking a soda-pop and cooling off as he perched on the edge of the porch. "Anybody who put his mind to it could do something like that."
"But could just anybody make a big old mule fly?" asked Sol. He quirked a bushy white eyebrow at the young man. "And would anybody in their right senses try to?"
The young fellow shook his head. "Of course not. A mule has got his place in the scheme of things, and flying isn't on his agenda. Who could follow a plow behind a flying mule, anyway?"
"Well Slewfoot Sally managed pretty well with hers," said Solomon.
There was a stir of interest on the porch. Five small boys edged up, leaving their elderberry popguns in the dust under the chinaberry tree and perched on the porch at Sol's feet.
He shifted his quid of tobacco around to lubricate his mouth. He spat again into the snuff can, wiped his lips daintily on the back of his sleeve, and stared off into the distant treetops as if he could see that mule flying over them, right that minute.
"She was an odd gal, old Slewfoot Sally. Had her a little old farm, not much bigger than a bedquilt, up over to Bobcat Ridge. She raised corn on the high ground and sugar cane in the bottomland, and if she needed cash she sold some eggs or a few chickens. Independent as a hog on ice was Sal.
"Her folks had farmed up there since way back in the Spanish grant days, and every generation had cut up that land into littler and littler batches, until she hadn't more than fifty acres to her name. That didn't mean that nobody came courtin', once she grew up, even if she did have the biggest feet and the sharpest nose in the county. A bit of land comes in handy, even for a footloose man, sometimes, but she wasn't a bit interested. She liked to farm, did Slewfoot, and she did every bit of work on that patch of ground from building fence to breakin' new ground.
"Sam was all the male she had time for, and that was that."
"Who was Sam?" asked the salesman, who was now leaning against a post in a comfortable position.
"Why her mule, of course. Smartest mule ever raised in Cotton County. He could teach a young'un to plow better than anybody I ever seen, mule or man. You could talk to him, and he'd look you in the eye and you'd swear he understood every word you said. He'd try anything Sal asked him to do, though he wasn't too fond of swimmin' with her in the creek.
"I've seen that critter follow her into the fields, come fall, and point birds as neat as any setter you ever did see. He wasn't much good as a retriever, though ... he was too far up to see the killed birds down in the grass, and he either stepped on 'em or mashed 'em up a little when he picked 'em up to fetch."
The salesman choked on his soda-pop. When he got his breath, he waved both hands protestingly. "Now that's too much to swallow. I never heard of anything so ridiculous!"
"Ridic'lus or not, Sam was a pretty good bird-dog, or bird-mule might be a better way to put it. And a lot of other things, too, though anything needing hands was pretty well beyond him." Sol looked about as if quelling any doubts in his audience.
"But his best trick ever was when Slewfoot Sally teached him to fly." Again he glared about him, daring anybody to dispute his statement.
"That crazy woman taken it into her head that she wanted to learn to fly. Tried to take lessons down at the shirt-tail airport at Cottonwood, but they wanted more money than she could come up with. So she decided that if Sam could hunt birds and help her in the garden, he could fly, too. She was no fool ... no way! She knowed it was going to take a lot of work to persuade that mule he could do such a thing, but nobody ever said Sal wasn't determined.
"She set him down in that shady front yard of hers and got right up close to his face and talked and talked and talked. I was there one mornin', delivering seed corn for Mrs. Bragg, and it was the beatingest thing I ever did see, the way that mule took in what she was saying."
"And what exactly was she saying that could persuade a mule that he could fly?" asked the salesman, in a sarcastic tone.
"Why she was telling Sam he didn't weigh hardly nothing at all. He could just walk right on up into the sky, if he put his mind to it. Take a load off his feet, too, she told him, if he'd start thinking the right way. They could go sailing around the country, seein' what folks was up to. Wouldn't need a car or truck that way, and they wouldn't have to buy gasoline.
"Besides, she told him, no mule had ever done it before. He'd be the very first flyin' mule in all history and he'd go down in the books that way, too. I could tell she was gettin' him all interested and enthusiastic, just by the way he twitched his ears and switched his tail." Solomon sighed deeply.
"I didn't believe she could do it, of course. I admit that right up front. I oughtn't to get riled at you all for disbeliving it, because I was the very first one to do that. I left, laughing to myself over that fool woman and her crazy notion. Next time I went up there was six months later. I needed to cut some firewood off Old Man Grogan's place, and I stopped, passing by Sal's.
"When I called, there seemed to be nobody home, though her old pickup was sitting under the elm tree. It looked like it had breathed its last, I tell you ... grass was growed up all through the engine. I called, though, just to see if she might be out back someplace."
He stared around him, his bright blue eyes wide beneath the cottony brows. "And damned if Sam didn't come swooping right down and land in the front yard, neat as a pin. Sal was ridin' him, and her hair was all blowed everwhichaways. She looked pink and excited, and that sharp nose of hers didn't show up near so bad.
"She was real glad somebody'd come around so she could show off her mule's new trick, and she showed me how he could lift right off the ground and float, or run and take off and zoom away over the trees.
"She wanted me to ride him, but somehow I wasn't quite up to that. I got to thinking that he might get second thoughts about what he was doing, and if he had any doubts then down he'd prob'ly come, kerplunk!"
Solomon sighed. "She rode him for years, all over the county, and, for all I know, all over the state. They kept getting unusual radar sightings, and the Air Force would send out investigators, but all Sam had to do was light down in a grass patch and start grazin' and nobody ever paid him no never mind a'tall. I guess having that flying mule was the best thing old Sal ever had in her life. She died a happy woman.
"Funny thing, though. After the funeral, her brothers went up there to see to her stuff. They couldn't find hide nor hair of that mule noplace. Sam was gone, slick as a whistle. Never did find him, and nobody ever sighted any carcass that might have been him, either."
The salesman was staring at the sky above the pines. He had gone pale, and his empty pop bottle had dropped from his fingers with a soft thud. He swallowed once, twice, three times. When he found his voice, he asked in a faintish tone, "How old do mules live to be?"
"Oh, sometimes thirty or forty, if they're well took care of and happy," said Solomon.
"It can't be," said the salesman. He got up and wandered over to his Ford. "That was a buzzard. A big buzzard."
He got into the car and cranked her up. But Solomon's sharp old ears caught the words he muttered as he put it into gear.
"A buzzard with a long, hairy tail ..."
And then he was gone in a cloud of dust. Solomon looked far up above the pine trees. A speck of black was almost out of sight.
Sol smiled and looked down at the wondering faces on the porch. "No, we've got some strange folks here in Cotton County," he said. "But since Slewfoot Sally died, they're not near as strange as they used to be."
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