Armadillos

It was nearly evening, dusk really, still half-an-hour from dark. The sun had already dropped almost below the horizon and shadows were tinged with purples and dark grays.

The old man, exceptionally tall, thin dark hair crowning his ramrod-straight slender frame, carried more than leaned upon a thick, dark brown cane of oak or ironwood or some other hard wood. He wore a long-sleeved blue plaid shirt and khaki pants, with belt and suspenders, neither of which he needed.

Although he was well over 75, he had no need of glasses. His small brown eyes, widely spaced, took in every detail of this yard which he had inspected daily for many years. No one would doubt that this was his place.

He sniffed the air approvingly. It smelled of late October, of burnt sugar and cane leaves, a semi-fermented sour and sweet smell which always accompanied the cane harvest in South Louisiana.

The cane-cutting season had only just begun -- some of the fields had already been burnt -- it would not be over until the acres and acres of cane had been cut, burned, and loaded, perhaps sometime after Thanksgiving. But, if the weather was too wet or the first hard frost too late, maybe not until Christmas.

Not much of the crop had been lost to wind, nutrias, armadillos, or other pests.

The old man looked at his pecan trees. They were still loaded with nuts, even this late. Hundreds of pecans littered the three acres around the house; thousands nestled in the dark gray star bursts of their now-opened dried pods.

The grass in the yard was still green although some areas were covered by drifts of oak leaves from the trees on the other side of the gravel driveway.

The man spotted a hole in his yard, walked over to it, poked his cane in as deeply as it would go.

“Damn armadillos! Damn foreign animals!” he muttered fiercely to himself.

He looked around for his grandson who lingered on the back porch of the house.

“All right, damn it! Let’s go!” the grandfather shouted. “It’ll be pitch black before we know it!”

His grandson came quickly. A skinny youth of 15, he replied softly:

“All right, let’s go. Do you have the keys?”

The boy spoke with an excess of precision, pronouncing every syllable, every letter. Clearly, he was not from South Louisiana.

The man handed the boy the keys.

They walked over to the Plymouth in the driveway. The boy got in behind the wheel and the man on the passenger’s side. The engine started smoothly. Somewhat inexpertly, the boy backed the car the entire length of the driveway and out onto the asphalt road in front of the house.

The road paralleled the snaking, tiny bayou -- nearly dry at this time of the year -- all the way to the Point, a beach and camping area on the bay.

The boy turned on the headlights, although the dusk was not yet deep enough to require them.

They headed west, very slowly, toward the point at the ten-mile-distant end of the road.

The old man rolled his window down half-way. He loudly gathered phlegm into his mouth then spat mightily, splattering the sides and even the back window of the car. The boy tried to stifle the expression of disgust that he knew would show plainly on his face. He said nothing.

Soon, they passed the limits of the farm and were driving slowly through wilder, uncultivated areas, thick with moss-hung trees that canopied the road.

There was no other traffic; there hardly ever was, except in summer, when people from town came out to the Point to swim, picnic, and camp out. But summer was over and the place was back to normal, the way the grandfather – and the boy – preferred it.

The boy spotted the first one. Eyes shone like tiny penlights in the shallow ditch on the right side of the road. If the grandfather saw them he gave no sign.

They continued, passing two more – still, the grandfather seemed oblivious.

Then, there were four of them, in a loose clump, taking their time, nosing in the vegetation in the shallow roadside ditch, feeding on the insects that were their usual fare. Their high, ridged backs in the grass were clearly visible in the deepening twilight.

The old man said, “Pull over.”

The boy let the car coast to a stop at the side of the road.

The man handed his grandson his cane. He warned, “Be quiet now; don’t scare ‘em off!”

The boy took the cane, got out of the car, carefully closed but did not slam the door. He circled around the group of armadillos.

They were not easily spooked, and he could have come up on them from the front, but he had been instructed to do it this way. He raised the cane high and smartly walloped the first of the animals across its snout.

The armadillo made a sound, popped almost straight up into the air, then rolled over on its back. It quivered as it died.

The boy shifted his attention to the others, striking a second armadillo the same way.

The need for silence now past, the old man yelled from the car, “Kill the bastards! Hit ‘em, hit ‘em hard!”

The boy quickly dispatched a third one. The fourth and last armadillo had already scurried off into the bushes.

As he wiped the lower part of the cane off on the grass, the boy realized that the old man could tell that he hated all this. He got into the car, handed the cane to his grandfather. The engine started smoothly; they continued toward the point.

Very quickly, the teen spotted more bright eyes alongside the road. Without a word, he let the car coast to a stop, reached for the cane. The old man relinquished his hold and the boy repeated the same approach as before. But now, since it was darker, he wondered whether the man could see as clearly as he had been able to see a little earlier.

The boy thrashed wildly at the first, then at the second and third armadillos, missing them on purpose, letting them rustle off into the bushes.

The old man in the car watched, said nothing.

The boy wondered whether his grandfather might not be able to tell exactly what had happened; maybe he would think it was now too dark and that the boy had missed on that account. In order to appease the old man, the boy struck one of the remaining animals, but he did not deliver a killing blow. He only stunned the creature enough to let it be picked up by the tail and to be flung into the tangled growth of trees and brush.

The man saw his grandson fling the animal away. The boy wiped off the bloodless cane and returned to the car.

After handing his grandfather the cane the boy tried to assess the expression on the old man’s face. He started the car, pulled out, still headed toward the point.

Almost immediately, the man said to the boy, “All right, turn around. That’s enough for tonight.”

The boy slowed, made a u-turn, driving partly into the shallow, dry ditch, crunching over the dried carcass of an armadillo, and started back toward the house. He clenched his teeth, determined that he would not go through this again.

The man cleared his throat then let a gob of spit fly through his partially opened window. It coated the side and back window and the lower rear panel of the car. The boy knew he would have to scrub it off the next afternoon. This time, he did not bother to try to conceal his look of disgust.

Barely turning his head, the old man watched his young grandson. The boy’s features, illuminated by the instrument panel, were reflected in the glass of the driver’s side window.

The grandfather thought the boy’s face resembled, if only slightly, the face of an armadillo.

The End

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