The Zoo

By Harry Day

A dark, crude yet hilarious novel about a man on a mission (as a party clown) to get to a child's party.  His car breaks down and he crosses paths with a giant wild hog and two moonshining cousin-brothers who live off the grid in the wildernes on the edge of the Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge in the Mississippi Delta... pressing through the wilderness and canebrakes with a half ton hog on his tail and two rubes hunting, drinking, stealing and harassing the locals make this wild southern story of life, love, loss, despair and reunion a unique read.  A must read for men and a look inside the minds of men for women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Day By Day
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224897346

Book preview

1

First light comes up quiet in its early rise over the massive Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge, known to the locals as the Zoo deep in the southern Mississippi Delta, over the grossly dense, thousand year old river thickets stretching along the Big River and its finger-like tributaries... quiet, unless your ears always ring, like mine.  The only thing that might be louder to your ears than their ringing would be the chaw and zing of the infinite amount of insect in this southern jungle, wheezing and whining, raging and zinging from sunset to sunrise.  Every night this high pitch ring grinds on and on and on.  

The insects settle at first light.  The birds emerge from their hiding places and pick off the late moving bugs in this first light, sometimes swallowing them down whole.  Then they go to hunting, scratching and pecking for bugs, seeds, scraps and bits hidden underneath the fallen leaves on the forest floor.  The birds, much like the insects, are indiscriminate in their doings.

The morning sky is where you find your first light.  It creeps up from the horizon with a pale bluish white hue.  There resembles a silver line across the horizon while up above stars still shine... if there is no cloud cover.  But down low, in the dark, all of God’s green Earth is black as the night is dark, closet dark, where there is no light to show you the contours, the paths, the depressions sunken like hidden graves in the woods, or the thorny dwarf trees that will skewer your eye out and leave it there like a persimmon waiting to be plucked up by a bird, pecked at, torn and eaten quickly with a pointy beak, and later by ants and other creepy crawlers unseen under dropped leaves of autumn winds.

After the hidden birds stir and crack into the silent morning, the smaller animals brave the stillness and crawl across the forest floor, looking for food, a worm, a bug, or maybe even an eyeball hanging on a thorn.  The squirrels shake high up in the tree tops.  Leaves fall as their bushy tails wiggle and their fat cheeks chatter.  The sky lightens more as small gangs of ducks speed thru just above the tree top canopy.  Frogs peep out from the low edge of the constant swamp called the Zoo, a big cypress swamp, longer than it is wide, shaped like a bowl in the land with big hardwood trees across and up to the sides where the cleared farmlands stretch.

Depending on the amount of rain fallen any given year the Zoo might all be under water.  The bowl would be full.  Depending on the lack of rain it might have no water at all.  The bowl would be empty.  This morning the Zoo has its average amount of water within its creek banks, but they are right up to the edge and waiting for one more heavy rain to spill out over the flats and bottoms and create the next level of shallow water that will cover more than half of the Zoo.  

Cypress knees jut up everywhere, waiting for the water to blanket their feet, drown the soil so fertile, dark and lovely, wet them down and drown them and make them happy again.  The next line of rains will come soon and the beginning of Old Man Winter is not far behind.

Once the night sky becomes light, the silver line widens, the egg cracks and the egg white runs across the sky as all else waits for the sunshine yoke to rise... but this day rises overcast.    The light is low, but life still stirs from the edges of the Zoo's creek banks up to the edges of the farm fields at the last decline of farmable land, where very high waters can reach and cover and kill anything growing, cotton or corn, soybeans or wheat.  The rice can survive, if planted there, but lately it is planted in the old catfish ponds, farther north and east in the vast Delta, since they lost all their holdings when the sunken ponds of catfish flooded out in the last flood.

All the home grown catfish wandered off into the flood waters, muddy and dark, cold and whirling.  It took control of the fish and sent them on to their new destination, their new fate, their new environment where they are much smaller and less experienced than the larger fish of the river channels, the alligators and giant gar, monster fish half centuries old or sharp snags that can gig any fish (or man) in an instant. 

Trying to fight the strong currents is useless... but the lands aren’t flooded, not yet, and the rivers are calm and slow.  There has been no flood this year, not like the last two years where everyone’s faith was tested by the raging waters, stressed levees and aching state crews who had to ease across the levee roads, working on boils and soil slumps, dozing and dumping soil all hours of the day and night, non-stop.  But today is just a regular overcast day in the life of the Zoo.

There is a faded white farmhouse set in the middle of several other farm sheds up near the top side of the Zoo and it looks quiet in first light.  It sits in the middle of the farmer’s vast empty fields.  They grew corn this year, maybe cotton the next.  Stalk bottoms and pushed over half cane-like corn stalks litter the fields.  Small clouds of blackbirds swoop in and out of the fields looking for kernels of corn.  It was a good harvest this year, the farmer made a big profit.  They worked hard and earned it.  Having no flood this year helped.  They even planted winter wheat for the fist time.

The farmer’s son busies himself out at the end of the driveway, up at Highway 1, putting up a new mailbox.  It was run recently, again, for the second time this year.  The farmer looks out his front window from the dining room and wonders why his son got up so early.  His son works hard, but he wants to leave for a city (any city) even though he knows of the trappings of the city, its crime, its unhealthy fast food, the rude people and the hustle and bustle of get-out-of-my-way, but he feels he must go and experience it, and with the harvest over and this being his last chore on the farm, he will be gone by the end of the week.  He gets to it and works fast.

His father, Mister Maynerd, sips his black coffee and shakes his head.  He’ll be back, he reassures himself over and over, but who the hell keeps running over my mailbox?  And where does it go?!

Creeping out of the Zoo tree line and easing towards the white farmhouse, but more importantly towards the farmer’s large garden, a short slovenly man in filthy clothes tries to look like a corn stalk with drooping leaves, holding his arms just so, hands limp, head cocked, his hat pulled down over his eyes as if he is invisible.  He feels invisible.  He aches to make a sound like a scarecrow but he wonders, what in the hell kind of sound does a scarecrow make?  

He takes a few steps and stops.  Only the sky shows light and with the trees at his back looking like a dark curtain, he might as well be invisible.  He nears the garden and the chicken wire fence made to keep deer and other animals out, and with great difficulty, sees there is a hole already burrowed near the back corner where rabbits and other small game crawl under to nibble on whatever the farmer plants, depending on the season.  

The man flushes a rabbit coming under the fence, sees it and dives for its hind legs like he's starving.  He is.  The rabbit just makes it thru the gap under the fence and the man’s hands as his face presses against the chicken wire, his hands empty and dirty.  He rubs his face and crawls under the fence, into the garden, licking his lips, looking over the Maynerd's vegetables.

Mister Maynerd watches the moving dot that is his son, far out by the highway for another moment, then goes back to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee.  As he pours the steaming cup and takes a deep whiff of the brew (Folgers), he notices the fence at the rear of the garden wiggle a time or two.

Got damn varmints! he grumbles, slamming down his coffee cup with a splash and going to the den where the gun case stands open.  He grabs one of their double barrel shotguns, cracks it open, reveals the ass end of two shells of buckshot, closes the breach and heads back to the kitchen.

The filthy man crawls on his hands and knees, picking at a little of this and that, some green onions, a small cabbage, a handful of carrots, and a few late season ears of corn.  He parts a husk and smells the white kernels, sweet for sure.  His stomach grumbles so that he wants to eat it raw, and he could with no problems.  His diet is no different than the deer in the woods, but his brother would kick his ass for eating first, even though his brother would eat it now.  He looks over his take and folds it into his shirt, stands up and looks around.

The farmer pulls the kitchen door open and with his booted foot pushes the screen door out.  The rusty spring stretches and creeks ever so slightly.  The farmer sees the man’s head poke up and look his way.

Got dammit! he yells and raises his shotgun to discharge the right barrel.  Blamm!

Vegetables fly in the air as the filthy man throws his hands up, still holding his cradled shirt ends.  The vegetables fall and land over his head and shoulders, some of them with fresh little pellet holes smoking and oozing sweet juices.  He falls to the ground, sees an onion and grabs it, takes a big bite and low tails it to the gap under the fence.  Mister Maynerd runs towards the front of the garden with its gate open towards the house.  He sees the man near the back and angrily discharges the left barrel.  Blamm!

The filthy man dives for the gap under the fence, and again crashes his face into the chicken wire, making a diamond pattern to his skin wanting to plop thru like sausage cubes.  The lead pellets rip thru leaves and fencing, tearing at a wire here and there, but one pellet parts the man’s hat and scalp just slightly, making him yelp.  Yipe!

Get out of my fields, son's a bitches!  Get out and be gone, ya got damn Cooters!  he yells, cracking open the shotgun and ejecting the spent shells.  

The shells spring out smoking and fall to the ground, but as the farmer feels for more shells in his pockets, he finds none.  All he can do is shake his fist at the fleeing man, dust trailing his flapping clothes, an onion in one hand, the other holding up his hat with a fresh tear in the top of the thing, his middle finger poking thru.  The man (Ruben Cooter) stumbles down, gets up and runs, and soon disappears into the wood line, giggling, cackling and yahooing into the forest.

Ya can’t catch me, the Cooter that can’t be, you’ll never get me, I’m the one that hides the flea!  Haw haw haw!

The morning's red-orange sun suddenly bursts up above the tree line, thru a gap in the clouds, blinding the farmer as he watches the tree top horizon like it might move when the man passes under a tree.  He notices off to his right a rabbit racing across the field.  He raises his shotgun to shoot it.  Click.  No shells.

Damn you Cooters!  Damn you!  Stay out of my garden and stay off'a my land!  he yells out at. . . nothing.  The sun hides again, the garden, the fleeing rabbit... the passing crows caw and laugh at him, his son, even the sun and anything else, because crows do not give a damn about anything, anyone, no thing or nothing else.  They bravely drop into his garden to peck around and the farmer hurries back inside to find some bird shot.

I’ll teach those damn crows to mock me,  he grumbles, entering his house, barging to the gun case.  

His son, way out by the road, putting up the new mailbox, looks towards the house and laughs out loud.   

"Daddy, why don’t you just go over to their shit hole place and set them straight!  If you dare!"  he yells, but Daddy doesn’t hear him.  He is too far away, inside the house rifling thru the gun safe, cursing the Cooters, the crows, the rabbit and his son for deciding to up and leave the farm.   

Mister Maynerd hopes it will only be temporary, but only temporary in the time frame of a few years, he sees in his mind, since he lived in a time when you didn't see family for those kinds of stretches, but also thinking it could only be this off season, until it is time to plow and plant next year.  The rich soil will bring him home.  He doesn't know anything except farming and Mister Maynerd wants what’s left of his family to keep running the farm when he's gone.  Everyone else is gone.

Just bury my ashes out in the fields,  he says to himself, but he hasn’t written this down or told anyone.

2

Ruben Cooter walks along the far boundary of the Zoo, after making his way across the width of it, he moves along the edge of the bowl, just inside the tree line, still eating his stolen onion and wincing at the strong flavor that makes his nose run and his eyes water as he walks along, until he has eaten the entire thing, skin and all.

He knows his brother will be plenty mad at him for coming back empty handed, and he would have saved half the onion for him, but he thinks he will need the whole thing in his stomach to deal with his brother Chafe.  Along his long walk back to their place he thinks about his family land, inherited from their fathers, who were brothers and were a hell on Earth in their own way, the Cooter brothers, both killed in a highway crash that involved a large mailbox over on the other side of the Zoo.  It was common practice all thru the Cooter family line to steal other people’s mail, but their Daddies would take the most beat down and busted truck they had and go running over mailboxes just so that the post would knock down and the mailbox would fly up and be caught in the entwinement of net and string they wove up above the truck cab.   

Because of the vastness of the Delta, the far spacing of people’s homes from each other and the long roads, there wasn’t a soul who knew for sure the Cooter brothers were the culprits of running over people’s mailboxes and catching them and taking the contents.  They were suspected, but there was never proof.  The bigger the mailbox, the better the contents, was what they would tout, but one farmer grew so tired of it he put up a fake mailbox down a ways from his real mailbox, which he took down just for this trick.  He filled his fake box with crop duster fuel, easy strike matches, a few bricks, a quart of melted Vaseline and some other things.  When the Cooter brothers hit that thing, Kaboom!  Their entire truck turned into a ball of flame, rolled down into a ditch and burned until all there was left was the chassis and a burnt out spot of ground.  

Nobody missed them aside the Cooter sons and their Momma.  She would turn to alcohol, in this case moonshine, and not much later she would die in a mysterious fire that consumed the family cabin and burned it to the ground.  The law never did anything about of it.  It was good riddance for the community, however far stretched and isolated the area was.  It might have been different if it happened in a city, or town limit, and the police cared to do something about it, but it was in a big county, Issaquena County, where they do things differently, as in they appreciate vigilante justice and screw-ups taking themselves out of the gene pool.

Ruben walks and walks, but keeps his eyes to the ground often enough to see what wild growth he can grab up and take back to the home place where Chafe waits.  Chafe is supposed to be tidying up the place, but Ruben knows that as soon as he left, Chafe would go back to sleep.  Any amount of tidying, even an all day clean-up, wouldn’t make a dent in what needs to be done to their family home place for so long there out on the far edge of the Zoo.

Along the way, near what must have been an even older home place, now desolate, Ruben picks wild onions, a big patch of them, leaving enough for them to continue to grow and divide and make more onions.  He also picks up two pockets full of acorns along the way, but unknowingly only keeps one pocket full, for he has a hole in his left pocket and every acorn he puts in, falls out, tumbling down his pants leg to the ground.  Ruben thinks he has a lizard or something in his pants and keeps shaking his leg as he walks, faceless to the fact that it’s an acorn each time one tickles down his leg.  It makes him walk funny though nobody but the birds see and they do not seem to care.  He steps down the side of the bowl a little deeper into the Zoo.

As he nears what he knows is their home place he comes to the end of a deep gully that empties overflowing rainwater into the Zoo.  He turns left and walks up the rising hollow with no water to dodge, for the water isn’t up yet.  He looks up the high walls of the gully where tree roots grow out sideways and vines grow up and down the sides.  He knows he’s back on family property when he smells that smell and reaches several beat up mailboxes, debris and old bones littering the gully floor, some deer, some chicken, and a few human bones where the family grave plot eroded over the years, spilling family bones, including Momma, into the gully and eventually down the wash and into the Zoo where they are gnawed on by squirrels and other small vermin looking for calcium to keep their teeth strong and get at that tender bone marrow.

Ruben soon catches site of the home place up above, shoddy and rag tag as anything ever put together in the woods over time.  About one third of it hangs out over the gully.  Boards and limbs and old pipes and other things stretch down from the flooring over into the side of the hollow as support.  Ropes and chains extend from the roof up into the trees, all in an effort to hold the thing up over the gully.  As Ruben comes closer to the place he spies up through a hole cut in the floor the movement of a shadow.  A smell catches him before he sees the hole up there, but he moves on anyways, thinking Chafe is asleep... but what is that shadow?  He stops and looks nearly straight up at the rough sawn circlish hole in the floor up above.

What in the world?  he mutters, but he hears Chafe up there cackling now, then something drops thru the hole and plops right across the toe of his scuffed boot.

What’s that?  Ruben says, looking down.

Look out below, Rube, ya damned fool!  Chafe says.  Hee hee hee!  

Being a bit slow, Rube looks at his messy boot toe and then back up thru the hole.  Watcha doin, Chafe?  You find your own breakfast and is throwin the rest out?  I want some, too!

Okay Rube, stay right there and I’ll get you the last of it.  Grunn!  Another brown mass falls through the hole and Rube steps back and catches it.  Squish!

Yeah, I got it!  Rube celebrates.

You got it alright!  Chafe cackles again.

Rube looks at his hand and the mess he has caught.  Hey, where’d you get the corn?  What’s this brown stuff?  Is it some kinda hard gravy?  He leans in close to smell it.  "Got damn the holler is smelly today. . . what is this?"

Rube looks up and sees Chafe’s face peeking thru the hole in the floor.  Why it’s last night’s supper, boy!  You might want to chew that corn a lil better than I did!  Haw haw haw!

Rube stands there,