Ray 5

The only thing old about him was his hands. They had wrinkles and scars, lots of scars. Scars on his knuckles. Scars on the back of his hands. Scars on the palms. I noticed them when he was skinning the raccoon, and later skinning other animals. Old cuts and who knows what all. I wanted to ask, "How did you get that one?" but I never did. Several times, however, I did ask him his age.

"Old," was all he ever answered. But sometimes he told me stuff about how Steen Road and Carroll County and the delta were "back then." How the woods was solid for miles and miles and miles. How you could kill a dozen squirrels and go back the next day and never notice the difference. How you could trap and fish and live off the land. "Not as many deer though," he told me once. "But plenty of everything else. And wildness and freedom." It didn't take long to learn that freedom was the one thing he valued most.

I really wanted him to be old, to look old, to act old. Maybe it's because I never knew my granddads. One was dead before I was born, and one died while I was a mere few months old. Always I felt the absence, always. I don't know how I did since I never had a granddad, but from my earliest memories I yearned for an old man to spend time with me, to teach me things, to be my grandfather, my Pops. It never seemed right that he wasn't there. Once, when I was a little bitty thing, I told a great uncle that he could be my granddad since I didn't have one. He died soon afterwards.

So when I started hanging out with Ray, in some ways he filled a deep-seated void I carried within me. He spent time with me, and he taught me stuff. He taught me things nobody else would or did. Besides skinning a raccoon the right way, he taught me how to trap. That set me on fire.

When December came around, Ray said it was time to start trapping. We left his cabin on Saturday morning and headed downhill, down to the cry creek off Steen Road. In the creek, traveled downstream until we found a water hole. You could-- and still can-- find them every now and then, always in a bend where the current digs a hole after a big rain and runoff. He showed me the tracks and how the coons were fishing in there at night. He showed me how to set the trap inside the edge of the water where the coon couldn't smell it and where he was wont to put his hand. He also showed me how to put wood chunks in front of the trap. "A coon will go around and always step into the water instead of circling in the sand. 

We kept working downstream and made a coon set at every water hole we came to. Eventually, we came to the upper edges of a large lake where it was swampy. We made some mink sets there. Then we retreated upstream-- we didn't want to be seen since we were trapping on other folks land-- and we sat on a old log and ate some lunch: crackers, sardines, and a moon pie. Why does food taste so good when eaten outdoors. Ray saved some sardine juice for a 'possum set. This one was on dry ground and we dug a hole and placed the top of the trap at ground level and covers it with leaves, dripping the juice on the jaws of the steel. "A 'possum will jump in this thing," he told me. "They are easy to catch. Too easy. But the hides aren't worth much. And your hands stink for days after you skin one."

During Christmas break, we trapped everyday. I always acted like I was going deer hunting because I was forbidden from having anything to do with Ray. That kept me out of trouble with Dad. I parked 100 yards from his cabin and walked off the road in the woods to his house so Dad couldn't see my tracks. After watching him set traps a few times, he started letting me set some. Then he let me scout out new areas and decide myself where to place a set. The first time I caught a coon on one of my sets, I felt like I had graduated to a new level of woodsmanship. Heck, I could hardly sleep at night thinking about trapping and hunting. I wanted a log cabin in the woods like Ray, and I wanted to live off the land.

Ray let me have the hides of the animals we caught when I made the set. He kept them so I wouldn't get in trouble with Dad, then he gave them back to me when the fur buyer came around. The first time I made a sell to the buyer, it really set me on fire. I sold five raccoon skins for $5 each. That might not sound like much, but $30 dollars in 1971 was a bunch of money to a kid. I felt rich and I constantly daydreamed and schemed on how I would make a living as a trapper. I could live in the family cabin, trap, and train bird dogs. To heck with school. Who needed it?