Bluetick Hound

One Sunday morning, maybe twelve or fifteen years ago I woke up on the couch in a friend’s living room. The TV was still on. There were beer bottles, and other detritus from the previous night’s party strewn around. I got the trash can from the kitchen, and made a half hearted attempt at straightening up. No one else was awake yet.
I left the house. It was early, but late enough that all the church folks had their asses securely planted in pews.
There was no traffic at all.
It was late in October. The air was cool. Not that breath stealing, mildew inducing, clammy cool that Mississippi can get in the fall, but a clean, dry, lung cleansing cool.
There was a little shred of breeze here and there.
My head was still kind of fuzzy from the night before, but over all I felt pretty good. The cool air seemed to fill up my lungs to capacity, and clean me out from the inside.
I started off toward seventh street. I kept on the sidewalk because I had a hole in my boot, a dime sized spot of cold on my left big toe.
I was coming up to Hercules Powder Company. The big gun powder plant where they don’t make powder anymore. They make insecticide. I think they make pine cleaner too. I crossed the street to walk along the sidewalk next to the elementary school.
That’s when I saw him. There was a bluetick hound trotting down the sidewalk on the other side of the block. He was going the opposite direction from me, sniffing the ground the way dogs do. When he drew abreast of me, I guess he felt me watching him, he looked up. We both stopped and stared at one another.
That’s when I knew who that dog was. It was the Devil. He had slipped on a dog skin, and gone out for a trot on a cool Sunday morning in Mississippi.
The look in his eyes was both inviting, almost friendly, and unfathomably malevolent. I could see the heat coming off of him. Shimmering waves rising from his body, and distorting the houses on the other side of the road. He was perfectly still. Then, he wagged his tail. One slow deliberate movement, and perfectly dog like. His tail swung to the left, and then to the right, then back to the center, one smooth natural movement.
I could see that he and I were thinking the same thing. How fast could that dog with the Devil inside of him cross this playground. It was about thirty yards. There was some playground equipment between us. Monkey bars, a jungle gym, stuff like that. Nothing that would slow him down. On my side of the block there was a chainlink fence, only about waist high, nothing a dog his size couldn’t be over in a running leap.
The dog stood on the opposite sidewalk. The grass next to the walk around him was beginning to turn yellow, and scorch a little from the heat coming off the dog.
I don’t know how long we watched each other. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. But, it seemed like quite a while.
Then, he put his nose to the ground, and trotted off around the school building. His paws left little, smoking scorch marks on the grass.
I stood there for a moment trying to figure out what to do. I couldn’t think of anything better than walking home, so I did.
And, that is the story about the first time I met the Devil.
I think that there are some places in the world, like southern Mississippi, where whatever it is that separates us from Heaven, and Hell is worn a little thinner than other places, and seeing the Devil out for a walk in a bluetick hound isn’t really that unusual.