He laughed. “Oh, he means business, but he don’t mean us. We’s family.”
The trail angled through a stand of pines—all dead, decimated by a pine beetle infestation three years before—which bore additional menacing signs. I looked at Waylon doubtfully, but he just grinned and motioned me forward. As I neared the edge of the pine thicket, Waylon slowed, then stopped. “Doc, watch your step here—be sure you don’t catch that war.”
“War? What war?”
“That war about a foot off the ground there, couple steps ahead.”
I looked where he was pointing. A taut monofilament line—invisible unless you happened to catch a glint of sunlight through it—stretched across the trail about knee-high. To my left, it was wrapped around the trunk of a dead pine; to the right, it disappeared into a pile of deadfall. Looking closer at the deadfall, I detected two small dark circles, rimmed in bluish-black metal. “Waylon, is that what I think it is?”
He nodded. “Double-barrel Remington twelve-gauge. For them that can’t read.”
Waylon was already moving down the trail, so I high-stepped over the trip wire, very carefully, to keep up with him. “What are we doing here, Waylon, and why’s your cousin Vern so antisocial?”
“He’s got a note comin’ due that I got to help him with. He’s a small farmer, you might say, and he don’t like people gettin’ in his crops or messing in his business.”
“But he’s not gonna mind us? Or me?”
“Naw. I’m blood, and long’s you’re with me, you’re awright. Matter of fact, he’s heard about you, kindly wants to meet you. Duck your head, Doc. Duck, damnit!”
I ducked, just in time to avoid getting snagged by a series of triple-ganged fishhooks, suspended at various approximations of eye level, from more monofilament line. I guessed the reasoning was, if you didn’t read the warning signs, you didn’t need your eyesight. I renewed my vow never to travel with Waylon again, even if it meant walking back to Knoxville. The trail followed the hill’s contour lines, and now it arced through a small hollow strewn with boulders, ranging in size from television sets to trailer trucks. As we approached a narrows hemmed by rocks, Waylon stopped again.
“You see them leaves in that low spot yonder?” I nodded. “You’re gonna wanna jump clean over them. Got it?”
“Got it. Why do I want to do that?”
“So you don’t get bit by them copperheads curled up right there.”
Looking closely, I could just barely make out the fat, mottled shapes of three copperheads coiled on the bed of leaves. “How’d you know they’d be there?”
“ ’Count of them fishhooks in their tails. Keeps ’em close to home, you know?”
“Fishhooks? You mean they’re staked out in the middle of the trail? Damn, Waylon, how many more booby traps between us and Cousin Vern? And what if he’s rigged up some new ones you don’t know about?”
“This here’s the last ’un, coming in this-away. And Vern ain’t rigged up no more, ’cause he ain’t the one rigs ’em.” He said this with a mixture of matter-offactness, modesty, and the proprietary pride of an artist displaying his handiwork. I should have known.
We wound down the hollow, which gradually widened into a small bowl. At the center, there appeared to be a sunlit clearing, though as we got closer, I saw that much of it was occupied by small trees, ten or twelve feet tall. At one edge of the opening stood a small cabin—more of a hut, really—with a wisp of smoke curling up from a rusted flue. Suddenly I understood: the clearing wasn’t a thicket of small trees, but a patch of huge marijuana plants, some of them with stalks as thick as my wrist. Of course—why else would a trail in the woods be booby-trapped with shotguns and copperheads? This lush, blue-green foliage waving in the breeze was the linchpin of Cooke County’s underground economy.
While we were still a hundred yards away, Waylon gave a piercing whistle. A deep baying emanated from the hut, and a rickety screen door screeched open and then slapped shut. Loping toward us on legs nearly as long as mine was a huge red hound, lop-eared and goofy-looking. The beast charged up to Waylon and reared up like a stallion, then placed immense paws on his shoulders. He stood eye to eye with Waylon and licked him square on the mouth. Waylon laughed, making no effort to dodge the dog’s slobbery tongue. After he’d had his fill of kissing, the dog dropped to all fours and trotted over to sniff my crotch. Luckily, the smell didn’t inspire him to French-kiss me. “Best keep him and your girlfriend apart,” I said. “One of them’s liable to get jealous.”