A Mule, a Pond, and a Christmas Gift

I don’t curse much anymore. Using them words ain’t near as much fun as it was when I was younger. Maybe I’m older and wiser, maybe not. Probably much more it’s just because I don’t like people judging me by the way I talk. About the only thing that can make me use them words these days is a mule. Even thinking about a mule can get my dander up. They are ornery, stubborn, smelly creatures that just ain’t natural to begin with, being a cross between a donkey and a horse. It’s plain to see they ain’t blessed by God neither. That’s why most of them come out sterile. He knows they shouldn’t be passing on their cussedness.


I didn’t always think this-a-way. Time was I’d be excited to get to work with any kind of stock, but that was before I worked with mules. I should have listened to my uncle. He said they was talked about sorely in the Bible over in Psalms 32:9, “Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding.”

Said it was because they was so blasted cantankerous that they was held up as an example of what we shouldn’t be. Why when God had all them other animals like donkeys, and weasels, and skunks, and snakes; snakes hell they is so low they don’t have no legs. Preacher said that was because of the temptation in the Garden of Eden. I wonder what they looked like before he took their legs away. Did them snakes have long legs like a giraffe, or did they scoot along like a centipede with a hunderd legs? Or skunks, now I know them things just use their smell as protection, but Lord do they stink. Why if humans smelled like skunks I reckin there wouldn’t be no children made at all. I do know that the Indian that lived down near Cherokee Lake had one that he took care of when it was a little thing and got lost from its Mother. That was the cutest thing. Followed him around like a little kitten. For that matter what about fleas and chiggers? A flea is the nastiest of afflictions. But if there is one thing that should be God forsaken it is a chigger. Those things get under your skin in the most embarrassing of places. I got em on my private parts once’t when I was picking blackberries and believe me, that wasn’t no fun. I couldn’t scratch nowhere in public and there ain’t nothing that itches like a chigger. No, of all them other things God could have used as ‘samples’ he said, “Don’t be like a MULE!”

I’m sorry, here I am getting all carried away and you don’t even have nary idea at all why I’m getting so riled up. No idea at all lessen you’ve had a mule that is. If you have, then you know exactly what it is I’m talking about and will enjoy this story as justifying of your hatred. If you ain’t never had one, well listen up close cause by the time I’m done you’ll know why they is such wretched creatures. You’ll also understand why even though I despise them like the dickens I owe ‘em so much. Sometimes I just don’t know what to think about them animals.

Some of my fondest recollections are cold weather ones, even though cold weather was tough weather on the farm. There was pipes to be thawed out in the milk barn before we could commence milking and sometimes that took near on an hour. There was straw that had to be spread out in the barn where we locked the cows up after milking. We fastened them up at night cause they didn’t have much sense and would stand outside until the milk dripping off their teats froze. Last thing at evening we ran them up in the stock barn and fed them hay and closed the doors while they was chewing away. If you didn’t spread the straw out the muck would get so deep in there you couldn’t even walk. Come spring we spread the mess out on the fields as fertilizer. People go on and on about recycling and composting these days like they discovered it. Why we been doing it on the farm longer than they been alive.

We kept the mules up during the winter too because they wasn’t no smarter than the cows. They got a little brain for an animal that big, I looked it up in the cyclopedia once and their brain ain’t no bigger than a lemon. A monkey’s brain is bigger than that! So every evening them mules had to be led out to the pond to drink. The pond was about a half mile from the barn. To git there you went down a lane through the woods that Grandpa said had been a stagecoach road way back before he was born.

The year I turned thirteen Dad give me the task of tak’un them mules to drink. They was two of them, Bell and Kate; and only one of them had to be led, ole Kate would follow Bell down and back pretty as you please. But now Bell she was different, she wouldn’t follow nowhere or no one. She was the one I put the halter and lead on every night. She was the bigger of the two and I had to stand up on the feed trough to get to her head. You’d think she would lower it some so she could get a drink, but no, that animal would raise up until her noggin bumped on the loft above and you didn’t dare open the stall door until you had the lead on her. She’d run right over you to git out otherwise. One time I didn’t git it on her head good and she shook it off; took off like a cat running from a water hose, a jumping and kicking her hind legs up in the air, look’en like a year old colt. It took us two hours to git that mule put back up.

Dad didn’t really give me much instruction on what to do, just said, “You can ride them or you can walk em, but if’n you ride don’t make em run and be sure and slide off before you get back to the barn. Bell won’t stop none to let you off and will run you right smack into the timber above the barn door if you don’t.”

That mule’s back was a lot higher than I could swing my leg up to. Heck it was higher than I could jump. So every night after I got the halter on I led her over to a big rock that laid up beside the barn on the south side and used it to boost myself up. I had to do it sorta quick like. If I didn’t jump right on she would turn her butt end around and start pulling on the reins like a hound pup does when you are breaking ‘em to lead. Cept’n she ain’t a dog, were’nt young and was a sight bigger. So I got pretty good at leading her over to the jumping rock and swinging my leg over in one move. It was sort of like learning to ride a bicycle, felt hard at first but soon got so easy I never even thought about it.

I guess you’d say we both got educated. She learned that she could chew on that bit all she wanted and it wasn’t going to break in two and I learned that riding a mule bareback wasn’t anywhere near as much fun as riding a horse. A mule’s got a backbone that sticks up like all the ridges in the Appalachian Mountains and the way they walk makes that back bone rub you side to side. They tell me in the old days that men who carried loads into the mining camps rode mules cause they was so sure footed. But they better have rode them animals with saddles cause if you was on one more than an hour or so they would rub holes in your pants and ever bit o’ flesh of’n your butt. That along with me only being thirteen and her having a wide backside meant when I rode my legs stuck out like I was a three legged milk stool; and gait, there ain’t no gait to a mule, they sort of pound along like they’s cracking walnuts with ever step.

By December I was used to the gait and the cold and the mule. I guess my butt hide had got a little tougher too. I learned to sit higher up on the mules back, up almost on its neck so my legs weren’t splayed out over half the state. Besides, I had my mind on other things anyways. It was Christmas time and I was hoping to get a twenty two rifle and I was going to be in the living nativity scene at the church the Sunday night before Christmas. We had one every year on the weekend before and this year was special as that Sunday was also Christmas Eve, not to mention my first to take part. There was a kid’s play afterwards in the church and I had done that before but never been in the grown up play. I was getting to because they wanted a donkey in the scene and Mr. Page, that used to own one, didn’t have one no more. So, I was going to hold Bell beside the manager scene. Hopefully no one would think it was too funny we had a mule instead of a donkey. If they did I bet Preacher would give em a look. I wasn’t excited none about having to hold the mule, but I still got to dress up and wear a robe like all the other grownups. Mom had bought me a brown one that was too big, but she cut off the bottom and washed it a bunch so it raveled and looked all worn out. When you wrapped it around me and I wore the beard that they glued on my face I looked like a short’ish grownup. Besides, nobody else in my Sunday School Class was getting to be in the grown up play. They all thought it was pretty cool.

We practiced every night in the week leading up until Christmas Eve and I was surprised at how cold it was once the sun went down. Mom told me just to wear my jeans underneath my robe and that helped. Bell was pretty good the first night, I guess it was the newness of it all, she was the other nights too and I figured we had this licked.

I was running late the night of the play and it was all my fault. A light snow had been falling all day, not enough to cover the roads, but there was plenty enough on the ground. I had gone over to my friend Jackson’s for lunch after church and then we got busy building a fort out of snow. Before I knowed it Mom was calling saying Dad wanted to know where I was. I rode my bicycle home and it was already getting dark so I didn’t waste no time.

I’ve never seen that mule so stubborn, every time I reached up to put the halter on old Bell she raised her head to the ceiling and then shook it side to side like one of them polar bears at the Knoxville Zoo. Finally I got the halter on her and then when I took her over to the rock she twisted around half sideways and I missed her entirely when I went to throw my leg over. I fell flat on my back beside that rock and the breath went out of me with a wushhhhh! The snow pushed up under my coat and shirt right onto my bare back, sending a shiver down my spine and making me jittery all over.

I was really running late by the time I got on her back and started out for the pond so I decided to give her a little nudge. In the back of my mind I could hear Dad’s say’en, “Don’t run her none.” But I figured by now I was good nuff a rider to stay on her back so I kicked her hard with my heels. Made no difference, it was if I wasn’t even there so when we came up under the old hickory tree I reached up and jerked off a limb to use as a switch. Once’t, twice, I thrashed her on the hips, nothing happened so the third time I brought it down on her backside as hard as I could. She took off like greased lightning. I grabbed a big hand full of mane or I would have slid right off her back. I dropped the reins and held on with both hands as I laid down low on her back, partly to keep from sliding off and partly to keep the limbs from smacking me in the face as we galloped down the lane.

`When we got to the edge of the pond that damned mule didn’t even slow down but went traipsing right out into the cold water. I raised my feet high up on its back to keep them from getting wet and waited as she drunk her fill. I kept trying to reach the reins but each time I reached she shook and when she shook I darned near slid off. So I just left well enough alone after a while. Then she did something I sure never expected. She laid down right in that cold stinking pond. I jumped off to the side and even though it only came up to my chest I thought I was going to drown before I got my feet up under me. I got a mouthful when I first went in and could taste that muddy mess. It was gritty in my teeth. I spit and sputtered trying to get the taste out, but my mouth felt like a cat had laid down in it and spent the night. Man it was colder than I don’t know what. Cold enough to make a muskrat shake I bet. As soon as she had me off her back she started running up the hill away from the barn. I took after her as soon as I realized what was going on.

Bell knew exactly how close to let me get before running on a few steps. She’d run a little bit and then stop, wait’en on me to reach down, then take agin off as soon as I was inches from the reins. I chased her around the pond twice before I finally got her hemmed in at the corner of the fence. I could hardly hold the reins my hands were shaking so bad, and I lit in to her with every cuss word I had ever heard. I might even have made up a few I was so mad. My teeth were chattering so hard I sounded like a squirrel chew’en on hickory nuts and I was shaking and shivering all over. It was a miracle I was able to get back to the house. I tied Bell to the fence post while I went in to get changed.

I didn’t want Dad to know nothing about what had been going on. I slowly inched the back door open and slid quite as a church mouse down the hallway toward the stairs that led to my room in the attic. I had just taken the first step when I heard Dad’s voice coming in from the kitchen, “Better get a shower before you put your clothes on. I can smell you coming all the way in here. And if I ever hear you using the language you was using up at the pond agin I aim to put the switch on you like you was using on that mule.”

That was when I knowed I hadn’t got away with nothing. Dad had been watching the whole time. I didn’t have to wonder none why he didn’t see I was hav’en trouble, why he didn’t help me catch that mule. He knowed I had been running her and figgered it was a lesson that needed learn’en.

I wasn’t none too sure that night how that old mule was going to act. Bell sure had been the devil up till then and when I got back out to where I had tied her to the fence post she was a snort’en and carrying on like she was loco, stomp’en her front foot down in the dirt. I untied her and she took right off. Here we went, up toward the church, me hold’en on for dear life. I was afeared the whole time she was going to git it in her head to take off agin and me knowing that when it really comes down to it a mule is a lot stronger than a thirteen year old boy. But when we got up to the nativity scene she settled down calm as a sleep’en baby; stood there as still as a cow wait’en on sweet feed. I knowed she was just thinking up some other kind of mischief though cause she kept look’en at me through the corner of her eye. I swear I think she was a laugh’en cause her lips kept curl’en up and she was grin’en just like she was a chewing on saw briar. She was the devil. I was sure of it. If not the devil she was one of the devil’s angels a sent down here to tempt me to cuss’en.

Dad and Mom wasn’t in the nativity scene cause they was the directors. They were in charge every year and decided who got to be who. I didn’t always agree with their pickin’, but Dad said it wasn’t no popularity contest and I better hush up cause he could always get somebody else to hold the mule. I guess the ones I had the most trouble with was who they chose to be Mary and Joseph. He named Terry Bittle to be Joseph and Terry was just about the meanest thing in the whole church. He was eighteen and had a red Dodge Charger that he raced at the drag strip every Saturday night. He kept the tires for it in the back of the store down at the highway that the Bacon brothers owned. Story was he had something on them both and told them if his Dad got word of what he was doing he’d tell. I don’t know why he was so vexed, his Pop never came to church and I couldn’t imagine he was none too worried about what his boy was up to him being eighteen and all.

And then there was Jenny. Jenny was the one they named to play the Holy Virgin. Jenny was as pretty as April sunrise. Although she was a couple of years older than I was, I’d been sweet on her for as long as I knowed what men and women was all about, which had been a while. Growing up on a farm and all, you learn’t these things just by watching what the farm critters was up to. But Jenny never paid me no mind even though we all knew she had kissed just about every boy in church but me. They tell me she even kissed Jimmy Larson once’t. I hadn’t never seen Jimmy without he had a chew of tobacco in his mouth and if’n she’d kiss him I couldn’t figger why she never had kissed me.

Old Pud was one of the wise men. Preacher says that the wise men were actually kings in their countries. Them coming such a long way to see Baby Jesus and bring him all those expensive gifts was their way of saying he was the King of Kings. I couldn’t see Pud being king of nothing unless it was a whiskey bottle.

Pud took care of the church, cleaning the building and mowing the cemetery in the summer when it was need’en it. He’d been throwed out of the church for drink’en, must’a been ten times already, but they kept vote’n him back. I think Preacher would have thrown him out for good if he wasn’t so handy at keep’en the old coal furnace going in the winter time. Dad said wasn’t no one as good at stok’en up a fire as Pud was. I think anyone could have done it if’n they wanted to, but they kept bring’en Pud back just cause no one wanted to carry the clinkers out and climb into the coal bin at 5 o’clock on Sunday morning. Last time they had to “church” him they had found him passed out in the coal bin. The door on the furnace was wide open and smoke had filled up the whole building. I reckin it was a miracle the church didn’t catch on far and burn down that time. They probably would have put him on the road for good, but he come back the very next Sunday and said he had him a dream about the fires of hell a lick’en at this feet and he was given up the drink for good. With a testimony like that I reckin Preacher had to take him back.

Between think’en about all the things that was go’en on in my head and keep’en my eye on Jenny I didn’t even notice where we was in the Christmas story. Dad was read’en the Christmas story. He had bought a version from the Bible store with both the shepherds and the wise men in it that was written just for nativity scenes. I looked out from where I was standing beside the stable we had built on the hill above the church. They must have been a couple of hunderd people gathered around a listening and a watching. I don’t rightly know how many but it was for sure more than I’d ever seen in church, even on Easter. The shepherds was already standing around and the wise men was gett’en ready to lay their gifts at the feet of Baby Jesus when I heard the mule. It wasn’t only me that heard it, I knowed Dad did too cause he looked at me as if it was something I had done. He give me one of them looks that said you are in trouble boy, ain’t nothing I can do right now, but you better know you are in a heap of trouble.

Now I think we was the only two that heard it, but slowly as the wind picked up the smell I noticed even Jenny who was holding Baby Jesus was curl’en her nose up and look’en over at me. I kneed that mule in the side trying to tell her she better not be doing that no more. But I reckin that was the wrong thing to be doing cause right at that exact moment she let the biggest, most longest fart I’ve ever heard any animal let out. It seemed like an hour although I’m sure it was just a couple of minutes.

Then it started, first it was just a few people right up in front. They was trying to not laugh full out loud, but then King Pud said, “Lord have mercy, get that mule out of here afore we is af-fix-e-atated.”

When he said that the whole crowd started in a laugh’en as hard as they could. They was laugh’en harder than the year that someone put one of them crying dolls in for the Baby Jesus and as soon as the Virgin Mary picked it up it started crying to all get out. I couldn’t help being embarrassed cause they was look’en right at me as if I was the one that had done it. Dad, he walked over and muttered, “Take that mule down to the barn – NOW!”

When I got to the barn I was about to let into that mule, but I remembered what happened earlier when I took a switch to her and didn’t feel like chasing her any more that night. So I just put her up in her stall. But I didn’t give her no sweet feed as a treat like I had done the other nights that week. I went back up towards the church and by the time I got there everyone was inside a listening to the little ones singing Old Little Town of Bethlehem. I couldn’t bring myself to go in and stood in the shadows until they sung a couple more Christmas songs and I reckin they was passing out the gifts cause it got all quite.

We exchanged names in Sunday school and everyone got a gift. I was looking forward to mine that year. I didn’t know who had drawn my name, but they had raised the amount to spend to five dollars which was twice’t what we spent the year before. Instead I had just about made my mind up to go on home when Jenny came out the front door of the church and called my name, “Walter, Walter Huggins.”

She hadn’t never called my name before, least not my full name anyways. I still didn’t feel much like talk’en so I didn’t even answer her. She walked right over and hooked her arm in mine then she pulled me toward the door of the church and I told her right off, “I ain’t going in there, they is all either mad at me or mak’en fun one!”

Then she done something I never expected, kissed me full on the mouth. Looking me right in the eye she winked and said, “Come on in here, no one’s mad, I think this is just about the merriest Christmas any of us has ever seen. Besides, I was the one who drew your name and I’ve got you something extra special.”

Extra special I reckin it was, special enough to make me forget about that mule anyways. Even today some fifteen years later, when I think about Bell I get all confused. Some ways I’m glad she died soon after and I didn’t have to be reminded no more of that night; just fell right over there in the stall, dead as a fence post. Then I look over at Jenny and think how she ain’t kissed nobody since, nobody ‘ceptin me that is and I want to hug that old mule’s neck. There’s some things ain’t worth sort’en out, they’s just best left alone and I reck’in my feelings about mules is one of them.

CC 2010 Michael D. Gray

Walking in The Snow Along Chestnut Top Trail

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