The Motions of the Animals

THE MOTIONS OF THE ANIMALS / Gerald Duff THAT ONE YONDER IS THE head dog then?" said B.J., looking at the black and tan hound curled up in the dust by one of the sections of oak stump supporting the front porch of the house. It was getting on toward evening, and the long shadows of the afternoon sun fell across all of the dog but his head and part of one front leg. "Yeah," said Uncle Font Nowlen, "he ain't gonna lie to you on trail." As they watched, the sunlit leg kept up a steady pawing motion at the red dust beneath it, maintaining a regular measured beat as though it were moving in time to some song that only the dog could hear. "Why's he scratching like that?" said one of the other men standing in Uncle Font's front yard. "Is he killing fleas?" The man was called Mr. Hall, he was up on the weekend from Beaumont for one of Uncle Font Nowlen's cat hunts, and he was wearing brand new clothes of a camouflage design: boots, trousers, jacket and hat. The jacket had zippers, pockets and openings arranged in symmetrical patterns all over it. Each piece of metal on the clothing was tinted dull gray to avoid giving any kind of reflection. Mr. Hall's boots had left perfect impressions of their tread wherever he had stepped in the skinned-off yard in front of Uncle Font's double-log house. "Naw," said Uncle Font, and leaned over to spit a big wad of Cotton Boll tobacco juice into the center of one of the boot tracks Mr. Hall had made." He ain't scratching no fleas. Nor ticks neither." He rolled the cud of tobacco from one jaw to the other and looked over at the black and tan. "Name's Elvis," he said. "I'll show you why." At the sound of the words the hound flopped his tail in the dust once and looked up at Uncle Font from under the ridges of tan markings over his eyes. He took a deep breath, expelled it with a sigh, and advanced three steps away from his spot under the edge of the porch, ending up standing about eight or ten feet in front of and facing Uncle Font. Although the dog had come to a standstill, the front half of his body continued to bob up and down at a rhythmical pace, first to the left and then the right, his forelegs flexing and working, now and then one foot or the other leaving the ground briefly to paw gently at the dusty yard. 58 · The Missouri Review "Why, I swear he looks like he's dancing," said Mr. Hall's friend in a Gulfcoast voice. "Can't help but do it," Uncle Font said. "He's jitterbugging. That's why he's named what he is. Elvis." The circle of cat hunters watched for a whUe without saying anything, until finally Elvis sat back on his haunches to scratch at an ear. Even during this operation, though, he kept up a steady movement, holding to his established rhythm and not missing a beat. "How'd you teach him that?" asked Mr. Hall, fumbUng at one of the zippers in his jacket. "Didn't," said Uncle Font. "Distemper when he was a pup left him with that movement. It's a natural dance, that thing is. You can't learn a dog nor a human being neither to do nothing like that. You got to be give something like that. Just like Elvis Presley had a natural gift." Uncle Font spit again and then lifted a carved cow horn hung around his neck with a rawhide string to his lips and blew two notes on it. Elvis got to all four feet and increased the tempo of his beat by about a quarter, and three other spotted dogs came surging into the front yard from under the house, two yipping in high voices and one baying in a low mournful tone. "That blue tick there," B.J. said to Mr. Hall, pointing to the last dog out from under...