The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale

and it was spreading over his body, popping up pustules on his feet and hands and face, and the more he scratched, the more it spread, until even his nuts were covered in the stuff. He used to say: "Poison ivy bumps were so thick, it pushed the hair out of my balls."
    He told me he hurt so bad, was so lost, so scared, so hungry and thirsty, he actually considered putting the rifle in his mouth and ending it all. Later, that wasn't an option. Crossing through a lowlying area, he discovered what appeared to be a thick covering of leaves was nothing more than slushy swamp, and in the process of grabbing on to the exposed roots of a great willow tree to save himself from drowning, he lost his rifle in the muck.
    Eventually he found his way out, but not by true woodcraft. By accident. Or in his words, "By miracle.” Benny came upon a gaunt steer, a Hereford/Long Horn mix. It was staggering and its great head hung almost to the ground. It was covered in crusted mud from its hoofs to its massive horns. It had obviously been mired up somewhere, perhaps trying to escape the mosquitoes.
    Uncle Benny watched it, and finally it began to move, slow but steady, and he followed the thorn-torn steer through the thicket, sometimes clinging to its mud-and shit-coated tail. He clung and followed until it arrived at the pasture it had escaped from, through a gap in the barbed wire. Uncle Benny said when that steer finally broke through the briars and limbs and the light came through the trees and showed him the bright green of the pasture, it was like the door to heaven had been opened.
    When the steer reached the emerald pasture, it bellowed joyfully, staggered, fell, and never rose. Its back legs and hindquarters were swollen up as if they were made of soaked sponge, and there were wounds that gurgled pus the color of primeval sin and thick as shaving foam.
    Uncle Benny figured the steer had gotten into a whole nest of moccasins, or timber rattlers, and they'd struck it repeatedly. Steer might have been out there in the Thicket for a week. The fact that it had survived as long as it had was evidence of the heartiness of the Long Horn strain that ran through it. It died where it fell.
    From there Benny made his way to the highway and found his car. His hunting dogs never showed up. He went there for a week and called their names where they had gone in with him, and he drove the back roads searching, but never a sign. To the best of my knowledge, though he continued to hunt from time to time, Benny never went into the deep woods again, and the infected eye gave him trouble all his life, until at the age of sixty-five he had to have it removed and replaced with a cheap glass one.
    You don't fuck with the Big Thicket.
    Grovetown wasn't much. A few streets, some of them brick, and down on the square an ancient courthouse and jail, a filling station/grocery store, and the Grovetown Cafe, and a lot of antique and thrift shops. There were benches out front of most of the buildings, and you had to figure if it wasn't Christmas Day and most of those places weren't closed there'd be old men sitting there, bundled up, talking, smoking, and almost managing to spit Red Man off the curb.
    The filling station/grocery was one of the few places open, and as we drove past, a tall, thirtyish, handsome, pale-faced guy in a gray shirt, heavy coat, and gimme cap stood out by one of the pumps with a water hose, washing down oil and grease in the center of one of the drives. He stared at us as we drove by, looking like a guy who might wash your windshield, check your tires and oil without having to be asked, just like in the old days. Then, on the other hand, looks could be deceiving. Guy like that might piss on your windshield and let the air out of your tires as soon as look at you.
    Christ, I was beginning to think like Leonard. Everyone was a scumbag until proven otherwise.
    We passed a washateria with a sign painted on the glass. It was faded, but it was