This is just a repost, from June 8, 2007. Since I can’t retrieve my old blog content, I’m going to repost some of the stories I had posted before, just to have them on here.

It was unusually cold, even for late December in those days, and late Decembers in Tennessee back then were colder than late Decembers in Tennessee today. White Christmases weren’t too uncommon.

But this was beyond white-Christmas-cold. The holiday was still five days off, but temperature highs had dropped into the low 20s during the day. Nighttime temperatures were in the single digits, with even some subzero temperatures recorded.

Yes, it was cold for a Tennessee late December. That 1952 cold snap was the coldest on record pre-Christmas in a half-century. But the cold wasn’t likely to stop Virgil Stephens. With his faithful companion at his side, a blue tick hound named Jake that any fellow would have been proud to share a hunt with, Virgil would grab his pap’s old shotgun and his oil lantern and head to the hills after the sun had set. Coon hunting was his game, and Virgil Stephens was good at it. So good at it that folks from all over the extremely rugged, rural community of Capachene would come to him to get his take on how good, or poor, the coon hunting would be at any particular time.

Coons weren’t hard to find in Capachene; they weren’t then, and they aren’t now. Capachene is located on Upper Jellico Creek, in the heart of the Cumberland Mountains. From the small town of Oneida, in Scott County, to the small town of Jellico, in Campbell County, there was nothing but rugged terrain, miles of woods, and tiny logging and coal camps. A school here and there — all of them one room, a post office, and a handful of churches were the only structures in those hills. The folks who made their homes there were those who made their living on that land, working for the mining and timber companies, and they were few and far between. A gunshot in those hills would likely as not go unheard. Capachene was located a half-day’s walk along a rutted road from U.S. Highway 27 that ran north to south through Scott County. Virgil had helped build the highway in the 1920s, when he was in his early 40s and still able to handle the demanding tasks of blazing the road.

Fifty years later, the road to Capachene is paved — well, part of the way; the pavement stops at Jellico Creek. You can still get a two-wheel-drive vehicle the rest of the way if the weather is dry. But Capachene remains every bit as rural today as it as then. The schools are gone. Most of the churches are gone. Some of the houses are still there, but they’re aging and no new ones are being built. Many residents have moved out or simply passed on. If there’s a more rural place in the state of Tennessee, one would be hard-pressed to find it.

But all that is neither here nor there. On this particular night, Virgil took down his old gun from behind the door and slipped a leash onto the collar of the old hound.

Jake was 84 in dog years, so Virgil figured they made a pretty good pair. Two old bachelors who weren’t gettin’ no younger. Virgil often wondered when they would traipse into the mountains for their final coon hunt. It would be a sad affair, that day, and the damnable misery of it was Virgil didn’t figure it would be long into the future. With the arthritis set into Jake’s old hound bones as it was, it was amazing he could even get out on these unusually cold nights. It seemed to take Jake a long time to work the creak out of his bones most mornings, and Virgil could feel his pain. His arthritis wasn’t getting any better in its own right. The day would come, Virgil supposed, when one of them wouldn’t be able — or wouldn’t have the desire — to get up and get out as the sun set over the mountains above Upper Jellico Creek. As it was, they were staying closer to the road — and the bottom of the mountains — than they had in years past, and Virgil knew that the days of either of them being able to outrun a coon were long past. But Jake could still outsmart them and Virgil could still shoot a fair bit, if he did say so himself, and so the hides kept getting tacked up onto the side of the leaning old shed out back.

Most folks would have been amazed that the old hound, let alone his master, were still chasing the vermin across those hills. But, as Virgil often said, “If me and Jake can both go t’gether, and go whilst we’re chasin’ after a big boar coon, I can’t imagine a better way for the Lord to call both of us on home.”

And so Jake and Virgil headed out on that bitterly cold December night in 1952, Virgil with his aging gun in one hand and Jake’s leash wrapped around the other hand; Jake walking with a slight limp but still eager to get off the leash.

It didn’t take long for Jake to strike up a trail, and the hunt was on. Virgil ambled in the direction of the old hound’s familiar bark. Soon, he heard Jake tree, and smiled at the old hound’s sure-fired ability to put a coon up a tree. He was still two hollers away, from the sound of it, and these days, that might be a 20 or 30 minute hike. “You jest get yoreself prepared for a wait ol’ boy,” Virgil said to himself as he shined the lantern ahead of him. “I’m on my way.”

As he walked, Virgil thought of the upcoming Christmas holiday. Christmas was nothing special to him and Jake, of course, but it would be nice if some of his grandkids would come to pay him a visit. They didn’t make it up his way much since his wife had passed on, 10 years earlier, and Virgil didn’t reckon he could blame them. They were busy building their own families, and Christmas was spent with their own kids, his great-grandkids. They had no reason to visit his old house way up in the sticks, with its sagging roof over the porch and torn linoleum floors. Still . . . “Naw,” he thought. “They ain’t been up to see you in what, three or four Christmases? No reason to think that this year will be any different ol’ man.” He didn’t get many visitors. In fact, his neighbor, Willie, and Willie’s young son Harry had been by to see him earlier in the day, to see if he needed anything from town, and they had been the first visitors to stop by his house in almost a week.

Virgil could tell from Jake’s bark that the old hound was just over the next rise. He needed to cross one final steep-sided draw on the side of the hill. As he felt his way up the steep embankment on the far side of the draw, his foot slipped. As it slipped, he grabbed for a root in the bank. But his advanced age had slowed more than just his walk, and he only felt his fingertips brush the root as he slipped back down the slope.

His right foot twisted sharply underneath him as his body weight pitched him backward. Crying out, he instinctively tried to twist himself, to avoid landing back-first on the rocks in the creek below. The gun bounced off one of the rocks as he tried to put his hands down to break his fall. He was mostly successful, but his knee struck a rock, causing flashes of pain to rip through his mind as he blacked out.

The first thing Virgil noticed as he regained consciousness moments later was that the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he had feared it would be. The second thing he noticed was that he couldn’t move his right leg. Figuring it had already gone numb, he reached down and gingerly felt of his knee cap. The mishappen feel was enough to tell him that the knee was dislocated. If he was lucky, his ankle would only be sprained, but it would be a bad sprain. And what good would luck do him anyway, he thought, lying here unable to move, a good three miles from home and probably five miles from the nearest neighbor. It wasn’t luck he needed, but a miracle. As Jake continued to bark in the next hollow, Virgil noticed something else: How bitterly cold the air really was.

Virgil was brought to by a cold nose brushing against his face. It took a moment for him to remember where he was, and to figure out that he must’ve blacked out again. “Jake?” he said. “What are you doing here, anyway? Never knowed you to leave a tree unless you was forceibly pulled off.” Jake whined and licked Virgil’s nose. “Yeah,” Virgil said. “I reckon I’m pretty bad off, ol’ boy. I can’t feel my leg no more. We got to think up a way to get out of here.”

As Virgil blackd out for a third time, he found himself wondering again, this time to himself, what in the Sam Hill had caused Jake to leave a treed coon and come back to him. Had the old dog sensed that his master had gone down? It was a funny thing, instinct . . .

As the moon shown brightly through the naked treetops and the night grew colder still, old Jake paced anxiously in the creek bottom for a brief time, whining on occasion, looking first at his master and then at the trail towards home. Finally, he trotted back to Virgil and lied down beside the old man’s frail body, still twisted in the awkward position in which he had landed.

* * *

“Don’t be late, Henry!” his mother called as Henry dashed out the door. “Your father wants us to spend Christmas night as a family, you know!”

“Yeah Mom. Be back before eight,” Henry called back as he jumped into his friend Terry’s Chevy pickup. Terry and Bobby were already inside, and the truck was rolling out of the driveway almost before Henry had gotten his feet off the ground.

“Where to, Oh-Henry?” Terry asked as the truck pulled out. “Anywhere, I reckon,” Henry answered as he reached behind the seat and pulled out a Mason jar containing homemade moonshine. “Let’s just get off the main road. Cops are liable to be out pretty heavy tonight, it bein’ Christmas and all.”

“Let’s head out Pleasant Grove,” Bobby said. “You know, up towards Jellico Creek where we go mud ridin’ sometimes.”

“Sounds good to me,” Terry said, turning the truck north. Stuck doing “family stuff” most of that Christmas Day in 1978, the teens were out for some “general hellraisin’,” as they put it; a way to inject a little excitement into their holiday, they figured. It had become a bit of a tradition over the past couple of years: Go out, drink a little homemade brew, wash the smell away with soda pop, and head home before their parents got too worried about them.

A short time later, the truck had left the pavement and was bouncing along the rutted road that led across the mountain at Capachene. It was raining; a cold Christmas rain. The forecast called for the rain to change to snow later in the night. As they drove beneath the tree branches overhanging the road, the boys caught a glimpse of light ahead.

“What the heck?” Terry said. “Didn’t figure to see anybody else all the way back here on Christmas night.”

Moments later, the truck’s headlights illuminated the source of the light: A lantern, carried by an old man walking slowly along the side of the road, a shotgun in his hand and an old bluetick hound ambling along beside him.

The boys drove by and left the man and his dog behind before Henry turned to Terry, a puzzled look on his face. “What in the world you reckon that old man is doing out this time of night on Christmas . . . and in the rain?”

“You got me,” Terry said. “From the looks of that gun, I’d say hunting. But in this weather? He’s liable to freeze to death.”

“Reckon we should go back and offer him a ride?”

“Yeah, I’d say it couldn’t hurt. There ain’t no house for at least seven or eight miles around here. Let’s see if he needs some help. A man that old ain’t got no business out in the rain, especially when it’s this cold.”

Terry turned the truck around at the first wide spot in the road, and the boys headed back in the opposite direction. But the old man and his dog were no where to be seen.

“What do you make of that?” Terry asked. “You don’t reckon they went into the woods, do you?”

“Naw, we’d'a seen that light in the woods, I think,” Bobby said.

“Well,” Terry said, “I don’t guess there’s nothing we can do here but just get on home. It’s getting late and all our folks are gonna be mad if we’re out too long.”

Their encounter might have been forgotten had Henry not stopped in at the local Texaco after school a few days later. As he chatted with the station’s owner, Harry, the storekeeper asked if Henry had managed to get in any hunting over the Christmas break.

“Nope,” Henry said. “But that reminds me. me and the guys were riding up on Capachene on Christmas night, and we saw the strangest thing . . . an old man and a dog. Remember how it was raining and cold that night? Pouring the rain. Anyway, the guy had a gun and they looked like they was probably out hunting, but anybody’d be half fool to be out hunting in that weather. Especially on Christmas.”

The corners of Harry’s mouth turned up in a knowing smile. “It was an old man, you say?”

“Yeah.”

“And the dog walked with a limp?”

“Yeah.”

“And I guess the old man was swinging a lantern?”

“Yeah. You know ‘em?”

Harry chuckled. “Henry, I guess it’s safe to say that you and your pals met Virgil and Jake. Ol’ Virgil Stephens was one of the best coon hunters to ever walk them hills, the old-timers say.”

“Wait a minute,” Henry said. “Old man Virgil Stephens? That can’t be. I’ve heard my dad talk about him. Ain’t he the man that died up there about 30 years ago?”

“Mm-hmm,” Harry nodded. “Busted his leg up pretty good and froze to death.”

“Well then, how . . .” Henry stopped, grinning sheepishly. “Nuh-uh. No way. I ain’t fallin’ for one of them old ghost stories.”

Harry chuckled again. “Well, I can’t tell you what to believe, but you ain’t the first person that has come back out of those hills around Christmas with a story to tell about an old coon hunter and his old hound dog, swinging a lantern down Capachene Road.

“See,” he continued, “Old Virgil was one of the most respected coon hunters in these parts. One of the most respected coon hunters this side of Nashville, probably. But he lived by himself way up there in an old house. It’s been torn down since. His wife had died and none of his folks lived around here. It was just him and Jake. They kept those woods hunted pretty good. Then one night in 1952 — I remember it was the coldest I’ve ever seen it around here in December. It was the cold front of the century, they all said. Got down to five below zero that night. Anyway, him and Jake was out hunting. They ought to have known better, both of them just about unable to get around and taking off in that cold . . . but, anyway, they went, and they didn’t come back. At least we figure it was that night. I was just 10 years old then, and my daddy stopped to see Virgil earlier that day. Virgil said that they were going out hunting that night. Far as I know, Dad and me were the last ones to see ol’ Virgil alive.

“It’s untelling how long he’d have laid out there, if his grandkids hadn’t stopped in to see him the day after Christmas,” Harry said. “By that time, it had been almost a week. They couldn’t find him, so they went down the road to our house — we was the next house down the road — and Daddy got up a search party to find him. We finally found him laying in a creek up there two or three miles away from his house. Doc Frazier, he was the doctor here in town back then, he looked at him and said that he had busted up his leg pretty good. There was some skid marks on the bank and we figured he musta been trying to climb the bank and slipped and then just couldn’t moe and froze to death. We like to think it happened quick, but Doc Frazier said it could’ve taken a couple nights. Course, Virgil was an old man, and not in the greatest health anyway, so . . .

“Anyway,” Harry continued, “the darnedest thing about it was when we found Virgil, ol’ Jake was laying right there beside him. He was dead, too. Jake wasn’t a pup, for sure, but he wasn’t hurt and he wouldn’t have frozen to death if he had food and water. Dogs are made to be out in the cold all winter. He was huddled up beside Virgil’s body. Dad figured Jake musta tried to huddle up against Virgil to keep him warm, and just laid there and kept trying to keep him warm even after Virgil died.”

Harry paused, shaking his head. “Darnedest thing I ever seen. Some folks say that whenever a cold snap hits, especially right around Christmas, you can sometimes see Virgil and ol’ Jake wandering around up there. Most of the times that they’ve been seen, it has been walking the road. But that’s just because that’s where they would be seen, naturally, that time of night, because who’s gonna be in the woods that time of night? But it did like to scare a deer hunter to death up there a few years ago. He said he got to his spot a ways before daylight and he saw this light coming towards him. Got closer and he saw that it was an old man swinging a lantern and carrying a gun, a dog limping alongside him. Said they was headed down towards the old Stephens house place. Said he whistled and then hollered, but the man never turned his head, just kept walking slowly along like he had somewhere to go. Course, you’ll have to make up your own mind but I’d lay down money that you saw ol’ Virgil and ol’ Jake, still roaming those hills and hunting those coons.”

Henry nodded a little speechless, paid for his Coke and walked back to his truck. He never told Terry or Bobby about his conversation with Harry, but he made several trips back to Capachene in the weeks that followed. He never again saw the old man and old dog walking the road by the light of an old oil lantern. But even today, when Christmas rolls around, especially if the temperature is brisk and cold, Henry remembers the Christmas encounter and wonders if he’s still up there, roaming his old hunting grounds with his faithful hound by his side.