Taylor County is in West Virginia about sixty miles due South of Pittsburgh. In my ill-spent youth, I lived near Grafton in Taylor County. From the local drummer, I bought a golden pony-mule. Even if you're city-folk, you no doubt know that a mule is an exceptional, but sterile animal of either gender, the product of breeding a "jack" or male donkey and a horse mare. If the mare is a pony, the offspring is a so-called a pony-mule. Okay, and yes, a pony is not an immature horse, but an animal similar to a horse, but quite a bit smaller and nastier. Eleven families, all hill-billies except for us, were peppered up the five miles of Aaron Hollow, a deep, stream-etched arc between two of West Virginia's typical ridges of steep hills. The drummer, a clever trader named Everett Demoss, or maybe "DeMoss," he couldn't read or write, lived in the middle of the hollow. With my extended family, I lived an an exhausted hill-farm close to the mouth of the hollow. I bought the young mule as a mount or pet for Theresa, called "Tish," corrupted out of "Tarshish," but that's a whole different story. At ten, she was the eldest of the girl-children, willful and inventive, but ill-disposed to change and sensitive about her dignity. The mule was a spirited colt when I bought him. Although the animal seemed healthy, the drummer charged only $35. He explained that the bargain price was because of the colt's color. A proper mule is expected to be shiny black and powerfully muscled. This animal was yellowish-tan, the color of a golden retriever dog. None of the rustic farmers would have anything to do with such a suspicious creature, but since we had a golden retriever scampering wildly around our property, he thought the golden mule would make it a matching set. Demoss was a cunning trader, wise and experienced. He was able to read a client like a sign. He could buy for a song and sell anything for a profit. In New York or another big city, he'd have been raking in six figures selling bonds or real estate or train loads of frozen donuts. In Taylor County he drove a wide circuit, buying stock and goods from the homesteaders and farmers, then selling them replacements. To us transplanted urbanites, he had a compassionate, almost brotherly interest in turning us into hill-farmers, an occupation which I abjured. Such an expert trader could not have realized what he sold me. If he had, the price wouldn't have been $35. The very first time Tish tried to ride the mule, he threw her. Because she was so amused by the animal's noisy farting, she named her golden mule "Thunder." Like all the children, she road her pony and then, also, Thunder bareback. You expect ponies to be nasty and difficult, but mules usually have better dispositions. Thunder just didn't like Theresa. He simply shrugged, dumping the child unceremoniously into a humiliating heap. He walked away without looking back. More furiously indignant than injured, my daughter stormed home vowing never again to mount the rude beast. Loudly she hoped that the mule had run away never to return. That seemed unlikely to me since, although over a hundred acres in size, the thicket in which Tish had been riding was completely fenced-in. When the animal didn't appear by dusk, I went out shacking a can of corn to lure the stray back to the barn. My pony, a large, docile white dunce unimaginatively named "Tony" by one of the younger children ambled through the darkening woods following the slithering path. He was more interested in the feed than in locating his stable-mate. Not until he was convinced that the rattling corn wasn't for him did Tony condescend to seeking the little mule. After the best part of an hour and well after dark, I saw the animal, like a golden glow, standing stark-still next to a sassafras bush. I'd had the common sense to bring a flashlight. Almost at once I realized that between the animal's front hooves were my prized fence pliers. I'd lost more them a month earlier. Now, there they were, found by Thunder. It really set me to thinking. In my imagination, I wondered if, like the hogs which sniff out truffles, the mule was able to find lost tools. Maybe Thunder could smell the scent of a tool and sought it out out of the kindness of his heart. More likely, it was just a coincidence. For a few days Thunder languished in the exercise paddock. Although Theresa wouldn't go near him, the other girls rode the animal with ease. For my part, I thought I might have accidentally stumbled upon a psychic equine which was able to ferret out lost objects. Even though I realized that my supernatural musings were pretty silly, I rationalized that some dogs point out wild game or uncover buried earthquake victims. Was it such a leap to think that a mule might seek out absconded car keys or even a misplaced child? With an education in science, I devised the "Thunder-one," an experiment to test a mule's ability to find hidden valuables. While Lisa, my second daughter, was currying the mule in the pony-barn, I stashed a dollar coin beneath a rock at one corner of the paddock. I watched from the wicket to the haymow when Lisa swatted the mule out the door. For an hour I watched, timing how long it would take the marvelous-mule to discover my stash. Thunder couldn't have cared less about the secreted Susan B. Anthony. Repeatedly, he trotted close by it only to ignore it in the same way that the public was shunning the coin. No wonder that, in later years, Sacagawea got the nod. I admit that I felt silly, but I thought that perhaps the psychic animal needed a little nudge, a demand for service, as it were. Casually sauntering over to the beast, I took hold of his bridle. "I wish I could find my dollar. It must be lost somewhere in paddock," I said aloud, but to no mule in particular. Thunder glared at me out of the corner of one big brown eye. As I released him to do his hunting, he took a half-hearted sideways kick at me. I guess he didn't like me any better than he liked Theresa, or it might have been that he resented being put to work. Mules can be a little mule-headed at times. As chance would have it, my experiment went awry. Dashing around wildly like a bunny on an Easter egg hunt, Lisa took the bait. In record time she'd kicked up the dollar coin and decided that it was finders-keepers. I felt foolish, but this was West Virginia. I was going back to the earth, communing with nature, learning the ways of the creatures. I didn't give up. I needed a new experiment, more scientific, better engineered. This mule wasn't going to be easy to master. Several days later, Todd, thirteen and the eldest of my children, showed his mother a ring. By the time I saw it, it had been scrubbed and eased back into a circular shape. It was a delicate little children's ring, what some of the Christians, a strange cult by any measure, called a confirmation ring. It had a tiny red stone, but the setting was gold. The ring was damaged, squashed almost flat as if run over by a car. Todd said that he'd decided to see if he could ride Thunder. He took him up the hill to the orchard. Along the way, the mule had simplystopped, refusing to move. Sliding off the animal's back, Todd saw the ring half buried in the clay of the road. As soon as he retrieved it, Thunder dutifully completed the trek up the hill, behaving every bit a gentlemen. The ring wasn't by any means a treasure, but it had been lost and it did have a value. To me the discovery seemed more than a coincidence. I was more convinced than ever that somehow the golden mule located lost objects. Then it struck me: metal. Both the fence pliers and the ring were made of metal. My new theory was that Thunder was an equine metal-detector. It never occurred to me that the undetected Susan B. was metal, too. Almost immediately, I formulated "Thunder-Two," an experiment to test a mule's ability to find valuable metal. It wasn't easy, but I talked Todd out of the ring. My new experiment was to re-hide the object that Thunder had just successfully located, then walk him over the spot and wait for him to detect the metal. After pressing the ring out of sight into the sod in our front yard, I had Todd ride Thunder over the spot at a slow walk. I wanted to reproduce conditions as closely as possible to the mule's last success. Nothing! Todd walked him back across the spot, still nothing. I was persistent. With the mule out of view on the other side of the house, I scratched the ring up out of the sod. Todd had said that the last time Thunder found the ring, it was visible above the ground. Maybe Thunder had eagle-keen vision. But, no. When Todd rode the animal over the object, the mule ignored ring completely. I was twenty yards away and I could easily see the untaken bait. "You're a dud, you jackass," I sneered at Thunder. "You had me fooled, but you can't find lost things after all. It was ust a fluke." "But it wasn't really," observed Theresa, who'd been watching disdainfully from the veranda. "The ring wasn't lost, it was hidden." Don't you fell silly when little girls are smarter that you are? I pretended to ignore my daughter, but, rolling his heavy head, Thunder gave her a scornful glare. "That's very unscientific," I scolded Tish in my own defense. "How can a mule tell the difference between lost and hidden?" Shrugging, she observed, "all the same, lost is different than hidden. Maybe he can read minds. He's rude enough." Lacking a clever, fatherly retort, I stomped off to the barn, pretending that's what I had in mind all the time. I was developing a distinct dislike for the golden mule. Rachel, my youngest daughter came to the barn to comfort old dad. The five year-old assured me that she'd lost a lot of things. If Thunder didn't want to find the things I was hiding, he could look for her lost toys. "How about Bonny-Bride?" my daughter suggested. I tried to explain that Thunder seemed to find only metal things which were valuable. "Why?" Rachel wanted to know. "Bonny-Bride is valuable. She is my favoritest doll. She doesn't have to be metal. They don't make metal dolls any more, just when you were a little boy, maybe." "If it was so valuable, how come you lost it?" I parried the novice's argument. Rachel screwed up her nose. "See just how you are!" she snapped dashing from the barn. Early the next morning I saw Rachel walking back and forth in the waste-meadow. That was the area near the top of one of the hills where coal seams broke through the surface of the ground. Our geese liked to graze there on the course grasses and the children sometimes played there, but it wasn't used otherwise. Thunder was docilely following around after the child like a loyal puppy. Rebecca, by good wife, explained that Rachel was looking for her lost doll. She'd lost it in the spring. She thought that a troll (Rachel was a great believer in trolls ever since she'd been introduced to our resident troll-tree) had carried it off to the coal mines as she called the black strips which dotted that part of the hill. It wasn't an hour before Rachel was yelling a triumphant "so there!" at me. Waving a filthy naked plastic figure, she averred that good-old Thunder had found Bonny-Bride right away. "You ought to be ashamed," she told me. "All I had to do was tell him, 'come on you good mule' and he just walked right up to Bonny-Bride!" Rachel wanted me to acknowledge that Bonny was beautiful. I did. "You just have to treat him friendly. You try it," Rachel encouraged. "Tell him something to find for you." "That's not scientific, darling," I explained. "Daddy doesn't want Thunder to find any particular thing. I just wanted to see what he could do. It was an experiment." The pragmatic little girl thought that I was silly. If I didn't have any lost thing, why was I annoying the mule? How about if he wanted to play? None of this was wasted on Rachel's big sister. Theresa didn't like the mule, but she was intrigued. She had her father's logical genes sprinkled amid her feminine irrationality. By that afternoon, Tish was in the barn wearing her prized yellow cardigan. The last time she'd worn the sweater, which was the last day of school, she'd lost one of its elegant mother-of-pearl buttons. With Rachel by her side as a kind of coach, the older girl showed the sweater and the remaining button to Thunder. "I want you to find a button like this one," she told the mule as if it could understand English. "It could be anyplace." Thunder didn't respond. After a few minutes of coaxing, Tish lost patients and went off in a huff. "He's dumb!" she complained, but Rachel had become the mule's champion. "I'll bet your old button isn't even here," she argued following as quickly as she could after her big sister. "You lost it in school, I'll bet or on the bus. A mule can't go in a bus." Theresa didn't want logic. Running to the house, she left her sister alone in the paddock. Rachel promptly disappeared into the pony barn. About dinner time I saw her climbing up out of the deep ravine where, in the hot of the day the children splashed around in the run which had been dammed to form a wading pond. Again Thunder was trudging obediently along behind the child, nuzzling her bottom up the steep incline. With the incredible energy known only to a young child, Rachel dashed full speed to the house, hollering for Theresa the whole way and waving something in her hand. It was her sister's anklet. Sometime or other, nobody ever tells fathers anything, or if they do, I didn't pay attention, Tish had lost a bracelet made of pink plastic beads. Apparently she'd worn it around her ankle because some boy thought it was "sexy." Good-old Thunder, as Rachel was now calling the golden animal, had found it. "I just told him not to mind you," she told Theresa. "You are moody. I told him he should forget about your button because it was on the bus or somewhere. Then I asked him if he'd find anything, just any old thing at all, that you'd lost. Right away, this is what he found!" Theresa was begrudgingly impressed. So was I. I was trying to contrive "Thunder-Three," experiment, a mule as a finder of any lost thing. Each of the children and even my very practical, down-to-Earth wife, Rebecca, was thinking of detective uses for the mule. Rachel was afraid to ride the Thunder. She said that he was too tall, so she walked with him. It was strange because, even though she had to mount by climbing up on a fence rail she happily rode her pony. He was even taller than Thunder was. I think she was cautious since Thunder had already thrown her big sister. Rachel looked up to Theresa like an idol. At my insistence, the five year-old led the animal, now regarded as a kind of supernatural marvel, to the barn for a treat of cracked corn and oats with molasses. While they were occupied, I sent Todd out to set up experiment "Thunder-Three." Not willing to risk a whole dollar, I gave Todd a quarter. After dark, he was supposed to throw the quarter as hard as he could out into the just-mowed hay field. I wanted the quarter to be really "lost." Then I'd see if the mule was the real thing, a finder of lost objects, or a phony. I didn't take Thunder out looking for the quarter the next day. I wanted to let it "age" a little, but the day wasn't wasted. Todd, seeing the potential in a golden mule like Thunder, tried to get him to find a pen he'd gotten for his birthday. The trouble was that it was almost certainly lost inside the house and his mother wouldn't hear of having a filthy mule searching through her home. The younger girls, Lisa and Rachel, both found detective chores for Thunder. With Lisa riding and Rachel walking, the golden mule found little things they'd suddenly remembered having lost over the past few months. I was impressed with the realization that children are pretty careless with the things their parents buy for them. Both little girls seem to have lost a lot of stuff and both claimed that the mule was successful finding it, but the finds were so trivial that I no longer remember what they were. Since Lisa got along so well with Thunder, I set her the task of riding him around in the hay field to search out my quarter. First, even though I felt ridiculous, I showed the animal a shiny new quarter. "Okay, Thunder," I lectured, "this is a quarter. There's one lost someplace in the hay field. Can you find it?" For the best part of an hour, my daughter wondered around in the field, but there was no evidence that Thunder was looking for anything. He certainly didn't locate the coin. To my cross- examination, Todd swore that he'd tossed the quarter just as I'd told him to do. He hadn't pocketed it. He confirmed that Thunder was ambling around in the right general area. "You're doing it all wrong," little Rachel admonished me with a shake of her curls. "You have to be friendly to him. He doesn like to be tested like at school." Lisa agreed. She was tired of riding around in circles. "What's the point?" she wanted to know. "You're just making fun of him." "Okay," I said in a taunting, condescending tone, "how's this?" Smiling, I affectionately stroked the mule's neck. "you're such a nice mule," I cooed. "So smart and pretty ..." "Handsome," Lisa corrected. "So handsome," I mimicked, "a fine golden mule. Please find a quarter for Edgar." Turning his horsy-face toward me, the animal gave me a disdainful glare as if a quarter wasn't worth his attention. "You're just making fun of him," Lisa repeated. "That's not being friendly," Rachel agreed. Chastened, I broadened my request and polished my sincerity. "A fine golden fellow like you, how about finding some gold for Edgar?" Walking off, the beast tried to give me a little sideways kick. That made the children, all four, even Theresa, were gathered around by then, titter. Walking to the gate, the cantankerous animal waited. I though he was heading for corn in the pony-barn, but little Rachel was convinced that he was on a quest for lost gold. Catching hold of his bridle, the child allowed Thunder to lead her down our road and out on the public road. Although it was an unpaved lane which was traveled only by the families which lived in the hollow, I didn't allow my five year-old to walk it with the mule. Lisa climbed up on Thunder's back and, at a leisurely pace, the animal strolled out of sight up the hollow. We waited for a few moments to see how far Lisa would let the beast wander before returning him home. In just a minute or two, she came running into view without the mule. He'd stopped in the rain gully by the lane and refused to move. My daughter was convinced that he'd found gold and we should bring a shovel to dig at the spot. I was less optimistic. There's no gold in West Virginia. Todd willingly fetched the spade and, as a group, the whole family, even Theresa, hurried up the narrow road. Yes, there was thunder standing like a lawn ornament down in the deep drainage gully. It was overgrown with tall weeds and there was nothing in sight, not gold or anything else. Feeling manly, Todd took charge. He pushed the golden mule, back a few paces and stepped the point of the spade into the stony bed. There seemed to be nothing there, "phony jackass," I thought. Scratching around a few inches down, the boy uncovered something grayish white. Suddenly it was clear that it was a piece of bone. The girls gasped when they realized that it was part of a person's skull. What a mess this was going to be! When we realized that they were human remains, Rebecca, my wife, ran off the phone the police. On the way, she passed Thunder who, having caused a spiteful calamity, was calmly headed for his corn in the pony-barn. In West Virginia the police have a pretty relaxed approach to emergencies. They were in no particular hurry to get there, but after a while, one sputtered up the lane spraying gravel behind him. When he was assured that it was a human skull, but that we didn't know who it was, he radioed for the highway patrol. They weren't any faster to the scene. They were even less professional. Instead of preserving the scene for forensic examination, the cop poked around with the point of the shovel. He uncovered the jaw bone that went with the skull. Prominent in it was a gold molar. It excited the children into such a commotion, that I had to send them back to the house. The incident sealed Thunder's expertise as finder of anything. The cops wanted to know who found the remains and how. It was a difficult thing to explain. I simply said that our mule had wondered upon them. They didn't seem satisfied, but went about their business, such as it was. The investigation turned into a big deal the way cops like to do, so that they'll feel important. It wasn't until many hours later that a forensic detail had exposed all the bones and taken endless photos and measurements. The medical examiner who eventually showed up decided that the bones were those of an old man and they'd been in the ground for a long time, maybe twenty years. At length it turned out that the remains, gold tooth an all, were those of a black hobo who had disappeared not twenty years ago, but during the Second World War. It was assumed that he drown and that gravel washed in over his body. There being no foul-play and the death being so old, the cops lost interest and went back to sleep. At the first opportunity, I stormed to the pony-barn and gave the beast royal hell. As soon as I started shouting at the animal, reprimanding him for being so vindictively nasty, I felt really stupid. This was a mule, a dumb animal. He couldn't have been acting spitefully. I was making a fool of myself. Still, I Swear, if equine can smile, that's what Thunder was doing. It's called a fleer. Lisa had heard my tirade at her hero. She was appalled that I should scold the poor animal when he'd just done what I'd asked him to do. "He really is a golden mule now," she asserted. "He really did find some gold. You never told him not to find bones." "So find me something valuable," I sneered at the beast. Perhaps feeling a bit contrite over his nasty trick with the skeleton, Thunder promptly marched out in the paddock and stood under the gigantic pin oak which dominated the yard. "See," said Lisa, "he's sorry. He's found something good for you." "There's nothing there," I told the child. "The ground is bare." "You probably have to dig for it," she suggested. I couldn't believe my ears. She hadn't had enough digging? "What more do you want to uncover?" I asked. "A skeleton isn't enough for you?" As I wearily trudged up to the house, my daughter said she'd dig herself. Within the hour she brought a stone to the kitchen door. She had to drag it. It was too heavy for her to carry. She thought that it was a diamond even though I assured her that there are no diamonds in West Virginia. Certain that she had a treasure, Lisa carefully scrubbed the bolder. It turned out to be tri-color, gem quality tourmaline. It wasn't exactly a treasure, but it was valuable. In later years, Lisa had garishly large jewels cut from the specimen for everyone except me. She just knocked off a chunk of the black part of crystal to adorn my desk. Thereafter, I left Thunder alone. He was, in my estimation, a Pandora. The children, except for Tish, made him a pampered pet and he developed a local celebrity as a mighty useful tool for finding lost things. A mother from Grafton phoned near the of the summer asking to have Thunder look for her lost toddler. The boy turned up before the mule was put to the test. Who knows, he might have pulled off a real rescue. Throughout all this time, Theresa was disdainful of the golden mule. Then on Labor Day she surprised all of us. The kids from the school were having a picnic to observe the end of the summer. There was Theresa early in the morning cinching her pony saddle onto Thunder's back. Sure enough, wearing immodestly tight jeans and black boots, and carrying her picnic victuals in sacks draped over the mule's neck, my daughter trotted off down the lane for the picnic. Since the girl made no secret of how she disliked Thunder, I was mystified by her about-face on the animal. "Why would she suddenly decide to ride Thunder to a picnic?" I asked Rebecca expecting a woman to have some insight into female idiosyncrasies. "It must be something to do with boys," Rebecca advised, but she didn't know what. Early in the afternoon, we got a phone call. It was an angry mother, Mrs. Motley. Our daughter had allowed her vicious mule to attack her son, Raymond. The beast had knocked the boy down and stood over him like a hungry predator until a crowd of adults had been able to pull him back. Fortunately, he hadn't been injured. I imagined nothing but medical bills and law suits, but Rebecca said that I shouldn't worry. Now she understood the reason for the mule being taken to the picnic. "As an assassin?" I asked. "Don't be silly. He was finding your future son-in-law." Rebecca was right. Theresa had asked Thunder to find her an ideal husband. He picked Ray Motley. It took years, but the summer after her twenty-first birthday, our daughter married the kid. They've been together ever since. Maybe Thunder hadn't been sucha bad gift after all, but I think I'll wait for the grandchildren.