Trouble on the Tombigbee

by Ted M. Dunagan

  “I think so. It just knocked me dizzy.”

  “Can you get up?”

  “In just a minute,” I said as I tried to clear my head.

  “If you can’t, tell me, and I’ll carry you ’cause we don’t need to keep piddling around here.”

  “You think we left him?”

  “For a little while, but he won’t quit, and he could come busting through them bushes any time now,” Poudlum said as he pulled me to my feet.

  With his help, we made it over to the big tree, where I leaned up against the giant trunk of it trying to get my senses back.

  What cleared my mind was a swishing sound, a flash of something spinning in the air, and the sudden thud as Mr. Kim’s murderous blade struck the trunk of the tree, where it stuck and stood vibrating with a low humming sound an inch from my head.

  It not only cleared my mind, but also sent us dashing like the wind for the river’s edge. We crashed into the underbrush, and there was his boat, our chariot to safety. As we flung ourselves into it. Poudlum snatched the tie rope loose and pushed us off.

  I was still slightly dazed, and Poudlum had to encourage me. “Grab a paddle and pull! He’ll be coming at us any second now!”

  Poudlum’s words proved true a split-second later as Mr. Kim burst from the bushes and dove straight into the water.

  He had retrieved his weapon, and as we stared in horror, he stood waist deep in the water and once more launched his wicked blade at us.

  I saw the flash of the sun’s reflection on the long steel shaft as it came twirling straight toward us.

  Chapter 16

  The Bridge

  Poudlum and I dived for the bottom of the boat just before Mr. Kim’s knife split the air between us and stuck in one of the paddles leaning against the side of the boat where Poudlum had dropped it.

  We looked back from our prone positions and saw it stuck in the paddle, quivering like a leaf in a strong wind.

  For just a moment, we were frozen there gazing at the dagger of death which had come so close to finding its target. Then I heard splashing sounds and peeked over the side of the boat. I just about jumped out of my skin because I was eyeball to eyeball with Mr. Kim!

  His hand was reaching out and was within inches of the rail of the boat. Then I felt us move away from him slightly. I looked back and saw that Poudlum had extracted the knife and was putting the paddle to use.

  “Come on and help me!” he yelled.

  The last thing I saw in Mr. Kim’s eyes was what I perceived to be a look of panic. I supposed it was because he realized we were getting away, and he had no means left of stopping us.

  To make sure his feelings were accurate, I snatched up a paddle and helped move the boat away from him.

  He was a good swimmer, and he stayed with us for a while although we kept widening the gap.

  “That man can swim just as good as he can paddle,” Poudlum observed. “You think he gonna swim all the way to Jackson?”

  “Can’t nobody swim that far, Poudlum. But I do have to say they ain’t no quit in that man.”

  In about twenty minutes, he was a good fifty yards behind us, but he just kept coming. Pretty soon he was just a dot on the horizon, and we took a break from paddling when we saw him turn and head toward the riverbank.

  “Looks like he’s finally giving up,” I said.

  “I doubt that,” Poudlum said.

  “Why you say that?”

  “’Cause not only are we witnesses to his act of murder, we also got the murder weapon.” Poudlum said as he picked up the long knife from the bottom of the boat.

  “What else can he do?”

  “He could travel along the riverbank by foot and try to catch us,” Poudlum told me.

  I thought about that and told Poudlum I thought he would probably hightail it back down to Mobile and take one of them boats to China himself. But just in case, we started paddling again.

  After a while, Poudlum started rummaging around in the bottom of the boat and came up with two cans of beans. We opened one with a pocket knife and shared it. We wanted to eat the other one but forced ourselves to save it for later.

  “Shore would like to have a proper meal,” Poudlum said as he polished off his share of the beans. “How far you ’spect it is up to the bridge in Jackson?”

  “Can’t be too much further. We ought to make it before nightfall.”

  “You reckon Mr. Curvin gonna be there?”

  “He’s probably been there since yesterday. And I bet there’s folks out looking for us.”

  “Yeah, but they won’t be looking down below the bridge. They’ll be looking up above it towards Coffeeville.”

  “Then let’s get to paddling and get on up to that bridge,” I told Poudlum.

  “What if ain’t nobody there when we get there?”

  “Then we’ll just walk on up to Grove Hill.”

  We labored hard over the paddles, but when the sun dropped below the trees on the left bank, there was still no sign of the bridge. Twilight came and then darkness descended upon us.

  “I guess that storm blew us a lot farther downriver than we thought,” Poudlum lamented.

  We paddled in darkness for a while, using the dark outlines of the banks of the river to stay in the middle of it. Finally the moon came up, and it wasn’t quite so dark and dreary out on the river anymore. We no longer paddled with intensity, just steadily and smoothly.

  “Kind of nice and peaceful out here right now,” Poudlum said softly. “This is about the first time during this whole trip we ain’t been rushing after catfish, running from the Klan, being captured by bootleggers, or chased by a murdering slaver.”

  “And yet here we are, safe and sound,” I told him.

  “Still powerful hungry and thirsty though.”

  “We won’t be much longer.”

  “What you talking about? All we got between us and starvation is a can of beans.”

  “Look up yonder,” I told him, pointing upriver with my paddle.

  It was a ways up there yet, but there it was, soaring in a beautiful arch, high above the river. It was the bridge over the Tombigbee at Jackson.

  “Praise the Lord!” Poudlum said. “There she is, and a right beautiful sight she is, too.”

  I thought the same thing, and wished I was an artist so I could paint the way the moonlight danced across and through the steel girders of the structure as it loomed over a stream of silver, bordered on each side by dark mansions of forests.

  While I was concentrating on the bridge, I noticed a flickering dot of light under the bridge’s abutment on the east side.

  “Look over yonder, Poudlum! You see that light?”

  “Uh-huh, I see it, and I believe it’s a fire.”

  “I believe you are right. Let’s ease over that way and see whose fire it is.”

  “All right,” Poudlum agreed. “But let’s go slow and easy and not let ’em know we here till we see who lit that blaze. It could be the Klan or that murdering Mr. Kim.”

  “Not likely,” I told him. “But we’ll still approach ’em with care.”

  We got close enough so we could see the flickering reflection of the fire out on the water. That’s when we heard somebody say, “I’ll guarantee you them boys gonna show up sooner or later.”

  “Well, bless my soul,” Poudlum said. “I do believe that is Mr. Curvin.”

  “It sure is,” I reassured him. “I think we gonna be all right now. But before we show ourselves, we got to decide what we gonna do.”

  “Do about what?”

  “About what we’ve seen concerning the Klan and the murder, what we gonna say, and who we’ll be saying it to.”

  Just minutes later, we paddled into the light of the fire, knowing exactly what we were going to do.

  My uncle and se
veral others had their backs to the water, facing their fire, and they were all startled when I called out across the water, “Hey, Uncle Curvin!”

  He hobbled down to the river’s edge, looked out at us like he couldn’t believe his eyes, and said, “Praise be to the Lord, it’s y’all! It’s Poudlum and Ted, everybody!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Are y’all all right? Paddle on in here, boys!”

  When the bow of the boat slid up on the muddy shore, eager hands reached out to help us off the boat. Someone said, “Come on up to the fire so we can see you good, boys.”

  Once there, my uncle looked us up and down, and felt our arms and shoulders before he said, “Why, y’all don’t seem no worse for the wear.”

  “We powerful hungry,” Poudlum said.

  “Figured you would be,” Uncle Curvin said. “They’s a big sack of ham and biscuits over here. Y’all sit down on this here log and eat all you want. They’s a jug of fresh water here, too.”

  While Poudlum and I were moaning and rolling our eyes at each other as we devoured the biscuits and ham, Uncle Curvin dispatched two men to go up the river and alert everyone we were okay.

  After they left in a motorboat with lights, my uncle said, “Y’all’s folks are up at the ferry in Coffeeville. We been going up and down the river between here and there all day long looking for you boys, but nobody could find no sign of you.”

  “That’s because we were down the river,” I told him as I finished off another biscuit.

  “Yeah, way down the river,” Poudlum added.

  “Down the river? Y’all mean below Jackson, down toward Mobile?”

  “Yes, sir,” I told him.

  “What y’all doing down that way? Henry told me you was gonna meet me here.”

  “We started out doing that, but we got caught up in the flood water after that big rain,” I told him.

  Poudlum continued while I bit into another biscuit. “That’s right, Mr. Curvin. Then it got dark on us, I mean pitch black, and this big old river just had its way with us, and the next thing we knew, we woke up in the top of a fallen-down tree top yesterday morning.”

  He gave us a toothless grin as we grinned back at him, just before he moved off to thank and disperse his friends. I heard him instruct the men to tell mine and Poudlum’s folks that we were all right and we would all sleep at my house tonight.

  In a few minutes there was no one left under the bridge except the three of us, and the fire was getting dim. Poudlum and I looked at each other and nervously eyed the tree line down the river. It was comforting to have my uncle with us, but we both knew he wouldn’t be a match for Mr. Kim.

  “Let’s get on out of here,” I told Poudlum.

  “Sounds good, but we ought to take the boat.”

  “How come?”

  “If he does make it here through the woods, we don’t want to leave him a ride down the river to Mobile.”

  Poudlum was right of course, plus I figured Mr. Kim owed us a boat because we could have saved ours if not for him.

  “We can get it later,” Uncle Curvin said when I told him we wanted to take the boat.

  “No, sir, if you don’t mind, we would like to take it tonight.”

  “All right then. Let’s load her up on the back of the truck.”

  We dragged and heaved and finally slid the boat on the back of my uncle’s truck. When we finished, I noticed him shining his flashlight up and down the boat.

  “Wait a minute, boys, I don’t believe this is my boat. Why, I know it’s not because it’s a good two feet longer.”

  “Uh, we made a trade down the river, Mr. Curvin,” Poudlum told him.

  “Well, did you have to give anything to boot? If not, it looks like you made a good trade.”

  “Can we just please get out of here, Uncle Curvin?” I said.

  “Yes, sir, we ready to get away from this river, Mr. Curvin,” Poudlum added.

  “All right then, boys. Y’all hop in the truck.”

  Poudlum and I watched the dark edge of the woods until the truck got up to the main road, and we breathed huge sighs of relief when my uncle shifted into first gear and we headed up Highway 43 toward Grove Hill.

  Uncle Curvin broke the silence when he said, “Henry told me about the trouble you boys run into. Y’all want to talk to me about it?”

  “You ain’t told nobody else, have you?” I asked.

  “Naw, I didn’t want y’all’s folks upset anymore than they was. Besides, we got to be careful in matters concerning the Klan. I think I can square things with them boys for y’all if we plan real careful.”

  Neither Poudlum nor I said a word.

  “So, do y’all want to tell me about what happened?”

  “Not now,” I told him. “We just too tired.”

  With that, we both settled down in the seat pretending we were going to sleep. Then pretense turned into reality, and we descended into a deep sleep, feeling safe and warm for the first time in a while.

  Uncle Curvin and Poudlum stayed at my house that night. My uncle got my bed, and my mother made Poudlum and me a pallet on the floor.

  We woke up to wonderful, mouthwatering aromas coming from the kitchen. Poudlum poked me and in a gravelly morning voice said, “You smell that?”

  After breakfast, everybody went off to work, that is after we listened to lectures on “staying off that river.”

  Uncle Curvin, Poudlum, and I were sitting out on the front porch while my uncle was sipping on his third cup of coffee. We were sharpening our pocket knives, and we cast a glance at each other, knowing what was coming.

  After a loud sip from his coffee cup, Uncle Curvin said, “Boys, I intend to intercede on your behalf with the Klan, but first I got to know the details of what happened.”

  We remained silent and just kept scraping the blades of our knives on the whetrocks.

  “Well,” he said. “Y’all got anything to say?”

  I looked up at him and said, “We want to go see our lawyer.”

  Chapter 17

  Telling Secrets

  My uncle just about choked on his coffee. When he recovered, he said, “Y’all want to do what?”

  “We want you to take us to see our lawyer,” I repeated.

  He leaned forward in his rocking chair, set his coffee cup on the porch rail, and said, “You talking about Mr. Alfred Jackson?”

  “Yep, he’s our lawyer,” Poudlum confirmed.

  “Wh-wh-why?” Uncle Curvin stuttered. “Mr. Jackson is an important and busy man. I’m not sure he’ll drop what he’s doing and talk to you boys.”

  “He will,” I told him.

  “And what makes you so sure about that?”

  “After he invested our reward money from the bank, he told us if we ever needed his help to call on him anytime.”

  “That’s exactly what he said,” Poudlum added.

  I could tell my uncle was tossing all this around in his head because he got quiet for a few moments. Then he said, real serious-like, “This is something that’s real important to you boys?”

  “Yes, sir.” I told him. “It ain’t just the Klan. It’s also about something that happened down the river. And I ain’t talking no more about it till we get to see Mr. Jackson.”

  He got up from the rocking chair and paced across the porch a few times while he thought about what we had said, “All right, y’all get in the truck.”

  When we had parked outside of Mr. Jackson’s office, my uncle got out of his truck and said, “Y’all wait here while I go tell Mr. Jackson y’all want to see him.”

  We watched him limp up the stairs on the side of the Bank of Grove Hill, which led up to Mr. Jackson’s office on the second floor. We kept our gaze on the little landing at the top of the stairs, and he hadn’t been in there hardly any time before he reappeared on the landing and wav
ed for us to come on up.

  “Told him,” Poudlum said.

  Mr. Jackson had a large room adjacent to his office with a big round table in it surrounded by polished chairs with leather seats. He called it his conference room.

  He motioned us toward it and said, “You fellows take a seat. Now, do you boys want Mr. Curvin to sit in with us, or is this going to be strictly a meeting between us?”

  “Uh, yes, sir. I think it would be all right for him to be here.”

  He looked at Poudlum, who said, “That’s fine by me, too.”

  “Very good,” he said as he also waved my uncle into the conference room.

  When we were all seated, Mr. Jackson placed a pad of paper and some pencils in front of him, looked up and said, “Mr. Curvin seems to think you boys have had a troubling experience in the past few days down on the river. You want to tell me about it? Just start at the beginning and when one of you gets tired of talking, then let the other one take over.”

  I started out about how we had walked down to the river and ended up camping that night at the mouth of the Satilfa and how we had caught a boatload of catfish.

  “I’ll have to remember that spot next time I go fishing,” Mr. Jackson said. “Go on, what happened next?”

  I related how we spied the Klan men going up the creek and how we had followed them and snuck through the woods and saw the Exalted Cyclops unmask himself.

  “Wait a minute, son,” Mr. Jackson said. “Are you telling me y’all saw the leader of the Klan reveal his identity?”

  “Yes, sir, we surely did.”

  “Have you related this information to anyone else?

  “No, sir, we didn’t because we wanted your advice before we did, or if we should.”

  Mr. Jackson seemed lost in thought for a moment or two. Then he said, “Do y’all know of any reason why you shouldn’t reveal his identity?”

  I was about talked out so I motioned for Poudlum to take over, who said, “No, sir, but we don’t know of any reason why we should, either. They chased us up and down the river and who knows what they would have done to us if they had caught us.”