The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe

by A. Jeff Tisdale

  “We gotta keep an eye out behind us and in front of us for cars,” Jack cautioned. “These country folks drive pretty fast on these gravel roads and they may just run over us.”

  “Yeah—I’ll watch for clouds of dust behind us and you watch ahead,” Billy Joe added. “If either of us see one, we can get in the ditch and stop to make sure. I’ll pull my shirt up over my face to filter out the dust.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jack said. “I don’t think breathin’ dust is good for you.”

  “Not too many cars come out this way, though,” Jack said, “especially durin’ the week. They’re farmin’ in the daytime.”

  Their ride went well and fast along the hard, compacted ruts. They did make up that time Jack wanted to recover.

  The boys knew who lived in almost every house they passed and usually made some comment about the people living there.

  “You know, I never see Mr. Weems at his house,” Jack commented as they passed a white house with weeds grown up in the yard all around. “Wonder why he doesn’t keep up his house.”

  “He’s got TB I heard,” Billy Joe said. “It might be that he’s in the sanitarium by now.”

  Both boys had their own ideas about what happened in the TB sanitarium on the outskirts of town. They both knew people who had gone into the sanitarium and, for the most part, didn’t come out alive.

  These thoughts stayed with them until they got to the next house and were able to wave at the people sitting on the porch and to discuss them for a while. They both liked the boy, Harold. He was their age. He would come into town on Saturday afternoons with his folks. The kids would go to a Saturday double feature movie. He would sit on the front row and shoot his cap pistol at the bad guys.

  The next house, about a mile further along, was the Watkins house. They didn’t farm. Mr. Watkins owned a sawmill and had done very well shipping rough lumber to army camps during the war. He also had a reputation for drinking a lot on Saturday nights. He carried a pistol, or so it was said, and might just shoot up a roadhouse if somebody there upset him. He had spent a night or two in the county lockup. Talk was that he had killed a man once but Jack and Billy Joe didn’t know for sure if that was true.

  They continued out the road making good time. As they got within two or three miles of WOCO farm, they knew they would have to pedal up the three big hills leading to the farm.

  “I may just push my bike up the hills,” Jack said. “I remember last time. My legs got so tired they hurt for two days.”

  “My daddy said you gotta tear the muscles by usin’ ’em so they can grow back stronger and bigger,” Billy Joe said.

  “You think that’s right?” Jack asked.

  “If my daddy said it, it’s right,” Billy Joe said somewhat indignantly.

  “You gonna ride up the hills then?”

  “Depends how tired I am,” Billy Joe said. “If my legs start to cramp up, I’ll walk and push the bike. If I don’t cramp, I’ll ride.”

  The first hill was not very steep but it was long. It curved to the left. They both were able to pump the pedals up the hill without getting off. That hill flattened at the top before the next hill began. The second one was steeper. About halfway up, Billy Joe got off the bike and began to push. Jack tried to continue to pedal but he also got off.

  “No sense leaving you too far behind,” Jack said as he waited for Billy Joe to catch up.

  They reboarded their bikes at the top of the second hill and pumped up the third and smaller hill.

  About a quarter of a mile further, they saw the road to the right leading into the woods. The gate was open. Mr. Coleman probably opened it for the boys so they would know they were welcome. It also meant that he didn’t have any cattle grazing there that could escape through the gate.

  They rode through the gate and down the double rut road. The trees and brush on both sides were thick and looked impenetrable. Jack knew that was an illusion. Behind that seemingly impenetrable edge of brush where the sunlight couldn’t reach, the brush didn’t grow. It was easier to walk through the woods there.

  About a hundred yards from the road, they saw the tenant house.

  The boys pulled their bikes up to the porch and leaned them against it. Jack led the way up the steps, onto the porch and through the front door of the house.

  It was just as they had remembered it. It was a big room with two little rooms in the back and a back porch with steps going down into the yard. The whole house was built up on posts and was about five feet off the ground in the back. The well was in the center of the backyard and had a round rock wall around it with a roof structure over it sitting on posts built into the rock wall. A windlass was mounted between two of the posts and looked well used.

  “Let’s draw a bucket of water and see what it looks like,” Jack suggested.

  Billy Joe took the bucket off its hook and slowly lowered it into the well by the rope. The wooden bucket had a trapdoor that would open when it hit the water so it would sink and fill with water. When you turned the windlass and lifted the bucket, the water in the bucket forced the trapdoor closed and the bucket of water could be pulled to the top. When the bucket arrived at the top, they saw that the water was crystal clear and good for washing, cooking or drinking. They poured the water on the ground and not back into the well. No sense taking the chance of muddying the well.

  “You were all hot to go to the Indian mound and the creek,” Billy Joe said. “Let’s get to it.”

  “Okay, but I don’t want to leave our bikes and supplies out. You never know when somebody will come along and steal them,” Jack cautioned.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna come here but if you wanna make sure, let’s put the bikes and supplies under the porch in the back of the house. Nobody can see them easy there and we don’t have to unpack them except to get our fishing gear,” Billy Joe suggested.

  They took the fishing hooks, weights, bobbers and line out of the side pocket of their packs. They closed the packs and rolled the bikes to the back of the house and way up under the porch.

  The boys walked back down the rut road to and across the gravel road. They entered the woods on the other side on a well-used footpath. The path immediately turned downhill and the going was easy.

  About two hundred yards down the path and to their left they spotted the Indian mound. They took the smaller path toward the mound.

  Each boy went his own way searching for arrowheads and they each found some.

  “How is it,” wondered Billy Joe, “that every time we come out here, we pick up all the arrowheads and the next time there’s more?”

  “My daddy said that he thinks the Indians used the dirt and gravel from the bottom of the hill near the creek to make the mound,” Jack said. “That dirt and gravel was taken from the same place the Indians had been chipping out arrowheads. Some of the arrowheads broke into pieces or the finished arrowhead was not good enough to suit them so they threw them away. The broken arrowheads and flint pieces were in the gravel they made the mound out of.”

  “That sounds right to me but why do we find all there are to find and the next time there’s more?”

  “Daddy says that when it rains, it uncovers more,” Jack completed his explanation.

  Happy with that theory, both boys kept looking for arrowheads.

  After a while, Jack noticed that the shadows were lengthening. He figured it was about two thirty or three o’clock.

  “We about got our pockets full of arrowheads and it’s getting late,” he said. “Let’s go on down to the creek and see if we can catch some bream or perch for supper.”

  “Yeah—I got some pretty good arrowheads this time,” Billy Joe bragged. “This is gonna fill up my arrowhead cigar box.”

  They went back to the main trail and continued on down the hill. Within a short distance they came to the creek.

  They found an old tin can that would hold their bait and looked for dead trees that had been lying in the woods and had begun to rot. Pulling the ba
rk off, they uncovered “sawyers,” a cellulose-eating grub-like insect. They put as many of these in the can as they needed for bait.

  Both boys started looking for fishing poles from the small trees in the woods. Each found one to his liking and cut it off and trimmed it up with his pocketknife.

  Billy Joe was fishing first, mainly because he didn’t try to trim his pole to perfection as Jack did. Jack had also cut a strong piece of vine and trimmed it up, leaving one three-inch branch on the large end. That was to be used for a fish stringer.

  Billy Joe hooked a small bream and brought it in. Jack handed him the stringer, on which he threaded the fish and pulled it down to the short branch on the end. He stuck the stringer vine in the clay bank and let the fish dangle in the water to keep it alive.

  Jack had his line in the water now and had hooked one of his own.

  For two hours they continued this until they had a good string of fish.

  “Let’s get back to the house,” Jack said. “It’ll be dark by the time we do and we need to get a fire goin’.”

  They rolled up their line on the end of their poles and secured their hooks so they wouldn’t catch on limbs on the way back. They kept the poles because they decided they might fish again in the morning.

  Both boys were getting pretty tired. All they really wanted to do was to have some supper and go to bed. They walked up the hill to the road in a hurry, crossed it and started down the rut road to the house.

  “Woooo, ha, ha, ha!” came a sound from the house as they approached it.

  They stopped dead in their tracks.

  “What was that?” Billy Joe whispered.

  “Sounded like somebody laughin’,” Jack speculated. “Let’s ease up to the porch and see if we can tell.”

  As they got nearer the porch, they could hear men’s voices and they seemed to be laughing and joking. They had started a fire in the fireplace and it was lighting the room with flickering light. “I wish I had my sergeant right now,” one of them said. “I’d wring that scrawny Yankee’s neck. He didn’t know nothin’ but army by the book.”

  Jack and Billy Joe eased to their left, being careful not to be seen by the men. To the left of the steps, they had a pretty good view of the room and the three men in it.

  “Who are they?” Billy Joe whispered.

  “Bums, I ’spect,” Jack said. “They’re probably deserters from the army goin’ from farm to farm lookin’ for whatever work they can get.”

  “There’s a lot more work in town. Why don’t they go there?” Billy Joe asked.

  “’Cause there’s also police in towns.”

  “Yeah, I see whatcha mean.”

  “You think they’ll hurt us?” Billy Joe wondered.

  “I’ve heard tell that these deserters will kill you and bury you in the woods to keep you from tellin’ on ’em,” Jack said.

  “What we gonna do?” Billy Joe asked.

  Jack motioned to Billy Joe to follow him and they moved to the back of the house and under the back porch.

  Joe found a leather thong, like a shoelace, hanging on a nail. He took it down and tested it for strength by pulling it with his hands. It was strong. There were several empty cans sitting on the sill under the porch. Jack selected one that was about half-gallon size.

  He motioned for Billy Joe to follow him and moved to the woods at the back of the yard.

  Out of easy earshot of the house, Billy Joe whispered, “What are we gonna do?” repeating himself.

  “They don’t sound real smart to me,” Jack said. “I think we can scare them out.”

  “How you gonna scare three grown men out of that house?” Billy Joe asked.

  “With noises from ‘haints’ beyond the grave,” Jack said with a smile.

  “Where you gonna get the ‘haint’ from?”

  “Right here in this can,” Jack explained. He put the can on the ground upside down and with his pocketknife, he cut a small cross in the bottom. He pulled the leather thong through the hole and tied a knot in it.

  “Now, when I pull this leather shoelace, I’ll get the voice of a haint.”

  “What’m I gonna do?” Billy Joe asked.

  “We’re gonna get you some noisemakers too.” Jack smiled.

  “Like what?”

  Jack retrieved his fishing pole that they had stashed in a tree. With his pocketknife, he split the base of the pole about two feet up.

  “Now when you hold the pole by its little end and swish it up and down it will make a whap, whap, whap noise. In the dark it will sound like gunshots. And I’ve got one more toy lined up for them.”

  Jack moved back to the porch and picked up a short chain he had seen. He also took a ball of stout string from the sill. Moving to the end of the porch, he tied the string to the end of the chain. Moving down the porch toward the other end, he unrolled the string and placed it behind each roof support post as he came to them. At the end of the porch he continued to unroll the string across the yard and into the woods.

  “Now—I’ll go to the other side of the house and into woods,” Jack explained. “On the way, I’ll put some rocks in the can and take them with me. When I get to my place, I’ll pour the rocks on the ground and pull the leather thong a little bit. When you hear that, you start flapping the split pole. I’ll pull the thong some more and throw some rocks up on the tin roof. You pull the string so the chain comes up on the porch and pull it real slow across the back porch. Whatever you do, don’t come out of the woods.”

  “This had better work or they’re gonna kill us,” Billy Joe said.

  “Okay, let’s try it,” Jack said, moving off to his post.

  It seemed forever to Billy Joe that he waited in the woods for Jack’s signal.

  “Uhhhh.” A deep, throaty sound came from somewhere out in the dark.

  Billy Joe flapped the split pole, “whap, whap, whap,” and he heard the rocks on the roof, “bang, bang, bang, rattle, rattle,” followed by the deep, throaty “uhhhhhhh.” He whap, whap, whapped with the pole with his left hand and pulled the string with his right. For a minute, he thought the chain was going to stick when it pulled up on the wooden porch but it didn’t. It made the indescribable sound of chain pulled across the rough plank floor of the porch.

  Nobody came out of the house to see what the sounds were but after about fifteen seconds, all three men came running out of the door, across the porch and down the steps three at a time. At the rut road they kept running to the gravel road and to parts unknown.

  After about two minutes, Billy Joe heard Jack softly ask, “Billy Joe, you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Are they gone for sure?”

  “I think so but we better be careful and go see,” Jack cautioned.

  “Go see—are you crazy?” Billy Joe almost yelled.

  “We won’t walk up the road,” Jack explained. “We’ll go up through the woods. We’ve got a good moon so we can see where we’re goin’ in the woods.”

  They scouted the big road, watched it for a while and decided the men had gone to safer places.

  Back in the tenant house, the fire the men had made was still burning and there was a stack of firewood they had brought in stacked beside the fireplace.

  “All we gotta do is clean the fish,” Jack said.

  “I’m not gonna clean fish,” Billy Joe proclaimed. “I’m too tired.”

  “Lazy, you mean,” Jack scolded. “Tell you what then. You draw me a bucket of water and pour it into the pan and I’ll clean the fish and cook them.”

  Agreeing to that, Billy Joe walked to the well and lowered the bucket.

  Jack quickly scaled, gutted and cut the heads off the fish. When he finished, the bucket of water was sitting on the side of the well. Jack poured water in the pan and swished the cleaned fish about. He laid the fish out on a clean board, rinsed the pan, put the fish back into the pan and gave them their final wash with the remaining water,

  Jack put a skillet on the fire and put in a blob
of lard and watched it start to melt. He took out the four ears of corn, wet them down and placed them in the coals to the side of the fire. His mother had already pulled the shucks back and removed the corn silks and resealed the corn with the shucks. He needed to remember to turn the ears of corn from time to time. He opened his brown paper bag of cornmeal and dropped in the fish. After shaking the bag vigorously, he removed the cornmealed pieces of fish and put them in the skillet. There was an immediate smell of frying fish.

  “Uh, uh,” Billy Joe said. “I’m ready now. That does smell good.”

  “You got two ears of corn and five or six fish to eat,” Jack said. “Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, and the plate you’re puttin’ them in.”

  After turning the corn three times and the fish twice, Jack announced it was ready to eat.

  The boys did themselves proud and finished it all. Each ate a couple of cookies Jack’s mother had put in.

  The boys cleaned up after they ate and decided to turn in.

  The rest of the night was uneventful.

  In the morning, they decided not to go fishing again. They ate a breakfast of biscuits that Billy Joe’s mother had baked and salt pork that Jack thinly sliced, soaked for a few minutes to wash out some of the salt and fried to a brown crispness. It was good on the biscuits and both boys ate several.

  Having had plenty of sleep and no desire to go fishing and their pockets full of arrowheads, they decided to go home.

  The three hills were easy in this direction. Their only problem was not to go too fast and fall in that gravel road. That would hurt.

  They navigated the hills safely and made the ride back to US11 in record time. At the south entrance to the junior college, the boys parted to go to their own homes.

  Jack parked his bike behind the house and went in the back door. His mother was in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Jack,” she greeted him. “Y’all have a good time?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

  “What did y’all do?”

  “We caught a lot of fish, cleaned, cooked and ate them and found lots of arrowheads for my collection. We got to bed early so when we got up this morning, we decided to come on home early.”