The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe

by A. Jeff Tisdale

Jack took the machete from its scabbard and walked back up the trail to a stand of gum and laurel trees. He selected two that were big enough to do the job but not too big for the boys to handle. The sharp machete made quick work of cutting the gum trees and then Jack went to work on “skinning” the limbs off the trunk so it would be a pole and not a tree.

  Refloating sunken boats was not a new experience for the boys. Rain will sink a boat if enough falls in it. Some people even sink their own boat to discourage others from stealing it.

  This one just seemed to be stuck tighter to the bottom than most.

  The boys walked back out into the water beside the boat where they had been before.

  “Let’s both try to stick our poles under the boat to break the suction,” Jack suggested. “After you have the pole under the boat, move it around as much as you can. When we’ve done all that we can, we’ll try prying it over with the poles.”

  Both boys did that. The poles inserted in the soft mud fairly easily and they were able to move them around. They hoped that was enough.

  “Okay, put your pole under the boat straight across to the other side and let’s see if we can roll it over,” Jack again directed.

  “I’ll count to three,” Billy Joe said. “One, two, three,” and they both lifted at once. The boat moved a little and then it seemed to break loose, turned on its side and finally, all the way over.

  “Yeah,” Jack exclaimed. “We got it.”

  “Now comes the hard work—pullin’ the water-soaked thing out onto the bank. Let’s get to it.”

  Jack got behind the stern and pushed while Billy Joe was at the front lifting and pulling. Each time they pushed and pulled, the boat would move a few inches until they had it out of the water.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” Billy Joe asked.

  “No, what?”

  “Mr. Myrick is a sorta lazy feller. I bet he knew this boat was under water and was happy for us to come along. We just did all the work and now he can use his boat. I’m not sure that one man could have done this.”

  Jack and Billy Joe sat silent for a minute thinking about that.

  Jack finally said, “It wasn’t all that much work and now we have the use of his boat.”

  The boys let the boat remain upside down to completely dry while they had a bite of early lunch. Then they rolled it over until the flat bottom was down and eased it back into the water. The fishing and camping stuff was all removed from their bicycles and carefully placed in the boat.

  “We gonna carry the bicycles in the boat too?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Naw, let’s find a place off the trail to hide ’em. We don’t have room for those bikes and we, for sure, don’t have a use for them on that sandbar where we camp.”

  Seeing that everything had been hidden or stowed, the boys eased the boat away from the bank and headed for their favorite sandbar.

  The river was fairly clear. The Leaf River doesn’t have that tea color of tannin that many southern rivers do. Its water is not from the outflow of swamps where the water “cooks” the color out of the vegetation in the water.

  The boys landed the boat on “their” sandbar and looked it over. The bar was never the same as they had seen it before. This time, it had a flat top up next to the tree line of the woods. Then it sloped down to another flat place and finally, gently on down to the water’s edge.

  “Hey, this is pretty good this time. The sand is nice and clean and the bar has two flat places, top and middle,” Jack noted. “And we can drink water right out of the river if we boil it first.”

  “Yeah, looks too good.” Billy Joe added his negative words. “Wonder what’s gonna go wrong?”

  “Nothin’ is gonna go wrong unless you make it go wrong.”

  “I don’t never ‘make’ anything go wrong. It just does,” Billy Joe corrected.

  The boys got busy unloading the boat and securing it so it wouldn’t float away. One boat had floated away from them before and they were stuck on a sandbar for two days until other fishermen came along. That was not fun.

  They moved all the camping gear up to the top flat place and the fishing gear to the middle level.

  Jack inspected the three trotlines to make sure they hadn’t deteriorated since he had made them up about a year ago. They had never been in the water and they looked as good as when Jack had rolled each of them up on a dowel. It should be easy to pull the boat up to a stout tree at the water’s edge, tie on one end of the trotline. Then one of the boys would paddle the boat across the river to a point directly opposite to tie the trotline to another tree, leaving all the hanging lines under water. As they played the trotline out across the river, each hook would be baited with the chicken gizzards and hearts. The second time the lines were checked, any fish caught were removed and put in the live well on the boat. This boat had a very large live well so they could catch a lot of catfish.

  “How many times we gonna run the trotlines?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Some say when you have three or more trotlines out, you run them all night on a rotational basis,” Jack said. “Then there are those who say you run them every three to four hours all night long. I think ever three to four hours is enough. More than that will, to my way of thinkin’, disturb the big river catfish and make them more wary of our lines.”

  “Somebody told you that, didn’t they?” Billy Joe said as if that made it any less true.

  “Yeah, Uncle Red, and I believe him.”

  “Well if Uncle Red said it, I believe it too,” Billy Joe conceded.

  “I hope you remembered to bring your headlight,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, I did and the carbide for it too.” Billy Joe confirmed.

  “Without those lights to run our trotlines, we might as well have stayed at home.”

  “How come they call them trotlines?” Billy Joe asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “I asked my daddy that and he told me that he had heard that under the water, the little hanging lines look like a dog trotting. He wouldn’t vouch for that but it sounded right to me.”

  “Billy Joe thought about it for a few seconds and finally said, “Sounds reasonable to me too.”

  The boys busied themselves with camp chores, especially gathering a big pile of firewood before dark. Neither boy wanted to be stumbling around in the dark in those woods looking for wood. Driftwood was plentiful but they just needed to gather it together. They did and made a pile of wood that would last them for a week. The boys were not lazy, although each accused the other of it.

  “We gonna keep the fire going all night?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Well, I hear tell that there are bobcats in these woods,” Jack informed. “They won’t come out on the sandbar if we keep a fire goin’. They’re afraid of fire.”

  “Let’s keep the fire goin’ all night,” Billy Joe suggested.

  “Yeah, let’s do,” Jack agreed.

  “I wish we had brought those two poles I cut over on the other bank,” Jack said.

  “What’cha need poles for?” Billy Joe asked.

  “We need some kinda poles for the seine when we try to catch minnows.”

  “Oh, but we don’t need poles as thick as those were, do we?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Nah, I guess not,” Jack said, taking the machete out of its sheath. He went out into the woods and cut two poles about half the size of the ones he had cut before.

  Billy Joe checked them out and proclaimed them good and tied on the seine to both poles.

  “What time do you think we need to put the trotlines out?” Billy Joe asked.

  “We don’t want to put them out too early while it is still daylight. The bream, trout and other daytime fish will eat all our bait. The catfish come out after dark and the smaller fish go to shallow water. That’s why we wait until after dark to seine for the minnows. The minnows come to the shallow water of the sandbars to stay away from the catfish at night.”

  “So when then?” Billy Joe persisted.
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  “We need to watch the sun and use as much of it was we can. It’s still better to see by the sun than by our headlights,” Jack said. “What would be good is if we can finish baiting our first trotline just as we have to turn on our lights. That way we could use as much sunlight as possible.”

  “Sounds good,” Billy Joe agreed. “Let’s do that.”

  The boys got busy preparing for sunset. They modified their plans somewhat when they decided it would be best to bait the trotline further upstream first. They could then float back to the second and third trotlines more easily.

  At just the right time, the boys were well prepared and pushed the boat away from the sandbar to paddle upstream.

  They selected a good place for the uppermost trotline. Billy Joe paddled to hold the boat in the right position parallel to the river, pointed upstream. Jack tied the end of the trotline to a well-secured tree and Billy Joe started to move the boat across the river, holding it parallel to the river’s flow. Jack baited each hook on the down line and moved on to the next. In the middle, he tied an old broken plow point to the main line to make it sink to the bottom when it was released.

  After the first line and been baited and released, they lighted their headlights and moved on to repeat the procedure on the second and third lines.

  After they had finished and had pulled the boat up on the sandbar, Billy Joe collapsed on the sand, completely drained.

  “The next time you can paddle while I bait the hooks,” Billy Joe insisted.

  “Okay,” Jack agreed. He knew that on the next runs, the paddling job would be the easiest job since the line tied on both sides of the river would hold the boat back with little help from the person with the paddle.

  They built a good fire and cooked some supper. Jack was the best cook so he had that honor.

  After supper, they rested. Their next chore would be to seine the sandbar for minnows to be used as bait on the next trotline run. They wanted to wait until the last moment to catch the minnows. They planned to use the live well for catfish caught and they couldn’t put the bait in with the catfish. They planned to catch the minnows, put them in a small bucket they had brought to keep them alive just long enough to get them to a hook. They would seine the sandbar just before going to run the trotlines each time. A good plan.

  The boys planned to take turns dropping off to sleep between runs. One boy would stay awake each time and the other would sleep. That was not so much to act as guards but to make sure they ran the lines on time. Another good plan. However, neither boy wanted to sleep on the first round.

  When they thought it was time—they didn’t have a watch—each boy picked up a seine pole and they stood at the water’s edge. Jack said, “Go,” and they both ran out into the water and put both ends of the seine down when Jack said, “Now.”

  Keeping a good arc in the seine, they slowly walked back to the shore. They were amazed to find that they had caught hundreds of minnows. One pass of the seine was all it would take. They had fifty hooks on each main line and three main lines so they needed 150 minnows. They had more than that.

  They got in the boat and both boys paddled upstream to the first trotline.

  Jack took over the paddling duties to hold the boat straight and level while Billy Joe took off the catfish and rebaited with the minnows. The main line lay right across the boat so Billy Joe would pull the boat by the big line to the next down line, take off the fish and bait it and move on, doing the same to each down line all the way across. Again, Jack had the easy job.

  On the first run, they caught five fair-sized catfish. Billy Joe estimated them to be from three to five pounds. That was more than they expected to catch on the first run. Usually the runs around midnight are the best when you catch more and bigger fish.

  The boys decided to run the lines at about midnight, again at about 3 AM and the last one at about 6 AM. At the rate they were going, they would have too many fish to carry anyway.

  That started both boys to thinking some fried fish would be good right now. They picked a fat catfish that was about four pounds. Jack put his special bucket of cooking grease on the fire after stoking up the fire with more wood. Billy Joe took the job of cleaning the fish.

  By the time Billy Joe had the catfish cleaned, Jack had a bucket of hot grease and cornmeal to dredge the fish filets in. Jack had salted the corn meal before they left home so he didn’t have to salt the fish.

  Jack lightly dredged the fish in the cornmeal and dropped each piece into the hot grease and they watched it. As the pieces began to float, they knew that it was about done.

  There were four large pieces. As Jack took them out of the grease, he put two on each plate. They smelled wonderful.

  While they were eating, Billy Joe said, “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Jack asked.

  “It sounded like a baby crying.”

  “There ain’t no houses close around here where they would have a baby,” Jack put him off.

  “I know what I heard,” Billy Joe insisted. “It might not have been a baby but that’s what it sounded like.”

  They ate their fish and Billy Joe didn’t hear the sound again.

  Both boys agreed that they would throw all their food trash toward the downriver side. The river would do whatever it wanted with those things and not leave a mess.

  After they had eaten and disposed of their trash, they decided that it was time to seine more minnows and go run the lines again.

  Jack was not sure that there would be as many minnows on the sandbar this time as there had been the first time, but there were.

  As they paddled the boat up the river, there was a sound that they both heard unmistakably. “REEEOWRRRR.” It had the high-pitched sound of a baby but it would not be mistaken for a baby’s cry this time. The second time they heard it, it seemed to be moving downriver on the same side as their camp.

  “I’m glad I put more wood on that fire before we left camp,” Jack said.

  “Can them things swim?” Billy Joe asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘them things’? Do you know what it is?”

  “We were talking about a bobcat before so I just assumed that was what it is,” Billy Joe confessed.

  “It might be a bobcat but it might be a bird or an alligator or a wild hog for all we know.” Jack explained it away. “Anyway, we got a fire so it ain’t gonna go near our camp.”

  They didn’t hear anything for a few minutes so the boys assumed it was gone and continued on their trotline run. They caught so many catfish this time that Billy Joe was afraid that they were not going to have enough space in the live well to hold them, but they did.

  The boys made it back to the camp without hearing that chilling sound.

  They pulled the boat up on the sandbar. Jack looked around to see if they had had visitors while they were gone. He didn’t find any strange tracks on the sandbar but just as he finished looking, terror went through both boys as “REEEEOWRRRR” filled the woods.

  After a moment’s hesitation, they both ran for the water. Jack pushed the boat back into the water but Billy Joe decided to swim for it—splash he went in the water.

  Jack kept his head and yelled at Billy Joe, “Jump in the boat.”

  Billy Joe did exactly that. The water he had jumped into was no more than knee high.

  The boys paddled to the other bank and tied the boat fore and aft to the trees there. They sat and watched their violated camp.

  As they watched, a bobcat strolled calmly out onto the sandbar, looked around, smelled a few things and appeared to be eating something and then walked off the other end of the sandbar into the woods as easily as he had come.

  The boys sat and watched their camp for a while; they didn’t know how long it actually was.

  Billy Joe was the first to speak. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think he’s gone but I don’t know for sure.”

  As if in answer to Jack’s thought,
from far downriver they heard, “REEEEOWRRRR.” He had definitely moved away from their camp.

  They untied the boat and eased cautiously back to their camp but hesitated to get out of the boat. Finally, Jack got out of the boat and said, “Come on and let’s check it out.”

  Billy Joe got out but very cautiously watched that downriver side of their clearing.

  They built the fire back up until it was roaring. That didn’t seem to make them feel any better. The fire hadn’t deterred the bobcat at all.

  Jack couldn’t find anything that the cat had seemed to be eating. It might have been a piece of bread or fish that had been dropped by one of them, he never did find out.

  They decided on one more time running the trotlines. This time it would be to roll them up.

  “We should have had a gun,” Billy Joe said.

  “As nervous was we both were, we would probably have missed him and he would have hurt us both,” Jack corrected him.

  “Yeah, I guess you are right.”

  The boys packed up their camp and waited in the boat until the first sign of daylight so they could better see to roll up their trotlines. With those in hand and having full daylight, they packed their bicycles and headed for home.

  “You gonna tell your momma and daddy about this?” Jack asked as they rode.

  “No way,” he said emphatically. “They would never let us go into the woods again. We didn’t get hurt none but they won’t see it that way.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Jack agreed. “If people only went where it was safe, it would be a very dull world to live in.”

  At home, the boys cleaned the catfish, wrapped them tightly and divided them evenly, making a third package to take to Mr. Morris, and put them in the refrigerators in their houses.

  Their parents said they had caught more fish than the adults had.

  Jack and Billy Joe just looked at each other and grinned. Their parents thought the grins were because the boys had caught the most fish. They would never know.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Gully

  The trotline fishing had worked out well, in the boys’ minds. Not only did they catch fish but they had an adventure with a bobcat and walked away unscratched, literally. Now they had to get approval to go to Bynum’s Bluff sledding.