It was still warm, but I knew the air would take on a chill as soon as the sun went behind the trees. It was time to set up our trot line. Poudlum held the ball of cord on the bank, and after I had slipped off my shoes and socks, I rolled up my pants legs and waded through the swift running water toward the other side of the creek with my end of the cord. Then I pulled out a little extra slack so I would have enough cord to tie it to a tree. Now that I had measured the length of cord we would need, I returned to where Poudlum was holding the other end.
“What do we do next?” Poudlum asked.
“Unravel about six more feet so it’ll have enough slack to go past the shoal and drop into the pool below it.”
We stretched our measured cord out across the clearing on the ground. Then we cut a bunch of two-foot pieces of cord and got down on our knees and tied the short cords every few feet along the length of our trot line. Then we went back and attached a fish hook and a small lead sinker on the end of each short piece of cord. It was tedious work, but it was a good way to catch a lot of fish.
We stood back and admired our work. “Nothing left to do except bait the hooks,” I told Poudlum. “Then we’ll stretch it out across the creek, tie both ends to trees and drop it over into the deep water.”
The fat worms wiggled and attempted to bite us with their tiny pincers when we stuck them with the fish hooks.
“You ’spect dat hurts ’em when we sticks ’em?” Poudlum asked.
“Naw, they just worms.”
“Den how come dey twists around and wiggles so?”
“I don’t know. Probably it’s just a reflex or something like that. Come on, let’s get ’em in the water while they’re still wiggling so they’ll attract the fish.”
We tied one end of the trot line to a stump near the creek bank on our side, and once again, I crossed over, but this time I secured the end to a tree and watched as the water washed the line over into the deep pool.
“How you tells when a fish gets on it?”
“You can’t,” I said while I was getting my shoes and socks back on. “We’ll just have to run it ever so often. We’ll do it just before dark so if any fish are on it we’ll have time to clean them. After that we’ll put more bait on if we need to and run it again in the morning.”
We rigged up our cane poles with hooks, lines, and sinkers, baited the hooks and settled down on the side of the creek to fish in the fading light of the day.
The gurgle of the water coupled with the surrounding solitude created the exact atmosphere we had been yearning for, and we knew then that all our planning, cajoling, walking, and work had been worth it.
The trees had lost most of their leaves and the fading light filtered through the branches and played light games on the water’s surface as our corks bobbed listlessly on the ever-changing silver liquid of the dark pool we gazed into.
Something was not as it should be.
I shook off the hypnotic feeling and realized that Poudlum’s cork was what was missing. It had disappeared beneath the surface and the only thing visible was the straight line going into the water.
“Poudlum!” I cried out. “You got one! Hold on tight to your pole!”
“Good Lawd!” Poudlum exclaimed as he stood up and got a good grip on his pole. “It feels like a big one, too!”
We threw several back, but when we quit just before dark we had four fat catfish and three perch as wide as your hand. I began cleaning them and had them ready to fry by the time Poudlum got a fire going.
“It’s just about dark,” Poudlum said. “Don’t you think it’s about time we run dat trot line?”
While I was removing my shoes in preparation to check the trot line, I glanced across the creek, lowered my head, then jerked it back up.
Had something moved over there? I strained my eyes, but the light was beginning to fade.
A peculiar feeling swept over me. I put my feet back in my shoes and told Poudlum we would wait until the morning to check the trot line.
I also asked him to put some more wood on the fire.
Chapter Five
The Visitors
I put some hickory on after I got the fire going real good. It makes the hottest coals,” Poudlum said as he used a stick to rake a pile of red-hot, glowing coals from beneath the flames. “Put de skillet on dem and I guarantee they’ll fry up our fish.”
I spooned some lard into the black skillet and placed it on the hot embers. The cleaned fish were all wet and glistening on a big flat rock I had fetched from the creek. By the time I got them coated with a mixture of cornmeal, salt, and pepper Momma had mixed up for me, the grease was spitting and popping.
The aroma of the fresh fish frying made Poudlum and me lick our lips in anticipation. “Um-mmm,” he moaned while he spread a big brown paper bag out for the cooked fish to be placed on.
When I finished there were eight catfish filets and three big bream, all browned with a crusty coating of cornmeal.
“Now dis is what it’s all about,” Poudlum said as he munched away.
I had to agree with him. It was mighty fine fish. In spite of the amazing good taste, we could eat only half of them. “We’ll save de rest of ’em for breakfast,” Poudlum said as he carefully wrapped the remainder of the fish. “Better keep them here close to de fire so no varmints get to ’em.”
We washed our greasy hands in the swift water and stood by the fire with our palms spread wide to dry them.
Darkness had set in and the forest, along with the creek, had turned to blackness. Even though it was only a few feet away, the sound of the water was the only thing that indicated the creek existed.
“I’m gon stoke up dis fire some so we got some light, and den does you wants to play some mumblety-peg?”
“Yeah, I would, but it’ll dull our knife blades and we need to keep them sharp to clean fish with.”
“I brought along a little whet rock,” Poudlum said. “I can sharpen ’em up again.”
“All right,” I agreed as I smoothed out a place on the ground next to the fire with my hands. “Whoever gets twelve points first wins.”
Mumblety-peg is a game in which the players flip a knife, the object being to stick the blade or blades firmly in the ground so it doesn’t fall over. The big blade is opened fully and the small blade is opened halfway forming an “L” shape by the blades. The player flips the knife, and if it sticks into the ground by the small blade only, it counts as three points, or two points if it sticks by the big blade, and one point if it sticks by both blades. No points are scored if neither sticks, and the flip passes to the next player.
But before either of us scored twelve points, we got drowsy. We gave up on the game and got our quilts and rolled up in them by the fire.
“Hey, Poudlum.”
“Uh-huh,” he answered sleepily.
“Anytime you wake up during the night, throw a little more wood on the fire and I’ll do the same.”
The moon kept appearing and reappearing as it butted clouds around in the sky like a billy goat. A million stars were twinkling away in the heavens above just before I closed my eyes and succumbed to the warmth of our fire and my momma’s quilt.
I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I began to feel something hard jabbing me through the quilt. I woke up to see a hot bed of coals glowing in the fire and thought I was just dreaming. Then I felt the jabbing again. It was rough and hard this time and I knew it was real.
I turned over, sat up, and in the dim light looked up and saw what I knew had to be the same sight that had frightened my uncle earlier in the day.
It was the black, glaring bore holes of a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun.
“Wake up, boy,” a gruff voice said.
There were two of them. The other one was stoking up the fire and adding wood to it. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but my attentio
n was focused on the two black holes above my head, which I knew could belch out fire and death.
After I raised up on my elbow, he said, “Go on, sit up now. We just want to talk to you.”
Fresh flames were licking up from the hot coals around the firewood the other one had added, and a flickering, shadowy light was beginning to illuminate our campsite.
I sat up, drawing my quilt around me like some kind of cloak of protection, but it didn’t help. The man reached down, grabbed it off me and tossed it aside.
His shoes and pants legs were sopping wet halfway up to his knees. The other one’s were too. I knew then that they had waded across the creek from the other side, and that my eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me earlier.
I was on my knees now. He had on a long-sleeved denim jacket and looked like he hadn’t shaved in about a week. His eyes were beady as a squirrel’s as they darted around from under the brim of a felt hat from which long hair spilled out and hung down to his shoulders.
I knew who they were. They were the bank robbers, but I was awake enough to realize they probably didn’t know I knew that.
“What y’all want, mister?” I managed to say.
“We just want to warm ourselves by y’all’s fire and dry our wet shoes. You don’t mind if we do that, do you?”
“No, sir. Don’t mind at all.”
“What’s your name, boy?” the one with the scattergun asked.
“My name’s Ted.”
“What’s your little nigger friend’s name?”
I didn’t like them calling him that, but I went ahead and told them Poudlum’s name. He was just now waking up and his eyes were wide and white, like two hen eggs in a pool of soot.
There was a bond of friendship and loyalty between Poudlum and me. We had encountered dangerous situations before, and we could communicate with just our eyes. I gave him a look, and I could tell he understood we shouldn’t let on that we knew who our visitors were.
The other man, the one who had stoked up the fire, was standing over next to Poudlum. He just had on a thin cotton shirt, and I could see he was shivering in the cold. His hair was short and curly and he had a clean-looking round, baby-face that looked like he was almost too young to shave. He was bareheaded, but he had some mean-looking eyes underneath his bushy brows.
Since introductions were in order, I boldly asked, “Who might y’all be, sir?”
The one with the shotgun grinned and sparks shot out of his mouth as the fire reflected off a gold tooth he had. “My name’s Jesse, and that’s my brother Frank over there.”
They both began snickering when he said that, like somebody had told a joke or something.
“You boys don’t mind if we sit down by the fire here and dry ourselves out, do you,” Jesse said as he eased down to the ground and began taking off his wet shoes.
“No, sir, we don’t mind at all. We happy to share it with y’all.”
They put their wet shoes up close to the fire, squeezed the water out of their socks and placed them on the hot, round rocks surrounding it.
As steam began to rise from the wet socks, Jesse said, “How come Poudlum don’t say nothing? Is he mute or something?”
I wanted to tell him I could ask the same question about Frank, but that might have seemed like a smart-aleck answer, so I refrained. Instead, I said, “He’s just a sleepyhead, hard to wake up.”
“How about that, Poudlum? Jesse asked. “Can you talk, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” Poudlum replied.
Frank finally spoke up when he said, “We proud to hear you can talk, Poudlum. Now, hand me that bag of fried fish y’all had left from supper. Pass it over here, ’cause we mighty hungry.”
When Poudlum passed the grease-stained bag to Frank, we had eye contact again, and at that time we both knew Jesse and Frank had been watching us for a while.
They ate our breakfast like starving men, wolfing down the fish without chewing or even tasting the freshness of it.
Jesse belched, and said, “Mighty nice of y’all to share your supper with us, boys.”
“Is you gentlemen out here in de woods hunting?” Poudlum asked.
“Yeah, we coon hunting,” Frank said, and they both smirked with amusement.
Poudlum wasn’t fazed. “Where y’all’s coon dogs?”
It was Jesse’s turn to make a joke. “Our dogs? Oh, we lost our dogs,” he said while they both about fell in the creek laughing.
They didn’t know we knew the source of their merriment, and I wanted to keep it that way.
They stopped laughing and got serious. “We got us a problem here, boys,” Jesse said.
“How’s that, Mister Jesse?” I asked.
“We need to get us some sleep.”
“I don’t see how that’s a problem. Y’all are welcome to just stretch out by our fire and doze right off.”
“Yeah, while you and Poudlum light out of here,” Frank said.
“We camping out here for the weekend,” I said. “And we got a lot more fishing to do. We’re not going anywhere.”
“You got that right,” Jesse said. “I got an idea, Frank,” Jesse continued, ignoring us.
“What you got in mind?”
“Get that ball of cord they made the trot line with out of Poudlum’s sack and I’ll show you.”
They had been watching us since way before dark!
Frank, following instructions from Jesse, used the cord to tie loops around both mine and Poudlum’s thumbs. Jesse took the two ends leading from mine and tied them to his big toe. Frank did the same with Poudlums’s.
“Now, let’s all lay down close to the fire and get us some shut-eye,” Jesse said. “We been coon hunting’ all day and we’re plumb tuckered out.”
“Wouldn’t be nothin’ left of a coon if you shot him with that big old shotgun,” Poudlum piped up.
“Don’t you worry about it, boy. Y’all lay down like I told you,” Jesse sharply replied.
After that everybody stretched out next to the fire and things got real quiet, the only sounds being the crackling of the fire and the gushing of the creek.
I looked at my thumbs and knew I couldn’t get my knife out of my pocket without pulling Jesse’s big toe and alerting him. I figured they just wanted to rest and would let us go in the morning.
Poudlum’s voice jarred me from my thoughts when he said, “Mister Jesse?”
“What now, boy?” Jesse growled.
“Y’all been over ’cross de creek for a spell just watching us?”
“Why you think that, boy?”
“’Cause you knowed where de cord was we made de trot line with.”
“Well now, ain’t you a smart little nigger?”
“Why didn’t y’all just come on ’cross de creek earlier?”
“Because if you boys had seen us coming, you would have run off and told somebody you seen us, and we can’t have that,” Jesse said.
“How come we do dat? Y’all just hunting coons.”
Frank’s voice came harshly across the fire. “If you don’t shut him up Jesse, then I will.”
“Listen, Poudlum, you little chatter-mouth nigger, I’m gonna take that cord off Frank’s toe, tie it to a big rock, throw it in the creek and watch it pull you down by your thumbs if you say another word.”
I realized that Poudlum was attempting to find out their intentions, and that it was time I helped him out. “He don’t mean no harm, Mister Jesse,” I said. “He’s just bad about asking a lot of questions. I was just wondering too, do y’all intend to continue hunting coons tomorrow morning?”
“Hey!” Jesse raised his head up and said. “What I just told your friend goes for you, too.”
“All right, Mister Jesse, I’ll be quiet, but I just wondered what you gentlemen gonna do with us tomorrow morning.”
The fire flamed up and soon there was enough light to see the outline of everybody’s face. I looked around and was able to see the flickering reflection of the flames in everybody’s eyes.
The ones in Jesse’s surely reminded me of the devil, and when he spoke I was afraid not to answer truthfully.
“You boys know who we are, don’t you? If you lie to me I’m gonna hold your heads underwater in that cold creek for a while. Now, tell me who you think we are!”
He was looking directly at me and I could almost feel the dark, cold creek water sucking me down. I groped for words, and finally blurted out, “Y’all are the bank robbers!”
“Tell us how you know that, boy.”
After I told them the story Uncle Curvin had told us, Jesse said, “Well, now that’s better, to have everything out in the open. Honesty is always the best policy, boys.”
Frank was snickering on the other side of the fire.
“Everybody thought y’all would be hightailing it toward the Tombigbee, trying to get to the Mississippi state line,” Poudlum said.
“Of course they did, but a smart man always does the opposite of what his adversaries expect. Remember that, boys, it’s my little contribution toward your education,” Jesse said.
“How y’all outfox dem dogs?” Poudlum asked.
“That was easy,” Frank gloated. “When we left the car we went down the bank of this creek a good way, leaving a trail. After going a good ways, we got in the water and doubled back past the bridge and the car and come on up this way. I figure the dogs are all the way to the Tombigbee River by now, sniffing around for tracks they ain’t never gonna find.”
“What about in the morning?” I asked again.
Jesse answered, “We’ll worry about that in the morning. Right now we all going to sleep. I’m more tired than a dead mule. No more talking. Lay down.” It got real quiet around the fire and I was just about to drift off when I heard Poudlum whisper softly, “What y’all do wid de money?”
Secret of the Satilfa Page 4
