“Sure is,” Frank agreed. “And we sure enjoyed camping out with you boys. Best fish I ever had. And don’t y’all worry none, ’cause some of your folks will come looking for you when you don’t show up at home.”
“Uh, Frank,” Jesse said, “just one other thing. Relieve the boys of their pocket knives before we go.”
I truly believe the bank robbers hated to leave us there under the bridge, but they did. Poudlum and I stood helplessly as they scrambled up the bank toward the road.
The water under the bridge sounded different than it did at the Cypress Hole. There were no shoals or rushing or gurgling water over and around rocks. It was just a steady, low hissing of deep running water, like our very lives were flowing away down toward the Tombigbee.
There was enough slack in the ropes to allow us to sit down. We just sat there beside the running water in a stunned silence for a little while.
Poudlum broke the silence when he said, “I bet dey is some big snakes up under dis bridge. I don’t want nothing to do wid no snake, ’specially wid my hands all tied up.”
Because of the length of the ropes up to the bridge we could only retreat about two feet from the water’s edge. The creek bank in front of us slanted off steeply straight down into the deep and ominous appearing water.
Poudlum had barely gotten the word “snake” out of his mouth when the head of a big, fat cottonmouth moccasin peeked up out of the water just below our feet.
“Oh, Lawd, you see him?” Poudlum cried out as he swiftly drew his feet up underneath himself.
“Yeah, I see him. Just be real still,” I told him in as calm a voice as I could muster.
The snake was moving slow. I knew it was because he was cold-blooded and it wasn’t long before he would eat up a bunch of fish and crawl into a hole somewhere and hibernate for the winter. The snake was looking for his last meal of tasty fish, just like we had been doing.
I hoped it would swim on down the creek, but to our horror it slowly slithered onto the bank and coiled up in a narrow beam of sunlight coming through a crack in the boards above, just a few feet from us.
“Just be perfectly still,” I whispered to Poudlum.
“I don’t know if I can,” he whispered back.
“You got to. Maybe he’ll crawl off in little bit.” I reassured Poudlum, but I knew that snake had found itself a patch of sunshine and it wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
“Yeah, and maybe it’ll start crawling toward us till we runs out of rope,” Poudlum softly moaned.
It had a pointed head and a fat body as big as one of mine or Poudlum’s arms, both signs of being a poisonous viper. I knew, and I knew Poudlum knew, that to be bitten by that snake could be fatal, especially in our current situation.
There was a smooth, round creek-rock about the size of a small watermelon between Poudlum and me. I directed him to it with a nod of my head and my eyes. We judged the distance in our minds and figured we had enough slack in our ropes to accomplish what we had in mind.
We ever so slowly moved our fingertips into the dirt surrounding the rock and gently lifted it out of the soft ground. Together we slowly raised it above our heads.
“Ready?” I whispered.
“Uh-huh, just say when.”
“Now!” I cried out. We hurled the rock as hard as we both possibly could directly at the length of coiled black death below our feet.
In the heat of summer the snake may have been swift enough to escape the rock, but the cool weather had made it slow and stiff.
The split second before the impact I saw it raise its lethal head and bare its fangs inside a mouth whiter than unpicked cotton. Its slender, red, forked tongue flickered once before the rock crushed its head.
We simultaneously breathed a huge sigh of relief as the spasms of the dead viper caused the body to flop back into the creek where it disappeared beneath the surface.
“Dat will teach dat snake to mess wid us,” Poudlum said with a tone of obvious relief in his voice.
“Yeah,” I agreed, breathing hard.
“Now we gots to get loose and get out of here,” Poudlum said.
“That wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t taken our pocket knives.”
“Let’s try to untie each other,” Poudlum suggested.
We struggled with the hard knots on each other’s wrists until our fingers ached before we gave up, but almost immediately I came up with another idea.
“If we could climb these ropes up to the edge of the bridge we could climb on top and pull the end of our ropes off the beams. We would still have our hands tied, but we would be loose.”
“Sure would be,” Poudlum agreed.
He looked up toward the bridge and out toward the creek, thinking about it for a few moments before he continued. “But if you got part of the way up and slipped, you would fall in the creek, and you knows I ain’t no swimmer.”
“All right, I’ll go then. If I fall in the creek I’ll just swim back over here to the bank and you can pull me out.”
“You done been in de creek once today. You sure you wants to chance it again?”
“I’ll chance it ’cause it’s the only way I can think of to get loose. I believe I can do it.”
“How you gon do dat wid yo’ hands tied?”
“I’ll use my legs along with my hands. I think there’s enough slack so I can wrap my legs around the rope to hold me up while I use both hands to pull myself up a ways. If I alternate using my hands and legs I should be able to make it.”
I twisted the rope around my legs, reached as high up it as I could, got a firm grasp with my hands, and told Poudlum, “Here I go!”
As soon as I left the bank the rope carried me out over the water where I began to swing like a pendulum. As I watched the water skim the bottom of my shoes, I became afraid that I had made a mistake. But it was too late to turn back and there was nothing left to do except give it a try.
I pulled myself upward with my hands and arms and it worked. My feet no longer skimmed along the surface of the water. But I was only about one third of the way up when my arms and shoulders began to ache so bad until I felt like I couldn’t make another pull.
Poudlum sensed my distress from down below. “Wrap yo’ legs around de rope real tight and just rest yo’ arms a while,” he called up.
I tried it and it worked. With my legs coiled around the rope I just hung in midair for a while until the pain eased off.
I labored at this process until sweat flooded my eyes, burning them and blurring my vision. By twisting my head I found I could wipe the perspiration out of my eyes on the shoulder of my shirt.
I was almost there. Up above I could see the rough texture of the wooden beam my rope was tied to. It was just inches away.
I coiled my legs around the rope for what I hoped was the last time and reached up. Just as my fingertips brushed the rough wood there was a loud pop, like a rifle shot.
At first I thought someone might be shooting at me, but then the frazzled end of the broken rope just appeared before my eyes and suddenly I was descending through the air with nothing to hang onto.
It stung and shocked me when I hit the surface of the water. Then the force of the fall plunged me deep beneath the surface where I fully expected the mate of the big cottonmouth to be waiting for me with open jaws.
Thankfully, I didn’t reach the murky bottom and began kicking and pulling upward with my hands toward the surface as soon as the force of my descent slowed.
When I surfaced, spitting and spewing water, I saw Poudlum wading in to pull me out. I knew he couldn’t swim, and I was too exhausted to pull him out of the creek.
“Stay back,” I called out weakly as I began to dog paddle toward the shore.
About the same time I felt the bottom under my feet, I felt Poudlum dragging me out onto the bank.
“L
awd, dat scared me when you went under. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back up. Is you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I sputtered, laying limp and shivering on the bank.
“Dat wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, but it worked. You loose from de bridge,” Poudlum said.
For the second time that morning I stripped out of wet pants. The set I had dried by the fire after my dousing while retrieving the trot line was in my sack. I would just have to shiver in my wet shirt until I could somehow get my hands untied.
The money Jesse had dropped into my sack fell out when I drug my clothes out. Poudlum counted it while I shivered in my wet shirt.
“How much is it?” I asked through cold, blue lips.
“Whew, doggie!” Poudlum whooped. “Mr. Jesse done left us forty dollars!”
“Well, that’ll more than cover the cost of my sardines, potted meat and crackers they took.”
“Yeah, de biscuits too,” Poudlum said. “I bet my momma never knew her biscuits were worth five dollars apiece.”
“Let’s get out from under here, Poudlum. I’ll toss your rope down just as soon as I get up there on the bridge,” I called out over my shoulder as I scrambled up the bank, dragging my rope behind me.
“Dat sure does suit me,” he called out as he stuffed the money in his pocket.
After I loosened the rope that Poudlum was attached to and tossed it down to him, it was only moments before he joined me up on the road. By then I had figured out a way to get our hands untied.
The rails on the Iron Bridge were sharp and rough. We placed the rope on our trussed-up wrists on its edge and sawed back and forth until the knotted ropes were cut through and fell off, and we were finally completely free.
The money was in dollar bills. As Poudlum counted out my half he said, “You think dis is some of de money they robbed from dat bank?”
“I expect it probably is, but after what Jesse and Frank put us through we ought to get something for our troubles as well as for our food.”
Poudlum concurred with me as we put our new-found wealth away. We also agreed not to discuss it with anyone else unless it was absolutely necessary.
“How long you think it’s been since they tied us up and hightailed it out of here?”
Poudlum held his hand over his eyes to shade them from the morning sun, judged its height in the sky, and said, “I ’spect it’s been about two hours. Less time than Mister Jesse thought it would take us to get loose, I bet you on dat.”
“Yeah, I think they expected us to be here until folks missed us at home and come looking for us, which would have been sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“And we would’ve had to sleep under dat bridge without a fire. I’m thinking less of dem bank robbers all de time,” Poudlum said.
“Let’s sit down here beside the road for a minute, Poudlum. We need to catch our breath and figure out what we need to do.”
We settled down on the soft brown grass beside the dirt road and dangled our feet in the ditch.
“Don’t you think we ought to be getting on down de road so we can report dem bank robbers?”
“I ain’t sure what we ought to do,” I told Poudlum.
“Teacher say we ain’t supposed to say ain’t.”
“Yeah, mine says that, too. Who we going to report them to?”
“I don’t know. Whoever we sees first, I suppose.”
“They got a good two-hour start. They could’ve done made it to the river and crossed it already. Or, if they caught a ride they could even be in Mississippi by now.”
“Dat’s true,” Poudlum said. “Mister Jesse and Mister Frank, dey smart. Look how dey fooled de sheriff and come up de creek instead of going down it. How we know which way dey went?”
“You’re right, Poudlum. They could have gone in any direction after they left us under the bridge. Shoot, they could have even gone back down the creek ’cause they already been looked for down there. You know the sheriff wouldn’t be looking for them to do that.”
Poudlum began chuckling.
“What you laughing at?”
“I just remembered what you told me yo’ daddy said about de sheriff, dat he couldn’t catch a rabbit wid a pack of bluetick hounds.”
“Uh, huh, but the sheriff will get help hunting the bank robbers.”
“What you mean?”
“All them state and federal lawmen join in the hunt when somebody robs a bank. They never get away anymore. They always catch ’em sooner or later.”
“So it don’t matter if we just goes on back up to de Cypress Hole and finishes our weekend of fishing, like we never knowed nothing about dem bank robbers, since dey gon get caught sooner or later anyway?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we trying to figure out. Them bank robbers have already ruined the first part of our fishing trip. Why should we let them ruin the rest of it?”
“If we goes running off down de road looking for somebody to tell, den dat’s what we’ll be doing, ruining de rest of de weekend.”
We looked longingly at the mouth of the trail leading to the Cypress Hole, and yearned for the freedom to disappear down it and continue our fishing trip, but we both knew what the right thing to do was.
We had to report what we knew about the bank robbers.
We didn’t say anything else, just picked up our gear and began jogging back toward Center Point. But after only a few steps we observed the dust cloud of a vehicle approaching us from down the road.
Chapter Eight
The Hidey Hole
Who you think dat could be?” Poudlum asked as he squinted his eyes down the road toward the approaching dust cloud.
“I don’t know, it could be anybody.”
“Might be yo’ Uncle Curvin. He said he might come back and check on us.”
We stood still in the road watching as the cloud of dust increased in size.
“What we gon do, jus’ stand here in de road and wait to see who it is?”
“No,” I told Poudlum. “I think we better get out of sight in case it’s somebody we don’t want to talk to.”
“Who in de world would we not be wantin’ to talk to?”
“It could be the sheriff, and I sure don’t want to talk to him.”
“How come?”
“I would just feel better if I could talk to Uncle Curvin before I talked to him, wouldn’t you?”
“Uh-huh, I think I would now dat you mentions it. We need a grown person we trust to be with us ’fore we tell what happened to us.”
Poudlum and I had minds that followed the same logic to reach a conclusion, that flowed in the same direction like creeks and rivers to reach the sea.
“That’s exactly what I think, Poudlum. Let’s move!”
The dust cloud grew larger and the approaching vehicle was just moments from rounding the bend, which would put us and the bridge in clear view of whoever occupied it.
“Come on!” I encouraged Poudlum as we grabbed our sacks and dived over the lip of the bank leading back down to the creek.
We slid, tumbled, and crawled until we were back to the curtain of ropes that hung down from the side of the bridge.
“I don’t want to go back under dat bridge,” Poudlum said, breathing hard.
“We got to,” I told him as I pulled him along, back into the dimness under the Iron Bridge, and sat there huddled on the creek bank as the vehicle above us began to rumble across it.
“Couldn’t be Mister Curvin ’cause he would’ve turned off the road fo’ he got to the bridge.”
“Yeah, but whoever it is has crossed the bridge now and we won’t have to—”
I stopped in mid-sentence when we heard the tires of the vehicle grind to a stop on the gravel just after it had crossed the bridge.
“Dey stopped!” Poudlum whisper
ed as his eyes grew to the size of those of a startled doe.
“Yeah, I heard! Be quiet!”
“Why you reckon de did dat?” His voice hissed across the water.
“I don’t know! Hush!”
Someone from up above was saying something. “Back up, I think I saw something on that bridge,” a gruff voice said.
The boards of the bridge creaked again as the vehicle backed onto the center of the bridge and came to a halt. The engine went dead and a moment later the silence was broken by the sound of two car doors slamming, one after the other.
“Look at this,” the same voice said from up on the bridge.
Poudlum and I looked at each other and nodded, because we both recognized the voice of Sheriff Crowe. We had both dealt with him before. Back in the summer he had hounded Poudlum and his family when he was looking for an escaped black convict. I supposed he had done that because they were the only black folks who lived around Center Point.
The escaped convict had worked and lived at the sawmill before it was dismantled and taken away. His name was Jake.
Jake had been a real friend to both of us, a gentle sage whose only crime had been stealing food and taking it to poor, starving folks, kind of like Robin Hood.
Between him, Poudlum and me, we had exposed a bootlegger and made off with his ill-gotten gains, which we had used to help our families and to get Jake across the Tombigbee and gone for good.
Now, while we gazed upward and strained our ears, we heard the dreaded voice of the sheriff say to his deputy. “Look at this, here’s two hunks of knotted rope just laying here on the bridge. Where do you suppose they come from?”
“Could have fell off someone’s truck,” the deputy answered.
“I don’t think so. They look freshly used too. See how the ends are all frazzled, like somebody sawed them in two or something.”
“You want me to have a look around?” the deputy asked.
Poudlum whispered very softly, “Should have tossed dem knotted ropes in de creek.”
I nodded in agreement just before the sheriff answered the deputy’s question.
“We probably ought to look around a little. Maybe down there underneath the bridge. Why don’t you climb on down there and see what you can see?”
Secret of the Satilfa Page 6
