After finding eight fishing worms, we made our way to the creek, then began our routine trip north. As was custom, we kept every crawdad we caught at first, then replaced the smaller ones in favor of larger ones caught later on. The trip progressed slowly, but I didn’t mind. Time away from Feenie was welcome anytime. It was necessary when The Old Man wasn’t home.
We gradually made our way up to our usual turnaround point, about a mile up. The sun still hadn’t reached its high, so we decided to keep going, figuring that as long as we stayed in the creek, we could never get lost. We reasoned that as long as the creek didn’t branch off, we could go as far as we wanted. We could simply turn around anytime we desired and follow the creek back toward the house.
We travelled farther up than we had ever gone before. We both hoped we wouldn’t encounter a bear or a large cat, both of which had been known to inhabit the deep woods. Though we had never encountered a bear before, I always heard that no matter how fast we ran, we couldn’t outrun one. I didn’t want to have to try. We both knew that trying to outrun a bobcat or a panther would be an exercise in futility.
Continuing on, we examined the surrounding area for possible getaways. Small, sturdy trees were everywhere, and we were both pretty good at climbing them. So, about every fifty yards, we stopped to identify a tree we would use to get away from a bear. We also decided to arm ourselves with a couple of the many durable, sharp sticks that lay near the creek bank. While we knew we couldn’t defeat a bear, we figured we might be able to smack or stab a bobcat, forcing it to run away.
Every now and again, we managed to catch a big, blue crawdad. It is still unclear to me how those gained their prestigious positions in crawdad hierarchy. Though no formal proclamation was ever drawn up, we deemed them more valuable than ordinary crawdads, akin to royalty amongst peasants in medieval times. While I personally never held them in as high regard as Eddie did, I liked to catch them for their bartering value. Sometimes Eddie offered two big regular crawdads for just one blue one of equal size. I usually traded with him. Heck, on a trip lasting as long as that one did, we always caught six or seven of them anyway, so I always got to keep one or two for myself.
We worked our way up toward a bend that began a slow climb. The sun was approaching its afternoon high, indicating time was closing in for us to begin our journey home. But since our buckets were already nearly full, we knew our trip back down would go much faster than it did upstream, so we decided we would turn around and head back down after we reached the bend.
Along the banks, we found wild grapes and blackberries, both of which seemed to be in greater supply the further we travelled. Eddie collected a fair share of both, while I stood guard for animals that might have wanted their share. Looking back now, I realize how small each of us would have looked to a big black bear foraging for those same berries and grapes. Thank God we didn’t have a chance encounter with one.
Strange, but we generally ate well in the summer, supplementing our three peanut butter and jelly sandwich diet with apples, wild grapes, blackberries, and the occasional tomato stolen from the garden. I’m ashamed to have to admit it, but neither I nor Eddie told our brothers of all the fruit we found, though they knew of the apple trees over in the field.
If I knew how to keep those damned mosquitoes, bobcats, bears and the like away, I would have preferred to just live in the woods during the summer. But while animals were fun to look at in the daytime from a distance, I didn’t want to meet up with one in the middle of the night.
By the time we made it to the bend, we both had plenty of crawdads in our buckets. At that point, the trip wasn’t so much about catching crawdads as it was just exploring. We still looked for crawdads, hoping to find that ever elusive lobster-sized one. We just didn’t hunt for them as vigorously as we did when we began our journey.
I had just picked up a long, flat, shale-like rock, letting the flow of the creek naturally wash away the murky water. Once it became clear enough to see, I nodded, providing indication to Eddie that a nice, fairly large one was there, waiting to be caught and placed in one of the buckets containing the day’s catch. He was good at crawdad hunting. I was still better, but he was good. Years of experience allowed us to perfect the art. Our instincts allowed us to position ourselves to give us the best chance of catching them.
I was a bit surprised Eddie didn’t move in immediately after I informed him of our potential prize. After all, that was the way we had done it for three years running. I can remember only one other time when he didn’t follow that routine. One day the previous summer, he stepped on a jagged rock and folded into the middle of the creek, needing a full seven minutes to recover.
I looked over to see what was taking him so long. His face was drained. He was as pale as a ghost. He stood there frozen, staring intently at something behind me.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Never before had I seen the look that covered his face. His big eyes were open wide. His mouth was tightly closed, and his nostrils flared with each rapid breath he inhaled.
I whispered “Eddie, what is it?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
I imagined a bobcat or a bear was standing directly behind me, ready to pounce. I slowly bent down and filled my hand with the cool creek water. Careful not to make any sudden movements, I flicked the water onto him. He didn’t as much as blink when it hit his face.
He glanced at me, then immediately redirected his attention on what was behind me. “Eddie, what is it?” I whispered again, pleading with him to answer me.
He glanced back at me and said “Indian.”
I flung down the rock I was holding. I immediately began running back toward the house. All I knew about Indians was that they liked to cut people’s scalps off. In many of the Westerns on the TV at Granny’s house, which The Old Man and Grandpa Joe watched with equal passion, Indians were always killing people. I didn’t want to become one of them.
I sprinted right past Eddie, giving little consideration to the jagged rocks protruding the creek bed. It may have meant spending the rest of the summer rehabilitating a punctured foot or a broken ankle, but I figured a foot injury was a far better option than being scalped and slow-roasted over a fire.
I must have run a full fifty yards before I realized there was no sound of splashing water behind me. “Why hadn’t Eddie followed my instruction?” I thought. Any reasonable person easily would have done what I did: run as fast and as far as humanly possible.
Attempting to make an abrupt halt in order to turn and see what was happening, I slipped on a slimy, moss-covered rock. As my legs went out from under me, I flung my arms down to cushion my fall. My hands didn’t touch water before my hip slammed against that same rock.
Writhing in pain and rolling around in the middle of the creek, I managed to catch a glimpse of Eddie. He stood there, still completely motionless. Though I was a bit disappointed he hadn’t turned to see how badly I was hurt, I was relieved he was still alive.
The intense pain in my left hip began to dissipate. As I pushed myself up, my eyes caught what his was focused on. Clad in leather, a large, brown-skinned Indian stood roughly ten feet from the creek, arms folded, staring at my brother. Unlike the television shows, however, he didn’t have paint on his face, nor was he chanting. In fact, he remained completely silent as he stood.
“Eddie, run!” I screamed, imagining the Indian was only moments away from grabbing him and taking him home to eat. But Eddie didn’t move.
I was torn. I wanted to run all the way back home and get the .22. Though I had only killed two living things with it, I never had once thought about having to use it on another human. I certainly didn’t want to have to use it, but I think I would have found myself capable, if I truly believed he was going to kill us and eat us.
“No,” I thought. “I had to stay and fight, even if that meant getting killed and eaten along with my brother.” Eddie had never abandoned me. He always reasoned things out in a
way that seemed to make sense. I didn’t know how to make sense of that moment, why he wasn’t running for his life. But somehow he just knew who and what were dangerous, and what people’s intentions were. He stayed, so I stayed.
For about two whole minutes, as I stood in the middle of the creek rubbing my hip, they just stared at each other. I stared at the Indian man, hoping he found us too little to make a decent meal of. I hoped his tribe had some kind of code or something that declared kids couldn’t be scalped until the age of fifteen or so.
I have no idea what was going through each of their minds. I quickly imagined many and varied possible scenarios. Unfortunately, none ended with either me or Eddie making it home alive.
Eddie picked up his bucket of crawdads and made his way up the creek towards the Indian, about twenty yards away. He sat the bucket down near the Indian’s feet. The Indian remained stationary, arms folded, silent.
Eddie untied the small plastic bag full of berries and grapes from around a belt loop of his cut-off corduroy shorts. He opened it and offered its contents to the Indian, asking him if he was hungry. The Indian stood there, motionless.
Eddie sat the bag on the ground, then offered the Indian his whole bucket of crawdads. I thought “are you crazy? Grapes and berries are one thing, but crawdads are precious cargo, not to be given away on a whim.”
The Indian slowly unfolded his arms. I feared Eddie’s time was up. I ran to help my brother, screaming for the Indian man not to hurt him. Instead, he reached for the bag of berries on the ground and picked it up. He handed it back to Eddie and said something that to me sounded like “what the hell are you doing here?” or maybe “get the hell off of my land!”
I was more than happy to oblige. Eddie, however, wasn’t the “let’s-leave-this-guy-alone” kind. He was curious. He wanted to know where the Indian came from, where his kids were, what he ate…everything. Given the chance, he would probably even try to get the Indian to invite him over to meet his family.
Eddie took a handful of grapes out of the bag and went to the creek and washed them. He took them back to the Indian, who opened his massive hand and accepted Eddie’s offering. He slowly raised one to his mouth, intently staring at us. Looking back, he must have been just as amazed at seeing us as we were of him. He ate all five grapes Eddie gave him.
I slowly and cautiously made my way to within ten feet of both of them. Eddie’s face glowed. He was as happy as I had ever seen him. He took the whole bag of grapes and berries to the creek and washed them, then returned to give them to the Indian. The Indian took the grapes, then reached into the inside his leather jacket. Pulling out two turkey feathers, he gave Eddie one.
He laid the other feather on the ground, motioning for me to come and get it. He backed up three steps as I approached and picked it up. I grinned widely, my toothless mouth displaying my age.
He never spoke a single word, but he did not have to. He knew he had just made two children very happy.
Eddie and I spent the next thirty minutes gesturing to the Indian. The Indian man made us feel welcome. From the moment he placed the feather on the ground, I never once felt uncomfortable in his presence.
A short while later, the Indian pointed to the mountain up creek. I think he was attempting to tell us he lived further north, somewhere in the mountain, and was expected home. In unison, Eddie and I pointed towards our house, down creek.
We took our feathers, held them high, and smiled at him. We nodded and thanked him for his gift. He nodded back, took the bag of grapes and berries and headed up creek. We took our feathers and crawdads and headed down creek, back toward the house.
I can’t be certain, but I think the Indian considered us his friends. I know I never feared another Indian from that moment forward. I didn’t believe anything I saw in any of those Westerns The Old Man and Grandpa Joe watched later on.
By the time we made it home, it was early evening, about six o’clock or so. I don’t even remember walking home. Eddie and I spent the entire trip back down the creek just talking about the Indian. “I bet he knew how to start a fire. We should have asked him to show us,” I said.
Suddenly we were within one hundred yards of home. As we approached the house, we heard Feenie screaming at Lee. We didn’t know what she was screaming about, but assumed it was probably something petty. Perhaps Lee put a glass on the cup shelf while drying and stacking the dishes. Or maybe he missed a spot of jelly when he wiped off the kitchen table. We didn’t always understand why, but Lee got yelled at a lot.
We decided it best not to tell Feenie about our encounter. We reasoned that she’d probably demand that old man take a few of his work buddies hunting up in that area, and to not come back without Indian hide. Evil witch!
As I lay here, I wonder if I’ll ever see the quiet, friendly Indian man again. I hope he knows he provided us one very memorable afternoon in the summer of nineteen seventy-three.
Chapter 6: Joseph
On those summer days when Jeff worked at the YMCA and my parents wanted to go somewhere, They dropped us off at Granny’s. I usually didn’t mind. After all, Granny lived in town, close to the high school and its well-maintained baseball field, where Eddie and I used to climb the fence to play, using whatever we could find to make it as realistic as possible.
Feenie and The Old Man went to the fair to see some singer named Conway Twitty. Both she and The Old Man thoroughly enjoyed listening to country music. The mere mention of any other genre, save for maybe bluegrass, initiated heated arguments. Both James and Jeff knew that, and often used it to rile them up. One time, Jeff went so far as to say “no country act should ever even be allowed back into an arena where Led Zeppelin played. I’m gonna write the President and ask him to make a law.”
Eddie was working with Grandpa Joe at the greenhouse. Since it was Saturday, Lee had to stay at the house and do laundry. James was at the bakery, where he could be found hard at work on any Saturday. The only reason they took me there that day was to hoe Granny’s garden.
Although she held a full sixty-four years of life experience, Granny was unskilled in reading people. I’m unsure she even fathomed humans, with the exception of The Old Man, whom she blamed for never allowing her daughter to reach her full potential, capable of doing unmentionable evil. That said, she could do little to protect those in her care.
She had already raised a daughter who plainly didn’t hold the tools to properly parent. Grandpa Joe admitted to that on numerous occasions. Granny could not bring herself to agree, however. She argued her daughter did everything she could to forge a better life for the kids. She did concede that her daughter simply had too many kids, too soon. “If she had spaced you boys out a little more, she would be able to better take care of you,” she said.
While it is possible she may have actually believed it, I think it more likely she was just trying to convince herself. She must have known Feenie was deficient in matters of parenting. Why else would she and Grandpa Joe have taken Joseph at such an early age, unless maybe she herself wanted a second chance?
I knew little about Joseph, other than that he was my oldest brother. Whenever a group of us went over to visit Granny, Joseph certainly didn’t act as though he was one of us. In fact, I submit that he didn’t want to even be perceived as being one of us. Eddie said Joseph thought he was better than us because he had running water, electricity and a television. He called him a snob who “has his nose so far up Granny’s butt, he can always tell what she ate for breakfast.”
While Granny frequently drove Grandpa Joe away with her yelling and screaming, Grandpa Joe always firmly stood his ground when discussing how Joseph should be raised. He wasn’t happy how Granny pampered Joseph. He once told her the last thing the world needed was a “male version of our selfish, poor excuse of a daughter,” a remark which prompted an angry, profanity-laced response from Granny.
When she uttered profanities while screaming at him, he quickly remarked that people who resort to such langua
ge lacked an educated vocabulary. That only seemed to intensify her outrage, frustrating her to the point that she eventually walked away, ranting under her breath. She clearly did not like any remark that questioned either her intelligence or how she talked.
Since I didn’t spend a great deal of time at her house, I can’t speak to how Granny raised Joseph. But I was proud of Grandpa Joe when he fought back. I wish he had more energy, so he could have fought back more often on other topics. Work must have drained him, though. When he did finally make it home, he mostly just wanted some peace and quiet.
They lived in the upstairs part of an old two story, tar-shingled shack. The first floor of the place was filled with old gardening tools, like scythes, sickles, and old manual lawn mowers.
While an abundance of spiders kept the downstairs relatively free of insects, cockroaches could be found everywhere in their living quarters. During the evening, when I’d get up to get a glass of water, I’d see at least ten of them scatter when I turned on the light.
Separated from the living room by a semi-transparent lace curtain, her kitchen was very small. The refrigerator, two-burner stove, and two-seat table crowded the room. Back in the living room, a small yellow couch and a green reclining rocking chair filled it so it was difficult to walk without hitting one of them. An old television, used primarily for Westerns and on Saturday nights for Hee-Haw, sat on top of a little antique coffee table abutting the wall separating the living area from the tiny single bedroom, where Joseph slept.
Granny’s eyes sometimes played tricks on her. I corrected her many times that day, reminding her I was Mike, not Eddie. Sometimes she got very confused. If three or four of us kids were at her house at once, she had a lot of trouble keeping track of us. She seemed to have more trouble in the afternoon. She called each of us by our correct name in the morning, but she seemed to become more confused as the day wore on.
That afternoon, Granny needed some sort of medication from the drug store. She said she’d be back in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I offered to run to the store for her, but she insisted the exercise would do her good. I understood, and watched her as she walked down the alley, slightly hunched over to the front and to the right.
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