by Terry Kay
“Now, that’s talkin’,” exclaimed Dover. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk, Wes. All right, let’s do it this way.”
Dover squatted and brushed a fan-shaped design in the white sand of the front yard. He drew a series of loops, circles, and lines with his finger. At the bottom of the fan, he scrawled the letter N. “That stands for North,” he announced proudly. “I learned to do that in the Army.” At the top of the fan, he lettered an S.
“That’s South?” Alvin asked.
“You got it, Alvin. That’s South. S for South.”
“Put you a W on the right, Dover,” Otis said, cocking his head to study the design.
“The W goes on the left, Otis. W for West. E goes on the right. E for East,” Dover corrected.
“Yeah…”
Dover studied his lettering. “You got it, boys? This here’s Beaverjam Creek. That there’s Rakestraw Road.” He made wavy lines with his finger.
“Dover, you got the S and N upside down,” R. J. said.
“What’d you mean, R.J.?”
“North’s that way, and South’s that way, according to the creek.”
Dover looked again at his map. He stood and walked on the other side, peering at his design like a hawk after a rabbit. Then he looked around him, settling on the sun with its red yoke rupturing and running into the trees. “Yeah, you’re right, R. J.”
“What’d you need N and S for anyhow?” asked Otis. “That don’t mean nothin’. We know the swamp.”
“I guess you’re right, Otis. Just thought I’d like to teach you boys somethin’,” Dover explained timidly. “Anyway, this is it: R. J., you take off and go over toward the Goldmine Road; Otis, you skirt around that upper beaver dam and follow the old creek bed; Alvin, you stay on the high ground, up where we hunted them doves last year; Wes, you and Colin go right down the middle of the swamp, since y’all live here and know them low places better’n any of us, and I’m gonna go over toward Tanner’s Branch.”
“Me’n Wes don’t have to go together, Dover,” I volunteered. “He can go one way and I can go the other.”
“You stay with Wes,” ordered Dover. “And I mean it. Anything happen to you and your daddy’ll skin my hide. I’m not about to get your mama and daddy on my back.”
“But…”
“You stay with me,” Wesley said firmly.
“Aw…”
Dover erased his map with his shoe. “Now, we all are gonna start up there near Rakestraw Road, down below the bridge. All you gotta do is drag them clothes along behind you. When you get to some place where there’s nothin’ but snakes and lizards can get through, take them clothes and stuff ’em inside of your shirt, and backtrack a little ways, then cut off to one side. That way, it won’t do nothin’ but confuse them dogs.”
“Why’s that, Dover?” asked Otis. It was easy to baffle Otis.
“Well, Otis, I can smell Freeman in them clothes,” declared Dover. “I swear that boy puts off a stink. When them bloodhounds start sniffin’ out Freeman, they won’t smell nothin’ but Freeman.”
Dover issued articles of Freeman’s clothing and Wesley went into the house to tell Mother we were leaving. He returned with a paper sack.
“Mama fixed some food for Freeman, in case we find him,” Wesley explained. “I guess she thinks he’s starving.”
“Your mama’s a good woman, Wes, and that’s the truth,” Dover said. “I guess Freeman knows how to take care of himself, but if we don’t find him, just leave it somewheres. Freeman’ll find it. You better believe he’ll know where we are, even if we don’t know where he is.”
*
Dover drove his truck over a logging road that had become spotted with broom sage—a brown, forgotten highway. He stopped a quarter of a mile away from Rakestraw Bridge.
“All right, boys, y’all get started,” Dover instructed. “I’m gonna drive the truck back out to the road and I’ll circle back and pick up here.”
“It’s gettin’ late,” Alvin noted. “You not gonna have time before they turn loose them hounds.”
“Shoot, we got plenty of time, Alvin. You never seen a bunch of sheriff’s deputies at work, have you?” Dover said.
“No,” Alvin admitted.
“Well, first thing they gonna do is build a fire up there where they park their cars and trucks, and don’t ask me why. They always building fires, no matter how hot it is. Then they got to wait for ol’ Jim Ed Felton to bring his hounds, and Jim Ed’ll have to stop two or three times on the way to show off them dogs at country stores. Don’t ask me about that, either. That’s just Jim Ed. Loves to show off them dogs. Even when he gets up there where the sheriff’s waitin’, he’ll spend a hour talkin’ about which dog tracks best, which one howls loudest, which one’s in heat. It’ll take a couple of hours before they get ready to start.”
Dover had truly impressed us with his knowledge. There were times when we did not respect the fact that he was a man and we were boys, that he knew things we had never thought of.
Wesley and I slipped and stumbled down a steep hill leading to the upper spill of Black Pool Swamp. It was a part of the swamp we did not know well, because it was outside our boundaries, north of the imaginary north line that protected us, isolated us from threat and danger. We had hunted there with Freeman, and once each year we crossed through that damp, mossy seepage to a lush cane growth on Little Tanner’s Branch, and we cut a summer’s supply of fishing canes. But there was an unusual quiet to this part of the swamp, as though some untold horror had left its presence and that presence overwhelmed everyone and everything invading its influence.
Wesley had a pair of Freeman’s work pants and I carried the food Mother had packed in a paper sack. I walked ahead of Wesley, watching for suckholes, soft pools of sand and water that pockmarked the swamp. We decided to edge close to those pools, knowing the dogs would plunge stubbornly into the middle of the mire and be slowed by the laborsome work of clawing their way to firm ground. If we could trick them into four or five suckholes, we would then lead them straight up the steepest hill we could find, then down again, and up again, then back into the swamp.
We quickly discovered three suckholes and Wesley made certain the scent of Freeman’s work pants coated the ground. A huge pond of backed-up water we had never before seen forced us to the bank of a hill.
“Must be some new beaver dams,” Wesley guessed. “They been chewin’ on every tree in here.”
We walked silently along the rim of the pond, where the heavy perfume of tiny blossoms from tiny flowering plants lingered like sweet breath. A rain crow fussed at our intrusion. Huge black gums and water oaks and ash and beech had been nibbled down and the bark stripped clean. At the base of the trees, there were flat, neatly circled chips.
“What’d they strip the bark for?” I asked Wesley.
“Not sure,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s the sap they’re after. Maybe that’s what they eat. Maybe they use it to plug up their dams, like tar, or somethin’. I heard Halls Barton say they stripped the bark off to cure the logs. Maybe that’s it.”
We walked the shoreline of the water bank until we found the dam, a majestic heap of sticks and logs jammed into the runway of the branch. There was a long, curving wing on both sides of the branch, a fort-like pile of limbs built to nudge the water into select run-arounds in a slow, seeping fashion.
“Be some good fishin’ there,” observed Wesley. “We’ll have to remember it. Don’t guess nobody knows it’s here. Not even Freeman.”
“Sure he knows,” I said. “Freeman’s been all through here.”
“He’d have told us about this. It’s a lots better dam than them behind the house. Naw, Freeman don’t know about it.”
We had lingered too long and Wesley increased our pace until we crossed back inside our boundaries, and we were easy about where we were and where we were going. As we moved along, Wesley thought of a way to further confuse the bloodhounds. He took Freeman’s pants and rubbed them
up the trunks of several trees, as far as he could reach, then he would stick the pants in his jacket and broad-jump away from the base of the tree. Fifty feet away from the tree, he would begin dragging the pants again.
“That’ll make ’em think they got Freeman treed,” Wesley said proudly. “Might even bring the sheriff and his deputies in tryin’ to find him. They’ll be goin’ crazy.”
“Are they gonna smell us, Wesley?”
“Sure, but it’s not us they’re supposed to smell. It’s Freeman, and Dover was right about one thing—these pants stink enough. I bet Freeman had been wearin’ them a week or longer.”
Nearer to the center of Black Pool Swamp, where we played, Wesley began to call softly for Freeman, but there was no answer.
“Do an owl,” I urged. “Maybe he’ll answer an owl.”
“Owls call at night. Don’t you know nothin’?”
“What about a bobwhite?”
“Well, he might answer.”
Wesley did a bobwhite. We waited. He whistled again. Nothing.
“Freeman,” I called out. “Freeman.”
Wesley turned his head slowly, like a bird listening to the wind. “He’s not gonna say nothin’,” he mumbled.
Freeman did not answer, but I could feel him, sense his presence. He was near, watching us.
“He’s there, ain’t he, Wesley?” I whispered.
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it. He’s sneakin’ around and you know it.”
“We don’t got the time to find out. We gotta get back to the house,” Wesley said.
“Let me drag the pants a little bit,” I begged. “You been draggin’ all the way.”
“All right, but make sure they stay on the ground. I’m goin’ on down to the sand bar to see if Otis has crossed the creek yet. You come on down there.”
Wesley left quickly, disappearing into the woods. I turned Freeman’s pants inside out and carefully pulled them after me. Not even Wesley had thought of turning the pants inside out, and I was pleased with the brilliance of my idea: if bloodhounds could smell Freeman on the outside of his pants, they would go slobbering crazy when they picked up a whiff of this fresh odor.
I decided not to follow Wesley’s path. If the bloodhounds had become accustomed to our scents, going separate directions would have to divide the pack and we would then contend the bloodhounds were worthless, because they could not tell one scent from another.
Dragging Freeman’s pants through the woods was the first important, man-type thing I had ever done, and I began to feel the oppressive responsibility of a newer, higher calling. I could see men sitting around service stations talking about the daring and, yes, the genius, of my woodmanship. Dragging pants was a man’s job, they would say, a man’s art, and I had, at twelve, advanced all recognized knowledge of the subject by turning the pants inside out. And they would talk—probably in exaggerations—of how the fresh, powerful scent of Freeman had been sniffed off oak leaves by a wild dog covered with bloodsucking ticks and driven insane with rabies, and how that dog had begun stalking me, slithering along on its belly like a bobcat, until it found me, off guard and unawares. They would lower their voices when they retold the part about the dog’s charge, leaping through the air toward my twelve-year-old back, and how I had turned, Freeman’s pants in one hand and a jagged walking stick in the other, and how I had had time to do only one thing—fall away and jab the walking stick into the throat of the diving dog. And after the telling, the men would sit quiet in their service stations and nod. Their telling and sitting and nodding would make a legend of my helping Freeman, and I would protest. Any man—man, that is—would have done the same thing.
I found a walking stick, with the suggestion of a point, and then circled the hill where, when we were younger, we had spent exuberant hours on torn-apart cardboard boxes, sledding down a carpet of pine needles. It had been a childish time, a time when there was no difference between black and white and our babyhood friends included the children of Negro sharecroppers. In the days of our sledding, we had been totally free of the distinction of Our Side and the Highway 17 Gang. We did not know there was a difference between us and anyone. We did not know, because we did not care. The days were too filled with adventure, too crowded with pleasures of running, physically running, after the quicksilver of seasons. The running had kept us joyously alive, had reminded us of our realness and quickened our imaginations of what it was like to be a spinning member of a spinning universe.
I passed a fox den that was unusually deep, burrowed beneath a surface root of a black gum tree, and an inspiring bit of trickery exploded in my mind. I pulled Freeman’s pants over the opening of the fox den, generously rubbing the ground with Freeman’s scent. I wrapped the pants around my walking stick and carefully shoved them deep into the den, scrubbing them against the walls of that dark, dry hiding place. I then walked away in giant steps, holding Freeman’s pants above my head on the stick. If Jim Ed Felton’s bloodhounds could still tell up from down, they would turn into whimpering fools at the fox hole. And if Jim Ed found them there, braying at a hole in the ground, he would kick their butts and sell them to the highest bidder.
There was no reason to drag Freeman’s pants any longer. There was a certain justice to leaving Freeman in a fox den. Freeman would love that touch, I thought. Freeman would have done exactly the same thing.
“Colin, what are you doin’, boy?”
I did not expect Freeman’s voice. It struck me like a great weight, broke my knees, and crushed the breath out of me. My heart erupted like a volcano, careened off my ribs, and lodged somewhere underneath my left armpit. I sank to the ground, and Freeman was over me like a cloud, catching me before I fell forward.
“Hey. What’s the matter, boy? You all right?”
I tried to motion for Freeman to catch the stick in my hand, the one holding his pants, but he did not understand and the stick fell away.
“C’mon, boy. You not gonna die on me, are you?” Freeman said. He slapped me twice across the face and suddenly the fear rushed out of my brain and my heart began to ease back into my chest cavity.
“Yeah, yeah, Freeman, I’m all right,” I mumbled, sitting down and breathing deep. “You have to scare me to death?”
Freeman smiled, smiled his King-of-Black-Pool-Swamp, Chief-of-the-Great-Okeenoonoo smile. “I gotta be careful. You know that.”
“You could’ve whistled, or somethin’.”
“Yeah. Guess I could’ve. Where’d Wes go?”
“Down to the sand—hey, how’d you know Wesley was with me?”
“I been watchin’ you for almost a hour. What’d y’all doin’, anyway? You look like a bunch of fools draggin’ a pair of pants through the woods. I even saw Alvin and Otis doin’ the same thing. Y’all crazy?”
I explained Dover’s scheme and Freeman radiated. He loved the plan and he loved the attention.
“That is something else,” he said happily. “Yessir, that is about the finest piece of thinkin’ Dover has ever done, or ever will do. Hard to believe he’s got that much sense.”
“He said he got the notion from a radio show. Sam Spade or somebody.”
“Sam Spade? Well, it ought to work. Sam Spade, huh? I didn’t hear that one. Did you? You hear it?”
“Naw. Hey, Freeman, what’d you think about pokin’ them pants of yours in that fox hole?” I asked.
“Son, that is pure genius. Yessir. Pure genius. Couldn’t’ve thought of anything better myself. Guess I messed it up, trampin’ all around here, but that’s some kind of thinkin’. I’m proud of you. Yessir, I am, and that’s a fact.”
Freeman’s compliment was highly flattering, but his mood changed quickly and he became strangely tense.
“What’re you gonna do, Freeman?” I asked. “Sheriff and his deputies are gonna be all over the place.”
Freeman picked up a stick and started chewing on it. “Well, I’m not too sure. I just know I’m not goin’ to jail, an
d that’s the truth. Not for somethin’ I didn’t do.”
“You didn’t steal that twenty dollars, did you, Freeman?”
“Steal it? Shoot, I never even saw it. If I was goin’ to steal something, it’d sure as Satan be more’n twenty dollars. You know I got more sense than that.”
“They’ll catch up to you, Freeman. Sooner or later.”
“They never gonna catch me, and you know it. C’mon, let’s go find Wesley.”
We moved quickly through the woods, across a net of drain ditches covered with surface water, and followed the bank of Beaverjam Creek. Freeman moved like an animal, completely noiseless and graceful. Watching him slip like some wind creature through the trees, I realized it was impossible to tell he had been there. Perhaps bloodhounds would siphon off the steps he had taken, but no man could follow the evidence of Freeman’s movements. I had never before believed his stories about melting into the woods and becoming part of them; now I did, and I remembered other exhibitions of his skill. Once, when Wesley and I had camped with Freeman, I saw him snap the head of a cottonmouth moccasin in a move so blinding it frightened me. “I could do that ten times out of ten,” he bragged. Now, following him, I knew he had not lied. Freeman became an ethereal extension of himself in Black Pool Swamp. In Black Pool—in the Great Okeenoonoo—Freeman was free, free from any of the pitiful suspicions we had when he told his tales.
Wesley was sitting, half-hidden, beside a water oak that was twisted and knotted. He was not surprised to see Freeman.
“Here,” Wesley said, handing Freeman the paper sack of food Mother had prepared for him. “Mama’s worried you’re starvin’ in here.”
Freeman devoured the sandwiches and baked sweet potato.
“That’s good,” he declared, swallowing the last sandwich. “Boys, y’all have got one good mama, and I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as my head.”
“Talkin’ about mamas, you got one that’s scared to death,” Wesley said.
Freeman’s face was furrowed and he seemed extremely tired. “Yeah, I know it. Figured she must be pretty upset when she and Daddy come over to your place last night. She all right? She—she any sicker?”
