Salvation of Miss Lucretia

by Ted M. Dunagan

  I had seen enough of rattlesnakes to last me from now on, and here come another big fat one slithering out of that cloud of wood ashes with his pointed head up in the air, his red eyes searching and his forked tongue flickering.

  “She don chunked a rattlesnake down the chimney!” Poudlum cried out in alarm.

  “Watch him!” I warned. “Watch where he goes!”

  “Oh, Lord,” Poudlum moaned. “Here we are chained to the floor and she’s running rattlesnakes in on us!”

  I calmed him down by reminding him we had cut both our chains to the point where we could break them if need be.

  Poudlum began to pray, and said, “Lord, please provide us with a weapon to protect ourselves.”

  “The Lord helps them who help themselves,” I told him as I reached over and retrieved the stool we had cut the wedges under the door from. I placed it upside down, stood up and stomped though the small spindles that held the four legs together.

  “Here,” I told Poudlum. “Grab one of the legs and let’s rip ’em out.”

  After we did so we each had a short stubby stool leg in our hands. “It ain’t much,” Poudlum said. “But I ’spect I could fight a snake off with it.”

  It was about that time we heard another plopping sound from the inside the fireplace.

  “On, no!” Poudlum said. “She done dropped another one down on us!”

  And sure enough another little cloud of wood ashes appeared and another nasty serpent came crawling out of it.

  We were both exasperated, and I could see little beads of sweat had popped out on Poudlum’s face, and I could feel little rivulets of perspiration running down my own.

  That’s when we heard Miss Lucretia’s voice from outside the door, as she called out, “I’m gonna send another visitor in on y’all ever five minutes till y’all open dat door.”

  I looked at Poudlum, and we both nodded in agreement that it was time to call a truce.

  “Will you tell her?” I asked.

  “Uh huh,” he said as we both watched warily and brandished our stool legs.

  “Hey, Miss Lucretia,” he called out. “We gonna open the door. Please don’t chunk no more snakes in here on us!”

  We heard her triumphant chuckle as Poudlum kicked the wedges out from underneath the bottom of the door. Then it swung open and she came back in.

  She glared at us for a moment; then she went over and scooped up a rattlesnake in each hand. She kind of shook them at us as we shrank back just before she went out the door with them. Then she stuck her head back inside the door, and said with venom in her voice, “These is two of my favorites, but you rapscallions kilt my most favorite one.”

  Then she was gone, leaving us to ponder the power of someone who was friends with rattlesnakes.

  It wasn’t long before she was back. She gazed around and observed the destroyed stool and the wedges we had jammed the door with.

  Poudlum had concealed the saw blade so she wouldn’t know we had retrieved it.

  “Y’all is two resourceful little devils. Destructive ones, too,” she added. “But at least I got one good stool left,” she said as she pulled it up, sat down and stared at us.

  Poudlum got his courage up first, and said, “Miss Lucretia, we don’t wish you no harm. Why you treating us like this?”

  “Don’t mean me no harm?” she said with an incredulous tone to her voice. “Y’all come in here chasing my squirrels wid dem hounds from hell, kilt my favorite snake, and just left him to rot. Dem snakes are good eating, and I save de skins for trade.

  “Den you killed one of my rabbits and cleaned his bones. I knowed dat rabbit, too. I fed him greens out of my garden.Next you done locked me out of my own house, busted up my stool, and tried to destroy dem old chains dat’s most a hundred years old, and you say y’all don’t mean me no harm!

  “’Sides all dat, it looks to me like a colored boy done taken to running wid a white boy. And sound like you done took to talking like one of ’em. Now what you got to say to dat?”

  She seemed to be addressing herself to Poudlum and ignoring my very existence, but that was all right with me because I preferred he do all the talking anyway.

  Poudlum didn’t hesitate. “Miss Lucretia, we was teaching our dogs to hunt squirrels so we can hire them and ourselves out this fall. As far as that big timber rattler, me and Ted—”

  “So dat’s who dis little white demon is?” she interrupted.

  “Yes’m, that’s his name, and he ain’t no demon. He’s my friend. In fact, he’s my best friend.”

  “Ain’t no white person no friend of no colored person, boy! You need to get that through yo’ head, you hear?”

  Poudlum wasn’t intimidated, and what he said made me proud to have him as a friend.

  “He is my friend, Miss Lucretia, and when I think of him, I don’t think about that he’s a white person, I just think about him as my friend, and he truly is.”

  I could tell she was taken aback by what Poudlum had just said, and there was a great moment of silence while she contemplated his words.

  I took advantage of it and uttered my first words to her. “I’m the same way, Miss Lucretia. When I think about Poudlum the color of his skin don’t never come to mind, just that he’s my friend. We been friends for a good long while now.”

  I could tell my words further consternated her.

  Poudlum continued, “And we killed that rattler because he threatened us. As far as that rabbit, we eat him because we had ventured farther from our camp than we had planned to looking for our dogs, and we was powerfully hungry. Then when our rifles disappeared, we just wanted them and our dogs back, and that’s the only reason we came in here.”

  She had recovered her composure somewhat, and said, “And y’all got put in a trance when you smelled my goat stew, didn’t you?”

  “Yes’m, we was. It was mighty tasty, but it was also mighty powerful, and led to us being chained up here on your floor.”

  She cackled with laughter, and said, “Uh huh, I put my potion in it. Works every time.”

  “What you done with our dogs and our rifles?” Poudlum asked.

  “Dem hell hounds, de big black one and de little red one, liked my goat stew, too. I let ’em have a little whiff of it, and dey followed me to a place where I gots ’em penned up, just like y’all.”

  “Miss Lucretia,” Poudlum pleaded. “If you’ll just give us our dogs and rifles we’ll leave and you won’t be bothered by us no more.”

  “Oh, no!” she howled. “De damage is done, and y’all gots to pay!”

  “Pay? Pay for what? Pay how?” Poudlum asked in alarm.

  She was standing and looking down at us in a menacing manner when she continued, “I got to figure out how to make y’all pay. I could use dem guns from time to time. Be a lot easier to shoot a wild hog instead of trapping ’em.

  “Now, dem dogs is another matter. I got something in particular to use dem for. I’ll use dat little one first ’cause he—”

  “Hold on a minute, Miss Lucretia,” Poudlum implored her. “We’ll give you the guns if you’ll set us free, but our dogs ain’t for trade and you can’t just take them.”

  “And how come I can’t take dem dogs if I want to?”

  “’Cause it ain’t a respectable thing to do, to take a man’s dog away from him,” Poudlum replied.

  Miss Lucretia cackled like an old hen with laughter before she said, “I don’t see no mens here. All I see is two boys, helpless and chained up like slaves.”

  I couldn’t stand it any longer so I blurted out, “What would you do with our dogs, Miss Lucretia? They wouldn’t hunt for you and you would have to keep them chained up to keep them from leaving on their own.”

  “Keeping ’em here ain’t exactly what I had in mind, at least not for long,” she snickered.

 
Poudlum’s eyes grew wide and he moaned, “Oh Lord, Miss Lucretia, you wouldn’t—!”

  “I’ve heard tell dog stew is pretty good. I ’spect dat little one would be mighty tender,” she continued with an evil grin.

  But then she relieved us of that awful thought when she said, “Naw, I don’t eat dog,” only to terrify us more when she continued, “but I knows something which might. What I aim to do is bait my panther pit with ’em instead of using up my chickens. I ’spect dat panther might consider a young tasty dog so tempting that it may finally get itself caught!”

  Poudlum struggled up on his knees, and with tears rolling down his cheeks said, “Miss Lucretia, I ain’t had that little dog long, but I do dearly love him. Please don’t use him for panther bait! If you’ll be kind enough to let us walk out of these woods with our dogs, me and Ted will pray for you every day for a year. I’ll get everybody in my church to pray for you every Sunday. Please, ma’am, please!”

  Amazingly, when Poudlum said that, a calming seemed to take hold of her. I could tell by the way her head drooped a little to her left, the way her shoulders sagged, but most of all by the change of the tone of her speech and the softening of the level of her gaze.

  There was a melancholy to her voice when she said, “I come to stay out here in 1935.”

  Poudlum and I exchanged glances and I knew he was figuring in his mind like me to the realization that Miss Lucretia had been out here in these woods by herself for fourteen long years!

  Well, not completely, as we were to find out later, but for most of that time she had been alone and isolated, deep in the woods.

  In an almost kind voice, she said, “Don’t you boys fret yo’ selves, I don’t plan to harm anything ’cept yo’ ears.”

  Poudlum’s jaw dropped when she said that, and I clamped my hands over my ears to protect them.

  “You ain’t gonna touch our ears, Miss Lucretia!” Poudlum said.

  “I only plans to touch ’em wid words,” she said in a calming tone while she pulled a little can of snuff out of a big pocket on her flour-sack dress, and loaded up her bottom lip with a dip of it.

  “Where you get that snuff?” Poudlum asked.

  “Man comes in here ’bout twice a year, great-nephew of mine, and brings me stuff,” she replied.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Flour, sugar, salt, kerosene, and other stuff I needs. Don’t need much, though. Besides my goat herd, I got chickens, and I trap a wild hog once in a while and cures out my own meat and cooks out my own lard.”

  “How in the world do you trap a wild hog?” I asked.

  She chuckled, and said, “Same way I would have trapped you boys iffen you hadn’t been trapped by yo’ own hunger. I grow me a garden, too. I raise peas and butterbeans, eat ’em green an den dry out a few pecks fo’ de winter. I grow taters, turnips, okra, and a few others. Okra is my favorite. Y’all know it come from Africa. African word for okra is gumbo, used for de base for yo’ stew. But we learned how to fry it in pig fat, and dat’s de way we eats it mostly.”

  She stopped talking and looked from one of us to the other. I suspected she noticed us licking our lips while she talked about all those good things to eat. “’Spect y’all be getting hungry, ain’t you? Being as y’all didn’t have no breakfast.”

  “Yes’m, we powerful hungry,” Poudlum told her.

  “All right, den. Iffen y’all will just be patient for a spell, I’ll fix you a dinner plate. Got a pot of butterbeans going, and I’ll fry up some okra. I does most of my cooking outside under a shed, ’cept when de weather is bad. Den I cooks at de fireplace.”

  She stood up to leave, then as if she had just thought of something else, she looked over toward the wall where the hacksaw blade had landed when she had kicked it out of Poudlum’s hand. While her eyes searched, she said, “Where dat saw blade?”

  Since we really didn’t need it anymore, Poudlum slipped it out from underneath his leg and held it out to her.

  She snatched it from his hand, examined it closely, then she walked around the room examining the floor. Eventually her gaze found our ankles, and she said, “What happened to y’all’s britches legs?”

  After Poudlum had explained to her how we had retrieved the saw blade, she chuckled, and said, “Dere for a minute I was suspecting y’all might know some voodoo, too.”

  When she turned to go out the door, Poudlum called after her, “Miss Lucretia, we real hungry, and we appreciate the food you offering, but we ain’t gonna eat it if—”

  “What I’m fixing won’t put y’all to sleep,” she reassured us as she interrupted. I needs y’all to be alert ’cause I got some things to tell y’all.”

  The door closed and she was gone again, but soon we strongly suspected she really intended to feed us because the aroma of boiling butterbeans and frying okra came wafting through the cracks of the cabin while our mouths watered with anticipation.

  “Hey, Poudlum,” I asked. “You think we ought to eat what she’s fixing?”

  “Uh huh. I don’t care if it does knock us out, I’m so hungry I’ll eat it anyway. But to tell you what I think is the truth, I don’t think there’ll be any knock-out potion in the food.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “’Cause she seemed to have lost that hard edge, and I think she seriously wants to tell us a story.”

  “That’s well and good, but I’m about to pee in my pants. What about you?”

  “I done gone past pain and moved into numbness. It’s got to be soon, real soon.”

  In the meantime we struggled with putting the stool back together, but by using the improvised little ropes we had made with our britches legs, we managed to get it back into a wobbly condition, sufficient enough so it would support one of us or Miss Lucretia.

  Not long afterwards she came back and moved the table so that Poudlum and I could both sit at it while we were still chained up. While she was doing that we explained our uncomfortable situation to her.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “I never thought of dat.”

  After giving it some thought, she said, “I’m gonna tell you where de outhouse is and let you go one at a time. Seems to me y’all really is good friends and one of you won’t run off and leave de other.

  “Wouldn’t get very far, anyway,” she said as an afterthought.

  We watched as she walked over to the far corner, the one that was curtained off, and saw her pull one of the edges back just far enough to reach in with her hand.

  While she was doing that, Poudlum leaned over and whispered, barely discernible, “Take notes in your head while you out there, and I will, too.”

  I nodded, just before she turned and came back toward us with a big rusty key in her hand. “My granddaddy, after he had wore one of dem shackles y’all gots on for more’n ten years, took dis key offen de dead body of Old Cap’n Foster.”

  I could hear the clicking sound of the key in the lock as she freed Poudlum. As the shackle came off, she said, “I’m gonna let you go first, and iffen you ain’t back directly, yo’ friend gonna be introduced to some voodoo he ain’t gonna forget fo’ a long time.”

  Poudlum dashed out the door, and I was alone with her. While she fussed about on the shelves getting tin plates for us to eat on, I imagined Poudlum flying through the woods, abandoning me, left to my fate with the voodoo queen.

  But of course that never happened, and soon he was back and it was my turn.

  During my trek to the outhouse, I took in everything with my eyes. I noticed there were two paths leading away from the cabin, one past her cooking shed, and the other toward her goat pen, the way we had come in.

  There was a wash basin, a bucket of water, and a big brown bar of homemade soap for washing on the small porch.

  When I got back inside, there were two plates piled high with steaming butterbeans and fried okra on
the table, where Poudlum sat, waiting for me.

  Miss Lucretia locked the shackle back on me after I sat down on the wobbly stool, and began to eat. The food was as good as any I had ever tasted.

  Miss Lucretia said, “I’m gonna go down to de spring and fetch a bucket of water.”

  Just before she departed, in between bites, Poudlum said, “Miss Lucretia, what you got behind that curtain in the corner?”

  “Dat’s fo’ me to know and fo’ you to find out, boy,” she said just before the door closed behind her.

  Chapter 7

  Drogues

  I thought back, counting the days since we had come into the forest and realized it was the middle of the day on Thursday, and we would be expected back at Mister Autrey’s Saturday morning.

  “Poudlum, if we ain’t back by this time day after tomorrow, they’ll come in here looking for us. Don’t you think she realizes that?”

  “She don’t think like that.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Don’t nobody come in here looking to see how she is, and I think she been back here so long that she done forgot that folks care about each other and look out for one another.”

  “She said somebody comes in here twice a year and brings her snuff and stuff.”

  “Twice a year ain’t enough, and I’ll bet you my dog, if I still got one, that whoever it is that does that is somehow taking advantage of her.”

  “How could anybody take advantage of that woman?”

  “I don’t know, but I got a feeling we gonna find out before we get out of her clutches.”

  “Speaking of getting out of here,” I said. “Did you notice when you went outside that there’s two paths leading away from the cabin?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Which one do you think would be safe to take when we light out of here?”

  “Neither one.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause she probably got traps set all along both of ’em. Probably best for us to go the most unlikely way, like straight into the woods.”

  “Well, when you think we ought to make a break? All we got to do is stomp on these chains to finish breaking the links.”