Trouble on the Tombigbee

by Ted M. Dunagan

  When we walked up, Mr. Henry was working on his little four-cylinder motor, which powered his ferryboat. He raised his head up from his task and said, “Hey, boys. “’Spect y’all be looking for that boat Mr. Curvin left here for y’all.”

  “Yes, suh,” Poudlum told him.

  “Well, it’s right down yonder,” he said as he pointed a few yards below the ferry. “Right where I helped him unload it early dis morning. Said you boys would be along directly and planned to spend a few days fishing on de river.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Henry,” I told him as we turned toward the boat.

  “Well, lookahere, you boys need to be real careful out on that old river.”

  Before I had moved to Coffeevilee, Poudlum and I had been going over to the spot on Satilfa Creek about twice a week, where the moonshine still had been, and I had taught him to swim. He had become a real good swimmer, too, just like I knew he would. So I told Mr. Henry, “We can both swim, and we’re not afraid of the river,”

  “Ain’t the river you got to worry about so much,” he said with an ominous sound to his voice. “It’s some of the folks you run into on the river.”

  Chapter 2

  The Mouth of the Satilfa

  “What you ’spect he meant by that?” Poudlum asked as we walked down toward the boat.

  “Shoot, I don’t know, but from the way he said it I ’spect we ought to pay some heed to him.”

  “I wish we had got up early this morning and rode in with Mr. Curvin. We done that, we probably would’ve already had us a mess of catfish.”

  “You probably right about that, but I don’t like getting up before daylight.”

  “What yo’ uncle went over the river for so early this morning?”

  “Said he was going over to Choctaw County and do some horse trading.”

  “He gonna get hisself a hoss?”

  “I don’t think so. What I think is that ‘horse trading’ is a couple of words that don’t really mean what they say.”

  “What they mean then?”

  “I believe they mean being real careful and making sure you get a good deal when you’re doing business with someone.”

  We were almost to the boat when Poudlum said, “Where you think we ought to set up our campsite?”

  “I don’t know. Just down the river a little ways I guess.”

  “I think we ought to cross the river and make camp over there.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause if we stays over on this side Herman Finney might come down here and be pestering us.”

  “I ’spect you might be right about that, Poudlum.”

  When we got to the boat we saw a big brown mound in the middle of it, and it turned out to be a tarp my uncle had used to cover up the stuff in the boat.

  As we removed it, I told Poudlum, “Uncle Curvin said we could use this tarp to make us a tent or a lean-to if it rains. Let’s fold it up and stow it under one of the seats.”

  Once we did that, we discovered my uncle had left some treasures for us in the boat. There were several cane fishing poles, a little box with hooks, lines, sinkers, and corks, a black iron skillet, blankets, wooden matches in a waterproof bag, a big bucket, and an ax.

  But Poudlum discovered the most important item and called out, “Hey, Ted! Come look at this!”

  I walked down to his end of the boat as he pulled out two quart fruit jars with bright gold caps and filled with a green, yellow, and black mixture of something.

  “Look!” he said as he held up one of the jars. “It’s catalpa worms, just about the best fish bait in the world!”

  Sure enough it was. I took one of the jars and began to examine it. Little air holes were poked into the caps of the jar, and it was full of catalpa worms and leaves from the tree for them to feed on. Those fat fish-catching worms were crawling around inside the jar munching on leaves, not knowing they would soon be taking a perilous swim in the river.

  The worms were picked off the tree leaves this time of the year, and I never particularly liked the job of collecting them because they would cling to the leaf with all their little tiny suction-cup legs and spit green juice on your fingers when you tore them loose from the leaves. But it was worth it because catfish loved catalpa worms more than a possum loves a sweet potato.

  The catalpa tree is ornamental with showy flowers, but once a year the tree becomes occupied by the pale yellow worms with black heads and black markings. Catfish would jump on these worms like a dog would a bone.

  We stowed the worms and our sacks of food in the boat and waved goodbye to Mr. Henry after we pushed off.

  As we were paddling toward the other side of the river, Poudlum said, “You think we ought to go upriver or down it?”

  “Why don’t we do both,” I answered.

  “How in the world we gonna do that?”

  “Easy. We’ll go down the river today, and tomorrow we’ll go up it.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Poudlum said. “But I think we ought to take all our stuff with us in case we decide to camp somewhere else instead of coming back here and camping near the ferry.”

  The boat, eleven feet long and five feet wide, was constructed of thick cypress boards with tar in all the joints and cracks. We had the hang of handling the paddles by the time we reached the middle of the river.

  We pulled our paddles in and rigged up four fishing poles. We held two with our hands and tied the other two down and started floating down the river, letting the slow current take us with it. A mighty feeling of just being swept over me, like I was the center of the world, no, the universe.

  After a while I looked down toward Poudlum’s end of the boat, and from the peaceful way he grinned at me, I knew he felt the same.

  In spite of our tried-and-true bait, the fish weren’t biting. We drifted about an hour with nary a nibble.

  When Poudlum began pulling in the poles, I looked up and asked him what he was doing.

  “It’s the wrong time of the day for fishing. We gots to wait until shadows start to fall on the water.”

  “So what you think we ought to do?”

  He turned toward the afternoon sun, shaded his eyes against it with his hand, and said, “It’s probably nigh on to three o’clock. I figure if we just paddle downriver for a good while we ought to come to the mouth of Satilfa Creek. I hear tell there is some mighty good fishing at that spot, and the light ought to be right about then.”

  I looked back up the river and figured there was no way we could get lost because the river flowed from north to south, so I agreed with Poudlum, pulled my pole in and grabbed a paddle.

  It didn’t take us as long as we had anticipated. We hugged the east side of the river and in about twenty minutes we saw a broad opening in the thick tree line where the color of the water turned from brown to dark green.

  “I believe that’s it!” Poudlum said excitedly. “Now we gonna catch us some big ones!”

  As we guided the boat into the mouth of the creek, Poudlum said, “Whoopee! Look at this place!”

  We had entered a cathedral of nature with the ceiling being the limbs of trees reaching out to touch the ones from the opposite side of the creek. The ones that hadn’t quite made it were joined by thick muscadine vines forming a leafy dome above the wide mouth of the creek. After we were a few yards in, it seemed as if we were in a floating cave.

  We nosed the boat toward a large tree branch which jutted out from the north bank. When we got within reach, Poudlum scrambled to the front of the boat and looped our rope over it.

  “This old rope is the same one that was in this boat when we first found it. It looks like it’s ’bout half rotten. Hope it holds.”

  It did, and we sat about baiting our hooks.

  As soon as our corks were bobbing in the water, Poudlum said, “You know why I wan
ted to come down here on the river instead of us going back to the Cypress Hole?”

  “How come.”

  “’Cause they is some whoppers down here in this river, and I aims to catch me one. How come you think catfish love catalpa worms so much?” Poudlum asked as he unscrewed the lid of the jar and extracted a fresh worm.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I guess it’s just some kind of secret of nature, kind of like why you and me like pork chops so much.”

  Poudlum paused, thought for a few moments before he said, “No, I don’t believe that’s the answer, ’cause when I eat a pork chop it comes out of a skillet and there ain’t no hook in it to catch me with.”

  I considered what Poudlum had said and surmised he was correct, so I just said, “Then I reckon I just ain’t go no idea why then.”

  My honesty seemed to satisfy him, but then he came up with the same question he had asked me one time up on the Cypress Hole.

  With a squirming worm between two fingers and a shiny steel fishing hook poised in his other hand he said, “Do you think it’s gonna hurt this worm when I stick him with this fishing hook?”

  “Naw, they can’t feel nothing.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me why he’s going into such a fit of jerking and squirming?” Poudlum said as he skewered the fat worm with his hook.

  “I don’t know. Just toss him in the water and let’s see if they biting yet.”

  “I’m fixin’ to do just that,” he said as he adjusted his cork. “Gonna fish a little bit more shallow, too.”

  My line was already in the water, which was a prettier color than out in the river, but you still couldn’t see anything below the murky surface.

  What I could see was the floating cork attached to my fishing line dancing on the ripples of the water. My favorite thing to see was when that cork would disappear into the watery world hidden from above. That’s when you knew a big channel cat had gone for your bait and gotten his gristly lip hooked on a sharp steel hook with a barb on it so he couldn’t slip off.

  That’s exactly what happened next, but it was Poudlum’s cork rather than mine.

  “Uh oh!” Poudlum cried out. “It’s a big one! I hope he don’t break my pole!”

  It took a while, but he finally wore that fish out and pulled him alongside the boat. I had pulled in my line so I could help him. Poudlum reached into the water, snagged the fish’s lip and tossed him on the bottom of the boat, where the fish began flopping all about.

  I leaned over the side of the boat with the bucket and scooped up some water to put the fish in, then I held it while Poudlum extracted his hook.

  “Watch out for that dorsal fin,” he admonished me. “He’ll try to stick you with it.”

  Once we got the fish in the bucket of water, we both leaned over the side and rinsed the smell of fish from our hands. Then we stood and gazed down at the fish swirling around in his new-found prison.

  “That’s a good two-pounder,” Poudlum said with exhilaration. “I bet they is a bunch more where he came from, and I aims to catch ’em.”

  And catch them he did. I even caught a couple of nice ones myself. Pretty soon there were so many fat catfish in our bucket there was hardly room for them to move.

  “This is one mighty fine fishing hole,” Poudlum said. “Just look at it. Because of the trees it stays shady all day long.”

  That’s when I realized we had been there for too long. The mouth of the Satilfa had cast a hypnotic spell on us, and we had lost track of time, and that began to bother me a little bit.

  “What time do you think it’s getting to be, Poudlum?

  “Uh, I ’spect it’s getting later on in the day.”

  “Untie us and let’s paddle out on the river and see where the sun is.”

  A few paddle strokes and we were back out on the river and were shocked to see the sun was just before setting.

  “I don’t think we have enough time to get back up to the ferry before dark,” I told Poudlum.

  “You probably right,” he said. “But they ain’t no clouds, and all we got to do is paddle up the river.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but I don’t think I want to be out on this river at night. What if we run into a big log or something?”

  “So what you think we ought to do?”

  “Maybe we ought to camp here on the creek bank and go back in the morning,” I said.

  “That’s fine with me. In fact I think I’d rather camp here than back up there. Probably be some more good fishing here early in the morning.”

  “Then we better make haste and find us a camping spot before it gets dark on us.”

  A few yards past the tree that we had tied up to earlier, we found a little cove in the creek with a sandy beach, which we slid our boat up onto. We used our ax to cut a few small saplings to make a clearing. Then after we unloaded the boat, we placed some of the saplings over our boat so no one would notice it if they came up or down the creek.

  “Why you think we need to hide our boat for anyway?” Poudlum asked.

  “I don’t know, just seems like a good idea, and it gets this brush out of the way. We need to gather us up some wood for our fire while we still got a little light.”

  Poudlum gazed into the bucket of fish on the ground and said, “If we hadda gone back up to the ferry we could have give some of these fish to somebody. Now what we gonna do with ’em? Sho’ can’t eat all of ’em.”

  “We’ll just have to throw back the ones we don’t eat,” I told him.

  “That do seem like a shame.”

  “If we leave them in that bucket of water, they’ll sho’ die. If we turn them loose, we might be able to catch them again in the morning.”

  Poudlum gently released the fish one at a time. We watched as they would move slowly at first, then with a dart disappear deep into the water.

  As he released the last one, he said to the fish, “Now, don’t you go too far ’cause I’ll be looking for you in the morning.”

  Turning back toward me, he said, “I saved this big last one for our supper. I’ll dress him if you’ll start us a fire.”

  Poudlum was at the creek’s edge giving the fish fillets one last washing, and I was just about to strike a match to light my kindling when I saw his head jerk up suddenly, like he had heard something

  Then I heard it, too. It was paddles bumping against the sides of boats, and men’s voices. Several of them.

  Chapter 3

  The Night Hawk

  Poudlum retreated from the creek bank and stood next to me. We cocked our ears and listened intently, and sure enough the sounds were exactly what we thought they were.

  “Who you think that could be?” Poudlum whispered.

  “I ain’t got the foggiest,” I whispered back.

  “What you think we ought to do?”

  “I think we ought to make sure they don’t see us. Quick, let’s drag all our stuff into the woods,” I said as I scattered my pile of firewood with a swipe of my foot.

  The paddle sounds and the voices were coming closer, alerting us that we didn’t have much time, so we made haste and by the time the boats came abreast of us we had cleared our campsite and were peeking through heavy foliage at the edge of the creek.

  It was dusk but we could still see there were three boats with six men in each one. It wasn’t the boats or the men that scared us—it was what they were wearing.

  They were all clad in white and had pointed hoods on their heads.

  “Lawd have mercy,” Poudlum moaned low. “They is the Klan!”

  “Hush!” I hissed. “Don’t make nary a sound!”

  Their faces weren’t covered, but there wasn’t enough light to recognize anybody. However, the voice of one of them rang out clear over the water when he said, “I smell fish.”

  “Me, too,” another one
said. “Supposed to be some mighty fine fishing around here.”

  “Yeah,” the first one said. “But it smells like fresh-caught fish, real strong like.”

  “Y’all hold it down back there,” a voice from the lead boat said. “And get busy paddling because we got about half a mile to go up this creek. And light your lanterns. It’s starting to get dark.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and heard Poudlum do the same as the boats moved on past us while they struck matches and lit their lanterns.

  Still, we didn’t move a hair or make a sound until they were out of sight and out of hearing.

  “Whew, Lawdy,” Poudlum said as he exhaled heavily. “If them men had a come by five minutes later we would have been frying catfish next to a big fire and probably wouldn’t have even heard ’em till it was too late.”

  “We could have outrun them through the woods,” I said.

  “Yep, and then we woulda been stuck out in these woods ’side the river all night with nothing to eat.”

  “Well, the good Lord was looking out for us and they didn’t see us.”

  “They shore did smell our fish though. I had to drop our supper on the bank when I first heard ’em. Now we gonna be eating cheese and crackers for supper instead of fresh fried catfish, all on account of the Klan.”

  “Let’s get those tree tops off the boat and get moving,” I said.

  “That sounds good to me. Being out on this river at night don’t sound so bad after all.”

  “We’re going up the creek and not out on the river, at least not now,” I told Poudlum.

  His jaw dropped as he stuttered, “Is-is-is you crazy? Why we want to go up the creek when we know the Klan is messing round up that way?”

  “Don’t you see? They didn’t have their faces covered and they’ll have a big fire going and we can sneak up on them and see who they are!”

  “You is crazy! What fire you talking about?”

  “They not going up the creek to go fishing, Poudlum. You heard one of ’em say they had ’bout half a mile to go. I bet what they doing is having a big Klan meeting and they’ll have a big fire going.”