“Sure would be nice to have us a fire,” I said. “But I suppose we better not take that chance.”
“’Spect you right about that,” Poudlum agreed. “But in the morning we can build us a small one as long as we use dry wood so it won’t make much smoke.”
I was already rolled up in my blanket when I heard Poudlum say, “I think I’ll set out a couple of lines before I go to sleep.”
In my state of exhaustion, just before I drifted off into a deep sleep, my last thought was that Poudlum was the only person I knew who loved to fish more than I did.
The next morning when I came awake I sat up with a start as the memories came flooding back, then I looked around and didn’t see any sign of Poudlum anywhere.
“Poudlum,” I called out real low.
“Over here,” he answered as he emerged from past the boat holding a good three-pound catfish by the gills, its big head still glistening wet as it curled its tail upward.
“Looks like you done caught a big one!” I said.
“Got ’im on the line I set out last night. I’ll dress him out if you’ll start us a fire.”
After we had devoured a big slab of delectable fish we set about pondering what our next move would be.
“I wish Uncle Curvin would get back. Maybe we’ll hear Mr. Henry toot his horn sometime today. If so, we’ll paddle directly up to the ferry.”
“I got some bad news,” Poudlum said as he was poking around in the boat.
“What?” I said in alarm.
“All the catalpa worms done died. On account of the Klan chasing us up and down the river our fish bait done died.”
We whiled away the day and still caught a good many fish, even though we were using dead worms for bait.
About an hour before dark we still hadn’t heard Mr. Henry’s horn and were at a loss at what to do next.
Suddenly Poudlum said, “I know what we can do!”
Chapter 7
The Quarter
“What you got on your mind, Poudlum?” I asked
“We got enough time before dark to get through the woods up to the Quarter. I know where Mr. Henry stays. He’ll know what we ought to do. We’ll take him some catfish, too. Might even get us a good supper in trade.”
After we had cut some green vines and plaited them together to make ourselves a rope, we looped it over a tree limb and suspended our food supply off the ground to keep it safe from varmints. We also drug our boat a little further into the woods and covered it up better before we set out.
We kept the riverbank in sight as much as we could as we headed through the woods. Sometimes we were forced away from it because of the denseness of the forest, but eventually the ferryboat side came into view.
We lingered in the edge of the woods until darkness came on, then we emerged and made our way up the road toward the Quarter, a place I had never been before, but knew about. It was where all the black folks lived, except the few who lived out in the country on farms like Poudlum’s family.
The moon had come up illuminating the Quarter as we entered it. We were on the narrow dirt road that was the main street. I noticed there were shallow ditches on each side of it, and I imagined how they would turn into muddy torrents when a hard rain fell.
The shotgun houses on each side of the road were weathered and drab without the benefit of paint, roofed with rusted sheets of tin. They were all built with small sagging porches in the front of three twelve-by-fourteen-foot rooms.
There were no glass windows, just wooden shutters hanging from the sides of the houses on rusted hinges.
I think Poudlum sensed my dismay as we walked down the middle of the little road. “This can be a mean place,” he said. “But as long as you is with me everything be all right.”
It dawned on me that the situation had reversed itself—instead of me protecting Poudlum in a white world, he was now protecting me in a black one.
A dim ray of light from a kerosene lamp seeped through the cracks of a closed window on one of the houses. Poudlum made a motion toward it and said, “Come on, this is where Mr. Henry stays.”
“How can you tell? They all look alike.”
“I been here a few times, bringing vegetables with my daddy. Got some kinfolks what stay in here, too.”
We walked up the two rickety steps onto the porch and Poudlum tapped on the front door and called out, “Hey, Mr. Henry.”
In a moment the door opened and there was the dim outline of Mr. Henry. “Hey, boys,” he said. “I kind of thought y’all might drop by. Come on in de house. Y’all didn’t run into nobody on the way, did you?”
“Naw, sir, nobody seen us,” Poudlum replied as he held up our stringer with three big catfish on it.
“Lord, look at dem catfish!” Mr. Henry said. “Catfish two nights in a row! Let me take ’em back to de missus in de kitchen. She’ll dress ’em out and fry ’em up for supper. You boys have a seat.”
I looked around the room and saw a square table with the dim lamp on it. There were two wooden rocking chairs at the table and behind it a bookshelf with several worn volumes. There was also a wooden bench across the room up against the wall. Poudlum and I sat there until Mr. Henry came back.
He pulled his rocking chair over a little closer to us, sat down, rocked forward slightly and said, “You boys done stirred up a hornet’s nest out on de river. Mr. Finney and dat boy of his come swimming up to de riverbank looking like two drowned rats. Said dey thought you boys had something to do with their boat and motor sinking. Once dat man quit spitting and sputtering, he did some masterful cussing. Y’all know anything about all dat?”
I glanced toward Poudlum and he gave me our secret signal that I should be the one to answer. “They did come by our camp, and Mr. Finney asked us some questions about where we had been on the river, but then they took off down the river so I don’t know of anything I had to do with their boat and motor sinking.”
Mr. Henry scratched his head and said, “What you boys think all this curiosity about y’all’s coming and goings on de river is all about? Has it got anything to do wid dat ruckus down on de creek de other night?”
I gave our signal back to Poudlum and he proceeded to tell Mr. Henry about our experience on the Satilfa the night before. The only part he left out was the fact the Exalted Cyclops’ identity had been made known to us.
“Lawd, save us!” Mr. Henry declared. “I think dat for some reason dey thinks y’all might have seen who some of ’em was. Anything else happen?”
I took over and told him how the two men had been at our camp last night after we returned from the creek where we had been searching for the piece of rotten rope. Once again, I left out the part about us also discovering the identity of the Night Hawk.
After that he told us if we had discovered who any of them were, he didn’t want to know about it because the less he knew about the Klan the better. After he said that, I knew we had done the right thing, and I was appreciative that we had an adult who would look out for us, but I still yearned for the safety of my uncle and the sanctuary of his truck.
“Why you think Uncle Curvin ain’t come back yet, Mr. Henry?” I asked.
“Sometimes when he goes over to Choctaw County he comes back de next day, but sometimes he be gone as long as three or four days. I think you boys ought to spend de night wid me instead of going back out on de river tonight. And come tomorrow morning y’all probably ought to paddle on down de river to Jackson, and when Mr. Curvin gets back I’ll tell him to pick y’all up at de bridge down dat way.”
Poudlum looked at me before he said, “But Jackson is ’bout ten or fifteen miles on down the river.”
“Dat’s true,” Mr. Henry said. “But paddling will be easy going downstream and it’ll get y’all out of harm’s way around here.”
Poudlum looked at me again and I could tell he was thinking the same thing
I was —that it would be a grand adventure to paddle down the river all the way to Jackson.
Mr. Henry got up, cracked the front door, and poked his head outside for a quick look-see. Apparently he was satisfied because when he closed the door he said, “Y’all come on and let’s mosey on back to de kitchen. I ’spect de missus probably got some victuals ready for us.”
We passed through the middle room of the house, which was the bedroom, and arrived in the kitchen where two lamps were burning brightly and the aroma of Mrs. Williams’s cooking made my mouth water.
“Hey, Mrs. Williams,” Poudlum said. “This here is my friend Mr. Ted.”
She smiled brightly and said, “I know, I remember seeing him in church. Y’all sit yourselves down and I’ll fix yo’ plates.”
I watched as she forked slabs of brown catfish fillets from a big black iron skillet on her wood stove. The grease was spitting and crackling as she spooned in the hushpuppies. “Won’t take but just a minute for dem hushpuppies to cook,” she said as she heaped piles of collard greens and black-eyed peas on our plates.
After we had feasted on all that wonderful food I noticed there was still a good stack of hushpuppies left over. While Mrs. Williams was serving us a big slice of sweet potato pie she said, “I’ll sack up de rest of dem hushpuppies and y’all can take ’em wid you.”
Later on Mr. Henry escorted us back to the front room and gave us two quilts each, one for a pallet on the floor and the other for cover.
Before he blew out the lamp and left the room he said, “Folks will be wanting to cross de river right after daylight, so I’ll get you young fellows up while it’s still dark and once we get down to de ferry y’all can light out at the crack of dawn, get back to y’all’s boat and be well down de river by de time anybody comes looking for de two of you.”
I was dead tired and Poudlum must have been too because I heard his heavy breathing before I drifted off underneath the soft quilt.
At first I thought it was a storm with a lot of thunder, but when I became fully awake I realized the loud crashes were being caused by something on the tin roof of the house.
Poudlum was awake too. In the darkness I saw his form as he sat up and said. “That don’t sound like no hailstorm to me.”
Mr. Henry came rushing into the dark room whispering loudly, “You boys need to get up and get yo’ shirt and pants on real quick. Make haste now!”
“What’s going on, Mr. Henry?” I asked as I stuffed one leg into my pants.
“I ’spect it’s de Klan. Sometimes late at night dey drive through de Quarter and chunk rocks on de roof of people’s houses. But somebody could have seen you boys come here and dey could be looking for y’all.”
He pressed a flashlight into my hand and said, “Use dis to find y’all’s way back to your boat.”
“But how we gonna get out of here?” Poudlum asked.
“Slide de wood box behind de stove over and y’all can slip through a hole under it and under de house, den sneak off in de dark. Dey may be watching de back door.”
Just then there was a pounding on the front door and we could see the flickering light of a torch through the cracks.
“Now git!” Mr. Henry hissed.
Sure enough there was a square hole underneath the wood box. I saw Poudlum snatch the sack of hush puppies just before we slithered through the hole. When we were through we reached up and slid the wood box back over the hole.
When we peeked up from underneath the edge of the back porch, sure enough there were two pointy-headed robed devils standing there. We eased over to the other side and in the darkness made our getaway to underneath the back porch of the next house where we breathed a little easier because from there we could melt away into the darkness, but we froze when we heard a gruff voice coming from Mr. Henry’s front porch say, “We heard the white boy and the colored boy what’s been fishing down on the river stopped to pay you a visit tonight.”
Mr. Henry was cool as a cucumber when he said, “Yes, suh, dem boys come by, brung us some catfish and we fed ’em a good meal. I ’spect dey back out on de river fishing by now. What you gentlemen be wantin’ wid dem boys anyhow?”
“Never you mind about that, old man. If we find out you lying we’ll stick this torch to this matchbox of a house.”
“Oh, I’m telling de Lawd’s truth. Dem boys is gone from here.”
“We’ll be watching you,” the hooded Klansman said as he turned away. “Load up, boys,” he called out. “Let’s get out of this den of black heathens.”
Poudlum and I watched as several hooded figures headed toward the pickup truck on the road.
“Like to take my knife to they tires,” Poudlum whispered.
“Not now,” I told him. “Just remember what the truck looks like.”
From the light of their torches we saw the truck was a black Ford without a tailgate. While they were still milling around and loading up we lit out across the backyards of the Quarter.
Poudlum tripped over something in the dark and went sprawling, but as I helped him up I saw he had held on to the sack of hushpuppies. “You think anybody heard me?” he panted.
“Naw, I don’t think so. I think we’re out of their hearing by now.”
That’s when we saw the light and heard the engine of the truck on its way out of the Quarter. We lay flat on our bellies between two houses and watched them go by. It was an eerie sight seeing about six white-robed and hooded men standing on the back of the truck waving torches as they passed.
When the sound of the truck had faded away we walked up to the road and very carefully made our own way out of the Quarter. When we got to Highway 84, the main road leading back to the river, we turned and headed that way.
“Don’t turn that flashlight on yet,” Poudlum warned. “We can see good enough to get to the river. Besides we need to save the batteries ’cause it’s gonna be mighty dark going back to our camp through the woods.
We took turns walking backwards so we could detect anyone coming up on us in time to dash into the woods. When we got to the river we decided to sit down on the ferry and rest for a while before beginning our dark trek through the woods.
“Can you believe it?” Poudlum said. “The Klan has got themselves a spy in the Quarter! I bet Mr. Henry will flush ’im out.”
“What you mean they got a spy in the Quarter?”
“How else the Klan know we at Mr. Henry’s house? Some dirty rat seen us and went and told ’em, that’s how.”
We studied the position of the moon and concluded it was around midnight.
“On account of the Klan we can’t get no rest and can’t do much fishing. I purely do despise ’em, do you?”
“I reckon I do, Poudlum.”
“I don’t understand why grown mens be running around in the middle of the night clad in bed sheets and with a pillow case over their heads with two peep holes in it. What does the Klan want and where do they come from?”
“I know a little about where they came from,” I told him.
“How you know?”
“Uncle Curvin told me.”
“Naw! Don’t be telling me Mr. Curvin is one of ’em!”
“No, no, Poudlum! I don’t believe Uncle Curvin belongs to the Klan, but he does seem to know a lot about ’em.”
“Then how come he knows—”
Poudlum was interrupted by the sudden glare of the headlights of a vehicle just before it crested the top of the hill behind us.
I sprang up and said, “We got to run for it!”
“It’s too late!” Poudlum said. “We couldn’t never make it to the woods before they gets here!”
Chapter 8
Burning Boats
I realized Poudlum was right. We could never make it to the woods before the lights would be squarely on us, so I called out in panic, “What we gonna do,
Poudlum?”
“Gots to get wet,” he said as he began sliding over the edge of the ferry which faced the river.
“Don’t you get them hushpuppies wet,” I told him as I followed behind him.
“And don’t you let that flashlight get under water,” Poudlum responded.
The river water was cool and I felt it soaking through my shoes as the vehicle’s lights flooded over our heads and spilled out over the river. Then the engine ground to a halt and we heard two doors slam shut. It got awful quiet for a few moments, then there was a loud sound of wood scraping on metal.
“Sounds like they is unloading a boat,” Poudlum whispered.
Sure enough that was what they were doing. We heard their grunts as they slapped it down on the muddy bank and then we heard the scraping again when it sounded like they were unloading a second boat.
Right after that we heard one of them say, “Well, we done our job. They’ll be a buncha boys here early in the morning and they’ll take one boat up the river and the other one down it.”
“What they gonna do when they catch ’em?” the other one asked.
“They gonna make ’em tell who sent ’em to spy on us.”
“What if they won’t tell?”
“Oh, they’ll tell all right once we get a holt of ’em.”
The two men had walked out on the ferry and we could hear them very clearly, and their words scared me so badly I dropped the flashlight. When it hit the water it made a loud ker-plunk sound.
“You hear that?” one of them said.
“Yeah, I heard it. It came from off the front edge of the ferry. Let’s take a look.”
We could hear their steps on the wood of the ferry as they headed our way. It was one of those times when Poudlum and I didn’t need spoken words to communicate. Just before the sound of their footsteps reached the edge of the ferry we both disappeared into the murky and dark water of the river.
I swam forward a little so I would be underneath the ferry and to my surprise I came up between two beams underneath it with enough space for my head to be out of the water. A split second later Poudlum’s head popped next to me.
Trouble on the Tombigbee Page 6