“What?”
“I never thought I would live to say it, but I’m about done got myself a bait of catfish.”
“What! You don’t want no more catfish?”
“Oh, I’ll eat it and be thankful for it, but I got myself a hankering for some fried chicken, mashed taters, and some fried okra.”
“I know what you mean,” I told Poudlum as my mouth watered thinking about the food he had mentioned.
When midday came, we shared the last piece of fish from last night, and it was still tasty even though we were tired of it. Just before dusk dark, we made a small fire and fried up our catch of the day, enough to last us another day. I fanned the smoke to spread it out while Poudlum did the cooking.
We let our fire die out and sat in the darkness until the moon appeared. The full one had gone, and all the sky could boast of was a dim crescent moon.
It was darker than it had been on the previous nights on the river, but we managed to get our boat in the water in the dimness and began paddling upstream toward Jackson.
“What we gonna do when we get to the bridge?” Poudlum asked.
“I think we ought to hide in the woods in sight of the bridge, and when we see Uncle Curvin, make a break for it.”
“That sounds good to me,” Poudlum said as we dug our paddles deep.
It was only a moment after Poudlum said, “We ought to get there before daylight,” when a false daylight suddenly descended upon us.
We froze when the light hit us and illuminated our boat and the river around us. We were shocked into inaction, and before we could react, Silas and Mr. Kim’s boat collided with ours while they held a carbide lantern on our faces.
“Hey, boys,” Silas said gleefully. “Glad to see y’all again. It hurt my feelings that y’all left in such a hurry, ’specially after I took the two of you in after the storm.”
Before we could react in any way, they grabbed the side of our boat, and Mr. Kim stepped aboard with a rope and lashed it to our boat.
He never said a word. Silas did all the talking. “We gonna take you boys down the river a ways and introduce you to some friends who want to take y’all on a real long trip, but first we gonna make a quick stop by my place. Now y’all just sit still while we get our motor started.”
Poudlum and I were in shock, and before we could dive overboard, Mr. Kim had our hands and feet tied.
I felt helpless as Silas started the motor, turned us back downstream and began speeding away toward our proposed enslavement.
With their boat in front and ours tied behind, the wind hit us squarely in our helpless faces as we sped downriver toward unknown horrors.
Before we got back to Silas’s cabin, I managed to work my knife out of my pocket and slip it inside of my sock.
Their motor slacked off, and it wasn’t long before we slid onto the landing at the familiar site of Silas and Dudley’s place.
They loosened the bonds on our feet and led us up the shore and back into the cabin we had escaped from the night before.
Dudley stared at us with his dull eyes like he was mad with us for escaping. He shoved us against the wall and finally said in a gruff tone, “Y’all sit down there and keep your traps shut.”
Silas and Mr. Kim went into the back room and started hauling boxes of whiskey out and stacking them on the front porch.
After several trips Silas stepped back inside, stopped in front of us, looked down and said, “You young rascals cost me some money. We lost six quarts of shine when that stack y’all made got pushed over. That’s all right though; I’ll get it back plus a lot more when we get downriver.”
Then he turned to Dudley and said, “Me and Mr. Kim got to deliver the rest of this shine. We’ll be back by dawn. You let these boys get away again, and I’ll skin you alive. Soon as we get back, we’ll be heading down the river for good.”
Mr. Kim never spoke at all. He did his talking with his eyes as he gave us a piercing and threatening look before he walked out the door with Silas.
The shock of our capture had dissipated, and Poudlum and I were talking with our eyes also, while Dudley sat there slack-jawed staring at us.
Now it was just us and Dudley, and I could tell by the look in Poudlum’s eyes that he was formulating a plan to outwit him.
“Y’all think you real smart, don’t you?” Dudley said. “Busting out of here like y’all did. It made me look real bad, and got Silas real mad with me.”
Poudlum spoke first. “It wasn’t your fault, Dudley. It was Silas’s fault for not taking our knives away from us.”
Dudley looked at me and said, “How come yore little colored friend is talkin’ like a white person?”
Poudlum answered for me. “You wants me to talk like a colored person, Dudley. I will if you wants me to. I’ll say dis and dat and dem and dose if you wants me to, ’’cause I speaks two languages.”
Dudley was dumbfounded by what Poudlum said, but I knew Poudlum was just trying to get him bumfuzzled.
Now it was my turn. “We awful hungry, Dudley. You think we could have some beans and sardines from the food we left here?”
He lowered his eyes in shame and said, “I done et up all that stuff.”
“Well, do you have anything to eat?” I asked him.
“All I got is some biscuits and some side meat,” he said.
“Hey, that sounds mighty good. You think we could have a bite? We ain’t had nothing to eat for two days,” I lied.
“I reckon it’ll be all right to give y’all a biscuit,” he conceded.
“Well, we can’t eat with our hands tied.”
“All right, I’ll untie yo’ hands so you can eat, but I’ll do it one at a time. First y’all stand up so I can take them knives off you.”
I stood up first, and Dudley went through my pockets before asking, “Where’s that pocket knife?”
“I think I lost it cleaning fish,” I lied again.
After Dudley untied my hands but not my feet, he brought me a biscuit with a slice of side meat in it, and it was mighty tasty.
When he had retied my hands, he ordered Poudlum to stand up, after which he removed his Barlow and a little snuff can from his pockets and placed them on the table.
“You know you too young to be dipping snuff, boy,” Dudley lectured him.
“I reckon you right, Dudley, but I sure do love my snuff.”
After Poudlum had eaten his biscuit, Dudley told him to turn around so he could retie his hands.
“I really do enjoy a good dip of snuff after my meal, Dudley. Do you mind if I get myself a dip before you tie me back up?”
“I don’t reckon I see no harm in that,” Dudley said as he handed Poudlum the snuff can.
I watched as Poudlum carefully removed the lid from the can and opened his mouth like he was going to take a dip. Then in one swift motion, he slung the little can of ground-up red peppers into Dudley’s face.
I was astounded at the effect it had on him. He took a tremendous intake of breath, which was the worst thing he could have done. Then he screamed and clutched at his eyes before he staggered backwards, crashed into the wall and fell to the floor. The screaming turned into choking and gagging sounds as he lay there jerking and twisting, first rubbing his eyes, then grabbing at his throat.
Meanwhile, Poudlum hadn’t wasted any time. By the time Dudley had hit the floor, he had gotten busy at untying his feet, and now he was loosening the ropes on my hands.
“Oh, Lord, y’all done kilt me,” Dudley moaned
“You ain’t gonna die, Dudley,” Poudlum called out over his shoulder as he finished untying me.
“Good move!” I told him.
“I knew that pepper would come in handy one day. When you finish untying your feet bring the rope over so we can tie Dudley up.”
“I’m blinded!” Dudley
called out in agony as he groped about and attempted to sit up.
“You’ll be able to see again if you listen to me,” Poudlum told him.
“Oh yes, I’ll listen,” Dudley whimpered. “Please get me some water.”
“Got to tie you up first. Stick your hands out in front of yourself.”
I went out on the porch to get a bucket of water and the dipper when I saw Poudlum was well along into tying up a defeated Dudley. While I was out there, I looked down toward the dark edge of the river, and I could see the dim outline of our boat, our vehicle of escape.
When I got back inside, Poudlum had Dudley propped up against the wall and was binding his ankles while he continued to blubber and blink his red and swollen eyes. When Poudlum finished, he tied another length of rope from his feet and secured it up over a rafter so Dudley couldn’t crawl outside.
Then I held the bucket while Poudlum took a dipper full of water and dashed it into Dudley’s face.
“Oh, bless you, bless you!” Dudley sputtered. “Do it again, please.”
After another dipper full in the face from Poudlum, I took a full dipper and held it to his lips and watched him guzzle it down like a thirsty mule.
When I looked up, I saw Poudlum placing slices of side meat into several biscuits, which he jammed into a brown paper bag before rolling down the top.
I gathered up our blankets, and we headed for the door. Just as we got to it, Dudley called out, “Y’all know Silas and Mr. Kim is gonna kill me, don’t you?”
I found myself feeling sorry for him, all hogtied up there on the floor, still blubbering, so I told him, “Just tell ’em several of our friends busted in and overpowered you.”
Poudlum added, “Tell ’em they’ll be waiting outside for them, too. And one other thing, Dudley, if you make a sound we’ll come back in here and give you another dose of that snuff.”
With that, we dashed out the door, ran across the porch and hit the ground running. When we got to the river, we tossed the biscuits and our blankets in our boat.
As we were just about ready to launch the boat, Poudlum said, “You know, we could run into ’em again, and they could chase us down with their motor.”
“Hold on then,” I told him. “I think I got a better idea!”
Chapter 14
The Wicked Knife
“What you got in mind?” Poudlum asked as we momentarily ceased our efforts to push our boat into the water.
“I don’t think we ought to take the chance of going back out on the river with them having the advantage of a motor on their boat. I don’t doubt we could outpaddle them, but we can’t outpaddle a motor.”
“But what else can we do? We got to at least get across the river.”
“Silas said they would be back by dawn from their whiskey-running. If they see our boat is gone, they gonna know at once we done got away, and they’ll start looking for us. But if our boat is still here, they’ll think we’re still tied up inside with Dudley.”
“But if our boat is still here, then we will be, too,” Poudlum reminded me.
“That’s right. What we could do is hide out and take both boats when they get up to the cabin, and that way they wouldn’t have no way to chase us.”
“We would have to move real fast,” Poudlum warned. “It do sound like a good plan, but we better work out the details, and work them out good.”
“All right, let’s get started.”
The first thing we did was retie the rope which secured our boat and put a slipknot in it so all we would have to do was give the loose end of the rope a yank to free it.
Essentially, our plan was to tie our boat to the back of theirs as soon as they disembarked and began walking toward the cabin. Once that was done we intended to rapidly launch their boat, start the motor and race away before they could get back down to the river after they discovered we had outwitted and overcome Dudley.
“You don’t think it might be stealing to take their boat, do you?” Poudlum asked.
“No, because we’ll be taking it from bootleggers and kidnappers.”
“I reckon I have to agree with that. But where we gonna hide out till they get here? It’s got to be somewhere close by, but we don’t want to be staying in the water that long.”
“Yeah, it’s got to be somewhere besides the water,” I agreed.
There was a big bushy oak tree nearby with branches low enough so we could reach up and grab them. When I proposed it as a hiding place, Poudlum readily agreed and said, “That tree is about the only hiding place close enough for our plan to work, but it might be a little uncomfortable being up there till daylight.”
“It must be about midnight,” I said. “We’ll stay on the ground until the last hour or two before dawn.”
We agreed that one of us should stay awake the rest of the night, and we would take turns being on watch. We devised a method of keeping up with the time by using pebbles, which we scooped up from the edge of the river. They were white and shiny and the moon gave off just enough light to see them and count them.
I took the first two-hour shift while Poudlum took his blanket from the boat, rolled up in it, and went right off to sleep.
To count the minutes and the hours, I took a pebble from the pile and put it in a new pile every time I counted to sixty, representing one minute. When I had sixty pebbles transferred to the new pile, I knew an hour had passed. Then I did it all over again, and when I had 120 pebbles in the new pile, I knew two hours had passed, and it was time to wake up Poudlum.
I gently awakened Poudlum for his two-hour shift. Once I got him fully awake, I showed him my pile of 120 pebbles, which he could discard one by one and then wake me up when they were all gone, which should be about four o’clock in the morning.
I rolled up in his still-warm blanket and went right off to sleep. It seemed like I had just closed my eyes when I felt him gently shaking my shoulder and whispering, “Wake up. It ought not to be but a hour or two before daylight.”
We had agreed to spend the last watch up in the tree with both of us staying awake, so after we had reviewed our plan and walked through it two times, we put the blanket back into our boat and approached the tree. It was only about twenty yards from the boat landing, and we judged the cabin to be about a hundred, so we felt comfortable it would work.
There was nothing difficult about getting up in the tree. We just had to reach up and grasp a massive limb and pull ourselves up. We climbed to the second row of limbs and nestled our backs up against the trunk of the tree and rested our legs on the limbs, which were thicker than our bodies.
From our perches, we were making sure we could see the boat and the shore of the river when Poudlum said, “You remember the last time we was up a tree together?”
“Yeah, it was when that big mean bulldog had us treed.”
“Jake ain’t gonna show up to save us this time,” he said. “We’ll have to do it ourselves.”
“We can,” I reassured him. “All we got to do is stick to our plan and execute it.”
“I feel like a panther laying up here in this tree waiting for my quarry to pass underneath so I can pounce down on it,” Poudlum mused.
“Yeah, but instead of a deer or a rabbit, our quarry is them two boats.”
Things were so still and quiet we could barely hear anything except the movement of the river, and barely that. My eyes got so heavy it felt like I needed some fence posts to keep them propped open. I shook my head to drive the drowsiness away and asked Poudlum how long he thought it was before daylight.
The only response I got was a soft snore.
I reached over and shook his shoulder and said, “Wake up, Poudlum. We can’t go to sleep now!”
“Huh?” he responded.
“A sleeping panther will let his quarry pass by unmolested. We got to stay awake. It ought not to be too l
ong now.”
When a faint light began to sift through the trees from the east, and the frogs began to croak, I knew it truly wouldn’t be long before daylight.
Suddenly, Poudlum said, “You hear that?”
“What?”
“Listen.”
I cocked my head, listened intently, and in between the sound of the toads toasting the dawn, I heard the faint sound of a boat motor.
“It’s them!” I said.
Way out on the river, a dim light appeared and increased with the sound of the motor as Silas’s and Mr. Kim’s boat approached the bank.
We instinctively scrunched up a little closer to the trunk of the tree when we heard them cut the motor off. We also heard the sound of the boat as its momentum caused it to slide halfway up on the low bank of the river.
As the two of them stepped out of the boat and onto the bank, Silas spoke first. His wicked words came drifting up through the foliage when he said to Mr. Kim, “Let’s go get yo’ two cabin boys and get on down the river.”
Mr. Kim didn’t say anything. He just moved slowly and deliberately as if he had some kind of sinister purpose in mind.
“I’m stiff as a board,” Silas said as he put his hand on his hips and stretched his back.
It wasn’t quite daylight yet, but there was enough gray light so that objects had begun to take form, and that was almost our undoing.
Silas took two steps before stopping in his tracks and casting his carbide lamp into our boat. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Them blankets wasn’t in that boat when we left.”
My heart began pounding like a drum, and I felt Poudlum’s grip on my arm as we pressed back against the tree trunk, wishing we could sink into the very bark of it.
“Should’ve left while we could,” Poudlum whispered.
Then we breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Silas said, “Dudley must have already started loading up. Come on, Mr. Kim.” Then he turned and began walking toward the cabin. “I saved one case of shine for you. I’ll wager it tastes a lot better than that sour stuff you fellows brew out of rice.”
We relinquished our grips on the tree slightly as they began walking away. That is until we saw the horrible deed that happened next.
Trouble on the Tombigbee Page 11