by Mike Blakely
I pulled her hands away from my face and took a step back. “I gotta go now,” I said. I tried to regain some semblance of composure. “I have to haul some water to the pearl camps. Those folks won’t have any water if I don’t.” I figured that while I was tearing Billy down, I might as well build myself up. I must have been cardinal-red when I left.
I walked to Esau’s camp in a trance. She had kissed me. My betrayal of Billy had worked quicker than I could have imagined. It was only a kiss on the forehead, but I never expected her to kiss me on the lips the first time.
I was virtually worthless hauling water with Cecil and Adam that afternoon. Cecil kept trying to get me to tell him about the fight at Esau’s the night before because Adam had a poor memory for details, and had left before it was over, but I was so wrapped up in Carol Anne’s lips that I couldn’t concentrate on anything.
“Well, Ben?” Cecil said. “Ben!”
“Huh?”
“Well, what happened then? What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you hear me? What happened after Judd Kelso came in with the ax? When did Captain Brigginshaw shoot?”
Poor Billy Treat. I had ruined him. It was a sorry reward for his saving my life. It hadn’t been fun destroying him, only necessary. Anyway, I didn’t have a lot of room left in me for pity. I was too full of wonder. My skin still tingled where she had kissed me.
“Ben. Ben!” Cecil shouted.
“What?”
“Why haven’t you got the danged mussels opened yet? We’re almost to the trotline, boy. Hurry up. Haven’t you been listening to me? You must be sick or something.”
“He don’t look too good,” Adam said. “I think he’s feelin’ peaked.”
I avoided my usual haunts that evening after supper. I didn’t want Cecil or Adam intruding on my thoughts of Carol Anne. I had plans to make. Tonight was the night Carol Anne was going to tell Billy she didn’t want to wear his pearl any longer. It was a vicious thing, but I wanted to see Billy get rejected. Not because I would get any pleasure from it, but because I wanted to make sure he was really out of my way.
Well, maybe I would get a little pleasure from it, and that was the disturbing part. Until that moment, I truly believed that I wasn’t doing anything to spite Billy. I could have sworn that I was only filling my own instinctive needs. It was primal, like a coyote howling for a mate. But I had to admit I was going to get some kind of kick out of knocking Billy down a peg, and that vicious feeling gave me no pride. My shame began to build, but there still wasn’t much room for it next to the hope I had been breathing in all day.
I was naive beyond imagination. I truly believed that just because Judd Kelso had called Billy a coward and I had repeated it to Carol Anne, she would think of him in that way. That little peck she had given me on the forehead must have soaked through my skull and addled my brain. Can you believe that I actually had some kind of hope that she was going to shun Billy and take up with me?
Of course my plan backfired. I’ll tell you how I found out. I wandered around to the Treat Inn that evening to flirt with Carol Anne. I was approaching the building when I saw Billy knocking on the door to Carol Anne’s room. Unseen, I stepped into the shadows to watch. Carol Anne came to the door. I couldn’t see her face, but I figured she was telling Billy to get lost because word was all over town that he was a coward, and she didn’t want to be seen with him anymore.
Poor Billy Treat, I thought. He had taken some hard knocks. First Mangareva, now this. He would never kiss Carol Anne. She wouldn’t want to wear the pearl of a coward. He would probably leave town. It would be a relief to see him go, but it would make me a little sad, too. I was going to miss him. I admired him and I knew he was no coward, but he was standing between me and Carol Anne, and that was justification enough for my treachery.
“Sorry, Billy,” I whispered as I watched from a distance. “But I was here before you.”
Then it happened. I saw Carol Anne step from her room. Her hand reached behind Billy’s neck, and she kissed him. I don’t mean on the forehead like that little smack she had given me earlier that day. She kissed him full on the mouth, and pressed herself against him in the most aggravating way. I turned and walked away then, because I couldn’t take it anymore.
The hope that had been filling me all day fled. I felt sick and helpless. My heart was tender and it fell into halves, as if some pearl-hunter had pried it open with his mussel knife and, finding no gem there—for my treacherous heart was destitute of anything that worthy—had thrown it back into the murky waters.
My pain and shame deepened. Confusion mounted. Anger surged. The hollow where my heart had been froze. It was awful.
It took me years to understand, but one morning I woke up thinking about the summer of pearls and realized what had happened. No honorable man wants to be a coward. He can think of nothing worse. Billy Treat was a brave man, but he blamed himself for what had happened on Mangareva. The fact that he had not stood and fought to the death made him feel like a coward, whether he was or not. It wasn’t as if he had had a choice in the matter. Trevor Brigginshaw had knocked him on the head and dragged him away. Still, Billy blamed himself.
No honorable woman wants to be a whore. She can conceive of nothing lower. Carol Anne wasn’t a whore, but she had thought of herself that way. She had allowed herself no excuses. It didn’t matter that she had grown up watching her mother take strange men into her bedroom. The fact that Carol Anne had been seduced with a pearl excused her from nothing. She had punished herself by secretly, privately, calling herself a whore of the lowest order—that is, until Billy convinced her otherwise.
Billy had given her honor, and she was only too happy to return the favor. A woman can restore a man’s self-respect even if he has given up finding it himself. I’m sure Carol Anne knew ways I will never fathom. She knew how Billy suffered under the weight of his own useless shame. She knew how to relieve him, renew him, replenish his dignity, his honor. A good woman can do that. Those two needed each other more desperately than the earth needs the sun.
Of course none of that occurred to me as I walked away from the Treat Inn that night. All I knew then was that I had betrayed Billy and lost Carol Anne in the same day. I was shamefaced, guilt-ridden, and heartbroken. I knew how Billy Treat must have felt after Mangareva. I deserved it. I had gone behind his back—like a coward.
I made up my mind about one thing right then and there. Maybe I would never have Carol Anne, but I was going to earn my self-respect back somehow, because I felt too terrible to live. I was through passing gossip. I was not cut out for intrigue. Never again would I attempt to hurt someone else to better my own lot.
Strange it is that often from the worst of burdens, a person’s character can find the way to its greatest worth. Such is the way of the pearl. It begins as something that galls and hurts. It results in something fine and beautiful to behold. But no pearl emerges overnight. It takes time. It takes a long, long time.
13
I WAS USELESS FOR DAYS. ADAM AND CECIL MIGHT AS WELL HAVE RUN THE trotline and hauled the water without me. I didn’t care about making money anymore. All I knew was an empty void. I stayed at home and sulked at night, instead of prowling around spying on girls.
“What’s that boy been so crotchety about?” my pop asked my mother one night when they thought I was asleep.
“Leave him alone, John,” she said. “He’s in love.”
Women are peculiar creatures. Especially mothers. I don’t know how Mama knew, but it actually helped a little to hear someone acknowledge it. Yes, I was in love. I would always be in love with Carol Anne Cobb.
Luckily for me, always doesn’t last too long when you’re fourteen. The summer wore on and I got bored silly feeling sorry for myself. The pearl boom was attracting more fortune-hunters all the time. Families were coming down from the hills and crowding the lakeshore all the way to Harrison Bayou. Some of them brought daughters, of course, and I hated to admit it to myself, but more than a few
of them made my eyes swivel in their sockets.
I stuck my hand into my pocket one day and discovered a lot of money there. I hadn’t spent a dime since my heart got broke, but all of a sudden I figured that maybe what I needed to get over Carol Anne once and for all was to buy something. Something big. Something that had beautiful curves and was fun to ride. I wanted an Ashenback bateau.
The bateau was sort of the official boat of Caddo Lake back then. It’s something like a canoe, but wider and flatter across the bottom, and it pitches up more in the front and back, and has prettier flares all around. It’s made for paddling sluggish bayou waters.
Charlie Ashenback made the finest bateaux ever to float the lake. I set my mind to saving enough money to buy one of his works, with mulberry stems, red cypress planking, a live well in the middle, and a minnow box within easy reach of the seat. I learned a trick that summer that still works for me: If you want to get your mind off of women, think of money and boats.
We had picked up the game of baseball from somewhere that summer. Cecil Peavy and I wound a bunch of old trotline cord into a ball and Adam Owens found a pine limb that made a pretty good bat. We would get some farm boys together on the lakeshore at Goose Prairie and teach them the rules and we would have some pretty good games and arguments and fistfights. The girls stood around, watched, and giggled at us.
Well, one day I was playing third base when I saw Billy approaching. He had been stepping a lot livelier since sharing Carol Anne’s dark room with her. I guess I would have, too. Trevor Brigginshaw had been heard to remark that Carol Anne had uncovered the old Billy Treat. Billy smiled and joked more than he had since coming to Port Caddo. When he drove his supply wagon down to the pearling camps, he attracted a regular crowd.
I still hadn’t spoken to him since that night. Half out of shame, and half out of anger. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but as he approached our baseball field, he headed straight for third base.
“Morning, Ben,” he said. “Who’s winning?”
“Who’s keepin’ score?” I said. “We just play till the fight breaks out.”
He laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I made Billy laugh.
“Well, when the game is over, I have an idea for you and your partners. That is, if you want to make some more money.”
I would have said I wasn’t interested, but he had engaged my interest with talk of profits, and I got a sudden vision of the Ashenback I was going to buy. Maybe Billy could take Carol Anne away from me, but he would never take my bateau once I had saved the money to buy it.
“What kind of idea?” I asked, concentrating harder than usual on the batter, so I wouldn’t have to look into Billy’s eyes.
“I’ve been thinking about all these dead mussels the pearl-hunters have been throwing in piles around here. It’s not sanitary.”
“They stink somethin’ fierce,” I said.
“Yes, they do. And that’s the problem. Some of them are regular maggot ranches.”
“So where’s the money in it?” I asked.
He paused for a moment while the batter swung at a wild pitch. “You’re starting to sound like your friend, the Peavy kid. I’m talking about doing something that will benefit the whole camp, and all you can think of is money.”
I smirked at him pretty severely. “You’re the one got me started makin’ money this summer. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, as long as you do a good job and enjoy the work. But when somebody offers you a deal, find out what’s involved first. Then, if you’re still interested, ask about the pay. Otherwise, you’ll end up in some kind of job you don’t like just to make money.”
“What’s involved?” I asked.
“It was Esau’s idea. He said that if somebody would build a hog pen near the camp, the hogs could fatten on the mussels and keep this place smelling better.”
The kid who had been batting either struck out or got tired of swinging and threw the bat down.
“I don’t have any hogs,” I said.
“Esau has some wild ones running back in the woods along Harrison Bayou that he doesn’t want to fool with anymore. He said that if you and your partners can trap them, you can have them, and fatten them on mussels. Then you can sell them in the fall at pure profit.”
“What do hogs sell for?”
“Read your father’s paper. He prints farm and stock prices twice a week.” He turned and walked back toward his supply wagon.
“If you know, why don’t you just tell me?” I shouted.
He stopped and flashed a smile at me. “When I was your age, nobody told me about pearls. I learned about them on my own. If you want to know what hogs sell for, find out yourself.”
I stared at the back of his head as he walked away. Just then a thump came from home base and that ball of trotline sang right past me like a cannon shot. Some kid at second base told me to keep my mind on the game. I told him to shut up, and the fight commenced.
Cecil carried Esau’s ax, Adam hauled a sack of shelled corn he had snuck out of his daddy’s barn, and I brought a black eye from the ball game. We paddled a skiff back into Harrison Bayou and found a place not far from the water where hogs had been rooting for bugs and worms.
Cecil got me and Adam to do most of the chopping and dragging of logs while he chose the site for the trap. We knew as well as he did there was no trick to choosing a site, but he pretended to be busy at it long enough for us to do most of the hard work. Cecil was like that. He was always afraid hard work was going to sap strength from his brain.
“I hear some of these old pine-rooters get big tushes on them,” he said as he marked off a square in the forest litter with his bare toe.
Adam laughed. “You’re scared! Ain’t you never caught a hog before?”
“I’m not scared. I just said they had big tushes.”
“Well, don’t worry,” Adam said. “I’ll bring old Buttermilk. He’ll get ‘em by the ear so we can gather their back legs and tie ’em up.”
“I’m not worried,” Cecil replied.
No, he wasn’t any more worried than I was. Cecil and I had both heard wild hogs pop their tushes together before, and knew they meant business. We were both wondering how we would move those trapped hogs out of our pen without getting a couple of fingers snapped off. Adam mentioning old Buttermilk made me feel a little better. According to Adam, Buttermilk was the best hog-rasslin’ dog on the South Shore.
We built our trap by laying up limbs sort of like a log cabin. We had brought some rope to tie the limbs together at the corners so the hogs wouldn’t push the walls down. On one side of the square trap, we left a hole for a door that we had already built out of some old planks Esau let us have. We rigged that door to slide up and down in the hole.
That’s when Cecil surprised me. It seemed he really had chosen the trap site for a good reason. There was a pine limb growing right over the sliding door. We tied a rope to the door and ran the rope over the limb. Adam cut a stake and drove it into the ground at an angle in the middle of the trap. Then we tied a loop in the end of the rope and hooked it over the stake. That held the sliding door up so the hogs could get in.
We fooled around with the stake and the rope for a while, adjusting them so a nudge would make the rope slip off the stake, letting the door fall shut. Finally we tied an ear of corn to the rope and hooked it over the stake, setting our trap. The hogs would come in, yank on that free ear of corn and pull the loop off the stake, letting the sliding door fall. Before we left, Adam made a few trails of shelled corn on the ground, all of them leading to the trapdoor.
Adam and I stood back for a moment and admired the ugly little log pen. He took as much pride in building it as I did. Both of us liked to do things with our hands, unlike Cecil.
“Well, come on. We better run the trotline before it gets dark.”
“Yassuh, Marse Cecil!” Adam sang.
I almost hurt myself laughing. Adam didn’t come up with many jokes, but
when he did, they usually tickled me something fierce with their suddenness. It felt good to laugh after sulking for so many days about Carol Anne. Maybe I was going to get over her after all.
They say dogs sometimes get to looking and acting like the people who own them, and Buttermilk was a good argument for it. He was a canine Adam Owens-lean, strong, not too bright, and utterly unafraid of any wild animal. He was the color of buttermilk, medium-sized, with perky ears, and a crooked tail he always carried high.
“Why doesn’t he ever let his tail down and cover his asshole?” Cecil asked as we paddled back up Harrison Bayou to check our hog trap the next day.
“He’s daring you to sniff it,” I said.
Buttermilk had been jumping all around the skiff, looking for critters in the water and getting in Cecil’s way. As we got closer to the trap, he started quivering with excitement, as if Adam had told him he would get to tackle a hog this morning.
We could see from the skiff that the door had fallen on the trap. When we pulled the boat up on the muddy bank, the trapped hog heard us and tried to knock the pen down, but the log walls held. I thought Buttermilk was going to bust with hysterics, but Adam had trained him well and he didn’t dare take off after anything without permission.
I was nervous about meeting Mr. Pig, but Adam looked like he was taking a Sunday stroll. He sauntered up to the trap and watched the hog smack its snout a couple of times on the log walls. From his pocket he removed a length of cord that had a loop in it like a snare. “You ready, Buttermilk?” he said, and the dog crouched. “Git him!”
Buttermilk skipped off the top of the log wall and leaped blindly into the pen with the wild pig. Now, this pine-rooter wasn’t like any barnyard slop-eater you ever saw. When pigs go wild, they get long-legged and lean, and grow teeth that can cut like scissors. They get so strong that they can root up pine saplings with their snouts, looking for worms and stuff to eat. When Buttermilk lit alongside the two-year-old boar in our trap, he had a fight in front of him.