by Mike Blakely
The hog jumped to one side with a grunt and backed into a corner to get a look at Buttermilk. The dog barked a couple of times and the pig lunged backward against the logs until it figured out it had nowhere to go but forward. Then it put its head down and ran at Buttermilk like a cow protecting her calf. The scissor teeth snapped at air as Buttermilk sprang on all fours, humped his back, and bit down on the end of the boar’s right ear.
Grunts, squeals, and growls filled the woods for several seconds, and our little log trap shook like a boxcar on a downhill run. Buttermilk tried to get a better bite, lost his hold and went flying against the inside of the pen. When the boar rushed him, he leaped out of the pen, nimble as a cat, but I think he started jumping back in even before he hit the ground between me and Cecil. He must have been taking lessons from the fleas he hosted, because he looked like one of them springing back into the pen.
He came down on the hog like an eagle and this time got a firm bite on the base of the ear. The piercing squeal lasted about two seconds, then the pig went to its knees.
Adam bounded over the log partition in a blink and jerked the hind hooves off the ground as Buttermilk clenched the ear to the dirt. Adam tied the hind legs together first, then produced another length of cord from his pocket to lash the front ones. He tied them quick as a rodeo cowboy. “Git out!” he said to his dog, and Buttermilk sprang over the logs like a deer. When he lit, he went prancing around the pen, wagging his tail.
The pig soon stopped squealing and trembled as if it had taken the palsy. We ran a long green limb in between its legs where they had been tied together, and carried it out of the pen to the skiff. We set the trap again and spread more corn before we left, having gotten off to a good start in the hog business.
Buttermilk perched in the bow and wagged his tail in broad, proud sweeps as we paddled back to Goose Prairie Cove. We grinned over our success and poked a lot of fun at each other. The sticky swelter of the bayou summer caressed us and made us carefree as we wove among the cypress knees. The hog lay between the bulkheads and rolled its eyes in fear. It looked dumb as a boated catfish tied up there.
The moss in the cypress limbs strained the sunlight like lace as we paddled through air pockets of different temperatures; here as moist and warm as a woman’s breath, and there as cool as the draft she leaves when she’s gone in the night. Caddo Lake was mysterious like a woman. Like life.
I had been lost in Harrison Bayou before, but I knew where I was going this morning. I wished I could say the same about my future. My heart still hurt a little when I thought of Carol Anne, but I knew I would get over her. Then what? Pigs and catfish the rest of my days? I wasn’t worried about it, just curious for the first time. It was a mystery and it intrigued me.
That was the summer of pearls. Mystery and discovery. Love and heartbreak. Wealth and poverty. Pigs and catfish. I was a boy, learning. I stabbed my paddle deep into the inky waters and stroked with undaunted strength. I had things to do.
14
I GAVE CHARLIE ASHENBACK EVERY PENNY I OWNED AND TOLD HIM I would have the rest of the money by the time he finished building my bateau. It would take him a week or so to get around to it, but only a day or two to build. Charlie could slap a boat together in his sleep, but he had a lot of orders from pearl-hunters ahead of me.
I fell into a daily routine again after I swore off thinking of Carol Anne. All the desire I had once held for her I now directed toward my bateau, my work, and my earnings. I took the risk of becoming like Cecil Peavy, always thinking of money, but it eased my heartache to have my brain occupied.
I rose at dawn every day and met my friends at Goose Prairie. We took Buttermilk with us everywhere now, and he loved watching Adam pull big catfish up on the trotline. He would bark at them as they splashed in the water. After selling the fish, or throwing them in the holding tank, we would paddle to our hog trap and let Buttermilk do his job. We had barely enough time before lunch to make the morning water run to Ames Spring, across the lake.
In the afternoons, we shoveled dead mussels into a wheelbarrow and hauled them to our hog pen. The pearl-hunters helped us by throwing the mussels in designated piles. They didn’t mind, because we kept the lakeshore clean and smelling tolerable. They. also threw garbage in with the mussels—any kind of refuse a hog would eat, and that covers about everything that will rot and stink.
We built the hog pen of rails about halfway between the lake and our catfish holding tank. Once they had gorged on mussels for a couple of days, our hogs calmed down pretty well and started acting domestic. After catching eight hogs in ten days, we abandoned the trap on Harrison Bayou.
After slopping the hogs, we would take it easy for an hour or so and wade for mussels. I had given up on finding a pearl, and just sold any mussels we didn’t need for the trotline to rich tourist pearl-hunters who didn’t want to get in the water.
On some days we would go out on the islands and cut hay to sell. Grass grew eight feet high on some of the islands where no stock ever grazed. With all the horses and mules in camp, we had little trouble selling hay, or trading it for seed pearls. A few campers had even brought milk cows with them, and they needed hay, too.
Toward late afternoon, we would paddle to Ames Spring on the second daily water run. That left us just enough time before sundown to make the evening run to the trotline.
My arms became hard as hickory from paddling all over the lake. My pockets began to fill back up with money earmarked for the Ashenback bateau. My parents glowed with pride.
“You’ve earned that Ashenback,” my pop said to me one evening. “Billy Treat told me yesterday what a fine job you and your friends have done keeping the camp clean and supplied with hay and water. I’m proud of you, son.”
Things seemed to be getting simple again, and I was hoping that my love affair that never happened with Carol Anne was just an aberration in life that would never recur. Once again I could look into an uncomplicated future. I saw myself working, making money, buying boats, and spending time with my friends. Only one thing could have plunged me back into wonderful chaos, and when it happened, it was like this.
One day Adam was shoveling mussels into the wheelbarrow I had been pushing along the lakeshore, when Cecil, who hadn’t bent his back to do a lick of work all afternoon, said, “Hey, look, Ben, that girl over there’s smiling at me.”
I glanced toward a neatly kept camp and saw a blonde-haired farm girl sitting under a wagon-sheet shade cloth. What surprised me was not only how pretty she was, but that she was smiling at me instead of at Cecil. Cecil’s eyes never did see the truth very well where women were concerned. He went through three wives before he finally just gave up, hired a housekeeper, and patronized the whorehouse twice a week. He was always much happier with the women he paid than he was with the ones he married.
But anyway, when I-saw that blonde country girl smiling at me, I felt the hot flush and got the same silly quivering feeling Carol Anne used to give me. I would have groaned in disgust if it hadn’t felt so good. I should have realized then that the world was too full of women for things to remain uncomplicated for long.
“She’s not smilin’ at you, Cecil,” Adam Owens said. “She’s smilin’ at me.” Adam was even less realistic about women than Cecil was. Maybe that’s why he died a bachelor.
Cecil went after her like a business deal, but Adam and I didn’t have the nerve to enter her camp. We just continued collecting garbage and dead mussels. While we were slopping the pigs, Cecil came trudging up to the hog pen, looking dejected.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“She said she wasn’t smiling at me,” Cecil grumbled.
“I told you it was me!” Adam shouted so loud that he scared the pigs.
“Oh, hell, why would she be smiling at you, Adam? It was Ben she wanted to know about.”
They looked at me as if they would throw me to the hogs.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Her name’s Cindy. Sa
id her old man brought the family all the way from Longview to hunt pearls. If you want to know anything else about her, you can find it out yourself.” He stalked away, obviously mad at me for getting smiled at in his stead.
“Dang, what’s he so mad at?” I said.
Adam frowned and shoveled some more slop to the hogs. He wasn’t feeling real friendly toward me, either. This was a new experience. My friends and I harassed each other daily, and often got mad enough to fight. But this was a silent anger I was feeling from them now. It was the same treatment I had given Billy after that night the lantern went out in Carol Anne’s room.
I had to admit that Cecil and Adam were the last of my worries. What concerned me was how to approach that pretty blonde girl named Cindy. In the next few days I suffered brief moments of rationality during which I told myself it would be better to leave her alone than to risk getting my heart wrenched out of my chest again. Then I would see her smiling at me as I carried a load of catfish or a barrel of water, and knew I would have to find the nerve to speak to her.
As it turned out, she came to me one afternoon as I ate my lunch under the mulberry tree at Esau’s place. She snuck up behind me and said, “Are you the boy with the hogs?”
I turned like a startled deer and almost choked on a biscuit when I looked into her blue eyes. My mama had taught me .better than to talk with my mouth full, so I just had to nod and turn red while I chewed.
She smiled. “My daddy wants to see you.” She had such a beautiful, twangy, piney-woods voice that I knew she had to be exaggerating it some for my sake. “Come on,” she said tossing her head toward her camp.
I was afraid her daddy might want to fill my britches with rock salt for being there for his daughter to smile at, but I wasn’t about to refuse to follow her. “What’s he want?” I managed to say, wiping crumbs from my face with my sleeve.
“He wants to buy a couple of them hogs of yours.”
“What for?”
“He found a pearl. Got a hundred and sixty-five dollars for it. We’re gonna celebrate tonight.”
“You inviting the hogs?” I said, trying to be clever.
“No, silly. We’re gonna cook ’em.”
“Oh.”
We walked on in excruciating silence for seconds that seemed like hours. I couldn’t think of anything to talk about but catfish, and I knew she wasn’t interested in that. She smiled at me a couple of times as we headed toward her camp. The silence didn’t seem to bother her, but then, she didn’t need to talk, and she probably knew it, as females know things.
“I’m gonna buy a boat,” I blurted at last.
She seemed impressed. “What kind?”
“An Ashenback bateau.”
She wrinkled her pretty little freckled nose. “I don’t know much about boats.”
“That’s the best kind there is.” We were approaching her camp.
“When you gonna buy it?”
“I guess after your pop buys those hogs from me. I should have enough money then.”
“Maybe …” she said, glancing toward her camp and lowering her voice. “Maybe you can take me for a ride in it.”
A light of pure joy filled the air around me until the shadow of Cindy’s father blocked it out. I almost ran into him as he came around the back of the wagon. “Cindy!” he shouted, making me flinch. “Oh, there you are. Is this the boy?”
“Yes, sir,” Cindy said.
“What’s your name, boy?” He looked big to me, but was probably average-sized, made of good solid country stock. He had stubble on his face, a battered straw hat on his head. “I say, what’s your name?”
“B-B-Ben Crowell,” I answered.
“You the boy owns them hogs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Want to sell a couple?”
I glanced at Cindy. “Sure, I guess.”
He offered me a price on two head of swine and I took it without attempting to negotiate or confer with my partners. I figured my third of the sale price quickly in my head, and it was enough to pay Charlie Ashenback the rest of what I owed him for the bateau. And Cindy wanted a ride! I was happy as a drunken possum when her pop put the money in my hand.
“We’ll come up to the pen and get them hogs this evenin’,” he said.
“Just pick whatever pair you want.”
He nodded and shook my hand, then disappeared behind the wagon.
Cindy walked me to the edge of her camp. “Don’t forget about that boat ride, Ben,” she said.
It was over two miles to Charlie Ashenback’s boatyard in Port Caddo, but I ran every step without stopping to rest. He had my bateau on a pair of sawhorses. “Sure, you can take it now,” he said. He was a friendly old man with sawdust in his white hair. “Paint’s dry.”
It was so beautiful I was nearly afraid to touch it. It almost looked alive, arching its back as if diving into the water. It wanted a bayou under it. “Will you help me carry it to the water?” I asked.
“Sure.” He picked up the bow and we lifted the boat and headed for the bank of Big Cypress Bayou. “Don’t fret if she leaks a little at first. Just leave her in the water and those planks will swell and close the cracks. Then she’ll be tight as a virgin with her legs crossed.” He turned his face up and laughed as he waddled along with his end of my boat.
When we put the bateau in the dark bayou water, I swore I felt her trying to swim. It was at that moment I realized I didn’t own a paddle. Old Charlie had some for sale, but they were above my means. The bateau had just about cleaned me out.
However, I had Cecil and Adam’s share of the hog money in my pocket. I knew one of them would lend me enough to buy a paddle, so I went ahead and paid Charlie for one of his. I was dying to get that boat between me and water.
Bayou water is flat, but the Ashenback seemed to go downhill everywhere it went. It was like flying compared to the way Esau’s cumbersome skiffs plowed through the water. I wasn’t sure if maybe I hadn’t wasted my money, as well as Cecil and Adam’s, on the paddle. It seemed my bateau would go all the way across the lake with one push.
I had never known a happier moment. I had earned that boat. As I slipped effortlessly past the mouth of Pine Island Slough, I thought of how Cindy would look in the bow. I imagined Carol Anne there, too, but only briefly. Cindy was my age. She belonged in my bateau. Carol Anne belonged to Billy Treat.
I took a shortcut through Mossy Brake, to see how my vessel would handle among the trees. She went like a snake, twining her way around the cypress knees. The air was dark and still back in the brake, but my bateau brought me through to Taylor Island before I could even worry about getting turned around. I passed right by our trotline, but didn’t even glance at it. I was having too much fun to think of work.
I used all my strength on the last stretch to Goose Prairie Cove. I wished the steamboats were running, so I could have showed off to the passengers. I passed the first of the pearl camps and noticed some of the waders admiring my speed, which gave me strength to stroke even harder. I was dying to show Adam and Cecil. I could give them their share of the hog money, then we could celebrate with Cindy’s family. It was going to be a great day.
When I slipped into Goose Prairie Cove, I didn’t see my friends anywhere. I raced past Captain Brigginshaw in his Ashenback rowboat so fast that he said to his oarsman, “Giff, why don’t you row as fast as Billy Treat’s young friend, there?” Wading pearl-hunters turned their heads to watch me streak by.
Esau greeted me as I beached my bateau near his saloon. “That yours?” he asked.
“Yep. Just bought it.”
He slipped his flask into his back pocket. “That’s an Ashenback, ain’t it? I can tell by the way he angles the planks on the bottom.”
“Yep. Where’s Cecil and Adam? I want to show them.”
“They were here looking for you a while ago. They said they would wait for you at the hog pen.”
“Thanks, Esau.” I started up the lakeshore.
“Th
at’s a good boat,” he said, stopping me. “You work hard, and stay away from whiskey, and you earn a lot of good things like that.”
I paused before continuing up the shore. Esau had never lectured me or given me advice before.
“Ben,” he said, stopping me again. He grinned. “They looked mad.”
“Who?”
“Your friends.”
“Mad? About what?”
Esau shrugged. “Somethin’ about the hogs.” He reached for his flask again as I turned away.
15
I SAW THEM SITTING ON THE RAILS OF THE HOG PEN, SCOWLING AND FUMING. They had been a little edgy toward me lately, because of the way Cindy flirted with me all the time instead of with them. But I couldn’t think of what I had done to make them this mad. I reasoned it was probably Cecil’s doing for the most part. Adam usually didn’t get mad unless somebody told him to.
Cecil jumped down from the fence when I got close, and Adam quickly followed. Buttermilk stood between them, wagging his tail. They ground their teeth and glowered at me until I was near enough for them to holler at.
“What the hell’s going on?” Cecil demanded.
“That’s what I want to know!” Adam added.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Your girlfriend’s daddy came up here and took two of our hogs. Said you told him he could do it.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well, whoever the hell she is, her daddy came up here and took our hogs. What did you do, trade him a couple of hogs to feel on her or something?”
I was still in good spirits from buying my bateau, but that sort of talk was going to make me mad quick. “I sold him those hogs,” I said.
Cecil took off his hat and threw it on the ground. “You what?” Buttermilk grabbed the hat, thinking Cecil wanted to play. “Who gives you the right to sell our hogs without asking us? I thought we decided to fatten those hogs till fall. Now you’ve sold them cheap and run off with the money without even asking us.”