The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe

by A. Jeff Tisdale

  They both started paddling hard and Jack guided the boat diagonally across and upstream. When they reached the other side, they paddled steadily along the shoreline where the current was slower. They made good progress, but both boys were getting very tired before they heard somebody yell, “There they are. They made it.”

  They pulled the boat onto the swimming area sandbar and helped Tom get off.

  “Has Mr. Jackson come back yet?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Not yet,” one of the boys said.

  They all walked up the clay steps and back to the shelter. Tom, Jack and Billy Joe put on pants and a shirt, which made them more comfortable.

  “What’s going on, boys?” the booming voice of Mr. Jackson asked as he came out of the woods.

  “They found Tom and brought him back,” one of the boys said.

  “Who found him and how?” Jackson asked, puzzled.

  “In the boat,” another boy said.

  “What boat?” he asked, walking up to Jack and Billy Joe.

  They explained to him that they remembered Mr. Ezell’s boat after both adults had left and decided to go get it. They told him about finding Tom hanging onto an old dead tree.

  “We couldn’t stay right next to the river all the way down,” Jackson said. “I guess one of the times we had to leave it, we missed Tom and you boys.”

  Jack and Billy Joe were still not sure how Mr. Jackson, the disciplinarian, would take their initiative.

  “Well, good job, boys, I’m proud of you. I’m gonna go see your folks when we get back and tell them what a good job you have done. And just to think,” he added, “I thought you were gonna be the troublemakers and you turned out to be lifesavers.”

  Chapter Six

  The School Pond

  Mississippi summers begin early and end late. The boys had to make all their fishing trips begin early so they started early each day so they could be on time to run their paper routes, except on Sunday. The Laurel Leader Call newspaper didn’t have a Sunday paper. Today, they decided to try fishing the school pond. They hadn’t been there in a long time—at least a month.

  The summer was hot and the humidity was high but Jack and Billy Joe didn’t notice. They had a date with a few bream in that pond.

  “What kinda bait did’ja bring?” Jack asked.

  “Red worms. How ’bout you?” Billy Joe asked.

  “I went down to Branch Creek yesterday afternoon and dip netted about a hundred crawdads,” Jack exaggerated. “I think bream bite better on crawdad tails.”

  “Daddy told me Branch Creek had sewage runoff in it from the cotton gin.”

  “I ain’t gonna eat the crawdads,” Jack said. “I’m just gonna use them for bait.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s okay,” Billy Joe agreed as the boys kept walking through the junior college campus.

  They turned into the road between the vocational school buildings. The vocational school had been established to teach the returning GIs a trade to help them go from army life to civilian life. Since this was farming country, agricultural courses such as animal husbandry, soil preparation and crop rotation were taught. They also had automotive repair and, in another area, watch and clock repair.

  Walking down the road to the pond, they came to two gates, which they climbed over rather than opening the gate to go through. A standard practice for boys.

  Behind the vocational buildings, the crops—corn, potatoes, peas, beans, peanuts and other row crops—grew neatly with a section for each. These were the results of the students’ agricultural training. It was the practice of boys going fishing in the school pond to gather any of these vegetables they wanted to be cooked pondside with their fish. The college didn’t mind.

  Jack and Billy Joe helped themselves to corn and potatoes. They would have liked to have some boiled peanuts but they took too long to boil in brine water and neither boy wanted to keep the fire going for that long.

  “Let’s don’t take more than we can eat,” Jack suggested. “We don’t want to make the school mad. They might tell us to quit takin’ their stuff.”

  “Yeah—I’ll pull four ears of corn and you dig up about six small potatoes,” Billy Joe said. “That’ll be enough.”

  They did that and continued on to the pond dam.

  “I got somethin’ new I’m gonna try to cook the fish today,” Jack said. “I get tired of burning my hands putting the skillet in and out of the fire. I brought a wire grill that Daddy gave me and I’m gonna use it on the dam.”

  “Okay, you play with your cookin’ stuff and I’m gonna catch some fish,” Billy Joe announced.

  Both boys put their packs down on top of the dam. It was a clay dam, roughly set with a flat place on top from much foot traffic. It also had small ledges all along its length on the pond side. On the side of the dam away from the pond, it sloped gradually to provide better support to hold the water pressure. At one end of the dam, a spillway had been left for the water to escape and continue to flow until it finally merged with Rocky Creek.

  The stream that fed the pond came from a spring that surfaced on college property.

  “You wanna run the nests in the spillway hole first?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Yeah. That’s a good idea,” Jack said, leaving his pack.

  The “spillway hole” is the little catch basin that had been dug out of the clay by the water falling over the spillway. The bream and shellcrackers who lived in that little pond would hide in little holes in the bank when a stranger, such as the boys, entered their water.

  The boys sat down on the edge of the basin and removed their shoes and socks and rolled up their pants legs as far as they could. They eased into the water.

  One boy went one way around the edge and the other boy went the other. They moved slowly, feeling in each hole in the clay bank for fish.

  Billy Joe found the first one and clamped it in both hands.

  “My stringer is on my belt,” Billy Joe said. “Can you reach it for me?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, leaning across the small catch basin to retrieve the stringer from Billy Joe’s belt loop.

  He unwound it and held it for Billy Joe to thread the bream on.

  Billy Joe took the stringer, tied it to his belt loop again and let the fish hang in the water.

  Jack caught the next one and they both caught one more each, which seemed to exhaust the catch basin’s fish supply.

  Walking back to the top of the dam, Jack went back to building his new “stove.” Billy Joe decided he would fish from the little dock that stuck out from the dam into the pond. He took the fish stringer with him with its four little bream. He sat on the end of the dock with his feet dangling just above the water and tied the stringer to one of the support posts of the dock.

  Using a big butcher knife that he had brought along, Jack cut out a notch about twelve inches wide, eighteen inches deep and about twelve inches into the clay bank. On top of the opening, he placed the wire grill he had brought. He stacked in some of the wood he had gathered and started the fire.

  “Ain’t you starting the fire kinda early?” Billy Joe yelled from his perch on the dock.

  “Nah, I’m just starting this fire so I will have some hot coals for the taters and corn. I’ll make a new fire to cook the fish. Right now, I’m gonna fish too.”

  He picked up his rod and walked past Billy Joe to the end of the dam and around the pond bank a few feet.

  “Whatcha goin way ’round there for?” Billy Joe asked.

  “I found out that they bite real good over by these lily pads. This is the best place to cast from,” Jack explained.

  “Show me,” Billy Joe said. “I already caught two here on the dock.”

  Jack cast out by the lily pads and no sooner had the crawdad bait hit the water than he got his first bite. The bobber went down and stayed down. Jack pulled in the largest shellcracker he had ever seen.

  “Where’s the stringer?” Jack asked, holding up the fish. “This thing’s about a p
ound and a half, I reckon.”

  “Stringer’s right here—tied to this post,” Billy Joe said.

  Jack walked around to the dock with his fish to add it to the stringer.

  On the dock, Jack kneeled down, untied the stringer from the post and pulled it out of the water. To his surprise, hanging from the bottom fish was a large snake—a water moccasin.

  “Heeeeeey,” Jack yelled, startled.

  Billy Joe turned around in his sitting position to see what was the matter. The snake was two inches from his nose. He also yelled in fear.

  “Get that thing away from me,” Billy Joe screamed.

  Jack ran backward off the dock to the dam.

  The snake had his fangs into the fish and couldn’t let go.

  “Get something and kill this thing,” Jack yelled.

  Billy Joe ran off the dock, having overcome his fear somewhat. He picked up a piece of metal pipe that had been left on the dam by a previous fisherman.

  “Put it down somewhere,” he yelled at Jack.

  Jack laid the stringer down between them and as if part of the same motion, Billy Joe hit the snake in the head with the pipe. He kept on hitting it until it was only a pulp.

  Both boys sat on the dam shaking, either from fear or excitement, who could say.

  Billy Joe seemed to calm down first.

  “I don’t think I’ll fish off that dock anymore,” he said.

  “Naw, me neither,” Jack agreed. “We gotta restring the fish and find another place to keep them in the water.”

  “Yeah,” Billy Joe agreed. “Let’s hang the stringer off the spillway. Snakes can’t get to them there. It’s a long way to go to string ’em when we catch ’em but they’d be safe.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Jack said, willing to do anything to stay away from other snakes.

  After Billy Joe had restrung the fish, throwing away the one mangled by the snake, he walked to the spillway and tied the stringer so they could easily reach it and the fish were bathed in running water.

  He walked back to the dock, looked at it for a moment and decided to find another fishing spot.

  “Can I come fish beside you?” he asked Jack.

  “Sure. Just don’t hook onto my line,” Jack warned.

  He walked around and hunkered down beside Jack, baiting his hook.

  Jack pulled his line out of the water to inspect the bait. It was okay so he whipped the line over his shoulder to throw it out again. Something abruptly stopped the swing of the cast.

  “Hey, you hooked my hat,” Billy Joe yelled.

  “Sorry about that,” Jack apologized. “Let me get it loose.”

  “Wait a minute,” Billy Joe said. “I think it’s stuck in me too.”

  Jack quit pulling on the line and laid the pole down.

  “Let me see,” Jack said, reaching for Billy Joe’s hat.

  “Be careful now. If it’s stuck in me, I don’t want to have to have brain surgery to get it out,” Billy Joe implored.

  “I’ll be careful,” Jack said as he took the line in his hand and slid his hand toward the hat without pulling the line to further set it in Billy Joe’s head.

  The hook had gone through the weave in the straw hat and set itself in Billy Joe’s head.

  Jack took out his pocketknife and opened it.

  “What you gonna do?” Billy Joe asked.

  “I’m gonna cut the line off the hook so we won’t accidentally pull on you anymore.”

  “Just be careful,” Billy Joe said, beginning to sound a little panicky.

  Jack cut the line up close to the hook. He slowly took Billy Joe’s hat off. The eye of the hook slid easily through the weave of the straw and revealed the hook in Billy Joe’s head.

  Jack pulled the hair back to see how the hook was caught. It had gone into and back out of his scalp as it would when it hooks a fish’s mouth. The barb was showing on the outside.

  “I can’t pull the hook back out without tearing up your scalp. The barb’s sticking out,” he told Billy Joe.

  “What we gonna do?” Billy Joe asked.

  “Let’s leave everything right where it is here and go to my house. Taking the shortcut by the band hall and the junior high building, we can get there in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Yeah. Your mother can take us to the doctor or somethin’,” Billy Joe said.

  They agreed and ran up the road and through the campus to Jack’s house.

  As they rounded the corner from the junior high building, they saw Jack’s daddy’s new red pickup truck.

  The boys ran up to the truck, obviously in a dither.

  “What’s the matter, boys?” Jack’s father asked.

  “Daddy, look at Billy Joe’s head.”

  “I’m looking at it,” he said. “It looks pretty much as it always has.”

  “I stuck a fish hook in it,” Jack explained.

  “Oh, let me see,” he said, removing Billy Joe’s hat. “Where is it? I can’t see under all this hair.”

  “Right here,” Jack said, pulling the hair back to reveal the hook.

  “Oh, I see. Just requires a little minor surgery. Step into my operating room,” he said as he pulled Billy Joe over to his pickup truck.

  He reached in his tool box, removed a pair of diagonal cutters and clipped the hook shaft on the “eye” end. Then he pulled the hook on through.

  “Operation successful. The patient should live,” he said. “Now you boys go in and see your mother, Jack, and ask her to put some iodine on it to disinfect it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said as they both turned to go inside.

  After Jack’s mother put iodine on the wound, the boys went back to the school pond. Everything was just where they had left it.

  Back at Jack’s favorite fishing place, Billy Joe tied another hook on his line and he and Jack each caught another big shellcracker.

  The hook in the scalp incident had all but been forgotten.

  Jack set up his new “stove” and cooked the corn, potatoes and fish. It was all delicious.

  “Snake—what snake?”

  “Fish hook in the scalp—when—who?”

  The memories were fading fast.

  Chapter Seven

  The Tenant House

  Fishing the school pond was good when you had little time but the boys liked to get away when they could. Mr. Wolf Coleman used to live in town and had run a dairy. He finally decided that he didn’t have enough room in town so he bought a lot of acreage out on old Pine Hill Road. He built a big house for his family. There were several houses already on the property. He used those for tenant houses when he needed and could find good tenant farmers. He named his farm WOCO Farm.

  Jack and Billy Joe had finally gotten their mothers to agree to them camping out at WOCO Farm. Actually, they were staying in a tenant house that hadn’t been used in years but still had a good tin roof and a solid floor.

  Jack’s mother had called Wolf Coleman. “Wolf—Millie. The boys are asking me to let them ride their bicycles out to your farm and spend the night in an old tenant house. Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Any time they want to. Tell them that if they need help at any time while they are there, just come on up to the big house to see me. Don’t worry about them, Millie, they’ll be all right. I use that tenant house when I’m working in that area myself and keep it in good shape.”

  She thanked him and felt much better about the boys going.

  She called Billy Joe’s mother. “Helen—Millie. You know about the boys wanting to go out to Wolf Coleman’s farm and spend the night in that old tenant house, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, another gray hair in my head,” Helen joked.

  “I just talked to Wolf on the phone and he said they are welcome anytime and if they have any trouble, they can come to the big house and he’ll help them out. He said he uses the tenant house himself when he is working in that part of his farm. I think it would be safe for them to go, don’t you?”


  “Yeah, and I think they can take care of themselves better than you and I could.” They both laughed.

  They agreed that the trip would be just about as safe as they could make it.

  Both mothers helped the boys pack for the trip—especially the food. They made sure there was plenty of food that didn’t have to be cooked and plenty of drinking water. The boys insisted on taking things that could be cooked over a fire in the fireplace—potatoes, corn in the shuck and a slab of salt pork that wouldn’t spoil on this short trip.

  There was a well out back of the house and, according to Mr. Coleman, it had a good bucket and windlass and a new rope.

  The baskets on the boys’ bicycles were filled to overflowing and their bedrolls were tied securely behind the saddle of each bike.

  “It’s eight o’clock. We shoulda been gone an hour ago,” Jack groused. “We need to try to make up some time.”

  “Why?” Billy Joe asked. “It’s only ten miles out there. We’ll get there by twelve noon, easy.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted time to check out the Indian mound for arrowheads and see if we can catch some fish in the creek for supper.”

  “Fish for supper would be good,” admitted Billy Joe. “You bring a pan to cook ’em in?”

  “Yeah, and some cornmeal and some lard,” Jack said.

  “Okay. We can make up the most time on Highway 11 since it’s paved but that’s just a mile and a half. If they haven’t graded the gravel road for a while, we can make good time on the hard ruts. If they have graded it, it’ll be slow goin’ in that loose gravel,” Billy Joe correctly analyzed.

  As the boys pedaled south on US11, Jack could see the houses where most of the Garners lived. That brought to mind Lige Garner and the ongoing threat to his daddy. His daddy told Jack he should not worry about it at all. He said that sooner or later he would have to take care of that problem.

  The boys pumped the pedals steadily on the concrete highway and did make good time to where they turned right onto State Highway 590.

  Obviously, there had been no grader over the gravel road in the last month. The ruts were worn down to the clay and it was smooth and shiny. The boys picked the best rut, set their bicycle tires in it and continued to move at a good pace.