That was a funny way to put things but I knowed he was trying to make me feel good, so I said, "Don't feel bad about it, Mr. King, because if you put your mind to it I bet you could be too dumb for me."
"Oh shut up," he said, and went back to talking with himself. "He's not smart enough to have made up that story," he said, "so it has to be true. If I hauled him into court and claimed that he falsely represented himself as an employee of the Department, to mislead my truckers, he'd have a smart lawyer who would point out that all he actually did was lean on a shovel, and the goddam lawyer would ask me if leaning on a shovel automatically identified a man as an employee of the Department of Public Improvements, and wouldn't that be a big yock for everybody! So I guess he gets away with it." He stopped talking to himself, and said to Pop and me, "Probably you two are mighty pleased with yourselves."
Pop said, "I never seen a feller go about things the wrong way as much as you do. Now if you had acted like you meant to give us that shell, we—"
"I'll give you shell!" Mr. King said, looking grim. "By tomorrow morning there are going to be ten trucks out here, dumping shell between your shacks and the road, and with me watching to make sure it goes in the right place. We'll see how you like living back of a mountain of shell."
"I wouldn't do that if I was you," Pop said. "There is all kinds of regulations agin things like that. A big pile of shell would be a health hazard to me and my family, on account of the little stuff would blow in our eyes, and it would cut off sun and air. You would be blocking folks from going lawfully into and out of their home. I would have to claim trespass if even one bit -of shell tumbled down from the pile onto our land. Them piles would fill the shoulder of the road and be a danger to traffic. And I reckon I would have to ask to see your dumping permit."
Mr. King sort of quivered, like the lid on a pot coming to a boil. Then he turned and began walking up and down the new beach, talking to himself. He come down pretty hard on the shell at every step, and if we could have kept him at it a while we would have had that new shell stomped down real good. But he finished his stomping and said to Pop and me, "I know when I'm licked. You Kwimpers have won. No hard feelings?" He held out his hand and shook Pop's hand and then shook mine. His handshake felt like it had been shucked out of them clam and oyster shells.
"I'm glad we got together on this," Pop said, "because
I never had no trouble working with the government before."
"Ah yes, you mentioned something about that the first time we met," Mr. King said. "What exactly was it?"
"I have helped the government out on near about everything it wanted to do," Pop said. "Relief and Compensation and Aid to Dependent Children and Total Disability."
"You don't mean you're getting all those things now?"
"Right at the moment I'm on vacation and taking it easy and only getting Aid to Dependent Children for them twins," Pop said. "But I ain't going to let the government down. Soon as I get around to it I might put in for relief, or maybe get me a job that would put me in line for another whack at Compensation."
"You're from New Jersey," Mr. King said. "I don't understand how you can be getting Aid to Dependent Children from New Jersey while you're down here in Columbiana."
Pop said, "All us Kwimpers stick together good, and I fixed things so my cousin Lon would pick up any check and get it cashed to the store and send me a money order. Nobody bothers us Kwimpers much about who is signing what because it ain't easy to read what any of us write except for Holly, and she is not a real Kwimper but is a Jones."
"What's this Total Disability you mentioned?"
"That's my son Toby here," Pop said. "He was in the Army at Fort Dix and near about kilt his back lifting a six- by-six truck out of a mudhole."
I said, "It warn't nothing but a little old jeep, Pop."
"Well anyways the doctors at the V.A. give him Total Disability for it," Pop said.
Mr. King walked around me the way a feller might walk around a tree he is thinking of chopping, and said, "I wish I were half as disabled. Didn't you tell me you helped spread out those forty tons of shell on this beach?"
"I didn't put no back into that," I said. "I just put a little arm into it."
Mr. King said to Pop, "I suppose you figure on switching the Aid to Dependent Children down here as soon as you can satisfy the residence requirements, and applying down here for relief or Compensation or whatever you decide on. I might be able to give you some helpful advice."
"That's mighty nice of you," Pop said. "But now that things is friendly and I am sure the government ain't getting into bad habits, I got something to tell you."
"Let me do the telling," Mr. King said, and he was looking grim again instead of friendly. "My helpful advice to you is to pack up and head back to Jersey just as fast as you can. If there's one thing I know, it's how to work through government channels, and if you're still here tomorrow, I'm going to notify the New Jersey authorities that you've changed residence to Columbiana and don't qualify any longer for Aid to Dependent Children from them. And if you think you can get any kind of state aid from Columbiana, just try, that's all I ask, just try."
"Toby," Pop said, "it turns out the government is getting into worse habits all the time. Do you think it would bother your back to pitch this feller off our land?"
I studied on Mr. King for a moment and figured he wouldn't go more than a hundred seventy pounds, and I said, "If I swang him around by the heels I could probably get him out in the water twenty feet, Pop. I will just put my legs into it and it won't bother my back none."
"I dare you, I dare you," Mr. King said, but by that time he had skimmed over our fence by a good two feet, and was on the government's right of way. "Not only would it be assault and battery, but also it might cost you that Total Disability benefit they're paying you."
Pop said, "You can leave him be, Toby. I don't think you could have thrun him farther than he went on his own."
"And let me give you some more warnings," Mr. King said. "You've been cutting down trees and taking coconuts and God knows what from the Department's land here. I can't stop you from picking up dead wood or fallen coconuts or from fishing, but if you take so much as one living branch from a tree I'll have you arrested. And I'm going to have men looking in here all the time to make sure you don't break the law any more. Just remember, I haven't half started on the things I'm going to do if you try to stay here."
"Pop," I said, "if I did put my back into it, I bet I could get some real distance out of him."
Pop didn't bother to answer because Mr. King got some real distance out of himself and clumb into his car. He started the motor and shouted, "Just remember what I said," and drove off.
Pop scuffled around in the shell a while and then said, "Toby, I done too much talking to that feller and it got us in trouble. The funny thing is, I was just getting ready to give him back the land when he turned nasty on us."
"Nobody could have figured he was laying for us, Pop. So don't feel bad about it." "Toby, if you are with me I am bent on fighting it out." "I am with you, Pop," I said. "But it looks to me like we are going to have to go to work."
"I never seen such a boy for looking on the black side of things," Pop said. "But my mind is set on this so there is no use trying to talk me out of it."
6
LIKE Pop said, I reckon it's true I look on the black side of things, but if you want to keep track of a feller like Mr. King, that is where you got to go looking for him. In the next two-three weeks Mr. King was real active on the black side of things. We had been picking up our mail at General Delivery in Gulf City, and first we got a letter from the government in Jersey saying they heard we had moved to the state of Columbiana and so of course Columbiana would have to come up with the Aid to Dependent Children from now on. Then I got a letter from the V.A. saying to report to the nearest V.A. Hospital for re-examination on account of they heard my back was getting along pretty good now, and they would have to hold up checks
until I did report and showed I was still Totally Disabled.
While it is nice to get mail, I would rather the government had just wrote saying everything is fine here hope you are the same. The letters got Pop so mad he said we warn't never going to leave if that was the way the government was going to act after all he done for it. So we set down and counted up how much money we had left. Pop still had most of the sixty-six dollars and fifteen cents I got from my last Total Disability, and he had twenty dollars
left from the last Aid to Dependent Children, so all told we had about eighty dollars. But that warn't going to last forever. We still had all the crabs and fish and clams you would want, and maybe more than you would want three times a day, but now I dassent go climbing for coconuts, or cut down cabbage palms for heart-of-palm salad, or pick little tart oranges from trees on the island. That meant we had to buy some food in Gulf City, and buy gas to get there and back.
Then there was the worry about beds. A bed of pine boughs is nice for a time but after a while it loses its get- up-and-go. The needles come off and tickle you, and the branches get dry and break and poke at you, and all in all you get the notion a pile of firewood might be more restful especially if it warn't burning. After what Mr. King had said, I couldn't cut no more branches. We needed cots but we hated to put out the money for them.
The lean-tos turned out not to be the best things to live in, now that it was getting near the end of May. Even with the new shell on our beach, the full-moon tide in May brung water right up near us, and if there had been a wind pushing the tide maybe Pop who is a sound sleeper would have floated away during the night and drifted miles. Then we was starting to get rain, because in the state of Columbiana instead of having four seasons like any sensible state they only have two, wet and dry, and the wet season was coming on. We could fix the roof of a lean-to so it would shed rain, but there warn't no way to make a lean-to so it would shed the skeeters that began to visit us.
At the start I didn't have no respect for Columbiana skeeters, because they don't stack up to the ones we have in Jersey. If you put a man in a room with ten Columbiana skeeters and let them fight it out, the man would win in just a few slaps. But if you put a man in a room with ten Jersey skeeters and asked who would come out of that room, the answer is that the man would come out, and he would come out mighty soon and mighty unhappy. But the trouble is they don't put a man in a room with ten Columbiana skeeters. They put him in with a couple thousand, and that man will end up slapping himself silly.
What we needed was not any lean-to but a shack built on pilings with a screen door and screened windows. If it hadn't been for Mr. King, I'd have whomped down some big old cabbage palms and used the trunks for pilings, and trimmed up some pine to frame a shack on the pilings. For shingles I could have used the sheath you get off royal palms where the fronds peel away from the trunk, and the whole thing wouldn't have cost hardly nothing and we could have bought the screening. But Mr. King had fellers keeping an eye on us now, and we dassent take any of that stuff off the government's land.
Things didn't look good to me, but Pop kept saying every cloud has a silver lining, and when you counted up our clouds I reckon we had more silver linings than we knowed what to do with.
There warn't much else to do so I done a lot of fishing. You take most fellers who go fishing and a fish can out- think them at least two times out of three, but I can think as good as a fish any day and maybe a shade better. So when I put my mind to learning how to fish, I done right good. Our bridge was about a hundred feet long, and it covered a deep-water pass between two big bays, and all kinds of fish come through that pass. I began to find out when the different kinds was likely to come, and what they was eating and how to catch them.
This one afternoon they was a school of big tarpon hanging around the pass and I was on the bridge giving some of them a little exercise. Them fish run eighty- ninety pounds and I didn't want to land none that big but that was all right because they didn't plan on being landed with that little rod and light line I had borrowed from one of the twins. I had a float, with a pinfish below it on four feet of leader, and I was letting tarpon take the bait and come up for a few jumps and then go off about their business. I warn't trying to set the hook good, and anyway it is almost like trying to set a hook in a tin can to try to set one in a tarpon's mouth. But if you keep the right strain on, you can hold a big tarpon a while even without the hook setting good.
Well, I had this tarpon on that would go better than a hundred pounds, and I heard a car come across the bridge and the brakes slam on. I couldn't look because that tarpon was spending more time in the air than in the water, and it was pretty to watch. But then I heard the car door thrun open and a man jumped out beside me. He was a bald-headed feller in fancy sports clothes and he was right excited.
"That's a beauty," he said. "Do you think you can land him?"
"Oh, I don't think the hook is set good," I said. "And anyway I'm just playing with him and he's just playing with me, and one of us will get tired in a while and will find something else to do."
"I've been spending sixty-five bucks a day for charter boats," the feller said. "When I hang a big tarpon, I've got him on a rod I could beat him to death with, and the charter boat captain is scared I'll lose the fish and mess up his record, so he starts his boat and drags the tarpon around and half drowns him. I'd give ten dollars to play that tarpon on your light rod."
"Well," I said, "you're welcome to him."
I handed over the rod and the feller took it. He warn't too good of a fisherman but he was real willing. He barked his knuckles on the reel and burned his thumb on the spool when the tarpon made a run, and near about sprained his left wrist, and all in all I never seen a feller have a better time. That fish was real willing, too, because it didn't make no long run and take all the line but acted like a feller on a diving board showing off to the girls. Holly come out to watch, and I told her how I happened to lend the feller my tarpon, and we admired Iris car which was one of them Imperials you could have set up housekeeping in. He had a Pennsylvania license, and they do have some nice fellers in Pennsylvania no matter what they say in Jersey.
Well, him and that tarpon went at it for twenty minutes, and I would say if the tarpon had gone at it serious he could have caught that feller in another ten minutes, but the tarpon put on a little too much pressure and straightened the hook and that was that.
"Gee, that was wonderful," the feller said, admiring the way his left wrist was all swole. He handed me back the rod, and dug in his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. "Here's the ten bucks," he said, "and another ten for some new hooks."
"Oh, I couldn't take that," I said. "It was fun for me, too, and if you want to give me a dime for a new hook that will leave us even."
Before the feller could say anything, Holly gave him a real nice smile and said, "I'll be glad to take the twenty dollars for him, because at the moment I think he has exactly thirty-five cents to his name."
"You're forgetting Pop has near about forty dollars," I said. "All I done was lend the feller a tarpon for a few minutes, and that tarpon is as good as new right now, so nothing is damaged but the hook and that is ten cents."
The feller grinned at Holly and said, "Sister, I'm for you. Here's the twenty. Buy a few steaks with it for this man mountain of yours and keep him in condition, because if I come back here next year I may want to borrow a few more tarpon from him." He clumb in his car, and waved and drove off.
Holly said, "I hated to do that, Toby, but we do need the money. Of course it was a shame to take it, because that man must be feeble-minded. Nobody sensible would pay money like that to go fishing."
"That's where you're wrong," I said. "I know from talking to the fellers at Fort Dix that some folks will pay anything to catch fish."
"All that proves," Holly said, "is that there are more feeble-minded men in the world than I thought."
"Maybe you are right," I said.
"Do
we have a lot of tarpon in the pass right now, Toby?"
"It's a right big school. They may hang around two- three days and give us a lot of fun."
"And there really are a lot of men who would pay money to let these tarpon yank their arms off?"
"I wouldn't say a lot who would pay twenty dollars for a twenty-minute loan of a tarpon, but a lot who would pay for bait and things."
"Toby," she said, "may I keep this money?"
"Why, sure. Maybe you would like to go into Gulf City and buy some dresses with it which I understand girls like to wear sometimes when they get tired of blue jeans!."
She smiled at me and blinked, and dog me if for some reason she didn't start crying. Then she run back to the lean-tos and got the car key from Pop, and in five minutes she was on her way to Gulf City.
I reckon she couldn't find nothing she liked to wear better than blue jeans, on account of she didn't buy no dresses in Gulf City. She told us she went to every tackle store in town and bought hooks and lines and things. At every store she told folks that at our pass we had the biggest run of the biggest tarpon that ever swum, and that strong men was busting out crying when they seen our tarpon because they knowed them fish was too big to land. Holly claimed that the folks in the tackle stores was going to slip the word around to fellers who liked tarpon, and she said we ought to get ready to sell bait and things to them when they come the next day.
I figured maybe the tackle store people just said that to make Holly feel good, and that nobody would show up the next day, but I didn't mind helping her get ready, and Pop was willing too. The twins warn't happy about it, though. They said they didn't want nobody coming to catch their fish, and you might think they was being asked to give up their best friends. As a matter of fact they knowed some of the snook and sheepshead and mangrove snapper that hung under our bridge pretty good. The twins had learnt how to swim fine, and days when the water was clear they would dive under the bridge and be neighborly with their fish and decide which ones they would go up and catch for dinner. I told the twins nobody was coming to catch their snook and sheepshead and snapper but only them stand-offish tarpon that never hung around under the bridge to be sociable. After that the twins was all for helping.
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