by John Shirley
When we got through hearing the story, first thing Tom said was, “Someday, when the moon is right, and that island is there, I’m gonna take a gun and a big Bowie knife, and I’m going to go out there. I’ll probably also have to pack a lunch.”
That danged old island is called Dread Island, and it’s always been called that. I don’t know where it got that name, but it was a right good one. I found that out because of Tom and Joe.
Way this all come about, was me and Jim was down on the bank of the river, night fishing for catfish. Jim said there was some folks fished them holes by sticking their arms down in them so a catfish would bite. It wasn’t a big bite, he said, but they clamped on good and you could pull them out that way, with them hanging on your arm. Then you could bust them in the head, and you had you something good to eat. He also said he wouldn’t do that for nothing. The idea of sticking his hand down in them holes bothered him to no end, and just me thinking on it didn’t do me no good either. I figured a gator or a moccasin snake was just as likely to bite me, and a fishing line with a hook on it would do me just as good. Thinking back on that, considering I wouldn’t put my hand in a hole for fear something might bite it, and then me going out to Dread Island, just goes to show you can talk common sense a lot more than you can act on it.
But anyway, that ain’t how this story starts. It starts like this.
So, there we was, with stinky bait, trying to catch us a catfish, when I seen Becky Thatcher coming along the shoreline in the moonlight.
Now Becky is quite a nice looker, and not a bad sort for a girl; a breed I figure is just a step up from cats. Jim says my thinking that way is because I’m still young and don’t understand women’s ways. He also explained to me their ways ain’t actually understandable, but they sure do get a whole lot more interesting as time goes on.
I will say this. As I seen her coming, her hair hanging, and her legs working under that dress, the moonlight on her face, I thought maybe if she wasn’t Tom’s girl, I could like her a lot. I’m a little ashamed to admit that, but there you have it.
Anyway, she come along, and when she saw us, she said, “Huck. Jim. Is that you?”
I said, “Well, if it ain’t, someone looks a whole lot like us is talking to you.”
She come over real swift like then. She said, “I been looking all over for you. I figured you’d be here.”
“Well,” I said, “we’re pretty near always around somewhere or another on the river.”
“I was afraid you’d be out on your raft,” she said.
“We don’t like to go out on the water the night Dread Island is out there,” I said.
She looked out over the water, said, “I can’t see a thing.”
“It looks just like a brown line on top of the water, but it’s sharp enough there in the moonlight,” I said. “If you give a good look.”
“Can you see it too, Jim?” she asked.
“No, Miss Becky, I ain’t got the eyes Huck’s got.”
“The island is why I’m looking for you,” she said. “Tom has gone out there with Joe. He’s been building his courage for a long time, and tonight, he got worked up about it. I think maybe they had some liquid courage. I went to see Tom, and he and Joe were loading a pail full of dinner into the boat. Some cornbread and the like, and they were just about to push off. When I asked what they were doing, Tom told me they were finally going to see Dread Island and learn what was on it. I didn’t know if he was serious. I’m not even sure there is an island, but you tell me you can see it, and well … I’m scared he wasn’t just talking, and really did go.”
“Did Tom have a big knife with him?” I asked.
“He had a big one in a scabbard stuck in his belt,” she said. “And a pistol.”
“What do you think, Jim?” I asked.
“I think he’s done gone out there, Huck,” Jim said. “He said he was gonna, and now he’s got that knife and gun and dinner. I think he’s done it.”
She reached out and touched my arm and a shock run through me like I’d been struck by lightning. It hurt and felt good at the same time, and for a moment there, I thought I’d go to my knees.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Will they be all right?”
“I reckon Tom and Joe will come back all right,” I said, but I wasn’t really that sure.
She shook her head. “I’m not so certain. Could you and Jim go take a look?”
“Go to Dread Island?” Jim said. “Now, Miss Becky, that ain’t smart.”
“Tom and Joe went,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said, like she was a grown woman, “and that proves what I’m saying. It ain’t smart.”
“When did they go?” I said.
“It was just at dark,” she said. “I saw them then, and they were getting in the boat. I tried to talk Tom out of it, because I thought he was a little drunk and shouldn’t be on the water, but they went out anyway, and they haven’t come back.”
I figured a moment. Nightfall was about three or four hours ago.
I said, “Jim, how long you reckon it takes to reach that island?”
“Couple of hours,” Jim said, “or something mighty close to that.”
“And a couple back,” I said. “So what say we walk over to where Tom launched his boat and take a look. See if they done come in. They ain’t, me and Jim will go take a gander for him.”
“We will?” Jim said.
I ignored him.
Me and Jim put our lines in the water before we left, and figured on checking them later. We went with Becky to where Tom and Joe had pushed off in their boat. It was a pretty far piece. They hadn’t come back, and when we looked out over the water, we didn’t see them coming neither.
Becky said, “Huck, I think I see it. The island, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I said, “there’s a better look from here.”
“It’s just that line almost even with the water, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yep, that’s it.”
“I don’t see nothing,” Jim said. “And I don’t want to.”
“You will go look for him?” Becky said.
“We'll go,” I said.
“We will?” Jim said again.
“Or I can go by myself,” I said. “Either way.”
“Huck,” Jim said, “you ought not go out there. You ain’t got no idea what’s on that island. I do. I heard more stories than you have, and most of it’s way worse than an entire afternoon in church and having to talk to the preacher personal like.”
“Then it’s bad,” I said, and I think it was pretty obvious to Becky that I was reconsidering.
Becky took my arm. She pulled herself close. “Please, Huck. There’s no one else to ask. He’s your friend. And then there’s Joe.”
“Yeah, well, Joe, he’s sort of got his own look-out far as I’m concerned,” I said. I admit I said this ’cause I don’t care for Joe Harvey much. I ain’t got no closer friend than Jim, but me and Tom was friends too, and I didn’t like that he’d asked Joe to go with him out there to Dread Island and not me. I probably wouldn’t have gone, but a fella likes to be asked.
“Please, Huck,” she said, and now she was so close to me I could smell her, and it was a good smell. Not a stink, mind you, but sweet like strawberries. Even there in the moonlight, her plump, wet lips made me want to kiss them, and I had an urge to reach out and stroke her hair. That was something I wasn’t altogether understanding, and it made me feel like I was coming down sick.
Jim looked at me, said, “Ah, hell.”
Our raft was back where we had been fishing, so I told Becky to go on home and I’d go look for Tom and Joe, and if I found them, I’d come back and let her know or send Tom to tell her, if he hadn’t been ate up by alligators or carried off by mermaids. Not that I believed in mermaids, but there was them said they was out there in the river. But you can’t believe every tall tale you hear.
All the while we’re walking back to the raft, Jim is trying to
talk me out of it.
“Huck, that island is all covered in badness.”
“How would you know? You ain’t never been. I mean, I’ve heard stories, but far as I know, they’re just stories.”
I was talking like that to build up my courage; tell the truth, I wasn’t so sure they was just tall tales.
Jim shook his head. “I ain’t got to have been. I know someone that’s been there for sure. I know more than one.”
I stopped walking. It was like I had been stunned with an ox hammer. Sure, me and Tom had heard a fella say he had been there, but when something come from Jim, it wasn’t usually a lie, which isn’t something I can say for most folks.
“You ain’t never said nothing before about that, so why now?” I said. “I ain’t saying you’re making it up ’cause you don’t want to go. I ain’t saying that. But I’m saying why tell me now? We could have conversated on it before, but now you tell me.”
Jim grabbed my elbow, shook me a little, said, “Listen here, Huck. I ain’t never mentioned it before because if someone tells you that you ought not to do something, then you’ll do it. It’s a weakness, son. It is.”
I was startled. Jim hadn’t never called me son before, and he hadn’t never mentioned my weakness. It was a weakness me and Tom shared, and it wasn’t something I thought about, and most of the time I just figured I did stuff ’cause I wanted to. But with Jim saying that, and grabbing my arm, calling me son, it just come all over me of a sudden that he was right. Down deep, I knew I had been thinking about going to that island for a long time, and tonight just set me a purpose. It was what them preachers call a revelation.
“Ain’t nobody goes over there in they right mind, Huck,” Jim said. “That ole island is all full of haints, they say. And then there’s the Brer People.
“Brer People,” I says. “What in hell is that?”
“You ain’t heard nothing about the Brer people? Why I know I ain’t told you all I know, but it surprises me deep as the river that you ain’t at least heard of the Brer people. They done come on this land from time to time and do things, and then go back. Them fellas I know been over there and come back, both of them colored, they ain’t been right in they heads since. One of them lost a whole arm, and the other one, he lost his mind, which I figure is some worse than an arm.”
“You sure it’s because they went out to Dread Island?”
“Well, they didn’t go to Nantucket,” Jim said, like he had some idea where that was, but I knew he didn’t. It was just a name he heard and locked onto.
“I don’t know neither them to be liars,” Jim said, “and the one didn’t lose his senses said the Brer People was out there, and they was lucky to get away. Said the island was fading when they got back to their boat. When it went away, it darn near pulled them after it. Said it was like a big ole twister on the water, and then it went up in the sky and was gone.”
“A twister?”
“What they said.”
I considered a moment. “I guess Brer People or not, I got to go.”
“You worried about that Miss Becky,” Jim said, “and what she thinks?”
“I don’t want her upset.”
“I believe that. But you thinking you and her might be together. I know that’s what you thinking, ’cause that’s what any young, red-blooded, white boy be thinking about Miss Becky. I hope you understand now, I ain’t crossing no color lines in my talk here, I’m just talking to a friend.”
“Hell, I know that,” I said. “And I don’t care about color lines. I done decided if I go to hell for not caring about that, at least you and me will be there to talk. I figure too that danged ole writer cheated us out of some money will be there too.”
“Yeah, he done us bad, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but what are these Brer People?”
We had started walking again, and as we did, Jim talked.
“Uncle Remus used to tell about them. He’s gone now. Buried for some twenty years, I s'pect. He was a slave. A good man. He knew things ain’t nobody had an inkling about. He come from Africa, Huck. He was a kind of preacher man, but the gods he knew, they wasn’t no god of the Bible. It wasn’t no Jesus he talked about, until later when he had to talk about Jesus, ’cause the massas would beat his ass if he didn’t. But he knew about them hoodoo things. Them animals that walked like men. He told about them even to the whites, but he made like they was little stories. I heard them tales when I was a boy, and he told them to me and all the colored folks in a different way.”
“You ain’t makin' a damn bit of sense, Jim.”
“There’s places where they show up. Holes in the sky, Uncle Remus used to say. They come out of them, and they got them some places where they got to stay when they come out of them holes. They can wander some, but they got to get back to their spot a'fore their time runs out. They got ’strictions. That island, it’s got the same ’strictions.”
“What’s ‘’strictions'?”
“Ain’t exactly sure, but I’ve heard it said. I think it means there’s rules of a sort.”
By this time we had come to the raft and our fishing lines, which we checked right away. Jim’s had a big ole catfish on it.
Jim said, “Well, if we gonna go to that dadburn island, we might as well go with full bellies. Let’s get out our gear and fry these fish up.”
“You’re going then?” I said.
Jim sighed. “I can’t let you go out there by yourself. Not to Dread Island. I did something like that I couldn’t sleep at night. “Course, I didn’t go, I would at least be around to be without some sleep.”
“Go or don’t go, Jim, but I got to. Tom is my friend, and Becky asked me. If it was you, I’d go.”
“Now, Huck, don’t be trying to make me feel bad. I done said I’d go.”
“Good then.”
Jim paused and looked out over the river.
“I still don’t see it,” Jim said, “and I’m hoping you just think you do.”
We cooked up those catfish and ate them. When we was done eating, Jim got his magic hairball out of the ditty bag he carried on a rope around his waist. He took a gander at it, trying to divine things. That hairball come from the inside of a cow’s stomach, and Jim said it had more mystery in it than women, but was a lot less good to look at. He figured he could see the future in it, and held stock by it.
Jim stuck his big thumbs in it and moved the hair around and eyeballed it some, said, “It don’t look good, Huck.”
“What’s that hairball telling you?” I was looking at it, but I didn’t see nothing but a big ole wad of hair that the cow had licked off its self and left in its stomach before it got killed and eat up; it smelled like an armpit after a hard day of field work.
Jim pawed around some more, then I seen his face change.
He said, “We go out there, Huck, someone’s gonna die.”
“You ain’t just saying that about dying ’cause you don’t want to go, are you?” I said.
He shook his head. “I’m saying it, ’cause that’s what the hairball says.”
I thought on that a moment, then said, “But that don’t mean it’s me or you dying, does it?”
Jim shook his head again. “No. But there ain’t no solid way of telling.”
“It’s a chance we have to take,” I said.
Jim stood for a moment just looking at me, shoving that hairball back into his pants pocket.
“All right,” he said. “If that’s how it is, then put this in your left shoe.”
He had whittled a little cross, and it was small enough I could slide it down the side of my shoe and let it press up against the edge of my foot. Jim put a cross in his shoe too. We didn’t normally have no shoes, but some good Samaritans gave them to us, and we had taken to wearing them now and again. Jim said it was a sure sign we was getting civilized, and the idea of it scared me to death. Civilizing someone meant they had to go to jobs; and there was a time to show up and a time to leave; and you had to
do work in between the coming and leaving. It was a horrible thing to think about, yet there I was with shoes on. The first step toward civilization and not having no fun anymore.
I said, “Is that cross so Jesus will watch over us?”
“A cross has got them four ends to it that show the four things make up this world. Fire, wind, earth, and water. It don’t do nothing against a regular man, but against raw evil, it’s supposed to have a mighty big power.”
“But you don’t know for sure?” I said.
“No, Huck, I don’t. They’re ain’t much I know for sure. But I got these too.”
Jim held up two strings, and each of them had a big nail tied to it.
“These supposed to be full of power against evil,” he said.
“Ain’t the nails on account of Jesus?” I said. “Them being stuck in his hands and feet and such. I think I was told that in Sunday school. It’s something like a cymbal.”
“A cymbal? Like you hit in a band?”
“You know, I ain’t sure, but I think that’s what I was told.”
“I don’t see it being about no cymbals,” Jim said. “Iron’s got magic in it, that’s all I know. It had magic in it before anyone ever heard of any Jesus. It’s just iron to us, but to them haints, well, it’s a whole nuther matter. Here. Loop this here string over your neck and tie the other end back to the nail. Make you a necklace of it. That ought to give you some protection. And I got some salt here in little bags for us. You never know when you might have the devil on your left, which is where he likes to stay, and if you feel him there, you can toss salt over your left shoulder, right into his eye. And we can use some of it on something to eat, if we got it.”
“Finally,” I said, “something that sounds reasonable.”
When I had the nail around my neck, the cross in my shoe, and the bag of salt in my pocket, and my pocketknife shoved down tight in my back pocket, we pushed off the raft. Moment later we was sailing out across the black night water toward Dread Island.