Secret of the Satilfa

by Ted M. Dunagan

  I looked down Center Point Road, shading my eyes from the sun with my hand, and saw no sign of Poudlum. I hated the thought that I might have to walk all the way over to his house and try to convince Mrs. Robinson to let him go, but I knew Lena would watch my stuff if I did.

  After waiting about half an hour I went back into the store and got myself a Nehi and sat on the front steps nursing it while I gazed down the dirt road looking for my friend.

  I began to wonder what I would do if he didn’t come. Just go on by myself or go back home and share all the stuff in my sack with my brothers?

  I didn’t think I wanted to sleep on the bank of the Satilfa by myself, but still, I didn’t want to give up.

  Miss Lena came outside and stayed on the steps with me. “You think maybe Poudlum isn’t coming?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know, but it’s not like him not to at least come tell me if he’s not.”

  After another thirty minutes I got angry and defiant. I stood up, shouldered my sack and started walking down Center Point Road toward the creek. Over my shoulder, I called back to Miss Lena, “I’m going fishing, and I’ll be at the Cypress Hole if anybody’s looking for me.”

  I had to stop and rest twice before I got to the Church. Even though I kept switching my sack from shoulder to shoulder, the strap bit painfully into it as I walked, and it grew heavier and heavier with each step I took.

  The sun was still beaming warmth down when I crossed the Mill Creek Bridge. Halfway up the hill beyond it I could see the sun striking gold from the mica stones in the ditch.

  That was about the time I heard the ruckus coming from back behind me. Somebody was yelling. I cocked my head, listened real hard and heard a faint voice yelling, “Mister Ted, wait up, I’m a comin’!”

  I recognized my friend’s voice and was elated that he was coming after all. The day took on a whole new outlook as my excitement about the venture returned. I stepped off the road, set my sack down in the shade of a big black gum tree, and waited.

  It wasn’t long before Poudlum came trotting up with a wet sheen on his face. He stopped in the middle of the road when he saw me and said, “Hey, Mister Ted.”

  “I done told you I ain’t no mister. I’m just Ted.”

  “I keeps forgettin’. But anyway, I’m here, even if I is late.”

  “What happened to you? I waited forever on you.”

  “We got company. Dey been here all week, and my momma thought I ought not to run off and leave my cousins. But I finally got her away from all dem folks and told her dat I had promised Mister Ted we was going fishing. She thinks a lot of you, so when I mentions yo’ name she packed up a syrup bucket full of biscuits and side meat and told me to git. When I got to de store Miss Lena told me you had already started down de road. I been walking real fast and running some to catch up wid you.”

  I was so happy to see Poudlum that I didn’t care about the details of his tardiness; I was just pleased that he was finally with me.

  “What you got in your sack besides a syrup bucket full of biscuits?”

  “I got some fishing line, some hooks, and some corks.”

  “That don’t sound heavy at all. Mine’s about to cut through my shoulder. Would you carry it a while for me and I’ll carry yours?”

  “Shore I will,” Poudlum said as he shouldered my sack. “Lawd, what you gots in it, rocks?”

  We stopped to rest again a ways on down the road, secured our bags in some tall weeds, climbed down a steep bank, and drank our fill from a spring we knew about. The water was cool, crystal clear, and sweet to the taste as it came bubbling up out of the ground. It was only about two inches deep, and as I lay on my belly I could see sunlight reflecting gold glints off the sand beneath the water.

  We rested for a while before we got back on the road, anxious to begin our adventure on the creek. But we hadn’t gone far before Poudlum began asking questions.

  “Dis fishing hole we heading for, de Cypress Hole, colored folks ain’t usually allowed to fish at it. Why you think dat is?”

  That was a perplexing question and I wasn’t sure how to answer it, but after a little thought I told Poudlum, “I think it’s ’cause they ’fraid y’all would catch all the fish in it.” I knew it wasn’t the real answer, but I didn’t know how to say the real reason without hurting his feelings. I think he knew the real reason, but I could tell he appreciated my answer as the way I felt, because he grinned and said, “Why you ’spect it’s called de Cypress Hole?”

  “Probably ’cause there’s a lot of cypress trees around it.”

  “De water deep in it?”

  “There’s a big deep place right below the shoals, which is the Cypress Hole. That’s where we’ll fish.”

  “What’s a shoal?”

  “Uh, that’s a place in a stream where the water is running over a lot of rocks. We can walk across the creek on those rocks. That’s what we’ll do when we set out our trot line.”

  “What kinda fish you think we gonna catch?”

  “Catfish and perch, that’s all there is in there.”

  “What we gon use for bait?”

  “We’ll catch some crickets and grasshoppers when we get there. Plus there’s some dead pine trees we can get grub worms out of. I brought a little empty pint jar we can put them in.”

  “What if you fished without no bait?”

  “You mean just throw an empty fish hook in the water?

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wouldn’t nothing happen, Poudlum. Why, that would be kind of like licking a clean plate.”

  There was a little swampy area about a quarter of a mile before we got to the Satilfa where a big stand of bamboo grew. We stopped there and cut us some fishing poles. We cut four in case we happened to break one, plus we planned to use some of the joints in the bamboo to make whistles out of later while we sat around the fire.

  I used the small blade of my pocketknife to cut the poles down because I wanted to keep the big blade sharp to clean the fish with.

  Once we had cut the tops off and stripped the poles clean, Poudlum carried them and his sack while I took my turn carrying my heavier sack.

  A little further up the road I knew the Satilfa Creek Bridge would come into sight just around the next curve.

  When we rounded that curve we both stopped and stared for a moment because there was a vehicle in the road up ahead.

  I squinted my eyes and recognized my Uncle Curvin’s old pickup truck. It had a jack under the front of it with the truck lifted up off the ground. My uncle had had a flat tire.

  At that moment he appeared from around the back of the truck rolling his spare tire. He wasn’t having an easy time because my uncle was crippled from a war wound.

  “Dat looks like yo’ Uncle Curvin up ahead,” Poudlum said.

  “Yeah, that’s him. Looks like he got a flat.”

  “He look like he so skinny it would take two of him just to make a shadow.”

  “Yeah, he’s skinny all right,” I said. “He’s also crippled. Let’s go give him a hand.”

  My uncle was mighty proud to see us. We loosened the lug nuts on his flat tire, replaced it with his spare and jacked his truck down for him.

  “Thank you, boys,” he said. “Y’all heading for the Cypress Hole to do some fishing?”

  “Yes, sir,” I told him. “We gonna camp out and fish for a couple of nights. Where you coming from?”

  “I been up to Grove Hill, and, Lord have mercy, boys, a terrible thing happened there this morning, with me right slap dab in the middle of it!”

  Chapter Four

  The Cypress Hole

  Poudlum and I both thought a lot of my Uncle Curvin. We had picked cotton for him back during the summer and he had always been mighty good to us. We also admired him because he had fought in World War One all the way over in Europ
e and got himself shot in the leg, which crippled him but did entitle him to a small disability check that came in the mail each month from the government.

  He looked the same as always, wearing his old brown slouch hat with sweat stains on it, a blue, long-sleeved work shirt, and a pair of overalls. Beneath his hat, his face was all caved in because he didn’t have any teeth.

  “What in the world happened up there, Uncle Curvin?” I asked.

  “I went up there to cash my check at the bank and all heck broke loose while Mrs. Vinny was counting out my money. She was telling me how she wanted to buy a bushel of sweet taters when all of a sudden she stopped talking and her eyes got big as saucers. I could tell she was looking at something behind me, so I turned around. You boys won’t never believe what I was looking at!”

  “We might, if you would just tell us. What was it?” I asked.

  “Scared me worsen I been scared since I was in the war. Came might near wetting my pants on myself. I been shaking like a leaf in a windstorm ever since.”

  “Shore sound like it wuz something real bad,” Poudlum said.

  “Yeah, maybe we’ll find out what it was one of these days,” I said with a sideways glance toward Poudlum, but my words were directed toward my uncle to let him know we were getting a bit impatient.

  Uncle Curvin sank down on the running board of his truck like he was worn down to a frazzle. Whatever had happened to him, it had just about got the best of him.

  “Y’all just keep your britches on and I’ll tell what it was I saw when I turned around.”

  We stepped closer and squatted down in front of him in anticipation.

  “When I turned around, boys, I was looking down both barrels of a sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun. And it was scary, ’cause I knew that thing could scatter me to kingdom come.”

  “Good Lord, Uncle Curvin!” I exclaimed. “Was it a bank robber?”

  “They was two of them,” he said. “The other one had a mean-looking pistol that he was waving around.”

  “What did you do, Mister Curvin?” Poudlum asked, wide-eyed as an owl at dusk dark.

  “Why, I did exactly what he told me to. I got face down on the floor and started praying.”

  “They told you to pray?” I asked.

  “Naw, I done that on my own.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, the one with the scattergun held everybody at bay while the other one went behind the counter and cleaned out all the money. I peeked up and saw that my little pile of money was still laying on the counter.

  “The one with the pistol grabbed it when he came out from behind the counter with his sack of money, but the other one jerked it out of his hand and dropped it down on the floor next to me on their way out of the bank.”

  “So you didn’t lose your money?”

  “Nary a dime of it. Got it all right here in the bib pocket of my overalls. I don’t know why they done that, but I shore do appreciate them not taking my pitiful little pension. A lot of rich folks can afford to lose a lot of money more than I can afford to lose these few dollars.”

  “Did they catch ’em, Mister Curvin?”

  “Naw, they got clean away. Wouldn’t nobody to stop ’em.”

  “How about the law?” I asked.

  “Shoot, the law was all out collecting their cut from the bootleggers. Mr. Leon Stringer, he owns the bank you know, went running outside after the robbers left with his necktie and suit coat flapping in the wind and went straight over to the sheriff’s office, but couldn’t find nobody there except the jailer. That’s what he told us when he come back. That sorry excuse for a sheriff, Elroy Crowe, showed up ’bout a half hour later, just long enough for the trail to get cold.”

  “Sounds like dem bank robbers got clean away,” Poudlum said.

  “Well, somebody did see ’em leave town heading down Highway 84 toward Coffeeville. Sheriff Crowe got on his radio and had somebody put up a road block down there to stop them from taking the ferry across the Tombigbee River, ’cause he said they were probably trying to get across the Mississippi State Line.”

  “Did they get across the river?” I asked.

  “Naw. I heard everything on the sheriff’s radio. They skidded around when they come up on the road block and headed back up Highway 84. They found their abandoned vehicle ’side the bridge over the Satilfa Creek, and figured they were heading down the creek toward the river on foot. Last I heard they were talking about getting some dogs together and start tracking them.”

  “Whew, you done had yourself a day, Uncle Curvin. You saw a bank robbery, and then on top of that, had yourself a flat tire.”

  He got up off the running board and started getting in his truck when he said, “You got that right, son. I believe I’m going home and lay down for a spell. I ain’t used to bank robbers and flat tires.”

  He cranked up his truck, put it in gear, leaned out the window and said, “How long you boys plan to fish?”

  “Tonight and tomorrow night, and then we’ll probably go home Sunday morning,” I told him.

  “I might mosey over here and check on y’all sometime this weekend.”

  “We’ll be at the Cypress Hole, and we got two extra poles. Come on by.”

  “I expect I might. Good luck, boys,” he called out through the truck window as he pulled out onto the road. We watched until his dust trail disappeared around the curve.

  Poudlum scratched his head and said, “You don’t think he made all dat stuff up, do you?”

  “Naw, he wouldn’t do that. Come on, the trail to the Cypress Hole is right up yonder on the left.”

  “Well, I just hopes dem bank robbers did head down de creek towards de river and not back up de creek dis way.”

  “They probably want to get to Mississippi, like the sheriff said. They wouldn’t come back up this way,” I reassured him.

  We could see the bridge over the creek when we turned off the road onto the trail that angled through the woods to our destination. On both sides of the trail there were great red oaks and cedar trees, thick with tangled muscadine vines. The wild grapes had long ago been consumed by squirrels and raccoons. I liked those wild grapes. You could pop one in your mouth, bite down on it and it would burst in your mouth and render a sweet, tangy juice. There were seeds which you had to spit out, and the hull, after you chewed on it a little. My momma made some delicious jelly from the juice of them. She even made preserves from the hulls. They were both tasty inside a biscuit.

  The trail was like a tunnel with tree branches forming a canopy above your head. A little further into the woods and the cypress trees began to appear with long draping ribbons of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs.

  “Dis is spooky,” Poudlum uttered in almost a whisper.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It opens up into a big clearing just a little ways up on the creek bank.”

  We emerged from the trail and there it was, the place where Ned and Fred and I swam in the summer and the best fishing hole on the creek. You could see the sky up through a large opening of the forest.

  Poudlum turned in a complete circle, taking it all in. “Now, I likes dis place,” he said. “It’s big and open. And look over there, it looks like somebody had a fire built over by de creek bank.”

  What he was referring to was a circle of big round creek rocks, blackened with soot, where the previous campers had built their fire.

  The sound of the water was the best part. It swept gurgling and churning over the flat rocks of the shoals before dropping into the pool below. That pool was where the fish were.

  Poudlum noticed, too. “Dat water spilling over dem rocks shore do sound fine. It soothes you kind of like when my momma sings a hymn at night.”

  “Yeah, I like the way it sounds too. We’ll sleep real fine tonight listening to it. But first we have som
e work to do. Let’s set our sacks down and start gathering firewood. We’ll need a big stack of it so we can keep the fire going all night. It’ll get cold soon as the sun goes down.”

  We stashed our stuff next to the fire bed and began dragging and carrying limbs and sticks out of the surrounding woods. Soon we had enough to last us through the night and into the cold morning.

  We even found a long-dead loblolly pine, which had rotted away except for the heart that had turned into lighter wood. We broke it into pieces knowing all we had to do was stick a lit match to it and it would blaze up because of the turpentine in it.

  There was also an abundant supply of lighter knots, the remnants of where the branches had been attached to the trunk. They looked like an elbow and were handy to throw on a bed of coals that had died down, to get a quick blaze going again.

  The next item on our agenda was to gather some fish bait. Poudlum had that covered. “I passed a big dead pine tree over yonder that’s about half rotten and I could hear dem sawyers inside it.”

  Sawyers were fat, round, white grub worms with two little red pincers on their head, which they used to eat dead pine trees. And Poudlum was correct, you could hear them inside of a dead tree if you listened real close. They made a kind of steady smacking sound. I supposed it was them eating wood that made the sound. I never knew why they were called what they were, but figured it was because they were actually sawing the dead log up with those little pincers on their head. What I did know was that catfish loved them, and so did perch.

  When we got to the tree we pulled the loose bark off the trunk in hunks and dug the fat grubs out of the rotten wood until we had our jar almost full.

  “How many you think we got, Poudlum?”

  “I ’spect about fifty. You think dat’s enough?”

  “Yeah, that’s plenty for tonight. Crumble up a handful of rotten wood and put in the jar so they’ll have something to eat.”

  After Poudlum screwed the cap on the jar I took the small blade of my knife and jabbed a few air holes into it.