Secret of the Satilfa

by Ted M. Dunagan

  “Yeah,” Poudlum added. “Dey had dat big old scattergun wid ’em dat yo’ uncle say dey used to rob de bank!”

  Some folks came driving up to the store about that time. “Y’all grab your cane and let’s go over to our hideout so nobody will hear what we saying,” my brother instructed us.

  Our hideout was across Center Point Road and at the back of Uncle Curvin’s empty and depleted cotton field. We climbed the fence and made our way between the rows where we had labored under the hot sun back in the summer.

  Fred took our cane and carried it for us since Poudlum and I still had our sacks containing our camping gear and food.

  The hideout loomed up ahead, gray, weathered, and sagging, with an old rusted tin roof. It was my uncle’s cotton house, where the loose cotton had been stored before he hauled it to the cotton gin. It was empty now except for a few field mice that always scurried out when we came in.

  This was the place I had helped Jake, the escaped convict, hide out before Poudlum and I helped him float down the Satilfa and across the Tombigbee River on his way to freedom.

  We had placed three boards across two of the bare rafters above our heads, and we hid our stuff on top of them so it would be invisible from below.

  I sat on Fred’s shoulders while Poudlum passed up the canned goods the bank robbers had left us and placed them on top of the boards while we told Fred the story of our encounter with Frank and Jesse.

  The only part we left out was the riddle Frank had recited when Poudlum asked them what they had done with the money. When we came to that part of the story, we used our eyes to communicate again. It was spooky, just by the way we looked at each other, we knew that we both wanted to keep that just between us.

  When we got to the part where they had told us their names, Fred interrupted us by breaking into uncontrolled laughter. He rolled on the floor of the cotton house with glee.

  Poudlum looked at me and said, “What you ’spect so funny to yo’ brother?”

  I didn’t know, but soon Fred stopped laughing and said, “Don’t y’all get it?”

  “Get what?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “That wasn’t their real names! They were just joshing’ y’all like they were the famous bank robbers Jesse James and his brother Frank James.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I never thought about that.”

  “Don’t mean dey names couldn’t have really been Jesse and Frank,” Poudlum said.

  “Not likely,” Fred said. “I’m surprised y’all didn’t bring ’em here to our hideout,” he added with a sarcastic tone.

  “We weren’t offered the opportunity to bring them anywhere,” I told him. “If you remember, they left us tied up under the bridge.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was right before they took y’all’s pocket knives.”

  “Dey paid us though,” Poudlum said. “Remember. Dey give us each twenty dollars fo’ dey lit out.”

  “Your knives weren’t worth anywhere near that. I think they felt bad about leaving y’all and wanted to do something to make up for it,” Fred said.

  “They owed us for more than the knives,” I told him. “We fed them and they took a lot of our food with them.”

  “Still wasn’t worth forty dollars,” Fred said. “But I suppose y’all earned it, ’cause I know you both was plenty scared.”

  “Naw, I wuddn’t never too scared,” Poudlum said. “Mister Jesse and Mister Frank just seemed like two hungry fellers on de run. And anybody dat likes fried fish as much as dem couldn’t be all bad.”

  “Plus,” I told Fred, “we knew they couldn’t shoot us.”

  “How come?”

  “I forgot to tell you that Poudlum swiped the shells out of that double-barreled shotgun and put some dirt in the breech while he was doing it.”

  “They gonna be real mad when they find that out,” Fred declared.

  “Well that’s too bad. They shouldn’t have left us tied up under the bridge and taken our knives. We would’ve just stayed there by the Cypress Hole for a while if they had asked us to.”

  “Did y’all see any of the money they stole from the bank?”

  “We didn’t see none of it,” Poudlum replied. “Dat is, ’cept de forty dollars dey give us.”

  “Well, they probably didn’t stay on Center Point Road or the sheriff would’ve caught ’em before coming up on y’all at the bridge. Which way you and Poudlum think they went?”

  “I ain’t got no idea,” I told him. “After they left us under the bridge and climbed up on the road I never heard another sound from ’em.”

  “I bet I know where they went,” Fred said.

  Chapter Ten

  Sweet and Sticky

  From the look I got from Poudlum, I could tell he was as astounded as I was that Fred thought he knew where the bank robbers went. But we both knew Fred was real smart, so we paid attention to what he had to say.

  “I ’spect they crossed over the road after they left y’all hogtied up under the bridge and went down the bank on the other side of the road and headed back down the Satilfa toward the Tombigbee.”

  “Why you think dey woulda done something like dat?” Poudlum asked.

  “Because everybody done searched down that way and give up, that’s why.”

  It turned out that Fred’s guess was a good one. Frank and Jesse crossed the Tombigbee and made it all the way to Mississippi before they were apprehended at the Greyhound Bus Station two days later over in Waynesboro. However, the only money found on them was a few crumpled-up twenty dollar bills totaling up to a little less than two hundred dollars.

  The rumor around the county was they had gotten away with over ten thousand dollars. We all knew that was a heap of money.

  On Wednesday, following mine and Poudlum’s encounter with the bank robbers, Uncle Curvin came by the house with a copy of the Clarke County Democrat’s weekly issue. It had a big story right on the front page about the bank robbery.

  My brothers and I gathered around the kitchen table and listened to our mother read the story while Uncle Curvin crumbled up a hunk of corn bread into a bowl of black-eyed peas and spooned the contents into his toothless mouth.

  According to the newspaper, instead of the infamous James brothers, Jesse and Frank, the robbers turned out to be Lester Malone and Carl Prescott, two unemployed pulpwood workers from over in Choctaw County, and were both incarcerated in the Clarke County Jail up in Grove Hill.

  The paper went on to say there was a great deal of speculation about what they had done with the money, and quoted several people who were of the opinion they had somehow evaded the bloodhounds west of the bridge over the Satilfa on Highway 84 just outside of Coffeeville before they crossed the Tombigbee River and headed toward Mississippi where they were eventually captured.

  Fred and I exchanged knowing glances because we knew that no one besides us and Poudlum knew they had actually traveled east on the creek all the way up to the Iron Bridge on Center Point Road and the Cypress Hole before doubling back.

  The only thing that took everybody’s mind off the bank robbery and the missing money was the coming weekend, which was scheduled for syrup-making, a special and exciting time for everyone except the mule who turned the cane mill.

  The pulping of the sugarcane took place a little ways from Poudlum’s house where his daddy, Ray Robinson, had a cane mill.

  He would hook his mule up to a long pole attached to its collar. The other end of the pole was attached to the top of a contraption with steel rollers set in a wooden frame. While the mule walked in endless circles, folks would feed cane stalks into the roller which squeezed the juices from them.

  The juice would come trickling out of a spout from the rollers into a bucket beneath the spout. There was a gourd dipper hanging on the wooden frame, and the best part of syrup-making was that yo
u could step up to the mill, take the dipper, catch yourself some cane juice in it directly from the spout, and drink the sweet, milky juice down without ever having to chew the pulp.

  Sometimes you could get a bodacious bellyache from doing that, but the wonderful taste of the juice was worth taking the chance.

  Mine and Poudlum’s job was to catch the pressed stalks as they came out of the other side of the rollers, crushed and shattered, and pile them aside while making sure the mule didn’t step on our feet as we darted in and out of its continuous circulation of the mill.

  “Y’all better quit drinking so much of dat juice,” Poudlum’s mother cautioned us. “Or both y’all be getting’ a bellyache before you knows it.”

  The morning mist burned away and it became a clear and cool day, perfect for syrup-making. After the juice was squeezed from the stalks of cane it was transferred to the syrup pans where a hot fire was cooking it. A special aroma filled the air. It was warm and sweet with the promise of syrup and biscuits on all the cold mornings to come.

  The only thing I didn’t like about syrup making was the stickiness. It seemed to permeate the air and your hands got sticky even without touching anything. I took time to wash my hands every so often to get rid of the feel.

  After many hard hours of work, just before it got dark, the finished product was poured into shiny tin buckets and the lids were tapped shut with a rubber hammer.

  Uncle Curvin declared it was “sopping good” as the last bucket was sealed.

  While the grown-ups were splitting up everybody’s share I heard them discussing the bank robbery. “I heard dem bank robbers ain’t telling nobody where de money is,” Mr. Robinson said.

  My Uncle Clyde said, “Do you suppose they just plan to serve their time and then go back and get it?”

  “Naw, I don’t think so,” Uncle Curvin said. “I think they might have give that money to somebody who plans to help them escape from prison.”

  Everybody had a different opinion, but the one thing on everybody’s mind was the money.

  “Then again, they could’ve hid it somewhere between where they left their car there at the Highway 84 Bridge on the Satilfa and the Tombigbee,” Uncle Curvin surmised.

  “Yeah, but dat’s several miles of creek before you gets to de river. Dat would take a lot of looking,” Mr. Robinson said as he stacked buckets of syrup on the back of Uncle Curvin’s truck.

  “Yeah, but still it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go down the creek looking for it. Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and again,” Uncle Curvin said.

  He continued, “I was up in Grove Hill yesterday and the bank has posted a five hundred dollar reward for finding and returning the money.”

  Poudlum and I were sitting there sharpening our new Barlow pocket knives Uncle Curvin had brought us back from town. “You hear dat?” Poudlum whispered. “Five hundred dollars reward for finding dat money! I figures everybody gon be looking on de wrong part of de creek. Has you figured out dat riddle yet?”

  “Naw, but I been thinking on it,” I told him.

  “We needs to plan us another fishing trip next weekend, ’cept dis time we won’t be wasting our time fishin’ or humorin’ bank robbers.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We got enough food stashed in the hideout to last us the weekend so we won’t have to fish. But we need to stay out of trouble this week and bring home some good papers from school so they’ll let us go. And remember, we ain’t supposed to be saying ain’t.”

  “I ain’t forgot,” Poudlum said.

  That night I dreamed about pulling a trot line out of the Cypress Hole and instead of catfish on the hooks it had big rolls of cash money.

  I woke up early Sunday morning and just lay there for a while feeling the comfort of my favorite quilt and listening to my two brother’s soft snoring. Any other time I would have gotten a feather and tickled their noses, but this morning I had more important things on my mind.

  How could something be wet, but still be dry I wondered? And how in the world could anything be deep and still be nearby?

  Whatever the answers were, they were the key to where the money was. I knew that and so did Poudlum. The only thing left to do was solve the riddle.

  I was still pondering the answer to the riddle while we sat in church. The collar of the starched white shirt my mother had ironed that morning was chafing my neck even before the new preacher started preaching.

  I concentrated on remembering the lesson I had been taught in the cotton field during the hot summer when the sun had beaten down on us unmercifully. It was when Poudlum had taught me, through his family’s singing, that you could take your mind to a finer place while your body suffered if you just concentrated on the sweet words of a gospel song.

  That’s when everybody stood and began singing “In the Sweet Bye-And-Bye,” and I was surprised at how quickly I captured the mood and forgot about my stiff shirt collar and the dress shoes squeezing my toes together. The song swept over me just as the one had in the cotton field, and pretty soon I captured the mood and in my mind I was floating down streams and drinking Nehis with little rivulets of cool moisture sliding down the slick surface of the bottles.

  After awhile I came out of my trance and became aware of the new preacher talking and soon my attention was riveted to his every word. He was preaching on the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Bible. His voice boomed out over the congregation when he said, “Chapter Eighteen says that in His name we can take up serpents, drink poison, and lay hands on the sick to heal them.”

  I leaned forward and listened even closer when he said, “Now I don’t think the Bible meant we can just handle snakes. Any fool knows if you handle a timber rattler or a moccasin, they are pretty sure to bite you. Snakes are creatures with no soul or feeling that just strike out at anything that threatens them, and therefore they represent evil. I think what the Bible really means when it speaks of handling snakes is that we have to confront evil and face it down. We have to handle evil! Now when the good book says we can drink poison in His name without being harmed, I don’t think it’s talking about drinking strychnine or whiskey to prove your faith, but rather being able to swallow the inequities and disappointments this old life brings us without losing your faith. And now we come to what some call ‘the laying on of hands’ in His name to cure disease and deformity. Now, some false prophets will talk you into a trance to make you believe this, but their cure is temporary. The true meaning is that care and providing for the infirmities and illnesses of our fellow man is the way we lay our hands on and attempt to heal.”

  The preacher paused and wiped his brow. A hush fell over the congregation and I knew then that other folks were listening to what he had to say, too. The silence was broken by an “amen” from somewhere toward the back of the church.

  I thought I liked what the new preacher preached. What he said made a lot more sense to me than the ranting and raving of the last preacher.

  After the closing prayer Addie Brooks struck a chord on the old piano and everybody stood and joined together singing “I Will Overcome.”

  Red, yellow, and golden leaves were floating down from the oak trees surrounding the church when the congregation spilled outside. A soft fall breeze caressed all the ladies’ hairdos as they milled around and gossiped. The preacher moved from person to person and accepted their praise for a well-delivered and enlightening sermon. There was a small element who held back because I figured they weren’t too sure about the way he had interpreted the Bible, but they, too, were polite and courteous to our new preacher.

  But everyone agreed on one thing—that there was money hidden on the Satilfa and a reward of five hundred dollars was a fortune that someone among us needed to collect.

  Fred and I meandered through the crowd and listened to several theories about where the money was hidden. The consensus was that it was hidden somewhere between
the Satilfa Creek Bridge on Highway 84 and the Tombigbee River.

  My brother grinned, leaned over and whispered into my ear, “But we know better, don’t we?”

  “Be quiet!” I scolded him.

  It would be a long week before we could escape back to the creek. It began Monday morning when we all got up early to get ready for school. The taste of the fresh syrup poured from a pitcher onto a hunk of fresh butter, stirred together, and then sopped up with hunks from a hot biscuit brightened the early morning routine. My mother and oldest brother Ned checked Fred and me to make sure we were properly dressed for school, and doled out a nickel and a dime, fifteen cents, to each of us for our lunch money.

  I had practiced my spelling words by the light of the fireplace last night and was ready to stand the test I knew awaited me.

  While we were walking out to Friendship Road to catch the school bus, Fred said, “One more week after this week and we’ll be out of school for Christmas, and we won’t have to go back until after the first of the year.”

  My heart soared! I had plumb forgot. In two weeks we would be free to do as we pleased for the next two weeks, and wouldn’t have to go back to school until the third day of the new year.

  The Bedwell kids caught the bus at the same spot we did, but they were older, like my brother Ned. They gathered together with him while we waited on the bus, talking about whatever folks in the eleventh and twelfth grade of school talked about, leaving Fred and me free to talk in low tones about what we wanted to.

  “I can’t believe it’s gonna be 1949 before we know it,” Fred said. “What do you think things will be like fifty years from now?”

  My brother came up with some strange questions. “How in the world would I know that? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” I told him.

  “I can’t wait that long,” he said.

  “You got to!” I exclaimed.

  “We can write down what we think,” he said. “That’ll give us something to do while we’re out of school.”