The Secret of the Swamp King

by Jonathan Rogers

  By this time the feechies were growing impatient for the next song. “Let’s hear something new,” called Branko.

  “Yeah, something we ain’t heard yet,” agreed Tombro. “Dobro, you always pirooting around all over the place. I wager you’ve heard some new ballads.”

  “Sure, I know a new ballad,” answered Dobro. “I learnt it from the beach feechies. But it’s terrible sad, and I’m fearsome it would bust up the merriment.”

  “Sing on, Dobro,” encouraged Odo. “The sadder the better. I could use a good cry.”

  “I don’t mind singing it,” continued Dobro, “but I ought to warn you, it’s terrible long.”

  “Sing on,” shouted a voice from the crowd. “We got nowhere to be.”

  So Dobro mounted the big singstump. “This here sad-ballad is called ‘The Thing That I Done,’” he explained. Then, as was customary for the singer of a sadballad, he pulled a long face, closed his eyes, and began to sing in a keening voice as high and as lonesome as a tree frog’s:

  Now listen up children to my tale of woe.

  I used to be happy a long time ago.

  Now everyone calls me the miserable one.

  It’s all on account of the thing that I done.

  I hope that you’ll learn from the mistakes I’ve made.

  I hope that you won’t play the games that I played.

  I done what I done with no thought of tomorrow.

  And now I got nothing but mis’ry and sorrow.

  Pobo, already primed for a good cry, tuned up at the first mention of misery and woe. By the end of the second stanza, he was leaning on Doyno, his face buried in his hands, wailing as if his best friend had died. After a brief pause, Dobro carried on with his ballad. Such outbursts were to be expected at a feechiesing.

  My mama, she learnt me the things I should know.

  My daddy, he showed me the way I should go.

  But I wouldn’t be an obedient son.

  I went out and I done the thing that I done.

  Now that a mother was involved, there were sniffles all around. A few sobs could be heard in the crowd.

  “I miss my mama,” wailed Branko. “She’s the finest she-feechie ever swung on a vine.” Doyno pushed Branko from behind. “She ain’t neither,” he blubbered. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying for his own mother. “My mama could whup your mama any day!” For a moment it appeared a fistfight was about to break out, but the other feechies shushed Doyno and Branko, anxious to hear what awful thing had ruined the balladeer’s life. Soon it was quiet enough for Dobro to continue.

  I once was so jolly, but now I just suffer.

  Things has got rough, and they’ll only get rougher.

  My troubles and worries and distress begun

  When I did that thing that I shouldn’t have done.

  Oh, this thing that I done, at the time I enjoyed it.

  But listen to me, child, you better avoid it.

  It ain’t worth the heartache, it ain’t worth the strife.

  The thing that I done has done ruint my life.

  By now the whole swamp council was dissolved in tears. Some had their arms around one another, sobbing on each others’ shoulders. Others were laid out flat on the sand, literally wallowing in pity for the poor soul in the ballad whose whole life had collapsed, whose happiness was shattered because of one mistake. They were desperate for more details. What was this one thing that had caused so much heartache? How might they avoid a similar fate? They hung on Dobro’s every word.

  Lean in here close, and I’ll tell you my tale.

  It’ll straighten your hair, it’ll cause you to wail.

  But if my sad story can save even one,

  I don’t mind your knowing this thing that I done.

  Except for a few involuntary sobs, the feechies were perfectly silent. All eyes were on Dobro. Their anticipation grew almost unbearable as Dobro launched into a stanza of heartfelt humming, a sort of instrumental interlude: “Hmmm, hmmmm, hmmm, hmmmm, hmmm …”

  Dobro launched into a second stanza of humming, his eyes still shut tight as if he were lost in the music. But his audience’s patience was starting to fray. “Any day now,” grumbled a feechie named Beppo.

  “Come on, Dobro,” whined Branko. “Ain’t it time you moved this here story along?”

  Dobro just kept humming, but as he moved his head around in time with the music, Aidan thought he saw one eye peep open just enough to get the lay of the land. Then, suddenly, the sadballad broke off, and Dobro sprang from the singstump like a bullfrog and soared over the first row of the audience. He was leaping for a grapevine hanging over Branko’s head. But it was a few inches too far. His fingertips just grazed the thick, woody vine and he belly-flopped onto Branko’s tortoiseshell helmet with a great, air-expelling ooooofff. Dobro and a very surprised Branko both thudded to the ground.

  A swarm of feechiefolk was on Dobro in an instant. “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Beppo. “You get up and finish that sadballad.”

  “Put him back on the singstump,” somebody shouted. The angry feechies carried Dobro roughly over their heads and deposited him back on the sweet gum logs, where he stood sheepish and silent for a few moments.

  “Well?” grumbled Doyno. “Let’s hear it.”

  Dobro closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began again: “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm … hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…”

  “Confound you!” shouted Branko. “You stop that humming and commence to singing!”

  “If you ain’t singing real words by the time I count to five…” began Beppo.

  Somebody butted in. “You can’t count to five, Beppo.”

  “Confound it all!” wailed Dobro. “I done forgot how the sadballad goes.”

  None of the feechies was crying now. They hemmed Dobro in from either side of the singstump, and they looked ready for a fight.

  “How can you remember all them preambulations,” asked Hyko, “and forget the main point?”

  “You launched into a sadballad called ‘The Thing that I Done,’” pointed out Branko, “without you knew the thing that was done.”

  Dobro looked more sheepish than ever. He now remembered that the one time he heard the sadballad sung, he had fallen asleep before it was over. Now Pobo scrambled onto the singstump to confront Dobro. His dirty face had clean streaks where tears had streamed down. “Do you mean to tell me,” Pobo began, “that you got me all wound up, worried sick over that person who done whatever he done, missing my own mama, and generally feeling miserable, for nothing?”

  Dobro shrugged. “Sorry, Pobo,” he said. But Pobo was in no mood for apologies. He lunged for Dobro. Dobro ducked away from him, leaped off the singstump, and bulled his way through the encircling feechies to a nearby beech tree. He shinned up the tree like a squirrel, with hotly pursuing feechies streaming up behind him. But all stopped stock-still, even Dobro, when they realized the treetops were full of strange feechies retreating limb to limb away from them and deeper into the forest.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Boat Ride

  Aidan scrambled up the nearest water oak to join the pursuit through the treetops. But by the time he made the first leap, the sounds of the chase were far away. He was still a civilizer, after all. No civilizer, not even Pantherbane himself, could tree-walk like a feechie in a chase.

  It was a moonless night; clouds had rolled in before dark to obscure even the faint light of the stars. Aidan climbed back down rather than risk further tree walking with no light and no feechies to guide him. He dropped from the lowest limb onto the leaf-strewn ground, just at the edge of the firelight.

  Two shadows darted from behind the trees and closed on either shoulder. Aidan felt hot breath at his ears and smelled the unmistakably pungent odor of he-feechies.

  “What sort of critter is this?” hissed a voice at his right ear. “He dresses like a feechie, but he wears foot covers like a civilizer.” He stepped on Aidan’s boot.

  “He tries to walk
in the treetops like a feechie,” whispered the voice at Aidan’s left ear, “but he moves like a civilizer.” The shadowy figure did an exaggeratedly stiff pantomime of Aidan’s cautious movements in the treetop.

  “He’s got a turtle-shell helmet, but his hair looks like civilizer hair.”

  “So is he a feechie or a civilizer?”

  “I believe he’s a feechielizer.”

  “Whatever he is, I reckon the Wilderking will want to have a look at him.”

  Aidan saw the glint of two shiny knives in the fading firelight. He opened his mouth to call for help, but a slimy, bony hand clamped over the bottom half of his face. One of his attackers tied his hands behind his back, and the other gagged him with a length of vine. They marched him to a flatboat waiting at the water’s edge, then tied his feet, lifted him into the boat, and poled away noiselessly into the blackness of the swamp.

  They poled throughout the night. Aidan crouched in the middle of the boat; his captors were at either end. The feechies never spoke a word, and Aidan, being gagged, couldn’t speak either. He was alone with his thoughts for an entire sleepless night, wondering what fate awaited him.

  At sunup, Aidan finally got a good look at his captors. They had a harder look about them than even the usual run of feechies. The feechie operating the push pole in the stern of the craft was as sharp-featured as a jackfish. His nose, his chin, and even the Adam’s apple on his twig-thin neck all came to sharp points. The one sitting in the front had the look of a bottom-feeder. His rounded chin turned downward, taking his mouth with it. Even when he sat straight up, his lips pointed toward the bottom of the boat. His flattened nose had obviously been broken more than once. It meandered down his face like the River Tam itself.

  “Sunup,” announced the pole-pusher in a raspy voice.

  “I ain’t blind, Pickro,” grumbled Bottom-Feeder. “I can see the sun’s up.”

  “Just making conversation, Carpo,” Pickro answered.

  But Carpo wouldn’t let it rest. “I probably knowed it was sunup before you did.”

  “How you reckon that?” snarled Pickro.

  “’Cause I’m in the front of the boat.” Carpo showed all three of his front teeth in a pleased little smile.

  “How’d you like to be even farther out in front of the boat?” asked Pickro, lunging to shove Carpo into the water. The boat lurched violently, and Aidan prayed for peace. Bound hand and foot, he didn’t like his chances should he get dumped into the Feechiefen.

  A gigantic alligator, much longer than the boat, opened its jaws in preparation for an easy breakfast. This had a sobering effect on Pickro, who returned to his post in the stern of the boat.

  The flash of anger was over. “You reckon it’s safe to float in the daytime?” asked Carpo.

  “I reckon so,” Pickro answered. “We’re a whole night’s float from Scoggin Mound. Anybody out looking for this civilizer gots to be behind us. Can’t be in front of us. We’re better off to keep poling.” So they poled on, deeper into the dark heart of the Feechiefen.

  Carpo looked back at Pickro. “Breakfast time,” he declared. “You hungry?”

  “Starving,” answered Pickro. “I could eat a civilizer.” Both feechies hee-hawed at this. Even Aidan couldn’t help but smile a little, even though he was the butt of the morbid joke.

  Carpo seemed impressed with Aidan’s sense of humor. “How ’bout you, civilizer?” he asked. “You hungry?” Aidan nodded. Carpo pulled his shiny knife from his belt. Holding it up to the morning light, he admired its gleam almost involuntarily. Then he cut the vine gag so Aidan could eat.

  “What you doing?” barked Pickro. “You want him hollering for help?”

  Carpo looked in every direction. They were in the deep of the deep swamp. “What’s he going to holler?” he asked. Then in a high, mocking voice he called out, “Help! I’m a civilizer! Save me from these mean old feechies!”

  Pickro laughed. “You right, Carpo. Even if somebody heard him, they ain’t likely to jump in on the civilizer’s side, are they?”

  When Carpo cut Aidan’s wrist bindings, Pickro protested again. “Bless my liver! If you ain’t the mollycoddlinest guard I ever seen! He’s a prisoner, not a play-pretty!”

  “Was you planning on feeding him his breakfast like a mama bird?” Carpo retorted. “He can’t eat with his hands tied behind his back, can he?” He retied Aidan’s hands in the front, an arrangement that Aidan found much more agreeable.

  Breakfast was dried duckweed pressed into a flattened mass. Carpo pulled it out of his side pouch and passed it around in palm-sized squares. It wasn’t so bad—certainly not the worst feechie food Aidan had ever had. They washed it down with swamp water scooped up in their helmets.

  While his captors chewed their breakfast and watched the swamp birds come to life, Aidan thought it was as good a time as any to see if his feechiefriend status would carry any weight with these feechies. He raised his bound hands in a series of elaborate morning stretches, in the hope that either Carpo or Pickro would notice the feechiemark on his forearm. But they just gazed blankly across the water.

  Aidan decided to use a more direct approach. After all, they might retie the gag at any time. He might as well talk while he could. “You might not have known it,” he said as nonchalantly as he could manage, “but I’m a feechiefriend.” Carpo just grunted a little. Pickro said nothing.

  Aidan pressed his case. “You know, ‘His fights is our fights, and our fights is his’n.’” The silence was deafening. But Aidan kept things rolling. “My feechie name’s Pantherbane. You may have heard of me.”

  “Sure we’ve heard of you,” said Pickro. It was the first time he had spoken directly to Aidan. “I reckon everybody in the swamp’s heard of Pantherbane.”

  At last! thought Aidan. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  “But Pantherbane’s pretty old news down at Bearhouse,” said Carpo. “Now that we got the Wilderking on the island, we got some new rules. Wilderking give us a whole new way of doing things.”

  Aidan held out his arms again and nodded at the red alligator scar on his forearm. “Does this feechiemark mean nothing to you?”

  “In Larbo’s band, we never put much stock in that kind of thing,” said Carpo. “Kind of did our own thing, if you know what I mean. When the Wilderking come to us last year, he was real interested in the feechiemark. He told us that if anybody with a feechiemark ever showed up in Feechiefen, we was supposed to bring him back to Bearhouse.”

  Pickro picked up the story. “Word got around the swamp a few days ago that Pantherbane was going to be at a swamp council at Scoggin Mound. Bunch of us seen the chance to look in on the North Swamp boys and bring the Wilderking his feechiefriend all at the same time.”

  “This Wilderking,” asked Aidan, “where did he come from?”

  “Don’t know exactly,” answered Carpo. “Chief Larbo showed up one day with a civilizer, and he told us he was the Wilderking. We’d all heard about the Wilderking when we was wee-feechies—how a civilizer king would rule over the civilizers and the feechies too. But none of us believed it much anymore.”

  “Larbo explained how it was all true, and how this here civilizer was the man hisself,” said Pickro.

  “That made us feel good,” explained Carpo. “Larbo’s boys ain’t always been the best-loved feechies in the swamp, so we was tickled to know the Wilderking come to Bearhouse Island and our little band, to get his Wilderkingdom started.”

  “He talked so high-flown and smart,” said Pickro. “I could listen to the Wilderking talk all day long.”

  “He give us a whole new way to think about ourselves,” added Carpo, “and the swamp too.”

  “It’s like the Wilderking says,” Pickro continued, “feechiefolks is good folks, with plenty of good qualities. Loyal, good fighters, we know the woods, got strong backs and a whole heap of energy. But most feechiefolks ain’t got the ambition that God gave a salamander.

  “But the Wilderking says that w
ith a little gumption and discipline and a commitment to poor grass, we can make something out of ourselves.”

  Carpo thought about what Pickro had said. “I don’t think he said ‘poor grass.’”

  “Sure he said ‘poor grass,’” said Pickro. “Wilderking says it all the time.”

  “I don’t think ‘poor grass’ is right,” Carpo insisted.

  “Commitment to progress?” suggested Aidan. “Was he saying commitment to progress?”

  “Maybe that’s it,” conceded Pickro. “Anyway, it’s what feechiefolks need. Just look around you.” He waved his hand toward a stand of giant cypress. “Lot of folks’d call them trees. The Wilderking calls them natural race horses.” He leaned back and watched for the effect of his big words to sink in.

  “Natural resources?” asked Aidan.

  “Maybe that’s it,” said Pickro. “But, anyway, you cut a few of them trees down, and a civilizer can build a house out ’em. And here’s the best part: Civilizers will trade you gold for a tree!” Pickro cocked an eyebrow at Aidan, judging the impact this revelation might have on the civilizer.

  “But what do feechiefolk need with gold?” asked Aidan.

  Pickro and Carpo looked at each other for a moment. They had never thought of that before. Finally, Carpo offered a feeble answer: “Because it’s shiny! Ain’t you never seen gold before?”