Trouble on the Tombigbee Read online

  Trouble on the Tombigbee

  a novel by

  Ted M. Dunagan

  Junebug Books

  Montgomery | Louisville

  Also by Ted M. Dunagan

  A Yellow Watermelon

  Secret of the Satilfa

  Junebug Books

  105 South Court Street

  Montgomery, AL 36104

  Copyright 2011 by Ted M. Dunagan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Junebug Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58838-270-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-085-1

  Map illustration by Linda Aldridge.

  Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.

  For Suzanne and Hardy, for Suzanne and Randall, for Lisa, Brian, and Isla, and for Kathy, Dianne, Annell, Sulynn, Kerry, Patsy, Jennifer, John Boy, Valerie, David, Kathleen, Linda, Renea, Hazel, Sue, Danielle, Ms. Scott, Ken, Steve, and all the others who helped, guided, encouraged and supported me as I stumbled along the literary path.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 — Walking to the River

  Chapter 2 — The Mouth of the Satilfa

  Chapter 3 — The Night Hawk

  Chapter 4 — The Chase

  Chapter 5 — Camp Visitors

  Chapter 6 — The Broken Rope

  Chapter 7 — The Quarter

  Chapter 8 — Burning Boats

  Chapter 9 — The Storm

  Chapter 10 — Silas and Dudley

  Chapter 11 — Trapped

  Chapter 12 — The Escape

  Chapter 13 — Mr. Kim

  Chapter 14 — The Wicked Knife

  Chapter 15 — Running for Life

  Chapter 16 — The Bridge

  Chapter 17 — Telling Secrets

  Chapter 18 — Evidence Revealed

  Chapter 19 — Back on the River

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Walking to the River

  The Tombigbee River was an inspiration to both me and my friend Poudlum Robinson, in that it had humble beginnings like us, but went on to be great and mighty. That’s what we wanted to do.

  I knew a lot about the river because my brother Fred had taught me. It emerged as a tiny stream from springs and marshes in northeastern Mississippi, crossed the state line into Alabama, and by the time it had meandered down to the southwest corner of the state at Coffeeville, it was a wide, deep and imposing body of water, its banks lined with thick hardwood forests.

  It continued flowing south for some seventy miles before it merged into the Alabama River and then emptied into the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile.

  But the part I was interested in was where the ferry crossed it at Coffeeville. That’s where Poudlum and I were heading.

  I hadn’t seen my friend since January when my family had moved from near Coffeeville to Grove Hill, where I had endured the hardship of adapting to a new school and finding new friends while I missed my old ones. I figured Poudlum was going through some changes, too, because I had read in the newspaper that his school had a new principal who had served in World War II as one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots. The paper had called him Professor Clarence Jamison, and went on to say he expected some of the students at Poudlum’s school to follow in his footsteps. Smart as Poudlum was, I figured the professor already had him in his sights.

  It was just a few days after I graduated from the seventh grade when word came from Poudlum wanting to know if I was interested in a fishing trip on the Tombigbee. The word came through our old friend, my Uncle Curvin. He was on his way to pick up a load of fertilizer when his old truck came rumbling into my driveway.

  As he limped down from the running board, he smiled his toothless smile, looked me up and down and said, “You running up like a weed, son.”

  “Hey, Uncle Curvin,” I said as I grinned back at him.

  After we settled down on the front porch, he said, “You ain’t home by yourself, are you?”

  My momma had given up her milk cow, her chickens, and her garden except for a tiny spot, and had gone to work in a shirt factory, which my daddy called a sweat factory. My oldest brother Ned had gone off and joined the Air Force, and Fred had already landed himself a summer job. So yes, I was home alone, I told him.

  “Well, then,” he said, “You might be interested in an invite I got for you.”

  My uncle was always doing that—saying something to make you curious and then making you drag the details out of him, but today he didn’t. I believe it was because he felt sorry for me for being home alone, which there was really no need of because I had discovered the library in Grove Hill and had a stack of books to read, but he didn’t know that so he told me right off.

  “I was by the Robinsons’ place yesterday, and Poudlum wanted to know if you might be interested in a camping and fishing trip down on the river. That boy is growing as fast as you are. And that new professor at his school must be doing something, ’cause Poudlum talks ’bout as good as you do.”

  Just the mention of Poudlum’s name caused memories to wash over me like the spring rains we had been having. Thoughts flashed through my mind of how the two of us had discovered and helped destroy the bootlegger’s whiskey still, set our friend Jake on his journey to freedom, been captured by bank robbers, and fished all up and down Satilfa Creek.

  “You talking about the Tombigbee River, Uncle Curvin?” I said as my hopes and spirits soared.

  “Don’t know of no other rivers hereabouts,” he said as he loaded his lower lip up with a dip of powdered snuff from a little round metal can.

  “When was he talking about going?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Whenever you can get yourself down there. Your momma and daddy ought to be home by the time I come back through here with my load of fertilizer. We get it cleared with them, you can go back down to Center Point with me tonight, and you and Poudlum could strike out tomorrow morning.”

  I think my parents also felt sorry for me for having to stay home alone because they readily allowed me to go off on my great adventure. Even my brother, Fred, after he came dragging home from his job of cutting pulpwood, agreed it was a good idea.

  “You and Poudlum done caught all the fish in Satilfa Creek, so I guess the Tombigbee is next,” Fred said.

  That’s how Poudlum and I ended up walking down Center Point Road toward Coffeeville and the river on a bright and sunny morning in the early summer of 1949.

  “How you like living up close to Grove Hill?” Poudlum asked me as we walked along cracking pecans by squeezing two nuts together in a fist.

  After Uncle Curvin dropped me off early this morning, Poudlum had doled out two pockets full for each of us while he told me they were last year’s crop, and occasionally you would find a bad one, but that most of them were good.

  “It’s all right,” I said as I popped two halves of a tasty nut into my mouth. “But it ain’t like living down here.”

  “How you mean, better or worse?”

  “Both, just different. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it on the river. You got any fishing hooks and lines?”

  Poudlum produced a flat, red metal Prince Albert tobacco can from his pocket, shook it to make it rattle and said, “Uh-huh, and I got sinkers, too. Mr. Curvin said everything else we gonna need be in the boat.”

  The boat he was referring to was the one we had found on Satilfa Creek and that our friend Jake had used to go down the creek, cross the river, and escape from Sheriff Elroy Crowe. Jake had sai
d he would leave it on the other side of the river, and Uncle Curvin had recovered it.

  “Everything except food,” I told Poudlum. “But we’ll stop at Robert’s Grocery in Coffeeville and buy us some supplies. If we had bought ’em at Miss Lena’s Store, we would have had to tote them all the way to the river.”

  All of a sudden, I noticed Poudlum getting tense, and I looked up and saw we were getting ready to pass where Old Man Cliff Creel had lived before he got hauled off to jail. It had a look of neglect with weeds growing in the flower beds and along the fence. The pasture in the back was empty of any livestock with grass waist-high.

  “Has anyone been living here, Poudlum?” I asked in a hushed tone as if danger and evil still lurked about the place.

  “Uh-uh, not nobody that anyone has seen. Has you heard anything about that old man?”

  Old Man Creel had been the bootlegger whose whiskey still Poudlum had discovered before we and Jake had alerted the revenuers without anyone knowing it was us.

  “I just heard he was going to be in jail for a while longer. What do you think happened to that mean dog that chased us up that tree?”

  “Jail is a good place for that old man,” Poudlum said. “As for that dog, I hear tell his cousin, Mr. Conway Creel, took him. “’Spect we might find out if that’s the case since we got to walk right by his house on the way.”

  “What! Poudlum, I don’t want to have another run-in with that dog!”

  “Don’t worry. I hear they keeps him chained up. Besides, I got something that will take care of that dog.”

  “What?”

  Poudlum pulled a little snuff can out of his pocket, one like my uncle dipped out of, and said, “I filled this snuff can up with hot pepper ground up real fine. It’s so hot it’ll take yo’ breath away if you just get one little whiff of it. I’ll sling it in that dog’s face if he messes with us, then we’ll watch him run off looking for a creek to stick his head in.”

  “Good Lord, I hope nobody mistakes it for real snuff and takes a dip of it.”

  “Yeah, it probably be worse on a person than it would a dog, if they got a good snoot of it.”

  We passed Miss Annie Pearl’s house, and it wasn’t long before Center Point Road ended when it ran smack into the road leading to Coffeeville. Poudlum and I had walked down a lot of dirt roads together, but this was the first paved road we had ever traveled together. It wasn’t hot enough yet to make the asphalt unbearable on our bare feet, so we started out walking down the middle of it.

  We hadn’t gone far before Poudlum grabbed my arm and said, “Uh oh!”

  “What? What is it, Poudlum?”

  “That’s where Herman Finney lives, up on the left!”

  “So? What you worried about that for?”

  “He chunks rocks at me sometime when I go by his house.”

  I knew Herman from when I had gone to school at Coffeeville. He was a grade ahead of me but performed like he was a grade behind. Besides that he was red-headed and had lots of freckles on his face, and he was bigger than us, and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to use his weight to push a smaller kid around. I had seen him do it before, and I knew him for the bully he was.

  “Why does he throw rocks at you, Poudlum?”

  “’Cause I’m colored—yells a lot of nasty names at me, too.”

  “And you ain’t never done nothing to him?”

  “Nary a thing. I just be dodging rocks and running.”

  “I bet he won’t be throwing any rocks at you today.”

  “Probably won’t, ’cause I’m with you, but that don’t mean he won’t be wanting to.”

  Herman’s front yard was fenced in with wire and littered with two old rusted-out pickup trucks with no wheels on them sitting on wooden blocks. There was a big black and sooty wash pot next to a pile of split fire-wood with empty buckets and jars strewn about like someone had begun several tasks and then left them all unattended to.

  We were almost past the place, and I was beginning to hope we would be able to pass without any kind of confrontation with Herman, but then I saw him come around from behind the wood pile where I suspected he had been watching us the whole time.

  “Hey, y’all!” he yelled as he began walking toward the fence. I noticed he had one hand full of rocks.

  We stood our ground, and I looked him in the eyes at first, then I let my gaze drop to his hand that clutched the rocks. When he saw me looking at his hand, he relaxed his grip, and the rocks trickled down to the ground.

  “Hey, Herman,” I said.

  His eyes darted back and forth between us before he said, “Where y’all think y’all going?”

  I deferred to Poudlum, remaining silent as I turned my head to face him. He hesitated for a moment or two before he said, “Why, uh, we is going fishing.”

  “I didn’t ask you, boy!” Herman lashed out. Then he sneered, turned back toward me and said, “How about it? Where ya’ll heading to?”

  “Fishing, just like Podlum told you,” I answered. “Why you got to hear it twice?”

  “’Cause you know how they lie. You can’t put no truck in nothing they say.”

  I had had just about enough of Herman. “Poudlum don’t lie, Herman, and he’s a friend of mine. Now we got to be getting on down the road. We’ll see you later,” I told him as we turned and started walking away.

  “See him a lot later as far as I’m concerned,” Poudlum whispered to me.

  “Wait a minute,” Herman said. “Where did y’all steal them pecans?”

  I had kept cracking nuts and popping the meat into my mouth during the entire encounter with Herman. When he said what he said, I almost choked. Then in disbelief I stuttered, “We-we-we didn’t steal no pecans, these came from Poudlum’s backyard where they fell off the tree!”

  “They probably stole the tree,” Herman said. “Hey, I might come down to the river later and y’all better not be fishing in my favorite fishing hole!” Herman called out as we walked away from him.

  “Don’t pay no ’tention to him,” I told Poudlum. “Just keep walking.”

  Just before we rounded a curve in the road. Herman yelled out one last veiled threat. “I bet y’all didn’t know my daddy belongs to the Klan!”

  “You hear what he said?” Poudlum asked.

  “Yeah, I heard. Don’t let it bother you ’cause Herman ain’t nothing but a bully, and I know how to handle bullies.”

  We had barely recovered from our run-in with Herman when a new challenge loomed up before us. It was Old Man Creel’s cousin’s house where that mean bulldog was supposed to be. We cautiously crossed to the other side of the road as we approached it.

  “I don’t see him. Does you?”

  I was too busy looking for a tree to climb to answer Poudlum.

  “There he is!” Poudlum hissed. “See over yonder laying in the shade of that mulberry tree. Thank the Lawd, he’s chained to it!”

  I looked and sure enough there was that dog, the one that had chased Poudlum and me up a tree and held us captive until our friend Jake had come to our rescue. He looked like he was dozing.

  “Walk real soft like,” Poudlum whispered. “Maybe he won’t wake up ’til we gone out of sight.”

  Too late! That dog’s head popped up and he looked straight at us. He sniffed the air a few times, and then to our amazement, he whimpered and retreated behind the trunk of the mulberry tree.

  “Why he’s acting like he’s scared of us,” I said.

  “Uh-huh, I ’spect that’s what it is,” Poudlum said. “I think he probably ’members us, and he ’members getting popped in his privates with a rock shot from Jake’s slingshot.”

  “But we didn’t do that. Jake did.”

  “Yes, but if you recollects, Jake made his shot from the woods and that dog never seen him.”

  It became clear to m
e after Poudlum said this, that the dog probably associated his pain with us since we were the ones he chased up the tree, and I had taken two fruitless shots at him with my slingshot.

  We watched carefully over our shoulders as we walked tentatively on down the road, but the dog never emerged from his sanctuary behind the tree, and Poudlum and I walked on with a sense of satisfaction in that even though he was a dog, we had put one bully in his place.

  Just the same, when we came to a stand of hardwoods by the road, we stopped and cut us each a strong hickory stick to walk with.

  Nary a vehicle passed us on that lonely road, and we finally rounded the bend and arrived in Coffeeville. My old schoolhouse was over to our left, looking alien without any teachers or kids on the grounds.

  A little farther down the road at the corner was Robert’s Grocery Store where we rested, had ourselves a NuGrape soda pop and a package of Fig Newtons.

  Afterwards, we purchased some canned goods, saltine crackers, and two big slabs of hoop cheese, enough to sustain us for several days.

  A little farther and the road came to a dead end at Highway 84, where we turned west and headed down the long hill toward the river.

  “Wonder where Mr. Curvin left that boat?” Poudlum asked.

  “He said he would leave it down there next to the ferry. Said Old Man Henry Williams, who operates the ferry, would watch it for us.”

  Finally there was the river, wide and deep, and also the ferryboat. It was just a big floating platform that had been operated by Mr. Henry ever since I could remember. Most everyone called him “Mister Henry,” both white and colored. I believe it had something to do with his ferry being the only way to get your car or truck across the river.

  He would slide two big wide and thick boards from the bank of the river to the ferry and use them to drive vehicles onto the deck when somebody wanted to cross the river over into Choctaw County. He carried them across for fifty cents.