Salvation of Miss Lucretia Read online

  That snake must have suspected something was up because he suddenly began to coil up into a tighter ball and raised his head up.

  “It’s getting ready to strike!” Poudlum called out. “Make your throw now!”

  I caught it square on its nose, driving its head back. Before it could recover, a ball from Poudlum drove its head back against the pit wall.

  I almost felt sorry for that snake as we rained missiles on it, pounding it into helplessness. The balls disintegrated on impact, and by the time we had exhausted our supply, it was completely covered with dirt.

  “Quick!” Poudlum said. “Start pushing more dirt on it!”

  Pretty soon we had about three feet of dirt on the snake and we started packing it down by stomping on it with our boots. Then we began digging like moles, piling more and more dirt on top of the snake. Finally, we figured we had piled enough on it not even a mule could have kicked his way out.

  We took a break. Perspiration streamed down my face washing dirt into my eyes, nose and mouth, and I thought I couldn’t remember a time when I was more miserable. That’s why I was so shocked when I heard Poudlum say, “We ought to be real thankful.”

  “Poudlum,” I said in astonishment. “We way down in the bottom of a pit, dirty, thirsty, hungry and with no way for sure we gonna get out of it, and you saying we ought to be thankful?”

  “Shore we should. A little while ago we was in the same situation except we was sharing it with the biggest timber rattler in Alabama, and it was wanting to bite us. We down here in the summertime. If it was wintertime, besides being dirty, thirsty, and hungry, we would be freezing, too. So you see, no matter how desperate your situation is, there’s always something to thank the Good Lord for!”

  I just sat there quietly, marveling at the wisdom of what Poudlum had said, and at the great amount of faith he had. Finally, I told him, “Maybe somebody will come help us and we won’t have to dig out of here. At the rate we’re going, I ’spect it’s gonna take more than two days.”

  “Who you think might come?” he asked.

  “The last thing I told Miss Lucretia was that we would meet her back at the cabin. When we don’t show up there after a reasonable time maybe she’ll come looking for us.”

  “Maybe she will and maybe she won’t,” Poudlum said.

  “Well if she don’t, Uncle Curvin and Mister Autrey will come looking for us if we don’t show up tomorrow. We told ’em we would be back around noon on Saturday, and tomorrow is Saturday.”

  “Yeah, but they won’t be sending out no search party when we don’t show up at noon. They’ll wait on us for several hours, but by the time they decide to come looking it’ll be about dark, and they’ll have to wait till Sunday morning. This is one mighty big forest, and who knows if they would even find us on Sunday.”

  After I absorbed what Poudlum had said, I told him, “I can’t stay down here that long, Poudlum.”

  “Then we better get to digging,” he replied. “We’ll dig like madmen. We’ll dig till we drop, and then get up and dig some more. If we are relentless we might just dig our way out of this hole by sometime tonight.”

  “Then let’s get to digging,” I said.

  Just before we got up I noticed Poudlum looking intently up toward the top of the pit, and he said, “Right now, we can be glad we down in this pit.”

  “Huh?” I said, as I followed his gaze upward and was astonished to see two golden eyes encased in a satin black and furry face. “It’s a panther!” I said in wonder.

  “Shore is,” Poudlum confirmed. “And it’s a big un, too. Let’s be real still and pray he ain’t hungry.”

  I could sense the fear in Poudlum at he stared up at this near-mythical creature that folks told so many tales about. I felt it, too. Being trapped in the pit seemed like a small thing at the moment. “You don’t think he’ll jump down here, do you, Poudlum?”

  “Naw, he’s too smart for that. But just in case, get a good grip on your knife. If he does, he’ll probably maul us up some, but I figure between the two of us we could destroy him.”

  We watched in terror and wonderment as the great beast looked down on us, licking his chops. Then his head jerked up and he looked around like he was alarmed, and suddenly, he was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

  “What you think spooked him into running off?” I asked.

  “Hard to guess from way down here,” Poudlum said. “Come on. What we got to do is get back to digging.”

  We started a new tunnel, stabbing with our knives and scooping with our hands.

  While we worked, Poudlum asked, “What you ’spect happened to the dogs?”

  “Oh! I forgot to tell you. They followed me out to the chicken pen this morning when Cudjoe sent me to gather the eggs, and I gave Old Bill the command to hit the woods, and Rip took off with him. I thought that was better than letting ’em hang around Cudjoe. No telling what he would have done to ’em.”

  “That’s for sure,” Poudlum said. “He might have wanted their skins to go along with the snake ones.”

  “Maybe they’ll come back and sniff out our trail and find this pit.”

  “Maybe so,” Poudlum said. “I don’t know what they could do to help us out of this pit, but it would be comforting to have ’em hanging around up there.”

  “They could bark and attract some help for us.”

  “That’s true,” Poudlum said. “I wonder where they could be?”

  We dug and dug and dug. The next time we took a break, Poudlum said, “We might not ever get these knives sharp again. Digging in this dirt is sure to make ’em dull.”

  We kept making observations like this to each other while we dug just to pass the time. Eventually, we sank down in exhaustion on a soft pile of dirt, and I asked Poudlum how far he thought we had progressed in our endeavor to dig our way out of the pit.

  He looked up and studied the wall for a few moment before he stated that he thought we were about one fourth of the way to the top.

  His observation brought pain and discouragement to my mind as I realized the impossibility of our task.

  He must have felt my state of mind, for he said, “Don’t look at it that way. Look at it like a challenge and have faith that we’ll make it out of here.”

  Now I knew for sure that Poudlum had a calling, and I was just glad to have him and his inspiration along beside me, as I plunged my knife into the wall of the pit.

  There was nothing else left to do, so we dug and dug, and dug some more. But when we reached our next stage of exhaustion, we heard a rustling sound coming from up above.

  “What you think that was?” Poudlum whispered as we froze in order to listen more intently.

  There it was again! A rustling sound, and then we almost shouted with joy when we heard what we recognized as the whimpering sound of our dogs.

  Suddenly, both their heads appeared up above staring down at us from the edge of the pit.

  When we called out to them, they began barking and scratching at the ground in their excitement.

  Then, miraculously, another face appeared with them, and with the sun at high noon, shining through her hair, making it appear like a halo, we thought that truly an angel had been sent down from heaven to help us ascend from the panther pit.

  Chapter 14

  Sister Gal

  We didn’t know who she was at the time, but it was Sister Gal who saved us.

  We couldn’t see her face, just the sun shining through her hair. Then when she spoke, the sound and tone of her sweet voice reinforced our angelic impression of her.

  Her words came floating down into the pit like a life-saving elixir when she simply said, “It appears to me y’all could use a little help.”

  “Wh-wh-who are you?” Poudlum stuttered as if he thought we might have dreamed her up.

  “Folks call me Sister
Gal,” she replied. “I don’t know who dese dogs belong to. I found ’em on my way back here from Mister Autrey’s place, or rather dey found me. Y’all want me to go get some help?”

  “No!” I shouted. “Please don’t leave,” I pleaded in panic. “There’s a rope in a hollow tree behind that big oak tree. If you’ll tie it to the oak and chunk it down here, we’ll do the rest.”

  She immediately disappeared, but she was back in less than a minute, and the rope came tumbling down like a life line from heaven. When we got our hands on it, Poudlum grabbed it, held it steady, and said, “You go first.”

  I didn’t need a second invitation. I grasped it with both hands and began to climb, hand over hand, till I reached the blessed edge and pulled myself up and fell exhausted on the ground.

  Old Bill started whining and nuzzling me, but I brushed him aside for the moment, dug my heels in and began pulling up on the rope as I felt the weight of Poudlum climbing.

  When he emerged from the pit, he collapsed on the ground next to me, breathing hard, and said, “Told you we would get outta that hole.”

  Slowly we sat up while our dogs licked our dirt-caked faces and wagged their tails with joy. We both looked up at our savior when she said, “Mister Autrey said one of y’all wuz white and de other wuz colored, but doggone if I can tell which of y’all is which.”

  I looked at Poudlum and saw what she meant. We were so covered with sticky dirt and sweat until we both looked alike. We forgot about what we looked like, and also our extreme thirst, as we observed Sister Gal. Her bushy head of hair looked like regular hair now, without the sun shining through it. I could tell she was colored, but her skin was the color of a ripe persimmon. And even though she looked to be about our age, I could already see the feminine lines of beauty emerging in her face, round and full like a ripening peach.

  But the most peculiar thing about her was she was the first girl I had ever seen wearing a pair of pants. Actually it was a pair of overalls with a tee shirt underneath the galluses. When I managed to pull my eyes away from her, I looked at Poudlum and saw that he was transfixed by her.

  Sister Gal broke the spell when she said, “How in de world did y’all get down in dat pit?”

  “We were running from Cudjoe Lewis and fell in it,” I told her.

  “Cudjoe Lewis!” she said with what I thought was a certain amount of disdain in her voice.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “Everybody knows Cudjoe, and dey is some who wish dey didn’t. How did y’all get so dirty?”

  Poudlum broke out of his daze, and said, “We was trying to dig our way out.”

  She leaned over and carefully peered down into the pit, and said, “Good thing I showed up. Y’all would have been next week digging out of dat hole.”

  “How did you find us?” Poudlum asked.

  “I didn’t. Dese here two dogs dat I stumbled on in de woods found y’all. Dey scared me at first, but den dey followed me to my Auntie Lucretia’s place. Wasn’t nobody to be found around her cabin, and then they started barking and sniffing at de ground and took off dis way. I just followed ’em.”

  “Miss Lucretia is your aunt, too?” I asked

  “Uh huh,” she confirmed.

  “And you kin to Cudjoe?”

  “I is, but I don’t particularly like to claim it.”

  “Don’t blame you for that,” Poudlum said. “But how did you come to be out here in the first place?”

  “Folks down in Africatown sent me to get her and bring her home.”

  “You come up here all by yourself?”

  “Naw, my Uncle Marvin come wid me. He back at Mister Autrey’s place. He too old to walk all dis way, so he sent me.”

  “How come folks want her to come back? We thought y’all banished her,” Poudlum continued.

  “Dey did, a long time back before I can remember, but folks done come to dey senses, and folks knows how Cudjoe been using her. How y’all know Cudjoe?”

  “We’ll tell you on the way back to Miss Lucretia’s,” I told her. “We’re powerful thirsty.”

  “Uh huh, y’all could use some water on de outside as well as on de inside,” she said.

  By the time we got back to the cabin we had told Sister Gal our entire story, and I could tell she was a fan of ours after we finished.

  “Looks like we be on de same mission,” she said as we arrived at the cabin.

  We were surprised and happy to see some of the canned food from our camp sitting on the table under the shed. Sister Gal followed our gaze, and said, “I brought dat stuff from y’all’s camp. Dat’s where I run up on Old Bill and Rip. But y’all need to get cleaned up fo’ you dine on it.”

  Poudlum and I took the water bucket and the bar of soap from the front porch and went down to the spring. It wasn’t big enough or deep enough for us to get into it, so we just stripped and doused each other with water, soaped up and did it again. All we could do with our clothes were to shake them out as best we could.

  When we got back Sister Gal had opened up some cans of sardines and beans. As we ate the food and washed it down with the cool spring water, she said, “At least now I can tell which one of y’all is Poudlum and which one is Ted.”

  As we were finishing up, Poudlum said, “I wonder where Miss Lucretia is. We need to be getting underway if we gonna get out of these woods before dark.”

  About that time two of the goats came wandering up in the yard, grazing all the time. A moment or two later we noticed several chickens scratching and pecking at the ground.

  “She done turned all her livestock loose,” Poudlum said.

  That truly was the case, and shortly thereafter, Miss Lucretia emerged from the path with a stick she was using to drive the animals with. When she saw us staring at her, she said, “Dese critters got to learn to live on dey own now.” Then she noticed Sister Gal and blurted, “Who is dis gal y’all got wid you? Young’uns seem to be springin’ up like mushrooms in dis forest!”

  She made her way on over to the cook shed and while we all shared the food, Poudlum and I urged Miss Lucretia to get together whatever she needed or wanted to take with her. And Sister Gal told her why she had come into the forest.

  Miss Lucretia got overcome with emotion again, but when she recovered, it was her turn to shock us again when she said, “I can’t go till I finds my gold.”

  “Uh, what gold is it you talking about?” Poudlum asked her.

  “A coffee can full of Spanish gold money I buried when I first come into dese woods to stay.”

  “You brought them with you when you come here?” I asked.

  “Shore did, and I’m gonna need ’em to get by on if I gonna go back to de world.”

  “How many of ’em you got?” Sister Gal asked with a tone of doubt in her voice.

  Miss Lucretia didn’t hesitate. “Dey is forty-eight of ’em, over three times as many as years I been living here.”

  I looked at Poudlum and we agreed with our eyes that her story was true, in spite of Sister Gal’s obvious disbelief. Besides, true or not, when it came to any kind of tale about buried treasure, it got mine and Poudlum’s intent interest.

  “You mind telling us how you come into possession of forty-eight gold coins?” Poudlum asked.

  “Heh-heh-heh,” she chuckled. “Naw, I don’t mind at all. In fact I reminisce about it a lot on long days here by myself. It was when I was just about Sister Gal’s age. I seen Old Man Lewis burying ’em by de light of a full moon. It wuz on a Saturday when my momma discovered we didn’t have enough sugar to put up her fig preserves, and she was afraid de figs would go bad if she waited till Monday to cook ’em and put ’em up. So she scraped up what few nickels we had and sent me off to de store to get five pounds of sugar.

  “I had to run all de way to get to de store fo’ dey closed, but I made it. Trouble was, it wa
s dark when I left town and I had to walk all de way through where some rich white folks lived to get home. It was quiet, and I could see de lights from de windows and hear ’em laughing and talking round dey supper tables. De last house I had to pass belonged to Old Man Lewis, and I noticed it was completely dark. But just fo’ I went past it I noticed a flickering light coming from round back of de house.

  “I started to keep going, but den curiosity got de best of me. I hid my bag of sugar underneath a big hydrangea bush on de side of de house and started sneaking round toward de back yard, praying all de time dey didn’t have no dog.

  “De flickering light got stronger the closer I got to de back, and when I finally peeked around de corner, I saw de light wuz coming from a torch stuck in de ground, and leaning over a little bit. And in de light of dat torch I seen Old Man Lewis digging a hole wid a shovel at de base of a big pear tree.

  “I kept real quiet and watched, and when he finished digging his hole, he dropped down on de ground and poured dem gold pieces out of a leather bag onto de ground and dey glittered and glimmered in de torch light.

  “I watched as he counted ’em and dropped ’em one by one into a coffee can. When he finished he put de lid on, placed de can in de hole and covered it up.

  “While he was patting down de dirt with de flat part of his shovel, I eased on out of de yard, got my bag of sugar and ran all de way home. Never did tell nobody ’bout what I seen, and didn’t go back there till the last night fo’ I was banished from Africatown, which was right after I refused to give up my crown as de voodoo queen, and de church decided on banishing me.

  “So de night fo’ I left, I determined to go back and dig dat gold up and take it wid me. I figured it could have been dug up long ago, but I had heard Old Man Lewis had died, and if like me, he had never told anyone, den de gold might still be resting just below de surface of de ground at de foot of dat pear tree.

  “It was another full moon dat night, and I sneaked outta de house sometime after midnight and made my way down to de Lewis mansion. It was a whole lot different from what it used to be. De hydrangea bush where I had stowed my bag of sugar was overgrown and covered wid vines and briars. De paint on de house had long since worn down to de bare wood and de whole place had a deserted and abandoned look about it.