Trouble on the Tombigbee Read online

  After we were well out on the river Poudlum said, “You think we might be in trouble?”

  “I think Mr. Henry thinks we might be.”

  “Why you think that?”

  “Because of everything he told us, and he same as invited us to hide out at his house if need be.”

  “You think some of them Klan folks gonna come looking for us?”

  “Could be.”

  “What we gonna do?”

  “We gonna stick with our story that we camped up the river last night, and we also gonna do what we come down to this river for. We gonna fish.”

  “Thats what I say too,” Poudlum said and promptly set about putting two trolling lines out as we paddled back towards our camp.

  We had gathered us up enough fire wood to get us through the night and was just about to re-bait our trotline when we heard a motorboat coming up the river.

  It got louder and pretty soon Herman Finney and his daddy beached their boat at our campsite.

  “Uh oh,” Poudlum said as his eyes grew large.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “Just let me do the talking,” I added without hardly moving my lips.

  Herman’s daddy was a rough-looking man with a week’s growth of dark whiskers. He wore a battered felt hat, brogans on his feet, and a pair of overalls with sawdust on them. I remembered hearing somewhere that he cut pulpwood for a living.

  His eyes, partially shaded underneath the brim of his hat, surveyed our camp. Finally he said, “Howdy, boys.”

  My voice sounded more confident than I felt when I said, “Hey, Mr. Finney. Hey, Herman. Y’all out trying to catch a few fish before it gets dark?”

  He squatted down with Herman standing behind him and began rolling himself a cigarette from a little sack of Bull Durham tobacco. When he finished, he put it in his mouth and lit it before he said, “I ain’t fishing for fish, son. What I’m fishing for is information.”

  I didn’t volunteer any for him, just waited to see what he had to say next.

  “Is the fishing better up the river or down the river?” he asked.

  “I can’t rightly tell you that, Mr. Finney,” I lied.

  “So you and that boy over there,” he nodded toward Poudlum. “Y’all been fishing up here since y’all got here yesterday?”

  “There’s the remains of our fire from last night,” I said as I pointed to the mound of cold dark ashes.

  “I noticed y’all got a piece of broken rope on the front of your boat. You lucky you didn’t lose it.”

  “Yes, sir. We need us a new rope. Till we get us one we just drag the boat up on the bank so it won’t get away.”

  He flipped his cigarette butt into the edge of the river and it made a little sizzling sound when the fire hit the water.

  “So what you’re telling me, son, is that y’all wasn’t out paddling way down the river last night, down near where the Satilfa Creek empties into the river?”

  I figured I had to tell another lie now, but I was saved from doing it when Poudlum said, “I hear dey wuz some monster catfish down at the mouth of the Satilfa. We might fish down dat way tomorrow and see if we can catch a big one.”

  Mr. Finney stood up, pointed his finger at Poudlum and said, “Boy! Don’t you know better than to speak to a white person without being spoken to?”

  Poudlum turned silently away and walked over to the boats at the edge of the water while Herman’s daddy continued to pepper me with questions.

  After I told him we hadn’t seen any other folks on the river, he gave me a stern warning that we better be careful because we were being watched.

  I noticed that Poudlum was back beside me when they turned to leave.

  When they got to the river’s edge, Herman leaned over, looking into our boat, and suddenly said, “Hey, daddy! Come here and look at this!”

  Chapter 6

  The Broken Rope

  What had caught Herman’s attention was the three paddles in our boat. There was our two and the one we had captured in the creek and floated down it on.

  Mr. Finney turned back toward us after he had observed this and said, “How come y’all got three paddles and one of them is white?”

  “We found the white one floating in the water,” I told him. Now that wasn’t a lie.

  “In that case I’ll just relieve you of it since you don’t need it,” he said as he took the paddle and placed it into their boat.

  My heart sank when he started his motor and pulled out into the river, because now he had a piece of evidence to connect us with being on the Satilfa last night. Some of those men might be able to recognize that paddle.

  I told this to Poudlum as their engine noise faded away, and I was surprised when he said, “No need to worry about that.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause that paddle won’t never reach the other side of the river.”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Poudlum?”

  “Herman and his daddy will make it ’cause they can swim, but won’t nothing else.”

  “Huh?”

  “After he spoke like he did to me, and while he was still talking to you I drifted down to the side of the river.”

  “I remember that. What happened?”

  “I noticed the plug in the boat was loose, so I just gave it a little kick and got it more loose. It’ll probably pop out about halfway home and I didn’t see nothing in their boat to bail with. It ain’t too smart to go out on the river without a bucket to bail water with.”

  “I’m glad you sunk that boat, Poudlum, I don’t blame you one bit. But I was wondering why you talked like you did in front of them, you know, kind of like you used to?”

  “It ain’t a good idea to act too uppity in front of white folks like Herman and his daddy. My new principal, Professor Jamison, said colored folks got to be able to speak two languages—depending on who’s company we in, whether they be white or colored.”

  We found out later that Herman and his daddy both could in fact swim, and that incriminating paddle had floated off down the river while their boat, along with the motor, within sight of the ferry, had disappeared into the depths of the Tombigbee.

  But in the midst of preparing our camp for the night, another horrible thought came to me. “Oh, no!” I cried out.

  Poudlum leapt to my side and said, “What’s the matter! You see a snake or something?”

  “It’s the rope. Remember Herman’s daddy noticed our tethering rope was broken. The other end of it is still tied to that tree up the Satilfa. If somebody finds it they can match it up to the short end on our boat.”

  Poudlum promptly walked down to our boat and used his knife to cut the rotten rope loose, after which he returned and dropped it into our fire and said, “Can’t match ’em up now.”

  “I wish I had thought to do that earlier, but he’s already seen it, and if they find the end left on the tree, he can still match them up in his mind and know we really was down there last night.”

  “Is you saying we got to go back down there and get that broken rope off that tree?”

  “As much as I hate to, I think we better,” I told him. “We’ll leave right after dark before the moon comes up. That way nobody can see us.”

  “How about coming back? The moon be up by then and it’ll be light out on the river.”

  “Maybe it’ll get cloudy. Let’s get us something to eat. It ought to be good and dark by then.”

  We had our second meal of fried catfish after being on the river for nearly two days. We also had some baked sweet potatoes we had buried under the ashes of the fire.

  When our bellies were full we decided it would be best to take all our gear and stores with us, even though we planned to return in several hours. Along with them we loaded a long slim piece of fat lighter to use as a torch to give us lig
ht to find the broken rope. Fat lighter was good for this because it consisted of the heart of a long-dead pine tree that contained a greater concentration of turpentine than the outer wood, which caused it to burn long and bright.

  After we pushed off and began paddling downstream I told Poudlum I thought we ought to stay close to the riverbank until we got down to the mouth of the Satilfa.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. “That way we can see the gap in the trees where the creek comes in, then we can make a dash ’cross the river to it.”

  We reached the intersection of the river and the road, where we ceased paddling and listened for a few moments. Hearing nothing, we paddled briskly on downriver.

  “Hope we don’t hit nothing, paddling around out here in the dark,” Poudlum said softly.

  “Wouldn’t be nothing but a log, probably, and this boat is pretty sturdy.”

  “Don’t boats supposed to have a name?”

  “I think they do. You want to let’s give our boat one?”

  “Yeah,” Poudlum replied. “I think we ought to call it the Night Hawk.”

  “That sounds good to me, but I don’t think we ought to paint it on the side anytime soon.”

  “Guess you right about that. But speaking of names, how you think this big old river got to be named the Tombigbee?”

  “It’s a Choctaw Indian word, or rather two of them.”

  “How you know?”

  “My brother Fred told me.”

  “He tell you what them words mean?”

  My brother had indeed told me what the name of the river translated into. Because of the nature of it, I didn’t want to tell Poudlum while we were out on the river in the dark of night.

  He sensed my hesitation and said, “Well, did he?”

  I supposed I had to tell him because Poudlum and I would never dream of withholding any kind of information from each other. So I told him, “Yeah he told me. What it means in English is ‘Coffin Maker’.”

  Poudlum was silent for a few moments before he said, “Does you mean like a wooden box to bury dead folks in?”

  “Yep.”

  “I sho’ do wish you hadn’t told me that. Wonder why anybody want to name a river something that spooky?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anymore about it than what I just told you.”

  “Now if we bump into a log I be thinking it’s a coffin floating down the river with a dead Indian inside it.”

  Poudlum’s dread was put to rest when we saw the dark outline of the gap in the forest directly across the river from us, signaling we had arrived at the spot where we needed to cross to the other side.

  We paddled across the river without seeing or hearing anything, entered the mouth of the Satilfa, and were soon well up the creek.

  “It’s darker in here than it was out on the river,” Poudlum said. “How we ever gonna find that little old piece of rope?”

  “We’ll recognize the clearing where they had their boats beached and then we’ll just backtrack from there.”

  We had no trouble recognizing that clearing because by the time we got there the moon had come up. While Poudlum lit the end of our makeshift torch, I guided us to the spot where we had tied our boat to the small tree with the rotten rope.

  “Bring the torch on up here close, Poudlum, so I can see better.”

  I had my hand around the tree and it even felt familiar to me, but when Poudlum arrived with the torch, to my shock and dismay, the rope was gone!

  “It’s gone, Poudlum, somebody done beat us to it!”

  “You sho’ we got the right tree? It was mighty dark as I remember it.”

  “I’m certain. This is where we tied up and where we got in the water later.”

  In spite of my certainty, we searched up and down the bank until our torch grew short. Poudlum dropped the spent torch into the water and as it sizzled he said, “Guess ain’t nothing to do but paddle on back to our camp.”

  “I reckon so,” I told him and pretty soon we were gliding out of the mouth of the creek. Poudlum was talking to the fish as we left: “We’ll be back, fishes. Y’all just stay put, ’specially you big’uns.”

  It was a long paddle back, going against the current, and as we neared our campsite we observed a strange thing from across the water. There was a big blazing fire which lit up the site and there were two men moving about where we had been camped. As we got closer I could see that one of the two was Herman’s daddy, but the other one had his back turned towards us.

  We ceased our paddling and remained undetected in the shadow of the bank.

  “You think we ought to paddle on in some and see who the other one is?” I whispered. “Maybe see what they want?”

  “’Bout like I think we ought to get drowned in this river!”

  “What we gonna do then?”

  “Paddle outta here real quiet like and go back down to the creek and make camp. It looks to me like they waiting for us to come back ashore at this camp.”

  I agreed with Poudlum and as we were gently turning the boat around I cast one last look back over my shoulder, and saw something that struck fear into my heart. The flames from the fire were causing little glimmers of light to reflect off the silver-toed cowboy boots of the one who was with Herman’s daddy. It was the Night Hawk!

  I was scared but I meant to see who he was. “Hold it, Poudlum! I want to get a little closer look before we go.”

  “Is you crazy?!”

  “I believe that other one is the Night Hawk.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Remember those silver-toed cowboy boots under his white robe up on the Satilfa last night?”

  “Uh-huh. You certain that man’s got on them boots?’

  “Real certain. Paddle in real slow motion and we’ll stay in the dark shadow of the bank until we can get close enough to see who he is. Try and be real quiet.”

  “I don’t aim to even breathe,” Poudlum whispered.

  We inched closer and closer and finally we could hear their voices. Herman’s daddy was saying, “You think they done skedaddled out of here? They didn’t leave none of their stuff here.”

  “They might come back,” the Night Hawk said. “We know they hadn’t come back to Coffeeville, so they got to be out here on this river somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Herman’s daddy said, “I hear they both do love to fish, so they could be out night fishing.”

  “We’ll give ’em another half hour or so, then if they ain’t back we’ll cruise up and down this river all night if need be. They paddling and we got a motor on our boat, and we got spotlights. We’ll find ’em.”

  No sooner had these words escaped the Night Hawk’s lips than I felt Poudlum’s hand on my shoulder. He leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Be right back.”

  Then to my astonishment he crawled over the side of the boat and disappeared into the dark water of the river!

  I was beside myself for a few moments until I saw the dim outline of their boat rock a little in the water. I immediately glanced back at the two men to see if they had noticed. They hadn’t, and continued talking when the Night Hawk said, “Who you reckon sent ’em out here?’

  “They could have just been fishing and stumbled up on us,” Herman’s daddy suggested.

  “Naw, I don’t believe that’s the case. Somebody sent ’em out here to spy on us, and I aim to find out who and why.”

  That’s when I felt the boat rock and looked over and saw Poudlum’s big eyes peeking over the side of the boat. I eased over to that side and gave him a hand climbing back into our boat.

  Everything went well until he swung his second leg over the side and struck the glass jar full of catalpa worms, which made a clinking sound when it turned over and a rattling sound as it rolled across the bottom of the boat. The sound went flying
across the water.

  I snatched it up and stilled the racket, but it was too late. The two men jerked around, looking in our direction, and that’s when Poudlum and I saw the Night Hawk’s face in the bright light of the fire. Once again we both gasped in recognition.

  “That’s them!” Herman’s daddy shouted. “They out there in the shadows. I’ll get a spotlight out of the boat.”

  “Paddle hard, Poudlum,” I whispered harshly. “It don’t matter about the noise now!”

  “No, just be real quiet and paddle easy,” he whispered.

  “But they gonna throw a light on us!”

  “Uh-uh, they ain’t gonna do that.”

  “Well how come not?”

  “’Cause that spotlight be floating down the river.”

  “Well then they’ll run us down with that motorboat!”

  “Uh-uh, they ain’t gonna do that neither, ’cause the gas line on the motor been cut clean in two.”

  When I realized what Poudlum had done, I reached over and gave him a pat on his wet shoulder, then we began paddling back down the river toward the mouth of the Satilfa. We heard their motor sputter once and then die.

  We began making our paddle strokes long and deep when we got down the river a little ways. We figured they had paddles on their boat and even though their motor was disabled they could still chase us.

  “Think they can fix that gas line, Poudlum?” I asked between paddle strokes.

  “Naw. I didn’t just cut it. I cut a chunk out of it and threw it in the river.”

  I breathed easier as we bent our backs and steered our vessel downstream. By the time we arrived at our original campsite inside the mouth of the creek we were worn down to a frazzle, what with all the paddling we had done.

  “We could of done paddled all the way down to Mobile if we had been paddling in one direction,” Poudlum said as we dragged our boat onto the shore.

  After we got our blankets out of the boat we dined on little sausages from a can and soda crackers, because we were both ravenous. Afterwards we covered the boat up with the brush tops we had used before.