13. I Meet Winnie’s Evil Twin Brother, the Wool Pooh

“If y’all are going to the water you stay away from Collier’s Landing. A couple of years ago Miss Thomas’s little boy Jimmy got caught up in some kinda whirlpool there and they didn’t find the poor soul’s body for three days.”

I’d only halfway listened to what Grandma Sands had said, and now me and Joey and Byron were standing at a sign with arrows that pointed in two directions. The one pointing to the left said “Public Swimming” and the other one, pointing to the right, looked like it had been on the post for a million years but if you got close to it you could read, “WARNING! NO TRESPASING! NO SWIMING! NO PUBLIC ENTREE! Signed Joe Collier.”

“Oh, man! Collier’s Landing,” I said. “Let’s go!” I knew Joey wouldn’t like this, but I figured me and By could talk her into coming and not snitching.

Joey said, “Uh-uh, Kenny, you heard Grandma Sands tell about that little boy getting lost in the water. What was that thing called that she said got him?”

Daddy Cool said, “Didn’t you hear what she said, Joey? She said he got caught by the Wool Pooh.”

“Is that a fish?” Joey asked.

“Uh-uh. You know who Winnie-the-Pooh is, don’t you?”

Me and Joey both nodded.

“Well, the Wool Pooh is Winnie’s evil twin brother. Don’t no one ever write about him ’cause they don’t want to scare y’all kids. What he does is hide underwater and snatch stupid kids down with him.”

By figured that dumb story was enough to scare me off and he started walking in the direction of the public swimming. “If Kenny wants to take his stupid little behind down there and get snatched, let him.” By grabbed Joey’s hand and started pulling her along with him, but she skidded her feet in the dirt.

“But Byron, what if the Wool Pooh comes down to where we’re going? Can’t he swim down there and get people too?”

“Naw, Joey, the Wool Pooh don’t come on public beaches, he just grabs folks that are too stingy to let peons come on their land, like this Collier guy.”

Who could understand Byron? Here was a chance for another Fantastic Adventure and he was going in the wrong direction. Something was wrong with him. If he was in Flint and you told him not to do something he’d go right out and do it, but now he was acting real dull and square. Maybe it was the heat, maybe just like it had sucked all the energy out of me it had sucked all the meanness and fun out of Byron.

“What you gonna do, punk?” Byron shouted over his shoulder. Joey yelled, “Come on, Kenny! You know what Grandma Sands said.”

I couldn’t believe it. I really wanted to go see where some kid drowned and now By was choosing this time to listen to what a grown-up told him.

“Awww, man, I’m going to Collier’s Landing.”

Byron shrugged. “Have fun.”

I shouted, “What’s wrong with you? When are you going to start acting like you normally do? What would Buphead say if he saw you acting like this?”

Byron flipped me double middle fingers and another finger sign I’d never seen before and said, “Just keep your stupid little butt out of the water.”

“Forget you, I’m going!” They kept walking.

“I’m not playing!”

Joey waved.

“I’m going to Collier’s Landing!”

They were gone.

I looked in the direction that the warning sign was pointing and started to get a little nervous. I turned and started to follow Joey and Byron, but finally decided I really was going to go to Collier’s Landing. Maybe Byron was getting sick of having more Fantastic Adventures, but I figured I was getting old enough to have some myself.

“You’re a couple of jive squares!” I shouted, then walked off the way the warning sign pointed.

Byron must have thought I was stupid. Whoever heard of something called a Wool Pooh? I wasn’t sure what the lie was, but I knew Byron had made that junk up. Besides, if Winnie-the-Pooh had an evil twin brother it seemed like I would have read about it somewhere. Some of the time it was kind of hard to understand what Grandma Sands was saying, but I couldn’t remember her saying anything about any Wool Pooh. If there really was something that snatched kids into the water Momma and Dad wouldn’t have let us come down here, would they?

I knew all that stuff but I was still kind of nervous when I followed the little trail that went through a bunch of bushes and led to the water. I forgot all about Byron’s lies as soon as I saw the water. Collier’s Landing was great! The water was dark, dark blue, and best of all, it was about a hundred degrees cooler.

Joe Collier had put up another sign on a giant tree: “WARNING! DANGER! NO SWIMING! SIX LIFES BEEN LOST HERE! BAD DROP OFF! Signed Joe Collier.”

Six? Grandma Sands had said one little boy drowned here, not six! I felt dumb but I looked real hard at the water to see if the Wool Pooh was hiding there. I even looked up and down the shore to see if there were any strange footprints on the ground. I was kind of worried because this sign looked a lot fresher than the first one.

I kept waiting for By to jump out of the bushes and say something like, “Aha, you little dope, I got you! I made you look for a Wool Pooh!” but everything was real calm and quiet, the water didn’t even look like it was moving, but like it was breathing, going up and down, up and down, and it made a sound like the wind blowing through big trees in Flint.

I walked right to the edge of the water and still didn’t see anything strange so I figured if there really was anything dangerous Byron would have followed me here and stopped me from getting hurt, wouldn’t he?

Then a bell went off in my head. I knew Joe Collier put that sign up because he didn’t want to share his lake with anyone! The Wool Pooh was some made-up garbage!

 

There’s one good thing about getting in trouble: It seems like you do it in steps. It seems like you don’t just end up in trouble but that you kind of ease yourself into it. It also seems like the worse the trouble is that you get into, the more steps it takes to get there. Sort of like you’re getting a bunch of little warnings on the way; sort of like if you really wanted to you could turn around.

The first warning I should have listened to was when Daddy Cool and Joey followed the arrow to the left and I went to the right. The second warning came when I decided to wade in the water and the knots wouldn’t come out of my tennis shoe laces and I had to pull and tug the shoes off with the laces still tied. After that it’s kind of hard to count how many warnings I got, because with the trouble I ended up in I must’ve had a zillion of them.

Step by step I kept easing into trouble until I finally was standing in the lake with the water up to my knees. I’d gone out into the water because there were a bunch of little, stupid-looking, slow-moving fish right near the shore and I thought I might be able to catch some of them and make them pets. I wasn’t afraid because I figured if there was a real Wool Pooh and he was in the area these little fish wouldn’t be hanging around.

Alabama fish were a lot friendlier, and a lot trickier, than Michigan ones. I bent over and stuck my hand in the water and tried to grab a couple but they kept slipping away like they were covered with soap. They were right there and I couldn’t grab them. They didn’t even act like they were afraid of me, they just kept swimming around my legs, even bumping their faces into me, like they were trying to kiss me. It seemed like they wanted me to catch them and take them back to Flint.

After missing about a hundred times I stood up and saw the reason the fish wouldn’t go out in deeper water. There was a big green turtle, about the size of a football, cruising back and forth in the deep water, and he looked just as slow and stupid as the fish did.

Wow! Who’d want to have a fish for a pet when you I could have a turtle?

I took a few more steps out and the cool, blue water came all the way up to my arms. Getting cool all of a sudden like this made me bug my eyes and suck in my breath. I made a quick grab at the stupid turtle and, zoom, he flapped his arms once and disappeared into deeper water.

That quick grab was my last step. Boom, all of a sudden I was in big, big trouble!

The rocky ground under my feet started sliding away from the shore. I didn’t get nervous because I knew I could flap my arms like the turtle and get back to the dirt. I looked up and saw the shore was still real close. I flapped my arms and nothing happened, I stayed in the same spot. Then the rocks under my feet were gone and I was kicking in water. With the tips of my toes I could still brush some of the rocks but they were all slipping and sliding away from shore.

I pushed away to try to swim back and my head bobbed under the water. All the sound and light from Alabama disappeared because my eyes automatically shut and it seemed like my ears were stuffed with cotton. I got a mouthful of water but my head came right back up. I laughed because I was spitting and patoohing a mile a minute when my head popped out of the water. But the laughing stopped real quick when I tried swimming again and my head went back under.

That’s when I got really scared. I’d seen enough cartoons to know that when your head goes down three times it doesn’t ever come up again! I knew if I went down one more time I was as dead as a donut!

My eyes looked at the shore, where my shoes were sitting safe on some rocks. “Awww, man,” I said to myself, “I wish I had a magic lamp so I could have the genie make me be where those shoes are and they could be where I am!”

That was the last thing I thought about before I found out that Grandma Sands and Byron and Joe Collier weren’t lying at all. That was the last thing I thought about before I found out that the Wool Pooh was real and big and mean and horrible and that he didn’t care at all about dragging kids out into the water!

I’d never, ever been this scared in my life! I hollered out, “Momma!” My arms were punching the water like it was a person and my legs were going a mile a minute to try to get back to the shore. But now even my toes couldn’t find anything to touch.

“O.K., Kenny,” I said to myself, “you know you’re going to be all right. Just get real calm and swim back to the land. When you count to three just go back to your shoes.” I stopped kicking for a second and said, “One, two, three . . .” Then I gave my arms one more flap to go back to shore and down I went again! My head went under for the third time and I knew I’d never come back up again. Going down three times like this is just like waking up and finding yourself tied to a tree with someone saying, “Ready, aim, fire!”

That’s when he came swimming real slow out of the deep, and even though my head was underneath the dark water I could see him coming right at me. He didn’t look like he was related to Winnie-the-Pooh at all, he was big and gray with hard square-looking fingers. Where he should have had a face there was nothing but dark gray. Where he should have had eyes there was nothing but a darker colder-looking color. He grabbed my leg and started pulling me down.

I kicked and scratched at him but he was just too strong, it seemed like he didn’t even feel my punches! My head felt like it was going to explode; I didn’t think I could hold my breath for another second. I was feeling real, real scared and dizzy from holding my breath this long. Then suddenly I could see that there was someone else in the water and the Wool Pooh was pulling me right toward them.

It was a little girl and she had on a real pretty blue dress and big, yellow wings and something tied around her head. When the Wool Pooh pulled me closer I could see that it was a little angel, and wait a minute, it was Joetta, looking just like the angel Mrs. Davidson had given her! Joey had wings and a halo! Her face was real calm too, but she was pointing straight up like there was something important I should look at.

This angel that looked like Joey was telling me I had to swim up one more time.

This really scared me. I knew it wasn’t a good sign when you started seeing angels so I kicked and flapped my arms and started going toward the sky! My head came up and I spit out a bellyful of water and took a couple of good, deep breaths.

“Momma! Momma! Help me . . .”

But the Wool Pooh wasn’t through with me. I felt his hard, hard hand go around my ankle and I went down for the fourth time!

I got pulled a little further and saw someone else in the water with me, kicking up a ton of dirt and scratching at the water like they were crazy. Byron!

Man! The Wool Pooh is going to let me see all my family one more time before I go!

Byron tried grabbing at me but the Wool Pooh was pulling me away too fast. I saw By’s legs swim back up toward the sky.

Pull-whisshh-stop, pull-whisshh-stop. Up ahead someone else was in the water. It has to be Momma and Dad! Good-bye, Momma! Good-bye, Dad! No, it’s By again, still looking all crazy, still scratching the water.

Byron and the Wool Pooh started duking it out. By must have hit it a hundred times in that place where its face should’ve been. Finally the Wool Pooh couldn’t take any more and I felt those hard cold fingers come off my ankle. The Wool Pooh swam back into the deep water. The last thing I noticed about him was that he had big square toes.

Byron grabbed me and put his arm around my neck and it felt like he was trying to choke me.

As soon as he got me on the shore and turned me upside down I felt like I was going to die! I started throwing up a ton of water and food. If there was a forest fire somewhere all they would have to do is hold me over it and I would have put it out! I threw up and coughed and choked and vomited about a million times, and all this just because I’d breathed in some air!

By held my ankles and kept banging me up and down and screaming at me. When the sound from the water in my ears and the sound of me vomiting my guts out and the whisshh sound from the Wool Pooh finally left me I could hear Byron shouting, “. . . Awww, man, awww, man, awww, man . . .” over and over.

Finally I yelled, “Stop! Put me down!”

Byron dropped me on the ground right on top of all the water and junk that I’d thrown up. I knew he was going to make a stupid joke about me landing face-first in all that mess but he didn’t, he just wrapped his arms around my shoulders real tight and put his mouth right on top of my head! Byron was shaking like he was getting electrocuted and crying like a baby and kissing the top of my head over and over!

This was real disgusting. He just kept saying, “Kenny, Kenny, Kenny . . . ,” a bunch of times with his mouth wide open on top of my head. I could feel his teeth grinding into my skull but By didn’t care.

I said, “Awww, man . . .” and tried to make him quit but all I could do was sit there too tired to do anything but let Daddy Cool nibble on the top of my head while he cried like a kindergarten baby.