We stayed in the shadow of the riverbank but got close enough to see what was going on. Sure enough it was the bunch of new Klan members whose paddles we had relieved them of. They were loading their boats onto the backs of their pickup trucks.
“So they did paddle by us while we was snoozing,” Poudlum confirmed in a whisper. “Wonder where they got some new paddles.”
“I ’spect some who come to the meeting from up the creek loaned ’em some.”
Their voices had a tone of anger and frustration and we could hear an occasional cuss word.
Poudlum moved up next to me in the front of our boat and said, “Don’t sound like they in too good a mood. I bet they expected to get home way before these wee hours.”
I silently shared Poudlum’s mirth as we watched their final preparations for departure from the river.
We waited until the last tail light had disappeared and the last sound had faded from up on the road before we paddled on up and beached our boat.
We flopped down on the cool grass and relaxed for the first time since we had heard the thumps of their paddles down at the mouth of the creek.
I was real sleepy and I knew Poudlum must be too, but I also knew we had some deciphering to do, so I sat up and said, “I don’t think we ought to make camp here for the night, Poudlum.”
“Ain’t much of the night left,” he said as he rubbed his eyes in the bright moonlight. “What? You think some of ’em might come sniffing around here in the morning?”
“That’s exactly what I think, and we can’t say we camped here all night because they came and went from right here.”
“You think we ought to paddle ’cross the river and leave the boat next to the ferry? Won’t nobody see us this time of night, and we could be at my house by daylight.”
“No, that won’t work. Too many people know we come down here. And besides, we done had our fishing trip ruined last year by them bank robbers, way up the creek. I don’t think we ought to let the Klan ruin our fishing trip down here on the river.”
That got Poudlum all riled up. “They done caused us to abandon a good camp and have a hunk of cheese for our supper instead of fried catfish. Caused us to have to swim down a dark creek and be up all night when we ought to be sleeping with a belly full of fresh fish.”
He wound down, sighed deeply and said, “But I don’t know what we can do about it except skedaddle out of here.”
“We could go up the river,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Yeah, we could go up the river a ways, find us a campsite, build us a fire and fish all we want to, then if anybody comes around we’ll just say we been there since we got to the river.”
“Like we ain’t never been down the river?”
“Nobody never seen us.”
“I do believe that will work,” Poudlum said as he stood up. “Glad we didn’t unload the boat. Let’s get on up the river and find us a good spot before it gets daylight.”
We paddled about a half mile up the river and found us a spot on the Choctaw County side where a big cypress tree had been blown down into the edge of the river.
“Probably be some good fishing round that tree,” Poudlum said. “And look, ain’t that a pretty good clearing right past the roots of the tree?”
I figured it was only about two hours left before daylight by the time we got a fire going and our camp secured.
I was wrapping myself up in my blanket next to the fire, so tired I ached, when the last thing I remember was hearing Poudlum say he was going to put out a line before he went to sleep.
I could tell it had been daylight for a while when I started waking up. The sun was already way out over the river, shooting little darts of sparkling light up from its surface.
After sight, the next one of my senses to come alive was smell. There was a delicious aroma in the air as I sat up. The source of it came from over towards our campfire where I spotted Poudlum frying fish in a skillet.
“Wake up, you old sleepy head,” Poudlum said as he grinned and waved the skillet under my nose.
“Where did you get them fish, Poudlum?”
“I got ’em out of the river. You hungry?”
“So hungry I could eat a dead mule. How long you been up?”
“’Most an hour. Had two fish on the lines I set out last night. Come on and let’s have us some breakfast.”
While we munched on the delectable fish, Poudlum gave his account of our new campsite. “You know, this ain’t a bad place to camp, and I reckon we ain’t got much choice since the Klan done chased us out of our last one. I figure we can walk way out on the trunk of this big old tree, what done fell in the water, and tie us a trotline way out on it, and then run it across the water and tie it to that black gum tree up yonder,” he pointed. “And we can troll up and down the bank in our boat, and I bet we catch us some fish.”
“Them catalpa worms still alive?”
“Uh-huh. I stuffed some more leaves in the jars for them to munch on.”
“What kind of leaves?”
“Just leaves off some bushes.”
“You think they’ll eat them instead of catalpa leaves?”
“Shore they will. They just fat worms and I don’t think they can tell one leaf from another.”
It occurred to me that Poudlum and I were making small talk, both of us reluctant to talk about what had happened to us last night.
We were licking our fingers when Poudlum said, “You remember everything about last night?”
It all flashed through my mind as I relived every vivid moment of it. “Yeah, I remember everything. Do you?”
“I ’member every bit of it. We thought we would get to see who a lot of ’em was, but we only got to see who the —what did they call him?”
“The Exalted Cyclops.”
“Yeah, that’s it! We gonna tell?”
“I don’t know. If we need to we will. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
“We know who one of the others was standing beside the Exalted Cyclops.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Herman’s daddy. Remember he told us his daddy belong to the Klan.”
We put our camp in order, then we set and baited us a trotline like Poudlum had suggested. After that we fished from our boat up and down the riverbank until late in the day. We didn’t have the same luck we had had down at the mouth of the Satilfa, but by the time the sun got low we had our bucket almost full of catfish.
Our catch was way more than we could eat, so we decided to paddle down and across the river and give them to Mr. Henry at the ferry.
He was piddling around tying up the ferry for the evening when we arrived.
“Looks like you young fellers had some luck,” he said when we presented him with a big mess of fish. Dis gonna be more than enough to feed me and de missus and a few more. Mighty generous of you boys to think of me, and I appreciate it. Where y’all catch all dese fish?”
After we told him where our camp was, he asked, “So y’all ain’t been down de river?”
Poudlum found a way to answer him without telling a lie. “We might fish some down that way before we get a bait of fishing, but right now we camped a little ways up on the other side of the river.”
“Well, I’m proud to hear dat,” Mr. Henry said. “De reason I ask is ’cause word in de Quarter early dis morning wuz dat some kind of a ruckus took place down de river and up de Satilfa last night.”
He had my interest now. “What kind of a ruckus, Mr. Henry?”
“Some folks heard a gunshot going off and others say dey wuz a lot of coming and going on de creek.”
I knew I shouldn’t push my luck, but we needed to know, so I asked Mr. Henry, “You hear any more about it today?”
“Not about what de ruckus was about, but folks been mighty curious about who been crossing de river.”
“What you mean?” I asked.
“Two mens I didn’t know come down here ’bout midmorning and wanted to know everything about everybody I took ’cross de river yesterday.”
My heart skipped a beat when I heard him say that. “Did you tell ’em about us?”
“Naw. Dey asked me who crossed de river, not who paddled out on it.”
I breathed a sigh of relief until I heard him say, “But I did have some mo visitors about noon, and dey was looking fo’ you two boys.”
When I heard what he said I desperately wanted to ask who it was, but I was struck dumb with fear.
Finally Poudlum stuttered it out for me. “Who-who-who they was, Mr. Henry?”
“It wuz dat boy ’bout y’all’s age what lives up between Coffeeville and Center Point. Herman, Herman Finney, yeah, dat’s his name. He said he wanted to fish wid y’all some, but he had his daddy wid him and he de one who ask most of de questions.”
“What kind of questions?” I asked with dread.
“Just when y’all got here, what you had wid you, where you got de boat from, and had I seen y’all since. Sounded like he had some kind of special interest in you boys, so I thought you ought to know.”
“We appreciate you letting us know, Mr. Henry. Has my Uncle Curvin come back from across the river yet?”
“Naw. He say it may be a couple of days fo’ he gets back. It’ll be tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Would you please tell him we need to see him when he gets back?” I asked.
“Shore I will. I got a pretty good air horn on my ferry. How about I give it three long toots on my way ’cross de river to fetch him? You can hear it a good mile or more up and down de river. Dat way y’all could paddle on in and catch up wid him.”
“That sounds like a good plan and we appreciate it, Mr. Henry,” I told him as Poudlum and I prepared to launch our boat.
“Uh, one other thing,” Mr. Henry said as we were pushing off. “If you boys need a place to come to, Poudlum knows where I stays down in de Quarter.”
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!”