I couldn’t imagine Jake being in prison. Maybe it wasn’t him they were looking for. I was just about to find out. I came out of the woods as soon as there was no one left at the sawmill except him. I saw him sitting on his bench taking his shoes off and I called out, “Jake, Jake, I need to talk to you.”
“Sho, we can talk long as you wants to. Just let me get des old brogans off, ’cause my old dawgs needs to breathe a little.”
“We might not have as much time as you think.”
“Huh? What in de world has got you so flustered?”
I saw the fear flicker across his eyes when I asked, “Is your last name Johnson?”
“It is, but how you knows dat? I ain’t told nobody round here my whole name.”
“You got to get out of here, Jake! You got to get out of here tonight!”
By the time I finished telling him of the day’s events he had his shoes back on and a forlorn look on his face. “I done run so long and so far, but now I gots to start running again. Thought I had got ’em off my trail and I could rest a while, but naw, dey don’t never quit. Guess I’ll just get my stuff and start walking, maybe walk all night. I just be so scared dat somebody gon’ see me crossing some field or some road and—”
“No, Jake, I didn’t mean get out of the county. What I meant was that you need to get away from this sawmill, ’cause this is the first place that sheriff will come looking. Then when he don’t find you here, he’ll go looking in other places.”
“What you gots in mind?”
“My Uncle Curvin’s cotton house. You can hide out there until we figure things out.”
Jake got a deep thoughtful look on his face and asked, “So you is saying dat instead of running I should just go across de road and hide in a cotton house?”
“Yeah. Go after it gets dark tonight.”
“What about yo’ Uncle Curvin?”
“He’s the one who put the idea in my head. He even said he’s going to leave some cotton and a few empty sacks in it.”
“Cotton house ain’t a bad place to sleep. I done it before. Dey won’t ’spect me to be right here, ’cause dey gon’ think I be running. Dey be driving all over the county looking fo’ me.”
“That’s right, and you won’t have to worry about food, ’cause I’ll bring you some. Then when things quiet down, I think I know a way to get you out of the county without you ever having to cross a road or a field.”
“You gon’ be dangerous when you gets grown, smart as you is now. I be putting my trust in you, and I be moving across de road tonight.”
“Good, take whatever food you have with you and I’ll come by sometime tomorrow or the next day and bring you some more. The cotton house is in the back of the field so I can come to it through the woods without being seen. There’s a branch behind it, just a little ways into the woods, so you’ll have water. I got to go now, but I’ll see you at the cotton house.”
I had only taken a few steps when I heard Jake say, “Mister Ted, wait.”
I turned and asked, “What?”
“I just hopes you don’t think too bad of me now dat you knows where I come from. I didn’t do nothing real bad, I swears I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t. I just know it. You still my friend, Jake. Will you tell me all about it?”
“Sho will. I see you across de road.”
Tuesday night at supper I listened while my father was telling everyone what I already knew. “That nigger, Jake, been working at the sawmill turns out to be an escaped convict from over in Georgia.”
My mother was walking around the table spooning second helpings of chicken-and-dumplings onto everybody’s plates when she asked, “How’d you find that out?”
“That sorry Sheriff Crowe came by looking for him this morning. Said he had busted out of prison in Jackson, Georgia, ’bout three months ago.”
“Did he catch him?” she asked.
“He couldn’t catch a rabbit with a pack of hounds. Jake wasn’t nowhere to be seen this morning.”
“You think he’ll get away?” Momma asked while she refilled my plate.
“I hope so, ’cause we all liked Jake, but the sheriff said they’d be watching all the roads. This shore is mighty good chicken-and-dumplings.”
Momma completed her trip around the table and sat back in her seat and helped her own plate. “Thank you. That old hen had quit laying, so there wasn’t nothing else to do with her.”
The chicken-and-dumplings was real good. I set about planning on getting some of it out of the house. After we finished supper everyone went in different directions. My mother went to nurture her garden, my father to work on his boat, while Fred went with Ned to check his bird traps. As soon as everybody was out of the house I took an empty quart fruit jar, filled it up, and left for Jake’s hiding place.
A half-hour later, I called softly from the edge of the woods behind the cotton house, “Jake, you in there?”
I saw one of the big wide boards being pushed outward from the bottom, then Jake slid out through the opening and joined me in the woods. “I thought my nose was playing tricks on me, Mister Ted, but I see it didn’t. Praise de Lawd, dat is chicken-and-dumplings you got.”
He smacked his lips and sighed with satisfaction when he finished. “I’ll go down to the branch and wash dis jar out, ’cause I know it belongs to yo’ momma.”
“No, you just keep it. She’s got so many she can’t keep up with ’em.”
“Good, ’cause it will come in handy. I can use it to fetch some drinking water from the branch.”
“How much food you got?”
“I gots enough canned stuff, potted meat, Vienna sausage, sardines, beans, and crackers to last me a week if need be. I gots a little money, too.”
“That’s good, ’cause it may be two weeks before we can get you outta here with everything you need. I’ll bring you food when I can, and we’ll buy some more if we have to.”
“What you talking about? I don’t want to stay cooped up in dis cotton house fo’ two weeks.”
“Well, maybe sooner, but I’ve got a plan and I got to have some help to make it work.”
“Tell me what you gots in mind.”
“I know who the bootlegger is, where he has his whiskey made, where he keeps it, where he hides his money, and I need you to help me figure out a way to see that he gets caught.”
Jake’s eyes grew wide. “Say what!”
I repeated myself. When it had sunk in asked, “Who is de bootlegger?”
“It’s Old Man Cliff Creel!”
Jake’s eyes widened again. “Dat don’t surprise me none, but I don’t know how I can help you see he gets caught. It ain’t like I can go talk to the sheriff about it.”
“Wouldn’t do no good to talk to that sheriff anyway.”
“Why not?”
I told him what Uncle Curvin had said about his relationship with the bootleggers. “We got to find someone else to get him.”
All of a sudden Jake’s eyes lit up. “Probably take a few days, but I just might knows a way. You wait right here.” I watched him while he sneaked back into the cotton house, then in a few moments he was back in the woods with a pencil, a piece of paper, and an envelope. He settled down on the ground, grasped the pencil in his hand and started writing on the envelope.
“What you doing?”
“I be putting de address on dis envelope.”
“Who you sending it to?”
“To de Alabama Beverage Control department up in Montgomery, de capital city.”
“Who’re they?”
“Dey is de folks what works fo’ de state whose job it is to catch bootleggers, and dey be serious about it. Chances are, dey won’t be no folks working fo’ dem who be crooked like dat sheriff looking fo’ me.”
He finished the envelope, spread the sheet of paper out in his lap, and began speaking the words as he wrote them. “Gentlemen, dis be to inform you ’bout a bootlegger down here in Clarke County by de name of— How you spell dat old man’s name?”
“I don’t know. Just like it sounds, I guess.”
Before he began laboring over the piece of paper again he asked, “Where you want me to tell dem dat still is?”
“No, I don’t want them to know that.”
“How come?”
“’Cause that’s where he leaves the money. He picks up the whiskey from the still, then hauls it over to his house and locks it up in the smokehouse.”
“How you knows all dis?”
“’Cause when we first went to the still, we watched him carry the whiskey away, then—”
“Wait a minute. Did you say, we?”
“Yeah, me and Poudlum.”
“Lawd, have mercy. Go on.”
“Then this past Sunday, about the time I figured he’d be getting home, I climbed a tree so I could see all around his house. Sure enough, about midafternoon he brought all the whiskey home and put it in his smokehouse.”
Jake began chuckling and said, “Dis be almost too good to be true.” Then he began writing and speaking again. “Mister Creel, who lives on Center Point Road between Coffeeville and Miss Lena’s sto—”
He stopped and asked, “What day is dis?”
“Today is Tuesday.”
Jake looked off into space and began speaking as if to himself. “If we mail dis letter tomorrow, which will be Wednesday, den it ought to be delivered by Friday. If so, de state revenuers might just get here by Sunday. Den dat might be a good time for me to ease on out of here.”
“What’s a revenuer?”
“Uh, dey be de whiskey police. Now, let me finish dis letter.” He leaned over with his pencil and continued: “Will have a large amount of moonshine whiskey locked up in his smokehouse sometime after three o’clock dis coming Sunday afternoon.”
At this point, he stopped, looked out toward nowhere again and asked himself, “Now, how is I gonna finish it?” After a moment he said, “Okay, here’s what I gonna say: We, de concerned citizens, certainly hopes you all will do yo’ duty and enforce de law.”
He looked up at me and asked, “How’s dat?”
“That’s real good. You think it’ll work?”
“Worth a try.”
“Where’d you learn to write a letter like that?”
“I learned my letters and my numbers in school. Finished de fifth grade, but learned most of my writing and reading in de—” He paused, then continued, “Since you already knows anyway, in de pen.”
“You said you was gonna tell—”
“I know, I said I gon’ tell you all about it, and I intends to, but first, let’s finish dis letter writing business.” He folded the piece of paper, then he stuffed it into the envelope, licked it, and pressed it closed.
“You want me to mail it?”
“Naw, somebody might see you put it in de mail box, den go post a piece of mail demselves, see our envelope and know you be sending it. Be getting dark fo’ long and you gots to be getting home. Best if I sneak over dere real late tonight and put it in de box, ’cept I ain’t got no stamp.”
The mail boxes at the corner across from Miss Lena’s store were shared by everyone in the vicinity, and I knew you didn’t need a stamp. You could just leave your money stacked on your envelope and the mail rider would take it and affix a stamp. I fished around in my watch pocket, dug out three pennies, handed them to Jake and said, “You don’t need one—just put these pennies on the envelope.” I hated giving up my money, but it seemed like a small amount to invest since it was going to net me a tree full of money.
“What time does you got to be home?”
“It’s okay as long as I get there before dark.”
“Den I s’pose we gots time fo’ my pitiful story, dat is, if you still wants to hear it.”
I slid over next to a tree, leaned back against the trunk, pulled my knees up under my chin, and said, “I sure do. Tell me everything, way back from the beginning.”
Jake took a deep breath and began: “I never had me much of no real family. Lived wid my Aunt Essie Mae since before I could remember, but she was on her own and had a passel of her own young ’uns, so when I was ’bout fifteen I lit out on my own. Worked all over South Carolina, Georgia, and parts of Florida, mostly picking crops. De trouble all started ’bout eight years ago when I was picking peaches over in middle Georgia. Besides picking, my job was to haul wagon loads of peaches up to de railroad stop fo’ shipping, then, on my way back, I had to pick up groceries fo’ de folks what owned the peach farm.”
“During de trips I usually stopped fo’ a drink of water at de house of a colored family named McDonald. Had dat grand old name, but dey was pore as dirt. On dis particular day, de only thing dey had to eat was some corn meal full of weevils and a hunk of salt pork. So later on, when I was transferring all dem boxes of fine food from de porch of de general store onto de wagon, I picked up an extra box. It had a big cured ham, flour, meal, lard and some canned goods in it.”
“You took it to those poor folks, didn’t you?”
“Sho did, but then the next day, de sheriff come looking fo’ it. Said he wanted de box of groceries back dat I had picked up by mistake. Well, de folks dat I worked fo’ told him dat dey hadn’t seen no extra box, and I told him de same thing. But it seems dat somebody seed me do it, so de sheriff puts cuffs on my hands, irons on my feet, loaded me in de back of his car and hauls me off to de jail house.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him what you had done with them?”
“Couldn’t, ’cause den he would’ve locked dem up for taking stolen stuff.”
“What happened?”
“After a few weeks in dat jail, eating nothing but corn pone and fatback, dey give me a trial and sentenced me to ten years in de state pen.”
“Just for taking some food and giving it to poor people?”
“Sho did. Next thing I know I wuz working on a chain gang.”
“Did they feed you any better?”
“Yeah, instead of having fatback wid de thin yellow corn pone, we had white beans wid it.”
“That’s all?”
“Fo’ dinner and supper it wuz. Fo’ breakfast we had more corn pone wid blackstrap molasses. Dat wuz what we had six days a week, but on Sunday we had vegetables out of de garden we grew.”
“I don’t blame you for breaking out.”
“Dis wuzn’t de first time.”
“You broke out before?”
“Busted out seven times, but dis is de only time I ever got clean away, so far, dat is. All my life I figured dat if you wuzn’t in a place you wanted to be, den you oughts to leave. So I just kept leaving, but dey always caught me, up until now. Sometimes a day, sometimes a week, but me and all dey others always got caught.”
“How did you manage to get away this time?”
“It was easy. I made myself a plan fo’ after I busted out. Every time before I would plan how to get out, but I didn’t plan what to do after dat. I would just run and run until dem dogs caught up wid me, and dey always did. But dis time was different. While I wuz out working on de roads I found everything I wuz gon’ need, in de order I wuz gon’ need it.”
“What you mean?”
“I knowed where dere wuz a chopping block wid an ax to cut de chains between de irons on my legs—dat was my first stop. Knowed when dis lady’s wash day wuz and what day clothes would be hanging on de line. Knowed what time de train would be coming by and where it would be going slow enough fo’ me to jump on board. Figured out how to deal wid dem dogs too. I dried me some hot peppers from the prison garden, had ’em ground up real fine. When I changed out of dem prison clothes, I left ’em in a pile filled wid hot pepper. From my hiding place I seed ’em start ripping dem old clothes up, den dey started snorting, sneezing, and rubbing dey noses wid dey paws. Dat pepper killed dere sense of smell. A little ways farther I heard dat train whistle blow and I knew I wuz gon’ make it.”
We sat for a long time, neither of us saying a word. Finally, Jake said, “You best be getting on home fo’ dark sets in.”
I got to my feet and said, “Okay, but I’ll be by sometime tomorrow, and don’t you worry about nothing.”
I had taken a few steps when Jake called out, “Mister Ted, you think you could bring me a few of your momma’s dried hot peppers?”