School lunches were good, especially on Fridays when we had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with a bowl of hot vegetable soup and a carton of milk. It was the Friday before we got out of school for the Christmas holidays and I was enjoying my last favorite school lunch for the year.
So far Poudlum and I hadn’t been able to convince our mommas to let us go on another fishing adventure, but we still had plenty of time to win them over.
The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was sweet on my tongue and the soup was warm with a rich taste of okra, tomatoes, and other vegetables. I found myself wondering what Poudlum was having for lunch just a mile down the road .
Once when I had asked him about lunches at his school he said, “Yeah, we got ’em just like you says y’all do, but most folks ain’t got fifteen cents to pay for ’em.”
“What do y’all do for lunch then?” I asked.
“Most of us brings our lunch. My momma fixes all ours and we brings it to school in a syrup bucket. Me and my brothers and sisters all share it at lunch time.”
“What do y’all eat?”
“Mostly biscuits wid some meat in them. Sometimes we has baked sweet taters and sometimes we have a fried egg in our biscuits. On special occasions a piece of pork or fried chicken, but mostly biscuits with a piece of side meat in it.”
As I finished my lunch that Friday I began to think about the plan I had come up with. It was to get Uncle Curvin to drop Poudlum and me, and maybe Fred, off at the bridge over the Satilfa on Highway 84 where the bank robbers had abandoned their car and tricked the authorities into believing they had gone west toward the river, when actually they had turned around and gone east and ended up at the Cypress Hole and ruined mine and Poudlum’s fishing trip.
Our story would be we were going to fish our way up the creek and end up at the Iron Bridge on Center Point Road, while in reality we would be retracing Jesse and Frank’s trail looking for where they had hidden the money.
I had come home from school with all B’s and one A on my report card and my momma had said I could go, but not until Sunday afternoon after church.
The first thing I did Saturday morning was walk over to Poudlum’s house to tell him the plan and see if Mrs. Robinson would let him go with me.
The Robinsons were scurrying around doing all kind of chores when I walked into their yard. Old Buster, their dog, who wanted to bite me the first time I ever came to Poudlum’s house, trotted out to greet me, wagging his tail. While I was petting him Poudlum spotted me from the front porch.
“Momma!” he called out. “Ted’s here!”
The screen door behind him opened and the lovely, full figure of Mrs. Robinson framed the doorway.
“Hey, Mrs. Robinson,” I said as I approached the steps leading up to the porch. “How y’all doing?”
Mrs. Robinson liked me. I could tell by the big smile that broke across her face. “Well bless my soul, I does believe you is right, Poudlum. It is Mister Ted. Come on up here on de porch and set a spell wid us. How’s yo’ momma and ’em?”
“They doing fine, thank you ma’am,” I told her as I sat down on the porch swing with Poudlum.
“I came over here to see if you would let Poudlum go fishing with me on the Satilfa Creek after church tomorrow,” I told Mrs. Robinson. “I thought we would start down on Highway 84 and fish our way up the creek to Center Point Road and be home Monday afternoon.”
Poudlum couldn’t sit still. “Yes ma’am, dat’s what we wants to do. I could go straight from church tomorrow afternoon,” he said while he tugged gently on his mother’s hand.
Mrs. Robinson smiled real big, and I sighed with relief when she said, “I suppose dat will be all right, since you brought dat good report card home.”
She told me Poudlum had brought home straight A’s. “How about you, Mister Ted? You bring home some good grades?” she asked.
“I got one A and the rest Bs,” I told her.
She beamed, and said, “Y’all both mighty fine boys. De Lawd blessed us wid both of you.”
“Thank you ma’am. Would it be all right if Poudlum walked up the road a piece with me?”
“Dat will be fine. You know it’s gon be hog killing time next week if the weather turns cold. Tell yo’ momma I be looking forward to seeing her, and we both will get us a nice Christmas ham.”
“I’ll be sure and tell her, Mrs. Robinson,” I said as Poudlum and I headed down the steps.
As soon as we were out of earshot of the house Poudlum asked me, “You figured out dat riddle yet?”
“Naw. You the straight-A student. You figured it out?”
“Naw, me neither. But I ’spect when we gets out on de creek we’ll figure it out.”
I sure hoped Poudlum was right, but I wasn’t real confident as I remembered Frank’s whisper: It’s wet but it’s dry, it’s deep but it’s nearby.
The First Antioch Church of Christ was just outside of Coffeeville, not far from the colored school. Uncle Curvin and I were sitting inside his truck across the road from it Sunday afternoon. We had driven over there after our church got out. I was afraid we would be late and Poudlum would have to wait on us, but the colored folks were still worshiping when we got there.
“What time is it?” I asked Uncle Curvin.
He slipped out his big round watch, flipped the lid of it up and said, “It’s half past one o’clock.”
“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “How long do you expect they stay in there?”
“Them colored folks love to preach and sing,” he said.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when I heard the church break into song. I figured that was a good sign, that maybe the preacher had quit preaching.
The sound of the old Negro spiritual, “Going Home,” with its inspiring lyrics, came floating out towards us:
I’m a goin home
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on de way
No more longing for de day
Gwine to roam no more
Morning Star lights the way
Shadows gone at the break of day
I’m just going home
I’m just going home.
Poudlum spotted us as soon as he came out the front door of the church. He waved, then disappeared inside the cab of Mr. Robinson’s truck for a few moments. When he reemerged, he had shed his Sunday clothes and was clad in clothes suitable for traveling up the creek. I watched as he hugged his momma, took his gear from the back of their truck and started jogging toward us.
I slid over in the middle of the seat and he climbed into the truck with us. “Y’all been waiting long?” he asked.
“Not too long. What time does y’all’s church start?”
“’Bout eleven o’clock, just like all of ’em.”
“You mean y’all have to be in there for two and a half hours?”
“Yep, dat’s right. Colored folks like to preach and sing,” Poudlum replied.
“Told you,” Uncle Curvin said as he shifted gears and guided his truck onto the road.
“You heard anymore about dem bank robbers, Mister Curvin?” Poudlum asked.
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
He hadn’t told me, so I was all ears. “What did you hear?” I asked.
“Well, boys, I didn’t just hear something, I saw it.”
Now he really had my curiosity up. “Saw what?”
“I saw the bank robbers. Difference was, this time they were handcuffed instead of holding a loaded sawed-off shotgun.”
“Did you see ’em at de jail house, Mister Curvin?”
“Naw, I saw them in the courtroom Friday. They got themselves arraigned in Superior Court.”
“What in the world does that mean, Uncle Curvin?”
“Arraignment is when you have criminal charges against you and you appear before a Superior Court judge and make a plea,” he explained to us.
Still not clear, I asked, “What’s a plea?”
“That’s when you plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against you. You can plead guilty and go ahead and take your medicine, or you can plead not guilty and have a trial by jury.”
“How did Mister J—” Poudlum caught himself and said, “How did dem bank robbers plead?”
“They both pled not guilty. A jury will be called tomorrow and their trial will start on Tuesday.”
“You gonna be there?” I asked.
“I got to be there. The state has called me as a witness against them.”
A thought suddenly entered my head. “You think me and Poudlum could go up there with you on Tuesday and watch the trial?”
My uncle didn’t have an answer right off. I could see he had to think about it for a while as we rode along. Finally, he said, “I don’t see no reason why not, since y’all out of school. I don’t know of no law that would keep young boys out of a courtroom as spectators. Of course both of you will have to get the okay from your mommas before I’ll take you.”
We soon reached the bridge. It was just a bridge built of concrete and steel, with no features to make it unique like the Iron Bridge up on Center Point Road.
While we were unloading our stuff off the back of his truck Uncle Curvin began giving us a little lecture: “Y’all probably won’t have to worry about snakes with the weather turning cooler, but there could still be some in the water, so watch out. Take them new Barlow’s I got for y’all and cut you both a stout stick soon as you get on the creek. And remember, find you a good camping place before dark. Leave yourself enough daylight to pile up enough wood to get through the night. It’ll get cold before morning.”
I wasn’t familiar with this part of the creek. The furthest I had been down it from Center Point Road was at most a mile. Folks said it was a good four miles from Highway 84 up to the Iron Bridge on Center Point Road. That meant three miles of unfamiliar creek to navigate.
Just after we got all our stuff off the truck and my uncle finished his lecture, another pickup truck pulled off on the other side of the road. Three men piled out of the cab and began unloading a skiff off the back of the truck. When they got it off, they carried it down the bank on their side and launched it into the creek. Two of them got aboard while the third one pushed the bow of the boat into the water and leapt aboard himself at the last moment. We watched them begin to work their paddles and disappear around a bend of the creek going downstream towards the river.
“Looks like somebody else is going fishing,” I said.
“Dey didn’t have no fishing poles or nothing,” Poudlum added.
“Them fellers ain’t going fishing,” Uncle Curvin informed us. “They searching for the money.”
“Dey be barking up de wrong tree looking down dat way,” Poudlum muttered.
“What’s that, son?” Uncle Curvin asked.
“Uh-uh, I just said I ’spect it’s time we got on our way.”
“I think you right. Now, boys, if y’all make it up to Center Point Road by around noon tomorrow, I’ll be along that way about that time. By then you boys will have had enough of walking and want a ride.”
“I imagine you’ll probably be right about that, Uncle Curvin, and we’ll be much obliged.”
We said good-bye to my uncle and I told Poudlum, “Let’s hit the woods.”
I heard the sound of the old truck fading away in the distance as we entered the shadows surrounding the Satilfa. There close to the bridge the ground was worn smooth from people fishing from the bank and camping out. There were several dark circles of cinders, the remains of campfires.
Poudlum found us two stout hickory saplings, which we trimmed with our new knives before we left the trampled-down area and started up the creek. We hadn’t gone far when Poudlum asked, “Which side of de creek you think Jesse and Frank went up?”
I was stumped by his question and had to think on it for a spell. “They were probably in the creek to hide their scent from the dogs when they came along here, ’cause they had already been down the creek before they doubled back up this way.”
“Dat still don’t tell us which side they went up.”
“We know which side they were on when they got to the Cypress Hole. They were on the far side from us.”
“Yeah,” Poudlum said. “But dat’s a long way up de creek.”
“Okay, we’ll just watch the banks as we go up the creek, and maybe we can spot where they came out. It makes sense they would come out of the water where there was a sandy bank, so we ought to be able to see their tracks since it hasn’t rained since they came up this way.”
“Sometimes you can’t see the far bank clear enough to spot tracks,” Poudlum argued.
“You want to let’s separate and one of us go up on each side?”
Poudlum considered that for a moment, then said, “Naw, I think it’s best if we stay together. What you think?”
“I think we ought to cross the creek and go up the other side because that’s the side they were on when they got to the Cypress Hole.”
We found a shallow place not far up the creek, studded with large rocks, so we crossed hopping from rock to rock and didn’t even get our feet wet.
“How far we goin’ fo’ we stops?” Poudlum asked.
“Let’s try to go about halfway.”
“How we gon know?”
“We’ll just guess.”
“What we gon look for while we going?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just look for anything unusual.”
“Everything along dis creek look unusual to me.”
“I mean like some piece of trash, an empty tin can, a broken limb or coals from a recent fire, stuff like that.”
We walked and walked but didn’t see anything except a beautiful stream secluded by an undisturbed forest. I figured it was about five o’clock, with barely an hour of daylight left, when we stopped. I knew it was time because the light filtering through the trees was growing dim.
It was a perfect campsite, on the sandy beach of a sharp curve in the creek covered with dry driftwood, which we quickly stacked into a pile to feed our fire through the night.
We ate sardines and pork and beans directly from the cans, along with saltine crackers, and washed it down with the sweet water from the creek. We burned the cans and the paper in our fire like Jake had taught us at the sawmill.
The soft flowing sound of the creek, the stillness of the woods, the crackle of the fire, and the warmth of my quilt were a potent combination to cause drowsiness.
“You asleep?” Poudlum asked softly.
“Naw, not yet.”
“What you thinking ’bout?”
“That riddle,” I told him.
“Maybe if we goes to sleep thinking ’bout it, we’ll wake up wid de answer.”
“I doubt that’ll work, Poudlum,” I told him in a sleepy voice. “But I can’t think of a better idea, so I’ll try it.”
The stars sparkled like precious stones in the sky, and the water licked softly at the sandy shore while moonlight danced across the surface of the creek. It all soothed me toward a blissful sleep while the riddle lingered in the back of my mind. It’s wet but it’s dry, it’s deep but it’s nearby.
When I woke up it was with a jolt, with a clarity of mind as sharp as the edge of a well-honed steel blade, and I knew the answer to the riddle! Well, at least to the first part of it!