If Uncle Curvin had had any teeth they would have been chattering like mine and Poudlum’s. The sleet kept pouring down and ice was beginning to accumulate around the windshield wipers.
“I’m going to start the motor one more time and warm us up a little, boys,” my uncle said. “But they ain’t enough gas to do it many more times.”
“You got any more of dem matches, Mister Curvin?” Poudlum asked.
“Uh-huh, I got plenty of matches, but they won’t keep us warm.”
“Dey would if we built us a fire,” Poudlum told him.
“We can’t build no fire, son, what with ice coming down like it is.”
“I knows a dry place nearby where we could get one going.”
Poudlum had my attention now. “What you talking about, Poudlum?”
“If we could use what gas we got left to make it to the Satilfa, we could get up under de bridge and build us a fire.”
Uncle Curvin straightened up in the seat and said, “Why that’s about the most sensible thing I heard all day, including everything they said in the courtroom.
“It’s gonna be a cold ride,” he said as he started the engine of the truck and rolled down his window. “I’ll have to hang out the window to see. Y’all just wrap up real tight in that blanket and we’ll see if we can make it to the bridge.”
There was a long downhill grade for about half of a mile before the road got to the Satilfa Creek Bridge. About halfway down it the old truck ran out of gas, sputtered and went dead. Uncle Curvin shifted the gear into neutral and said, “I think we can coast on down to the bridge. Y’all just hang on.”
The road leveled out and the truck coasted to a halt about a hundred yards from the bridge. Uncle Curvin rolled up his window and said, “We gonna have to walk the rest of the way. Y’all bring the blanket along with you.”
The sleet pelted us pretty good on the walk down to the bridge. When we got to it Uncle Curvin said, “I’ll hold the light to show us the way, you boys just follow me, and be careful ’cause it’s starting to get a little slick.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” I told him as Poudlum and I grabbed hold of each other while we climbed down the bank as Uncle Curvin lit the way. It was treacherous, but we made it by grabbing hold of small pine trees with our free hands.
It was cold and eerie when we got under the bridge. Everything was still and the only sounds were the swish of the creek as it went by and the peppering sound of the sleet on the bridge above us.
“If we get up in the secret place and build us a fire in it we can stay warm all night,” I whispered to Poudlum.
“Shore can,” he whispered back. “But yo’ brother ain’t gon be happy about us showing it to Mister Curvin.”
“Naw, I don’t think he’ll care. He’ll understand it was something we had to do.”
“What y’all a-whispering about?” Uncle Curvin demanded.
“We’ll show you,” I told him as I took his flashlight and pointed it up toward the secret place my brother had discovered. We struggled a bit, but we finally tumbled into the secret place.
Uncle Curvin took his flashlight back and cast the beam about inside it. “Good Lord!” he declared. “This is some kind of nice hidey hole. Why we can build us just a little fire in here and be as warm as if we was in your momma’s kitchen.
A few minutes later we had us a nice fire going with a large stack of fuel, enough to last us through the frozen night. The walls of the secret place trapped the heat and with the blanket we had brought from the truck the numbness began to disappear from my fingers and toes. It got warmer still, and I knew we were going to be all right.
Uncle Curvin took his jacket off, rolled it up and used it as a pillow as he stretched out. “I believe we gonna be all right boys, thanks to this here hidey hole of y’all’s. This storm will break and come tomorrow morning we’ll walk on out of here toward home.”
The warmth of the fire, the sound of the sleet peppering down on the bridge above us, and the cozy feeling of the secret place combined to put a real drowsy feeling on me. I glanced over toward Poudlum and saw his eyelids were getting heavy, too.
I added a few more pieces of fuel to the fire, and pretty soon I got so toasty warm in the hidey hole that Poudlum and I kicked off the blanket we had been sharing.
We made us a pillow out of it and stretched out like Uncle Curvin next to the warm embers and pretty soon I felt myself drifting off. It had been a long day, and even though I was in a strange place and sleeping on the hard ground instead of in my warm, comfortable bed, I still felt secure being there with Poudlum and Uncle Curvin, so sleep came easily and soon I fell into a deep sleep.
Just before dawn Poudlum shook me gently awake. “What’s the matter?” I asked, rubbing my eyes as I sat up.
“Shhh,” Poudlum whispered. “Be real quiet.”
“What is it?” I whispered back.
“Dey is somebody walking up on de bridge,” he said in a whisper.
“It ain’t even daylight yet. Who could it be?” I whispered.
“Who you think?” Poudlum answered in a low growl.
The sleet had turned to a soft drizzle, but through the soft sound of it I heard heavy footsteps on the wooden planks up above, and knew Poudlum was correct. It sounded like maybe two people.
“You think they can see our fire?”
“Naw, it ain’t nothing but hot coals covered with white ashes. We better wake up Mister Curvin, but be real quiet about it.”
The sound of steps on the bridge stopped, but then the rustle and scraping sound of them coming down the bank toward the creek started.
“Don’t wake him up yet,” I told Poudlum. “Let’s make sure who it is first.”
“You know it’s gonna be Jesse and Frank,” Poudlum responded.
“Well, let’s just make sure.”
We both eased up and peeked over the wall of the secret place and in the pre-dawn dimness we both recognized the faint outlines of Jesse and Frank as they reached the creek bank just below the bridge and across the creek from us. We continued to observe until they disappeared into the woods heading up the creek toward the Cypress Hole.
“Dey going to get de money!” Poudlum hissed. “We ought to got it ourselves when we had de chance!”
I knew Poudlum was probably right, but I also knew we had to get up on the road and get gone because they had surely seen Uncle Curvin’s truck and suspected we were somewhere close by.
I figured they were probably out of hearing distance by now, especially with the sound of the drizzle, so I moved over close to Uncle Curvin and slowly shook his shoulder until he roused up.
He snorted and wheezed just before I leaned down and whispered into his ear and said, “Uncle Curvin, you need to wake up. Them bank robbers are just up the creek from us!”
“Are you dreaming, boy, or am I?” he said from a prone position.
“Neither one, we got to get up and get out of here while we can!”
“You seen ’em?”
“Yes, sir. Poudlum heard them up on the bridge and woke me up. Then we watched them climb down the bank and head up the creek toward the Cypress Hole.”
Uncle Curvin sat up slowly and said, “I can’t move too fast. Besides being cripple, I’m cold and stiff from sleeping on this hard ground. Maybe you boys ought to light out and leave me here.”
“No, sir, Mister Curvin,” Poudlum piped up. “We can’t leave you here by yo’self.”
He sat up and scooted over a little closer to the bed of ashes, which still had some hot coals radiating heat. “Listen, boys, by the time y’all pulled me out of this warm hidey hole and helped me up to the bank it would probably be broad daylight. I’ll be fine here. The thing to do is for y’all to scamper on out of here real quiet-like and go get us some help. Y’all can leave that blanket with me, though.”
It didn’t take Poudlum and me but a few moments to realize he was right.
“All right,” I told him. “You just stay low in here. Me and Poudlum will get up on the road and run all the way to Uncle Curtis’s house and wake him up. He’ll know what to do.”
“Uh, before you go, boys, what do y’all think the bank robbers are doing here on the creek. I would have thought they would have been clean out of the county by now.”
Poudlum looked at me and said, “Might as well tell him.”
I knew Poudlum was right. It was too late to be keeping secrets now. “They come back to get the money,” I told him.
“Huh?”
“Yes, sir, we think they got the money sunk up there in the Cypress Hole.”
“Well now why in the world would y’all think something like that?”
“Tell him real quick,” Poudlum said. “Then we gots to get on outta here.”
After I quickly told my uncle the whole story culminating when we had found the arrow carved into the black gum tree, he said, “Lord, have mercy! You boys should have done told me about all that. In fact, y’all should have been testifying in court!’
“We wuz scared, Mister Curvin. Plus, we wuz after dat reward money,” Poudlum told him.
“I can understand that, boys, and it’s all right. But now y’all need to get up on the road and run.”
Poudlum and I slithered out of the secret place like two snakes. We lowered ourselves to the ground and crept out from under the bridge. But when we took our first step up the bank we were shocked when we slid right back down. The bank was a sheet of ice from the sleet.
“Uh oh, what we gon do now?” Poudlum whispered.
Thinking fast, I told him, “Feel around and find a good stick. We’ll break them so they got sharp ends and stab them in the ground and pull ourselves up.
I heard a sharp crack when Poudlum broke his stick, and mine followed. “You think dey heard dat?” he asked.
“Probably did, let’s start climbing.”
The sticks worked well enough and soon I felt my hands on the crusty sheet of ice on the ditch next to the road. I pulled myself up and Poudlum was right behind me.
We stood there on the side of Center Point Road in the predawn light for a few moments, breathing hard.
“You hear anything?” I whispered with a frosty breath.
We listened real hard for a few moments before Poudlum said, “Naw, does you?”
“No, me neither,” I responded. “Let’s start running!”
It was so cold it hurt to breathe, but we ran hard until we got to the Mill Creek Bridge, where we stopped to catch our breath. “You okay?” I asked Poudlum.
“Uh-huh, I’m rested. Let’s see how far we can run fo’ we has to stop again.”
It was uphill all the way from the Mill Creek Bridge to Uncle Curtis’s house and Poudlum and I were both blowing like a mule pulling a ground slide loaded with watermelons by the time we got there. But we weren’t cold anymore; in fact, we were both damp with perspiration.
We turned off the road down toward Uncle Curtis’s house and I could see a light inside when we got to the front porch.
There was a smell of bacon frying and it made my mouth water. I knew Poudlum was experiencing the same feeling when I glanced toward him and saw his eyes roll while he licked his lips.
We told the story of our all-night vigil, including the bank robber’s visit, to Uncle Curtis while he served us up some thick sliced bacon along with some fried eggs with syrup and biscuits.
Afterwards, he told my cousin Robert to go crank up the truck and get it warm. Shortly after that, while Poudlum and I soaked up the warmth of the inside of the cab, we drove down to Miss Lena’s Store.
To our surprise, there was a small crowd of people gathered there. It seemed that Poudlum’s momma and daddy, my two brothers and my own momma, plus a few other folks had all gathered there for the purpose of finding us and Uncle Curvin.
After everybody fussed over us for a while, Uncle Curtis and some others headed back up Center Point Road to go rescue Uncle Curvin, and some others headed off toward Coffeeville to find a telephone to call the sheriff and tell him the escaped bank robbers had been sighted.
Things got kind of fuzzy after that. I remember being on a pallet on the floor in front of our warm fireplace covered with a quilt. I felt my momma’s cool, soft hand on my burning forehead and heard her voice sounding like it was coming from somewhere way off when she said, “This child’s burning up with fever.”
I drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes sleeping lightly, sometimes deeply, but I woke up clearheaded on Thursday morning, so hungry I felt like my belly was scraping my backbone.
“We thought you had pneumonia for a while,” my momma said. “But you just got chilled real bad after you sweated through your clothes with all that running in the freezing cold.”
“Has anybody heard from Poudlum?” I asked while I sopped up syrup with a hot biscuit.
“He’s been sick, too,” my momma told me. “At least that’s what your brother Fred heard from over at Miss Lena’s Store.”
“Where are they?” I asked her. “Ned and Fred?”
“They both out cutting firewood to get us through this cold spell. Now you finish up your meal and get back under them covers for a while.”
The fire had died down to a bed of hot coals when I crawled back into my pallet. With my belly full, I propped up on a pillow, pulled the quilt up over me and watched as Momma piled fresh logs on the fire.
Pretty soon little blue and yellow flames began to spring up from the bed of coals and lick up between the cracks of the logs like flaming cat tongues. It wasn’t long before the flames leapt higher and the fire turned into a roaring and popping solid blaze, radiating heat that lulled me back to sleep.
The rumble and thump of wood being stacked on the floor next to the fireplace woke me up.
I looked up, sleepy-eyed, and saw my brother Ned grinning down toward me. “You gonna sleep all day?” he asked as he reached down and rumpled my hair. “Wake up, Fred’s got something you’ll be wanting to see.”
I heard a rattling and crinkling of paper as Fred sat down next to me. “Move over,” he said. “Quit hogging the fire and I’ll show you this story in the Clarke County Democrat.”
What he had was the weekly county newspaper. It came out every Thursday. “Look here on the front page,” he said.
The cobwebs disappeared from my mind and my eyes bugged out when I saw the headline.