Читать книгу Smokey and the Fouke Monster: A True Story - Smokey Crabtree - Страница 4

Hello, my name is J. E. "Smokey" Crabtree. I am not a writer. I can't even spell very well, so this book is going to be an awfully big job for me. I feel like I have to do it.

I am not doing this for money alone. I don't have that kind of lust for money. I am trying to do several things. The largest one is to keep me from losing my mind. Another is to send a message to the world and another is to try and compensate my little town and friends for a wrong that I helped bring to them.

If this book sells it will help some of the people involved in helping with a movie named "Legend of Boggy Creek", filmed here in Fouke. For you to understand how I feel I will try to bring you into my world for awhile.

The year was 1932 or so, I was five years old and I can still remember the scene well.

There was seven children in our family, three boys and four girls. We three boys were the youngest members of the family.

We lived in a small three-room house, the lumber was as it came off the sawmill, in the rough and unpainted, but clean. You could see the chickens under the house, at times, through the cracks in the floor. It was our home and we loved it, and people couldn't bother us much back where we were.

It was located seven miles southwest of Fouke, Arkansas, in the' edge of Sulphur River Bottoms. The water from the river's overflow came up in our yard. We often went swimming in. the yard when the water was up real high.

Dad caught fish and sold them when the fish were running. It was during this time two men came to buy some fish. Dad asked the men to come with him down to where the fish were in a live box, tied out in the river.

They went down to the water's edge where the boats were tied up. My two brothers and I followed them. We called my older brother "Buddy", he was seven years old at the time. They called me "Smokey", I was five and my baby brother was two years old, his name was Harold.

The river was not as high as it gets, but the overflow water was out in the bottom land between the house and river. There were large over-cup acorn trees standing all out in the water, then there were small trees and lots of underbrush farther on out in the water, where you could not quite see the river itself. There was a small crooked path leading out to the river in Which we traveled by boat.

We reached the water's edge where there were two boats tied up. Dad and the two men took one of the boats and told us to wait on the bank until they came back. All three of the men grabbed a paddle and soon they were out of sight, on their way out to the main part of the river. As soon as they were out of sight, Buddy took the other boat and Harold climbed in just for the ride. They got out about one hundred yards from the bank where the water was six to seven feet deep.

Harold was sitting on the front boat seat facing the back of the boat. Buddy was on the back seat doing the navigating. The boat bumped into a large tree. Harold toppled over backwards into the water. He could not swim so Buddy stood up and watched for a second and saw bubbles coming up in one place and dove in after him. For awhile both of them were out of sight, I began screaming for Dad to come, they were drowning. One of the men heard me hollering and told· Dad. At first Dad told the man that we were just playing. I hollered again and one of the men told Dad, "Hell," he said, "they are drowning." They turned around and started rowing back to where we were.

After Buddy clove in, a short time passed that I could not see either one of them. Soon Harold came up and just stayed up, his head and shoulders out of the water and then went back under I found out later that Buddy went down and found him on the bottom and he was grabbing for everything. When he felt Buddy, he clenched to him and climbed up his body and was standing on Buddy's shoulders, so his head was out of the water.

Buddy tried to walk under the water with Harold on his shoulders and could not do that. He tried to get up for breath and Harold held him down. Soon, he collapsed to the bottom, letting Harold go out of sight again.

When Dad and the men came into sight Dad was standing up in the front of the boat paddling for all he was worth. They saw the other boat out there adrift with no one in it. I hollered that they were clown by that big tree and they went down by the tree. The boat was still going full blast when Dad dove off head first, clothes and all from the front end of it. He came up with Harold first, and just threw him over in the boat, and went back down for the other one. He was down for some time like he was hunting for Buddy When he came up with him the boy was a clark purple in the face. The men in the boat grabbed hole! of him and layed him across the side of the boat and drained a lot of water out of him. They worked with him until he started moving around. One of the men said that it was a miracle that he came out of it. He was completely unconscious. The baby was not in bad shape, he was out of the water for awhile during the time they were in the water

I want you to know it put the fear of God in me watching all of that.

Dad said to Buddy, "Son, I told you to stay on the bank and walt for me to get back. Now it was wrong for you to take the boat after I told you not to and now you see what can happen when you do something wrong. I am not going to punish you; I feel like you have had enough already."

I was very young when I first realized that you may have to pay a dreadful price for only a small wrong.