Читать книгу Smokey and the Fouke Monster: A True Story - Smokey Crabtree - Страница 7

I was eight years old when Mother gave her consent for my brother, Buddy, and I to buy a shotgun. It was a twenty gauge single barrel.

The price of the gun was eight dollars. It was a lot of money and hard to come by

A man by the name of Cutchall owned several large bee ranches and sold honey The places he selected to put his bee ranches were along the river bottoms. Here the bees could work the large locust thorn trees that stand along the Sulphur River Bottoms. They say the honey made from locust trees is the very best.

At times, the bees multiply to a point to where when some of them leave the hive, which is their home. One queen bee will leave and a large amount of the bees will follow her They will look for a new home. When the queen bee first leaves the hive, she will not go far until she lights on a branch of a tree. Then all the bees that are following her will light there with her They will all pile up in a bunch resembling a cluster of grapes. Some swarms have over two gallons of bees in them. The bees would settle on a branch and hang there for several hours. Then, they would swarm again. The sky would be dark with bees. When they were all together like that, they would make an unbelievable amount of noise. They would be leaving for parts unknown.

One of Mr Cutchall's bee ranches was located not too far from our house, at the time I worked for him. He did not want to lose the bees that swarmed. He hired me to capture the bees before they left and give them a new hive to live in.

I would take the new bee hive, sit it up in formation with the old ones, and leave the top of the hive open. I rigged up a long pole with a five gallon bucket tied on the end or it. The long pole would allow me to reach up high in the tree. I would ease the bucket up to the cluster of bees hanging on the limb. I would make sure I had them down in the bucket real good, then I would jab the limb real hard with the pole and bucket. The bees would fall off into the bucket. I then walked to the new hive and poured them into their new home.

Sometimes part of the bees would miss the bucket and fall all over me. I got stung many times paying my four dollars on that shotgun.

We were real proud of our gun. We only used it to kill game we could not get any other way

When our dog ran a rabbit by us in the woods we knew we would be able to get it without firing a shot. We never wasted a shell. When we did find game to shoot we made sure we were going to do some good before we fired. When the shells were gone it meant a lot of trapping, saving, and a fourteen mile walk, on foot, to buy more.

I have walked to Fouke from our house many times with only twenty-five cents to spend. I would talk the store manager into opening a box of twenty gauge shells and selling me a few shells. Sometimes I had an opossum hide I would trade for the shells. When I fired my gun, I would really get serious and level down on what I was after.

One day I was squirrel hunting and had the gun with me. I was only a short distance from the house when I heard company arrive at the house. I started to the house, and met my brother Harold and a group of girls and boys. They had come to go fishing in Clebit Lake. The lake was about two miles through the woods from our house so I joined them.

When we got to the lake there was a bunch of boys from town in the lake seining fish. They had been dragging the seine out onto the bank filled with fish. They picked out the big ones they wanted and left thousands of small ones on the bank to die. The bank was lined with dead fish.

I looked them over and recognized one of them. He was Kenneth Maxwell, he lived in Texarkana, Arkansas. Sometimes he lived with his uncle in our community.

I spoke to Kenneth and told him they were destroying a lot of fish they were not using. I told him if they would put the seine up, I would be glad to come in and help them fill their sack up, by catching them with our hands. That way. they wouldn't kill all the small fish. He told me to kiss his ... I reminded him of the young girls that were in our group. I told him to respect them a little.

He jumped out of the water, naked, and said that this was the respect he had for them and myself. I asked him out on the bank to fight. He did not want that. They had me outnumbered and knew it was a slim chance of my coming into the water He kept repeating his little statement from the water. I had set the shotgun down by a big tree behind me. I stepped back, got the gun, and told him that if he was smart he would not do that again. I told him I would break him from the habit. He saw the gun and told me that I didn't have nerve enough to shoot a rabbit and turned his bottom toward me. I told him that after this he would believe what I said to him and I cut down on him with the shotgun.

They scattered like a herd of cows, all in different directions.

That evening the sheriff came down with a warrant for Harold and I. They had told the sheriff that Harold had brought me the gun and I didn't have it to start with.

I told the sheriff I had only shot to scare him. I told him I knew the range of my gun and if I had wanted to kill him I would have waded out to where I could have done the job. The sheriff told me I had scared him pretty badly and I had stuck a few shot in him. He told me he would have to carry us both into Texarkana with him.

We only stayed in jail one night. They got the story all straightened out and let us go home the next day.

A few months later something funny happened as a result of that.

When the word was spread around that I had shot the Maxwell boy it somehow got twisted. Some of the people understood that I had shot him for cussing me.

About two months later, Buddy and I were duck hunting. We were at Little Pond. This is an open pot hole of water back in the bottoms, three miles or so from our house. We were using live ducks for decoys. We had them tied on a string, all lined up in front of our duck blind. We were quiet and watching for ducks when all of a sudden someone shot our live decoys. Three men ran from the brush out into the open and shot them again. We finally got them shut down. Buddy really got hot, They were our old tame ducks, we had brought from home. They were well trained for what we used them. Buddy demanded pay for the ducks. He told them how much money they could fork over. They were digging in their pockets trying to rake up the money

I had the gun at the time. I was with the ducks looking them over to see if any of them would live over the ordeal.

The men had pooled their money and they lacked a dollar having enough. They had all the stuff out of their pockets looking for more money. Buddy saw a pocket knife one of them had in .his hand. He told them the knife would do to make up for the other dollar The fellow told him he would not let us have his knife.

One of the fellows was a giant of a man. He was six foot six inches tall at least. He was scared out of his wits. He was shaking all over and I had been watching him pretty close. All at once he burst out in a panic stricken voice and told the other man to give us the damn knife and get out of there. He said he didn't know the biggest boy but the little one with the shotgun shot a boy down here, two or three weeks ago, for just cussing him.

The way the man had been misled was funny. It was hard for me to keep from laughing. He thought I was a mean boy that went around shooting people. He did not know what I was like inside and the inside of a man is the most important part. He did not know the real reason I pulled the trigger He never knew that I was willing to work, for nothing, if it would keep small fish from dying and going to waste. He didn't know that I pulled the gun to make him respect the young girls. He didn't know I pulled the trigger to keep my word.

I did not tell Kenneth that I would kill him. I am very careful what I tell a man, but what I do tell him is the way it will be. I told him if he continued to do what he was doing I would break him from the habit and that was what I did.

It is very important to me whether people believe me or not. If people do not believe what you say, you are nothing.

Later in life, feeling like I do about the truth, caused me to lose a mighty fine girlfriend. I was sure stuck on her I could tell she liked me very much too. Everything was going fine until one day she brought her cat to school with her. My desk was close by her's in the schoolroom. While we were all out playing at recess her cat climbed into my desk and helped himself to my lunch.

Now, when it came to my food, I was very serious. It was hard to come by and the cat had no business in school in the first place.

I told her about the crime her cat had committed and that it would be better for the cat if she would leave him at home. She said she would bring him with her anytime she got ready. I told her that I was not over him eating my lunch and if she brought him back to school I would make a bobcat out of him. She said she didn't believe I would cut her cat's tail off. I told her I had just got through telling her that's what I would do. She said that didn't make it the truth. I pulled my knife out, reached and got the cat's tail, and relieved him of his tail. She almost fainted.

I got whipped by the teacher and when my brothers and sisters told my Mother, she got very upset.

She knew I loved animals and was always kind to them. She asked me what caused me to cut the cat's tail off.

I said, "Mother, it is a long story. The first thing I want you to know is that it was not meanness. I have a much larger problem and the poor cat just kind of got caught in the whole thing. The girl is something very special to me. Someday I hope to marry her. I do not want a wife who does not believe what I say and I have not given up on her yet."

"It was something very important to me and it needed to be straightened out right then. I was thinking of our future. We could never be happy if we were going to lie to each other. I want her to know she can believe what I tell her, and that was the way it all happened."

I am sure the cat did not understand the worthy cause of losing his tail. He split the scene immediately

Time proved that the girl did not understand my feelings or the real reason for my behavior, because she quit having anything to do with me.

If I told her something today I just imagine she would take it for the truth.

Mother understood me and knew my intentions were good. She did not stop me from using the shotgun or my knife, but gave me quite a lecture on what they should be used for, and I promised to keep the cats out of my personal affairs.