Читать книгу The Salvation of Miss Lucretia - Ted Dunagan - Страница 8

Chapter 1

The Forest

The seductive forest had stands of thick, tall hickory and oak trees for as far back as you could see. I wagered the ground was littered with hickory nuts and acorns, and that would mean that up high in those giant trees there would be nests full of squirrels.

Off to the east I spotted a huge grove of loblolly pines with thick trunks and big stubby limbs and I knew that was the preferred range of the red fox squirrel.

My dog, Old Bill, the most renowned squirrel dog in Clarke County, Alabama, was trembling and whimpering at my side and I knew he was chomping at the bit to find the scent of one of the furry creatures. I patted his head and told him to be patient.

The grand forest of four hundred acres of virgin timber belonged to Mister Leon Autrey, the largest land owner in the county who was a colored man. There were all kinds of stories and rumors of how he had accumulated such a large tract of land, but the plain truth was that part of it had been handed down through the generations of his family and he had accumulated the rest by hard work.

Folks had schemed for years to deprive him of it, but the love of the land had inspired him to find ways to keep it as his own. The latest way he had been able to pay his taxes and maintain ownership of his property was by abandoning cotton and switching his crops to the production of peanuts.

He had gone up to Tuskegee to the institute and been taught the way to grow peanuts from the teachings of George Washington Carver, and now, in the summer of 1949, he was teaching my Uncle Curvin how to switch his crop from cotton to peanuts.

That’s how Poudlum and I had ended up with the opportunity to hunt on Mister Autrey’s land. While he and my uncle were discussing the advantages of peanut farming, they had agreed to give us boys the run of Mister Autrey’s woods for as long as we wanted.

The time to harvest squirrels was on toward the fall when the weather got cool. Now was the time to train Poudlum’s young dog so that when fall came he would be ready. And Rip was a fortunate dog because he was going to be taught to hunt by Old Bill.

Squirrel hunting this year was going to be mine and Poudlum’s money crop. Hunters hired Old Bill and me out for fifty cents. Old Bill would tree the squirrel and I would shake a vine or a bush to trick him to move around to the side of the tree where the hunter could get a clean shot. We aimed to make Poudlum’s dog as good as mine and expand our hunting business.

Old Bill and I had gone down to Coffeeville to visit with my Uncle Curvin yesterday and we had picked up Poudlum and Rip this morning, then traveled up to Zimco, where Mister Autrey lived.

“They look like some good woods to hunt and camp in,” Poudlum said as we unloaded our gear off the back of my uncle’s truck.

“Yeah, look at the size of them hickory trees,” I replied. “They must be two hundred years old.”

“Uh huh, and I ’spect they some monster squirrels in ’em, too,” Poudlum said.

Mister Autrey came over to where we were sorting out our hunting equipment and said, “How long you boys plan to be out in ’em woods?”

“Uh, we thought we’d be out there until Saturday morning, sir,” I told him.

Mister Autrey looked a lot like my uncle except he was black and Uncle Curvin was white. He wore overalls with a blue work shirt and a straw hat, and his face had that deep wrinkled look of doing hard work on the outside. “Y’all got enough grub to last you that long?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Poudlum said. “And we can live off the land if need be.”

That’s when Uncle Curvin put his two bits in and said, “They pretty resourceful boys, Mister Autrey, and ain’t a river or creek they hadn’t been up and down, so they ought to be able to stay out of trouble.”

My uncle was referring to mine and Poudlum’s recent experiences on the Satilfa Creek where we had encountered bank robbers and the Tombigbee River where we had been chased by the Klan and a mad Chinaman, who had committed a murder we had witnessed.

The mad Chinaman was Mister Kim, and he was in jail now awaiting his trial. According to Mister Alfred Jackson, our lawyer and benefactor, Poudlum and I would have to testify at that trial when it reached the court’s calendar. Mister Jackson had paid us a visit recently and informed us the case could go to trial sometime within the next two weeks.

Neither Poudlum nor I relished the idea of facing Mister Kim again. The last time we saw him he had been chasing us with his murderous blade, and we had barely escaped him.

Mister Autrey patted Old Bill on his head and said, “He’s a black-and-tan hound, ain’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“He’s a fine-looking dog,” he continued. “And I’ve heard tell he’s got some mighty fine hunting skills.”

Then he turned toward Poudlum and observed young Rip as he sat next to Poudlum with his tail wagging and thumping on the ground. “And I believe you got yourself a redbone hound, don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir,” Poudlum answered as he reached down and stroked one of Rip’s big floppy ears.

“Well, if you boys can teach him half of what they say Ted’s dog knows, then he’ll be a fine squirrel dog.”

We turned our attention to packing our gear while Uncle Curvin and Mister Autrey walked off toward the barn, talking about peanut farming all the while.

Mister Jackson had allowed Poudlum and me to withdraw some money from the interest earned by investing the reward money we got after we found the money the bank robbers had hidden on the Satilfa Creek last winter.

With this money we had purchased back packs and a real tent. We had also been allowed to buy ourselves each a .22 caliber bolt-action, single-shot rifle. We had gone out on the Tombigbee River this past spring armed with nothing but boat paddles. But this time, for our trip into the forest, we had our rifles and first-class camping equipment including canteens, mess kits, and scout knives. Also, we had our dogs.

Mister Autrey had a well with a big iron pump over it. After a few pumps of the long handle, clear, cool water came tumbling from the spout. We held the mouths of our canteens underneath and filled them full. Afterwards we pumped some more and laughed as both dogs lapped at the big stream of water.

Then we got down to the serious business of packing our backpacks. We threw in some dry food for the dogs, and cans of beans, fish, and sausages, and some dried fruit for us.

We strapped the folded tent on the top of Poudlum’s pack and our two blankets on top of mine, and we were ready to go. Then, from down at the barn, Uncle Curvin yelled from the half-opened wide front doors, “Hey, you boys come on down here!”

With the dogs following behind us we made our way inside the dimly lit barn. Dust motes floated in the air through thin lines of sunlight filtering through the cracks. It was a huge barn, and the first thing I noticed was a large pile of foliage in the back right corner.

Mister Autrey noticed the direction of my gaze, and said, “Those are my first crop of peanuts, still on the vine. I let ’em dry here in the barn; then on rainy days we pick ’em off the vines. I raise two crops of ’em. We plant the first crop in the early spring, harvest it, and then immediately replant using the largest and best nuts as seeds.

“That second crop is busting up out of the ground already. Later in the summer you boys can come back, and instead of picking cotton, y’all can help me pull peanuts.

“Y’all will find it not nearly as backbreaking work as picking cotton. Go on over there and pick yourselves a sack full to take on your camping trip with you. You can roast ’em in your fire at night, or just eat ’em raw.”

We thanked him and settled down next to the pile of vines and began plucking the peanuts off them. “Some of these shells got three or four nuts in them,” Poudlum marveled.

While we were picking we could hear Mister Autrey’s voice droning on as he gave my uncle information on how to harvest and sell his first crop of nuts from where his cotton field used to be.

Poudlum’s family had done the same thing with their cotton field. “I shore ain’t gonna miss not having to pick no cotton,” he said. “How about you?”

“Naw,” I told him. “It wouldn’t bother me if I don’t never see another cotton plant, cotton sack, or even a field full of it.”

“But you know what?” Poudlum reminded me, “if it wasn’t for a cotton patch you and me might not have ever got to be friends.”

I knew that to be true, for we had indeed met while we were picking cotton last summer in my uncle’s field. The black people had been picking on one side of the field and us white folks on the other. But me and Poudlum had put a stop to that segregated picking and had been inseparable ever since.

“You want to let’s come back up here and help Mister Autrey pull his peanuts in a few weeks?” Poudlum asked.

“I reckon so. We’ll probably have to help Uncle Curvin, too.”

“I wonder how much you get paid for it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t see how they could weigh the nuts and pay you by the pound like they do cotton, ’cause the nuts stay on the bush until they dry out. Most likely they just pay you by the day.”

“If they don’t pay right, we’ll just have to eat a lot of ’em to make up the difference,” Poudlum said as he cracked a shell and popped the nuts into his mouth.

After we had picked about as many nuts as we figured Mister Autrey intended to offer, we made our way back up toward the front of the barn and picked up on the conversation between Uncle Curvin and Mister Autrey as he was saying, “And it’s all because of the boll weevil. I tell you, Curvin, the boll weevil was a blessing in disguise. When he first come up here from Mexico and ate our cotton bolls, we just about all starved to death. But we outsmarted that nasty bug when we found out he don’t like peanuts, and on top of that we freed ourselves from the curse of cotton and the torture of planting it, plowing it, chopping it, and picking it.

“Now that old boll weevil is something we tell stories about. Somebody even wrote a song about ’em and called it ‘Just Looking for a Home.’ I hear tell there’s a statue of a boll weevil somewhere up in east Alabama. Imagine that.”

Mister Autrey stopped talking when he noticed we were listening to him. But then he started right back and said, “So you see, boys, the lesson to be learned here is that good things sometimes come riding in on the back of bad things.”

We thanked Mister Autrey for the lesson he had taught us, and for the peanuts; then we went out and began to attempt to find space in our backpacks for them.

We were eating the last handful that we couldn’t find room for when Poudlum said between bites, “I always got a little room in my stomach.”

That’s when I noticed Uncle Curvin watching us eat the nuts and I immediately felt guilty because I knew he didn’t have any teeth and couldn’t eat them.

It was like he could read my mind, or so it seemed to me when he said, “That’s all right, I’ll eat myself a batch of ’em goobers when my crop comes in. When you first pull ’em they’re green and you can boil ’em and they come out of the shell real soft. We’ll have us a peanut boil then. Say, ain’t you boys about ready to hit the woods?”

Poudlum and I were anxious to do just that, and the dogs, in their excitement, were approaching the stage of being uncontrollable. “Yes, sir,” I said as we began to shoulder our packs.

“Let’s see?” he said. “Today’s Monday. You think y’all gonna get enough of them woods by Thursday?”

I looked at Poudlum, and we both said almost at the same time, “How about sometime Saturday morning?”

My uncle rolled his eyes, and said, “Lord, if y’all wasn’t different colors, I would swear you was twins. All right, I’ll be here before noon on Saturday to pick y’all up, but after then there won’t be no more gallivanting. I talked to Mister Jackson yesterday, and he thinks the trial might start next week down in Washington County, and you boys will have to be there to testify.”

“How come it’s in Washington County and not here in Clarke County?” I asked.

“’Cause the crime happened on the other side of the river, farther down south, and that’s in Washington County. Now listen y’all, they’s timber rattlers out in ’em woods. Keep your rifles on safety, but loaded, and use ’em if need be.”

Mister Autrey came out of the barn, joined us, and contributed some of his advice, “I’ve seen signs of panthers and bobcats in those woods, boys, so y’all keep your eyes and ears open, and a good fire going at night. Y’all ought to be fine since you got your dogs with you.”

We said our farewells, much to the delight of Old Bill and Rip, and we were about to enter the edge of the woods when we heard Mister Autrey.

“Boys! Boys!” he called out as he shuffled toward us.

When he caught up with us he seemed like he wanted to say something to us, but didn’t quite know how.

“Uh, there’s one other thing I forgot to tell y’all,” he said as he scratched his chin and stared off into space.

We waited a few moments, and then he finally blurted out, “They’s somebody else back in ’em woods y’all ought to know about!”