The River Is Home. Patrick D. Smith
bank with Skeeter.
“You hurt, Skeeter?” asked Pa.
“Naw,” he said, “jest got me a bellyful uv mud.”
“How we goin’ to git back in the boat without turnin’ her over?” asked Jeff. “That sucker jest air goin’ to stay out’n the water by itself now.”
“I guess they ain’t but one thing fer us to do,” said Pa, “and that be to cling to the sides of the boat and float her in home. Me and you kin git on one side apiece and Skeeter kin hang on to the rear. We kin drift to the bayou and then kick her on up home.”
Pa and Jeff got on opposite sides of the boat and Skeeter clung to the rear; they paddled with their hands and feet and pushed the boat into the swift current of the river. They fought the boat to the left side of the river and barely managed to turn it into the mouth of the bayou. Once out of the swift water, they all three clung to the rear and kicked up their feet, and slowly moved up the bayou to the landing. Ma and Theresa ran from the house to meet them.
“Whut in the world air you fellers hangin’ on and kickin’ like a bunch of hound dogs fer?” asked Ma. “You ain’t got tetched in the head, has you?”
“That dern steamboat jest liked to have sunk the boat and drowned us all,” said Pa, “and we couldn’t git back in without swampin’ her. You see whut a load we got in the boat, don’t you? We shore got to git us a bigger boat somehow.”
“Hit’s a good thing you come home with some fish this mornin’,” said Ma, “or hit would have been mighty pore eatin’ aroun’ here soon. Now you kin jest git me a fresh bottle of snuff fer some of that fish tomorrow.”
“And if’n you kin, I’d like a hair comb, Pa,” said Theresa.
“The both of you better be glad if’n I bring home plenty of meal and sugar,” said Pa, “’cause we come mighty nigh losin’ the whole bunch of hit.”
“Well, I’m goin’ an’ hoe in the garden some more,” said Ma, “so’es hit won’t be too long afore we has some peas and onions on the table. Theresa, you better go see if’n you kin get some of that poke salat to fix fer dinner. And while you is out there, git some fer them hogs. They been rootin’ in that pen so much hit looks like where a bunch of bull ’gators been fightin’.”
Pa and the boys pulled the boat up on the landing and took the fish out and put them in the fish box. When they had finished, they turned the boat up on one side and dumped the water out of it. “Jeff,” said Pa, “I ’speck me and you better row over to the woods on the other side of the river and git some pine fer the fire. They ain’t too much left, and we shore won’t be able to go afore next week.”
“Do you want me to go too, Pa?” asked Skeeter.
“I’m afeared they won’t be enough room in the boat fer us and the wood too if’n you go,” said Pa.
As soon as Jeff went to the house and brought back the ax, he and Pa shoved off down the bayou in the boat. Skeeter stood on the landing and watched them until they were out of sight. He was glad that they had not wanted him to go along with them. He liked to be alone, especially if he could go into the swamp by himself. He ran to the back of the house and got the pole for the skiff and started up the bayou toward the swamp. The sun felt good, so he pulled off his shirt and threw it in the bow. He felt good all over, knowing that he could do as he pleased the rest of the morning.
When he reached the edge of the swamp, he would give a hard push with the pole and then lie down in the bottom of the skiff and glide along, looking up into the trees and at the clouds in the sky. It gave him a dizzy feeling to lie in the skiff and watch the white clouds sail by over him. He would lie on his stomach and push the skiff along by pulling his hands through the cool water. He felt more at home in the swamp than any place he had ever been. He couldn’t understand why anyone would be afraid of the swamp like Pa was.
A thought suddenly struck him that made him get to his feet and start poling the skiff swiftly through the water. He would go back to the place where they had fought the ’gator last night and see what had happened to him. He guided the skiff around trees and through vines, toward the place where they had been. Ahead of him he heard a splash in the water and knew that a snake had heard him coming and dropped from a limb or a vine. He could see turtles resting on logs and minnows shoot out in all directions. Sometimes he would pass a frog bed and see thousands of the small black eggs stretched out in long lines of white slime. As he went further into the swamp, the trees grew thicker, and the sun was almost shut out from him. He did not think that they had gone this far the night before. Presently he came to the spot where they had first seen the burning red eyes. He found the mudbank where the ’gator had been lying and could see signs of the struggle. He poled in the direction the ’gator had pulled him, and could see broken vines for several hundred yards until he came to a limb of a tree hanging low over the water, where he found the shaft of the gig floating in the water. The ’gator must have gone under the limb and broken the shaft from the steel gig. He knew that the gig was still solidly planted in the ’gator’s head. He said to himself: “Them dem ’gators must be awful hard critters to kill. Next time I go after me one of them buggers I’m shore goin’ to take that shotgun with me.” Without the gig shaft sticking up to break the vines, the trail was harder to follow and, when he came to a pool of deeper water, he lost it completely. He made several circles around the place, but could never pick up the trail again. Then he poled the skiff slowly in the direction of the bayou, stopping several times to watch a fight between a hawk and a catbird, or a snake stalking a small, unsuspecting frog, but he could never get close enough to one of the snakes to have a try at catching it. Sometimes it seemed that the snakes knew that he was after them and would glide away.
When he saw several small streaks of mud shoot through a shallow place by an old log, he knew that it was a crawfish bed, so he stopped the skiff and eased over the side into the water. He sunk down halfway to his knees in the soft black muck, and could feel it ooze up through his toes. He liked the feel of the cool muck on his feet. As he walked slowly through the shallow water to the log, he could see the crawfish backing around through the muck, so he stopped down and grabbed at them with his hands. When he would catch one he would put it in his pocket and then look for others. He ran his hands along the bottom of the log and caught several each time. After a while he had both of his pockets full and all he could carry in his hands, so he made his way back through the muck and dumped them into the skiff. Then he repeated this until he could find no more. He knew that his mother would be real proud, for now she could make them a big pot of crawfish gumbo. His mouth watered at the thought of this favorite dish. They could not catch crawfish in the bayou because the turtles would eat them as fast as they would come out of their beds.
It was about an hour before high noon when he reached the head of the bayou, so he lay down in the bottom of the skiff to enjoy the warm sun. A gentle breeze pushed the skiff slowly down the bayou. The breeze made the tall marsh grass look like a sea of swaying dancers. Skeeter thought that he would be content to drift forever with the sun and breeze and water about him. Why would anybody ever want to live anywhere besides along the swamp and river? When he raised up, he saw that he had already drifted past the landing, so he poled the skiff back to the landing and pulled it up on the bank.
He walked to the house and got a bucket and went back to the landing. He scooped several handfuls of the soft, cool, bayou muck into the bucket, and then put several layers of grass on top of it. When he had put in about a cupful of water and dumped the crawfish into the bucket, he walked back to the house and climbed the steps to the kitchen, where Ma and Theresa had already started preparing the noon meal.
“Guess whut I got in the bucket, Ma,” said Skeeter.
“Hit’s probably a bucketful of them swamp snakes,” said Theresa.
“Well, if’n that’s whut hit air you shore better git out’n here with hit in a hurry,” said Ma. “You oughta know better than to bring a bunch of them varments in here.”
“Hain’t neither one of you got the right idea,”