The River Is Home. Patrick D. Smith
tomorrow, and we’ll have the best pot of gumbo you ever tasted. I’m shore right proud of you, Skeeter.”
“Whut’s that you got cookin’ fer dinner, Ma?” he asked.
“Hit’s somethin’ you like a lot,” said Theresa.
“We got a pot of young poke salat with little onions and peppers chopped up in hit, and I’m makin’ a corn pone with onions fried in hit. And best of all, I’m fryin’ that fish eel. Now ain’t that a right fancy dinner, Skeeter?”
The mention of the food and the smells coming from the hearth made Skeeter’s mouth water with hunger. He put the bucket of crawfish in the corner of the kitchen, and slipped up to the hearth where the eel was cooking, to steal a piece. Ma saw what he was doing and grabbed him by the arm. “Now you git on out of here and wait fer yore Pa and Jeff to git back afore you start snitchin’ food. All you’ll do is ruin yore dinner.”
Skeeter went out the kitchen door and down to the landing. He broke sticks into little pieces and threw them into the water and imagined they were boats on a big ocean and he was sailing them. He looked down the bayou and saw Pa and Jeff coming with the load of wood. When they were close enough, he waded into the water and grabbed the bow of the boat and pulled it to the bank, as Pa and Jeff started throwing the fat pine wood out of the boat.
“You should have been with us this time, Skeeter,” said Jeff. “We saw a big buck over in the woods. We had sot down on a log to rest, and we were real quiet when we heard him comin’ through the bresh. He run right up to us and jest stopped and looked at us fer a spell. If’n we’d had the gun, we coulda kilt him as easy as shootin’ a squirrel.”
Skeeter’s eyes grew wide at the mention of the deer.
“I ain’t never seed as many deer signs as they were over there this mornin’,” said Pa. “I guess they ain’t been none of them slickers from up at Fort Henry messin’ aroun’ over there and skeerin’ ’em fer a long time now. We’ll go over there next week and git us one of them buggers.”
“Kin I go too, Pa?” asked Skeeter.
“Shore you kin go. Hit’s jest that when we go after wood they ain’t no room to take you, and other than that we jest don’t have no call to go into the woods very often.”
Skeeter had never been into the big woods on the other side of the river, and the thought of getting to go made him feel wild with excitement. He could picture all kinds of mysteries that he had never seen, but he didn’t think that he would like it better than the swamp.
He helped Pa and Jeff store the wood beside the house, and then they all went in to wash up for dinner. Each took his turn at the washbasin and towel. Skeeter had become so excited at the thought of the deer hunt that he forgot to tell Pa and Jeff that he had caught the crawfish.
Ma put the dinner on the table, and they sat down to begin the meal. The young poke salat, hush puppies, and eel tasted so good that they all put large quantities of the food in their mouths and ate in silence. About halfway through the meal several of the crawfish escaped from the bucket in the corner and were crawling toward the table. Pa happened to glance at the floor and saw them coming toward him. He tried to jump from his chair, but his feet caught the bottom of the table and turned him over, rolling him backwards over the floor, right into the middle of the crawfish. The half-swallowed food stuck in his throat, and he fought madly to get back to his feet. Finally he dashed to the door and looked back and saw that his assailants were only harmless crawfish.
“Where in the tarnation of hell did them things come from?” he bellowed. “I thought all the devils in the swamp were comin’ after me. That liked to have scared me to death.”
“Skeeter caught ’em in the swamp whiles you were gittin’ the wood,” said Ma. “Now come on and finish yore dinner and stop actin’ like an idiot.”
Everyone had to hold their breath for a minute to keep from laughing at Pa.
“Well, if’n hit weren’t for the fact that I could eat six barrels of that gumbo you make, Ma, I would whale the daylights out uv Skeeter right here and now. Ain’t no use in scarin’ the livin’ out’n a feller like that.”
Skeeter got up and caught the crawfish, put them back into the bucket, got a pan and covered the top of the bucket so that they could not escape again, and the meal was finished in peace.
When the last person got up from the table, there was not a crumb of the dinner left. Theresa stacked the dishes on the stand, and she and Ma went to the other room to lie down and rest a few minutes before washing them and cleaning the kitchen. Pa and Jeff lay down on the front porch, and Skeeter went down to the bayou to lie in the grass and look up at the clouds. The sun sent pleasant waves of simmering heat into the Corey clearing, and the breeze brought cool air from the bayou. In a few minutes the entire family was fast asleep.
It was mid afternoon when the blast from the steamboat whistle awakened Pa Corey from his deep sleep. He grumbled something about where he wished the steamboats would go, and rose slowly to his feet. Ma and Theresa were cleaning up the kitchen. Jeff was still asleep on the porch. Pa walked into the kitchen, took the gourd dipper from the shelf, dipped it in the bucket, and took a long draught of the cool water. He walked back to the front porch and shook Jeff. “You better git up, Son,” he said. “We got to string them fish afore hit gits dark.”
Pa went into the kitchen and took the long fish string from a nail on the wall. On one end of the string was a slim copper spike, and on the other a copper circle. He went down the back steps and to the landing. Skeeter was not there, and the skiff was gone. Pa found a small round stick about a foot long, pulled a loop of the line through the copper circle and pushed the stick through the loop. Then he pulled tight on the string, and the stick was tied fast against the circle. In a few minutes Jeff came down to the landing, and they pulled the fish box out of the water. Pa took a fish out of the box, ran the spike through its gills and out its mouth, and then let it slide down against the stick. He handed the spike to Jeff, and as he would take the fish out of the box, Jeff would string them. When they had finished, they put the fish back into the box, closed the lid, tied the end of the string to a bush on the bank, and shoved the box back into the water. Jeff took his knife and started cleaning one of the large buffalo he had left out for their supper, and Pa went back into the house.
Jeff was washing the fish in the bayou, when he saw Skeeter coming toward him in the skiff. When he pushed in at the landing, Jeff saw three large water moccasins lying in the bottom. Their heads had been neatly popped from their bodies. Skeeter threw the snakes on the bank and got out of the skiff.
“I’ll give you one of these skins to trade in town tomorrow if’n you’ll help me clean ’em,” he said.
“I’ll shore do hit,” said Jeff, “’cause I need somethin’ of my own fer to trade. Whut you reckon them folks do with these here skins, Skeeter?”
“I heard that they makes belts and purses out of ’em.”
“Well, I shore wouldn’t want no snakeskin hangin’ aroun’ my belly or in my pocket,” said Jeff.
Jeff put the cleaned fish on the grass and grasped the tail of one of the snakes. Skeeter took the other end and ran the sharp blade of his knife down the underside of the snake. When they had split the snake in half, they trimmed the meat and bones from the skin. Then Skeeter washed it in the water. When they finished cleaning all three of the snakes, they hung the skins over a limb of a tree to dry, and went into the house. Ma was giving Pa instructions as to what to bring from town the next day. Jeff took the bar of yellow soap from the shelf and went up the bayou to take a bath, and Skeeter stood at the door looking after him.
“Why air hit that Jeff’s been takin’ a bath afore we go to town the last few times?” asked Skeeter. “I can’t see no use in him gettin’ all that fancy.”
“I’ve heard that he’s sparkin’ some gal in town,” said Pa.
“Yeh,