Secret of the Satilfa. Ted Dunagan

waiting about half an hour I went back into the store and got myself a Nehi and sat on the front steps nursing it while I gazed down the dirt road looking for my friend.

      I began to wonder what I would do if he didn’t come. Just go on by myself or go back home and share all the stuff in my sack with my brothers?

      I didn’t think I wanted to sleep on the bank of the Satilfa by myself, but still, I didn’t want to give up.

      Miss Lena came outside and stayed on the steps with me. “You think maybe Poudlum isn’t coming?” she asked softly.

      “I don’t know, but it’s not like him not to at least come tell me if he’s not.”

      After another thirty minutes I got angry and defiant. I stood up, shouldered my sack and started walking down Center Point Road toward the creek. Over my shoulder, I called back to Miss Lena, “I’m going fishing, and I’ll be at the Cypress Hole if anybody’s looking for me.”

      I had to stop and rest twice before I got to the Church. Even though I kept switching my sack from shoulder to shoulder, the strap bit painfully into it as I walked, and it grew heavier and heavier with each step I took.

      The sun was still beaming warmth down when I crossed the Mill Creek Bridge. Halfway up the hill beyond it I could see the sun striking gold from the mica stones in the ditch.

      That was about the time I heard the ruckus coming from back behind me. Somebody was yelling. I cocked my head, listened real hard and heard a faint voice yelling, “Mister Ted, wait up, I’m a comin’!”

      I recognized my friend’s voice and was elated that he was coming after all. The day took on a whole new outlook as my excitement about the venture returned. I stepped off the road, set my sack down in the shade of a big black gum tree, and waited.

      It wasn’t long before Poudlum came trotting up with a wet sheen on his face. He stopped in the middle of the road when he saw me and said, “Hey, Mister Ted.”

      “I done told you I ain’t no mister. I’m just Ted.”

      “I keeps forgettin’. But anyway, I’m here, even if I is late.”

      “What happened to you? I waited forever on you.”

      “We got company. Dey been here all week, and my momma thought I ought not to run off and leave my cousins. But I finally got her away from all dem folks and told her dat I had promised Mister Ted we was going fishing. She thinks a lot of you, so when I mentions yo’ name she packed up a syrup bucket full of biscuits and side meat and told me to git. When I got to de store Miss Lena told me you had already started down de road. I been walking real fast and running some to catch up wid you.”

      I was so happy to see Poudlum that I didn’t care about the details of his tardiness; I was just pleased that he was finally with me.

      “What you got in your sack besides a syrup bucket full of biscuits?”

      “I got some fishing line, some hooks, and some corks.”

      “That don’t sound heavy at all. Mine’s about to cut through my shoulder. Would you carry it a while for me and I’ll carry yours?”

      “Shore I will,” Poudlum said as he shouldered my sack. “Lawd, what you gots in it, rocks?”

      We stopped to rest again a ways on down the road, secured our bags in some tall weeds, climbed down a steep bank, and drank our fill from a spring we knew about. The water was cool, crystal clear, and sweet to the taste as it came bubbling up out of the ground. It was only about two inches deep, and as I lay on my belly I could see sunlight reflecting gold glints off the sand beneath the water.

      We rested for a while before we got back on the road, anxious to begin our adventure on the creek. But we hadn’t gone far before Poudlum began asking questions.

      “Dis fishing hole we heading for, de Cypress Hole, colored folks ain’t usually allowed to fish at it. Why you think dat is?”

      That was a perplexing question and I wasn’t sure how to answer it, but after a little thought I told Poudlum, “I think it’s ’cause they ’fraid y’all would catch all the fish in it.” I knew it wasn’t the real answer, but I didn’t know how to say the real reason without hurting his feelings. I think he knew the real reason, but I could tell he appreciated my answer as the way I felt, because he grinned and said, “Why you ’spect it’s called de Cypress Hole?”

      “Probably ’cause there’s a lot of cypress trees around it.”

      “De water deep in it?”

      “There’s a big deep place right below the shoals, which is the Cypress Hole. That’s where we’ll fish.”

      “What’s a shoal?”

      “Uh, that’s a place in a stream where the water is running over a lot of rocks. We can walk across the creek on those rocks. That’s what we’ll do when we set out our trot line.”

      “What kinda fish you think we gonna catch?”

      “Catfish and perch, that’s all there is in there.”

      “What we gon use for bait?”

      “We’ll catch some crickets and grasshoppers when we get there. Plus there’s some dead pine trees we can get grub worms out of. I brought a little empty pint jar we can put them in.”

      “What if you fished without no bait?”

      “You mean just throw an empty fish hook in the water?

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Wouldn’t nothing happen, Poudlum. Why, that would be kind of like licking a clean plate.”

      There was a little swampy area about a quarter of a mile before we got to the Satilfa where a big stand of bamboo grew. We stopped there and cut us some fishing poles. We cut four in case we happened to break one, plus we planned to use some of the joints in the bamboo to make whistles out of later while we sat around the fire.

      I used the small blade of my pocketknife to cut the poles down because I wanted to keep the big blade sharp to clean the fish with.

      Once we had cut the tops off and stripped the poles clean, Poudlum carried them and his sack while I took my turn carrying my heavier sack.

      A little further up the road I knew the Satilfa Creek Bridge would come into sight just around the next curve.

      When we rounded that curve we both stopped and stared for a moment because there was a vehicle in the road up ahead.

      I squinted my eyes and recognized my Uncle Curvin’s old pickup truck. It had a jack under the front of it with the truck lifted up off the ground. My uncle had had a flat tire.

      At that moment he appeared from around the back of the truck rolling his spare tire. He wasn’t having an easy time because my uncle was crippled from a war wound.

      “Dat looks like yo’ Uncle Curvin up ahead,” Poudlum said.

      “Yeah, that’s him. Looks like he got a flat.”

      “He look like he so skinny it would take two of him just to make a shadow.”

      “Yeah, he’s skinny all right,” I said. “He’s also crippled. Let’s go give him a hand.”

      My uncle was mighty proud to see us. We loosened the lug nuts on his flat tire, replaced it with his spare and jacked his truck down for him.

      “Thank you, boys,” he said. “Y’all heading for the Cypress Hole to do some fishing?”

      “Yes, sir,” I told him. “We gonna camp out and fish for a couple of nights. Where you coming from?”

      “I been up to Grove Hill, and, Lord have mercy, boys, a terrible thing happened there this morning, with me right slap dab in the middle of it!”

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