The Right Side of Wrong Page 13

  “She needs to know.” Miss Becky slid her needle into the fabric so it wouldn’t get lost. “Ned’s family had the Gift for as long as they can remember. I ain’t gonna get into this too deep, but right after we got married, one of his kin whose name I won’t call, found he had both that Gift and another one that helped people pass on to be with the Lord. It got him in trouble with the law and Ned had to help him out of it. Before it was over, some people in town wanted to lynch both of ’em, like they did that colored feller just before I was borned.”

  The brutal lynching of a wrongly accused Negro man in Chisum at the end of the nineteenth century was a sour reminder of how mob violence could quickly destroy innocent lives.

  “It’s a story you won’t believe, and I’ll tell it to you one of these days when the time is right, and now it ain’t. Anyways,” Miss Becky continued, as if they hadn’t gotten off track, “Top dreamed about dark buildings and dark people, but he said it wasn’t the Exchange.”

  “We don’t much dream about what happened in the past, just what’s coming.”

  “I know that, but he was telling me the other morning.”

  Cody sat straighter with a start. “I just remembered something. Before Christmas I dreamed about snow and rivers and Mexicans.”

  Miss Becky’s face told her feelings. “You was shot in the snow, and nearly wound up in the creek.”

  “May be part of it, but creeks ain’t rivers, and there weren’t any Mexicans around. Wonder if it has anything to do with Top’s dreams. Mexicans are dark.”

  “So are coloreds.”

  Norma Faye shivered. “I wish y’all didn’t have that.”

  “So do I.”

  The screen door opened and Ned came into the living room, along with Tom Bell. “Y’all ready?”

  Miss Becky stood. “Howdy, Tom. Y’all crank this frame back up and we will be there in a minute.”

  Cody went outside to call the kids and to let the sun warm the chill he felt when they were talking about dreams.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Uncle Cody gave his rod tip a twitch, cranked the open-faced reel twice, and twitched again. Squatting on the bank of the creek not ten feet away, I watched his Rapala lure swim toward us.

  My own bobber didn’t move much at all, unless you counted the sluggish current. “I haven’t gotten a bite.”

  Pepper’s rod tip twitched and bowed hard toward the river’s surface. “Got one!”

  Her head covered with a colorful flour sack bonnet, Miss Becky expertly moved the tip of her cane pole to the left, making room for Pepper’s fight. “Yank him in!”

  Sitting beside Miss Becky, I couldn’t help but notice that Norma Faye had on makeup and lipstick, something most of the women in Center Springs didn’t use, and she sure was pretty. I’d been watching her off and on while we were fishing, and wishing she’d come over and sit by me for a while.

  Grandpa put his pole down and made his way to stop behind Pepper, in case she needed him. He waited behind her, hands holding the galluses of his overalls. On past about twenty feet, Mr. Bell gave his bobber a little jig, but kept his eyes on Pepper’s line cutting through the smooth water. A fat crappie rose and flashed in the sunlight. As usual, she forgot to reel and pulled it up on the bank by turning to run.

  “Lordy, gal!” Uncle Cody hollered and laughed. “You do that every time. Use that reel you have there and your fish won’t always be sandy!”

  Grandpa reached out and grabbed about two yards of loose line to help her land the speckled crappie. “You’re like your grandma there when she was about your age. She’d have ten feet of line on her cane pole and instead of lifting the tip, she’d turn and run up the bank, a-dragging them poor ol’ fish in the mud.”

  Miss Becky flashed him a grin from the shade of her bonnet. She never went outside in the sun without covering her head. Old folks knew any type of covering, whether it be a bonnet, hat or cap, kept them cooler than having the sun beat down on an unprotected head.

  Grandpa put his brogan on the flipping white perch to hold it still until Pepper grabbed its bottom lip. The rest of us went back to fishing while they slid a stringer through its gills and lowered the fish into a deep hole close to Miss Becky.

  Mr. Bell checked the worm on his hook, and then plopped it back into the water. “I sure appreciate y’all asking me to come along. I haven’t been fishing in a coon’s age. You know, we couldn’t fish this way down in the Valley.”

  “Why’s that?” Grandpa asked.

  “Too many snakes and not much water.”

  Uncle Cody cast again and let the lure float in the slow current for a minute, waiting for the rings to disappear. He says fish’ll swim up and look at the lure for a while, trying to decide if it’s good to eat. “You know, me and Lane Miller went fishing last fall and learned something about snakes.”

  Lane Miller was one of Uncle Cody’s running buddies. The last time I’d seen him was when we went dove hunting. Lane was laughing, because their friend Steve had shot himself in the foot only a few minutes before we got there. Those guys always thought it was funny when anybody got hurt, if it wasn’t too bad.

  I’d seen them howl one time up at the store when Jimmy Foxx, one of the Foxx brothers, walked around too close to the back of his truck and barked his shin on the trailer hitch he already knew was there. While Jimmy Wilson cussed and rubbed his shin, his brother Ty Cobb and the rest of the guys laughed so hard tears ran down their faces.

  Uncle Cody said it was because they’d all done it at one time or another, and to them, it was funny. “Me and Lane couldn’t fish that day without being covered up with snakes.”

  Pepper shivered. She hated snakes worse than spinach.

  Uncle Cody twitched his rod and reeled twice. “Me and Lane were out on Hap Martin’s pool that morning, working some lily pads growing near where the draw comes in, when this water snake swam by with a half-grown frog in his mouth. Well, I got to thinking, we weren’t doing much good with crawdads, and if snakes were hitting frogs, maybe a bass might like one too.

  “So when the snake got close enough I scooped him up with a net to get the frog out of his mouth. He wouldn’t let go, and I didn’t want to kill the poor thing, so I grabbed him by the back of his head and tried to pry the frog out of his mouth.”

  Pepper shuddered and Grandpa, who also hates snakes with a passion, joined her in a sympathetic shiver.

  “That snake hung on like a snapping turtle, so when Lane wasn’t looking I snuck a half pint of snakebite medicine out of his tackle box…”

  “Snakebite medicine?” Miss Becky perked up.

  “Yeah, you know, he had half a pint of J.T.S. Brown in there.”

  Miss Becky shook her head at the thought of them having whiskey. Me and Pepper grinned, because we know our Uncle Cody.

  “Well, anyway, since both hands were busy, I opened the bottle with my teeth and then I poured a good slug of whiskey around the frog and in the snake’s mouth.

  “Hoooweee! He like to have twisted out of my hand, then he let go of the frog and I pitched him out into the pool. That snake thrashed around in the water for a good five minutes before he disappeared. I threaded the frog on my hook and threw it out there, but I had to give it up.”

  “Why?” Miss Becky asked.

  “Well, lordy, I couldn’t fish for all the snakes offering up frogs for trade.”

  Acting aggravated because she’d been snookered, Miss Becky waved a hand at Uncle Cody and pulled her bonnet down a little to hide her smile.

  Brush popped a ways down on the other side of the creek. Two men in overalls came out of the woods and picked their way toward the bank. Both wore beat up felt hats that mostly shaded their faces. Neither acted friendly, nor waved.

  We sometimes liked to fish that part of the creek where there were several deep holes and a big wash under the bank
, so I didn’t think nothing of anybody else fishing over there, because it had happened before.

  “Can you tell who that is?” Grandpa asked.

  Uncle Cody waved in greeting. “Naw, they’re too far down.”

  We knew they saw us, but neither one so much as raised a hand in response. I could tell it aggravated Grandpa. “Unfriendly, ain’t they?”

  “Umm hum.” Uncle Cody reeled slowly.

  We could hear them talking across the water, but I couldn’t make out the words. They sat down on a blow-down log, but neither one put a line in the water.

  I could tell Grandpa and Uncle Cody didn’t like it a bit that they hadn’t spoke. We watched our bobbers for a few minutes in the silence of such rude behavior.

  After a while, Norma Faye cleared her throat. “I’ve never had trouble with snakes, but the last time I went fishing, I caught something most people haven’t ever hooked in their lives.”

  “What’s that?” Uncle Cody was surprised that she had a story.

  “Me and Darla Watkins were drift fishing for catfish in a big lake outside of Houston late one night when I hooked something that bent my rod completely double. It felt like a tire on the other end and it took me nearly thirty minutes to pull it up from the bottom, since I didn’t want it to break off.”

  The whole family nodded right along, because we knew better than to horse a big blue catfish out of the water. The line would break sure enough.

  Pepper jumped in, not wanting Norma Faye to get one up on her. “I bet it was a turtle. That’s what they do, they lay down deep there on the bottom and you have to drag them in or break the line. I’ve had that happen before.”

  “No missy, it wasn’t.” Norma Faye tilted her head and pushed her red hair back. “But I wished it had been. It took a while, but I finally hauled it up close to the boat and you know what I’d caught?”

  We all stopped fishing and minding our bobbers to hear.

  Mr. Bell absently jiggled the end of his cane pole. “What was it?”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Cody said. “What was it?”

  “Well, Darla Watkins recognized right off. I’d done gone and caught myself a body.” She paused and waited. When no one said anything, she went on. “The dead body of a man, bobbing there in the dark beside our boat, and let me tell you, it was spooky.”

  We shuddered in horror. It had never occurred to me that Norma Faye had had a life before she and Uncle Cody got together. I knew she was married to Calvin Williams and that he was mean as a snake, but to think she’d lived down in some exotic place like Houston, and had found a dead man, was almost too creepy to think about. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one surprised.

  “What did you do?” Grandpa asked. I remembered he’d helped haul a body out of the Red River not too long ago.

  “Why, Grandpa, we didn’t have a Body License, so we threw him back. We caught five more the same size before the night was over.”

  We were so surprised none said anything for a minute. Then Uncle Cody threw back his head and laughed loud and long. Grandpa snickered, and Pepper frowned, because she’d been caught a second time in five minutes and didn’t like the idea of adults getting the better of her.

  Miss Becky shook her head, and then I realized her shoulders were shuddering. At first I thought she was crying, but I realized she was laughing. She gave Norma Faye a little push on the shoulder with her big hand, and right then I knew that everything was all right between them.

  On the other side of the creek, one of the men snickered and one of them mocked our laughing. Grandpa’s ears got beet red, and it was easy to see he was getting a mad on for sure.

  Pepper stepped a little closer to me to whisper. “Them two are assholes.”

  It always scared me to death when she cussed around adults, but she was so good at it, they seldom heard. “Look at Uncle Cody.”

  He stood stiff as a bodark post. His shirt was unbuttoned, and I knew his .45 was under it. I was sure glad he had it on. Those two men were scary.

  After a while, one of the men unrolled the string on the tip of his cane pole and plopped a bobber into the water. The other one didn’t do nothin’ but sit across there and stare at us.

  The day was pretty, and the shade keeping the sun off our necks was cool and solid.

  Miss Becky raised the end of her pole to see if she still had any bait left. “Well, y’all sure have been pulling my leg, that’s for sure. Top, this reminds me of when your mama was a little older than you. She liked coming here.”

  Everyone on the bank quieted down, because we usually didn’t talk about Mama or Dad. They were killed in a car crash several months earlier, and it hurt to bring them up.

  I felt like I had to say something. “I didn’t know she liked to fish.”

  “She did when she was a teenager. Remember Ned, we had to walk a foot log to get over the creek. She was scared every time.” She laughed at the recollection. “She always took her shoes off and moved as slow as molasses until she got halfway across, then she almost ran and skipped the rest of the way.”

  I couldn’t imagine Mama ever laughing. Her last years were filled with depression. Dad never let loose of her, though, and did everything he could to help her get well.

  “Your daddy taught her how to walk a log when he started hanging around, and them two were always running off to fish, or pick berries or picnic. My lands, I never knew two people who enjoyed each other so much.”

  The wall of new and painful images rolled over me in a wave. I couldn’t imagine my parents young, or having fun. Life had beaten them down to a quiet couple who spent their evenings alone, Mama in bed with the shades drawn, and Dad in the living room, reading.

  Pepper kept her eyes on the bobber, but I knew she was waiting for me to say something. I was at a loss for words, thinking about them as youngsters. It was Grandpa that broke up our dark thoughts.

  “One thing your grandma didn’t tell you was that your Daddy was wild as a March hair when he was growing up, and I spent most of my time trying to keep him out of trouble. One time, when him and his cousin Dale were younger than y’all, they were fooling around somewhere here in the creek bottoms when Dale had a pain and needed to go outdoors. He dropped his overalls to squat down in the grass beside a dirt road, and something bit him right on his little bare butt.

  “He thought it was a snake and it scared him to death. He jumped up, pulled up his overalls, and took off running for the house with your Daddy chasing right behind. Every now and then Dale got scared and dropped his overalls and squatted down so your Daddy could check out his snake bite. He got on his hands and knees to look, but Dale couldn’t wait, so he jumped up and ran for the house faster than ever. A little further along, they went through the same thing again with him squatting in a dirt road and your Daddy squinting at his little old white butt. They finally got to the house and found out he wasn’t snake bit, he’d only squatted down on a sharp stick that stuck his bottom.”

  It was like the Red Skelton show on television. We were all laughing big when Uncle Cody’s rod bent nearly double and he reared back to set the hook with a grunt. Before I knew it, mine did the same thing and the two of us were fighting big catfish.

  They went on the stringer before you could say Jack Robinson. It went that way for the next few minutes, and then things settled down again as the fish moved off. We waited for the next bite to start.

  I smelled the fish on my hands and the mud under our feet. I wished Uncle James and Aunt Ida Belle were there with us to tell some stories of their own, but she wasn’t much on fishing.

  I knew Pepper didn’t care, though, because if they’d been with us it would have been, “Pepper do this,” or “Pepper be careful,” or “Pepper why are you doing that?” It was enough to unnerve a preacher.

  Uncle Cody edged closer to Grandpa. “Those two over there haven’t moved an inc
h, and that feller ain’t pulled his line in one time to check his bait.”

  Grandpa grunted. “I know it.”

  It made me think to check my own hook. The bait was gone. Sometimes little bream will nip a worm off your hook without moving the bobber. I reeled it in and reached toward the coffee can full of worms, when Mr. Bell threw a holler at me.

  “Hey, son, have you thought about using chewing tobacco for bait?”

  I hadn’t heard that one. Once I caught a crappie on a piece of pink bubble gum, but that was all. “No, sir.”

  “Well, you might want to think about it. Course you’ll need a club for that technique. You want to try?”

  “Sure.”

  “Find you a thick stick, and I’ll cut you a piece of this Day’s Work plug here in my pocket.”

  Limbs were on the ground all around us. Everybody concentrated on their fishing while I put down my rod and went to find a good one. Pepper joined me, because we were about to learn something new. When I passed Grandpa, I saw he was staring hard at the men across the creek.

  We found a stout limb on the other side of Miss Becky and carried it to Mr. Bell. He had a chunk of fresh tobacco in his hand. “Here, drop this in close to my bobber.”

  I followed his instructions and we squatted down. I watched the line leading down into the water. “What now?”

  “Why, you wait.”

  “For what?”

  “In a little bit those fish are going find that chew, then you give them a few more minutes.”

  Pepper frowned. “Then what.”

  “Why Little Missy, when that catfish comes up to spit, you whack him ‘tween the eyes with your club.”

  That must have been the funniest thing the adults had ever heard. I knew we’d been had, but it was Pepper that threw a fit. She stomped off toward the woods, cussing under her breath.

  “Pepper,” Uncle Cody called. “Stay close by.”

  She was as sulled up as a possum. “Why?”

  “You might slip into the water and drown.”