got the best of him.
“Y’all just keep your britches on and I’ll tell what it was I saw when I turned around.”
We stepped closer and squatted down in front of him in anticipation.
“When I turned around, boys, I was looking down both barrels of a sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun. And it was scary, ’cause I knew that thing could scatter me to kingdom come.”
“Good Lord, Uncle Curvin!” I exclaimed. “Was it a bank robber?”
“They was two of them,” he said. “The other one had a mean-looking pistol that he was waving around.”
“What did you do, Mister Curvin?” Poudlum asked, wide-eyed as an owl at dusk dark.
“Why, I did exactly what he told me to. I got face down on the floor and started praying.”
“They told you to pray?” I asked.
“Naw, I done that on my own.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, the one with the scattergun held everybody at bay while the other one went behind the counter and cleaned out all the money. I peeked up and saw that my little pile of money was still laying on the counter.
“The one with the pistol grabbed it when he came out from behind the counter with his sack of money, but the other one jerked it out of his hand and dropped it down on the floor next to me on their way out of the bank.”
“So you didn’t lose your money?”
“Nary a dime of it. Got it all right here in the bib pocket of my overalls. I don’t know why they done that, but I shore do appreciate them not taking my pitiful little pension. A lot of rich folks can afford to lose a lot of money more than I can afford to lose these few dollars.”
“Did they catch ’em, Mister Curvin?”
“Naw, they got clean away. Wouldn’t nobody to stop ’em.”
“How about the law?” I asked.
“Shoot, the law was all out collecting their cut from the bootleggers. Mr. Leon Stringer, he owns the bank you know, went running outside after the robbers left with his necktie and suit coat flapping in the wind and went straight over to the sheriff’s office, but couldn’t find nobody there except the jailer. That’s what he told us when he come back. That sorry excuse for a sheriff, Elroy Crowe, showed up ’bout a half hour later, just long enough for the trail to get cold.”
“Sounds like dem bank robbers got clean away,” Poudlum said.
“Well, somebody did see ’em leave town heading down Highway 84 toward Coffeeville. Sheriff Crowe got on his radio and had somebody put up a road block down there to stop them from taking the ferry across the Tombigbee River, ’cause he said they were probably trying to get across the Mississippi State Line.”
“Did they get across the river?” I asked.
“Naw. I heard everything on the sheriff’s radio. They skidded around when they come up on the road block and headed back up Highway 84. They found their abandoned vehicle ’side the bridge over the Satilfa Creek, and figured they were heading down the creek toward the river on foot. Last I heard they were talking about getting some dogs together and start tracking them.”
“Whew, you done had yourself a day, Uncle Curvin. You saw a bank robbery, and then on top of that, had yourself a flat tire.”
He got up off the running board and started getting in his truck when he said, “You got that right, son. I believe I’m going home and lay down for a spell. I ain’t used to bank robbers and flat tires.”
He cranked up his truck, put it in gear, leaned out the window and said, “How long you boys plan to fish?”
“Tonight and tomorrow night, and then we’ll probably go home Sunday morning,” I told him.
“I might mosey over here and check on y’all sometime this weekend.”
“We’ll be at the Cypress Hole, and we got two extra poles. Come on by.”
“I expect I might. Good luck, boys,” he called out through the truck window as he pulled out onto the road. We watched until his dust trail disappeared around the curve.
Poudlum scratched his head and said, “You don’t think he made all dat stuff up, do you?”
“Naw, he wouldn’t do that. Come on, the trail to the Cypress Hole is right up yonder on the left.”
“Well, I just hopes dem bank robbers did head down de creek towards de river and not back up de creek dis way.”
“They probably want to get to Mississippi, like the sheriff said. They wouldn’t come back up this way,” I reassured him.
We could see the bridge over the creek when we turned off the road onto the trail that angled through the woods to our destination. On both sides of the trail there were great red oaks and cedar trees, thick with tangled muscadine vines. The wild grapes had long ago been consumed by squirrels and raccoons. I liked those wild grapes. You could pop one in your mouth, bite down on it and it would burst in your mouth and render a sweet, tangy juice. There were seeds which you had to spit out, and the hull, after you chewed on it a little. My momma made some delicious jelly from the juice of them. She even made preserves from the hulls. They were both tasty inside a biscuit.
The trail was like a tunnel with tree branches forming a canopy above your head. A little further into the woods and the cypress trees began to appear with long draping ribbons of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs.
“Dis is spooky,” Poudlum uttered in almost a whisper.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It opens up into a big clearing just a little ways up on the creek bank.”
We emerged from the trail and there it was, the place where Ned and Fred and I swam in the summer and the best fishing hole on the creek. You could see the sky up through a large opening of the forest.
Poudlum turned in a complete circle, taking it all in. “Now, I likes dis place,” he said. “It’s big and open. And look over there, it looks like somebody had a fire built over by de creek bank.”
What he was referring to was a circle of big round creek rocks, blackened with soot, where the previous campers had built their fire.
The sound of the water was the best part. It swept gurgling and churning over the flat rocks of the shoals before dropping into the pool below. That pool was where the fish were.
Poudlum noticed, too. “Dat water spilling over dem rocks shore do sound fine. It soothes you kind of like when my momma sings a hymn at night.”
“Yeah, I like the way it sounds too. We’ll sleep real fine tonight listening to it. But first we have some work to do. Let’s set our sacks down and start gathering firewood. We’ll need a big stack of it so we can keep the fire going all night. It’ll get cold soon as the sun goes down.”
We stashed our stuff next to the fire bed and began
