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,” said Skeeter. “I got a plum bucketful of crawfish here that I caught in the swamp.”
“Well, now, ain’t that nice?” said Ma. “I’ll get yore Pa to git me a few things in town 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
