The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (17 page)

After they had eaten and disposed of their trash, they decided that it was time to seine more minnows and go run the lines again.

Jack was not sure that there would be as many minnows on the sandbar this time as there had been the first time, but there were.

As they paddled the boat up the river, there was a sound that they both heard unmistakably. “REEEOWRRRR.” It had the high-pitched sound of a baby but it would not be mistaken for a baby’s cry this time. The second time they heard it, it seemed to be moving downriver on the same side as their camp.

“I’m glad I put more wood on that fire before we left camp,” Jack said.

“Can them things swim?” Billy Joe asked.

“What do you mean, ‘them things’? Do you know what it is?”

“We were talking about a bobcat before so I just assumed that was what it is,” Billy Joe confessed.

“It might be a bobcat but it might be a bird or an alligator or a wild hog for all we know.” Jack explained it away. “Anyway, we got a fire so it ain’t gonna go near our camp.”

They didn’t hear anything for a few minutes so the boys assumed it was gone and continued on their trotline run. They caught so many catfish this time that Billy Joe was afraid that they were not going to have enough space in the live well to hold them, but they did.

The boys made it back to the camp without hearing that chilling sound.

They pulled the boat up on the sandbar. Jack looked around to see if they had had visitors while they were gone. He didn’t find any strange tracks on the sandbar but just as he finished looking, terror went through both boys as “REEEEOWRRRR” filled the woods.

After a moment’s hesitation, they both ran for the water. Jack pushed the boat back into the water but Billy Joe decided to swim for it—splash he went in the water.

Jack kept his head and yelled at Billy Joe, “Jump in the boat.”

Billy Joe did exactly that. The water he had jumped into was no more than knee high.

The boys paddled to the other bank and tied the boat fore and aft to the trees there. They sat and watched their violated camp.

As they watched, a bobcat strolled calmly out onto the sandbar, looked around, smelled a few things and appeared to be eating something and then walked off the other end of the sandbar into the woods as easily as he had come.

The boys sat and watched their camp for a while; they didn’t know how long it actually was.

Billy Joe was the first to speak. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think he’s gone but I don’t know for sure.”

As if in answer to Jack’s thought, from far downriver they heard, “REEEEOWRRRR.” He had definitely moved away from their camp.

They untied the boat and eased cautiously back to their camp but hesitated to get out of the boat. Finally, Jack got out of the boat and said, “Come on and let’s check it out.”

Billy Joe got out but very cautiously watched that downriver side of their clearing.

They built the fire back up until it was roaring. That didn’t seem to make them feel any better. The fire hadn’t deterred the bobcat at all.

Jack couldn’t find anything that the cat had seemed to be eating. It might have been a piece of bread or fish that had been dropped by one of them, he never did find out.

They decided on one more time running the trotlines. This time it would be to roll them up.

“We should have had a gun,” Billy Joe said.

“As nervous was we both were, we would probably have missed him and he would have hurt us both,” Jack corrected him.

“Yeah, I guess you are right.”

The boys packed up their camp and waited in the boat until the first sign of daylight so they could better see to roll up their trotlines. With those in hand and having full daylight, they packed their bicycles and headed for home.

“You gonna tell your momma and daddy about this?” Jack asked as they rode.

“No way,” he said emphatically. “They would never let us go into the woods again. We didn’t get hurt none but they won’t see it that way.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jack agreed. “If people only went where it was safe, it would be a very dull world to live in.”

At home, the boys cleaned the catfish, wrapped them tightly and divided them evenly, making a third package to take to Mr. Morris, and put them in the refrigerators in their houses.

Their parents said they had caught more fish than the adults had.

Jack and Billy Joe just looked at each other and grinned. Their parents thought the grins were because the boys had caught the most fish. They would never know.

Chapter Eleven

The Gully

The trotline fishing had worked out well, in the boys’ minds. Not only did they catch fish but they had an adventure with a bobcat and walked away unscratched, literally. Now they had to get approval to go to Bynum’s Bluff sledding.

Jack didn’t know how to ask. His father solved that problem.

“Where y’all off to this mornin’, Jack?” Jack’s father asked at the breakfast table.

“We’re goin out to Bynum’s Bluff to sled on the pine needles,” he responded.

“You mean down into that big gully with Tallahala Creek at its bottom?”

“Yes, sir, but we just sled down to a stand of trees that block us from goin’ into the gully,” Jack explained.

“That’s not good enough. I want something more positive than that to stop you. It’s a hundred fifty to two hundred feet straight down to the bottom of that gully, if I remember it right.”

“Yes, sir, you do, but we plan to take some old two-by-fours with us to nail to the trees to make sure they stop us.”

“How old are the two-by-fours and where did you get them?” his father asked.

“The two-by-fours were old batter boards from layin’ the floor in the new girls’ dormitory at the college. When the concrete dried, they piled them all in a pile waitin’ to go to the trash dump. We asked Mr. Watkins, the superintendent, if we could have some. He said take them all but we ain’t got no use for all of ’em and no way to haul ’em if we did.”

“Jack, don’t say ‘ain’t got no.’ You know better than that,” his mother said from the other side of the kitchen.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jack dutifully replied.

“So, how many two-by-fours you and Billy Joe takin out there?” his father asked, returning to the subject.

“We figure we can haul four apiece on our bicycles,” Jack said.

“Four apiece?” he asked, astounded. “How you gonna do that?”

“We’re gonna tie them up close under the saddle and tie them to the steering column with two on each side. Then we can straddle them and be able to ride easy,” Jack explained.

His father thought a minute and finally said, “Well, maybe you can. You boys are pretty good planners.”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” Jack replied.

“All right then, would you do me one big favor?”

“Yes, sir, what’s that?” Jack promised.

Take plenty of those ten-penny nails out in the garage and a good hammer and make sure all the two-by-fours are nailed solidly.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack quickly responded.

“That’s not all,” his father responded just as quickly. “When you have nailed them up as best you can, step back and say to yourself, ‘Would Daddy approve of this?’ If the answer is yes, go ahead and enjoy the slide. If not, either fix it or just don’t slide on it. That’s easy, isn’t it?”

“Ah…yes, sir, I guess so, but that’s a pretty tough requirement for me to decide if you will like it before I can slide on it.”

“I meant for it to be a tough decision for you to make,” his father said.

“Yes, sir, I’ll do it,” Jack said solemnly, and his father knew he meant it.

There was a knock at the back door and Jack rushed off to go with Billy Joe.

Jack’s mother walked over to the table and looked down at her husband with a smile on her face. “You’re playing dirty pool with Jack this morning, aren’t you?”

“How’s that?” he asked, already knowing what she meant.

“Having him look at the trees and two-by-fours through your eyes,” she said.

“That was the only way that I knew for sure that he would make sure it was safe as I would look at it. I can’t use that too often but to save his life, I can.”

She kissed him on the forehead.

Jack and Billy Joe rode their bikes the three blocks around to the new girls’ dormitory and to the scrap pile the workers had built. As they rounded the corner of the junior college building, Jack spotted a man who jumped behind an arborvitae bush to conceal himself. Jack could have sworn it was Lige Garner. He would have to be on the lookout for him.

“Pick out the straightest ones that have the least concrete stickin’ to them,” Jack instructed as was his nature.

“Yes, Daddy,” Billy Joe mocked.

Jack showed Billy Joe how to tie the boards under the saddle and to the steering column post without getting the light rope or its knots into the wheel spokes.

“You bring the hammer?” Billy Joe asked.

“Yeah, it’s tied to my handlebar.” Jack pointed toward it. “And Daddy told me to bring this bag”—he patted his blue jean pocket—“of ten-penny nails.”

“I got a hammer and a bag of ten-penny nails too,” Billy Joe announced.

“You remember where you hid those RC Cola signs?” Jack asked.

“Now how could I forget that?” Billy Joe scoffed. “It was just yesterday.”

“Let’s go then,” Jack said as his bike started moving.

The boys rode north on Court Street and turned right beside the courthouse, past the big Baptist Church, and the houses started getting further and further apart. At the bottom of the hill leading up to the Bynum house, the boys stopped.

“You wanna try to pump your bike up the hill or are you gonna push it up?” Jack asked.

“I think I wanna pump up the hill as far as I can without gettin’ too tired and then push it the rest of the way up,” Billy Joe decided out loud. “I may even pump all the way up.”

“Let’s go,” Jack said, having heard that as a challenge. “If you can, I can.”

They both pumped all the way to the crest of the hill, although their leg muscles were about to cramp up.

Jack stopped on top and looked back down. Billy Joe stopped beside him and also looked back. Both acted as if it was no real challenge. Neither boy would have wanted to do it a second time.

After a few moments, both boys pedaled on toward their destination, Bynum’s Bluff.

About a half mile further on, the main road turned left. The road they wanted, however, went straight ahead through a well-hung gate.

Jack opened the gate, allowed Billy Joe through, pushed his own bike through and closed and latched the gate.

Within two minutes, the boys came out onto a rolling pasture. Actually, it was a Mississippi Power Company right-of-way with power lines running as far as you could see north and south. There were cattle grazing on it in both directions.

The sun was shining brightly in an azure cloudless sky. There was a soft breeze blowing from the northwest. It was that ideal time of the year when it was most comfortable to be outside.

“Let’s go get this show on the road,” Billy Joe pushed.

“Take it easy,” Jack replied. “We have all day and I don’t see any reason to rush it. This can be dangerous if we are not careful.”

“Your daddy talked to you, didn’t he?” Billy Joe guessed.

“Yeah, yours too?” Jack asked back.

“Uh-huh.”

“What did you promise him?” Billy Joe asked.

“That after we got the two-by-fours up, I’d stand back and look at it as if it were his eyes and decide if it was safe or not. How about you?”

“More or less the same. Daddy said that all he asked was that I look at it and honestly decide if it was dangerous before we made the first slide.”

“What we gonna do?” Jack asked.

“I guess we’re gonna do what we told our daddies we would.”

“All right,” Jack agreed, “let’s go through it step by step and figure out where our dangerous places are.”

“Don’t we need to nail the two-by-fours on the trees at the bottom so we’ll know if that makes it less dangerous?” Billy Joe rightfully asked.

“Yeah, I reckon we do,” Jack conceded.

Billy Joe took the hammer from his bike and slid it into the hammer loop on his jeans and started to untie the two-by-fours to move them down the slide hill.

Jack followed suit and did the same.

At the bottom, the boys surveyed the situation to determine where to nail the two-by-four boards.

“The way I see this is,” Jack began. “There is a flat place at the top of the hill where we will push off from. Then goin’ down the hill, we will be able to control the sled some by pulling on the ropes on each front corner. The pine needles are pretty even all the way down so we should slide straight. At the bottom, the grade of the slide kinda tapers off some so we should slow down before we hit the trees. Is that about it or do you see any other problem?”

“Naw, that sounds good to me,” Billy Joe agreed, but how are we gonna locate these boards on these trees to make sure we catch one every time?”

“Sit down on the ground and let me see how high they need to be,” Jack asked of Billy Joe.

Billy Joe sat down in front of the trees looking toward them and Jack looked the situation over closely.

“I think,” Jack began, “that we need to put one board at about one foot off the ground all the way across. That will make it so that we can’t go under it. The top board should be placed at about two feet off the ground. That should catch us fine. Sittin’ down, we couldn’t get through there if we tried to.”

“All right, lets do it then,” Billy Joe said, showing his impatience.

Each boy piled his boards up at the base of the trees.

Since Billy Joe was the best with a hammer, Jack agreed to place each board and hold it while Billy Joe nailed it to the tree. They agreed that each board should have two nails in each end at the trees that supported them. It didn’t take long. Billy Joe didn’t bend many nails so they moved right along.

When they finished and surveyed their work, it looked better than they thought it would. There were four boards at two different levels. That was thirty-two feet of “backstop” to catch them at the bottom. How could they miss it?