The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (8 page)

The boys all liked Mr. Ward. He treated them as if they could understand what he was saying. Not like some adults who acted as if boys were not smart enough to understand so there was no use taking the time to explain.

The generator was lowered and meshed, and the lights came on all over the camp.

The boys cheered and dived off the generator tower. Mr. Ward let them climb back up and do it a couple more times.

“Let’s go have some lunch, boys,” Mr. Ward said as they walked back toward the shelter.

On one of the tables in the shelter, another detail had set out loaves of bread, peanut butter, pimiento cheese and pints of milk in a tub of ice. The boys made sandwiches and drank milk until each had had enough.

It wasn’t necessary to demand that the boys take an after-lunch nap. They took their blankets, as did the men, and found a shady place under a tree.

Jack and Billy Joe were among the first ones up.

“What we gonna do?” Jack asked.

“We still got our bathing suits on so let’s go swimming.”

“We’re not supposed to without one of the men being there,” Billy Joe said.

“Yeah, I forgot,” Jack said, being used to making his own decisions in the woods. “Well, let’s just walk down there and look. That can’t hurt.”

They walked over to the edge of the clay bank and looked down to the river. There were four or five boys in the water having a ball.

“If they can do it, we can do it,” Billy Joe said.

“Nah,” Jack warned, “it won’t matter if there’s one or a hundred, Mr. Jackson will punish ’em all. He enjoys that.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Billy Joe conceded. “No sense getting cut outta the fun just for a few minutes of swimming.”

The tone of the boys playing in the water changed noticeably. There was an added sound of fear.

Jack and Billy Joe looked to see what the cause of this change was.

All the boys were looking down the river and shouting. What they were saying was unintelligible but it appeared that someone had been swept away.

“I think somebody is floating down the river and can’t swim back,” Billy Joe said.

Jack turned and ran back to the sleeping campers near the shelter. He ran directly to Mr. Ward and shook his shoulder. “Mr. Ward, Mr. Ward,” he said.

“What’s the matter, Jack?” Ward asked, instantly awake.

“I think one of the boys has washed off down the river, sir,” Jack explained.

“What, what’s he doin’ in the river?”

“I don’t know, sir, but somebody better get him back. There’s snakes and alligators in that river,” Jack said.

Ward jumped up and ran over to Louis Jackson and shook him.

“What’s the matter?” Jackson asked sleepily.

“A boy’s in trouble at the river, I guess.” Ward gave the best explanation he had.

Jackson jumped up and ran to the clay bank overlooking the river.

Recognizing one of the boys, Jackson yelled, “What’s the matter, George?”

“Tom Nelson swam out to the center and couldn’t get back,” George said. “He floated off down the river.”

“Can you see him?” Jackson asked.

“No, sir, he’s gone way down the river,” George replied.

“What are we gonna do?” Ward asked Jackson.

“One of us needs to take a couple of the boys and go down the riverbank as far as we can to find him,” Jackson said, still clearing his head of sleep. “The other needs to get in the car and drive to the next bridge crossing and pull him out in case he goes that far.”

“The next bridge is at least five miles downriver,” Ward said. “If he stays afloat that long, he’s a better swimmer than I thought he was.”

“That’s all we can do,” Jackson said. “You go—I’ll walk the river.”

“Okay,” Ward said as he turned toward the car.

Jackson picked two boys—big strong guys who looked as if they could handle themselves.

“The rest of you,” Jackson said, “stay out of the river and stay out of trouble. We’ll be back with Tom soon.”

And they walked into the woods south along the river.

A quiet had fallen over the boys waiting. They each imagined the worst, depending on his own inner fears.

“Boy, I wish we had Mr. Ezell’s boat,” Jack said.

“Yeah, and it’s not all that far from here,” Billy Joe said.

“Hey, you know, it’s not,” Jack said. “Why don’t we ride our bicycles over there and get the boat?” Jack suggested. “We could float back here in no time, especially if we paddled hard.”

“Yeah, Mr. Ezell’s house is right along the way,” Billy Joe said. “We can tell him on the way.”

The boys ran to their bicycles and started off toward the main road. At the main road, they turned toward the bridge and Mr. Ezell’s driveway—actually a rut road about a mile long that Mr. Ezell had made driving through the woods to his cabin.

The boys made good time to the driveway and down it to Ezell’s house. They knocked on his door but got no answer.

“He won’t mind if we take his boat. We use it all the time and he never says no.”

They raced to the boat landing—just an easy sloping bank of the river where you would drag the wooden boat out.

They pushed the boat out into the river and jumped in as they had done so many times. The roughly cut “paddles” were in the boat and the boys wasted no time in digging into the river to hurry the boat along.

“Here comes the bridge,” Jack observed while still paddling as hard as he could.

They passed under the bridge in a hurry.

“We’re going at least ninety miles an hour,” Billy Joe exaggerated.

“Nah, but we’re moving pretty fast,” Jack corrected.

They made the mile to the campground in short order. The boys along the bank yelled encouragement and waved until the boat was out of their sight.

“We had better look for Mr. Jackson and the others,” Jack said.

“Yeah, we can’t all fit in this boat but Mr. Jackson can,” Billy Joe pointed out.

They kept looking and paddling.

“Help,” they heard a weak voice say.

“Where’d that come from?” Billy Joe asked.

“I don’t know, but keep a sharp eye,” Jack said.

“Help,” the little voice said a bit louder.

“Where are you?” Jack yelled.

“Over here on this tree,” the voice said, obviously very tired.

“I see him,” Billy Joe said. “Over there.” He pointed toward a dead, leafless tree that had fallen into the water.

Both boys paddled as fast as they could to overcome the current to get across the river to the dead tree and Tom Nelson.

They pulled the bow of the boat past Tom and toward the bank where Billy Joe could grab the tree. The current continued to push the boat downriver and into Tom. Jack had to hold the boat away from the dead tree to keep from mashing Tom.

Billy Joe managed to tie the boat to the tree trunk with the short piece of rope that dangled from the bow. He could then come back and help Jack get Tom into the boat.

Jack was still holding the boat off Tom but he was assisting him by putting one hand under Tom’s armpit and pulling. When Billy Joe got there, he reached into the water, grabbed Tom by the seat of the pants and pulled. Tom rolled over the side and into the boat.

He may have been crying before, Jack and Billy Joe didn’t know, but now he was all smiles.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he kept saying over and over.

Jack and Billy Joe didn’t have a jacket or even a shirt to give Tom to keep him warm. They were still in their bathing suits.

“Get down low in the boat so the wind won’t hit you so much, Tom,” Jack said. “Maybe you won’t be too cold until we can get you back to the camp.”

“We had better go back across the river to the ‘slow side,’” Jack said. “It will be easier paddling upstream.”

They both started paddling hard and Jack guided the boat diagonally across and upstream. When they reached the other side, they paddled steadily along the shoreline where the current was slower. They made good progress, but both boys were getting very tired before they heard somebody yell, “There they are. They made it.”

They pulled the boat onto the swimming area sandbar and helped Tom get off.

“Has Mr. Jackson come back yet?” Billy Joe asked.

“Not yet,” one of the boys said.

They all walked up the clay steps and back to the shelter. Tom, Jack and Billy Joe put on pants and a shirt, which made them more comfortable.

“What’s going on, boys?” the booming voice of Mr. Jackson asked as he came out of the woods.

“They found Tom and brought him back,” one of the boys said.

“Who found him and how?” Jackson asked, puzzled.

“In the boat,” another boy said.

“What boat?” he asked, walking up to Jack and Billy Joe.

They explained to him that they remembered Mr. Ezell’s boat after both adults had left and decided to go get it. They told him about finding Tom hanging onto an old dead tree.

“We couldn’t stay right next to the river all the way down,” Jackson said. “I guess one of the times we had to leave it, we missed Tom and you boys.”

Jack and Billy Joe were still not sure how Mr. Jackson, the disciplinarian, would take their initiative.

“Well, good job, boys, I’m proud of you. I’m gonna go see your folks when we get back and tell them what a good job you have done. And just to think,” he added, “I thought you were gonna be the troublemakers and you turned out to be lifesavers.”

Chapter Six

The School Pond

Mississippi summers begin early and end late. The boys had to make all their fishing trips begin early so they started early each day so they could be on time to run their paper routes, except on Sunday. The
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newspaper didn’t have a Sunday paper. Today, they decided to try fishing the school pond. They hadn’t been there in a long time—at least a month.

The summer was hot and the humidity was high but Jack and Billy Joe didn’t notice. They had a date with a few bream in that pond.

“What kinda bait did’ja bring?” Jack asked.

“Red worms. How ’bout you?” Billy Joe asked.

“I went down to Branch Creek yesterday afternoon and dip netted about a hundred crawdads,” Jack exaggerated. “I think bream bite better on crawdad tails.”

“Daddy told me Branch Creek had sewage runoff in it from the cotton gin.”

“I ain’t gonna eat the crawdads,” Jack said. “I’m just gonna use them for bait.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s okay,” Billy Joe agreed as the boys kept walking through the junior college campus.

They turned into the road between the vocational school buildings. The vocational school had been established to teach the returning GIs a trade to help them go from army life to civilian life. Since this was farming country, agricultural courses such as animal husbandry, soil preparation and crop rotation were taught. They also had automotive repair and, in another area, watch and clock repair.

Walking down the road to the pond, they came to two gates, which they climbed over rather than opening the gate to go through. A standard practice for boys.

Behind the vocational buildings, the crops—corn, potatoes, peas, beans, peanuts and other row crops—grew neatly with a section for each. These were the results of the students’ agricultural training. It was the practice of boys going fishing in the school pond to gather any of these vegetables they wanted to be cooked pondside with their fish. The college didn’t mind.

Jack and Billy Joe helped themselves to corn and potatoes. They would have liked to have some boiled peanuts but they took too long to boil in brine water and neither boy wanted to keep the fire going for that long.

“Let’s don’t take more than we can eat,” Jack suggested. “We don’t want to make the school mad. They might tell us to quit takin’ their stuff.”

“Yeah—I’ll pull four ears of corn and you dig up about six small potatoes,” Billy Joe said. “That’ll be enough.”

They did that and continued on to the pond dam.

“I got somethin’ new I’m gonna try to cook the fish today,” Jack said. “I get tired of burning my hands putting the skillet in and out of the fire. I brought a wire grill that Daddy gave me and I’m gonna use it on the dam.”

“Okay, you play with your cookin’ stuff and I’m gonna catch some fish,” Billy Joe announced.

Both boys put their packs down on top of the dam. It was a clay dam, roughly set with a flat place on top from much foot traffic. It also had small ledges all along its length on the pond side. On the side of the dam away from the pond, it sloped gradually to provide better support to hold the water pressure. At one end of the dam, a spillway had been left for the water to escape and continue to flow until it finally merged with Rocky Creek.

The stream that fed the pond came from a spring that surfaced on college property.

“You wanna run the nests in the spillway hole first?” Billy Joe asked.

“Yeah. That’s a good idea,” Jack said, leaving his pack.

The “spillway hole” is the little catch basin that had been dug out of the clay by the water falling over the spillway. The bream and shellcrackers who lived in that little pond would hide in little holes in the bank when a stranger, such as the boys, entered their water.

The boys sat down on the edge of the basin and removed their shoes and socks and rolled up their pants legs as far as they could. They eased into the water.

One boy went one way around the edge and the other boy went the other. They moved slowly, feeling in each hole in the clay bank for fish.

Billy Joe found the first one and clamped it in both hands.

“My stringer is on my belt,” Billy Joe said. “Can you reach it for me?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, leaning across the small catch basin to retrieve the stringer from Billy Joe’s belt loop.

He unwound it and held it for Billy Joe to thread the bream on.

Billy Joe took the stringer, tied it to his belt loop again and let the fish hang in the water.

Jack caught the next one and they both caught one more each, which seemed to exhaust the catch basin’s fish supply.

Walking back to the top of the dam, Jack went back to building his new “stove.” Billy Joe decided he would fish from the little dock that stuck out from the dam into the pond. He took the fish stringer with him with its four little bream. He sat on the end of the dock with his feet dangling just above the water and tied the stringer to one of the support posts of the dock.