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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued
They set out for Middleton’s camp up by Blue Cypress Creek, Harlan in the lead, both striding strongly through the grasses that dragged at their boots and swished and whooshed as they passed. Cicadas screamed in the afternoon light. As the sun dropped the mosquitos came out in their droves, buzzing in the bushes, impatient for the night when the heat no longer prevented them from hunting blood.
In less than an hour the two men were slogging up the marl grade to the lake. The Middleton spread was several buildings, one a bait shop and boat house of dingey, once-white clapboard, right up against the little channel that led from the main body of water to about a hundred yards west of the lakeshore.
The main house that sat facing the end of the canal was a rambling, cypress-log monstrosity, with so many add-ons that Red suspected the original house was completely enclosed. Smaller sheds sat back of the house, and Red could see a pickup inside an old barn used for a garage.
A Mexican man was out on the dock throwing a bait net for the coming night-time fishing.
“Rosalijo, algun’suerte?” Any luck?
The man nodded energetically. “Oh diablos si, Jefe!” Oh hell yeah, chief!
Red had to laugh |
He tugged up the net he’d thrown, and a squirming mass of glistening minnows came up with it, flapping wildly on the dock, the evening sun reflecting flashes from their silvery scales. Rosalijo lifted the lid from a wooden barrel of water on the dock and, with a splash, expertly emptied the load of bait fish into the water without letting a single one wiggle free.
He was dressed in one of those loose shirts the Mexican boys wore, although good old American overhauls were strapped over it. He wore red Buna rubber boots with the overhaul’s legs tucked in, and a bunchy red bandana around his neck that Red swore would be big as a tablecloth if laid flat. All he lacked was a big straw sombrero.
“Rosalijo, run’n take th’ truck over’t the Junction and fetch Uncle Skeeter, will ya? Rapidamente ’hora, comprende?” Quick now, Red translated.
As the two men strode on towards the house, Rosalijo replied, “Sure thing, chief,” produced the missing sombrero from behind the bait barrel, and hustled into the barn to the driver’s side of the truck.
Red heard the characteristic winding noise of a Ford being readied for starting. A pause, then the main crank. Ruh-nuh-nuh, the engine turned over, and with a loud pop and a small cloud of smoke, it caught, and began the slow puttering of a well-kept motor idling.
A red light showed on the left rear of the truck, all the law required to drive at night; that and one headlight. It didn’t matter which side the headlight was on.
The truck backed out and Rosalijo took off like a scared rabbit, leaving more smoke mixed with a shower of marl grit flying from the spinning tires.
“That boy’s gonna be the death of me yet,” Harlan swore, shaking his head at the ground.
“He your boy?” Red asked.
Middleton kept shaking his head, “Nah, just one of Skeeter’s kids. Got him a Mex woman, right purty too, and took in a couple a’ her boys and a girl. Then they’s the Ind’ins.”
Red swung a look at him, eyebrows raised.
“Well, see, Skeeter, he’s got him a Seminole woman too, took in her girl an’ boy, so that’s what, five? Lordy, me’n Ma had our hands full with two boys and a girl.”
At this Red stopped dead |
Middleton stopped too, leaned back, clearly offended, scowling at him with those hard, dark little eyes. “Hell no! They ain’t married! He’s jus’ keepin’ ’em. What’a ya think we are, some Gat dang heathen Mormons or somethin’?”
Those very “heathen Mormons,” Red had heard, were establishing a ranch up north along the Kissimmee River, the main water supply of the Everglades. Red quickly assured Harlan that he was a born-again, washed-in-the-blood Southern Baptist, accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior, and no heathen Mormon would ever corrupt him.
This seemed to satisfy Middleton somewhat, but on the way to the main house he was still grumbling. “Damn it to hell, they ain’t even white women fer Gat’s sake…”
They took the three front steps to the porch, and Middleton banged through the screen door already hollerin’. “Ma! Missus Middleton, we got us a guest fer supper!”
The presumed Mrs. Middleton began hollerin’ right back, from the rear of the house where the kitchen would normally be. This house proved no different. The complaining became louder as she came through the short hallway. “Jus’ like you men, don’t give a woman no time to repair, jus’ come bustin’ in with extra mouths to feed…”
Ma Middleton was a short, stout woman with long mousy-brown hair in a loose bun who was still attractive, for an old woman in her fifties. She wore a cotton shift with little blue flowers on it and was wiping her hands on a white apron as she came.
“What you want me to do, Ma, send you a letter ahead a’ time?”
Red eyed Harlan and mouthed “repair?”
“Haw haw, Ma’s jus’ joshin’ with you. Go on, ask her.”
Red stuck out his hand as she got to him, said “I’m Red Dedge, pleased to meet you, ma’am. And don’t you mean ‘prepare’?”
Ma’s face split in a sly grin. “Nope, I mean repair. I’m fixin’ to make dinner.”
Middleton haw-hawed some more, said “That’s jus’ her idea of a little joke.”
Ma fixed Red with a steady smile and said “It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man, Harlan has told me about you.”
“Well I’m flattered, I’m sure” |
Ma turned back for the kitchen and Middleton pointed Red the way. To the right was a big cypress wood table, a free-form trunk sawn horizontally to make a solid slab four inches thick. It was finished to a beautiful pattern of tan-to-brown rings that followed the irregular outline of the table itself.
“Nice work,” Red complimented, as he and Harlan sat down.
“Thank you kindly. I made that m’self. That’s right, yore a saw man, ain’tcha? Told Ma while ago about you boys, looked like you was gonna make good, the way you worked. Ain’t ever’body would go cut trees in the swamp for extra money, the most of them just do repairs around the farm until the crop comes in. Work y’all do, just lumberin’, would kill any city boy.”
Ma had gone to the left, where a huge porcelain-enameled stove sat against the far wall. The spot had clearly once housed a wood-burning stove that had shared the chimney with a fireplace in the next room, but it had been converted to gas sometime in the past. A metal chimney pipe penetrated the old bricks surrounded by a plate of steel to hold and seal it.
She returned with two plates laden with fried crappies, mashed potatoes, green beans and hot wedges of skillet-cooked cornbread.
“Like to have me some greens with m’ cornbread, but it’s too hot yet. I’ll have collards and turnips come winter, and Ma’ll stew ’em up with some nice salt pork, mmm hmm, them eat good.”
Red was nodding, tucking into the beans. He normally ate fresh vegetables every day of his life, and had been starved for something green for days. He then tore into the fried panfish.
“Miz Middleton, ma’am, this here is some of the best crappie I ever ate.”
She replied by forking another fish onto his plate.
He turned back to Harlan. “Y’ gotta wait till the frost gets on the greens, just like citrus. It sweetens ’em up.”
Middleton grunted agreement, his mouth full of potatoes and fish.
“Just like the crappies, you c’n catch ’em in the summer but best time is just after a cold snap. Then they’re really runnin’.”
Blue Cypress Lake was famous for its crappie and bass fishing. Harlan Middleton allowed as how big-mouth bass was fun to catch, but he wouldn’t eat them.
Red agreed, “They’s too mushy, an’ not much taste. I might eat a striper, fried with the right spices, but they’s way better fish to eat.”
It was Middleton’s turn to nod. “We get all the regular catch too, catfish and croakers, warmouth and mouthbreeders an’ yellow perch. Ever’ one’s better eatin’ than a bass, striped or otherwise.”
Red swallowed, asked, “When y’all normally plant, over this way? It’s hotter here than over by the coast.”
This was standard farmer-talk |
“Yore right there, son, we cain’t plant greens ’til October, usually, while over yonder you can gen’rally get collards in by the first of September. Pick ’em maybe January ’stead a’ December, ’cause remember, it stays colder longer over here too, just like it’s hotter in summer.”
They both chewed and swallowed heartily, nodding sagely, as farmers had from time out of mind, over these weighty matters of the earth, the water, and the sky.
Ma Middleton hovered in the background, refilling plates and glasses of sweet iced tea like clockwork, as farm wives always did, except for Sunday dinners. “Does a mother’s heart good to see a growin’ boy eat up. Our boys are grown and gone, up in the Okeefenokee, trappin’ hogs for the railroad crews to eat. Our daughter Delia married a shrimper out of Tampa, and the both of them drown’t in a storm in 1918.”
Red offered his condolences, then asked about corn.
Middleton allowed as how corn didn’t grow for shit much south of the Panhandle. “Soil’s too poor for corn, tobacco, most other high-yield crops, even peanuts. It’ll grow or’nges, pineapples, strawb’ries, once even had a peach industry up north a’ Ocala, but somethin’ come along and kilt the trees. Happens a lot in Florida. Folks’ll get somethin’ goin’, and boom, a bug, a fungus, a blight, a freeze, whatever, comes along and eats it all up. Or somebody grows something cheaper than we can. Florida, it takes three t’ five years to grow pineapples; Hawaii an’ Mexico can grow ’em in two to three years. Foreign countries with better soil an’ better weather, hell son, y’ can’t compete with that.”
Red told about growing corn up by Jasper in Hamilton County, and doing well with it. “Tol’rable, the livin’ you c’n make on corn, and it’s easy to grow. Tobacco, too. Never grew cotton; don’t know much about it.”
Middleton allowed as how he’d never grown cotton either. “Heard they was too many thorns. Prob’ly wouldn’t grow here no way. Like I said, the soil’s poor as a church lady in a whore house.”
Ma brought out two thick white ceramic coffee cups, steaming with a strong brew, bolstered with cane sugar, fresh cream and a solid dollop of rum. She set the bottle on the table between them, along with two fancy shot glasses, and went to washing the dishes, “So’s you men-folk can talk private bidness,” she said, then turned back to Red. “You know, I know some Dedges from way back. Where you from?”
“Well, we won’t hold that against you” |
“Ah, you think we might be kin to these folks you know?” Hoping to get an opening, looking for an angle to get him in good with these people. He needed them.
She looked at him like she was speaking to a child. “Hell no, son, they’s from up Pennsyltuckey way.”
Harlan Middleton pounded the table, and haw-hawed until he like to have choked. Finally, he turned to Red, poked him in the ribs. “Got’cha! Did’n I tell ya she was a pistol?”
Red in fact remembered him saying no such thing, but decided not to complicate things further by saying so.
Red tried to roll a cigarette, fumbled it as usual, and Middleton took his Granger rough-cut from his fingers and a paper from Red’s pack, and rolled a perfect smoke that looked like a Camel.
Red was impressed, and thanked him sincerely, lighting up.
“Gave it up m’self, gave me the dry coughs, but I c’n still roll. Learn’t if from m’ cousin, that damn wild dog Tom. He’d been in jail. Said he had a lot a’ time to practice. A’fore he took up with that God-damn John Ashley…”
They drank about half of their coffees, Red smoking contentedly, and, the obligatory small talk behind them, they got down to serious subjects.
“What brings y’ here, son? Said you got a ‘proposal’.”
Red took up the bottle, poured and drank a shot, poured another and set it down, took a sip of the coffee. “First off, sir, me an’ Guy and Guy’s girl Jenny from over at Senegal Johnson’s place, we done took up at that old cutting we had, the night we first…met. Hopin’ that’s all right with you.”
Middleton turned his little black eyes hard on Red. “Not the Jenny? Jenny the seamstress? That does that…thing, with her mouth?”
Red’s eyes flew wide.
Ma hollered at her husband, “Julius Harlan Middleton! Why, I never!”
Middleton didn’t take his eyes off of Red. “Don’t tell me you never, ’cause I know better…”
Red wished he could sink through the hardwood floor. Instead, he mouthed to Harlan: “Julius?”
Harlan pointed a finger and mouthed back: “Shut up.”
Red shut.
Ma threw her dish towel at Harlan |
Middleton sniffed. “Damn straight.”
Desperate to get to his mission in this crazy household, Red jumped in. “Mister Willis likes Guy’s ’shine, and we aim to set up a still. Also said he’d buy logs from us. We’d like to sell ’em to him. Reckon he’d want planks and beams and such too?”
Middleton nodded. “I know he would. He’s building a ranch out south a’ Jackass Junction, and he needs everythin’ from fence posts to floorboards. He’s got three grown kids, two girls and a boy, an Ind’in and two Mexes. They’s all married and poppin out little Skeeters every which way. And they all need houses too, and barns and fences an’ all. And, he’s right partial to cypress, bein’ as how it don’t rot.
“And as far as that there ’shine, I can guarantee you I’ll take a share too, it’s some mighty fine liquor. We missed it when that little can we bought run dry.”
Red sipped his coffee, nodding. “We can provide all that, only it might take a little longer than usual. Don’t know if I mentioned it, but Guy went missing a leg a few months back. Some fellers took a dislikin’ to him havin’ his still…”
Harlan froze, dark clouds gathering on his brow.
Ma stopped clattering the dishes behind him, and Red noticed it got awful quiet all of a sudden.
“You tangled with them God damned Ashleys, didn’t you? Didn’t I tell you to stay the hell away from that nest a’ vipers? Do they know you’re here?” He jumped up, slamming his chair against the wall behind. “Do they? You better tell me, boy, right now!” His hand was inside his coat, where Red had seen the lump of a pistol on their way to the homestead.
Red was stunned, stuttered, “No, no sir, I spent the last few months hiding from ’em and killin’ ’em!”
Middleton stared at him.
Ma said, “Harlan….”
Red went on, speaking fast, fearing for his life. “We done kilt every Frankenfield man on them islands, burnt their houses and stills, boats and storehouses and the rum in ’em. Left their women and children cryin’ on the shore. I swear, I kilt Kenny Frankenfield my own self. You could see the smoke for miles, up and down the river. And I hope you don’t mind, sir, but I come w’thin half a inch of killin’ yore cousin, Clarence.”
Red found himself falling into the backwoods country talk, like his hosts.
Some of the air seemed to come out of Middleton |
The older man sat back down, and the dishes began to clank and gurgle in the wash-water behind them again. So much for men-folk’s “bidness” being anything like private.
Red considered that he ought to remember that lesson when he married Lola; women always listened in.
“So,” Harlan asked, “how in the hell did you let that snake Tom get away?”
They heard the sound of the truck rattling up the marl track from Hesperides Road, and Red allowed as how “Uncle Skeeter” would want to hear the story as well, so they waited on him for a few minutes.
Ma put out another shot glass. Red noticed Middleton drank sparingly, but steadily, in sips. Not a white-knuckle type of drinker then. Something good to know.
Skeeter, on the other hand, swept in through the screen door like a hurricane wind, grabbed the bottle, gargled for a few seconds, slammed it down and grabbed Ma in a passionate hug with a kiss on the lips, then sat to the bottle again. His voice growled and gritted like the tires of the old truck on the marl grade outside. “Heard you ’as here,” and he tipped up the bottle again.
Red threw back that second shot of rum, said “Ahh,” and proceeded to tell all about the raid on the Frankenfield’s homestead, blood, guts and all.
Ma Middleton stood back by the stove and took in every word. The two rough swamp rats, speaking mostly through Harlan, were impressed that the “darkies” under Ezra Stone had had the gumption to burn those evil bastards out.
“I think you’d be surprised what them darkies got the gumption for, when they ain’t out-numbered, out-gunned and out-lawed,” Red said.
Harlan haw-hawed, Ma snickered, and Skeeter wheezed, his version of a laugh. Harlan allowed as how the darkies were pretty much like everybody else, and generally got a raw deal.
Red, from up Georgia and north Florida way, was used to more rabid racism from the older men he knew.
“Same thing, only differ’nt,” Harlan stated flatly.
Something else good to know, Red considered; it went along with their general acceptance of Skeeter’s Mexican and Seminole women and stepchildren.
Once again, he got down to business….
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
A most enjoyable narrative of domesticity and hospitality! You were in a convivial, robust spirit, Maestro Owens, when you created this telling! Lesser writers such as myself can hardly comprehend how you do it.
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