“I don't want to go in there,” Belinda whined. Daddy grabbed her up with one hand and Rick with the other and carried them, each under an arm, like two sacks of flour. When we were among the trees, we could smell the river and hear the Allison kids already yelling and throwing rocks into it. I broke into a run. Joe George was standing on a huge rock that stuck out into the water.
“Boy! Ain't this something!” he said. “I never seen so much water!”
“I bet there's acres of fish in there,” I said.
The river was about as wide as two houses, and it ran between two rocky banks that sloped down from a grove of trees on each side. It ran slowly, and the sun glared off the little ripples, giving it the appearance of a wrinkled, peeling old mirror. It was the grandest sight I'd ever seen.
The women were carrying things down from the cars and spreading them around a big grassy place on the bank. One of the older Allison girls was running around, trying to keep up with Belinda and Rick and all the other Allisons, and Daddy and Jim Bob and Harley and the four Allison men were stringing out the trot lines along the bank and starting to bait the hooks.
“If we hurry and get these hooks wet, maybe we can have fish for supper,” Jim Bob said.
“Yeah,” Daddy said. “You help me, and I'll take the first line across.”
The men stripped down to their drawers, and the Allisons picked up two of the lines and started walking along the bank, looking for good places to string them. Jim Bob tied one end of the remaining line to a small tree near the water's edge, and Daddy took the other end and started wading out. Jim Bob squatted on the bank and paid out the line to him, and Harley kept it off the rocks and snags. The hooks danced a crazy little jig above the water as Daddy pulled them farther and farther away from the bank.
“How's the water out there?” Harley yelled.
“Mighty fine,” Daddy said. “I think I'll just stay out here all summer.”
“Yeah, and if Uncle Sam wants you, he can just dive in and get you.” They laughed. Daddy waded in deeper and deeper until he had to hold his head back to keep his chin out of the water.
“Is that as deep as it gets?” Jim Bob asked.
“It better be. I can't swim, you know.”
As he neared the other bank, he slowly emerged and tied his line and waded back. The line was under water now, and we could just see where it went in and came out. The men sat down on the bank and watched the line.
“We're sure going to miss you, Will,” Jim Bob said. “I know me and Virgie sure miss our two boys.” He sighed. “But I guess there's nothing to do but hope it don't last too much longer.” Daddy and Harley nodded silently. Soon, three of the Allisons joined them. Bill Allison grinned.
“I brought back some brew, last time I was in Waco,” he said. “It's iced down in the truck. I sent Lon to get it.”
“Son,” Daddy said, looking at me, “why don't you boys go get your fishing poles and go sit down there on that rock? There ought to be some good ones down there.”
We did, but we didn't have any luck. It was nice, though, just sitting there holding the pole, watching the wind bow out the line over the water, wondering if that cork was ever going to bobble, talking to Joe George about how dumb those Allisons were. Bill Allison was the only one who ever said much. The others just followed him around and did whatever he told them to. The Allison kids made plenty of noise, though, and we could hear them and Belinda and Rick yelling at each other among the trees, playing tag or something in the weeds that Belinda didn't want to walk through. Some of those Allisons were bigger than Joe George and me, but they would rather play with Rick than us. The women were circled on the grassy spot, sewing and talking and laughing. Every now and then, one of the men flung a beer bottle into the water, and pretty soon it would float by us.
About sundown, the men ran the lines for the first time, rebaited them and came back with enough fish for supper. We ran over to watch them gut and skin the cats and scale the perch.
“Boy, I guess old Jake knew what he was talking about, didn't he?” Daddy said to Jim Bob.
“Yeah, if this keeps up, we might not ever go home.”
When Daddy's tin plate was heaping with clean carcasses, I carried it to the grassy place, where Mother and the other women had a couple of fires going and hot grease ready in the frying pans and coffee boiling. It was getting dark, and the air was full of the smell of burning wood and frying fish and potatoes and coffee and sourdough biscuits and the river and the grass and the noises of locusts and frogs and kids and women and grease sizzling and logs popping, and I wished it would never rain or hail so that we could live out there like that forever.
There's just nothing better to eat in the world than fried catfish right out of the pan and sourdough biscuits. We all were so hungry that we just ate and ate and didn't say anything, except every now and then, during a rest, somebody would tell how good he felt. But nobody bothered to answer.
After supper, the men gathered around the fire and drank more coffee and talked, while the women cleaned things up. Joe George and I played hide-and-seek with Belinda and Rick and some of the Allisons for a while, but when we tired of that and started making noises like wild animals to scare the younger ones and make them cry, the daddies made us all go to bed. They let Joe George and me sleep together, though, so we spread our quilts on the bank and lay and talked for a long time and listened to the water lap the bank.
I don't know how long I'd been asleep when I heard the men hollering. I sat up and saw a woman running down the bank with a lantern, and some of the other women trying to shush the little kids and keep them in bed up by the fires. Then I saw Daddy and Bill Allison walking up the bank holding Lon Allison by the arms. All were naked, and Jim Bob and Harley walked behind them, carrying clothes. They were naked, too. Bill Allison's wife was walking ahead, carrying the lantern.
“Where are the other boys?” she asked.
“I left them to finish up the lines,” Bill said.
They walked Lon over to the fire, and he sat down and peered at his belly. Bill squatted on the ground and looked at it, too.
“Something's happened,” I whispered to Joe George. “Come on.”
The men looked funny, standing naked in the firelight. All the women except Mrs. Allison kept busy with the children. Lon looked funniest of all. He was sunburned almost black from the waist up and was fish-belly white from the waist down, as if he'd fallen headlong into a deep mud puddle. He stared at his belly and then gazed up at Bill through long strings of wet blond hair. His buck teeth glistened in his dark face.
“It's all right, Lon,” Bill said. “Don't worry about it none.”
When Lon moved his hand away from his belly, I saw two small holes and a little blood oozing from them. Mrs. Allison poured coal oil on them and wiped them with a dirty rag. Harley stepped in front of me. “I think we'd better get him in to Doc Kenney, Bill,” he said.
“No, no, he'll be all right,” Bill replied. “Lon's been bit worse that that before, ain't you, Lon?” Lon appeared not to hear. He watched his mother wipe the holes, never flinching from the coal oil.
“Did you see it happen?” Jim Bob whispered to Harley, not noticing me behind them.
“Yeah,” Harley whispered. “Didn't you?”
“I just heard Lon yell something.”
“Yeah, he hollered, âThis is for fucking Laverne,' and threw a snake at Will. Will grabbed it and threw it back.”
“Jeee-sus!”
“Now come on, Bill, be reasonable!” Daddy snarled from across the fire. “That might've been a water moccasin, for all you know! This boy could die!”
“It wasn't no water moccasin. And even if it was, Lon ain't going to die, and we don't need no doc. None of us Allisons has ever needed no doc, and we ain't going to start now. We've always took care of our own, and that's what we're going to do now.”
“But Bill! He
can
die!” Daddy cried.
“Listen, you son of a bitch! You keep talking like that and you won't never call Bill Allison a friend again!” The other two Allisons had arrived with their strings of fish, and they and Bill gathered around Lon and Mrs. Allison as if they expected Daddy to charge them.
“Will's just trying to help you, Bill,” Jim Bob said. “Doc Kenney can get that boy well a lot faster than you can.”
“You're all a pack of mother-fucking sons of bitches!” Bill was almost foaming with rage. “Lon's my boy, and I'll do with him what I goddamn well please! Now get your asses away from here and leave us alone!”
Daddy took his clothes from Harley, and the three men dressed.
“Gale,” Bill said, “go get the white lightning out of the truck. Lon could use a drink.” One of the other Allisons trotted off naked through the trees.
“Shit!” Daddy said. Then he noticed Joe George and me. “You boys get back to bed right now,” he said, “or I'm going to whip you both within an inch of your lives.”
It was about daylight when Mrs. Allison screamed. We were up and running to where the Allisons already were crowding around. Mrs. Allison was lying on top of Lon, screaming. Lon lay naked, not moving. Bill yanked Mrs. Allison off. “Lon's dead! Lon's dead!” she screamed. I glimpsed Lon's belly. It was swollen, the fang marks looking like small dark eyes in a small purple head. Mother and Daddy had come by now, too, and Mother grabbed me. Her hand was trembling.
“Get out of here, Gate!” she said. “Both of you. Go over by the fire and stay with the young ones.” She tried to bring the Allison children away, too, but Bill stopped her.
“You leave us Allisons be, Lacy,” he said. “This is our business and nobody else's.”
He allowed Daddy to stay, though, and we all sat and watched Bill and Daddy and Mrs. Allison fumble with Lon, slapping him, pumping his arms, listening at his chest. Then Daddy and Bill wrapped him in a quilt and carried him through the trees and laid him in the back of the truck. Then they came back and gathered up all the Allisons' gear and loaded it, and the other Allisons piled into their car and the truck and drove off slowly across the pasture.
Daddy walked slowly to the fire, and Mother handed him a cup of coffee. He took a long pull and then stood staring into the graying coals.
“He really was dead, wasn't he?” Jim Bob asked.
“Yep.”
“Anything we can do for them?”
“Nope. Bill says the Allisons take care of their own.” He threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “Shit. Well, we might as well pack up, too. I don't think we want to fish any more.”
“What about your trot lines?” Jim Bob asked.
“Just leave them. I guess I won't be needing them for a while.”
The sun was already hot, and the dust was still bad, and we all found that we were covered with chiggers. It was a long ride home.
The next day, Mother thought it would be proper for us to go see the Allisons and help with Lon's burial. Daddy didn't like the idea. “Bill killed him,” he said, “and by God, Bill can bury him.” But he finally agreed to go, and Mother began bathing and combing us. Since I could dress myself, I was first into the washtub, which I liked. I hated to bathe after the others, when the water was no longer warm and lapped the thick film of lye soap and dirt onto my skin.
Mother had set out my white shirt and the new pants she had bought at the rummage sale for me. They were the first I had with belt loops, and Daddy had cut down one of his old belts to my size, and I felt big, putting it on. When I was dressed, I sat in the rocker on the front porch to wait for the others and listen to Mother talking to Belinda about her pinafore and Daddy telling Rick to settle down and stop splashing the water on the floor. But I tired of waiting and walked around behind the house and climbed to the top of the cellar and pretended that I was a cowboy hiding out from the Indians. The round earth mound of the cellar was a good place to do that, because I could play like it was a big mountain and the weeds on it were trees, and I could see the Indians riding around the foot of the mountain wondering where I was.
But I tired of that, too, and got to looking at the sheet-iron door that sloped down the side of the cellar to the ground. Finally I slid down it. I didn't go down nearly as fast as I did on the slide at school, but it was fun, and I did it again. Then I started a contest with myself, seeing how fast I could run up to the top of the cellar, slide down the door, and run up again.
Belinda came to the corner of the house and stood watching me. I slid down the door again. When I turned to run back to the top, she hollered.
“Gatewood Lafayette! What happened to your pants?”
The whole seat was ripped. Belinda turned and disappeared, and I knew she had gone to tell on me. I waited for Daddy to appear at the corner with his belt in his hand, but he didn't come. I couldn't decide whether to stay and wait for him or go give myself up.
Then I heard the car start, and I ran to the corner just in time to see it start down the lane. Belinda and Rick waved at me through the back window. I just stood at the gate and watched the car disappear. I was confused. For a minute, I thought they'd just forgotten me and would come back. But I really knew that wasn't true. If it were, Belinda and Rick wouldn't have waved.
Finally I went into the house and put my overalls on again. Then I ran to the barn, climbed the ladder to the loft and over the stacked bales of alfalfa, and dropped the pants into the dark space between the hay and the wall.
The loft was shady, except for the wide beam of white light that poured through the open door where Daddy dropped hay into the milk pen. And it was sweltering. I lay on my back on the hay and watched the sunlight gleam through the nail holes in the roof and listened to the chickens caw-cawing sullenly and Old Blue stomping and snorting. I thought maybe I'd just stay there until Mother and Daddy got home and just let them wonder what had happened to me. I'd just lie there and listen to them calling my name while they searched the farm, and I wouldn't answer. And after a long while, I'd just die in the heat, from hunger maybe, and they would carry my body to the house and lay me down on my bed. They would cry and say, “Oh, if only we hadn't run off and left him!” It would be too late. I'd be dead forever.