The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe
The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe
The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe
By A. Jeff Tisdale
Copyright 2012 by A. Jeff Tisdale
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass
and Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover image: RPPC - "
Boys on Pier, Weiss Pond
" - Sabetha, Kansas, 1908
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe
A. Jeff Tisdale
Chapter One
The Heroes
Jack woke up and looked at the clock beside his bed.
Aw, shoot,
he thought.
Billy Joe’s gonna kill me for sure.
It was five thirty.
He pulled on his pants and a long-sleeved polo shirt. From a drawer, he fetched a pair of white athletic socks and pulled them on and then a well-worn pair of high-top tennis shoes. Pulling the shoelaces tight, he wrapped them around the shoes above the ankle and tied them in the front.
Jack eased across the house toward the kitchen, avoiding all those places in the polished oak floor that he knew would make a squeak and wake his mother. In spite of his best efforts, he did get two squeaks. He cringed as he heard his mother getting out of bed.
The swinging door shut behind him as he entered the kitchen and flipped on the overhead light. The circular fluorescent tube in the center of a snow-white ceiling flooded the room with light.
As the swinging door opened, Jack looked up and saw his mother standing there wearing her favorite robe that should have gone in the trash months ago. Her hair stuck out on one side and was flat against her head on the other. Obviously, she hadn’t bothered to brush it before checking out the noise in the kitchen.
“Where you off to so early, Jack?” she asked with concern.
“I’m meeting Billy Joe at the Rocky Creek Bridge on US11. We’ve got his old flat-bottomed boat tied up there and we’re gonna float Rocky Creek over to Old Augusta Road.”
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s still early.” Jack watched his mom as she crossed the kitchen and grabbed a pan. “Let me fix you some breakfast first.”
Good, she was letting him go.
“Why can’t you wait ’til later?” she asked.
Jack bit his lip a moment before he replied, “It’ll take us all day to get from one bridge to the other.”
Her eyes cut over to the gun he’d propped against the back door. “Fishing?”
“Maybe hunt squirrels and maybe get a duck or two if I can get Billy Joe to keep his big mouth shut.”
“Jack, that’s not a nice way to talk,” she corrected him. “You don’t tell somebody to keep their mouth shut.”
“No, ma’am,” Jack responded in the only way he dared.
“How are you gonna get back from the Old Augusta Road bridge?” she asked.
“We’ll stick out our thumbs,” he responded. “There’s always a car or two comin’ into town from out there. Those ole boys like to shoot pool in the pool hall. They get in from work before dark time, eat supper and head for a cue stick. We’ll prob’ly be home before dark.”
“If you’re not here by dark, I’ll drive out Old Augusta Road to pick you up,” she decreed.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “that might be best.”
“Besides, I don’t think those ‘ole boys’ will want those stinking fish and squirrels in their car,” she pointed out. “Let me fix you a good breakfast. We’ve got a sugar-cured ham in the refrigerator. I can fry some eggs and make you some toast and grits,” she suggested, almost begging.
“No, ma’am, thankya, I don’t have time. I was supposed to meet Billy Joe at the boat at five and here it is a quarter to six already.”
She sighed as she shook her head. “Okay,” she responded. “You go ahead and get your gear. I’ll make you a sandwich out of that ham and you can eat it as you walk.” She opened a cabinet door and withdrew a skillet.
Jack wasn’t about to argue with her since he knew he’d be hungry soon and a ham sandwich would taste awfully good. By the time he got back from the breezeway with his pack and baseball cap, his mother had the sandwich wrapped and packed in a brown paper bag.
“There’s one for Billy Joe too.”
“Thanks, Momma.”
“You got plenty of water? I don’t want you drinking out of that creek. It’s got rottin’ dead things all up and down it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, moving for the back door. “We both have a water bottle in our packs along with food.”
He picked up his under-and-over .22 rifle/410 gauge shotgun at the door.
As Jack started out through the garage, he noticed that the garage light was on.
Strange,
he thought, and then he saw his father standing facing some man.
Jack stopped with one foot on the first step down into the garage to see what was happening.
The man said, “Jesse, you know that I am the best plumber and pipe fitter in this town. You trained me. You know that if you hire me, you’ll get yo’ money’s worth.”
“Yeah, Lige, that’s true until you get a bottle,” Jesse agreed. “The problem is, you find too many bottles too easy. I can’t depend on you. If I leave you on a job with a crew of men, I need to know you will work them properly and fairly. You are the expert when I’m not there and I need you sober to get the job done.”
The man, obviously upset, moved slightly forward toward Jesse. Another man, whom Jack had not noticed, also started forward.
“Easy, Lige,” the new man said. “Not one more step toward Mr. Jesse. I’ll have to stop you.”
“I’m not sure you could do that, Leonard, but I’ll leave for now, but this ain’t the last of the conversation.”
Jack’s mother was standing in the doorway behind him and she had heard the same thing Jack heard.
“Get on outta here on your fishin’ trip, Jack. This isn’t any of your business.”
He could feel her watchful gaze as he made his way down the street until he was around the corner and out of her sight.
I wonder who that man was and what that was all about,
Jack thought.
Jack cut across the junior college campus, crossed the railroad tracks and went about a half mile down US11 to the bridge. Billy Joe should be there waiting.
Taking the path from the shoulder of US11 down to the creek below the bridge, Jack yelled out so Billy Joe wouldn’t shoot him, “Hey, it’s me.”
No answer. Jack walked on down to the creek’s edge—no Billy Joe.
Jack put all his gear down in a pile and checked the boat to make sure it wasn’t leaking. It was dry as a chip and both paddles were still in the boat.
“Hey, it’s me,” Billy Joe’s voice shouted from the same path Jack had just come down.
“Where you been, boy?” Jack said as if he had been there since five A.M. “I started to leave without you.”
“Momma caught me at the door and had to know where I was going and when I’d be back,” he explained breathlessly. “I thought for a while that she wadn’t gonna let me go. I told her your momma was lettin’ you go and if she wouldn’t let me go, everybody was gonna call me a sissy. She still wouldn’t have let me go but Daddy showed up and told her that I had a certain amount of time in the woods that I have to do to get to be a man. She didn’t like it much but she finally said I could go but we hafta be home by dark.”
Both boys grinned, knowing they probably wouldn’t be home by dark.
Jack told Billy Joe, briefly, about what had happened as he came out of the house. Both boys thought it over but neither really understood what had happened so they quickly dropped it.
They loaded the heavy wooden boat after a discussion about who’d sit in the back. Jack won the right to sit in the back to begin with and they would switch every two hours.
Each boy had his gun; Billy Joe’s was a breech .22, a very short rifle. Each had his telescoping fishing rod with a cheap casting reel and a selection of fishing hooks, weights and bobbers. They also had a can of earthworms that Billy Joe had brought and he shared them with Jack. They knew that they could stop and dig more worms in any bog along the way. There were also crickets, grubs, sawyers and any number of other baits available to them.
By the time they left, the sun was sending ladderlike shadows across the creek. The light seemed to flicker in their eyes as the slow-moving boat cut across each shadow.
“Man, I’m sure glad school’s out,” Billy Joe began. “I been waitin’ for this for a long time. We gonna catch a whole lot of fish and shoot a bunch of squirrels.”
“Not if you don’t shut up we won’t,” Jack admonished Billy Joe. “You’re gonna scare off every fish and squirrel for a mile down the creek.”
“Nah, the sound just settles on the water and dies out,” Billy Joe said.
“Where in the world did you ever hear a thing like that?” Jack asked.
“Everybody knows that,” Billy Joe said, issue closed.
“Okay then,” Jack said. “Just for me, shut up.”
Billy Joe did, for about two minutes.
In spite of the talking, they began to catch bluegills and shellcrackers as they floated along.
This brought on another discussion. Jack said hanging the fish over the side on a stringer would attract snakes but Billy Joe said that’s only true in a pond where the water is calm. Since they had no other way of keeping the fish, they had to use their stringers.
The day moved along and the sun got higher in the sky.
At about ten o’clock—they weren’t sure since neither boy had a watch—they spotted a squirrel in the top of a tall pine tree. Both boys fumbled for their guns but Jack got to his first. He aimed at the squirrel and pulled the trigger—BOOM! A clear miss; the squirrel ran out on a limb and jumped to another tree, never to be seen again.
“Hey, give a guy a chance,” Billy Joe berated Jack.
“Aw, you couldn’t have gotten him with that toy rifle of yours,” Jack replied.
“I coulda done as well as you,” Billy Joe pointed out.
Being upset with each other, both boys were silent for a while.
“What’s that smell?” Jack asked softly.
“I don’t know. It’s kinda sweet and sour at the same time,” Billy Joe whispered.
Jack sniffed, his nose pointing upwind. “Somebody’s cookin’ somethin’,” Jack suggested.
“They’re not cookin’ anything I’d want to eat.”
“Nah, me neither, but I think it’s cooking anyway,” Jack insisted. He squinted as he tried to hide his concern. “Moonshiners.”
“How’d they get in here?” Billy Joe asked.
“This isn’t a swampy area. You could go south on US11 for a few miles, take one of those little gravel roads east and then drive through those scrubby little pines to Rocky Creek.”
“Why to the creek?” Billy Joe asked.
“You need a lot of water to make moonshine,” Jack said.
“How’d you know about moonshinin’?”
“When the sheriff raids a moonshine still, he always calls my dad and tells him to come down to get a keg of ‘evidence,’” Jack said.
“Why does your daddy need evidence?” Billy Joe said, and then his face lit up with understanding. “Oh, you mean for him.”
“Daddy has a charred keg in his tool room,” Jack explained. “He pours the moonshine into that keg and my dad says it turns as red as Canadian Club.”
“Is that good?”
“I guess so.”
“I think we better tie up this boat and go along the side of the creek a little ways to see if it is a still. We can’t let them see us,” Jack pointed out.
“Here’s a good place right over here,” Jack said. “Let’s pull the boat up on this sandbar as much as we can.”
The boys picked their way through the heavy undergrowth when suddenly they heard voices a short distance away.
Jack took one step toward the clearing then stopped abruptly. It was the moonshiner’s camp. He pulled Billy Joe to the ground. “Shhhh.”