Before the Fall
By bayinghounds
- 733 reads
“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?...He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride. “
Job 41:1 & 34
Standing there looking on at him up on them gallows I couldn't help but think of that day he got his fingers bit off down on the bayou. We wasn't probably but ten years old that day. He was a mean boy just like his daddy. It only got worse once his mammy run off up north with that colored fella. Both him and his daddy turned just plain bad after that happened. That weren't nobody's fault but his daddy. That man liked his whiskey, made it hisself. He was always bragging that that stuff was the pride of the county, everyone else thought it weren't nothing more than kerosene. He'd always made a lot of it, daddy said that that man just sold a lot less of it after she run off.
He was a year older than us and always a school grade or two behind. We never liked that boy too terrible much, but we always figured it was better having him on our side. He come in handy too. Like that day them rough boys from down by the ferry landing found us up in the pines and tried to give us a good whooping. That boy, he picked up a big ol' branch up from the ground and swung it clean across the face of that first boy that come at him. I t hit him square across the face and I swear I seen teeth fly off into the pine needles. Those boys ran back down to the river and we ain't never seen them up our way again, long as I can remember at least. All that ain't to say he didn't beat on us on occasion. He didn't give it to us near as bad though, seeing as how we was the only ones would have him around.
The day he got them fingers took off, we was playing down on the bayou not but a half mile or so from the cabin I grew up in. Everyone's mammy's and daddy's told us never to get down in the water. We'd realized why the last last spring. My daddy's brother'd been out hunting coons with his hounds late one night. He'd been passing by the water on the bayou when he'd seen a flash at the edge of his lantern's light down in the water. He thought that it might coulda been a big old catfish or the like. Well he stopped to take another look and seen that flash again. Well he ain't had no hook or line or nothin'. What kind of damn fool would go coon huntin with a hook and line anyhow? So he shouldered up that rifle and fired a shot down into the water where he'd seen that flash. He said the thrashing and whipping about was like to wake the dead. We all went and seen that fish he'd shot the next day, and I swear, if it weren't ten foot, it wasn't an inch. It was one of them alligator gar, bigger than any of the old timers said they'd knowed 'em to get. There was canoes down on the bayou that was smaller than that damn fish. I remember lookin' into that things mouth and seein' them teeth that was big as a pocket knife and just as sharp. Daddy said my uncle was gonna have fish to feed the family three meals a day for the next year off of just that one damned fish.
We knew where that part of the bayou was, and we sure as hell stayed away from that day on, lest there was more like that gar lurking in the still black water there. Anyways, we was out running around one day like boys will and that mean old boy he was talking all this mess about how he weren't scared of nothing, swamp cats or haints or any other nasty thing that we'd heard tell about growing up. Well, me and them other boys got to thinking that if he weren't scared of no haints then he wouldn't be scared of no gar. We dared him that he wouldn't wade off into that part of the bayou and tempt them fishes. We knowed he was scared, he'd of been a fool not to, but he took the dare anyhow, kept sayin' how he weren't afraid of any damn thing. Well we walked on over to that pool where that sluggish water turned to black. There wasn't hardly no light that could come down through the canopy, it was so thick with Spanish Moss. He hesitated at the edge of the water and thats how we knowed for certain he was scared. Sure as night follows day, that boy couldn't back down from no dare and make a hisself fool in front of a bunch of other boys. Well he went down into that water step by step 'til he was up to his waste in the bayou. I remember how that place stank, it stank all musty and old like a graveyard. If we'd been caught at that point by our daddy's every last one of us would've got the whooping of our lifetimes. Fortunately or unfortunately, the only grown up around was the mean boy's daddy. We could've probably thrown a rock and knocked the windows out from his shack if you could one through the trees and the brush. Well boy, I want you to know that we didn't mean any harm to that boy no how, we just wanted him to look the fool for once. He got out there and he just stood for a bit, stiff as a board, he was scared for sure. Then we could see him loose some of that tension, as he realized he weren't getting eaten. He got to gloating and splashing around in that water when he thought he got us beat at our own dare. He got to splashing that dirty water at us and laughin' and a hollerin' about what wussies we was and how maybe we should go play with our sisters from then on. Well that's when we seen it, there was a flash at the surface of the water just behind him, and he was too busy a carryin' on to notice it for hisself. I think we all knowed what it was and what was about to happen but not one of us said a word of warnin' to that boy. Part of me thinks maybe we wanted it to happen, the other part of me knows we did. Boy, I tell you it happened fast as lightin' a match. He was up on the banks and on his back lickity split, wailin' like a baby. His arms and legs was kicking about like a madman with thick, syrupy blood shootin' out the knubs where his fingers had been. His fits looked to me like that dance he was doin' when he'd thought he'd proved us a bunch of babies. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit. Well, we done the right thing and runned off to fetch his daddy. We sure got a whooping that night no matter what we done right.
We didn't play much with that boy no more after that day. Didn't see much point, he'd just got meaner and there ain't no reason to be scared of a boy that's got no fingers to whoop you with. They said he was lucky though, being in that water was likely to give infections in wounds like that, or so the doctor says and I ain't one of them so I suppose I ain't qualified to say one way or the other. Weren't too many years after that, his daddy up and died. Everyone knowed he'd gone and drunk hisself to death. The boy just got meaner as the years went on and I swear he just grown up to be his daddy. He even took to wearing his daddy's clothes and drinking his daddy's whiskey. Only real difference, I suppose, was he didn't know how to make whiskey like his daddy did. Don't suppose he probably could have made it if he'd knowed how, not having them fingers and all. Well, he learned to use his fingers well enough on the other hand, well enough to shoot a pistol ant least. And that's what he done to get him a spot up on the gallows.
The day he done it he was into town over across the ferry landing and he'd got to drinkin' pretty hard with some of them rough old boys from down the river. He said later that that colored fella had looked at him wrong, or spit at him, or just plain ignored him asking for to fetch a drink of water. Those was the things he said different times on different days. Lord knows what that man done, let alone if he done anything at all, I suppose he was in the wrong place at the wrong time to be doing anything at all. Well he just pulled that pistol of his and somehow, drunk as he was, shot that man clean 'tween the eyes. Damnedest thing I ever heard of. Never even heard tell of something like that, have you? Well everybody knowed that if that didn't happen down on the main drag in broad daylight and he hadn't pointed that pistol at the deputy, they probably wouldn't have arrested him, let alone put him to swingin' up on them gallows. But that was what he done and that was what they decided to be done to him.
They led him up onto them gallows in his black and white county jumpsuit. Normally, they allowed the condemned to be escorted by their wives in their Sunday best, but this was a different matter. He never had no woman, at least none whose company he didn't pay for. The black folks said he didn't have the dignity to wear no church clothes to meet his maker neither. I suppose that was partially true. We all knew he simply didn't have none. He'd sold most anything he'd ever had, including most of his daddy's clothes and that old whiskey still. A mean drunk don't have no use for no Sunday clothes anyhow. The preacher come up and said a prayer for him and asked him did he have any words to say before he died. Well, he just stood there and stared fit to kill that old preacher. After that, they just put that black hood on over his head. The last thing I seen before they covered him with that black cloth was a big ol' grin, like he won. Like he beat us at all at a kid's dare. They dropped that trapdoor out from under him and just took a turn for the worse. That noose didn't snap his neck like they's supposed to and he just dangled there like a fish on a line plucked outta water. Boy, he kicked all about in the air something fierce like I seen only once in my life. He kicked just like when he got them fingers bit of by that damned old gar. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit.
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Comments
Great story. Brilliantly
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Brilliant narration to a
keleph
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Oh great. Another aquatic
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I'll use a word no one else
Give me the beat boys and free my soul! I wanna getta lost in ya rock n' roll and drift away. Drift away...
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