Chapter 11

Yaller Bill" Harbidge

Meeting Arthur

"I had always admired the boys from Pennsylvania University sculling up and down the Delaware River as a kid, and after my dismal showing in the '82 season, I wanted to get away from both Troy and Philadelphia, so I headed for South Carolina with the idea of joining up with a couple players from the Troy team, namely Bob Ferguson, Bill Holbert, who had taken over most of the catching on the club, and an up and coming pitcher, named Mickey Welch who lived to hunt and fish. Now I liked fishing as much as the next man, but when I arrived at Cumberland Island, I saw a row of canoes, and knew I wuz going to try my hand at a solo journey around that coastal area.

So as not to hurt anyone's feelings, I did go fishing with the boys the first three days we were in camp. It wuz a good time too, but when they decided to get some pheasant hunting in, I told 'em about my plan to canoe as much of the coast as I could; and if I had to, to take the train back to Savannah, where they would be whooping it up with some of the local whores after three or four more days of hunting and fishing.

Now, my original plan wuz to attempt to canoe along the 100 mile coast in three days, bringing enough food and water for four days if my body and the weather didn't cooperate. I packed up and launched from Jekyll Island, just north of Cumberland Island and paddled south to the Brick Hill campsites on the northern marsh side of Cumberland. But Ferguson and the others were not to be found. I later learned that they had gone into town, gotten drunk and slept right through the next day. I wuz a little annoyed at not finding them because they had taken the tents and other supplies with them. Anyway, I slept next to my canoe in a bivvy, [1] and the following morning made ready to start paddling north.

The first day I paddled from the marsh, what we call 'the back side, ' on the west side of Cumberland, and then north to the front side of Jekyll. I was blessed with warm temps and a tailwind. Once I got my canoeing figured out, I poured it on, knowing that I had two days of warm weather with good tailwinds. The first day I stayed out front, that is, on the ocean side as opposed to the back side in the marsh, and paddled past Little Cumberland, Jekyll, St Simon's and Little St Simon's. I stopped on Wolf Island between Sapelo Island and Little St Simon's Island. There I stayed on the beach as I didn't want to risk having some joker take off with my canoe. I slept a full eight hours, and got in two big meals before leaving the next day in the fog.

The second day out wuz another warm, beautiful day with a nice tailwind, and I felt great. I had the wind behind me and I wuz full of beans, so I paddled my hiney off from Wolf past Sapelo, St. Catherine and Ossabaw Islands.

My three day plan included camping on a great hammock, [2] without nobody else around in St Catherine Sound. I paddled up to the north end of St Catherine Island and had to make a choice. See, I had pulled two forty mile days, and doing the coast in three days wuz looking like it was going to happen. I don't know if it was the wind and sun and spending all day on the gorgeous Georgia coast or hypoxia, [3] limiting my ability to make sound decisions, but I decided that if I pushed ahead and made the north end of Ossabaw Island, I might be able to get to the last island on the Georgia coast, Tybee Island, in 48 hours.

Well sir, I paddled through dusk; and when I started to get cold, I beached on Ossabaw's front side, put on some more clothes, ate some canned beans and got back in the canoe before I thought better of my crazy plan. I paddled the rest of the way to the north end of Ossabaw Island in the dark under the nearly full moon, while the shrimp boats passed me headed in the opposite direction with seagulls following in their wake.

On the north end of Ossabaw, I made camp just above the rack line, [4] made dinner, and started preparing for the next day. Eventually I fell asleep looking up through the mosquito netting of my bivvy at the clouds scudding across a bright Georgia autumn moon.

I woke up at 4 am in the dark, having heard a strange series of sounds. They wuz unlike anything I'd ever heard before, or since. The wind had shifted, and the temperature had dropped. I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs of slumber, but the sounds persisted. I got up, and taking my hatchet with me, started out toward the noise.

In my haste to find out who, or what was out there, I tripped over a root and fell, sustaining a nasty gash on both my chin and elbow. Bleeding profusely, I cursed and thought about turning around and taking care of my wounds. But right then this voice came into my head, I shit you not. Clear as a bell, the voice sez to me, "Hurry, I'm sinking!"

"Where the hell are you?" I yelled. And into my head comes this voice again, telling me where to go, and then as I neared him, to be careful not to get trapped like he wuz.

"Twas quicksand, he wuz fixed in. Up to his neck he wuz. Now it was dark, and I could make out a shape, but had I seen more of him, I might a shit my pants, 'cause he was not like anybody I'd ever seen before ... or since."

Anyways, it wuz dark. So I wasn't afraid or nothin'. Like I said, he was caught in some quicksand and about ready to go under for good. I found a decent sized branch, and offered it out to him. He took hold, and together we managed to pull him outta the quicksand.

When I actually seen what he was, I fainted. Now I am not a coward, having had many a fight with boys and men bigger than myself. And I came out of those spats okay for the most part. I even had a husband catch me with his wife and come at me with a bone knife, and me with nothin' but my skivvies between that menacing blade and my flesh. I'll let you guess what part of my anatomy he wuz going for. But that's another story.

I woke up and found myself back at my campsite with this creature holdin' my canteen to my lips. I took it from him and drank deeply. Then I heard that voice in my head again.

"Thank you for saving this wretched creature from the sucking sand. I was not aware of such things until it had me in its clutches."

"How can you get in my head like that?" I asked, overcoming my initial fear of him.

"First, allow me to introduce myself. I am called Arthur. As you must realize, I am not of this planet, but another, so far away that even the greatest telescope you have cannot see it."

I was studying this creature. He was shorter than me by a couple inches and at least thirty or forty pounds lighter. But it was his gray pallor that I had some trouble with. Now I been around Indians and Niggers enough so that a man's pigment ain't going to throw me off my feed. But gray is the color of a dead man, or so I've been told. He didn't have a nose either, but I seen many a guy with their nose's bitten off in a bar room fight, so while unusual; I didn't think much of it, and in just a few minutes, in the earliest of dawn's light, we wuz conversing, and getting on just fine.

Arthur, I might as well call him by his name, asked me question after question. Where had I come from? Where wuz I going? What did I do for a livelihood? And he wuz puzzled when I told him I wuz a baseball player. A professional baseball player, and got paid right handsomely for doing just that.

Arthur nodded, and studied me some, and then he said, "I want to reward you for saving me from the quicksand, but you appear to be well off and not in need of anything."

"What do you mean, reward?"

"You saved my worthless skin, isn't that what you people say? I mean, is that the correct expression? I don't get to have many conversations with Earthlings, so I have to ask."

"Yes, that is an expression people use. But as for me saving your skin, don't think nothin' of it. I'd have done the same for anyone, and hope that someone would return the favor if needed."

"That's exactly what I mean," Arthur told me. I gave him a puzzled look, and he continued. "I wish to return the favor. I understand that I cannot save your life this very moment, but I am capable of performing some favors that you might consider magical in nature."

"You a magician?"

"Well, no. But ... let us see ... for example, you said earlier that you were a professional baseball player."

"I did," and to my surprise, my voice took on a sorrowful tone. "But my career is just about over with. My performance this year was not what I expected it to be, and if it weren't for old Bill Ferguson, the Troy club would be letting me go before the new season gets kickin'."

Arthur looked thoughtful for a minute, and then seemed to brighten somewhat. "Suppose, just suppose, that you could perform well indefinitely, would this Troy person keep you on the team?"

I laughed at the thought of me playing baseball at age forty-five.

"What, have I erred?"

"No, I seem to have misled you though. See, a fella can't play baseball past a certain age. It varies from player to player, but still most don't perform so well after turning thirty or so. So thinking about me playin' at forty-five made me laugh, 'cause it's downright silly."

"What if I gave you the ability to play on, with no loss in ability; with perhaps an ability to improve on your ... performance, was it? Each succeeding year?"