Chapter 23

Everyone was at the fishing hole by nine-thirty the next day. They were surprised to find Johnnie Sue, Jesse and Luthor already waiting for them, fully clothed. When the first arrivals suggested waiting for the others in the water, they were told there would be no skinny-dipping this day. At least not until later. Nathan and his sisters were the last to arrive. Telling them all to leave their fishing poles there, Johnnie Sue then instructed them to follow her. They did, curiously, asking aloud where they were going. She wouldn’t answer. Luthor and Jesse were obviously in on the deal, because they were grinning like the Cheshire Cat in the book Miss Flossie had been reading to them lately.

Johnnie Sue stopped at the pile of boards and turned around.

“Tah Dah!” she said, holding out her arms.

“Look at that!” said Curtis Lee. “How did that get here?”

“We snuck it here!” squealed Johnnie Sue. Then she started into a long narrative about how they stole through the night, dodging dogs, and the constable and the whole Ku Klux Klan. Luthor finally wrapped one arm around her waist from behind, and put his other hand over her mouth. She struggled, and the hand around her waist came up to cover a breast. She stopped struggling, her eyes wide.

“Oops,” said Luthor, grinning at the others. “I slipped.” His hand slid off her breast, very slowly, still pressing hard. “We three snuck the boards here at night. A few each night. It was a surprise, so we could build a treehouse.”

The first order of business was to select a suitable tree. The plans, rough as they were, and only verbal anyway, called for a floor large enough for them all to sit around in a circle. That was pretty big. It would take a big tree, preferably with large branches, or multiple trunks, to support a floor that big. They fanned out. Two good candidates were found. They picked the one closest to their favorite fishing hole on the creek. They had to carry the wood about five hundred yards, but there were plenty of them, and it all got moved in one trip. Each of the blood brothers had brought a hammer, and Luthor had brought a saw with him on this date. He had to take it back home that day. He didn’t have permission to take it, and he had to sneak it back into the shed without his father seeing him returning it.

They had four boards that were roughly five inches by three inches, and eight feet long. They had been inside the exterior wall of the mansion when it fell in. Three were used to form a triangle, each corner of which was anchored to a tree limb by lashing it with binder twine. The nails weren’t long enough for that. The last one was used as a support for the middle, also lashed in place. Planks were then laid across the triangle. Luthor was going to saw the ends even with the edge of the triangle, once they were nailed down, but most of them didn’t stick over far, and they were left alone. No one would want to step there, outside the triangle, but things like picnic baskets or whatever could be set down there. They had cut up two planks to make the steps, nailed about a foot apart, going up the trunk of the tree. When they had used the last plank, they were about four or five short.

Johnnie Sue, Luthor and Jesse said they’d have to make a few more nighttime runs. Actually, they were all pretty pleased that they’d have an excuse to get together again in the dark. Nathan ruined it for them though.

“No, you went to all that work. If Luthor and I go over there today - just the two of us - and we bring back six or seven planks, we can finish. Nobody will think a thing about two white boys carrying some lumber. And if he can use your bike, Bernie, we can get there quicker.”

It sounded like a good plan, and it was added to. While they were gone, the others would fish. If enough fish were caught by the time Nathan and Luthor got back, then there might even be time for skinny-dipping.

Nathan surveyed the pile of burned and broken lumber at the base of the tree in the corner of the house. Most of the good planks had already been culled. They were going to have to move a lot of splintered and charred wood to find more good planks. Nobody had said anything about a roof for the tree house, but Nathan thought it would be a good idea. He wasn’t sure how they’d engineer that, but while they were at it, they’d pile up as many good boards as they could find. They could always come back for them later.

They hit a good vein after moving eighty or ninety pieces of junk. They were able to pull out ten boards and piled them by the door. There were more, but they were still nailed together and they couldn’t get them loose. There was what looked like a long beam sticking up out of the pile, and Luthor said that could be cut up to make better steps for the tree trunk. To get that out they had to move a bunch more broken pieces of wood from around the stone steps they had discovered earlier. They were doing that when they found the hole.

They thought it was a hole, because when they saw it, and reached inside, they couldn’t feel anything. It was framed by pieces of wood, nailed to and being held up by another beam. It took both of them, but they were able to break the boards off enough to realize that what they were looking at was the space that the stone steps must have led to.

“It’s got to be a cellar,” said Luthor, sniffing at the musty odor in the hole.

Curious now, they cleared away more wood from the steps. Eventually they had an opening almost large enough to crawl into. Neither did, though, because that beam was all that was holding up a large quantity of wood over the opening they had created. They peered into the blackness, but blackness was all they could see.

“I wish we had a lantern,” said Nathan.

But they didn’t, and it was getting late. They chose eight of the best planks, and the beam they had freed. Nathan got the idea of tying them together and tying one end of them to his luggage carrier, with the other end tied together and sitting on top of Bernadette’s handlebars. That way they could push the bikes, which would carry the load. They were able to move at a very quick walk, and got back much quicker than if they had just walked. Then they went to find the others.

Perhaps, because they hadn’t swum first, the catch had been good. There were plenty of fish, so that each one could take home a few to show that they had, in fact, been fishing. It was about three or so, by the sun, and the next decision was whether to return to the tree house, or go swimming. Swimming won, hands down.

They were tired, and there was almost no horseplay. They soaked in the water, shoulder to shoulder in a circle.

“How come we never catch any Catfish?” asked Nathan. “I figured with a name like Catfish Hollow that we’d catch lots of them.”

“We’re not fishing for Catfish,” said Luthor, as if that was obvious. When he saw the confusion on Nathan’s face he explained that Catfish stayed close to the bottom, and not the top couple of feet where the kids had been hanging their worms.

“Most people use different bait to catch Catfish too,” said Jesse. “It stinks something awful.”

“Actually,” said Curtis Lee, “old Mister Hopkins, before he died? He told me that the town was named that because of all the spooning they did along Foster’s creek upstream. It used to be a lot bigger, almost a river, he said, before they started diverting it for irrigation.”

“Spooning?” asked Bernadette.

“Yeah,” said Curtis Lee. “You see, Catfish like to just lay there with their mouth open and let things swim in. Then they close their mouth and swallow, or whatever. What they’d do is find a hollow in the bank, under the water, and back in there and open their mouth. Mister Hopkins said some of them never moved for years, just letting the river feed them.”

“What does that have to do with spoons?” asked Hilda Mae.

“That’s the part I didn’t get to yet,” chided Curtis Lee gently. “I don’t know why they call it spooning, but what you do is wade along, in the water, feeling along the bank, until you find one of those hollows. If it’s got a Catfish in it, you stick your hand in its mouth, and grab hold of a gill, and just pull him out.”

“In his mouth?!“ gasped Bernadette. “How in the world could you get your whole hand in a fish’s mouth?”

“Well, the way I understand it is that if they just lie in there for years,” said Curtis Lee, “they get real big, because they never move and eat all the time. I’m talking two, three feet long. You can feed two or three families on a fish like that.”

“Curtis Lee Waggoner, there is no way in the world there is a three foot long Catfish in this creek,” scoffed Johnnie Sue.

“I’m just telling you what Mister Hopkins told me before he died. He said some of those fish was big enough that they would clamp down on a man’s arm and swim off with him. He said people drowned spooning, because they got hold of a fish that was too big.” Curtis Lee looked at the astonished faces around him. “I’m not joking! He told me he spooned one himself that weighed ninety pounds!”

“I’d be happy with a ten pound Catfish,” said Luthor. “You think the fish still do that these days?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Curtis Lee. “I kind of got the impression that there had to be a lot of water flowing for that to happen, and the creek moves kind of slow now. I guess it could happen, but the fish wouldn’t get as big, maybe?”

“Lets go find out!” said Jesse, visions of thirty pound Catfish sparkling in his eyes.

“What if we find one that’s too big?” worried Hilda Mae.

“We’ll go looking in pairs,” said Luthor, caught up in the idea. “One can feel for hollows, and the other can hold on to him.” He got excited. “And we can work opposite sides of the creek, so there’s even more who could help if somebody gets swum away with.”

“I don’t know about this,” said Nathan doubtfully.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” said Curtis Lee. “The creek has been like this for as long as I can remember. I don’t think any really big fish could survive. There’s not enough water.”

Two of the teams, not surprisingly, ended up being Bernadette, with Curtis Lee and Hilda Mae with Moses. Johnnie Sue elected to go with Jesse, because, she said, he was so small and light that even a small fish could swim away with him. Luthor looked at Nathan.

“We’re a pretty good team,” he said. “Why don’t we float, and if anybody feels a really big fish we can run to help them.”

That sounded fine to Nathan. That gave them four teams, one for each side of the creek, and two to explore upstream, and two to explore downstream. They agreed to come back in half an hour if nothing had been found.

Within two minutes they were all back together, in response to Jesse’s frenzied screams that he was being swum away with. He was screaming that he had his hand in a fish’s mouth, and it wouldn’t let him go. Johnnie Sue was pulling at him frantically, but she couldn’t budge him either. Curtis Lee shoved her to one side, and ran his hand down Jesse’s arm.

“Relax!” he said. Jesse slumped and Curtis Lee moved his hand. Jesse’s hand shot out of the water and he stared at it, expecting to see shredded flesh and dripping blood. There was neither.

“You had it caught between two roots,” said Curtis Lee, trying to hide a grin. Jesse covered his face with both hands, in shame. Johnnie Sue told him it was okay, and that anybody could have made that mistake, and pulled him on up the creek.

Hilda Mae held Moses’ hand, under water, as they half walked and half floated back downstream to their assigned area.

“I’m not to hot on the idea of sticking my hand in a fish’s mouth,” she said.

“Me neither,” said Moses.

“I’d rather do something else, instead,” said Hilda Mae softly.

“Like what?” asked Moses, falling into her trap.

“Like this,” she said, pressing her naked body against his in the water. Her lips pressed themselves to his. Her hands went around him, and slid up and down his back.

Across the creek, and down about thirty yards, Curtis Lee was bent over, running his fingertips along the muddy bank as he and Bernadette let the current carry them slowly along. Bernadette’s hands were on his hips, her thumbs almost, but not quite on his buttocks. She had said this was necessary since she might have to jerk him away from a monster fish.

“I don’t feel anything,” he said for perhaps the sixth or seventh time.

One of her hands left his hip, and he gasped as he felt it go between his legs. A hand fumbled for and then grasped his penis, pulling it gently down and back, between his legs.

“I think I got one!” said Bernadette softly. “It’s a big one too! Ohhhh I hope it doesn’t swim away with me.” She giggled.

Curtis Lee couldn’t do much about it. She was pulling steadily between his legs, and her other hand was now on his lower back, pushing. Had he been in deeper water, he could have rolled forward. Then again, that might not have been a good idea.

“Bernadette, let go of me,” he said.

“Oh! Is that you, Curtis Lee? I thought maybe it was some kind of water snake.” She giggled.

“You know very well what that is,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “You’re teasing me again.”

Reluctantly, she let go. He turned, and his eyes widened as he looked up the creek. She turned to see her sister and Moses Finshaw, clasped together, kissing.

“You are the strangest girls I ever met in my entire life,” moaned Curtis Lee.

“I don’t feel strange,” said Bernadette, thinking about kissing Curtis Lee like Hilda Mae was kissing Moses.

“First I see you with your own brother, and now both of you are messing around with colored boys,” he said. “Don’t you do anything normal?”

She turned him in the water, moving closer to him, her hands on his strong shoulders.

“I’m a girl. Girls like boys. You’re a boy. I think I’m acting perfectly normal.”

“But this is crazy,” he whined.

“My little sister is over there getting kissed by a boy she obviously likes,” said Bernadette. “That’s not crazy. What’s crazy is that I’m probably going to have to beg the boy I like to see what it’s like to be kissed like that. That’s crazy.”

“But you already kissed me ... back in Miz Hopkins library ... don’t you...”

He was cut off by her lips pressing against his. This time it was no quick, sterile peck on the lips. This time, as Hilda Mae had, she kissed Curtis Lee like she kissed Nathan, with loose lips, and probing tongue. The electric shock that tore through Curtis Lee’s body made him shake and jerk. Her hands slid down his arms, and then went inside them and around his waist. She pulled, and her body pressed firmly against his. Her hands dropped to his muscled buttocks and rested there as the kiss went on ... and on.