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Jack
had always lived with his uncle. Until he was five, about 20 kinfolk
camped in run-down shacks and old camper trailers they had drug into the
woods on the lower end of Hatcher’s Bottom at the mouth of a creek
that emptied into the river. It was a clan agreement that the group
needed to have an easier way to get their children to the school bus
during high water. After selling some timber from the family land, Lemmy,
who exercised the most influence in the family, made the decision to buy
a single story, eight-room cinder block school building after
consolidation of the educational system in the late 60s. The building,
and the small acreage with it, adjoined their family property nearest
town.
Jack
brought his lunch to school every day in a brown paper bag he used over
and over again until the bottom fell out of it. There were a lot of
less-than well-to-do folks at Jack’s school and nobody made fun of him
when he brought the hind-quarters of a fried squirrel, a piece of hoe
cake, a Mason jar of blue john and a hand-full of native persimmons for
lunch. All the kids traded parts of their meals. Usually the meat
exchanges included some wild game or pork. Dessert swaps had folks
bargaining apples for fried pies, pound cake for bananas and in Jack’s
case, candied yams, pawpaws, scuppernongs or homegrown pears for
whatever store-bought sweets he could get.
Jack
was a mischievous boy who, with the help of his friend Chris Ghartsmon,
would nimbly shimmy up the schoolhouse brick wall at recess and untie
the bell rope. The teacher couldn’t immediately summon students with
the bell and would waste precious teaching time rounding children from
the playground then walking the hundred or so yards to go behind the gym
and gather the boys and girls playing baseball. He would take wax paper
from a sandwich he’d traded for, climb the sliding board ladder, sit
on the paper and ride it down the slide. This left the unsuspecting
sliders coming up behind him with a very slippery slope that, more than
once, sent them skipping and rolling out of control on the ground at the
foot of the slide. He jammed bathroom doors. Greased door handles. He
once put a dead toad frog under the radiator in homeroom. He was
suspected of being the miscreant who once locked most of the teachers in
their lounge until the principal got back from a lunch meeting with a
key to let them out.
The
other students admired him for his daring and, at the same time, feared
they might fall victim to one of his jokes.
Now
was the beginning of summer vacation. Next year would be the seventh
grade. Jack wasn’t quite old enough to get a summer job with one of
the local farmers but was old enough that nobody wanted to have to
babysit him. So, when he wasn’t doing chores like chopping wood,
feeding the hogs and chickens or working on the old cinder block
building his extended family lived in, he roamed around the countryside
by himself, fishing, building forts and tree houses, or just exploring.
He wandered into town several times during the first few weeks away from
school to see his school chum, Chris.
Jack’s
Uncle Lemmy had an old crank telephone magneto he used to illegally fish
with. He had hooked two, five-foot long wires to the hand generator and
would hang the end of the wires over either side of his pirogue. When he
cranked the spinner handle, anywhere from 60 to 100 volts shot into the
water sending stunned fish to the surface where they were nabbed with a
dip net. Voltage was determined by the speed at which you turned the
phone handle. Jack and Chris had started using Lemmy’s phone to fish
from bridges around town. They referred to this fishing technique as
"calling fish."
Jack
and Chris were at that age where they really didn’t know what to think
about girls. After all, they’d found out early in life adults would
inflict serious butt whoopins if you got in a fist fight with a girl,
most couldn’t pitch a ball worth a flip, they didn’t like frogs or
bugs or fishing bait…and they’d cry over a heavy dew. These two boys
had pretty much decided life was better without girls and they avoided
them as much as possible. That didn’t stop Gina Brinkle from becoming
smitten with Jack. She’d told all her friends Jack liked her and
rumors of their relationship enraged Jack. When he was at school or when
he was in town to see Chris, she followed him around everywhere, often
hiding in the bushes to avoid being shooed off. There were few things in
life that annoyed Jack more than Gina.
This
Wednesday afternoon, Gina got bold and approached the boys and their
phone just after a disappointing fishing jaunt where Jack had fallen in
the slimy water. As she came nearer, Jack handed the phone to Chris,
held onto the ends of both wires in one hand and told Chris he’d know
what to do when the time came. Gina, seeing he was shivering, asked him
if he was all right. Jack replied that he was cold and held his damp
hand out for her to feel. Eagerly Gina touched his palm. Like a striking
snake, Jack grabbed her by the wrist and shouted ‘CRANK!’
Old
man Delmire was on his way to the church to clean it up for prayer
meeting that night when he heard what he thought was a cat with its tail
hung in a screen door. As he described it to the constable "that
lil ol’ gal looked sorta like a chorus girl who’d stuck her head in
a wasp nest…floppin’ and carrin’ on. It was a terrible sight to
see."
Charges
weren’t filed but Chris was put to work chopping cotton and doing odd
jobs around town and Jack was banned from being in town without an adult
for the rest of the summer. It was eleventh grade before a girl would
talk to either of them.
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