The Forgettin' Of Sat'dy Night
The Sugar twins had drank too much of Junior’s moon ---the good stuff--- with the blackberries in it. Now they turned to arm-wrestling ---somewhere out there in the dark soybean fields. These things were just appetizers.
Joe and I had driven for fifty miles in the Aerostar with the keg of beer sitting where the middle back seat used to be. It was the second morning of one of our early fall rituals---traveling the blue highways of North Carolina with no destination. The only rule was that red highways and Interstates were forbidden, as was staying at anything other than "Indian" motels. You know, the kind of motels that used to be name-brand, but had long been left as orphans because things on blue highways got passed by. Indians looking for a better way of life in America started buying them up and did just enough maintenance to keep them open for the oil patch workers and guys like us. But the price was right if you didn’t mind sharing the one thin towel, and if the smell of curry in the air conditioning ducts didn’t mess with your hangover.
We left the Alligator River Wildlife Area and headed west for Lake Mattamuskeet. It was our favorite place to gather especially large blue crabs---crabs that got locked in the marsh lake when the canals leading to the Sound were dammed up to control the water level. The crabs and crab fishermen were considered a nuisance by the waterfowl enthusiasts who envisioned that Lake Matty was their own toy---something reserved for waterfowl habitat and the good hunting and birding that winter brings. If we left our throw lines and weights out overnight, someone always cut them down.
It was a beautiful spot---all the wildlife you care to see would be on parade in a single weekend. Large nests of osprey, plenty of deer, snakes of arm-girth size, and in the waters, salt-water herring mixing with the catfish and bream.
The locals knew about that lake and its bounty of nine and ten-inch crab, but its fame was hidden from most everyone else. Joe and I had stumbled on it five years earlier, and made it our getaway. Little by little we learned the art of catching the big blues, how the jimmies were better tasting than the sooks, or females, and how to tell them apart. Males have the Washington Monument symbol on their underneath, and females the Capitol dome. Simple as that. If we caught a sponge crab---one carrying eggs---we let it go as an investment in our own future.
An average two-day catch would yield fifty or more, and we brought our steamer and propane to cook what we caught. None got wasted. What we didn’t wash down with our keg beer, we cleaned and brought home in a Ziplok. Joe always let me keep the extra meat, because he appreciated that I could trade it to my wife Karen.
Lake Matty was something of an intrigue itself. It dated at least as far back as the sixteenth century, because Algonquian native Americans were known to have spear-fished its clear waters. Massive efforts to drain it in the 1770’s were unsuccessful, but the canals that were dug for that purpose had given the crabs a thruway, and they brought the brackish water in behind them. Having no natural predators in the lake to speak of, the crabs just naturally had to get big and plump, and were mostly record size, versus bay crabs.
The dominant structure was the mammoth pumping plant, which was built to house the pumps that were going to drain the lake. It was billed as the largest in the world of its type. Looking more like a lodge or a hotel than a pumping station, its tall coal-belching smokestack was the only thing that gave it away. The building actually spent some of its history as a lodge, and today it sports the honor of being a National Historic Site.
Time was fleeting for Joe and I. When the migratory waterfowl fans had dammed the canals for the sake of the birds, and unwittingly closed the access for our crabs. We estimated that even with only the locals crabbing it, the count would dwindle pretty fast. For that reason, and the reasons of our favorite keg-beer passenger, we sometimes went as often as every other weekend.
Joe and I had diverse lives and personalities---he was a quiet college professor, and I was the fiery corporate career man. But when we came together for crabbing, our differences were lost. It was the perfect relaxation for our individual stresses, and our wives were never invited. In the usual three-day trip, we didn’t shave; we wore overalls, and didn’t even bathe regular.
I took copious notes of our adventures for a book I intended to write. But like most hunters and fishermen, we were vague about specifics of the exact location when talking to friends. It is the celebratory greed and protection of one’s fishing hole. You can brag about the catch, but you must always lie about the origin.
We liked to stay at a small motel near Englehard. It wasn’t Indian, but it qualified as blue-highway and it qualified as to the rate. We liked the style. The big bagged-ice chest on the veranda was kept open by the honor system, and we just confessed to how many bags we used when paying the bill on checkout. Joe and I were treated like kings once we got the proprietor’s one rule straight. He wanted to be paid in crisp cash---no checks, no credit cards. It was little enough to ask for the privilege of being left completely alone. We could junk up the room and not worry about the maid’s reaction. There was no maid until we were a hundred miles down the road after checkout the last day.
The owner was always amazed at the quantities of ice we used---but the keg had to be kept cold. He probably also wondered why we never had beer can or bottle trash, but stayed sufficiently drunk around the card table on the porch at night. But we weren’t rowdy---something else he always thanked us for. I believe he could tell that we had it in us to get rowdy, but we maintained Mattamuskeet’s formal social conventions for etiquette.
It was always peaceful, quiet, and uneventful. All except for that one time.
We had drawn a small crowd of volunteer fireman from the firehouse down the road, and we had an unusually big bounty of crab spread out on the big picnic table. It was corn harvest time, and one of the firemen had stopped by in his pickup and left a full crate of silver queen for us to steam in the husk. They joined us for a real feast, and we told our lies about where the crab had actually come from. They knew from the size that they were Matty crab, but didn’t know what spot on what canal. Joe just made a place up.
The guy they called Miller kept saying that he had permits to spotlight and shoot deer off his soybeans at night; and he invited us to come along for the fun. He looked like a rich farmer’s kid, with a new truck, stiffly-ironed jeans, and a starched white western shirt with no stains. He was sipping Jack Daniel’s right out of a black label half-gallon, and French-harping the silver queen corn that Joe had steamed for the firemen.
By nine that night, it was pitch dark and we had stuffed ourselves on big jimmies, and the keg was listing badly---a sign that it was about to float. We loaded into Miller’s crew cab, and headed out into the fields. I had drank just about enough that I made most of the ride with my eyes closed, and if Miller had stopped and let me out, I would have never found my way back. We traveled miles of soybean fields along dusty pasture roads, and through countless cattle-guard gates. The dust was so bad that Miller had to use his wiper-washer several times, and the sludge looked like black snow on the sides of the windshield.
Somewhere back in there we stopped. There was an old shack, and there were kerosene lanterns and about a dozen other pickup trucks. In a big pile were maybe ten deer and fawn. Someone had a barbecue pit going, and some of the deer hams had been cut into strips, cooked, and left soaking in tinfoil pans with brown sugar and sweet tomato sauce. It was a big pit, fashioned from a large butane tank, and mounted on an old boat trailer. People were drinking moonshine and Jack Daniel’s, and tearing at the deer ham with their teeth. In the glow from the dim kerosene light, they were just yellowy figures, with red smears around their mouth from the sauce.
Joe and I got introduced around the nickname-only crowd---by mostly nods instead of handshakes. The guy with a long ponytail asked Miller if we were "alright". Miller said, "hell, they drank a keg of beer and floated it---just the two of them. They gotta be about primed. The fat one dozed all the way out here. They’re fine."
Two of the guys were twins, and curiously, each was nicknamed "Sugar." If there was any hope of telling them apart, it was lost on me now. They asked me if I cared to arm-wrestle them across the big wooden cable spool that they called the "the fistin’ table." Sort of an initiation, I figured. I declined, owing to be too fat and almost unable to hold myself upright from all the beer.
Then they asked Joe, and for some reason, he agreed. I figured it was just an exercise for his stay-in-shape ego, since he was a fitness freak and rode a bicycle twenty miles a day when not with me.
As a starter’s signal, a yellow man rang the fender of the rusty old tractor with a walking cane and the wrestle was on. Their arms were locked like mating snakes, and the pressure of the struggle caused them to ripple and quiver. Within seconds, the first Sugar had Joe’s arm flat against the spool. He grinned his thrill of victory, and made way for the second Sugar to sit down. This time, Joe had stiffened up, and the two of them swayed back and forth for minutes, each getting the other close to the fall. Finally, like a sawed oak, Joe’s arm relaxed and fell. He would later tell me he was simply afraid to win.
To celebrate, Sugar # 2 got out a fresh jar of blackberry moon, and passed it between Joe and I until it was mostly gone. In North Carolina, the State posts highway billboards that warn in simple one-liners, "Moonshine Whiskey Will Kill You." Why would I be reminded of that just now?
Some sort of a business meeting was starting. The talk was hushed at first, and I began to sway a little from the blackberry moon. I kept thinking to myself---soon this will break up and we can get to bed. More jimmies to catch tomorrow. We always left after cleaning the morning catch on Sundays, because both Joe and I each had to stand work muster Monday mornings.
I could make out certain sentences and phrases from the yellow men. Hell---I was sure---they were discussing burning a church.
"There’s that plank bridge that runs across Haggerty Creek. We better burn that too, or they’ll build it back," said the yellow man they called Little-Britches.
Damn. I looked over at Joe. His head was against the trunk of a big pine that had a weathered poster on it from the last Sheriff’s election. He looked like a corpse. I looked around the lantern’s halo for Miller. He was across the way, with his Tarheels cap turned backwards, and wearing sunglasses. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or not.
I closed my eyes and sat slumped down, like I was passing out. I wanted to avoid all eye contact. But I listened, my chin against my chest.
They guy named "Cleaver" was saying…"You know that old man lives about two hundred yards down that same road. You have to pass his trailer on the way in there."
"Cut the phone lines and spray the door with buckshot. That old bastard will dive under the dining table and spend the night there for sure," said the guy I think they called "Mutton."
"Besides, they don’t pay him nothing---not even for the mowing he does. Loyalty don’t include dodgin’ buckshot." There was a round of laughter.
"Okay---Wednesday at two in the morning." Said one of them.
"Done." Said another. "Hey---we only need three guys. No sense looking like the Soy-Queen Parade got lost in the woods." Another round of laughter.
Like after a knockout in the first round, it was suddenly over. Somebody clanked the barbecue grill door closed and they loaded the deer carcasses all in one truck. I shook Joe so we could head back to Miller’s pickup. He opened just one eye and winked.
It was even a longer ride back, and Miller had a Bocephus tape on, playing real loud. Then we crossed the last cattle guard and he turned it way low.
"You know, he said, the Sugars will take those deer and drop them on the back side of Mattamuskeet. There’s a place back there where the game warden won’t even go. It’s where old Hambone---he was the guy with the corncob pipe y’all met---old Hambone has his still in a Tidi clearing back in there, and its all booby-trapped. Anyway, the fluff mud in that part of the lake is about twelve feet thick. Hell, you could slip an Aerostar van in there and the radio aerial wouldn’t even show in low tide."
So tomorrow you boys enjoy a great morning of crabbing and forget about our little prayer meeting tonight--- just in case you weren’t so much asleep. Just think of yourself in that easy chair back at your house, watching Jeopardy. You know the answers to some of the questions, but when it comes to Final Jeopardy, you kinda go blank."
Then he laughed a forced laugh. "When you come back down here sometime, we’ll do‘er again."
Somehow I lost the little spiral book of copious notes in all that black dust. A new dawn came and neither of us cared much for Sunday crabbing. We got home a half-day early. After that, we stuck with the Indian motels on the other side of the lake. Joe says now that curry smells real sweet to him in the morning.
from October, 2000 issue