Authors: Edward Lee

The Backwoods (20 page)

BOOK: The Backwoods

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“Ernie. I didn’t see you coming,” she faltered.

He hoisted the box. “I was just cuttin’ across. Judy wanted me to go to Squatterville to turn the electricity off on a few of the shacks.”

Patricia had barely recovered from her startlement.
That was the most vivid daydream of my life!
She brought a stray hand to the bottom of her throat.
I hope I’m not blushing
. . . . The fantasy hadn’t lasted long enough for her to see the face of her imaginary peeping Tom.

Had she hoped it was Ernie?

He chuckled, looking cockeyed at her. “You okay?”

“Daydreaming,” she muttered back. “What were you saying? You had to turn
off
the electricity?”

“Just to three of the Squatter shacks. No point in electricity going into an empty place.”

“What do you mean?”

He set the toolbox down and crossed his arms. “Well, things ain’t changed much since you moved outta the Point. Back then, a’ course, there weren’t quite as many Squatters. But unlike back then, it seems that a lot of ’em are leavin’.”

“Leaving—as in leaving the Point?” she asked.

Ernie nodded. Somehow the streak of sweat going down the center of his tight T-shirt struck her as sexy, and the way his long hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d just gotten out of bed. “Three of ‘em have left just in the past week, and eight or ten more since the beginning of the month. Kinda strange . . . or maybe not, really. Just ’cos I love livin’ on the Point don’t mean everyone does. Look at you.”

“But where did these Squatters go?” she asked the logical question.

Ernie shrugged his strong shoulders. “They didn’t leave forwardin’ addresses, if that’s what you mean. Most a’ the folks who left was younger Squats, late teens, early twenties. Growin’ pains and all that, I guess. It ain’t unusual for kids to wanna leave home to check other pastures.”

No, it’s not,
she realized.

“But me?” Ernie continued. His long hair gusted in a sudden breeze. “I love it here. Cain’t see myself ever leavin’. The city ain’t for me. I went to Roanoke once, couldn’t believe it. The air stank, the traffic was awful, everything was expensive. I don’t know how you stand it in D.C.”

“It has its ups and downs,” she said. “But I’m actually liking it a lot here this time. I didn’t last time I was back.”

“Oh, yeah. When Judy‘n’ Dwayne got married. Well, that’s all over ‘n’ done with. I’m hopin’ Judy gets out of her funk soon.”

“Me, too.”

“She got drunk as a skunk last night, but you could tell—even as heartbroke as she was—there was a lot of worries and hassles gone from her life.”

That was good to hear.

“You just out for a mornin’ walk?” he asked her.

“Yes. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good look at the Point. It’s much more beautiful than I remember.”

“I gotta head down to the pier to check ‘n’ see if the new crab traps got delivered. Why don’t’cha come with me?”

“Sure,” she said, and followed him down the trail. They went in and out of several stands of pine trees. Around them the fields behind Squatterville blazed green in the sun. The scenery lulled Patricia, but not enough to take away all of that irritating sexual edge left over from the daydream. As she walked behind Ernie, she had to consciously force herself not to look at him: the toned, tan arms, the tapered back, the strong legs.
This damn place is becoming an aphrodisiac,
she thought,
and there’s no reason why
. She tried to clear her head, following on.

“I love that smell off the bay,” he observed. “Salty, clean.”

“Mmm,” she replied, taking a breath herself.

“No pollution, like everywhere else on the bay. Christ, most other places think the bay’s just a place to dump their garbage.”

Yeah, like D.C.,
Patricia had to agree in her thoughts. Now, through breaks in the trees, she could see the mirrorlike shine off the water, and, high in the sky, the finches and crows were replaced by seagulls and pipers. Another few minutes of walking took them down to the town dock, where a dozen piers jutted out into the water. Some wooden buildings stood up front, where several Squatter men looked up, nodded briefly, then resumed their tasks of sorting rigging ropes and stacking bushel baskets. Ernie briefly walked to one of the dock buildings, grabbed a clipboard, and began counting what looked to be several dozen brand-new crab traps that had been stacked there: simple chicken-wire boxes dipped in black latex to prevent rust. A cylindrical compartment inside each trap held the bait, and then each trap was dropped out in the bay, marked by a floating buoy. The boats would all go out as early as four in the morning, drop their traps, then dredge oysters and clams for a few hours, after which they’d haul up their traps, empty them, and size the crabs. Almost all of the boats were gone now, but Patricia did notice a few moored to the piers—long, wide, shallow. dingies with little motors at the back.

She walked over to Ernie, who was still busy counting traps. “I’m always reading in the papers about how bad the crab harvest is in the bay. What’s so special about Agan’s Point?”

Ernie pointed outward, where the bay stretched several miles across. “Out there? The current’s too strong, not many crabs.” Then he pointed to a series of sand berms that could be seen just breaking the surface a mile or so out. “But those berms cut the current way down in the Point, which is ideal for blue crabs. Then there’s the freshwater runoff, keeps the water cooler and lowers the salinity. That’s why Agan’s Point crabs are bigger ‘n’ heavier than crabs anywhere else. The perfect environment.”

“So why don’t the big commercial crabbers come out here?”

“It’s not worth their time or money. They have to come too far, and their boats are too big. Agan’s Point waters are too rocky ‘n’ shallow for their big rigs. So they all go south ‘n’ leave us alone. The Squatters use flatboats to get around these shallow waters, and they always bring in the same number of bushels a day, and not one more than that, ever. The rest of the bay’s been fished out, but not Agan’s Point. The Squatters stick to their daily haul limit and never break it; that way there’ll always be plenty a’ crabs. We only sell our meat to the better restaurants and markets in the county, and that’s it, and because Agan’s Point crabs taste so much better than the other stuff, our buyers pay more per pound.”

“What makes them better?” Patricia asked. Now she was sitting at the edge of the pier, waggling her feet in the cool water.

“The meat’s sweeter ‘cos the salinity’s perfect and the water’s cooler ’n’ cleaner. It’s that simple.” Ernie hung up his clipboard, apparently satisfied with the trap delivery. “And another reason the company’s got a higher profit margin per pound is ’cos of the lower overhead.” He pointed to another pier, where several men sat down at tables next to some large picnic-type coolers. “Most crabbers use chicken necks fer bait, but what ya need to know about the Squatters is that they don’t waste
anything.”

Patricia didn’t get his meaning; she leaned up higher from where she sat, squinting at the men. Now she heard a continuous series of
thwacking
sounds. . . . “What are they doing?”

“Like what I was sayin’,” Ernie went on, leaning against a stack of traps. “The Squatters live off the land like nobody’s business; they don’t spend a dime on food unless they need to.”

Patricia’s bosom jutted as she leaned more urgently to see what the men at the tables were doing. “I still don’t—”

“It ain’t just crabs the Squatters trap; it’s everything. Rabbit, possum, muskrat, squirrel. When they’re done guttin’ and trimmin’ what they catch to eat, they chop up what’s left. Scraps, guts, feet, ‘n’ tails. And that’s what they use fer crab bait.”

Patricia shuddered a moment when she finally realized what the men were doing: chopping up animal scraps and innards with butcher knives and then depositing the portions into plastic jars punctured by holes. Each jar was then put into a cooler.

“Them jars there?” Ernie explained. “When the boats go out tomorrow, they put one a’ them jars in each trap. Best crab bait ya can get. And it’s free.”

It sounded very practical—but grisly. “I can understand rabbits and squirrels—I ate plenty of that when I was growing up,” Patricia noted. “But you said the Squatters even eat
muskrat
and
possum?”

“Oh, sure. I do, too. Muskrat’s tough to dress, but it tastes like ham, and on a possum the only thing ya eat is the back strap. Tastes like the best pork tenderloin ya ever had if ya marinate it right, and the Squatters know how to do it.” He tapped her on the shoulder, looking down. “You’ll be able to try some. This weekend is the Squatters’ celebration feast. You’ll think you walked into the county fair, and they’ll be cookin’ up everything. These people know how to cook.”

Her feet in the water relaxed her. She looked up at him, frowning. “Ernie, I don’t mind eating a little squirrel and rabbit, and crabs are fine too, but now possum and muskrat? That’s roadkill, if you ask me.”

“You’ll try some,” he assured her. “One thing I remember about you from way back is that you were always adventurous.”

“Not
that
adventurous,” she declared. It occurred to her in the briefest moment that her position—sitting down at the pier’s edge as he stood over her—afforded Ernie a considerable view of her cleavage and possibly even her nipples, given the leeway of her loose ivory blouse. Again, she hadn’t put a bra on, and she’d been oblivious to that fact until just this second. But when she glanced back up at him to say something, he was looking out at the water, not at her.
What the hell is my brain up to now?
she asked herself
. It’s almost like I want him to be looking at me . . . but if he’s not, I’m disappointed. I’m
so screwed-up!
Then her original question resurfaced. “You said they’re having a
celebration
feast?”

“Yeah. Every month—every half-moon, whatever that means. They got some weird ways.”

The Squatters were notoriously superstitious but . . .
Half-moons?
she wondered. “So what are they celebrating?”

“Life, I guess—in their own way. Nature, the crab harvest, the food they get from the woods. But when ya think about it, it’s the same thing as our Thanksgiving.”

Patricia supposed so. All societies, even today, seemed to have some ritual of giving thanks for the abundance of the land. “What religion are they, though?” she asked next. “I never quite got it.”

“I asked Everd once, and he said they’re worshipers of nature and love, or some such, and left it at that. But then ya see a lot of ‘em wearin’ crosses along with all those knickknacks and stones around their necks. Their own kind of Christianity, I think it is, mixed with other stuff.”

How interesting. Like Cuban Santeria and the obia of the Caribbean, these religions amalgamated old African folk magic with traces of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Even Haitian voodoo borrowed patron saintdom and idolatry from Christianity. And now that Ernie had mentioned it, she looked back at the men chopping up the crab bait and noticed that one of them wore around his neck what appeared to be a cross made from small animal bones.

“See, right out there,” Ernie said, and pointed out to the bay

Patricia focused out on the water. At the end of the berm, near the inlet’s mouth, she spotted a wide plank sticking up out of the water; on its face someone had painted a cross.

“Everd supposedly blesses the Point every morning,” Ernie said.

But Patricia was still looking out. There were actually two planks, she noticed now, the second sunk directly into the sand berm. But it wasn’t a cross painted on it; it was some sort of a squiggly design. “What’s that second one there?”

“Some kind of clan good-luck sign,” Ernie said. “Don’t rightly know exactly.”

More
superstition,
Patricia realized.

One of the Squatters approached them, a knobby-kneed man in his fifties, with a sun-weathered face and the trademark coarse, jet-black hair of the Squatters. He seemed to be bearing the lid of a bushel basket as a waitress would with serving tray.

“Howdy, Regert,” Ernie greeted him.

Regert,
Patricia thought.
What a strange name.

The man kept his eyes downcast, the way servants wouldn’t look directly at their masters, another thing that had always struck Patricia as strange. “Miss Patricia, Mr. Ernie.” He returned the greeting with a curt nod. He set the basket lid down on a dock table. “We made ya both a clan breakfast. Hope you like it. It’s a blessing from the land.”

“That’s mighty nice of ya, Regert,” Ernie said, then to Patricia: “This is great; come ‘n’ have some.”

Patricia got back up to look. Two tin tumblers of liquid sat on the tray, along with a plate of shucked oysters and a bowl of . . .

What are those?
she wondered
. Prunes? Figs?

“Try our home-brewed
ald,
miss,” Regert said, passing her one of the tumblers.

BOOK: The Backwoods

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