TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (17 page)

Holding up the lassoed catfish by the rope end and examining his catch, White said, “Maybe a twenty-five pounder.” Then he secured the stringer around a sapling near the shore and dropped the fish into the water.

“Threebuck!” Randy yelled. “If you don’t get out here, I’m gonna come up there and throw your ass in.”

Threebuck, shamed into action, sat down near the others’ stashes of pocket items, socks, and boots, and started removing his own. Rather than removing stuff from his jeans pockets, he decided to just take them off.

Randy looked at him and asked, “What are you doing?”

Pulling his leg out of his jeans, he folded them and put them on top of his boots. He then started walking toward the water wearing only his white briefs and his Confederate flag do-rag.

“Don’t want to get all my clothes wet,” he said as he stuck one foot tentatively into the water.

“Aw right, well let’s go look for another,” White said to the others. The wind picked up a bit, and big drops of rain started to ripple the water erratically with small craters. White waded toward the submerged tree trunk with its twisted limbs protruding out of the water in every direction. He motioned for the others to follow, and said, “Come on, now.” Randy sloshed toward him, but Threebuck held back when he saw White already up to his neck in the brown water. Then something harder than the fat raindrops smacked into is body; and almost immediately one stung the top of his head. He saw other round white missiles the size of a pea enter the water around him.

“Looks kind of deep there,” Threebuck said.

“Well, yeah, it’s deep, but it ain’t over your head. These big babies don’t exactly live on dry land,” White said.

“Come here, son,” he said to Threebuck. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Threebuck looked at Red Randy and shook his head, but got no sympathy. Deciding the deeper water would be better than the pelting of hail, Threebuck waded out to the others, who had become two bobbing heads in the water.

“See, your bull flathead will be on the nest protecting his old lady’s eggs,” White started to explain while moving around under water. Raindrops and small hail plopped into the water around them at an increasing rate. “The female catfish likes to find a place down in some dark hole to lay her eggs. An old log like this, with lots of brush is perfect.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” he said. “I think I found something. Let me make sure it ain’t some old snapping turtle.”

After he felt around a little more, White said, “Naw, it’s a catfish awright. Dang big one, too.”

“C’mere, son,” he said again to Threebuck. Threebuck treaded along side White. “Now reach down here and feel him. Careful, though. Don’t poke him. Just run your fingers along his side. He won’t do nothing unless he feels threatened.”

Threebuck reached down into the murky water, stretching to keep his head above the surface; small whitecaps lapped against his chin and cheeks. He touched the soft side of the catfish and ran his fingers along it. It felt slick and slimy.

“Yeah, I feel him,” he said to White.

“You want to grab him?” White asked.

Threebuck wasn’t about to say no, even though the thought of grabbing that big denizen terrified him. “Sure, why not,” he said with bravado.

The sky flashed and crashed in an almost simultaneous detonation. Threebuck and Randy cringed and ducked. White only looked up at the storm.

Turning his attention back to Threebuck, White said, “Awright, here’s what you want to do. You move your right hand a couple inches out in front of his mouth, and start wiggling your fingers. Move your fingers in toward his mouth, still wiggling, maybe even touch his lips.”

Threebuck started doing as instructed. It began raining harder.

“If that old catfish has been sitting on them eggs for a while,” White shouted above the hiss of rain. “...he’s probably pretty hungry. And when he sees them fingers of yours wiggling in front of his nose, he’s going to think they might be something good to eat, and he’s going to grab them.”

Threebuck looked at White with concern, and slowed down his finger wiggling under water. White saw the concern, and went on with his lecture.

“When he does that, it’s going to startle you some. I been noodlin’ for fifty-some years, and I ain’t never got used to that moment when a big old catfish grabs onto to me. But don’t let that panic you, son, because it’s at that point you got him.

Rainwater ran off Threebuck’s head and face in rivulets. The concern expressed there didn’t slacken.

“Now I gotta tell you,” White continued. “That a catfish has got teeth. They ain’t big teeth, like a gar or pike or nothing, but just the same, it ain’t real pleasant when he chomps down on you. They’re little sharp things more like a saw blade or real heavy sandpaper. But that don’t mean they can’t rip you up some when they start twisting.”

Threebuck looked at White with a furrowed brow; White looked back at him as if he’d just told him how to change a tire with the expectation that he should proceed. When Threebuck kept looking at him, White said, “You might ought to duck your head under water to see where your fingers are in relation to his mouth”

Threebuck immediately raised both hands out of the water and started to stand up. “Naw, huh-uh, I ain’t doin’ that,” he said with a vigorous shake of his head, and started backing away.

White looked disappointed. “Well, suit yourself,” he said. “Noodlin’ ain’t for everybody.” Threebuck couldn’t mistake the disparagement in the old man’s voice. The rain continued to splash heavily around them.

“You’re just a damn sissy, like I thought,” Randy said.

Threebuck sighed and squatted back down in the water. “What do I do after he grabs me?” he asked White.

“Well, son,” White answered. “You grab holt of him through his gill slit, and haul him up out of the water. It’s as simple as that.” More lightning and thunder issued from overhead.

Threebuck stretched his neck as much as he could, the surface of the lake water lapping around his chin and mouth. He started to tell the others, “I think I can get to him without ducking my he—” But before he could get the word “head” out, his index and middle fingers banged into the lips of the flathead. The fish snapped onto his forearm, swallowing it almost up to the elbow.

Threebuck panicked and jerked his hand back. “Damn!” he said in a half screech. But the catfish held tight.

“Ya got him?” White asked with excitement. “Pull him up, boy! Pull him on up!”

Threebuck tried to plant his feet on the slick dough of the muddy bottom and stand up, but the fish spun violently and yanked him under. The only sound the others heard from Threebuck was, “Glurrg.” His head came up and he gasped for air, and then just as quickly he disappeared under the frothy mocha surface again. White and Randy stood looking at the spot on the water where they’d last seen Threebuck. Ten seconds later he arose again like a breaching whale, only this time five yards farther out. He thrashed the water with his free arm. Looking back toward his companions, he said only, “Help,” before disappearing under the waves for a third time. White would later remark that he thought the look in Threebuck’s eyes at that point came in somewhere between terror and resignation.

“Don’t let him go, son!” White yelled. “He’s yours!”

Randy would later remark that, right after Oxley said that, he wasn’t sure if the old man was talking to Threebuck or the fish.

It was then the skies opened up. Rain fell in wind-whipped sheets, and the commander of the clouds fired his cannonade in several loud and successive volleys, trembling the earth and waters.

Every few seconds Threebuck would break the surface and thrash about, only to disappear again. Each time, he faded a little more into the shroud of rainfall, and farther away from White and Randy. Each time he surfaced he fought toward the shoreline. But just as Threebuck struggled towards shallower waters, the fish fought back for deeper, and it became a stalemate between the two about ten feet from the shore. After the fifth time Threebuck came up for air, he started to replace his plaintive cries for help with subsequently more intense and profane swearing, that is, as much as the remaining air in his lungs would allow.

White and Randy tried to wade and swim to Threebuck, but the catfish held the advantage, being in its own element. The downpour hampered them as much as the lake water. Soon Threebuck and his catch bobbed around a promontory point in the rain-wrapped shoreline and disappeared totally from sight. The two men waded as fast as they could to shore, and then broke into a run to reach the shoreline on the other side of the rocky point. The woods, the deluge, and thick underbrush slowed them down, but when they finally broke through on the other side they couldn’t believe what they saw.

The storm had abated, and fifty yards away, Threebuck lay on his stomach some ten feet from the water’s edge. Behind him, White recognized Soc Ninekiller pulling a johnboat onto the shore. To their amazement they saw the large flathead catfish on its side next to Threebuck. The catfish’s tail waved slowly up and down, and its left gill slit flexed. The fish looked half Threebuck’s size in length and almost the same in girth. The scrawny biker’s right hand and bloody forearm remained buried inside the fish’s mouth, the curl of his fingers wrapped around the outside of the right gill slit.

“Hey, Soc,” White said to the elder Cherokee. He and Randy approached the scene at a trot. Ninekiller gave a nod to the two, and looked down at the waterlogged Threebuck.

White, panting, said, “I’ll swan. Did this boy land this flathead on his own?”

Ninekiller shook his head. “He was in the water. I think the fish pulled him along. When he appeared out of the rain by my boat, I looped my stringer over his free arm and tied it down. Then I rowed him and his fish to shore. I had to drag them up here.”

White and Randy looked again at Threebuck. He looked two-thirds drowned, naked except for his white briefs and his Confederate do-rag still in place.

“Three?” Randy asked, and nudged his partner in the ribs with the toes of one foot.

Threebuck sputtered and coughed, water shooting from his mouth and nose. He looked up bleary-eyed at the three men. He turned his head to look at the monstrous fish still attached to his right arm. He coughed again, and said, “Sumbitch.”

“I’m thinking this here’s a record, son,” White said. He moved to pry Threebuck’s right forearm and hand from the wide jaws of the catfish. “He’ll go eighty pounds, if he’s an ounce,” he said. “No one’s never, around here, grabbed a fish this size single-handed.”

Red Randy Brown looked at Socrates Ninekiller and the two traded nods. “
O si yo
,” Randy said.

Soc held his chin high, and looked Randy straight in the eyes. He responded in his native tongue, “
Hi tsa-la-gi s
.” (Are you Cherokee?). He removed his hat and slapped the water off it with his other hand.

“
Tsi tsa-la-gi
,” (I am Cherokee.) Randy answered.

Soc grunted and nodded again. “
Tsa-la-gi s hi-wo-ni
,” (Do you speak Cherokee?) he asked.

Randy nodded and said, “
Tsa-la-gi ga-yo: tli tsi-wo-ni
.” (I speak a little Cherokee.)

Soc kept looking at Randy studying the latter’s tattoos. Shirtless, Red Randy’s body art showed its extensive array. Soc furrowed his brow, but said nothing.

Still in Cherokee, Soc asked Randy, “Who are your people?”

“My people were in the Ross Clan. All in my family are dead now. I am the last,” Randy answered, also in the native tongue.

“The Ross Clan is not dead,” Soc said. “There are still many. Most I know have kept the old language well.”

“Are you Ross?” Randy asked the elder.

Soc looked at Randy, his chin still high in fierce pride. “No, I am Starr,” he said.

The two looked at one another in silence for several seconds. All Cherokees knew of the old blood feud between the Starr and Ross Clans. In some parts it still lived.

“If you’uns are done with your powwow, I could use a little help here,” White said as he struggled to free the fish from Threebuck... or vice versa.

* * *

White and Randy had retrieved their drenched clothes and shoes, they’d gathered around the fire that Soc had made. White collected some semi-dry pine needles from the woods and placed them on a spot near the fire. He stretched out on the needles, placed his old straw cowboy hat over his face, and went to sleep. Threebuck, wrapped in a dry blanket Soc had given him, sat close to the fire shivering and staring into it. Soc and Randy sat cross-legged next to each other, opposite the fire from Threebuck. It had turned evening on that rain-cooled July day, and they sat in the shade of the hill behind them.

Randy spoke again to Soc in Cherokee. “I am looking for a place. It is supposed to be near this Eagle Branch. The white men say it is a place with a bent sycamore tree.”

Half a minute passed before Soc responded, also in Cherokee, “Why do you seek this place?”

“I have heard of a treasure in these parts,” Randy said. “A white man hid this treasure somewhere around here. If you help me find this treasure, I will share it with you.”

Soc continued to look into the fire, but he said nothing. Finally, he spoke. “I have no need for white man’s treasure. I already have much of that. It has not brought me much contentment.”

More time stretched out. White, beside them, snored softly. Threebuck continued to shiver and stare into the crackling fire.

“I have heard of this treasure about which you speak,” Soc said softly. He stuck a long stick into the fire, and shifted some of the burning wood, sending a spray of sparks upward.

Randy looked at him and spoke intently, “What do you know about it?”

“Many men have looked for it,” Soc continued. “But it has never been found. Many say this treasure is cursed. That it will never be found. That it is protected by the Hill Man.”

“Who is the Hill Man?”

“He is said to be the spirit of the forest, a demon.”

Randy snorted, and said in English. “C’mon, old man. That’s just a spook story women like to tell around home fires.” Then he laughed in derision.