Me n Poot Strike Again

Trees line a ditch across Wade Road and in front of the houses me n Poot were planning to burn down. We drove our mopeds off the road and followed that drainage which led us behind a small patch of woods and to the banks of the Tallahatchie River. This is where Poot told me the plan.

From where we were on the river bank, we could look across and see the edge of town and the swing, on town side, at the end of Medallion Drive. In those days, there were three swings that I knew about. One was on the Yazoo off of West Claiborne. Another was off of Wade Road just over the Tallahatchie Bridge. That’s the one me n Poot spent the most time at although we swam at them all. And one was at the end of Medallion Drive. Today, where the swing off Medallion was, the river bank has been stripped of the huge trees that covered it then and it’s been rocked by the Corps of Engineers in order to stabilize the bank. Erosion had slowly been moving the river closer and closer to the road because the river makes a sharp sharp bend there.

“This is what we do,” Poot said as we gazed across the river at the swing off Medallion. “We start going out at night, after dark. We can say we are running, getting in shape for track in the spring. We tell our parents that we gotta wait till it gets dark cause of the heat. We stay out longer and longer and come home covered in sweat. We do it ever night, that way nobody gets suspicious when one of those houses burns. Then when everything is set we burn the first one down.”

“But Poot, it just takes one person to see us cross the bridge . . . .”

“We ain’t gunna cross no bridge, dummy.” He pointed across the river to the swing. “We swim the river right there. After dark. Nobody on town side can see us because of the trees on the river bank and the dark. Nobody on this side can see us cause of that patch of woods,” he said pointing back towards Wade Road. And we have that ditch for our own personal get-away road.”

Wow, I thought. That’s when I heard the Mission Impossible music start playing in my mind.

“Now we gotta get us some tenny shoes to stash on this side so we got shoes when we get out of the river. Maybe a shirt and shorts. And lighter fluid, of course. We can get that stuff at Gibson’s. And a hammer and a towel and small nails.”

“Hammer, towel, nails?”

“To cover the window. To give us time to get across the road before somebody can look out their window and see the flames.”

“Yeah.” There was a line of homes starting about two hundred yards from the shotgun house. That was our only real danger of getting caught, if somebody looked out and saw the flames and then seen us run across the road. The towel over the window would give us a minute or two to light the fire and get gone.

So the plan was set and we started right away getting ready. The next day we both took some of our yard money to Gibson’s and bought shoes and shorts and a T-shirt and a towel. Poot already had a hammer and nails in his pack back at his house. We left Gibson’s, went back to Poot’s and got his pack, and took all the stuff to the river bank and hid it under a tree and covered the stuff with leaves.

The next night, we did our first training run. We both stayed home all afternoon and told our mom’s we was doing our homework early so we could go out after dark and start training for track. It worked.

First night out we didn’t get nowhere near the river. We just walked around about an hour and then run home so we would be outta breath and sweaty when we got back. Next night we made our way to the swing just to look things over in the dark. Perfect. We could come and go on Riverside Drive or Medallion either one. The houses on Riverside Drive ended a hundred yards or so from the swing. At that time, the ones on Medallion were at least a quarter of a mile from the river bank. We could slip in and out with nobody seeing us and since we were “training for track,” being wet was to be expected. And with it dark, couldn’t no cars slip up on us cause we could see the headlights.

So we made plans to burn the house down the next Tuesday. The days were getting a little shorter, giving us more time. We would go out to run Monday night and again Wednesday so we would be out plenty without anything suspicious happening.

And that’s what we done.

Tuesday night we followed the little path off Riverside Drive to the river bank, pulled our clothes off, and waded into the river. I was skeered. I don’t know why. We had swum here a whole bunch, but it was creepy crawling into the brown water in the dark. If Poot hadn’t been there, I don’t think I could have gone through with it.

And we didn’t count on the current carrying us so far downstream. We stayed in the water when we got to the other side and looked back. We were straight across from houses on Riverside Drive. It was pretty dark so maybe they couldn’t see us. But just in case, we walked upstream in the water so as not to leave tracks and staying as low as we could.

When we got back straight across from the swing, we had to get out without leaving tracks. There was a strip of wet bank that stretched from the water line about two feet up the bank. Above that the bank was dry for a couple of feet and after that a strip of grass grew before the bank crested. We had to get close to the water edge and then step up and over the wet soil to the dryer, harder soil above.

We done it, climbed the bank and found our shoes, shirts, shorts, and other stuff under the tree where we left them. We got dressed, picked up the hammer, lighter fluid, and lighter and started making our way towards Wade Road and Star of the West Plantation.

We stayed on the edge of the field until we got to the road. At the closest house, the one next to the one we was going to burn, an old man and old woman was going in and out of the front door. We finally figured they was unloading groceries. So we sat there at the edge of the road and we was a all-you-can eat buffet for the fat delta mosquitoes.

They finally finished, but when they did we seen headlights coming from Money Road, so we let the mosquitoes feast some more. A pickup truck drove slowly past and turned in a few house down. There is a line of houses on Wade Road down there that lead up to the headquarters of Star of the West Plantation, a delta cotton farm named after a captured Yankee ship the confederates sunk in the Tallahatchie River to stop General Grant from using the river to get to Vicksburg.

The truck stopped two houses down and a floppy man got out and went inside. He came back out almost instantly, cussing like he was in a contest. A woman shot out the door behind him, threw something his direction and did some cussing of her own. Me n Poot blushed. At least I did. I couldn’t see Poot’s face but I could feel mine turn red and hot. I had never heard a girl or woman cuss. The man flopped back into his truck and peeled out of there.

Finally, the coast was clear and we slipped across the road and into the house. Poot hurriedly stood on the window sill and held the towel up while I tacked it to the framing. Poot then wasted no time in emptying the lighter fluid on the floor and the wall of a closet. Then he told me to check the road. All was clear.

“Take that spring off the screen door so it won’t slam behind us,” he said. His breathing was quick and shallow. Mine was too. My heart was about to beat out of my chest. Then Poot lit his cigarette lighter and dropped it on the lighter fluid dampened floor.

We runned.

We runned fast.

We runned real fast.

When we got to the tree where we took our clothes off and hid our hammer, we was breathing so hard I thought we both would heart attack. We looked back and already the house was blazing pretty good but we didn’t hear nobody stirring.

This time we had the sense to walk upstream about fifty yards before we got in and started our swim back. We was still breathing real hard and for a bit I was skeered Poot might drown. He couldn’t swim as good as me, so I went slow and encouraged him. But we made it alright. We just landed about twenty-five yards town ways below the swing and had to walk back on the bank. The current is too fast on that side to walk up in the water.

We got dressed and peeked out of the trees onto Medallion Drive. No lights. We stepped out into the street and turned left walking up Riverside. We could see the glow from the fire across the river on our left. We was wet, but not no wetter than if we had been running. We walked, without talking, and listen to the Katydids filling the September air with their sounds.

Then we heard the fire truck roaring and yelling and honking through red lights as it raced up Grand Boulevard. We knowed we had pulled it off, and I didn’t even feel like squirting, but went home and slept real good.

[I appologize for the font. On the draft, it shows most of the story in Verdana and the final paragraph in Ariel. Published it is the opposite and try as I may, I cannot have my way with the text here. I think it's Poot's fault]