Eternity Swamp by T. C. Tereschak Read Free Book Online Page B

place…well…it has memories. What do I mean? Well, let’s see here, how can I explain it?
    “How old are you son? Twenty-two? Oh son, you’re still green, need a little more time on the vine, ripen up a bit. Ha, ha. Oh, don’t get all flustered now. I’m funnin’ with ya. Twenty-two is a good age. Enjoy it. Hmm? Me? How old am I? Well…to be honest I don’t rightly know. If I gave you an exact number I’d be lyin’, telling ya a flat out lie and that is one thing I try and never do.
    “Getting’ back t’ the subject at hand, as I was sayin’, this ol’ swamp has its memories. Right here is where ‘Ol’ Hickory’, General Andrew Jackson and his boys, routed the Apalachee, Cherokee, and Choctaw. Slaughtered them savages right here in these woods. Some say it’s them crying out for revenge, or to their long lost loved ones.” Come again? The name of this place? Well, this is really a piece of a swamp, backwater to a bigger swamp. Some folks call it Snake Swamp. Not because of the cottonmouths and swamp rattlers, but because of how it meanders along, turnin’ here and there, a twistin’ around. Others call it Mercy Swamp. Cause if’n you get turned around in here you’ll be crying out, ‘Lord, Lord, have mercy, get me out of here. Ha, ha. Maybe they should call it ‘Sweet Jesus Help Me Swamp.’ Heh, heh, heh. Me, well…I call it Eternity Swamp, ’cause if’n you get tangled up just right, under the right circumstances, well…you might be stuck here for eternity.
    “Now the sound you heard before, like a scream, probably the wind or maybe a panther, but…let me have a little of that chaw I gave ya and I’ll tell you about the memories this ol’ bayou has. I’ll tell you a story ’bout a feller name o’ Samuel Lake.”

The Encounter
    “Sam Lake was a white man, born in these parts around 1885 or so. Now Sam, he was what most folks would call no count, just poor white trash. His mama died when he was about three and his daddy was a sharecropper who liked to drink. Now, some folks when they get to drinkin’ they’re as pleasant as a summer breeze. Others, well they’re more akin to a nest full of white-faced hornets.
    “Unfortunately for Sam, his daddy was more like the latter. Before I go on about ol’ Sam, maybe I ought to cover some local history, so I can give you a better picture of things.
    “Now around here during antebellum—hmm? Oh, antebellum? That’s the period before the War Between the States, the ‘Old South’ as some folks like to say. It tickles me how folks like to romanticize ’bout the days gone by, forgettin’ how hard life was for those who came before. Did you know back then there were no prisons in the south? Didn’t know that, did you? Well there weren’t, not a one.
    “If a black man committed a crime against a white…well it suffices t’ say no judge and jury was ever called upon, and as the law stood, a white man couldn’t commit a crime against a black, which brings us to the third scenario. If a white man committed a crime against another white it was a matter of honor, to be settled between the two or perhaps their families. In some cases it was little more than a matter of reparation, other crimes, especially those involving the honor of women, well, that was usually settled by a duel, or the like. At any rate this system of justice worked well for the establishment.
    “After the war however, with the freedom of the slaves came the dismantling of the status quo. This is when the ‘Jim Crow’ laws came on the books. It became a crime for a black man to whistle at a white woman or be within so many feet of one…countless laws like those were put on books.
    “Now, only men sentenced to ten years or less would be placed on work details, you know, ‘hard labor’. So any white man accused of a small crime was simply fined or released. If he committed a serious crime he was sentenced to ten years or more, or put to death; this kept any white