Summer of Pearls by Mike Blakely Read Free Book Online

hands, we were bound.
    â€œGo get that trotline,” I said to Adam, all excited. “We can used old Esau’s skiff to run the line.”
    â€œWhat are we gonna use for bait?” Cecil asked.
    â€œWe’ll wade for some mussels.”
    Suddenly Billy perked up, and I saw a new light flash in his eyes for a second. “Mussels?” he said. “Do these waters bear a lot of mussels?”
    â€œThey’re all over the dang place,” Cecil said.
    Billy glanced at a watch he pulled out of his pocket. “I think I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’d like to see these mussels.”
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    Adam snuck his pop’s trotline out of the barn along with a couple of cork floats and a good supply of hooks. Billy walked with us the two miles between Port Caddo and old Esau’s saloon located on an inlet of Caddo Lake known as Goose Prairie Cove,.
    Esau was a friendly old man who drank whiskey all day, but never seemed to get drunk. He was dark-skinned and claimed five-sevenths Choctaw blood. I asked him one time how he figured that, and he said, “I’ve got seven ancestors, and five of them was Choctaw.” I think he was really pure Indian and just liked to pull my leg. He kept his hair cut and dressed like a regular civilized man. With his saloon and fishing camp down at Goose Prairie Cove, he managed to make a living that
he supplemented by hunting wild game and running a few hogs in the woods. He had several old leaky boats at his camp and never refused them to us boys.
    Esau always ran us off after dark, though, because sometimes fights broke out between drunks at his place. But there were a few knotholes in the walls, and we often snuck back and looked through the knotholes to see what barroom life was like. One night when we were peering through the knotholes, Esau walked casually over to a chair by the wall, sat down in it, and sprayed a mouthful of whiskey in Adam Owens’ eye through a knothole. I never did figure out how he knew we were out there.
    Anyway, when we got to the fishing camp, we found Esau and Judd Kelso sitting in the shade of a big mulberry, sipping whiskey. Judd Kelso had been hanging around Port Caddo ever since the disaster. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he should have been looking for work somewhere. Kelso was not independently wealthy. However, his family lived over at Long Point, not too far away, so it didn’t seem unnatural to me for him to stay in the area after the boiler explosion.
    Esau stood up to greet us when we got there. We introduced Billy and they shook hands. Esau offered Billy a whiskey flask.
    â€œI never drink,” Billy said.
    Esau didn’t bat an eye, just put the flask in his pocket. We asked him if we could use a skiff to throw mussels in and run a trotline, and he told us we were welcome to, as long as we brought the skiff back.
    â€œHowdy, Treat,” Kelso said, waving glassy-eyed, sprawled across a wooden chair in the shade.
    Billy just flat ignored him and went with us boys to the lakeshore. My friends and I waded barefoot into the shallows, towing a skiff behind us. I had worked up a sweat on the walk from Port Caddo, and the water felt good. Billy kicked off his shoes, put his pocket watch in one of them, and followed us in.
    It didn’t take long for me to find the first mussel. I was probing through the mud with my toes when I felt it, a hard ridge in the muck. I dug it out with my toenail, then used my foot like a shovel to lift it up to where I could grab it in my hand.

    It was a pretty good-sized one, but nothing extraordinary—about as wide as the palm of my hand—a dark brown, clamlike shell plastered with mud. I threw it into the skiff Adam was holding by the rope and went on hunting with my toes. Billy sloshed over to the skiff, grabbed the mussel, washed it off, and studied it. I saw that light in his eyes again. He seemed fascinated.
    â€œHow many