“BILLYBEDAM”
Billybedam was bibulous.
None knew how he achieved his devilmaycare nickname—the only name he had, but everybody around Pocotaligo knew that he came by his thirst through patient industry, and that he loved his work. No round-paunched monk of the Middle Ages, no Falstaff of the English taverns, ever absorbed dusky Tuscan wine or Sherris Sack with more appreciative avidity than Billybedam soaked up the “Fus’ X” corn sold on the sly by Yemassee blind tigers and bootleggers, for Billybedam had acquired his “liquorish mouth” during the days, the glorious, honorable days, of the State Dispensary, when, under the operation of that “Great Moral Institution,” certain sons of “Grand old South Carolina” had shown the world that the Caucasian was not “played out,” but could, upon occasion, graft like any freedman of the good old days of Reconstruction!
So the bibulousness of Billybedam became a byword all about “de Yamassee,” where “de Po’ Trial” Railway—significant name—crosses the Atlantic Coast Line, and, not infrequently, the tempers of passengers bound for Beaufort and Port Royal.
Perhaps it was the frequent pouring of libations—his gods were all in his gullet—that enabled Billybedam to crook his elbow so expertly, but this facility, and a marvelous twist of the wrist, contributed to his success as a fisherman, and the greater part of what he ate and drank and wore, came from the brown waters of the Salkehatchie, whose deep and narrow current flowed between wooded banks a mile or so away. With rod and line he fished the stream by day, and many a string of bream and redbreast perch was sold at the station to buy the precious whiskey, while the narrow-mouthed “blue cats,” caught on his set lines over night, were traded among the negroes in exchange for his scanty food and shelter, for Billybedam was a bachelor and a vagabond, unattached and unaffiliated, and called no roof his own.
Sometimes in the spring when the sturgeon were running, the fisherman would get the big-game fever, and, armed with a “grain” which he threw as the whaler throws a harpoon, stationed himself on some log that jutted out over the water, or in the fork of a low, overhanging tree, and took toll from the passing thousands. During the sturgeon run, when, too, mulberries and blackberries were plentiful, the negroes grew fat and “swonguh” and became more than usually irresponsible.
The heavy, sensuous Southern spring was in the air. The bayous or “backwaters,” which irrigated the inland swamp ricefields, were dotted with the sweet white pond lilies, or aflame with the yellow lotus, while over the broad leaves of lily and lotus, purple gallinules tripped daintily. Every log that floated and every stump that rose above the water carried a string or a cluster of terrapins, their glistening backs reflecting the sunshine. The sloping trunks of the willows that fringed the banks were festooned with water snakes, basking in the grateful warmth. Here and there on tussock or muddy flat, rough-backed alligators lay dozing. Blue flags flaunted along the marges. Tall white cranes stalked slowly about the shallows, pausing now and then with spear-like bill poised, watching, waiting.
Billybedam was full of the magic of the spring-time, but it was not altogether a satisfying fullness, and as he pushed the shallow flat-bottomed skiff off from shore, he laid down the paddle long enough to eat a hunk of coarse corn bread and swallow a nip from his “Fus’ X” flask. And then, thoroughly satisfied with the world, he dipped his blade and, with alternate strokes to right and left, pushed the clumsy snub-nosed bateau across the backwater to a famous “drop,” a deep pool just below a gap in the dam where the dark waters flowed slowly through from an upper reservoir. This was Billybedam’s favorite preserve whenever high water in the Salkehatchie forced the river fishermen to seek their living elsewhere.
Today, however, he made an unpropitious start. After his earthworm bait had been repeatedly stripped from his hook by the troublesome silver fish, whose small mouths enabled them to nibble it away piecemeal without getting hooked, his cork bobbed furiously, and he jerked quickly, only to bring swinging over the boat one of the malodorous little black turtles commonly called “limus cootuh” by the low-country negroes. This unwelcome catch he disengaged from the hook and threw as far away from him as possible. “You good fuh nutt’n’ nigguh! Yunnuh t’ink me come spang f’um Macfuss’nbil fuh ketch limus cootuh, enty? Who eenwite you fuh eat ’long fish? You ebbuh see nigguh eat ’long buckruh? De debble!” Running his cork a foot or two higher up the line, he fished at a deeper level and soon began to haul in fine perch, which he strung on the willow withes he had provided. At the end of two hours he had several strings of marketable fish, and, as the sun had set, he paddled to shore, threw away his now empty flask, tied his boat to a snag, and started for Yemassee to convert his catch into cash.
An hour later, with silver jingling in his pocket, he encountered in the dusk, Miss Maria Wineglass, a much sought-after ornament of colored society. Miss Wineglass was, in a manner of speaking, a peripatetic paradox. Altho’ dour-looking and glum, she was noted for her spirits (80 proof); bootless and bare-legged, she was McPhersonville’s most daring and accomplished bootlegger, and so circumspect and resourceful that she seldom met the law face to face.