“Sho! The woman shore will love to cook that goose! I’m a fisherman but no hunter. ’Tain’t of’en we git a roast bird!” 160
So Terabon sat by the stove, writing. He wrote for more than an hour—everything he could remember, with the aid of his pencilled midnight notes, about that long run down. With his maps before him he recognized the bends and reaches, the sandbars and islands which had loomed up in the dark. Of all the parts of the river, the hundred miles from Island No. 10 down to Fort Pillow became the most familiar to his thoughts, black though the night had been. Even each government light began to have characteristics, and the sky-line of levee, wilderness, sandbar, and caving bank grew more and more defined.
Having written his notes, and Jeff Slamey having fingered the nine loose-leaf sheets with exclamatory interest and delight, Terabon said he must go rest awhile.
“Yas, suh,” the fisherman cried, “when a man’s pulled a hundred mile he shore needs sleep. When the woman’s got that goose cooked, I bet yo’ll be ready to eat, too.”
So Terabon turned in to sleep. He was awakened at last by the sizzling of a goose getting its final basting. He started up, and Slamey said:
“Hit’s ready. I bet yo’ feel betteh, now; six hours asleep!”
It didn’t seem like six minutes of dreamless recreation.
With night the wind fell. The flood of sunset brilliance spread down the radiant sandbars and the bright waterways. The trees were plated with silver and gold, and the sweep of the caving bend was a dark shadow against which the river current swept with ceaseless attack.
For hours that night Terabon amused his host with his adventures, except that he made but most casual mention of the woman whom Carline was seeking. 161 He was cautious, too, about the motorboat and the companion who had taken Carline down the river, till Slamey burst out:
“I know that feller. He’s a bad man; he’s a river rat. If he don’t kill Gus Carline, I don’t know these yeah riveh fellers. They use down thisaway every winter. I know; I know them all. I leave them alone, an’ they leave me alone. I knew they was comin’. They got three four boats now. One feller, name of Prebol—he’s bad, too—was shot by a lady above Cairo. He’s with a coupla gamblers to Caruthersville now. Everybody stops yeah; I know everybody; everybody knows me.”