Summer of Pearls Read online

  But the best fishing waters I know of in the world are right here at Caddo Lake. If you could take all the fish I’ve caught here in my life and put them together at one time, they would fill up the lake they came from. I’m mainly a sport fisherman now, and just plug some for bass around the lily pads. Bass are good fighting fish and not bad eating. I also enjoy fishing with live minnows on cane poles for white perch. And I once made pretty good money catching those spoonbill catfish around spawning time to pass their eggs off as caviar.

  But back in my younger days is when I really caught fish. I would load them in barrels to ship to Marshall, Jefferson, or Dallas. That and duck-hunting and hogs and boat-building have gotten me through some lean years when the sawmills and railroads weren’t hiring.

  I used to set gill nets and trammel nets in the Big Water and up Jeem’s Bayou to catch carp and buffalo by the hundreds every night. Old Esau showed me how to shoot them with a bow and arrow, tying a stout cord to the arrow. I once shot a hundred-and-twenty-pound alligator gar that fought for over an hour before I clubbed it senseless with an oar.

  After Billy Treat taught us how to hold our breath for a good long time, Adam Owens and I became famous around here for hand-grabbling those big opelousas cats out of hollow logs and out from under washed-out banks.

  But of all the fishing I have ever done, trotlining gives me the biggest thrill. I like it even better than those hooking those huge tarpon in salt water or catching those rising trout from the mountain streams. People who consider themselves sport fishermen scoff at the trotline, but I know of no finer tool for recreation or livelihood, and it all started for me that summer back in 1874, when me and Cecil Peavy and Adam Owens were catching cats for Billy Treat’s kitchen.

  We were on the lake at sunrise the day the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush began. It looked like any other summer day to us as we launched old Esau’s skiff and started paddling toward our trotline over near Mossy Brake. We were talking about Captain Trevor Price Brigginshaw, who had come to town the day before.

  “He’s big as ol’ Colored Bob over at the sawmill,” Adam claimed.

  “He’s not that big,” Cecil argued. “Colored Bob has to duck to go under doors.”

  “well, he talks funnier than Colored Bob.” Adam had his own strange way of winning arguments.

  As they paddled and contradicted each other, I opened mussels to bait the trotline with, and of course I checked them all for pearls.

  “Ben,” Cecil said, “what are you gonna do if you really find a shell berry in there? Are you gonna trade it in for ten thousand dollars, or a hump with Pearl Cobb?”

  “One pearl ain’t worth ten thousand dollars,” I said, avoiding the more interesting half of the question.

  “I thought you said today’s paper was gonna talk about Pearl Cobb selling a pearl for ten thousand dollars.”

  “It doesn’t say it was Carol Anne, and it doesn’t say it was just one pearl. Don’t you ever listen?”

  “I guess she probably sold that Captain Brigginshaw a couple of hundred pearls to get that much money. Lord knows, she’s got a thousand of ’em.”

  “Shut up, Cecil,” I said.

  “You like her, don’t you?” Adam asked.

  Before I could think of an answer, Cecil said, “Like her? He’s in love with her, boy, can’t you tell? If Ben found a ten-thousand-dollar shell berry right now, he’d give it to Pearl Cobb for one hump, when he could get a couple of thousand humps for it over at the nigger whorehouse.”

  “How would you know, Cecil?”

  We aggravated one another like that until we saw our trotline floats bobbing. The second-biggest thrill in trotlining is seeing those floats bob. When you see that, you know you’ve caught something. We had good-sized cork floats on our trotline, and we hadn’t yet caught anything big enough to pull one all the way under. But that morning, as we approached, we saw the cork stay under for five seconds, and we knew we had hooked a monster.

  Cecil was businesslike, as usual. While Adam and I were almost falling overboard with excitement, he said, “Take it easy! We’ll run it from the north end, like we always do. Whatever it is that’s on there, it won’t go anywhere. Probably just a big snappin’ turtle or an alligator gar, anyway.”

  We had been using mussels to bait the line and had been catching mostly willow cats, because they don’t mind eating dead bait. Billy had been very pleased with our catches. They were mainly in the three-and four-pound class. A fresh willow cat of that size—skinned, filleted, and fried—is the best-eating fish in the world. The biggest we. had caught was maybe ten pounds. We all knew that if we wanted to catch a huge opelousas catfish, we needed to put something live on the hook.

  We had also caught a few carp, which we gave to some colored folks we knew, but I didn’t think a carp would get big enough to hold the cork float down that long.

  Figuring Cecil was probably right, I got a little nervous. An alligator gar big enough to pull that cork under like that would have a snout a foot long, lined with razor teeth. A snapping turtle of the same size could take your fingers off with one snap, quicker than you could blink.

  But whatever it was, it wouldn’t get my fingers. It was Adam’s job to take the critters off the hooks. He had a knack for handling thrashing catfish without getting barbed, and I figured he could handle a gar or a snapper, too. Maybe he would just cut the line and let the monster go, the hook still in its mouth.

  I figured it was a gar. We hadn’t yet taken any turtles off the line - on the morning runs. Turtles usually won’t bother a trotline at night. Yes, I was pretty sure it was a gar, but that was part of the lure of trotlining. When you see those floats bobbing, you never really know what you’ve got until you hoist it up from the deep.

  We paddled to a big cypress standing in the water at the edge of Mossy Brake. We had one end of our line tied to a cypress knee next to the tree. From there it ran down into a channel where those willow cats liked to prowl. Some people, as a matter of fact, call them channel cats for just that reason.

  Adam sat in the front of the skiff. He would grab the line, pull the boat along, and take the fish off the hooks. I was in the back of the boat. I kept the boat straight, helped pull on the line, and put fresh bait on the hooks. Cecil was useless except as a counterweight. With Adam and me hanging over the right side of the skiff, it was helpful to have Cecil sit on the left side, to keep the boat as level as possible. As long as I knew Cecil, he always preferred to let other people do the work for him while he sat back and counted money.

  The sun and the rich, rotten smell of the lake were hitting us when Adam began working the line. We pulled the skiff along, passing the rock we had tied on to pull the line to the right depth and keep it tight. Along the main line were lighter cords, about a foot and a half long, tied at six-foot intervals, and on these lighter cords were our hooks. The first few were empty. I untangled the twisted cords and baited their hooks with fresh mussels. Then I felt the first tug, despite Adam’s hold on the line.

  The biggest thrill in trotlining is feeling the fish tug from down deep. Even a little catfish can pull the line pretty hard. As we approached the next hook, I saw the flash of gray down in the brown, muddy water. Adam was smiling. He lived for simple pleasures like that. He pulled a three-pound willow cat to the surface. It splashed us pretty good before he got it unhooked and into the boat.

  Catfish have bony barbs on their pectoral fins, and one on their dorsal fin, too. If they stick you, it aches something fierce for a long time. The skin has some kind of poison in it, I’ve heard. But Adam Owens wasn’t afraid of anything you could pull out of the water, and he knew how to grab a catfish around those bony barbs where it couldn’t jab him. He knew how to grab alligators, water moccasins, wild hogs, and snapping turtles, too.

  He carried a pair of pliers in his pocket and had the hook out of the fish’s mouth in no time. He threw it between the bulkheads at Cecil’s bare feet.

  “Hey, watch it!” Cecil said
as the cat flipped and flopped around. “That thing will stick me!”

  “Oh, shut up, Cecil,” I said, still put out over what he had said about Carol Anne. “Just keep the boat steady.”

  We worked down the line, me and Adam feeling anxiously for the tug of every fish we had hooked, and getting more excited as we came closer to the place where something big was pulling the cork float under.

  “All right, here it comes!” Adam said. We were only a couple of hooks away. “Hold the line tight, Ben. Don’t let it pull a hook through your finger.”

  “Can you see it yet?”

  “No, not yet. But, by gosh, I can sure feel it!”

  The plunges of the creature on our line were rocking the boat like crazy.

  “Just cut it loose as soon as you can,” Cecil said, calmly. “Don’t let it tear up our whole line. Hey, maybe it’s a little gator. Watch your hand, Adam!”

  “I’m watchin’! Gosh, it pulls hard!”

  We worked the skiff forward and Adam grit his teeth lifting the catch. Then I saw it. A huge, flat head rose in the muddy water, then turned for the deep as if the light hurt its beady eyes. A broad tail flipped and splashed a wall of water toward me, even though the fish was still completely submerged.

  “What is it?” Cecil demanded.

  “It’s the biggest damn opelousas cat I ever seen!” Adam’s muscles were popping from his thin arms like twisted steel cables as he fought to pull the fish up. The line was all but cutting through his hand.

  “Hold on tight, Adam!” I said.

  He gave a loud grunt and hoisted the monster from the deep. It looked like a dinosaur coming up from Caddo Lake. Its broad, flat head told us it was an opelousas cat. Its mouth looked like the opening to Captain Brigginshaw’s money satchel, with a jutting lower lip.

  When it broke the surface, I saw its three bayonet-sized barbs, then lost them behind a spray of brown froth. The boat almost pitched Cecil off of the high side. Adam hollered for joy as he reached into the gill under the monster’s head and took a firm hold.

  “It must weigh seventy-five pounds!”

  “Get it in here, then!” Cecil said. “It’s worth two bits to each of us!”

  The catfish lunged, beat its head against the boat, and splashed bucketfuls all over the place, but Adam hung on. He didn’t fool with the hook. He just cut the line that the hook was tied to. He almost fell over backward pulling the fish into the boat, and still wouldn’t turn loose of the gills for fear the biggest fish he had ever seen would jump out of the skiff. The thing was fat and grotesque out of the water, beating itself stupidly against the bottom of the skiff and slapping the smaller fish with its tail.

  “I guess you were wrong!” Cecil said triumphantly to Adam. “I guess you can catch an opelousas cat using dead mussels for bait!”

  “No, I was right all along!” Adam said, panting. “Look!”

  He pulled the lower jaw of that monster catfish open and we saw a smaller fish in the big one’s mouth. About a seven-pound willow cat had taken our mussel bait and hooked itself. Then that giant opelousas cat had risen from its dark hole somewhere to eat the willow cat that had eaten the mussel. The hook alone probably wouldn’t have held a fish that big. It probably could have bent it straight getting away. But when it swallowed that willow cat, the smaller fish set its barbs in the big cat’s throat, and died holding it on our trotline for us.

  Cecil had to take Adam’s place running the rest of the line because Adam didn’t trust him to hold onto the big fish. We baited as quick as we could, collected a few more normal-sized fish, and paddled back toward old Esau’s saloon.

  On the way, the Lizzie Hopkins II steamed within forty yards of us, en route to Port Caddo. The pilot rang his bell and blew his steam whistle when we showed him the fish. The passengers all crowded the rail to see. We felt like decorated heroes. Lucky ones, at that. We hadn’t expected any steamers. The lake was getting almost too low to handle them. The Lizzie would be the last one of the summer, until the rains came back.

  When we came around Pine Island and caught sight of Esau’s place, we saw a big crowd of people standing on the shore, others wading, and some floating in boats. It was as if the news of our tremendous catch had preceded us and people had come out to see it. We didn’t know what was going on, but we were thrilled.

  “Too bad Pop already printed the paper,” I said. “Now we won’t be in it till next week.”

  “He ought to print an extra for a fish like this,” Cecil said. “I wonder what all those people are doing at Esau’s. Wait a minute. I know what they’re doing. Look! They’re hunting for pearls!” He laughed so hard that he had to quit paddling. “That’s Captain Brigginshaw on the shore with his suitcase.”

  Cecil was right. Everybody in town had seen Brigginshaw’s half-page ad and read about the big pearl sale of the previous day. Half the population of Port Caddo had come to hunt up a fortune in Goose Prairie Cove, where Billy had recently found his pearl. Nobody had found anything yet, but a few disenchanted wives had brought old specimens their husbands had given them years before. Brigginshaw was dealing for them in the shade of a big mulberry.

  “There’s Billy standing beside that Brigginshaw fellow,” I said.

  “Good,” Cecil replied. “He can pay us on the spot for this fish.”

  When we got closer, we started hollering to attract attention. We paddled in among the pearl-waders and let them look over the edge of the boat at our fish. Esau met us at the bank with Billy and Captain Brigginshaw. They made us feel good, bragging on us for bringing in such a monster whisker fish. Pop was there too, taking notes on the pearl-hunt, and he promised he would write us up on the front page next week. When Billy said he would pay a penny a pound, as promised, Esau doubled the stakes.

  “Might as well fry up some fish to feed these hungry pearl hunters,” he said.

  Most of the pearlers had come out of the water to view our fish and hear our story. They took turns looking into the big cat’s mouth, to see the smaller one lodged in its throat. I was bulging with pride. For the first time in my life, I was earning money and getting recognition for something besides being my parents’ son. Even Billy was amazed at what I had done. I wondered what Carol Anne would think when she heard.

  What had started out as a pearl-hunt was quickly turning into nothing more than a big fish fry. The novelty of opening mussels in search of riches wore off fast. Most of the men were content to stand around our huge opelousas cat and tell fish stories. As whiskey sales increased, Esau decided to buy every fish we had in the boat. And he hired us to skin and gut them.

  A couple of men volunteered to carry our big fish up under a tree where we could hang it, whack it on the head to make sure it was dead, and go to work on it. We felt like local heroes as two dozen whiskey-sipping ex-pearl-hunters followed us up under the boughs of the shade tree. It was shaping up to be the most glorious day of my life.

  Then it happened. A shout came from Goose Prairie Cove. At first, nobody paid any attention. Slowly, though, I realized that somebody was yelling his lungs out. I heard a body splashing madly through the water, and turned to see Everett Diehl floundering to dry ground, all wet and muddy.

  “Pearl!” he hollered. “I found a pearl!”

  9

  I WAS ACCUSTOMED TO EVERETT DIEHL SPOILING MY FUN, BECAUSE HE taught school at the Caddo Academy where I took my lessons. But school had been out for weeks now and he still wasn’t satisfied. He was trying to upstage my catfish with a measly shell slug. As soon as he hollered “Pearl!” every man standing around the big ugly fish hanging in the tree turned and stampeded to the lakeshore to see what he had found.

  “I was just about to give up!” Diehl claimed as the crowd gathered around him. “I thought I’d open one more. I almost threw it back in before I saw the pearl stuck to the rim of the shell. Look!”

  Captain Brigginshaw pushed through the crowd of men, his money case like a battering ram. He took one glance and said, “Bu
tton pearl. I’ll give you seventy-five dollars for it.”

  Diehl’s enthusiasm wilted a little. “Seventy-five? But the paper said they were worth thousands.”

  “Those were excellent specimens, and many of them.”

  “Still …” Diehl lamented. “Just seventy-five dollars …”

  “No small wage for two hours of work,” the captain said, opening his money case. “Seventy-five dollars, take it or leave it.”

  As Diehl groused, Billy took the mussel shell from him to examine the pearl. “I’d take it,” he advised. “This pearl isn’t worth fifty. Captain Brigginshaw sometimes inflates the prices in the early going to promote interest.”

  The big pearl-buyer sighed and frowned at Billy for revealing his tactics. Diehl decided to sell immediately. When his soft, pale fingers closed around the seventy-five dollars, all the men in sight—except for Brigginshaw, Billy, and Esau—turned and ran into Goose Prairie Cove like boys. It was then that the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush truly began. My friends and I didn’t get to take part in that first stampede. We had to gut and skin catfish.

  The hunting went on fruitlessly until about sundown, when Allen Byers, the sawmill owner, came up with a hundred-dollar pearl. Brigginshaw’s luck had held out. The pearl fever would carry over to the next day.

  By the second day of the pearl rush, I had established a daily routine. At dawn, I rode in the skiff and opened the mussels we had gathered the day before, while Cecil and Adam paddled to our trotline.

  After running the line, we took the fish we had caught to our holding tank on the old Packer place. Like Billy Treat, those catfish could hold their breath a long time. The Packer place was a mile from the lake, but the fish could survive out of water until we got them to the big cypress trough.

  By that time in the morning, it was hot, so Cecil and Adam and I were happy to go splash around in the water. Port Caddo must have been almost abandoned that second day of the pearl rush. It seemed every man in town was looking for mussels in Goose Prairie Cove. Some ladies had come, too. They didn’t wade in like the men did because it wasn’t considered ladylike for them to get their clothes all wet and sticking to them, but some of them opened the shells the men brought to the shore.