Summer of Pearls Read online

  Cecil and Adam and I threw the mussels we found into one of Esau’s skiffs. We would open them that afternoon, on our evening run to the trotline. First, though, we ate some lunch we had brought from home, and found some kind of useless way to occupy ourselves for a couple of hours along the lakeshore, or up in the woods.

  By the time we shoved the skiff into Goose Prairie Cove that afternoon, Captain Brigginshaw had purchased three new pearls. As we were paddling away, someone came rowing into the cove, shouting. It was Junior Martin. He had found a two-hundred-dollar pearl somewhere on the North Shore. A new surge of excitement fluttered through the pathering of pearl-hunters.

  “Where ’bouts did you find it, Junior?” somebody asked.

  “The same old mussel beds I’ve been gittin’ my trotline bait from for years. The best mussel beds on the North Shore.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “None of your damn business!” he said with a big grin.

  Two men vowed to follow him all over the lake all night long to trail him to his lode. He was a good-natured fellow and challenged them to do just that. Junior was a lake rat and knew how to hide out in the brakes and swamps.

  When we left to run our line, spirits were running high at Goose Prairie Cove, and folks were talking about scouting new mussel beds all over the lake.

  On the third day of the rush, a couple of farm wagons showed up near Esau’s place. The news had spread into the hills and fields. The crops were in the ground and wouldn’t require much cultivation, except after a rain. A farmer could leave a couple of his older sons to take care of the fields and bring the rest of the family to the lake to hunt pearls.

  On the fourth day, Goose Prairie began to look like a camp meeting. More wagons and tents appeared. Trevor Brigginshaw bought five pearls that day. People waded, napped in the shade, drank whiskey at Esau’s, cooked, talked, laughed, and played.

  Billy walked over to the cove between dinner and supper, and found me and Cecil and Adam watching a wrestling match between two farm boys.

  “Ben, we have a problem,” he said.

  “We do?” Cecil asked.

  “Esau can’t keep fresh drinking water for all these pearl-hunters. I told him I’d talk to you men about it.” He was always calling us “men” when he was trying to get us to do something productive.

  “What are we supposed to do about it?” I said.

  “Yeah, what are we supposed to do? Make it rain?” Cecil added.

  Billy ignored him and talked to me. “Esau will provide the boats and water kegs if you men will row across the lake to Ames Springs every day and bring back water. He’ll buy it from you.”

  Cecil ran to Esau’s place and haggled over the price for a while before making the deal. Everybody in camp agreed to use lake water for washing, reserving the spring water for drinking and cooking. After we made our first water haul across the lake that day, we barely had time to run our trotline. My summer was getting busier than I had planned, but now I was making money off of spring water and catfish, and starting to think of things I would like to buy.

  My pop’s business was booming, too. He became Trevor Brigginshaw’s most avid promoter. He was thinking more of Port Caddo than he was of the Australian, of course, but what was good for Brigginshaw was good for the town. International Gemstones continued to run a half-page ad in every issue, so pop went biweekly.

  A regular pearl column appeared on the front page. Pop told where the best pearls had come from, what kind of mussels had yielded them, what they looked like, and what they sold for. By surveying pearl-hunters and analyzing the industry, he concluded that the average man would make a dollar a day in the pearl-hunt. But some lucky hunters would earn small fortunes.

  Pop’s editorials heralded the Caddo Lake pearl boom as the salvation for our town. Pearl money would replace the dying riverboat trade. He urged everyone in town to spread the news of the pearl rush. People would come from surrounding towns and farms. The stores would sell more goods, the inns would fill with weekend pearl-hunters. Everyone would benefit.

  At his own expense, Pop printed fliers announcing a pearl rush of unprecedented magnitude on Caddo Lake, centered at our town. He sent them to surrounding towns. Local business people began to spruce up for a pearl boom.

  Summer was supposed to be a slack time for trade. The lake had gotten too low for steamers to ply. But something new had come to Port Caddo. A glimmer of hope. People started talking about making the town a “pearl resort.” Pop may have been a visionary, but he sure sold the town on his pearl vision.

  The Steam Whistle carried regular stories of unusual pearl finds: A fellow came from Marshall and found a pearl in the first mussel he opened. A farmer found one lying loose on the shore—probably dropped accidentally by some careless mussel-opener. A camper gutted a fish and found a pearl in its stomach. A boy found a pearl caked in bird dung under a heron rookery..

  Of course there were other news stories to report besides the pearl rush, and one article that caused a sensation around the middle of July dealt with the riverboat trade. After decades of work, the government snag boats were finally getting close to removing the Great Raft from the Red River.

  I don’t know if I’ve explained exactly why it took so long to get rid of the Great Raft. It was a huge tangle of driftwood, hundreds of years old, that fed itself constantly with trees washed down from upstream. At one time it blocked over a hundred miles of the Red River channel above Shreveport. It was a concern to Port Caddo, because to get into Caddo Lake, steamers had to skirt the edges of the Raft and find a bayou channel deep enough to navigate. The channels shifted constantly as they got choked with new drift logs.

  The government contractors were now claiming, however, that the removal of the Raft and the clearing of a channel would make year- ’round steamboat traffic possible on Caddo Lake for the first time ever. It seemed that the U.S. Government wanted to keep our steamboat industry afloat, even promising to mark channels to help pilots navigate. Port Caddoans began to talk about a new era of prosperity and a sustainable economy, based on pearls and riverboats.

  George Blank, the blacksmith, was one of the first to take advantage of the new prosperity. He started building mussel rakes to sell to the pearl-hunters. He invented two models. One looked like an overgrown garden rake. The other resembled a huge pair of tongs, with two long . handles. Both were designed to be used from a boat to get at mussels in water too deep for wading. They sold as fast as he could make them, for a while.

  Charlie Ashenback, the best boat-builder on the lake, started taking back-orders. I regarded Charlie as a sort of artist. His skiffs and bateaux were the most graceful things in the water. He used only the best red cypress, and his hands were living tools. He could saw exactly three-eighths of an inch off of a board without even measuring. The boats he built would glide over the water like greased ice. If a fellow had to row all over the lake to find a pearl, he wanted an Ashenback under him.

  Trevor Brigginshaw had Ashenback build a rowboat especially designed to carry his great weight, his money satchel, and an oarsman. He hired a young black man named Giff Newton to row the boat for him, while Brigginshaw himself sat in the bow with one hand on his satchel and the other on his pistol, watching for pirates. They made the rounds among all the best pearling spots, black and white.

  Colored folks were in on the pearl boom, too. They generally kept to themselves, and hunted mussels where they were harder to get at. Us white folks got all the best mussel beds to ourselves.

  Blacks and whites didn’t mix much, of course. Around Caddo Lake, the colored population was double that of white folks in those days. Some whites were scared the coloreds would take over if they got education and the vote, both of which they were supposed to have, but didn’t. There was a lot of severe harassing of any black person who tried to horn in on what the whites considered theirs.

  But nature didn’t discriminate against black folks, and they found their share of pearls. In fa
ct, Captain Brigginshaw probably bought as many pearls from black folks as from white. Pop was careful not to print too many stories in the Steam Whistle. about blacks finding a lot of pearls. He didn’t want a bunch of high-handed nigger-haters attacking the black pearling camps and ruining the boom.

  Anyway, about the only people in town who disapproved of the pearl rush at first were the preachers. The Reverend Bartlett Towne almost threw a hissy fit when half his congregation failed to show up the first Sunday of the boom. They were all out pearl-hunting. On Sunday! He preached against the evils of mammon for two weeks running, until he realized that not enough of that evil mammon was winding up in his collection plate. The third Sunday, he held services outside of Esau’s saloon and asked God to bring luck to all good Methodist pearl-hunters.

  And the luck came. Not just for the Methodists, but for all denominations. Most of the pearls found were just small things called seed pearls, or even smaller ones known as dust pearls. They sold for about twenty-five dollars an ounce, but it took a handful of them to make an ounce. Some people got in the habit of paying Esau with seed pearls for whiskey or drinking water. Cecil and Adam and I traded catfish for seed pearls sometimes. The seed and dust pearls enabled just about everybody to at least break even in the pearl-hunting business.

  Several times a day, however, we would hear of something bigger than a seed pearl being found. Maybe it would be worth twenty-five dollars all by itself. Maybe it would fetch fifty, seventy-five, even a hundred. Those were tough times in the bayou country, and a hundred dollars could pay a pearl-hunter’s expenses for the whole summer and still leave a profit.

  Then there were the rare specimens everybody wanted to find: the pearls of fifteen grains or more, about the size of a garden pea, or bigger. Such a gem would sell for at least a hundred dollars. Edgar Burnett, who lived on the North Shore, found a metallic-green pearl that sold for five hundred. Wiley Jones, a woodchopper who came over from the Louisiana side of the lake, sold two matching egg-shaped pearls for three hundred apiece.

  The pearl-hunters at Goose Prairie picked up a whole new vocabulary from Trevor Brigginshaw and Billy Treat. It was funny to hear the farmers, who usually sat around talking about bugs and the weather, saying things like “It had good overtone, but the luster was too low” when they talked about certain pearls.

  After a couple of weeks, everybody in town knew the difference between a haystack and a turtleback. We could judge size, shape, and orient as well as any jeweler. Even Adam Owens could look at a pearl and tell you whether it was a wing pearl, a dogtooth pearl, a nugget, a ring-around, or a bird’s-eye.

  Camps of merry pearl-hunters sprang up all over the lake, and everybody made money. We owed it all to the stranger, Billy Treat. It was peculiar how the town idolized him, yet knew so little about him. He didn’t hunt for pearls himself. He just continued to cook at Widow Humphry’s place and wander over to Goose Prairie in the afternoons to see what was going on. He taught some hunters the finer points of judging pearls, so Brigginshaw wouldn’t take them too badly, but other than that, he mostly stayed out of the pearl business.

  He almost always seemed to be sulking over something, like there was a sadness in him he couldn’t shake. At times, however, Billy would get to talking real poetic about pearls, and his mood would brighten. I heard him more than once quote a line from Shakespeare’s Othello: “Speak of me as I am … of one whose hand, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe … .”

  One day I came down from the catfish-holding tank and found Billy standing under Esau’s mulberry tree with a crowd around him. “The Chinese,” he was saying as I got close enough to hear, “believed in magical pearls that glowed and could be seen a thousand yards away. They believed the light of such a pearl would cook rice.”

  On another day, I was toting a water keg up to Esau’s place and heard Billy telling how all the different ancient civilizations explained the formation of pearls. Angel tears, and things like that. “Some reasoned that a white pearl was formed during fair weather, and a dark pearl was formed during cloudy weather.”

  “What about our pink pearls?” someone asked. Caddo Lake produced quite a few pink ones.

  “Maybe dawn or dusk, if you believe in that sort of thing,” Billy answered.

  He loved pearl legends and folklore, and I loved to hear him talk about them. It added an air of ancient romance to the muddy pursuits of us lake rats.

  It was a wonderful summer. I will never forget it. I felt rich and free. It was a time like no other in my life. A time when I knew both the sterling excellence of innocence and the bewitching siren of temptation.

  Pearls were my temptation. Mussel pearls and Pearl Cobb. I dreamed of finding the paragon of angels’ tears. I dreamed of giving it to Carol Anne. It was the fabulous summer of pearls. I guess I thought it would last forever.

  10

  “NO, THANKS,” BILLY SAID, HIS BACK TO THE AUSTRALIAN AS HE FINISHED drying the pots and pans.

  Trevor Brigginshaw held his satchel in his hand. “Come on, Billy,” he urged. “Just a drop. It won’t hurt you. 11

  “You know I don’t drink,” Billy said as he hung a heavy iron skillet over the stove. He turned to face his friend. “It’s a waste of time and money.”

  “I’ll give you the money.”

  “Who will give me the time?”

  “For God’s sake, mate, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to. Just come along for the fun!”

  Billy took off his apron and hung it on a brass hook. “I like you when you’re sober, Trev, but you’re a mean drunk. There are happy drunks and sad, slobbering drunks and mean drunks, and you’re the meanest of the mean if something rubs you wrong.”

  “So that’s it? That time in Valparaiso?”

  “And La Paz, and San Francisco, and Lahaina.”

  “Lahaina? Oh, now, that was different. The bloke kicked my dog, Billy. I was provoked.”

  “The dog bit the bloke first, and it wasn’t even your dog.”

  “Well, I couldn’t help that. I like dogs, I do. I’ve got a mind to get another one.”

  “What do you mean, ‘another one’? You’ve never had a dog.”

  “I would have kept that one in Lahaina if you had bailed me out of the stinkin’ brig before dawn!”

  “And watch you tear another saloon apart? The brig’s the best place for you when you’re drunk, Trev. No, you go on to Esau’s by yourself. I don’t want to be there when the place falls in.”

  Trevor sighed and shook his head. “You’ve become a cautious soul, Billy. When are you going to stop blaming yourself for what happened on Mangareva and have some fun like you used to? You won’t even hunt pearls with these Texans, and I know you want to.”

  Billy felt the guilt well up like an ocean tide. “I’m out of the pearl business. For good. You go on over to Esau’s saloon. I have better things to do.”

  He stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Trevor there alone. He went to his room, washed his face, put on a clean shirt, and combed his hair. When he was sure the Australian had gone, he left his room, walked through the parlor, and went out the front door of Widow Humphry’s place, into the dark. He crossed the street, nodding to a couple of locals who greeted him, and turned the corner of Snyder’s store.

  There was a light on in Carol Anne’s room. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.

  When Carol Anne saw him standing at the top of the stairs, her breath caught in her throat. She had been wondering if he would ever come to see her again. Billy had been spending so much time with Trevor that she was actually getting a little jealous of the big Australian. “Hi, Billy,” she said.

  “Are you busy?”

  “No, not at all. Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  They sat at the table and made conversation for a while, until Billy got around to telling her the reason for his visit. “I have a business proposition
in mind that you may be interested in,” he said.

  “Business?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’ve gotten to like some of the people around here, and I’m thinking about staying. I’m thinking about going into business, but I don’t have the money to get started. I need some investors.”

  “Just a few weeks ago, people were talking about this town dying,” Carol Anne said.

  “That was before you started the pearl rush,” he said with a grin. His smile was handsome and it made wrinkles line his eyes with character. “I believe that with a little organization, the pearl business could last here indefinitely. Trevor has already started talking to John Crowell about ways to protect the mussel beds. Crowell is going to try to drum up some interest through his paper.”

  “So, you’re going back into the pearl business?”

  “No, I’m through with pearls. I have another idea. The inn has been full now for two weeks straight. Widow Humphry says she hasn’t had as much business in years. Those out-of-town pearl-hunters have taken every available room, and people are sleeping out on the open ground.”

  “You’re going to build another inn?”

  “Yes. And a store, too. And I’m going to buy a big wagon to take supplies out to the pearl-hunting camps so they won’t have to come into town to shop. Maybe next year I’ll buy a little steam-powered boat so I can reach the North Shore camps as well.”

  Carol Anne sat back in her chair and beamed at Billy. She loved his big ideas and his poetic talk of pearls. She was glad he was planning to stay in town. He had brought hope to Port Caddo, and he gave no one greater hope than he gave her. “How much do you need?” she asked.