t takes me and my brother Bill both to tell this story right. Part of it is my story, so I'll tell that, and then I'll try to tell his part the way he would tell it.
One night a gang of us decided to go frog gigging. Actually, I wasn't in on the decision. Nobody would ever have thought about consulting me on anything because I was the least , and when you're the least in a gang of teenage boys, the best you can hope for is just to be allowed to be there.
As an aside, I might mention that eventually I grew to be an inch taller than the tallest of them and have outlived two of them so far.
There were the Walls boys, Pell and Raymond, and J. T. Brown and my brother Bill and me, and they decided to go to Blizzard Pond. Blizzard Pond was a slough in the middle of Blizzard Woods, and Blizzard Woods was so big that you could go in there and if you weren't careful never come out again and never be found. It happened, or so the story went, and nobody ever disputed it or even tried to. It's all gone now. Trees cut down, slough drained, swags filled, and houses built over where it all used to be.
Pell was the oldest in the bunch and might even have had a driver's license. At least he had the use of a car, a 1928 A-Model Ford roadster, and when it got good and dark we got flashlights and frog gigs and jumped in and lit out. There was just one frog gig between my brother Bill and me so I didn't have one, which was all right because I wasn't much good at killing things back then. Never did learn how. But I had a flashlight, so I could spot them for somebody else to do it.
We followed a two-rut track into the woods until it played out, then left the car and went the rest of the way on foot. We knew that part of the woods pretty well, and any one of us could probably have found Blizzard Pond alone at night, though I doubt anyone alone would have wanted to because a big woods is a little bit scary even in the daytime.
We could hear them even before we got there, going Grrr- rrump, Grrr-rrump, and others going Grr-rrick, Grr-rrick, which somebody—Pell, probably, because he knew just about everything or thought he did—claimed was the girl frogs answering. They were still going as we edged up to the pond, everybody being extra quiet.
Now, the way you gig a frog is you have to slip up close and shine a light in his eyes, and while he's sitting there wondering where in the world the light is coming from, you stab him with your gig, which is like a three-pronged fork with a sharp barb on each prong, and is fixed to the end of a long pole like a fishing pole. You have to be careful not to make a sound; the light won't scare him but a noise will.
Just as we reached the pond, somebody stepped on a stick. It cracked like a rifle shot and ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker- chuck, ker-chunk, all our frogs hit the water and were gone. Nobody would admit to stepping on the stick so they decided it must have been me. That's the way it is when you are the least.
Everybody told everybody else to shut up and quieten down, and we turned off our lights and squatted down to wait for the frogs to come back. It wasn't long before we heard them start up again—from the middle of the pond.
"Blamed island!" somebody said, and we focused our lights on it. There it was, right in the middle of the pond, sprouting cattails and a cane thicket and, judging from the sound, harboring probably a thousand frogs. And separating us from it, was coal black water with little smoky tendrils of fog rising from its surface like steam, and now and then a stream of bubbles.
"Hey, here's a boat!" somebody said. We looked down at where his light was pointing, and there was a little square-ended, flat-bottom row boat, john-boats, we used to call them, though I never did learn why. It had moss growing on it and was half full of water but was still afloat.
"Somebody's got to go out there and scare them off so they'll come back here," Pell said. Somebody turned out to be me. My brother Bill said it was the least I could do since I had scared them away to begin with, which has always made me suspect that he was the one who broke that stick. But maybe he was just going out of his way to show the others that he didn't think any more of me than they did.
I pointed out that there were no oars, but they found me a long pole. I took my shoes off and set them beside a tree because with all that water in the boat, I didn't want to have to wear squishy shoes the rest of the night. The boat had a board in the middle where you could sit and row and another at each end for passengers. I stood on one of the end seats, balancing myself with the pole, and they shoved me away from the bank. They kept their lights trained on me all the way to the island.
There is nothing quite like the smell of a slough. The years of leaves and tree limbs and Lord knows what else that settle to the bottom and slowly rot send up bubbles of gas that fills your nose and the back of your throat with an odor so putrid you can taste it as well as smell it and so thick, as my brother Bill tells it, "You hesitate to swaller without chewing a little first because you could choke yourself to death."
I poled on out to the island, being careful not to shove too hard on the pole or too sudden or it would sink into the bottom mud and be the very devil to get loose because of the suction. The water was maybe four feet deep; no telling how deep the bottom mud was. As I approached, the frogs got quiet and began ker-chunking into the water. I got as close as I had to to thrash the cane and cattails with my pole, but no closer. I couldn't see much, and who knew what might be in there besides frogs.
When I had thrashed around for awhile, I poled the boat around and headed for home. With all those lights shining straight in my eyes, I couldn't see a thing, but it seemed to me I was riding a little lower in the water than when I started. And then a little wave of water washed over my toes. It hadn't done that before, and I wondered if the blamed boat might be sinking. I began trying to dig out my flashlight, which was wedged in my hip pocket, because I wanted to see how much water was in the boat. Just as the flashlight came clear, I felt something more solid than water slide across my foot. I snapped the light on and there was a big black and yellow water moccasin straight looking up at me.
Now, that's my part of the story, and I can swear, and will if need be, that every bit of it is true. But what happened next, I've always been a little vague about, and have to rely on my brother Bill, who is recognized to be far and away the biggest liar in our family, and it's a big family, or use to be.
The way he tells it, "We could see him out there, standing on the back end of that boat, which made the front end raise up out of the water, pushing on that pole, mist drifting up around him. Then we heard him say 'Hey!' and start trying to yank something, his flashlight, out of his back pocket. Finally he got it out and snapped it on and hollered 'Hey!' And then he hollered louder 'Hey! Hey! Hey!' real fast. And then that pole shot off in one direction and that boat in another and that flashlight went sailing way up in the air turning end over end and here he come across the water straight at us hollering 'Hey!' every time a foot hit and his feet was hitting so fast they didn't have time to go under so he was running on the surface of that pond just like a waterbug. He didn't even slow down when he passed us. Somebody stuck out a gig handle to try and trip him, but it snapped like a toothpick, and he didn't miss a beat in running or hollering.
"We caught up with him at the car. He was sitting there on the running board, breathing hard. His mouth opened once or twice before anything come out. Finally he said, 'Snake.' And puffed a time or two more and then said, 'Big.'
"Now you may think I was stretching it when I said he was running on water, but you know what? His britches legs was as dry as a bone!
Go on," he always says to me at this point in the story, "admit it."
"I don't remember," I always say. But I do. They were not dry as a bone. They were wet halfway to my knees where water had splashed them.
