Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter 6

My friend Thorny Childers was staying over for the weekend. She’s got quick hands and strong legs, though she’s a year younger and three inches shorter than me, which made her a setter on the Steinhatchee Bobcats. She lived with her uncle Bob, who was out of town in Jacksonville at a regional sales convention for orchard supplies, pumps and fertilizers. Thorny’d brought her make-up kit and we were practicing penciling in eyebrows. Red hair and black eyebrows are unnaturally weird, so I lost interest. Make-up made a world of difference for Thorny. She used a light brown eyebrow pencil to accent her auburn hair. With pink lipstick, she looked pucker sweet.

I got worried Jeeter might take a shine to her, but recognized that Thorny didn’t have my instincts. While I love her, she’s not at all bossy or assertive. In fact, she’s partial to a day of sobbing at least once a month, and she’s a better cook than I’ll ever be. As her best friend, I get to hear all about it. It’s mostly sad misery stuff about how her life is slipping away and she’ll never have a chance to be a volleyball star like me.

We do crazy stuff around here, for amusement. The wicked rope trick is one of them, kind of a modern day Robin Hood thing that the boys do when the beer is low and the ice is gone. While they respect me as an athlete, the boys will only let me watch from a safe distance. If I was seen in the headlights, local hillbillies would assume I wasn’t ornery enough to pull it off. And they might be right. My mean streak is narrow, not wide like Jeeter’s, or either of his brothers, Branch and Dante.

Let me straighten you out real quick. In my generation, the Askaloosas are three brothers. My Jeeter is the youngest. He’s nineteen and acts like he’s twenty-one all the time. Then there’s his middle brother, Dante, who is skinny, good-looking, a smooth salesman and who takes to being a little faggy on Friday night. The clan is led by Branch. He’s a bear of a man, covered with tattoos and bad attitude, a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and came back both bent and crooked. Before he enlisted, he never met a man who could beat him. When he returned, he never met a pain pill that didn’t need swallowing. Despite their deficiencies, the Askaloosa brothers ran a construction company, though not a lot gets built hereabouts. Jeeter once explained to me that their big revenue opportunity was an annual contract with state forestry to keep fire access roads clear in the swamp zone. And they had other outside interests which I’d best not describe.

Branch Askaloosa had a real reputation in Steinhatchee long before my time. He’d been a local high school football star in his glory days. He was reputed to have gotten several girls in trouble, but that was before he went off to war. As a little girl, I remember him sitting on a motorcycle showing off his muscles and his tattoos in front of Gramm’s general store. I can imagine how young women were susceptible to taking a ride on Branch’s motorcycle, and him taking them a little further than they wanted to go.

Well, Thorny and I were sitting around bored as bones. Jeeter called and asked if I was up for some fun and did I want to meet at the highway bridge over the creek. He said it’d be fine if Thorny came along. After dinner, we walked over in the twilight, excited just to get out and see what these boys were up to. Maybe I wanted to show off my Jeeter and see what Thorny’s opinion of him was. Jeeter sure held my curiosity. Lord knows he wears his blue jeans like the promise of a snapped electric power line, sparks and all.

We found the Askaloosa brothers in a metal-bottom skiff under the bridge. The smell of marijuana gave away their hiding place. I hollered down at Jeeter and he ran up from the creek to say hello. He was polite and nice and kissed my cheek. He said ‘hey’ to Thorny and didn’t give her any extra attention.

Jeeter said, “We’re getting ready to run their rope trick. Have you ever seen that?”

I said, “Maybe I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never seen it.”

Jeeter smiled, patted my back and said, “Well then maybe it’s time you saw it.”

He took my hand and we walked up the road about thirty yards to where we could hide behind some palmetto fronds ten yards back from the road. Thorny tagged along. Jeeter said we should sit tight, not let anyone see us, and watch. Then he ran back toward the bridge and we heard the sounds of some heavy cables clanking against metal. And I could hear Branch swear when something heavy fell on his foot.

In the dim light I looked at Thorny and said, “Well?”

“He’s a dish, really yummy,” she said. “Is he the one?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet,” I said and then began spraying myself with Mosquito Off.

Thorny elbowed me in the ribs. “Well, if he is, you have to tell me everything.”

“Puh-leeze,” I said, but I knew I would.

The rope trick is simple, but it requires a fearful, gullible soul. Two fellows stand across from each other on opposite sides of the two-lane road and lean toward each other, grunting, like they’re pulling on a rope between them, except the rope is imaginary. Now you wouldn’t think a cracker would fall for that, except on a dark night and with so many folks being half blind or drunk, they’re not sure. When they stop to inspect the situation, Dante would approach the window and tell them he needed a few bucks for beer.

Most passersby were so arrested by the whole thing, they’d pay up. And if Dante couldn’t sweet talk five dollars out of them, then Branch would take his place. One look at Branch, all two hundred and fifty pounds of his tattooed and muscled brawn, and they’d pay. Of course, this only works if there is a terrible accident on the road now and again. Of course, with my luck, Thorny and I arrived on accident night, and Branch was doing the asking.

Thorny and I hid behind the palmetto bushes on a rise above the drainage ditch. We had a good view down to the bridge and about fifty yards up the road. Thorny borrowed my can of mosquito spray and we greased up to keep the bugs off and got ready to laugh.

The first car to come to a screeching halt was Mrs. Wheatly. We all knew her and she knew us. She was making her regular delivery of dozens of eggs to her niece’s vegetable stand outside Cross Creek. Branch greeted her nicely and she forked over a five dollar bill. No harsh words were exchanged. She smiled and waved and the Askaloosa brothers let her pass.

We waited ten minutes for the next car. Jeeter and Dante kept us entertained, making funny comments and imitating what some drivers say when they see the imaginary rope. Finally, we saw a beam of car lights enter the highway and stretch wider and wider as it approached us. Branch and Jeeter made a show of bending over to gather up their rope and pull it tight.

The passerby was a family of tourists in a station wagon. The driver flashed his high beams on and off several times and slowed down to crawl forward. Inside, the family rolled up their windows and their little kids gawped out into the darkness. Dante tapped on the driver’s window but the man behind the wheel wouldn’t speak to him. Jeeter grinned at the woman in the front seat and Branch pantomimed pulling on the imaginary rope even harder and he began growling.

Dante tapped on the window again and the driver beeped his horn, one long toot after another. He kept flashing his lights, throwing a shadow of Branch and Jeeter way down the road. The driver began to inch forward and Branch worked the fake real good, making a show of dropping the rope at the last minute. Jeeter even fell backward on his knees.

The driver sped up and his kids in the back seat shot us the bird. Branch got real pissed at that. He pulled out a flashlight and signaled down the road. Unknown to us, two more fellows were at the bridge with a proper steel cable stretched between two bridge supports.
The poor driver flashed his lights and then slammed on his brakes like as to whiplash the occupants inside when he saw the cable. The young’uns in the car began to cry, and the woman in the front seat reached for her purse. Branch ran down the road screaming at the driver and raised his fee to ten bucks. The poor man paid and swore some.

Branch didn’t mind about the swear words, that was the nice thing about him. All his problems since coming back from war were deeply internalized. Once he saw the ten dollar bill, he said, “Would have been cheaper back down the road where I was. Remember that next time.” His two compatriots at the bridge lowered the cable and they let the tourist family pass into the night.

We gathered as a group by the bridge, had a good laugh, and passed around the last bottle of beer Jeeter had. And we waited, slapping mosquitoes, and listened to the Askaloosa brothers brag about being the modern day pirates of Steinhatchee swamp.

We saw truck lights laboring down the road toward us so the Askaloosas all moved back to their positions. Thorny and I hid behind the palmettos, squatting low so the truck lights couldn’t see us. Jeeter and Dante bent over and stretched their legs out into a wide stance, like they were holding a rope. Fifty yards from the bridge, Branch used a gator call to alert his guys at the bridge to be ready.

Branch looked over and hollered at us, then began jumping up and down like he was defending a volleyball net. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. It was a beer truck coming out from the fishing club and marina at Steinhatchee. Thorny reached out and squeezed my arm, and I pulled her down lower in the fronds.

Sure enough, the truck flashed his lights and slowed to a crawl. I could see the driver squinting through the windscreen, wondering what the hell. Branch jumped up on the sideboard and banged on his window. The driver rolled down his window and yelled, “Hell no.” Then the driver accelerated, after trying to hit Branch across the face with his backhand. Branch jumped off the sideboard, fished out his flashlight and send a signal down to the bridge. I could tell he was mad.

The green beer truck passed our position, trying to find second gear and picking up speed. The truck was the kind that had roll up sides to off-load cases. The paint job said he was hauling St. Pauli Girl and Heineken, the gourmet imports in green bottles. The driver shifted into second gear and rolled right past Jeeter and Dante, giving them the finger and snarling from the cab. Jeeter shook his head, knowing what would happen next. Branch ran past him toward the bridge. Jeeter and Dante fell in beside him, running as fast as they could. Thorny and I chased after them.

The driver must have seen two more guys at the bridge. He shook his fist at the fellow on the driver’s side, and missed seeing the cable stretched across the road, wrapped tight on the bridge trusses. Well, the cable smashed across his windscreen, which broke, and jerked the truck to a stand-still. The driver banged his head on the steering wheel and must have knocked himself out.

Branch had the sliding side open in a second and began stacking full cases of beer on the road. The other two fellows ran from the bridge and helped Jeeter and Dante hustle those cases down to the creek and loaded them into the skiff. I counted more than ten cases before the driver started to come to, blood gushing from his broken nose. He was in no shape to fight.

Thorny grabbed my elbow, her nails digging deep, because we both heard the siren. Down the road, we saw a cop car with flashing lights racing up the road toward us. Jeeter whistled and waved at me. We ran down to the creek and jumped into Branch’s skiff. The two fellows I didn’t know jumped in with the cable and winch taken down from the bridge trusses, and we sped away laughing.

Jeeter squeezed my thigh. “That bridge keeps biting beer trucks. Third time this year,” he said, stretching his legs out on top of several cases of Heineken. Branch navigated the creek and steered deeper into the bayou headed for the swamp.