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Show RTVER far out in the middle of the river, half a mile or more from shore. It went very hard on any of them that had the misfortune of landing on the raft because Rosie hated spiders. We tied up the raft just inside the bayou early in the afternoon. There wasn't much of a marina, just a few battered docks, and the shore was littered with the blackened wrecks of several ancient wrecks. There were more wrecks on the shore than there were boats in the water, even counting our raft. People lounged in the Sunday afternoon sun. The loungers didn't even go through the motions of fishing, mostly they just sat and watched the river roll by. We started walking up to town when a guy in a red Ford coupe pulled up next to us. "Where y'all goin'?" he asked. When we explained we were going after groceries, he insisted that he'd take us up to town in his car. "C'mon," he said. "I'm just loaferin' and ain't got nothin' better to do." We got into his car. He shook my hand and said, "My name is Sam Stewart, Jr." Sam was short but stocky, built stout as a bull, with jet black hair that was as thick and bushy as his eyebrows, which ran in one dense ridge below his forehead. His accent was pure Arkansas. He was thirty-five and except for one hitch in the army he'd lived in Helena all his days. "Where y'all from?" "California," I said. "The niggers still raisin' hell out there?" "Uh," I swallowed. "I suppose you could say that." "Heh heh, I bet I could," said Sam. I was always surprised that southerners, despite our outlandish appearance, always assumed we shared their prejudices. This was my first close encounter with a certifiable southern redneck and I was -198- |