vituperation

…continued

Was it really a monster? Not to the adult I am now; I realize it was probably a beaver or maybe one of the fifty-odd crocodiles and alligators released into the nearby Wildlife Refuge years before. But I wasn’t an adult then, and all I knew was that something scary lived in the recesses of those dark woods. The narrow path leading back to the monster’s lair twisted through the trees, perhaps fifteen feet from the dank water. Briars, poison ivy, and thick spider webs served as ineffective barriers, clutching and plucking at us as we made our way in.

Far enough into the forest that the sounds of traffic from bordering roads didn’t penetrate, a low wide deadfall - wood piled up like the bones of some long-since-eaten animal - stood on the bank of the creek. When we approached this structure, we stayed quiet lest we bring the monster out after us in a roaring fury of teeth and claws. We always took care here, fearful for our lives, and no one ever fell into the water.

While the monster never came after us, we woke him up plenty of times. Rings emanated from the tip of the deadfall in the creek, radiating out in uneven waves on the surface. Then a gout of mud shot from the bank, underneath, an A-bomb mushrooming to the middle of the channel. The monster was out and gone. We never actually laid eyes on it, though I once saw it snatch at a broken limb out in the center of the water, popping the branches straight up like the hand of a corpse waving from the deep.

Our path in the woods ended there where the monster lived, because beyond it the creek spread into a marsh. We went back there a single time, going so far as to be able to see highway 67, but the muck prevented us from reaching the road. God only knows what sorts of things lived there, lying in wait for unsuspecting children to wander by.

Those places were scary enough, but there was one location near Hickory Hills that was more frightening than all the others combined. Across highway 67 from the marshy area sat a section of Tennessee River backwater, lovely in the summer but something nightmares are made of in the winter. We called that place “the holes.”

The holes were in a harbor of sorts, set apart from the rest of the backwaters by a narrow finger of land. In the winter the water level dropped to a depth of less than a foot, exposing a bed of mud and the location’s namesake. Since there never seemed to be as much rain in the winter as in the summer the water stayed settled, almost clear, and you could easily down into it.

You could see the holes.

Scattered all across the cove just under the surface were pits, like pockmarks in the acne-scarred face of an adolescent. Most were small, three or four feet across, but there were a couple of whoppers as big as swimming pools - only deeper. We never saw the bottom of those holes, not even on bright days when the sun was high overhead. As clear as the water was, it wasn’t that clear. The holes swallowed the light, changing it first to a muted green and then to black.

Fish swam out of that darkness from time to time - sunfish, bream, and the occasional barracuda-like gar - as if they wanted to catch a glance of the strange creatures peering down at them from another world. We tried in vain to catch these fish but were rarely successful. On one memorable occasion I was at the holes with my friend Mike, hoping to gig a fish, and we spotted a large bass in the shallows on the far side of the cove. After carefully working our way around the perimeter we threw rocks at it, driving it into water so shallow it became trapped.

We worked our way out to the fish and quickly became trapped ourselves. The mud was like quicksand, grasping and sucking until we were in it - literally - to our waists. We got close enough to the fish to spear it with the gig, but we almost didn’t make it back to the rocky shore. To this day one of my knee-high rubber boots lies a good two feet under that mudflat. We ate the bass, Mike and I, later that same day at my house. We were cold and muddy and covered with scales and fish blood from the cleaning, but it was one of the finest meals I’ve ever had.

Two holes - one huge and one small - were close enough to the edge of the water where we normally fished that falling in was a distinct possibility if one wasn’t careful. The edges of those holes looked decayed, waiting (hoping) to break away if a wayward boy got too close to the edge. An old stump jutted out of the water like a broken tooth next to the smaller of the two. My friends used to stand on that stump, which hung gnarled roots out over the hole, to fish. I never did; I was too scared of what might happen.

Sometimes at night when the house is quiet and I can’t sleep, I think of the holes. In my mind I see myself standing on that blackened stump looking down into the dark. Soundlessly it breaks and I plunge helplessly into the water, the rotten wood crumbling away under my feet as I frantically flail my arms. I descend in a cloud of silt in that vision, sliding into the mouth of some leviathan. Above me I see the light fading as I sink deeper, bubbles streaming from my mouth and racing toward the surface like hundreds of tiny balloons. Such thoughts ensure that sleep keeps its distance.

I drive through Hickory Hills at least once a year now, reflecting on my childhood. I pass by the places I’ve described, the homes of so many memories, but the only place I stop is the holes, and then only if it is wintertime. They’re still there, outposts to a silent world so different from our own. They remain as frightening to the adult me as they were to the child me, and I keep my distance when I walk along that muddy shore.