Winkie, Buford, and the Perfessor owned the road at Petry Bridge, at least that stretch from Buford’s house at the second turn on the Acadia side of the bayou to the lane that led to Winkie’s house just beyond the first curve on the Vermilion side. To say they owned the road is to say they were its principal traffickers, walking…meandering, really…or biking between domiciles for the better part of most days. The Perfessor was a minority stockholder, the city-slicker who appeared only during summer and on the occasional weekend.
Most folks acknowledged the boys’ claims upon the road…most were relatives, anyway. Aunts and cousins driving cars, pickup trucks, and John Deere tractors would slow and wave as they approached. The slowing was an important part of the courtesy, as the road in those days was still gravel and yellow dirt…yellow dirt ground by the gravel into yellow dust. Speeding by the boys could leave them in a yellow, choking haze. Most drivers accorded them some consideration…even Larry, usually a speed demon intent on getting to his girlfriend at Indian Bayou…and Bobby, who was sweet on Winkie’s big sister. Although…Bobby’s moderation of speed may have been prompted by his reluctance to dust up his convertible, moreso than any thought for the boys’ welfare. Then, also, he may have been thinking of nothing else but Winkie’s big sister, which, in retrospect, is a reasonable assumption.
However, there was one carpetbagger who had no respect for the boys’ title or to the rules of the road. After the big oil well in Grandma Venie’s back yard had struck the mother lode, and the heavy trucks had carted off the machinery and the timbers that had served as a foundation, floating on the mud of the former rice field, for that enterprise, all that remained visible was a Christmas tree of multi-colored valves and guages to measure and control the flow of the gas and oil on its way to Grandma Venie’s pocket book. There was a man…I’ll call him Red, which may or may not have been his name…whose responsibility it was to read those gauges, at Petry Bridge and throughout the area. Red had a red pickup truck, which may or may not have had anything to do with his name, directly or conversely. I say red, but it appeared more of an orange, or fuzzy over-ripe peach, flecked as it was with yellow dust.
For, you see, between stops to read his guages, Red never slowed, as if he were Santa on Christmas Eve. And he never paid any mind to Winkie, Buford, and the Perfessor, blasting by them leaving a burgeoning cloud of dust and hail of gravel, sending the boys to the shoulder of the road or the ditch for survival. He never slowed. He never waved. He never paid a toll…until…
One fine summer day, the boys were pitching gravel at the turtles off Petry Bridge (which, may appear to be an unfeeling thing…however, consider that the boys were never able to hit the turtles, anyway…all they could see were the turtles’ heads, which were very small targets to begin with, which were withdrawn into their natural armor at the flick of a wrist…which does not excuse the boys’ intentions…but, consider that these self-same turtles would and did regularly snatch the bait from the boys’ trotlines…but I digress). Anyway, turning from the turtles, they spotted a stick of near fishing pole length lying at one end of the bridge and,…eureka…a sizeable piece of string (it might have been discarded fishline, or twine, it would not have been unusual to find either). Thinking and acting as one, as was oft the case, the boys stuck the stick upright in a crack between the timbers at the Vermilion end of the bridge…then stabilized it, like a radio tower, with the string, tied off on nailheads at either side of the bridge. Then…eureka,..one of the boys, I believe it was the Perfessor, spied a square mechanical nut of hefty size, not likely from farm machinery, but more the type one would find on oil derricks, or Christmas tree valves. This crown was placed on the top end of the stick.
It was wholly happenstance (or perhaps, providential…although I’d be reluctant to implicate Providence in the boys’ actions that day…even if there was a tincture of Justice in what transpired) that Red in his red pickup was blaring down the Vermilion road, just rounding the curve in front of Grandma Venie’s house, a wheel’s length ahead of a monstrous cloud of yellow dust. The boys turned and bolted across the bridge , seeking sanctuary in Acadia Parish. They were nearing the curve before the last stretch of road to Buford’s house when they heard the brakes on Red’s vehicle lock and the scratch of tires on loose gravel over baked yellow clay. Then,..there was the roar of an engine and the blop-blop-blop of a vehicle gunning across the timbers of the bridge. Red had apparently caught a glimpse of the bottom of the boys’ bare feet as they rounded the first bend. Fearing that they could not outrun the pickup on the thoroughfare, Buford, then Winkie, then the Perfessor cut off into the woods just short of Ed’ard’s house, slipping immaculately through the two strand barbed wire fence, spooking the cow, running as fast as cockleburs would allow, as deep into the trees as they thought necessary…where they hid behind trees…and waited.
After that initial gunning of the engine and blopping of the truck across the bridge, the boys did not hear another sound…except for their own beating hearts and wheezing. They did not hear Red drive on by, fast or slow…and finally surmised that he had turned around and retreated in the direction from which he had been so hell-bent. Relaxing and catching their collective breaths, the boys stepped from behind the trees where they had been hiding…and were confronted by Red, on foot, not 20 feet from them.
Without a word, the man gestured that they should follow him back to the truck, where he pointed to the sunburst crack on the passenger side of the windshield . Red in the face, he exclaimed, “What were you thinking? You could have killed me? Who’s going to pay for this? Do I need to talk to your daddies?” Then he spun around, jumped back into his pickup (he was not a tall man), and drove off…howbeit, at a much more moderate speed than he was accustomed. And, thereafter, he would slow when he passed the boys on the road, out of respect and concern, I’m sure…keeping an eye out for them.
I don’t think that the boys’ parents ever heard of this escapade. Or anyone else, outside myself, for that matter.
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