A Catfish Moon

By Gerald R. Sumner

Job Smyth, known by his friends as Jo, is a young boy who finds himself in a very difficult situation. He dreams of escaping the turmoil of his home in Southern Georgia to explore the country on a motorcycle. He hopes to find peace of mind for himself. But the prayers of a godly sister interrupt his plans and he surrenders his own plan for a greater plan. He and his two younger brothers are rescued by and elderly pastor and his wife and their lives are changed forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gerald R. Sumner
• Release date: Aug 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311806253

Gerald R. Sumner

Gerald “Roger” Sumner is a former pastor, retired IBM field engineer, husband, father and grandfather, talented musician and skilled craftsman whose wife says, “can do about anything but sew!” Born to a poor family of 15 in the wiregrass regions of South Georgia, Roger has a rich heritage of values and a quest for spiritual truth. This combination has enabled him to write with wisdom and pathos, and a gentle and respectable treatment of simple folk. He is called by many to be a very wise man; a storyteller; a shepherd; and-- again his wife Susan interjects--“He is a prince among men.”Roger and Susan live in the mountains of Southeastern Tennessee. They have four children and three grandchildren, and a dog named Reagan.

Book preview

A Catfish Moon

By Gerald R Sumner

Copyright 2012

Gerald R. Sumner

A Catfish Moon

Table of Contents

From the Author

Chapter One- The Plan

Chapter Two - Working the Plan

Chapter Three- A New Job

Chapter Four- Seeing Things Clearly

Chapter Five- Something Better

Chapter Six -A New Friend

Chapter Seven- A Good Mess of Fish

Chapter Eight- The Man of the House

Chapter Nine- Tragedy Strikes

Chapter Ten- A Home for the Heart

Chapter Eleven- A Broken Man

Chapter Twelve- Binding up the Broken

Chapter Thirteen- Senior Year

Chapter Fourteen- Finding Joy, Finding Strength

Chapter Fifteen- Joy Comes in the Morning

Chapter Sixteen- Change in the Air

Chapter Seventeen- Promises to Keep

Chapter Eighteen- And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Chapter Nineteen- They Camped at Elim

Chapter Twenty- The Mighty Mississippi

Chapter Twenty- One Home Again

From the Author

As a young boy growing up in rural Southern Georgia many of my memories are of exploring the river bottoms of the Withlacoochie River that runs through Cook and Lowndes counties. Most of the time the little river was small enough to be waded across over one of the many sandbars that lay in her bed. But in rainy weather the river would swell into a hazardous, roaring torrent that took the lives of more than one careless swimmer.

I spent many hours there as a teen, fishing the numerous catfish holes, swimming there with my brothers and our friends, or just sitting there on her banks pondering what life was dealing out to me.

There were many family picnics with uncles, aunts, and cousins fishing up and down her banks. It was not uncommon, on Sunday afternoons, for one of the little country churches to show up at Futch’s Ferry for a baptism.

I think of the times that I spent there with great fondness. I rode an old Bridgestone ninety CC motorcycle far back into the river bottoms. I spent many nights camping there, listening to the frogs, katydids, and crickets as they sang through the night, while we, my brothers and I, fished, talked and sorted out the issues of life.

The emotions that these memories conjure up are many and varied. Some of those events are depicted in this novel, though perhaps embellished and certainly with a great deal of license as to the true nature of those events. But the emotions that are expressed in the story of Job Smyth are real and they belong to me and to my brothers and sisters who grew up in the hot, sweltering, farm country of South Georgia.

So put on a pot of coffee or tea; pile up in your favorite chair and before you even turn this page, picture yourself sitting on a tree stump, fishing with a cane pole, using fat juicy worms for bait. Watch, with your minds eye, as your cork bobs up and down in the black waters of the Withlacoochie, with a bright autumn moon shining overhead. When you are there, you are ready to read this book. Should you find a lump in your throat or a tear in your eye, know this, they were also in mine as I wrote.

Enjoy

Chapter One

The Plan

The black water eddied and swirled in the bend of the river where the young man sat staring at the twisted reflection of the trees. The news had not been good and this was the place he always came to find consolation, to sort out the issues and to try to find some way to deal with them.  A friend’s older brother had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Porky, as he had been called, was very popular among the senior class of 1970. It was not that they were close, being three years younger than Porky, or even that Porky would even have known who he was; Porky’s little brother, who was called Little Porky, was his friend. It was also the fact that he was killed in a motorcycle accident that added to his turmoil. He had ridden his own motorcycle to the river to get to this place of solitude. At fifteen he was having a difficult time dealing with how quickly and indiscriminately death could come.

Job Smyth, known as Jo by his friends, had already dealt with the loss of his mother just over seven years earlier. He sought the solitude of the river bottoms often in trying to remember what it was like to have a mother to encourage him and to affirm him or even to hold him when he was scared.

He loved his father despite that fact that he was an alcoholic and was in a constant losing battle against depression. The one thing he and his dad had in common was motorcycles. A friend had given Jo an old Bridgestone Fifty. He brought the old bike home in several boxes. Jo and his father put the pieces of the puzzle back together and made the thing run. They were both thrilled with it.

Jo was hooked after his first ride. Nothing in his life up to that time had given him such a sensation of freedom. Soon he had purchased another bike from his Uncle Wilbert. This one was also a Bridgestone but it was a ninety CC model. Jo’s father kept the smaller bike and helped Jo get the larger one running. It was old looking and ragged but it ran like nobody’s business. The first time out he had the old bike up to sixty-five miles per hour and he came back with a grin so wide that his face hurt.

He decided to strip the bike down bolt by bolt. He would clean it, sand it and paint it and make the thing look new.  He did just that and he did it well. Never had he been so proud of anything in his life. His father, though he would never say so, even seemed to be a bit proud of him. Jo gloated over even the possibility that his father might approve of his work. Jo didn’t know what gave him more pleasure, repairing the bikes, riding the bikes or the fact that he was able to spend time with his father. It was the only quality time he had ever spent with him.

George Smyth was an excellent mechanic. He managed to confine the worst of his drinking to weekends, only drinking small amounts at night, thus managing his workload at the tractor shop where he worked. George was frequently angry and almost always in a bad mood but there was something about the motorcycles that captured his attention and allowed him to be nearly human. Jo took advantage of the opportunity to be with his father. Beggars can’t be choosers, he’d heard his Granny say, and his father was the only father he had and so he did his best to make the most of the opportunity.  This was the young boy’s reasoning.

George had developed a good reputation among the local farmers and was called on frequently to make quick repairs during harvest or planting season. There was nothing his father couldn’t fix and Jo was a quick study.

His father, though an apt mechanic, was a poor teacher. He exhibited infinite patience with machinery and none at all for fifteen-year-old boys. Jo knew that if he were to learn to work on his own bike he would have to observe his father closely. He was careful with his questions and often endured verbal, sometimes even physical abuse to obtain the knowledge he so desired. Jo learned quickly and well but it came at a higher price than anyone could ever have imagined. Even Jo was not aware of the toll that it was taking on him internally. Had anyone been paying attention, they would have seen the signs. They would have noted the despair, the stress and the fear. But no one did and Jo kept trying to find ways to cope.

The young boy loved the river. He loved the solitude and quiet. The places that he could get to on his motorcycle were places that few people even tried. The woods around the Withlacoochee River, the Indian word means crooked river, had been home to the Creek Indians and it was not uncommon to unearth arrowheads or pieces of pottery. That was never his purpose. He came here to escape and to think. The motorcycle was the key to his freedom. It was the key to peace for him. He knew the river bottoms as well as he knew the old motorcycle. He had explored the woods around the Withlacoochee where it wound through the Futch settlement. He knew every bend, every catfish hole, and every fallen tree. He likewise knew every bolt, nut and wire on the old motorcycle, having also explored it completely.

On this day, even the quiet black waters could not give him solace. Death had visited again and with the audacity to use the only thing in his life that brought him any joy. He knew it was not the motorcycle’s fault. Porky had been jumping a ditch; trying to jump all the way across the road. He didn’t see the pickup coming and the pickup driver didn’t see him. They say he sat up after the wreck and then lay back down and was gone.

It had only been a few days ago that Jo had stood among a group of boys with little Porky and his big brother. Porky was laughing and joking--- living. Today he was gone. It all brought back to Jo’s mind the horror of seeing his mother lying lifeless in her casket. He remembered running from the sight of it and grabbing the first pair of legs he could find and crying his heart out. The same feelings sought to overtake him as he sat watching the yellow sweet gum leaves falling into the eddy and going round and round in the swirl. The lump in his throat grew until he could no longer hold back. He released his burden of sorrow onto the ground there under the sweet gums. He wept for the pain that he knew his friend was enduring but, even more, he was reliving the loss of his mother. She had been the only bright spot in his dismal life. His motorcycle, strange as it seemed, had filled a portion of the void left by his mother’s death. Now a motorcycle had taken the life of someone he knew. His only source of peace seemed to be revealing a potential to harm.

As the air grew cool on the mid-autumn Saturday, the young boy kicked the starter on his old bike and headed back to his house, away from his woods, back to the turmoil that was his home. Jo had grown up with four brothers and six sisters. Two other brothers had died years before or there would have been six of each. There were still two brothers at home besides him. His sister, just one year older than he, had opted for marriage in order to escape the hell that their home had become since the death of their mother.

Of course it would have been the best thing if he could have talked to someone about his feelings. His father would have been the obvious target for such a dialogue but that was not how things worked in the Smyth house. If one had feelings about anything he kept them to himself. There was no room for softness. No room for wimps and especially no room for emotional displays of mere humanity. So as he pulled his bike up under the old carport, Jo swallowed the lump in his throat and steeled himself for the hardness that he had learned to cope with in his home.

The nights were the worst time. The old house was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It was never the heat or the cold that gave him trouble, though each held its own challenge. It was the fear that was the hardest to deal with. He knew that there had to be more to life than he was experiencing.  What would he become? What would he do with his life? Would he be a mechanic like his father? Would he work at the carpet factory like his brother-in-law? He dreamed of having a home with a wife who loved him. He dreamed of having kids and telling them stories, holding them close, teaching them things they needed to know.  But the fear kept telling him, You will never have any of those things.  He’d heard the message from his father many times, You will never amount to anything! He fought the fear with all he had but deep in his heart the thing had taken root and haunted him in his waking and sleeping hours.

He’d learned everything the hard way. His father didn’t buy toothbrushes or toothpaste for his kids; he didn’t buy deodorant or any of the personal hygiene products a person might need; neither did he instruct his kids in hygiene, though he took good care of himself. Jo had worked at odd jobs since he was nine years old. He’d worked in tobacco. He’d cleaned tools for mechanics at a garage. He’d bagged groceries. He’d had to spend most of his money buying the things his father deemed as unimportant. Things like shoes, socks, pants, shirts, and underwear. You name it!

If you can’t eat it, you can live without it! , that was his father’s motto.

But his father’s motto did little to ease the pain and humiliation of poverty. Poverty was the other thing that Jo hated. He feared it. He dreamed of being able to buy the things he needed so that he could be like everyone else. It seemed that he could never achieve it and so he rode his motorcycle to the river. The river never humiliated him. It never made cruel jokes about his dirty clothing, or his worn out, soiled shoes or the way he smelled.  He could ride his bike down the highway and the wind rushing by his head drowned out the humiliation of poverty.

At the river, he was king. When he found people fishing there he could show them where to catch more fish. He could tell them exactly what to look for and where to cast their jigs and what kind of lures would work best. But at home he was a coward and a prisoner. At school he hung his head in hopes that no one would notice him. But they did. Jo often wondered if the other kids thought that poor people didn’t have feelings.

Do they think their words don’t hurt? He wondered many times.

But of course he couldn’t tell them. He had to be tough and mean. That was the only way to survive. There was just one problem for Jo; he was not sure he wanted to survive. He would soon be sixteen. He had swallowed just about all the pain that a fifteen year old could swallow. He knew that he could not survive if something didn’t change.

Kid’s like Jo don’t find solutions to their issues. The best they can hope for is to find a way to cope. Some kids turn to drugs or alcohol. Jo was determined never to do either of those. He’d decided that had it not been for their poverty, his mother would still be living; in his mind, alcohol had caused their poverty.  He had experienced hunger many times when the food would run out before payday on Friday. He recalled waiting until late on Friday nights for his father to come home with something for them to eat only to greet a stumbling, drunken man who had lost an entire week’s pay. Jo may have been poor but he could put two and two together and come up with the right answer. He deduced that alcohol caused poverty, hunger and misery. He vowed in his heart to steer clear of them both.

All that being said, and Jo being a logical sort of kid, he decided to go fishing. His primary goal was for food. He longed to be able to eat until he was full and not have to go to bed hungry. Although he and his brothers were of medium height, none of them were above a hundred pounds. He’d heard the comments behind their backs many times. Those kids look like scarecrows! or Why they are just skin and bones! Fishing was one answer to his hunger. It also answered another need: to be out of the house, away from the fear and the pain. At the river he could be alone, though usually his brothers would be with him, they did not converse much. They were all hungry.

Night was the best time to catch catfish and catfish were in abundant supply in the Withlacoochee. They nearly always caught enough to eat for a couple of meals but there were two times a month that they could catch them in abundance. The first was just before the full moon and the next just after the full moon. Jo had learned to observe the shape of the moon and it’s position in the sky. He didn’t know why the fish cared but they did. Every month that the sky was clear enough to allow the lunar outline to be seen he and his brothers would fish during the Catfish Moon.  The moon had to be just less than round. The best time was on the waxing moon, he had discovered. There was, at best, two good nights of fishing before the moon became full. The bright moon also provided the light necessary to navigate the bushy, boggy terrain of the river bottoms.

These were the times that Jo loved the best. While waiting for the next tug on his line he would ponder what his future would be. He would envision the house that he would build or remodel. He envisioned working at a good job and being able to buy all the things that his family needed and never having to go hungry. Then he would battle the demons of fear and despair that kept saying to him, You can never have those things. You are poor and you don’t deserve to have those things.

Jo learned to be independent. He learned to cook by the time he was eight years old. He learned to fix whatever was broken. He had learned to chop wood and build a fire. He could catch fish by the river and have them cooked and ready to eat in a matter of minutes. He could sew and mend his own clothing. He loved being independent and he loved solitude. It was from this mindset of being independent and self-reliant that Jo began to formulate his plan.

Chapter Two

Working the Plan

Jo was working Fridays after school and all day on Saturdays bagging groceries at Lewis’ Grocery store. The pay was minimal but it was steady. He worked hard and Mr. Lewis had spoken casually of wanting him to stay and work for him after graduation. But Jo was a fixer; his hands and mind were motivated to turn wrenches. He wanted to work on things and he needed more money. He eventually gave up grocery bagging for a job at a filling station. Again the pay was minimal but he was able to work after school until ten every night. He also was able to work most weekends. The income was important to his plan. When the school year was over in just a few months, he would be sixteen and a junior in high school. That meant he had two and a half years to prepare for what he wanted to do. It would require planning and saving. He was determined to endure the difficulties of home and school.