1975, Southeastern United States
Travis lived in an old log cabin a few hundred yards from the point where the creek flowed into the big river. His father had bought two acres for next to nothing and built the place one log at a time in the late nineteen-fifties and they had used it as a hunting and fishing getaway. When he was young Travis had always looked forward to coming there with his Dad and older brother Eddie to fish out in the river and in-season would hunt for deer and rabbits.
The cabin was pretty crude from the get-go. His father installed a septic tank and drilled a well, but the water was full of sulphur and other minerals and it smelled and tasted bad. The cabin was a few miles from the small town up the creek, so there was no electricity either until the mid-sixties. As the town slowly expanded in the direction of the big river his father, who happened to be a supervisor at the electric company, managed to get a power line run out to the point. Stay ahead of the growth, he'd said, and one of the bigwigs had agreed and approved it. The cabin still had no heat or air conditioning, but at least it had power for lights, fans, a fridge and a stove.
Eddie was drafted in '67 and was soon sent off to Vietnam and Travis followed him fifteen months later. Eddie was killed in combat when Travis was in Boot Camp. Travis went to war too and nine months later was sent home with his left leg full of shrapnel and three of his toes blown off. He would walk with a wobbly limp for the rest of his life. When he got home he found out his girlfriend had moved in with another guy. Then he got sick as a dog and became delirious with high fever. He went to the doctor. The doctor put him in the hospital immediately; he had malaria. Over the following half-year his father died of a heart attack, and then his mother passed away shortly thereafter. She hadn't been sick; Travis assumed she'd died of a broken heart.
Travis was their sole heir. He hired a lawyer to sort everything out, get rid of all the personal property and sell the house. Then he packed all his stuff into his pickup and hitched the boat and trailer to the rear and drove to the cabin. That was all he wanted. He'd been there ever since.
After the estate sale, selling the house and receiving the life insurance Travis netted a little over $31,000. He insisted on cash; he no longer trusted his government and he wasn't trusting any banks. The lawyer thought it was a peculiar request but he didn't pry and had the cash waiting for him when he came to pick it up. Then Travis drove to the small town up the creek where he had a post office box and picked up his monthly disability check. He cashed it at the bank and drove to his cabin. He opened a floor board under the rug in the bedroom and stashed the money in the steel box hidden there.
For many months, all Travis did was go fishing in the mornings and work around the cabin the rest of the day, fixing it up. He and his pickup became a familiar sight in town, the 'loner from the point' they called him, coming and going, buying tools and materials, ordering supplies, always paying cash. He painted. He built a front porch the length of the cabin. He rebuilt the bulkhead and dock. He replaced the old shingled roof with metal and installed gutters all around, which flowed into two huge cisterns he installed at the back of the cabin, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom and indoor and outdoor showers. In a southern, subtropical climate that received fifty-some inches of rainfall per year the tanks stayed well-filled most of the time. The well water was just used for the commode, cleaning fish and washing down the truck and boat.
He built himself a desk. Because at night Travis tried to write. He'd always been a writer, and had sent many short stories out to magazines, and had had two published, earning twenty-five dollars for each. But now he was trying to write something big, something special. About the war and the shit he'd seen and the pain he'd endured and the brother he'd lost and his anger and the hatred he felt for the assholes who had sent him there and how everybody now looked at him like he was some kind of freak ever since he'd come home. But the writing wasn't happening. He ripped sheet after sheet of paper out of his typewriter and threw them in the trash.
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Travis fished nearly everyday and found that he was not only good at it, but that it could be profitable. He'd stock his fridge and freezer and then sell the rest to the market in town or to a market in the town across the river. Mostly trout and cat. With his monthly check and the money he had coming in from fishing he made more than enough to live on and each month he would stash more cash into his steel box.
One afternoon after a very prodigious day out on the river, Travis was cleaning fish on his dock when he noticed a skiff full of black kids coming his way from town heading toward the river. There was an older, good-looking girl sitting back with her hand on the tiller of an old, small outboard motor that sounded like it was about to kick the bucket at any moment. In front of her were three young children, two boys and a girl.
"Hi, Mister!" one of the little boys called, as the boat neared his dock. It slowed and eased closer.
"Hi. How're y'all doing today?" Travis asked.
"Good! Going for a boat ride," the boy said.
"Where are you all going? This here's the end of the creek. You better turn around. You don't want to get out in the river!"
"Why not?"
"Number one that little motor isn't going to help you much, it's pretty rough out there, the current's too strong. Plus, where are your life jackets?"
"We're not going in the river," the older girl said. "Just to the mouth, then we was gonna turn back."
"Good," Travis said. "Why don't you tie up, take a break?"
They secured the skiff and climbed up on the dock.
The young girl looked to be about ten, the boys a little older. Travis could see that the older girl was actually a young lady, and an attractive one at that. She looked to be about nineteen or twenty, was thin and barefoot and wore blue jean cutoffs and a white t-shirt. Her breasts were small and bra-less, her nipples slightly aroused inside her damp shirt. Her hair was a wind-blown, kinky black mop but her toned arms and legs were smooth as chocolate milk.
"What ya doin' Mister?" the boy said.
"Cleaning fish. Catfish. This here's a big one too, I'd bet thirty pounds or close to it. Y'all like catfish?"
They got talking about catfish. They all loved catfish. Mama fried it up every chance she got, the older girl said.
They talked as Travis cut and cleaned. He learned where they lived. It was on the other side of the creek a couple miles closer to town in the Black section. Their Dad was a truck driver and was away a lot. Their Mom raised chickens and tended garden and cleaned houses in town. He learned their names. The boys were Nathan and Roy, the little girl was Joy. Mom was Jolene, Dad was Robert.
The older girl was Bettina. She was nineteen. She helped Mom with the kids and the chickens and the garden and worked at the drug store to help with the bills. Travis had a hard time looking away from her slim, trim body, her cute butt and her dark satiny skin. But he caught himself, shook it off. This was the south.
"How many of you are there living in your house?" Travis asked.
"Seven," Bettina said. "Our grandmother lives with us too."
Travis cut several long, thick pieces, about three pounds, and wrapped them up in parchment paper. He handed it to Bettina.
"There now," he said. "Take that home with you. Fry it up. That will be a tasty dinner for your family."
"Oh, you don't have to do that, Mister Travis."
"I know that, Bettina. But I want to. Just being a good neighbor, that's all. And enough of that Mister stuff. Just call me Travis."
"Okay. Travis. Thank you. And I'm sure my Momma thanks you too," Bettina said.
"We're gonna have a good supper tonight!" Nathan said enthusiastically.
Travis finished up his work and squirted off the table and washed the guts and remains into the creek.
"Now you all do me a favor," Travis said. "Don't go any closer to that river. It's dangerous. You turn that boat around and head back home, you hear?"
The kids uttered a chorus of okays and Bettina said they would. She would take care of them.
