Needless to say I overslept the next morning.  When we got up, it was around seven o’clock and I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen.  I woke Woody up and then went to see who was fixing breakfast.  Daddy was standing by the sink, sipping his coffee and flipping through a J.C. Whitney catalog.
    “Mornin’.” I said.  He put his coffee cup in the sink, turned and picked up his cap off the table.
    “Coy, Jr., don’t give your Mama any trouble today.  Do whatever she says.  I’m going on to work and I’ll probably be home early tonight.  What are you and Woody going to do today?”
    “We were going fishing, but we missed our ride, I think.” I said, kinda hoping that he would offer to drop us off.
    “Well…It’s a pretty day.  It won’t hurt y’all to walk.  Has Woody got a pole?”
    “Nope.  Said he broke his.”
    “You can use mine, but try to keep him out of my tackle box, okay?”
    “Yessir.  He won’t mess with your stuff.  Where’s Mama?”
    “She’s still in the bed.  She didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    “What’d that Deputy want last night?”
    “Never mind about that.  You two stay out of trouble, I’ve got to go.  Here’s a couple of dollars, y’all get a Co-cola or something…” Daddy laid two bills on the table as he walked by.
    And with that, he looked at me a couple of seconds then walked out the back door, climbed into his truck and headed off to work.  The only problem was he went the wrong way.  He seemed to be headed toward town instead of toward the woodyard.
    “Hey.  Did your Daddy leave already?  Why didn’t you ask him for a ride?”  Woody said as he took a cup from the cabinet then poured a cup of coffee.  “Got any bourbon?”
    “What?  Bourbon?  You look like bourbon.”
    “I like a little bourbon in my coffee in the morning.”
    “Woody, you’re 14 years old, for crying out loud.  Bourbon.  Crap.”
    “Hey.  Don’t knock it if you ain’t tried it!  And I’m old enough to drink if I want to.”
    “Yeah…sure…whatever.”  I got a glass and looked in the refrigerator for some milk.  The only thing we had was buttermilk and that was not something I drank in the afternoon let alone first thing in the morning.  “Maybe I could use a shot of bourbon myself” I muttered as I exchanged the glass for a cup.
    I looked around the kitchen to find us something to eat and could only come up with some Toastem Pop-ups that had been in the cabinet about two months.  I gave a pack to Woody and kept one for myself.  We didn’t have a toaster, so we ate them cold.
    “Woody, you ready to go?” I looked at Woody as he shoved the last half of the stale pastry into his gaping maw.
    “Let’s hit it!” he replied, blowing crumbs all over the kitchen table.  “I can’t wait to show you how to catch a fish!”
    We walked out into the carport and Woody was right, the crickets were all dead.  The slice of light bread that I had put in there for food had completely turned green and the jar lid of water was upside down.
    “I can’t believe these crickets all died.  There was at least a dollar’s worth in there.  Man those things just don’t hold up, do they?”
    “Naw.  A cricket ain’t gonna live more than a day or two.  Once you take ‘em away from the bait shop, them thangs are bound to die.  Whut we gonna use for bait?  I’ve tried usin’ dead ones before, fish won’t hit ‘em.”
    “We can go out behind the shed and look for some worms.”  An old shed that had once housed a couple of horses was at the end of the backyard.  There was a low spot that stayed damp and several trees had grown up beside it.  The combination of horse manure, dead leaves and moisture produced some of the biggest nightcrawlers you had ever seen.  “We need a can or something to put them in.”
    “Here’s a coffee can full of bent nails.”  Without hesitation Woody dumped the nails in the middle of the carport floor.
    “Woody!  Daddy’s gonna skin us alive for that.  Pick those nails up and put ‘em on the bench or something.”
    “Naw, man.  He won’t know it was us, he’ll think the cat turned it over.  Let’s hit it, man.  Or are we gonna talk about it all dadgum day?”  With that, Woody struck out for the shed.  I picked up two fishing poles and Daddy’s tackle box and then followed Woody.
    “I’m sure Daddy will think a cat put a pile of nails in the middle of the floor when there’s no can to be found.” I kept complaining as we walked.
    “Coy, Jr.  You worry too much.  You just like an old woman.  I’ll tell you what, you gonna get an ulster if you don’t watch out.” Woody’s medical knowledge was based purely on what he had overhead his mother say and what he had seen on TV.  “I saw a man on TV almost die from one of ‘em.”
    “It’s an ulcer and I ain’t got one…yet.”  We walked behind the shed and raked the leaves back to uncover the worms.  There were plenty and every one of them was as big around as your little finger.
    “Whoooo-eeee!  These thangs look like snakes.”  Woody admired one of them for a second then started picking them up as fast as he could.
    “Hey now. We don’t need but twenty or thirty of them, Woody.  Save some for next time.”  I scooped up a handful of dirt and put it in the can.  Woody picked up the can of worms and spit on them several times.
    “Why’d you do that?”
    “Keep ‘em wet.  They’ll live longer.”
    “Yeah, but now I gotta dig my fingers in your spit.  Woody, you beat all I ever seen.  I ought to make you bait my hook all day!”
    “I’ll bait your hook, little man.  Scared of a worm.  I tell you, you gonna get an ulster…”
    We headed out of the yard and down the road.  It was kinda cloudy, looked a little like it might rain but it was relatively mild for a summer’s day in Mississippi.  We had walked about a mile or so when a sheriff’s car passed us going about ninety miles an hour.  We jumped off the side of the road and down in the ditch like a couple of idiots, then stood up and stared as he went on down the road.  We could see that there was somebody in the back seat, but couldn’t make out if it was a man or a woman.  That was all it took to get me thinking about Mama and what that deputy had said last night.  Now it was gonna bug me all day, wondering if that was Mama in the back of the car getting hauled off to jail.
    We kept walking and had gotten in sight of Mama Pope’s house.  And there sat the sheriff’s car.  There was no sign of Uncle Benny’s car, so I reckoned that they had headed back to New Jersey.
    “Woody, let’s sneak around to the other side of the house and see if we can see anything.”  We cut across the road and went through the woods.  The fishing poles were really a problem maneuvering through the trees and bushes, but when they hung up, I would give them a yank.  We came to the barbed wire fence just to the back of Mama Pope’s shed.  We laid down our fishing stuff and climbed under the fence, hoping not to be seen.  We stayed on the ground and elbowed our way to the back of the shed.  That’s when we realized we could hear somebody talking inside.  I recognized the voices immediately.  It was Deputy Hannon and he was talking to Mama Pope.
    “Listen to me old woman.  I’ve been getting complaints about you not delivering and I got to say I ain’t happy about it!”  I could almost smell his bad breath in the tone he was using.  I was scared to death.  I knew that if he saw us he’d probably kill us or at least make us wish we were dead.
    “I’m sorry Deputy, but I just can’t bend and pick up all those heavy jugs.  My old back has been going out on me and it hurts too much.”
   “Well, I’ll send somebody over here to help you load up.”
    “My Buick just can’t haul enough to satisfy those people.”
    “Well, I reckon you’ll just have to get a truck, now won’t you?”  Hannon was getting louder and you could tell he was talking through his clenched teeth.
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to buy a truck.”
    “Get a truck.”
    I wriggled over to a crack in the shed wall and peeped in cautiously.  I saw Hannon and it looked like he had a hold of Mama Pope by the hair.
    “But I don’t have the money.”  Mama Pope was beginning to cry.
    “Get a truck, dammit!”  He pushed her backwards and she sat flat down on the ground.  Then she fell over on her side and covered her head.  I was getting so mad I wanted to run in there and kill him with my bare hands.  But I knew if I did, that’d be it.  I’d be dead and so would everybody else.  As hard as it was, this was going to require some serious thinking.
    I leaned back and whispered to Woody, “That’s Hannon in there.”
    “I know it.  I know it.”  Woody was breathing fast and had gotten wild eyed, his pupils were huge as his eyes were darting back and forth.  “I got to find me a stick or something!”  Woody had broken out into a sweat, his mouth was gaping open and he was panting like a dog.  I knew he was fixing to do something rash and I had to try and keep him calm or else this situation was gonna go extremely bad.
    “Woody, Mama Pope’s got a still hid in this shed.”  I hoped this would divert his train of thought off of attacking Hannon.
    “Do what?  A still?  Nuh-uh!”  Woody looked puzzled, but his attention immediately went back to Deputy Hannon.
    The next thing I knew, he had tucked in his elbows and was rolling like a Co-cola bottle across the grass toward a big pile of junk.  He scurried around on his hands and knees pulling out pieces of pipe and lumber, apparently looking for one that he thought could do the job.  Two seconds later, he’s got a pump handle and what looked like a spoke out of an old wagon wheel.  He turned around and started duck walking back to where I was, a weapon in each hand.
    “Woody, we can’t do nothing.  If he sees us, he’ll shoot all of us.”
    “Coy, Jr.  I’m going to kill him.  I’m gonna bash his head open and stomp his brain.”
    We heard them go out the front of the shed.
    “Listen to me old woman, I got somebody to help you load your car this afternoon.  But by this time next week you better have a truck, or there’ll be hell to pay.  Do I make myself clear?”
    Woody shoved the wooden club toward me, jumped up and raised the pump handle high in the air and leaned back against the wall.  He looked like he was counting to three, but he stood there for at least a minute.  I had a feeling that we were fixin’ to die. But my life wasn’t flashing before my eyes like they say it will, probably because it wasn’t really worth repeating. Woody started screaming like a banshee and took off full blast around the shed.  I scrambled to my feet and took off after him.  At that precise moment I came to realize that I was just as crazy as Woody.

Chapter 3. We Need a Plan Part 1.