Sketcher Read Free Page A

and Tony wash dishes and haul water and go borrow somethin’ from that crabby ol’ lady Ma Campbell across the fence, Frico gets to take Calvin, our yaller dog, on a lovely stroll to the shop or to go paint by the train tracks or deeper in the swamp. But even then, that’s during the day. So when he stormed out of the house that night, I was waitin’ to see if he was finally gonna get it. But Pops, he just stopped his Cajun-cussin’ and said: “Y’all go on and get your little brother.”
    Of course, even if Doug and Tony weren’t doin’ no homework, they weren’t gonna get up first, cos they were just tired of goin’ after Frico. So I jumped up like a good boy, made sure the screen door didn’t slam when I ran out, and waited to see if anybody was goin’ to come after li’le ol’ Skid and protect him from black bears, water moccasins and demons. But no, sir: ’twas just me, myself and a million crickets.
    Now, even though I don’t personally believe it, older folks say that strange things from hell walk under the old cypress trees after dark. So, if you ever go walkin’ in the swamps, here’s a few rules for ya, just like I heard ’em.
    If you see a shadow walkin’ out on the water, look away.
    If you hear someone whistlin’ or singin’, don’t join in.
    If a voice calls your name in the woods, walk in the opposite direction. Quickly.
    Watch out for a hairy man with his head in the trees: that’s the Loogaroo werewolf man.
    Look out for the little bald-headed girl walkin’ fast – and don’t follow her.
    And most of all, you need to look out for James “Couyon” Jackson and his gang, who’d dope up on crack before coming in a black van to cut out your kidneys and leave you in a tub full of party ice and rock salt. The way I heard it, you’d rather bump into the Loogaroo man after dark than run into those crack-pipe-hittin’ types in the broad daylight, I tell ya.
    So yeah, Pops told me all these stories and then he let me go out alone. Anyway, all that waitin’ in vain on the doorstep made me lose precious seconds, so by the time I chased after Frico he had disappeared, almost like the darkness was a stretch of water and he’d done gone under in it. Well, after walkin’ blind for a while, I realized I didn’t know where I was. See, in the pass, we lived on a little piece of land, shaped more or less like an “L” – a cul-de-sac, really. The top part of the L was connected to the mainland and led in from the train tracks that ran through the swamp. You went down a grassy slope from the tracks when you entered the L. Then, a little way in, there was a footbridge with a decent enough creek runnin’ under it. You crossed that bridge and went on for about two hundred metres on a dumped-up marl road before going round a bend into the bottom part of the L, which is where we lived along with Ma and Pa Campbell. Their house was right across the chicken-wire fence from us.
    Now, all around that L-island, as I call it, there was some murky swamp water filled with alligators and lots of drowning opportunities. So at night, without a light or a full moon, you could easily end up going off the corner of the L – and that would be the end of it. Furthermore, after the dry season, when rain broke a drought, big ol’ sinkholes could beanywhere. So I stayed put until I saw Tony and Doug way behind me with a flashlight and I got a sense of where I was.
    Doug was callin’ out, “Skid, wait!” – so I walked in the opposite direction. Tony, who was the eldest at thirteen, began yellin’ something scary about some vampire guy that he used to watch when my family had a TV. I wasn’t goin’ to look like no baby, so I took my bearings from the light and just kept walkin’ until I saw the flashlight bobbin’ up and down, on the ground and up