It was a clear sunny late afternoon, and the marsh was silent and still under the lowering sun. This disturbed the slightly built man in the dark green work clothes. Bill Harding was a professional trapper of the illegal type, and poaching of game was not beyond his scope of criminal enterprise. The restaurants around the small Chesapeake Bay fishing town always liked to have some duck or goose to offer the high paying sports from Baltimore and New York. In those days, before the building of the Chesapeake Bay bridge, the Eastern shore of Maryland was a isolated and strange place. A place of salt marshes and slow rivers, it was a haven for all sorts of game, both feathered and furred. And Bill Harding had taken most everything that flew, walked or crawled in his realm, that being LaCompt Marsh near the mouth of the Choptank River.
But right now, Bill was a bit uneasy, He'd set out to shoot some illegal venison while checking his illegal traps, but the marsh was still. As still as a tomb. This was unusual for this time of day, as there should have been some sounds from the population of bird life. It was like the marsh was holding it's breath, like a danger was present, just too quiet. That danger suddenly appeared in the form of Warden Perkins. The local game warden, Perkins had been on a crusade to be the one to bring in Bill Harding as a notorious flaunter of local and federal game laws.
"I've got you now!" Warden Perkins called as he jumped out of hiding in a small brush thicket the other side of a grassy open area.
"Not today, you ain't!" yelled back Bill as he took off on a dead run back through the marsh. A small compact man, Bill was agile, and jumped from grassy hummock to hummock across a wet area, with Warden Perkins in hot pursuit. Warden Perkins took a bit longer to negotiate the swamp, as he did not have the intimate knowledge of the safe spots to jump on as Bill, plus he was a larger bulkier man. But his chance almost came when bill slipped on a mound of wet marsh grass, and fell headlong in the damp grass. Jumping to his feet in an instant and grabbing up his 16 gauge Stevens shot gun he'd dropped, he sprang forward in a new effort to escape the game warden. In desperation, he dove into the water and started swimming a side stroke, trying to hold his gun above water, and made for the opposite shore of the wide deep creek that flowed by.
Warden Perkins stopped at the creek shore and watched in disgust as his quarry swam away through the dark waters of the swamp, and he shouted at Bill as Bill climbed out on the muddy bank almost 50 yards away, "I'll catch you yet, you little reprobate!"
"Yeah, but like I said, not today!" Bill yelled back and cackled with humor and ran off into the swamp.
Perkins watched his adversary run out of sight, bent over to catch his breath for a moment, and started to walk back the way he'd come. "i'm getting too old for this.' he thought to himself. Then stopped in mid stride as something yellow in the dark green marsh grass caught his attention. Bending down, he picked up the object that was laying there. An old yellow handle Case trapper. An old yellow handle Case trapper with well worn old gray blades that had seen many years of use. It could have come only from the pocket of Bill Harding, AKA Trapper Bill, as he fell in his run from the warden. Old Warden Perkins looked at the old trapper pocket knife in his hand and thought about what to do with it.
"Tail of the dog!" he muttered.
Much later, at the Jenkins store, trapper Bill was holding court with the other scalawags of the area. The sagging front porch of the Jenkins store was a hang out of trappers, poachers, chicken thieves and general riff raff of the area. Bill had a cold can of beer in hand, and it was not his second, nor even his third beer. He was telling his cronies of his narrow escape from the clutches of Warden Perkins, and his audience was listening with rapt attention. As he talked, he set his beer down and stood up reaching into his pocket for his knife, so he cold slice of a bit of cheese from the large wedge setting on the counter inside. Then he got a mild look of alarm as he fumbled around in his pocket, then the alarm deepened as he groped in his other pockets.
"It's gone!" Bill exclaimed, as he emptied his pockets on the porch rail.
Bill's alarm turned to panic, as he literally turned his pockets inside out, and franticly searched through the contents. Lighter, a few .22 rounds, a small ball of twine, pouch of pipe tobacco, an old corncob pipe, a pipe tamper made from a tip of a deer horn. It became clear the knife was gone, and Bill went into a deep depression.
"That old trapper has been with me from before the war. I've had that knife for so many years now, it's like a part of me!" he said as he slumped down his chair.
"You loose any more parts of you, you'll shrink up to nuthin" laughed Matt Rankin, one of the most respected and feared poachers on the Choptank.
Bill shot a baleful glance at Rankin, but held his tongue. It was well known on the Choptank that the members of the Rankin clan all had sanity that was half a bubble off of plumb.
Various members of the liars circle tried to console Bill with optimistic comments. Maybe he could go back tomorrow and try to retrace his steps and find it. One man said it was a good excuse to go buy another knife. Then Mrs. Jenkins told Bill that maybe he should try the power of prayer. The others laughed but Mrs. Jenkins told them to hush up. She was a formidable woman, and quiet fell on the porch.
"Ya all hold that nonsense now! I've prayed now and then, so any of you gonna laugh at me for it?" she asked the members of the liars circle.
Nobody was that brave, plus they didn't want to jeprodize their spot on the front porch. Even Matt Rankin held his tongue.
"Now Bill, you just ask the good lord almighty to help you, and maybe something will occur. You never know what happens in life that the good lord above has a hand in." She told a disconsolate Bill Harding.
Willing to try anything, Bill closed his eyes, put his hands tougher and prayed.
"Lord, please help me find my pocket knife tomorrow when I go back and look for it. I'll be most beholding to ya, and promise to mend my ways in gratitude."
He opened his eyes and looked at Mrs Jenkins. "Like that? he asked.
Mrs, Jenkins knew when not to push it, and she also knew that this was as good as she was going to get from Bill Harding. The other members of the liars circle laughed at Bill small effort for holy intervention.
"I ain't seeing no knife fall from the sky yet." said Matt Rankin.
Billy Caulder, one of the best chicken thieves on the Eastern shore put a hand to his ear like he was listening.
"I ain't heard no voice from on high saying' where the knife is." he mocked.
Normal drinking resumed on the porch and life went on. For a little while all seemed well. Then there was the crunch of tires on gravel and a silence fell on the porch. They all recognized the dark green truck with the Maryland state seal on the door. The truck pulled right into the dirt and gravel parking lot of the Jenkins store, and stopped right in front of the porch. Warden Perkins got out and stood looking at them all for a moment. Matt Rankin slowly stood up staring at Warden Perkins with his right hand dangerously close the knife sheathed at his right hip. At that same moment, a tall young woman with a waist length mane of light brown hair, came out of the store with a paper sack of groceries in hand. A beauty that most men couldn't help but look at, was ignored as all eyes where on Warden Perkins. Lizzy Rankin, took in the scene and stepped over in front of her father.
"Daddy, take it easy, lets just see what he wants here. Okay? Okay Daddy?" she told Matt.
Slowly, Matt looked at his daughter and nodded a little, but stayed on his feet. Warden Perkins raised the bill of his ball cap with the Maryland seal on the front.
" Evening MIss Rankin. Matt, I ain't here concerning you." he said, keeping a wary eye on Matt. If it was known on the Choptank that the Rankin clan's sanity was a half a bubble off of plum, it was also known that Matt's bubble was nowhere near center, and was always unpredictable.
Warden Perkins slowly walked over to the end of the porch where Bill Harding was seated. He reached into his pocket and produced something that was yellow and spun through the air to land in Bill lap. It was the lost trapper knife that Bill thought he'd never see again.
"You dropped that when I was chasin' you through the marsh."
With that, Warden Perkins turned and walked back toward the porch steps.
"Hey," Bill yelled a this retreating back, "Why'd ya bring it back?"
Warden Perkins looked at Bill and then glanced over at Matt Rankin.
"I'll get ya someday. I'll catch ya right and proper with evidence right in your hands. But 'till then if I cain't have the whole dog, I don't want the tip of the tail."
With no further words, Warden Perkins got in his state truck and drove off. A dead silence fell on the porch. Bill was looking down a the old yellow handle trapper that was the last thing his old dad had gifts him, deep in thought.
"Why'd he do that?" he asked nobody in particular.
"He's just being ornery in some way. Who knows what goes through the minds of game wardens?" said Billy Caulder.
"I now what I'd like to put through his mind!" muttered Mat Rankin.
Bill looked up and and then wondered aloud, "Hey, ya don't think that " he trailed off looking up at the darkening evening sky.
There was laughs and rude jokes on the porch, and things slowly returned to normal, as normal as the front porch of the Jenkins store permitted. Trapper Bill was quiet for a spell, and then stood up and staggered to his truck, and quietly pulled off. He drove down the road a bit, then made a U turn and drove into the heart of the town. Deep evening had settled and most people were home having dinner. Bill pulled up in front of the church that his brother was the Reverend of. No two Brothers of the same parents had ever evolved into as different people as had Bill and his brother. Although they both were compact lean built men and had a family resemblance, there ended the similarity. As much as a scalawag as Bill was regarded, his brother, the Good Reverend Harding, was the epitome of righteousness in the eyes of the towns people. At the time, the good Reverend was distributing new hymn booklets in the pews when the church doors banged open and he was flabbergasted to see his brother Bill standing in the open door. The Reverend could not remember any time in the near or moderately distant past that Bill had ever darkened the doorway of a church. Slowly, not taking his eyes off of his brother fearing it was a delusion that would dissolve if he did so, he set the hymn booklets down in a pew and walked toward the doorway.
"Bill I am rather surprised to see you. Are you all right?" the reverend asked carefully.
"it came back. My knife came back to me. It was gone and the warden gave it back." Bill said.
Fearing that his brother had gotten some bad home brew and was delirious, the reverend asked him to sit down. Bill did so, then in a rush he blurted out the whole tale to this brother, starting with the chase in the swamp, and Warden Perkins coming to the porch and tossing him his knife right after he prayed. The reverend did not know quite what to make of this, but the miracle of having Bill appear in a church, and actually sitting down and talking to him, was no small thing to the reverend. An opportunity not be passed up.
"Do you think that he answered my prayer?" Bill asked.
The reverend thought carefully before he spoke.
"I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know. But if we have faith, and believe that there can be meaning in the common place, even in small things, and that nothing is by chance, then maybe. That's the thing about faith, Bill. We have to take it on faith, to just believe. "
The reverend reached down and took out a very beautiful silver pocket watch from his vest pocket, and clicked open the cover.
"Tell you what, Bill," the reverend said, " Mary is making pot roast for supper. Why don't I have her set another place at the table, and you come by to dine with us?"
Bill had watched his brother look at the watch, and his eye followed the silver watch chain to the other end, where a small pocket knife was secured. The reverend saw the look, and replaced the watch, and took out the exquisite pearl penknife from Sheffield that was secured there.
"Yes, it's still there. It's been a long time since you and father gave it to me when I graduated the seminary."
Bill held out this hand with the worn old trapper in it.
"I got this the same day and place. I had went with dad to pick out a nice knife for your watch chain, and bought this one the same time as that pearl beauty. But yours is in much better shape now. I guess this old trapper has been through a lot a swamp and muskrat pelts in it's day. " he said.
The two brothers sat and talked about pocket knives for a while, and faith in general. Bill seemed to sober up a little and settle down. The reverend stood and addressed his brother.
"Bill, you sit here a bit if you like, and think about it. Then come by for supper. A nice pot roast supper, and after it we'll talk over a brandy or two. Okay? Just lock up when you leave."
The reverend patted Bill on the shoulder and left. Bill stayed in the church pew and thought about a lot of things. Outside, the reverend bent over and peered through the window and pondered it. He got in his old Ford sedan and went to start the engine and hesitated. Then he said quietly, "Lord, far be for me to guess at things, and I sure don't question this. But if it was you that got Bill back his knife, and into a church, I'm almighty grateful. "
Then the reverend drove home and asked his wife to set another place at the table. A place that had been empty for too long.
But right now, Bill was a bit uneasy, He'd set out to shoot some illegal venison while checking his illegal traps, but the marsh was still. As still as a tomb. This was unusual for this time of day, as there should have been some sounds from the population of bird life. It was like the marsh was holding it's breath, like a danger was present, just too quiet. That danger suddenly appeared in the form of Warden Perkins. The local game warden, Perkins had been on a crusade to be the one to bring in Bill Harding as a notorious flaunter of local and federal game laws.
"I've got you now!" Warden Perkins called as he jumped out of hiding in a small brush thicket the other side of a grassy open area.
"Not today, you ain't!" yelled back Bill as he took off on a dead run back through the marsh. A small compact man, Bill was agile, and jumped from grassy hummock to hummock across a wet area, with Warden Perkins in hot pursuit. Warden Perkins took a bit longer to negotiate the swamp, as he did not have the intimate knowledge of the safe spots to jump on as Bill, plus he was a larger bulkier man. But his chance almost came when bill slipped on a mound of wet marsh grass, and fell headlong in the damp grass. Jumping to his feet in an instant and grabbing up his 16 gauge Stevens shot gun he'd dropped, he sprang forward in a new effort to escape the game warden. In desperation, he dove into the water and started swimming a side stroke, trying to hold his gun above water, and made for the opposite shore of the wide deep creek that flowed by.
Warden Perkins stopped at the creek shore and watched in disgust as his quarry swam away through the dark waters of the swamp, and he shouted at Bill as Bill climbed out on the muddy bank almost 50 yards away, "I'll catch you yet, you little reprobate!"
"Yeah, but like I said, not today!" Bill yelled back and cackled with humor and ran off into the swamp.
Perkins watched his adversary run out of sight, bent over to catch his breath for a moment, and started to walk back the way he'd come. "i'm getting too old for this.' he thought to himself. Then stopped in mid stride as something yellow in the dark green marsh grass caught his attention. Bending down, he picked up the object that was laying there. An old yellow handle Case trapper. An old yellow handle Case trapper with well worn old gray blades that had seen many years of use. It could have come only from the pocket of Bill Harding, AKA Trapper Bill, as he fell in his run from the warden. Old Warden Perkins looked at the old trapper pocket knife in his hand and thought about what to do with it.
"Tail of the dog!" he muttered.
Much later, at the Jenkins store, trapper Bill was holding court with the other scalawags of the area. The sagging front porch of the Jenkins store was a hang out of trappers, poachers, chicken thieves and general riff raff of the area. Bill had a cold can of beer in hand, and it was not his second, nor even his third beer. He was telling his cronies of his narrow escape from the clutches of Warden Perkins, and his audience was listening with rapt attention. As he talked, he set his beer down and stood up reaching into his pocket for his knife, so he cold slice of a bit of cheese from the large wedge setting on the counter inside. Then he got a mild look of alarm as he fumbled around in his pocket, then the alarm deepened as he groped in his other pockets.
"It's gone!" Bill exclaimed, as he emptied his pockets on the porch rail.
Bill's alarm turned to panic, as he literally turned his pockets inside out, and franticly searched through the contents. Lighter, a few .22 rounds, a small ball of twine, pouch of pipe tobacco, an old corncob pipe, a pipe tamper made from a tip of a deer horn. It became clear the knife was gone, and Bill went into a deep depression.
"That old trapper has been with me from before the war. I've had that knife for so many years now, it's like a part of me!" he said as he slumped down his chair.
"You loose any more parts of you, you'll shrink up to nuthin" laughed Matt Rankin, one of the most respected and feared poachers on the Choptank.
Bill shot a baleful glance at Rankin, but held his tongue. It was well known on the Choptank that the members of the Rankin clan all had sanity that was half a bubble off of plumb.
Various members of the liars circle tried to console Bill with optimistic comments. Maybe he could go back tomorrow and try to retrace his steps and find it. One man said it was a good excuse to go buy another knife. Then Mrs. Jenkins told Bill that maybe he should try the power of prayer. The others laughed but Mrs. Jenkins told them to hush up. She was a formidable woman, and quiet fell on the porch.
"Ya all hold that nonsense now! I've prayed now and then, so any of you gonna laugh at me for it?" she asked the members of the liars circle.
Nobody was that brave, plus they didn't want to jeprodize their spot on the front porch. Even Matt Rankin held his tongue.
"Now Bill, you just ask the good lord almighty to help you, and maybe something will occur. You never know what happens in life that the good lord above has a hand in." She told a disconsolate Bill Harding.
Willing to try anything, Bill closed his eyes, put his hands tougher and prayed.
"Lord, please help me find my pocket knife tomorrow when I go back and look for it. I'll be most beholding to ya, and promise to mend my ways in gratitude."
He opened his eyes and looked at Mrs Jenkins. "Like that? he asked.
Mrs, Jenkins knew when not to push it, and she also knew that this was as good as she was going to get from Bill Harding. The other members of the liars circle laughed at Bill small effort for holy intervention.
"I ain't seeing no knife fall from the sky yet." said Matt Rankin.
Billy Caulder, one of the best chicken thieves on the Eastern shore put a hand to his ear like he was listening.
"I ain't heard no voice from on high saying' where the knife is." he mocked.
Normal drinking resumed on the porch and life went on. For a little while all seemed well. Then there was the crunch of tires on gravel and a silence fell on the porch. They all recognized the dark green truck with the Maryland state seal on the door. The truck pulled right into the dirt and gravel parking lot of the Jenkins store, and stopped right in front of the porch. Warden Perkins got out and stood looking at them all for a moment. Matt Rankin slowly stood up staring at Warden Perkins with his right hand dangerously close the knife sheathed at his right hip. At that same moment, a tall young woman with a waist length mane of light brown hair, came out of the store with a paper sack of groceries in hand. A beauty that most men couldn't help but look at, was ignored as all eyes where on Warden Perkins. Lizzy Rankin, took in the scene and stepped over in front of her father.
"Daddy, take it easy, lets just see what he wants here. Okay? Okay Daddy?" she told Matt.
Slowly, Matt looked at his daughter and nodded a little, but stayed on his feet. Warden Perkins raised the bill of his ball cap with the Maryland seal on the front.
" Evening MIss Rankin. Matt, I ain't here concerning you." he said, keeping a wary eye on Matt. If it was known on the Choptank that the Rankin clan's sanity was a half a bubble off of plum, it was also known that Matt's bubble was nowhere near center, and was always unpredictable.
Warden Perkins slowly walked over to the end of the porch where Bill Harding was seated. He reached into his pocket and produced something that was yellow and spun through the air to land in Bill lap. It was the lost trapper knife that Bill thought he'd never see again.
"You dropped that when I was chasin' you through the marsh."
With that, Warden Perkins turned and walked back toward the porch steps.
"Hey," Bill yelled a this retreating back, "Why'd ya bring it back?"
Warden Perkins looked at Bill and then glanced over at Matt Rankin.
"I'll get ya someday. I'll catch ya right and proper with evidence right in your hands. But 'till then if I cain't have the whole dog, I don't want the tip of the tail."
With no further words, Warden Perkins got in his state truck and drove off. A dead silence fell on the porch. Bill was looking down a the old yellow handle trapper that was the last thing his old dad had gifts him, deep in thought.
"Why'd he do that?" he asked nobody in particular.
"He's just being ornery in some way. Who knows what goes through the minds of game wardens?" said Billy Caulder.
"I now what I'd like to put through his mind!" muttered Mat Rankin.
Bill looked up and and then wondered aloud, "Hey, ya don't think that " he trailed off looking up at the darkening evening sky.
There was laughs and rude jokes on the porch, and things slowly returned to normal, as normal as the front porch of the Jenkins store permitted. Trapper Bill was quiet for a spell, and then stood up and staggered to his truck, and quietly pulled off. He drove down the road a bit, then made a U turn and drove into the heart of the town. Deep evening had settled and most people were home having dinner. Bill pulled up in front of the church that his brother was the Reverend of. No two Brothers of the same parents had ever evolved into as different people as had Bill and his brother. Although they both were compact lean built men and had a family resemblance, there ended the similarity. As much as a scalawag as Bill was regarded, his brother, the Good Reverend Harding, was the epitome of righteousness in the eyes of the towns people. At the time, the good Reverend was distributing new hymn booklets in the pews when the church doors banged open and he was flabbergasted to see his brother Bill standing in the open door. The Reverend could not remember any time in the near or moderately distant past that Bill had ever darkened the doorway of a church. Slowly, not taking his eyes off of his brother fearing it was a delusion that would dissolve if he did so, he set the hymn booklets down in a pew and walked toward the doorway.
"Bill I am rather surprised to see you. Are you all right?" the reverend asked carefully.
"it came back. My knife came back to me. It was gone and the warden gave it back." Bill said.
Fearing that his brother had gotten some bad home brew and was delirious, the reverend asked him to sit down. Bill did so, then in a rush he blurted out the whole tale to this brother, starting with the chase in the swamp, and Warden Perkins coming to the porch and tossing him his knife right after he prayed. The reverend did not know quite what to make of this, but the miracle of having Bill appear in a church, and actually sitting down and talking to him, was no small thing to the reverend. An opportunity not be passed up.
"Do you think that he answered my prayer?" Bill asked.
The reverend thought carefully before he spoke.
"I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know. But if we have faith, and believe that there can be meaning in the common place, even in small things, and that nothing is by chance, then maybe. That's the thing about faith, Bill. We have to take it on faith, to just believe. "
The reverend reached down and took out a very beautiful silver pocket watch from his vest pocket, and clicked open the cover.
"Tell you what, Bill," the reverend said, " Mary is making pot roast for supper. Why don't I have her set another place at the table, and you come by to dine with us?"
Bill had watched his brother look at the watch, and his eye followed the silver watch chain to the other end, where a small pocket knife was secured. The reverend saw the look, and replaced the watch, and took out the exquisite pearl penknife from Sheffield that was secured there.
"Yes, it's still there. It's been a long time since you and father gave it to me when I graduated the seminary."
Bill held out this hand with the worn old trapper in it.
"I got this the same day and place. I had went with dad to pick out a nice knife for your watch chain, and bought this one the same time as that pearl beauty. But yours is in much better shape now. I guess this old trapper has been through a lot a swamp and muskrat pelts in it's day. " he said.
The two brothers sat and talked about pocket knives for a while, and faith in general. Bill seemed to sober up a little and settle down. The reverend stood and addressed his brother.
"Bill, you sit here a bit if you like, and think about it. Then come by for supper. A nice pot roast supper, and after it we'll talk over a brandy or two. Okay? Just lock up when you leave."
The reverend patted Bill on the shoulder and left. Bill stayed in the church pew and thought about a lot of things. Outside, the reverend bent over and peered through the window and pondered it. He got in his old Ford sedan and went to start the engine and hesitated. Then he said quietly, "Lord, far be for me to guess at things, and I sure don't question this. But if it was you that got Bill back his knife, and into a church, I'm almighty grateful. "
Then the reverend drove home and asked his wife to set another place at the table. A place that had been empty for too long.
