By H.L. Dowless
Once there was a man named Sam Cain. Sam was born in Burlington, on the south bayou. He had been raised to hunt alligators for hides and to forage from the countryside. He once went on long camping trips far back up in the bayou, searching for gators, deer, fish and beaver. The bayou was generous. With this meat and the money from the hides, he provided for his family.
So the local rumors had gone, Sam had been used by his father for gator bait as a young child, which was a relatively common custom of the area. This meant that he had been tied to a steak on the sandbar in the bayou. His father parked his canoe nearby so that when the gator came to get his son, he could shoot the gator in the eye, which would kill him. Over the course of time being used as gator bait had turned Sam into a rough, callous man.
This life that Sam had lived, was the only life that he knew. When the season ran out for gator, he learned how to weld and soon opened up his own welding shop. He also raised a garden, saved all of his scrap cloth and reused his metal. Living the life that he did made him a wealthy man. Sam was both happy and content.
The memory of being used as gator bait had burned itself into his mind. This memory influenced the personality of Sam. He disregarded all adversity, continuing on, no matter what. He became a master in the art of survival, ignoring pain and times of illness, doing anything to maintain himself and his family. Like the gators of the bayou, any meat acquired would serve the purpose. The bayou was filled with beaver, muskrat, gator, birds of nearly every sort, snakes, turtles, cattail plants, lilies, bamboo shoots and roots. Sam became ruthless in his pursuit of these natural grocery items.
Just like the gators, Sam became insensitive toward the needs of others, if their need had a bearing on him supplying the needs of himself and his family. He would do anything to access supplies, including theft and use of violence, if the situation at hand called for doing so. At times, he had conflicted with the laws in the local town of Burlington, down in the fork of the rivers Ashley and Cooper. This conflict had invited pursuit by the local law enforcement. The resulting pursuit caused Sam to vanish into the environment that he knew best, the bayou.
The bayou was a very thick, wet, jungle type of environment, filled with dangerous animals such as alligators and huge poisonous snakes. Because of him being pursued by local law enforcement, he and his family withdrew into the bayou, living in an A frame cabin constructed on a platform between four trees, over the standing water. His food was cooked in a thick hollowed soap stone grill using charcoal made on higher, dry land not far from the cabin. He would cook his food in pots found inside old abandoned buildings on the edge of town. Most of the clothes he and his family wore were those that had been found inside these same buildings.
One day the local police chief decided to pursue Sam deep into the bayou, the Sheriff and the top officer came with him. They brought their thermal imaging devices. They had their night vision equipment and their two way radios. They stayed gone twelve days, then suddenly the radios went silent. Four days later only one of them returned.
When the one was questioned, he claimed that they had found sign of human movement through an area of the bayou with a floor that was covered in water. The thermal imaging equipment showed no sign, since the water had cooled any remaining body heat. Suddenly the trail bottom that they were walking collapsed, even though the floor was covered with standing water. The one law enforcement official escaped, while the other two appeared to vanish inside the boiling water. A local who knew the customs of the area claimed that there was a type of water trap known that made use of gators, and that such was what the incident sounded like to him.
A heavy bounty was placed upon the head of Sam. Some said more than a million dollars in bills, solid gold or diamonds. In time a virtual army went in searching for Sam and his family. Every now and then a few failed to ever return. Sam nor his family was never found.
Over the years, many rumors arose among the surrounding population. Some said that Sam had vanished into one of the bayou caves that the dry season exposes the entrance to. When the rains return, it raises the water level and seals off the entrance, but the caverns and caves remain bone dry, being high above the water line. Gold hidden long ago has sometimes been found inside these concealed caverns.
Meat, nuts and fruit dried, then mixed with melted fat could literally sustain him and his family for months, if not several years before needing replenishing. Vegetables could be acquired by raising them inside garden areas tactfully concealed, or from temporary forages. Like the gators who are known to become cannibalistic during times of difficulty, some have claimed that Sam actually consumed his pursuers, since the ones that have vanished tend to always be those who strayed away from the group.
The author is a national & international academic/ ESL Instructor. He has been a writer for over thirty years. His latest publications have been two books of nonfiction with Algora Publishing, a fictional novel by Atmosphere Press, and fictional publications with combo e-zines and print magazines; Leaves Of Ink, CC&D Magazine, a novel with Atmosphere press, Short Story Lovers, The Fear Of Monkeys, and Frontier Tales. He recently signed three contracts with Pen it Publications.
The author has enjoyed a lifetime of outdoor activities from big game hunting, camping, fishing, and trapping, to archaeological field work in various exotic locations. What he enjoys most of all is meeting freedom loving, interesting creative people, who are also regular dedicated fans of his publications
Academy of the Heart And Mind 