Summer of Pearls by Mike Blakely Page B

damn opelousas cat I ever seen!” Adam’s muscles were popping from his thin arms like twisted steel cables as he fought to pull the fish up. The line was all but cutting through his hand.
    â€œHold on tight, Adam!” I said.
    He gave a loud grunt and hoisted the monster from the deep. It looked like a dinosaur coming up from Caddo Lake. Its broad, flat head told us it was an opelousas cat. Its mouth looked like the opening to Captain Brigginshaw’s money satchel, with a jutting lower lip.
    When it broke the surface, I saw its three bayonet-sized barbs, then lost them behind a spray of brown froth. The boat almost pitched Cecil off of the high side. Adam hollered for joy as he reached into the gill under the monster’s head and took a firm hold.
    â€œIt must weigh seventy-five pounds!”
    â€œGet it in here, then!” Cecil said. “It’s worth two bits to each of us!”
    The catfish lunged, beat its head against the boat, and splashed bucketfuls all over the place, but Adam hung on. He didn’t fool with the hook. He just cut the line that the hook was tied to. He almost fell over backward pulling the fish into the boat, and still wouldn’t turn loose of the gills for fear the biggest fish he had ever seen would jump out of the skiff. The thing was fat and grotesque out of the water, beating itself stupidly against the bottom of the skiff and slapping the smaller fish with its tail.
    â€œI guess you were wrong!” Cecil said triumphantly to Adam. “I guess you can catch an opelousas cat using dead mussels for bait!”
    â€œNo, I was right all along!” Adam said, panting. “Look!”

    He pulled the lower jaw of that monster catfish open and we saw a smaller fish in the big one’s mouth. About a seven-pound willow cat had taken our mussel bait and hooked itself. Then that giant opelousas cat had risen from its dark hole somewhere to eat the willow cat that had eaten the mussel. The hook alone probably wouldn’t have held a fish that big. It probably could have bent it straight getting away. But when it swallowed that willow cat, the smaller fish set its barbs in the big cat’s throat, and died holding it on our trotline for us.
    Cecil had to take Adam’s place running the rest of the line because Adam didn’t trust him to hold onto the big fish. We baited as quick as we could, collected a few more normal-sized fish, and paddled back toward old Esau’s saloon.
    On the way, the Lizzie Hopkins II steamed within forty yards of us, en route to Port Caddo. The pilot rang his bell and blew his steam whistle when we showed him the fish. The passengers all crowded the rail to see. We felt like decorated heroes. Lucky ones, at that. We hadn’t expected any steamers. The lake was getting almost too low to handle them. The Lizzie would be the last one of the summer, until the rains came back.
    When we came around Pine Island and caught sight of Esau’s place, we saw a big crowd of people standing on the shore, others wading, and some floating in boats. It was as if the news of our tremendous catch had preceded us and people had come out to see it. We didn’t know what was going on, but we were thrilled.
    â€œToo bad Pop already printed the paper,” I said. “Now we won’t be in it till next week.”
    â€œHe ought to print an extra for a fish like this,” Cecil said. “I wonder what all those people are doing at Esau’s. Wait a minute. I know what they’re doing. Look! They’re hunting for pearls!” He laughed so hard that he had to quit paddling. “That’s Captain Brigginshaw on the shore with his suitcase.”
    Cecil was right. Everybody in town had seen Brigginshaw’s half-page ad and read about the big pearl sale of the previous day. Half the population of Port Caddo had come to hunt up a fortune in Goose
Prairie Cove, where Billy had recently found his pearl. Nobody had