You can easily get lost in the San Pedro Swamp. Sandy roads twist and turn for miles on end. Wild hogs run around in there. They’ll eat you if they get you down.
If the mosquitoes don’t eat you, the wild hogs will. One time, two teenage boys, Dumont and Lester, were down in there fishing. They were young and didn’t think too much about staying out there after dark. Later on, they began to wish they had.
It so happened that it was one of those harvest moons. The kind that come up orange in the late evenings, then turn golden when it gets dark. They had caught some fish and were getting tired and cranky and were wanting some supper. Dumont said, “Let’s go. Mama’s cooking fried chicken and I need to git home.”
Then, Lester’s fishing line got hung up and that took awhile to get it untangled. Finally, they got loaded up. Dragonflies swooped low all around. Mourning doves called, sounding like lonely spirits in the purple mist.
They had gotten down the road a good piece before the truck quit on them. Well, they weren’t out of gas, but the points looked wet from going through mud puddles. So they dried them off - no good. After trying everything they could think of and it still not starting, they began to think of that long walk home. The evenings were cooler now and the mosquitoes weren’t so bad, but the wild hogs were!
They got some big sticks and whittled the ends down so they were sharp, in case they got attacked. Every rustle in the bushes scared them a little more. Each one heard snarling and grunting that the other couldn’t hear. But they walked on, because they had to. Directly they came to a fork in the road. They couldn’t remember which fork to take, so they flipped a coin. It came up heads, which meant go to the right. On each side of the road were ditches filled with rainwater and grasses, and critters. A hoot owl began to hoot. Snakes slithered out from under their feet as they walked.
Each one of those boys was praying for all he was worth. And it must have worked, because they saw a light up ahead. Since it was only one light, they reasoned that it was probably a car with only one headlight working. It was moving slowly, but nobody seemed to hear them shouting and hollering. Since it seemed to be their only hope of getting out of the swamp, they began to run towards the light. Alligators watched them with hungry eyes.
Lester was getting real scared by this time, as they didn’t seem to be getting any closer to anywhere. But they ran on after the light. A big mama hog was out in the middle of the road with her babies, eating snakes. When she saw that light coming, she just eased on off into the swamp with her brood. They boys were running harder than ever now. All of a sudden, the light began to rise. It rose higher and higher. Lester and Dumont watch as it disappeared into the sky. At this point, they realized they were standing next to the highway, with several cars approaching!
