Floyd, in his thirties and forties, was probably the most accomplished catfish noodler in South Carolina. Noodling is the art of catching catfish with one’s bare hands, a difficult and dangerous thing to do, primarily because the activity involves getting into the water and making yourself bait for a fish that could weigh up to 50 pounds or more. Fifty pounds with handles is heavy enough on dry land. In the watery lair of the flathead catfish, an angry whiskered fish attached to your arm it is a good way to experience drowning.
Floyd used to joke that he did this because he was frugal and didn’t want to waste money on tackle and bait. But this was just part of the act. Anyone who tells you he (or she) noodles catfish out of hunger or thrift is pulling your leg. It is, above all, a breathtaking stunt. You noodle a big catfish and you are exempt, for the rest of the day, from having to explain yourself. You can take a nap, excuse yourself from having to do lawn work, or go to a movie, or a bar. It doesn’t matter, you’re off the hook and you don’t have to say another word.
And this was an incentive for Floyd who, so much more so than Erskine, liked to do his work through deeds. The less said the better. He’d rather show you than tell you, and if he had to tell you he would tell you once, in a tone that, though not unpleasant, clearly conveyed that the subtext that the verbal message was finite, and therefore important. He did have the natural ability to sell RVs in front of a television camera because he knew, most of all, that he only needed to sustain the verbiage for less than a minute. And he could do that. Otherwise, he wanted to be spare with his words, to work away from the ball, as it were.
Erskine figured that Floyd acquired his legendary resolve as a very young man. But he could never quite figure it out. There just wasn’t enough information available. You could only get four or five words pumped out of him at a time anyway, so delving into his relationship with his father, or how he met Wanda, or even how he got invested in selling RVs, was hardly worth the time of a direct inquiry. You just had to allow the clues to seep out at Floyd’s pace and at times of his choosing. In the meantime, there was a whole vocabulary of half words, grunts, and gestures that would have to do for arranging times and place, for navigating, and for sharing the loads. It was enough, for Floyd, that Erskine and Michael Lowe mostly understood him, and that Wanda was almost completely beyond any need for direct speech. She had long ago filled the silence from Silent Floyd with her humming and singing. And this was fine. She enjoyed her own sound track and thought she understood her husband just swell.
On the other hand, as talkative as Erskine was he was not inclined to be direct about what he wanted most. He had admitted to himself, almost immediately after the event up on Lake Marion, that he wanted to find the Ivory-billed woodpecker. And he wanted Floyd to help him. But he also suspected that Floyd, as a former prolific catfish noodler, would think pursuing birds was odd and unmanly. So he kept it to himself. He did have an agenda of suggestion that would take them into areas where you might just see a really big rare woodpecker, but he held it gently enough that he didn’t really think Floyd had picked up on it. Maybe he should have known better.
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