Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (26 page)

CHAPTER 11

A
MONG
T
HE
P
LAIN
F
OLK

W
HEN WE WALKED ACROSS THE
Kokosing River on the US 62 Bridge, I looked down and spotted a wide gravel bar at the base of the southern bank. It had lots of shade, good graze for Della and a long gravel beach next to clear flowing water. A perfect place to camp for a few days. It was time to re-shoe Della, and this would be a great spot to do it.

Patricia said, “I don’t know if we should take the cart down there.”

“Why not?”

Long ago someone had bulldozed a short narrow driveway down through the bank onto the beach. My wife pointed at it and said, “It looks too steep.”

“Get in and ride the brake. It’ll be all right.”

She climbed in saying, “I’m not worried about going down.”

It was steep, and going up would be a tough pull. But it was nothing Della couldn’t handle. Besides, it was dirt and gravel, so she’d have lots of traction. I signaled like a wagon master leading a train of covered wagons headed west. “It’s no big deal. Let’s go!”

And down we went, me slowly leading Della around the ruts and holes–creations of storms gone by. Halfway down, a cart tire skidded in loose gravel. Patricia gasped, “I don’t know about this.”

A minute later, we were down on the beach rolling smoothly along the gravel toward a perfect spot to camp. In less than an hour we had the tent up about twenty feet from the water’s edge, with a fire flickering in a circle
of charred rocks that had held many previous fires. It was the perfect spot for a vagabond camp.

The Kokosing wasn’t a wide mighty river. It was a canoe kind of stream, with rapids that looked like undulating wrinkles where they flowed in and out of long smooth pools. Our camp was next to a still pool that was about a hundred yards long. The newest Highway 62 Bridge was at the upstream end of it, and the downstream end flowed into rapids under the old bridge.

Of all our campsites so far, this one was the most pleasing to the ears. There was the water that babbled and chattered over stones as it flowed in and out the pools. And then there was the sound of the crackling fire, whose flames leaped up between the logs to ignite the night with an orange glow. Every-so-often there was an explosion of sparks that spewed into the night sky like fireworks. I think small fires, and jabbering rapids, are more meditative than major conflagrations and roaring cascades. The senses aren’t overwhelmed. Your spirit is free to be carried away by the flicker and babble of it all.

Another treat for the ears was the sound of hoofs and carriage wheels up on the highway. Into the late hours of Friday and Saturday night, carriages with flashing lights rolled across the bridge above our camp. Sunday morning it was often like a parade of buggies. No doubt about it, we were in land of the Plain Folk. This was Amish country.

We met lots of people during our three days on the river. None were Amish, but most had lived around there all of their lives. Men and women who grew up playing on that gravel bar. One middle aged man said, “I sure drank a lot of beer on this beach!”

Sunday, late in the afternoon, a crowd of people came down to the river for a baptizing–the Pentecostal kind, where the baptized, and the preacher, wade into the river in their Sunday best. Bending them backwards, the preacher dunked them completely under, while on shore, the congregation sang, clapped, cried and testified. It was very exciting. But not as exciting as that evening.

It began about an hour after sundown. Patricia and I were sitting next to our riverside fire, when a huge rain drop landed on one of the burning logs. It sizzled, spattered and steamed away before it could drip down into the heart
of the flames. Then another, and another, followed by several more. Through orange steam my wife looked at me and asked, “What’s the forecast?”

“Last time I saw the Weather Channel–”

Suddenly, a jag of white ripped across the night sky. Like the report from a dozen sharp shooters, the heavens sprang to life with flashing. It sounded like bullets ricocheting all around us as we scurried to the tent. After a few moments of fighting with the door zipper, I yanked it open just as Mother Nature tipped her bucket over.

“Got it!” I screamed, then pushed Patricia inside, with me tumbling in behind her.

After zipping it shut, I turned toward my wife and said, “Rain.”

Patricia was rubbing her head with a towel. “Huh?”

“You asked for the forecast. I think it’s going to rain.”

And it did, all night long. It was an hour past dawn before it quit. When I stuck my head out the tent door I was shocked at what I saw. “Oh-my-God!”

My wife rustled around in her sleeping bag as she said, “What?”

“The river is coming up. We need to get out of here!”

Instead of twenty feet, our tent was now less than six feet away from the river. The clear sweet ripples had become churning brown rapids frothing around boulders that earlier had been high and dry on a gravel bar midstream. The once babbling Kokosing now was grumbling.

We broke camp, packed the cart and hitched up Della faster than we ever had. Even so, by the time we got moving, the water was up to our wheels. Della had to step into the river to turn the cart around. When we got to the steep driveway, without hesitation, Della lunged into the pull. I had to trot to keep up as sturdy mule legs climbed up the hill. The rain had loosened the bank gravel, so each of her steps slid backwards a bit. Still she steadily kept moving.

We were almost to the top, when the right rear wheel dropped into a rut, and everything jerked to a stop. I yelled, “Get up, Big Sis!”

She leaped forward and popped the wheel out of the rut. But Della couldn’t get traction in the wet gravel. Gravity took control, and the cart
started pulling Della toward the river. I helped her guide it back down to the beach.

At the bottom, with hands on her hips, Patricia shook her head. “I knew coming down here was a bad idea.”

And I knew
that
was coming. It sent a flare up my spine, but I ignored it and simply said, “Della can do it. If the wheel hadn’t hit that rut we’d be on the top right now.”

Patricia’s rolled her eyes and arched their brows. “I don’t know about that.”

After Della rested for a few minutes, we tried it again. “Come-on Sis, let’s go!”

Della leaped up the hill, and got up it faster than before. But the right rear wheel dropped into the same rut and jolted the cart to a stop. Before I could say anything, she lunged and popped the wheel out. But gravity, and the soft soil won. Again we backed down to the bottom, where the gravel bar was getting smaller–and the river wider.

“I knew it!” Patricia stalked around the cart with hands on her hips. “I knew we shouldn’t have come down here.” She stopped face to face with me, shook her trigger finger at me and yelled, “Didn’t I tell you she couldn’t make it?”

“If it wasn’t for that rut she–”

Patricia exploded, “Rut, smut!” She aimed her finger at the cart. “She can’t get it up there because we’ve got too much shit!”

I wanted to yell, “If I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t need all this shit!” But I kept my mouth shut and just stood there seething.

Exasperated, Patricia threw her hands up in the air. “So, now what do we do? Eh?”

One of the locals that we had met was a volunteer fireman, Don Brunner. He lived a about a mile away and had a four-wheel drive pickup. He told us, “If you have trouble getting up the hill, come find me. Unless I’m out fighting a fire, I’m usually home.”

So I took my bicycle off the back of the cart to go find Don. I was strapping my helmet on when Patricia said, “Don’t take too long. The river is still coming up.”

At the top of the driveway, I climbed on my bicycle and headed toward the village of Millwood. Although the road was badly pot-holed, it was smoother than things back on the beach. When I looked down from the old bridge to where Patricia, Della, and the cart were stranded, I started sputtering to myself, “It’s bad enough we’ve got this problem, but I have to put up with her attitude too.”

The further from the river I got, the more relaxed I felt. My legs were enjoying the smooth aerobic exercise and my spirit relished the lack of confrontation.
Man, this is living! Just me and the road. I should have made this a bicycle trip. It would have been a whole lot easier than dealing with a wife and mule
.

Then a familiar voice from deep inside me said, “Hey, you’ve got a hundred bucks in your wallet. Go for a ride. Man, you deserve it. Get away from all that negative bullshit.”

When I got to the road to Don’s house, I stopped and gazed at the highway ahead of me as that inner voice sang, “Go for it! Life is too short to be miserable.”

Standing at that intersection, straddling my bicycle, I felt like I had been there before. Not the location, but the situation. A juncture where one direction would prolong my misery, while another offered hope for a better way. Every one of those times I took that vow “. . . for better or worse . . . .” I meant it. But damn it, if worse is all I’m going to get, then it’s time for me to get going.

Suddenly, a shiver raced through me.
What the hell am I doing? My family is stuck beside a flooding river, and I’m going for a bike ride?

In less than thirty minutes we had the cart chained to the trailer hitch on Don’s truck. He shifted into four-wheel drive, then let out the clutch. At first, all four wheels spun in the gravel, but then they grabbed hold and everything began to creep up the hill. Patricia was standing next to Della at the top watching, while I walked beside the cart.

Don tried to miss the rut at the top, but the right rear cart wheel slid into it anyway, and it stopped the truck just like it did Della. So he revved the engine and let out the clutch. Sand and gravel flew as the cart wheel popped out of the rut with a loud bang, and the truck raced up the hill–but the cart did not. It was rolling back down the hill. Instinctively, when it passed me, I reached out to grab hold. But better sense made me step back and just watch it careen toward the river.

Patricia screamed, “No!”

I was helpless. All I could do was watch everything we own roll away.

Then, just a few feet from the bottom, the right front tire hit a big rock. The cart jack-knifed, and when it did, the back end crashed into the dirt embankment on the right side of the road. Teetering on just the two downhill wheels, the cart looked like it was going to roll over.

I prayed, “Lord, please don’t let this happen!”

And it didn’t. In slow motion the cart came down on all fours and bounced a couple of times. Not until it stopped completely was I able to inhale. Then I clasped my hands together, touched them to my lips and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Except for some cosmetic damage, everything on the cart was all right. A repair link in the chain had come undone. This time we used a bigger chain, and I rode in the cart. If it did come loose, I could stop it with the brake. But it didn’t. Don missed the rut and we made it to the top.

I tried to pay him, but he wouldn’t take it. After Don left, we hooked up Della and walked back out onto Highway 62 headed east. On the bridge I stopped and looked down to where we had been camped. Now it was under water.

Patricia was standing beside me as I said, “What a great campsite.”

“Not now.”

“Yeah, but it was. Admit it, we had a great time down there.”

My wife shook her head and scoffed, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a great time down there. But I still say–”

I jumped in, “You were right. We shouldn’t have taken the cart down there.”

With her arms crossed, Patricia just stood there looking rather smug for a few moments. Then she grinned and said, “Thank you.”

I couldn’t help it. I had to say, “Some adventure, eh baby?”