by Jay Heavner
He knew the day might come when he could no longer care for her, and he may need to do just that, but death had taken her before that. He held no hard feelings for those that had chosen differently. He knew first- hand how hard caring for her had been. Now she was at rest in the arms of Jesus, and that gave him comfort.
He sat for a moment, looking at the field. Through his slightly cataract clouded eyes, he made his plan of attack with the plow. When the cataracts matured a little more, he would have his eyes fixed at the clinic in Moundsville. He had given up driving on the highway but felt comfortable on the tractor on familiar grounds. William had about five acres to turn over. The county agent had convinced Junior to switch his wheat crop over to a newer variety. The senior Kirkendall had urged his son to use caution. Plant a small area to see the county agent's advice was sound or not.
Old Will remembered taking the advice of a long-dead former agent on planting Multiflora Rose for living fence rows. It had worked well at first, but then the birds ate the red seeds and carried them everywhere to sprout. It became a real fiasco. It had taken years, much money, and effort to eradicate the noxious, invasive Rose. Well-meaning people can still give bad advice. Old Will lowered the plow and began. Back and forth, forth and back, he went again and again. The old field plowed easy, except for two lines about 100 feet apart by his estimates.
There were parallel rock ridges here in the ridge and valley section of the Appalachians, but to his farm-trained mind, the obstructions seemed more like roots, but in a line? That puzzled the old man. Still, he continued with his planned work. There were no more obstacles he could see in the field, except maybe for that little sycamore sapling in the middle of the field. He remembered that a monstrous giant of a tree had stood there years ago. What it had been doing growing up on the hill, he did not know. Sycamores are water-loving trees and typically found very close to water. Age and the ravages of nature had taken their toll on the old tree, and now the only evidence of its long existence was a four-foot-tall sapling sprouting from an ancient root that refused to die.
He remembered when he and his granddad would set at the foot of the enormous tree and talked. William had learned much from his granddad. The old man knew much about the history of this area and its fauna and flora. He had called the old tree a buttonwood because the pioneers had made buttons from its easily worked wood. No one used that name anymore. And the little tree would soon be gone, a victim of the John Deere's plow. William slowed as he approached the old tree's former location. There could still be some big roots from the tree there. Chunk! He'd hit something. It didn't sound like wood, but more like metal. He raised the plow from the soil. What in blazes? Through his cloudy eyes, he saw a dirty, rust-covered pipe about three feet long caught in his plow.
He got off the machine and took a closer look at the catch. Wonder who left this piece of junk here? He hopped back on the tractor and drove it over to the end of the field. There high above a near vertical shale cliff, he dislodged the unwanted item and rolled it to the edge. Even to his strong arms, the old rusty pipe was a challenge. It felt like it was full of lead.
He pushed it over the edge and watched it roll down the steep slope. It went over several rare endangered indigenous plant species that only grow on the shale banks in this part of the world, and through a patch of Opuntia cactus sending pieces of the thorny pads flying, but William's clouded eyes missed these details. He saw the great splash as the fast-moving, heavy object hit the water and disappeared into the deep, murky water where the creek made a horseshoe-shaped curve. He finished plowing the field without further event, drove home through the cow pasture, and had a good supper his daughter-in-law had prepare for her work-weary men.
One month later, a tropical storm formed in the Gulf of Mexico. The erratic moving weather maker became Hurricane Juan. It made landfall in Louisiana, looped around, and again make landfall this time in the Florida panhandle. There was excessive rainfall, but minimal flooding in the southern states. In early November, the remnants of Hurricane Juan combined with a low-pressure system that stalled over the Appalachian Mountains. This moisture-saturated system caused severe flooding in large areas of both Virginia and West Virginia, and significant flooding in smaller regions of neighboring Maryland and Pennsylvania. The good people of Fort Ashby described it as a storm of biblical proportions. Streamflow records fell throughout the affected areas, and flooding in West Virginia was the worse in the state's history.
Thirty-eight lives were lost. Numerous homes, outbuildings, roads, and bridges were destroyed. Damages were estimated at $578 million in West Virginia alone. The worst-hit places were the Cheat River and South Branch of the Potomac valleys, and Patterson Creek flowed in a mountain valley between them. There, the usually shallow and tranquil waters of the creek became a raging tiger. Two people were rescued from a house floating down the torrent by a helicopter. Huge trees a hundred years old were uprooted and swept away. Boulders the size of cars rolled like balls down the creek bed. And one old, rusty, and forgotten swivel gun was caught up in the flood and swept away. And it was still full of gold, Braddock's Gold.
WANT TO READ MORE?
Braddock’s Gold Novels – Braddock’s Gold, Hunter’s Moon, Fool’s Wisdom, and Killing Darkness
Florida Murder Mystery Novels – Death at Windover, Murder at the Canaveral Diner, and Murder at the Indian River
Braddock’s Gold is the first in the Braddock’s Gold Novels. Each book in the series is written as a stand-alone novel. Readers say he keeps getting better. All of Mr. Heavner’s seven books can be found on Amazon as ebooks and paperbacks. Braddock’s Gold is also available as an audiobook from Audible at Amazon. Mr. Heavner is currently working on the fourth in his Florida series.
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