There is a strange sound on the roof of Bob’s cruiser. Just as the weatherman had predicted the heavy drizzle had arrived. It started to rain.
Chapter Twenty
There they stood looking at each other, not so much as whispering a word, Ryan and this bearded stranger with a long-barreled rifle. They have the same last name and that simple fact alone allows them—no it demands them—to stop and ponder each other’s existence.
From Ryan’s perspective his words have temporarily defused the situation, and by the stranger lowering the rifle he has a brief chance to look him over. His eyes begin to focus on an oddity of a man.
There he stood at six-and-a-half feet tall, holding his 1861 single shot muzzle loading rifle near his hip. Ryan had never seen a .58 caliber, Minie ball rifle. It was enormously long. The tip was near Ryan’s belly yet the stranger was four feet away. His attire was just as peculiar.
He wore rough cut leather boots high above the ankle, grey wool pants that were tucked (or bloused as some would say) inside orange wools socks pulled up to below the knee. A black leather belt with a good size brass buckle having the initials CSA held up his pants. Tucked inside the belt was a long-sleeve grey wool shirt. A single row of brass buttons adorned the front. On his belt hung a rifle cartridge box, bayonet and scabbard, tin cup, haversack and a canteen. Across his shoulder was a blanket roll. On his head was a floppy leather cowboy-type hat turned sideways. On his face a full black beard hiding all expression. But those eyes told Ryan he was a dangerous man. Ryan spoke first.
“Like I said, that’s my name, Sykes I mean,” Ryan said nervously.
Jebediah Sykes did not answer him. Behind his full bead was hidden a sarcastic smirk. He was thinking that—of all the lies that men have told him—he had never heard anyone say that they shared the same last name as he. This entertained Jebediah as much as it took him by surprise. He held his words and waited for Ryan to say something else entertaining.
“My Pa said that we have kin folk from around this area,” Ryan said with caution, but his words drew no response from Jebediah.
“If fact we Sykes go back many generations around these parts, why we could be kinfolk.” Ryan did not know why he adapted a southern drawl to his speech but it seemed to fit. Sometimes the human mind reacts in strange ways when it comes to survival.
Jebediah shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. He said no words but let out a weak chuckle. He was amused but growing increasingly irritated at this foolish talk. He had an agenda and he needed to stick to it. He kept his rifle trained on Ryan’s belly.
Ryan could sense Jebediah growing impatient so he continued to speak. What he didn’t know and could not have known was that he was carrying the conversation in the wrong direction.
“Oh, I get it now, why it just dawned on me, your part of that civil war reenactment from the weekend aren’t you?” Ryan asked with interest.
This caused Jebediah to lose his smirk and his patients; through clenched teeth he let Ryan know he had enough of his babblings. He raised his rifle up pointing it between Ryan’s eyes.
“Boy, when I get you back to base camp up on Bear Creek, I’ll get $20 dollars for your sorry hide dead or alive but that’s up to you. And right now I’d just as soon drill a bullet into your brain than listen to another ounce of your foolishness.”
Well, Jebediah had spoken and it was not at all what Ryan expected, but he knew it was time to play along. Besides after all Bear Creek was in the direction he needed to go.
“Well then, you got me mister,” Ryan said as he slowly raised his hands, “your right nobody fools the likes of a Sykes, why not even a Sykes!”
Jebediah listened intently now as he waited for a confession.
“I’m a scout alright, a scout for the North, please don’t shoot me!” Ryan said it as plain and calm as he could while keeping a straight face.
“I knew it!” Jebediah exclaimed, “Now start walking towards that large cypress out yonder and don’t try anything funny.”
Ryan turned and looked in the direction of the large cypress and sure enough it was right in line with the bearing he took just a few moments ago with the compass. He smiled to himself as he walked down the embankment and into the swamp holding his hands up high. Jebediah followed close behind with his rifle pointed at Ryan’s back.
They no sooner stepped down into the water when Ryan remembered his pack and machete on the raft. Ryan stopped walking but he did not turn around as he pondered for a moment as to what he should do. He decided that he would not say anything because he knew all he really needed was the compass in his pocket. Besides when they got back to this so called base camp and this overzealous re-enactor got his $20, maybe he would share some food and water and perhaps give him a ride out to Forest Road 77.
Jebediah did not take kindly to Ryan stopping. He put the barrel of his rifle in between Ryan’s shoulder blades and shoved him forward causing Ryan to stumble into the swamp face first with a great pain in his back. Ryan rose up on one knee and splashed water at Jebediah with one hand, and trying to reach his sore back with the other, grumbled loudly in defiance.
“What is wrong with you? Aren’t we taking this a little too seriously?”
Jebediah shuffled through the water and stood directly over Ryan’s crouching body. Then Ryan, looking up at the backlit silhouette of a mountain of a man said, “Don’t you know it’s a Monday? And you’re out here in the middle of this swamp playing games! Shouldn’t you be at your real job?”
The silhouette was the last thing Ryan saw before he was knocked unconscious. Jebediah came across the side of Ryan’s head with the butt of his rifle and sent the sarcastic youth face first into the swamp. He lies there bubbling. He would have drowned had not Jebediah pulled him up, and pull him up he did. With one motion he threw Ryan over his shoulder with the use of only one hand.
Ryan begins the half mile journey to Bear Creek unconscious and slung over the shoulder of this giant of a man. To Jebediah the weight of Ryan is nothing more than his bedroll on a rainy day. He hardly notices he is carrying Ryan as he skillfully slips through the cypress swamp like he has done countless times before.
As the thick morning fog begins to rise towards the canopy high above, the inhabitants of the swamp begin to greet the morning. The suppression of the fog is lifting. It’s time to make noise and to move about. High above the Banana Spiders repair their webs, the birds twitter to and fro and the snakes are slithering down below.
Jebediah weaves in and out of the cypress knees with great ease and speed. The embankment quickly fades into the distance. At this pace Jebediah will cover the half mile distance to Bear Creek within thirty minutes. That is to say if Ryan doesn’t cause any trouble when he wakes up.
There is no telling what first awakened Ryan. It could have been the gentle rocking in his gut as he lay across the stranger’s shoulder, or maybe it was the warm trickle of blood that ran up the side of his head into his hair—dripping into the swamp. Or maybe it was just the fact the he was upside down starring at the backside of the stranger watching the heels of his boots as he skillfully walked through the swamp.
No matter the cause for his awaking, awaken he did, and surprisingly he had the nerve to stay calm and ride it out. For just a fleeting moment he thought about St. Christopher carrying the boy across the river upon his shoulders. Not exactly like he was being carried, but none the less it reminded him of the story once again. As his head began to clear he begins to assess his situation.
He watched the blood trickle into the swamp and based on the occasional drop he figured that although he had a killer headache he was not hurt bad. He kept his breathing steady so as not to alarm the stranger that he had awakened. He figured that he had been knocked out for ten minutes, and based on how fast he was being carried he figured he was about a third of the way to Bear Creek. His head began to feel numb from being upside down and he had a real urge to leap off his shoulder and put up a fight. He decided a
gainst it.
One might argue the statement that, it took more courage to stay put than to fight, but in this situation there was no argument. It did take more courage to stay put. The urge to fight would have been easy to give in to. He decided against fighting because after all he was being carried to Bear Creek. But more importantly he was learning from a master how to make progress through a swamp.
Watching from behind gave Ryan the unique vantage point of being able to see the last fifty feet or so of the swamp that they had covered, including the exact steps that the stranger had taken. Ryan began to see a pattern to his steps revealed by the wake he left behind.
As the stranger walked he stepped in such a way that he never allowed the water to enter the top of his boots. He did this by stepping near the tufts of ferns and not by stepping near the cypress knees. The swamp water was much shallower near these tufts. This was a valuable lesson to learn. If Ryan had known this earlier it would have saved him some banged up shins.
Ryan was learning other things as well. The stranger paused to eat some blackberries off a thorny bush (Ryan took note of the type of bush) eating the wrong berries can kill you. He watched as he avoided hat-floaters, spider webs, and hornets’ nests. All these things passed harmlessly behind them as they slipped through the swamp with ease and Ryan took it all in for future reference.
Future reference because once they reached Bear Creek and Jebediah got his $20 dollars for turning him in and the “game” was over, he still had a half mile of swamp to go before reaching the uplands. Hopefully he could talk the stranger into giving him a ride to the hard road. But based on the fact that he has shown his temper once already, Ryan is not sure what to expect. He does know however that with his new found knowledge of how to travel in the swamp and the trusty compass that is tucked deep inside his pocket. He will be just fine.
The stranger stopped suddenly. With one motion and without the use of his hands he buckled at the knee than sprang upward ducking under Ryan causing Ryan to land on his other shoulder. Ryan was surprised by his strength and agility.
Ryan was also surprised at how musty his bedroll smelled now that his face was buried in it. It had the appearance and odor of a bed roll that had been used rather extensively between cleanings. Ryan was thinking that for a weekend warrior he would be more apt to cleaning his equipment.
Ryan struggled to keep his head above the bedroll and into the fresh air but it was too strenuous. He laid his head down and rode along with the gentle rocking motion. He saw all that he was going to see and he learned all that he could from this position. Besides they should be coming upon Bear Creek any moment now.
A few minutes had passed and Ryan was starting to doze off when he heard a commotion ahead of them. The stranger heard it too because he came to a stop and listened intently. Off in the distance was the sound of several men hooting and hollering and making a loud ruckus. Ryan’s heart began to pound with excitement at the thought of getting help sooner than anticipated. The bedroll concealed his pounding heart as his mind raced through the possibilities of what lie ahead.
“Dang nabbed! What are they trying to prove?” Jebediah said.
Then the stranger started to stomp-off in the direction of the commotion and the ride for Ryan got rough as he struggled to stay limp and continue to hide the fact that he was awake. The uproar grew loader and the swamp began to dry up as the ground was rising on the approach to Bear Creek. The stranger had begun to trot causing Ryan to bounce up and down like a sack of potatoes.
After a few moments the stranger stopped and the commotion was right in front of them. Ryan really wanted to open his eyes and lift his head but he dared not. The stranger gently lowered Ryan to the ground and propped him up against a tree on the north side of Bear Creek. He left Ryan there and walked out into the creek towards the ruckus. When Ryan heard his feet splashing he knew it was safe to open his eyes.
Through his squinted eyelids Ryan could see that the commotion came from four men all huddled very close together under a tree at the south bank of the creek. They were yelling and splashing water at a bear cub just ten feet away in the center of the creek. They were trying to get it to move-on because they knew the mother would be close by and you never want to get between a mother bear and her cub.
The clanking noise told Ryan that the men were shackled together by their hands and feet, and they were also shackled to the tree. This made their effort to scare the cub most ineffective. It wasn’t until the stranger joined in from Ryan’s side of the creek with splashing and yelling that the cub bolted fifty yards upstream to the west, and stood near the shore staring back at the men. For some reason it seemed like it wanted to come back as if the men really were between it and it’s mother.
The stranger turned from looking at the cub and looked at the cluster of men whose fear now seemed to be directed at him. They were fidgety. He spoke from the center of the creek—leveling his rifle—and he seemed to be speaking to the man at the end of the shackles farthest from the tree.
“What’s the matter Obadiah? Afraid of a bear cub now are we?”
“Jebediah you know what kind of trouble a bear cub can bring my brother,” said Obadiah the end captive.
Ryan was trying to take it all in as fast as he could because he knew that any second the stranger would come back. Ryan was thinking to himself, so Jebediah was the strangers name and he has a brother named Obadiah. Who are these people?
And they too were dressed in shabby grey clothes that were nowhere near as clean as Jebediah’s. And they were physically in bad shape with filthy bruised and blacked faces. The other three never said a word as they huddled in the shadow of the tree like one three-headed man. The whole sight was surreal to Ryan as he continued to watch and listen through a squinted gaze.
Obadiah spoke out, “Jebediah, I should have smothered you in your crib! And I would have, had I only known what you would have turned out to be.”
“O-be,” Jebediah sometimes called his brother that, “I’m not the deserter, you are! You and the scum you keep company with,” Jebediah must have been talking about the other three because they nervously started to shuffle upon hearing his words and seeing his rifle leveled at the waist as he stood a mere 15 feet away in the cool rushing waters of the creek.
“But it really doesn’t matter now does it O-be? Because I’m going to get $80 dollars for the lot of you and a bonus of $20 for the scout I picked up this morning by the river, Ha!” Jebediah said sarcastically. Of course he was referring to Ryan and the others started to crane their necks as they looked across the creek in Ryan’s direction.
“That gives me five people and a full set of shackles for $100, God! I mean Gosh! I like round numbers don’t you O-be?” Jebediah came close to using the lord’s name in vain just to irk his brother. They came from a Christian home and were named after Bible characters and were taught not to cuss.
Ryan looking across the creek beyond Jebediah realized that the end shackle (the one attached to the tree) was for him. He wanted to scream out—guys, enough is enough already my dad is hurt. I need help! But the sheer craziness of what was playing out in front of him said keep your mouth shut.
Then the cub that was silent for the last minute or so began to bleat like a goat as if it were hurt. Jebediah turned his head towards the cub but kept his rifle pointed in the direction of the men. The men shuffled under the tree with uneasiness. They pulled on their chains while Jebediah was distracted by the cub. Nobody in their right mind would want to be chained to a tree between a cub and its mother.
“Shut that cub up Jebediah, or turn us loose!” Obadiah demanded, but Jebediah paid him no mind.
“Yea, shut that cub up,” chimed in one of the others.
“How about I just shut you up O-be?” was Jebediah’s answer.
With the cub bleating and Jebediah looking upstream, his rifle pointing at the men, and with Ryan having his eyes squinted, no one could have guessed what was about to happen next.
<
br /> As it is, fate can be cruel sometimes and sometimes generous. It was about to be both. In the case of the “Sykes” brothers it would be on the cruel side, but for the other men the generous.
Just below the surface of the water in the flowing creek a submerged log was on the move. It wasn’t moving very fast but then it didn’t have to because it carried with it a lot of energy. Like a slow moving freight train it plowed into the back of Jebediah’s leg buckling his knee. This caused him to accidently squeeze the trigger on his rifle. There was a click then a thunderous explosion as the black powder rifle shot off a tremendous cloud of gun smoke.
The entire south bank was obscured by smoke as the log slid by Jebediah unnoticed by anyone else. Then there came a sickening outcry from one of the men in irons.
“Oh my God,” someone cried, “Jebediah murdered his brother! He murdered his brother! Oh my God!” said the voice through the smoke.
Jebediah’s rifle fell from his hands and splashed into the creek. Walking stiff-legged, fighting the resistance of the water, he walked as fast as he could. The cloud of gun smoke was fading away as Ryan opened his eyes and arose to his feet. He began trudging through the water towards the other side of the creek and the Sykes brothers.
Jebediah upon reaching his brother bent down and cradled his limp body into his arms. He brushed his brother’s hair back and it revealed a hole dripping blood from between his brother’s eyes.
He continued to brush his hair with a trembling hand and a sobbing cry until his hand reached the back of Obadiah’s head where he quickly jerked it back. It was stained crimson red.
Startled he let the lifeless body of his brother fall from his grasp as he raised his hand high towards heaven and the darkening sky above. On bended knee he let out a guttural scream.
“No!”
All was silent except for his sobbing.
“No!”
The cry echoed throughout the river basin.
6 Miles With Courage Page 10