by Ron Foster
“I dunno, what’s it gonna cost me then?” Crick said confused.
“Oh not much at all, the deal is, that iffin that thing floats the first go round and you don’t drown or sink it in the mud, then I get me a turn at driving it Ok? I sure would like to spin them old paddle wheels around one more time by myself.” Clem said clapping and rubbing his hands together with glee while looking dreamily off into the distance thinking about all the fine tales he could tell afterwards for years.
“Daaamn! Well sure, why not? I guess you can have your turn then Clem, I was going to let you give her a try anyway but if you want to call it a deal, then it’s a deal!” Crick said looking to Loomis for confirmation that they were going to let this crazy old race car loving country plough boy play with their one piece of equipment for survival.
“Hey Bertha, how would you like a ride on the lake with me up in the cab? That tractor of Cricks is so damn fancy it’s even got speakers in the wheels that plays radio that you can hear more of if you leave the doors open to listen!” Clem said grinning at Crick about his modern conveyance.
“I ain`t going to be thinking about listening to no damn music coming out of any of them wheels while you try driving it Clem! I ain`t even considering listening to no more of your craziness neither, so don’t even try it Clem Bowman. There is no way that you are getting me to ride that darn thing off with you out into that muddy river water. You knows I can’t swim! And don’t you even think about asking Rossy Ross neither just so’s you can have a passenger to bedevil along the way. She is going to be standing right here by me on the shore and if you swamp that thing or try splashing us with it I am going whomp you with my pokey stick when you get back ashore!” Bertha said only half serious and wanting to see how good of a job Clem did driving it in the river before maybe she would think about letting Rossy Ross have a turn at being part of such a spectacular thing. Imagine that she mused to herself, a tractor boat! Oh Clem is going to be hard to live with after this adventure; he would talk them to death.
“Are you really going to let him drive that thing?” You think it’s safe?” Loomis whispered to Crick.
“I got no choice Crick; he traded us for the wheels.” David whispered back listening to the animated threesome chatting excitedly in front of them.
No, hell no, I done told you a dozen times already Bertha them boys we are looking for ain`t got nothing to do with no dentures or bonding servants if we find them. The word was indentured and I don’t have time to explain to you what it means again. Just treat them folks when we find them the same as you did when we found Crick and Loomis and everything will be alright.” Crick overheard Clem to say.
“Now then Mister Crick do I get to ride the tractor some if it works?” Clem questioned wandering away from Bertha and Rossy.
“Sure no problem, I told you so already!” Crick answered before Loomis poked him in the ribs to ask when was it going to be his turn to try it.
“Dammit, we can’t be riding all the gas out the tractor and spend a ton of time playing with it. You know Ben and Beauregard didn’t even have those packets of hot chocolate MREs like we did and they will be in far worse shape than when we were when we arrived here. Sorry for the fussing guys. I just figured that we needed to hurry up and go out and look for them boys as quick as we can, course they might be doing fine up river somewhere working on a rescue plan of their own. I just don’t know. Anyway I need to get back over to the island and tell them folks about how we are planning on getting them off there and what our plans are after we get them back to this side. Hell I ain`t going to look for them two river rats that long anyway. Shoot if we did find them I bet they probably would ask a turn to drive that dang tractor thing around themselves some also” Crick said still smiling and laughing at the strange company he found himself keeping these days.
“Loomis! You get your cotton picking fingers outta there, I done fed you once already this morning!” Bertha said as Loomis peeked under the cover on the wicker basket in order to see what there might be available for lunch later.
Aw hell Bertha, I just thought you might need some help carrying it and wanted to make sure it wasn’t stone soup or something and it be too heavy for you to tote all by yourself!” Loomis declared smiling at the old woman.
“What’s stone soup Clem? Never heard of such before, oh maybe I do know what it is. Did you show them that there patch of wacky weeds where those hippie boys you run off had all that rabbit tobacco growing? Loomis you have had my wild weed gathering and cooking before, you know I ain`t got you neither stoned nor made nobody sick yet when I fix it! I only use a little Sherry in it once in awhile if it’s available” Bertha declared thinking Loomis had broken her taboo about saying anything derogatory about her cooking.
“Now Bertha, he didn’t mean anything. He has just got himself a healthy appetite for your good cooking and wanted to see what kind of vittles you got fixed up for us. I don’t know nothing about no stone soup though, but it sure sounds awful interesting. Can you eat that shit too, Loomis?” Clem asked.
“Eat what? Uh, what is it your talking about Clem?” Loomis exclaimed, totally confused as to what it was the old man was exactly referring to.
“The stoner soup we was talking about, is it made out of that stuff that some folks call wildwood weed or Mary Jane that people say they get stoned off of? Is that why the dish you is talking about called stone soup?” Clem said as Loomis looked like he caught on to what it was they were talking about.
“No not that stuff at all, He wasn’t referring to marijuana. What he was talking about is an old story about a hungry soldier that got a village to all add to the pot to make soup. You never heard that one before? Stone Soup is an old folk story in which hungry strangers persuade local people of a town to give them hidden food. It is usually told as a lesson to children in cooperation and community sharing.” Crick declared laughing at the confusion.
“What kind of stone do you use Crick? Has it got salt in it or did he get the villagers stoned to get them to donate?” Bertha asked more confused than ever as Loomis groaned and shook his head.
“No its well, its well what you might say is a fable sort of thing with a moral at the end to teach people something. I ain`t going to try to explain it to you right now, Crick you want to take over here and explain it?” Loomis asked as Clem and Bertha waited for more information on this mysterious culinary dish.
“Me or Loomis will tell you all about that story later on; meantime, right now we got to be getting this show on the road folks! OK, now then, I tell you all what I think we should be doing. I don’t know my way to get down to the landing so I am going to follow Clem`s truck down there later on so what I suggest we do now is we all load up on that pickup truck and we spend a little time running the roads around here a couple miles up and down have ourselves a look see around the area outside this plantation. Could be we see a sign of Beauregard and Ben. We get done with that and then we can all come back here and start up on seeing if that tractor will float. Do we all agree?” Crick said looking at the group.
Nodding heads of assent for the plan occurred but soon an argument ensued about where the picnic basket was going to be transported at and the seating order for everyone. Bertha said she didn’t care as long as the basket was away from Loomis which created even more confusion and hub bub.
Crick and Loomis were all for riding in the back of the pickup and stuffing Rossy Ross in between Bertha and Clem inside the pickup.
Bertha wanted Loomis in the middle of her and Clem in the trucks cab for whatever reason, and Rossy could ride in back to advise Crick of the local sights. Scientifically, there was no way in hell Loomis could fit in between Bertha and Clem in that truck and there weren’t no way he was sitting in her lap so somehow it ended up with Rossy Ross, Loomis and Crick all riding in the back of the truck as Bertha hung out the window trying to talk to Loomis all the way!
That conversation wasn’t going well what with the sound of the wind and th
e engine and every time that conversation got going good Clem would honk that “AH-OOOO_Ga” horn Loomis decided was sometimes like a model T and other times like the old General Lee’s horn in a TV sitcom as Clem seemed to hit a electronic switch or something to cause the first verses of Dixie to start playing right after it made its first strange sound. Neither Crick nor Loomis had heard the damn horn before but memories of the movie Deliverance played in their heads as they were rolling down the country road.
Clem had an old can type boat air horn that he put Rossy Ross in charge of to help raise a ruckus with as they progressed along hoping that the survivors they were hunting would hear it.
Problem being she like to point it playfully towards Loomis’s hat to see if she could get a rise out of the hat or him when she blew it and that didn’t go over well with him at all! Crick knew there wasn’t a house for miles around here so creating such a commotion seemed like good sense in this situation and Loomis’s blustering just added to the noise.
Well after about 15 or 20 minutes of raising a racket along that old country road trying to alert anyone who might be listening for help coming all the while scaring all kinds of critters along the way and no luck finding the other rafters, they finally got back to the mission at hand of going down to the river landing and the group turned back toward the house to pick up the tractor.
2
LOST FRIENDS FOUND
“What in the hell is all that noise going on? Do you reckon that it is somehow meant for us specifically? Could be rescuers or Crick trying to find us” Ben said cocking his head towards it and listening.
The last fifteen minutes or so they’d been hearing the sounds of Dukes of Hazard meets McHale’s navy or something and evidently somebody had an old Model T around here or something similar with a klaxon horn and somebody else had some kind of musical horn. Ben and Beauregard figured someone must be trying awful hard to alert someone around here or draw attention to themselves but it was awful hard to figure out exactly where all that noise was coming from.
Then everything kind of went quiet up on the bluff for a while so they kept trudging along hoping it was probably Crick looking for them and eventually they would all meet up soon.
It had been three long days since they had washed up on the shore after leaving Castaway Island as they’d been referring to the place after Crick and Loomis had separated those rafts and sent them on their different ways.
The coal barge they had checked out soon after landing upon the opposite shore where it was washed up at but a brief examination showed it held nothing useable for them and where the tugboat was that had once pulled it had ended up at, nobody knows.
Ben and Beauregard hoped to find a boat or some house with some people willing to come help out but there was nothing along the area that they had been assigned to scout that offered anything useful for a rescue or a refuge.
It had taken them upwards of a half a day and then some to figure that out and then slowly begin backtracking while stopping occasionally along the way to fish and hunt blackberries in a vain attempt to get some sustenance and they were in a sorry state as they headed back to where they figured Crick and Loomis had gone ashore at.
They had seen the raft Crick and Loomis had used tied up in the weeds yesterday on the shore and the trail they had left leading up to the woods away from the raft but they didn’t follow that path and instead tried to stick to the shoreline like they were supposed too still doing their boat and house hunting. Then they had heard the crazy truck and horn sounds and decided to turn inland.
“Something is definitely going on up there, Beauregard! We are heading that way the very first clearer patch of woods and vines that we can find and go see about what and who that is!” Ben said.
“Yeah, but what if it’s not Crick? I bet it is, but you never know, maybe someone wants somebody else besides us to come out of the woods for another reason?” Beauregard speculated.
“I don’t know, I do know at least if we keep on going along this way, everyone at Prepper Stock can see us going up the shore line soon and know that we are working on something to get them off that damn island, though I don’t know what that something might be right at the moment!” Ben said wearily trudging along.
“There’s those damn sounds again! Listen, now there’s a ‘beep beep’ sound like a truck backing up warning I am hearing not too far off.” Beauregard said as they listened to the sounds in the woods.
“I got no idea, doesn’t’ that look like smoke across the river from the campground?” Beauregard said, pointing in the general direction of the campground where they had first left on this excursion in to muck and mire.
“We got to go inland and upwards now regardless; there is a big ass ditch up ahead in front of us. Shit, lets sit down a second; I’m too totally worn out!” Beauregard declared.
“Look man, we got to be going on inland and up this hill now while we got plenty of noise to follow. We will take a break in a little bit ok? I am wore out to but we can wait on a rest. Somebody’s is riding around on what has to be some kind of a road nearby with all them car horns blaring.” Ben said eyeing the shore around them.
“Yee Haw!” A voice not too far away called. And all of the sudden they heard a big motor gun followed with the sound of a big splash.
Beauregard and Ben looked at each other trying to figure out what that might mean.
“EEe Hee Hee!” The sound like a female Earnest T Bass rang out not too far distant from their position on this side of the ravine.
“That’s close, what is it they could possibly be doing? Don’t sound like no rescue party to me.” Ben said checking his holstered pistol.
“Dang close, I say it sounds like a bunch of kids having fun at the beach.” Beauregard said, doing the same.
“They must have got themselves some kind of a boat! We need us a boat lets get hurrying along.” Beauregard said, pushing by Ben to get down to the pencil thin shoreline.
“Not so fast, we watch and wait! No telling who that might be, or for that matter how they will be acting after all these weeks without power! Hell they might be the superstitious type and be doing something crazy like drowning a witch or something.” Ben said thinking about how strange folks could get and who they might blame after a disaster or some odd religious belief they had influenced them.
“They are having fun with something though and it doesn’t sound much like anything bad offhand I would say.” Beauregard complained thinking that caution wasn’t that necessary now.
Two worn weary dirt smudged faces peered out of the bushes of the shoreline and they heard the putt-putting Lap-Lapping sound of some kind of boat coming around the bend.
“What do you think it is? Damn sure is a weird sounding boat motor” Beauregard said.
“Damned if I know, but keep quiet, that sounded kind of close and it will be here soon enough for us to get a look at it.” Ben said.
“Look sees I told you it would be here in a minute. Whatever it is coming this way it’s sure got dang big headlights!” Ben declared
“Headlights! What kind of headlights? How close are they together? You got a guess on its size?” Beauregard said sticking his head out from around the bushes to get a better look.
“What in the hell is that contraption?” Ben said, doing the same maneuver to get a better view.
The pair looked like Heckle and Jekyll sticking their heads out of the bushes on the very narrow shore with their bodies remaining hidden behind a bush as Crick rounded the corner riding that paddlewheel looking gizmo they had created.
“Do what???” The pair both exclaimed at once in astonishment at the spectacle.
“Aw shit!” Crick declared seeing two dirty ugly wall trophy mount looking heads poking pistols out of a bush with there free hands while rubberneck looking his way and he started laying on his horn and creating a lot more noise that the shore party of Clem and crew took as a excuse to raise another ruckus of their own with hoots and horn blares
in response.
Well, what with the sparkling sun lit water reflecting off the windshield and everything else awash in white foam from the paddle wheels and the odd crafts progress through the water, neither Ben nor Beauregard could see who was driving this odd looking contraption that looked like it had came out of the back swamps of Louisiana. Not that they were worried so much about a strange apparition in these times, but this one kind of took them aback and left them speechless as to what it was and what it was doing there.
What made it worse for them was whatever or whoever was driving the thing climbed halfway out the door and started yelling ‘Hey! Hey! I found them!” loudly as the driver hit a submerged log that nearly threw him out into the river before they got a good look at him.
“Found what, did what?” Beauregard said stepping out into the open for a better look. no longer worried about remaining behind cover anymore..
“You son of a bitches, you darn near scared me to death with those pistols poking out of the bushes towards me. Your surprising me like that nearly broke my rig!” Crick shouted not knowing whether he should go into reverse or go forward with this weird contraption he was traversing these waterways with to get off of whatever it was he had hit.
“Crick is that you?” Beauregard shouted.
“Well who the hell else would it be? You expect anyone else to come save your sorry hides today?” Crick hollered back jubilant and blessedly happy at finding his friends safe today.
“Damn man, just what in the hell is that thing you’re riding on and where did you find it?” Ben called out.
“Don’t be talking about my puddle jumper like that! I will have you know that one Clement T Bowman designed and engineered this for me special. You might have messed it up distracting me like that with your ugly mugs and uglier guns suddenly appearing in the bushes like that though, give me just a minute to assess some damage here.” Crick said as he checked out the paddlewheels and jumped up on the hood of the tractor for a better look.