River Rocks: A West Virginia Adventure Novel

by Steve Kittner

  Josh was running it all through his head when all of a sudden Eddie abruptly squeezed both hand brakes as hard as he could and slid to a sideways halt. Josh slid in behind him, running his tire into Eddie’s spokes.

  “Man! I almost ran you over!” Josh said.

  Eddie held up one hand to quiet his friend and then pointed down the riverbank about fifty yards. Heading down over the bank was Brad Radcliffe with a long, narrow pole about twelve feet in length, and about fifteen empty one-gallon milk and water jugs.

  As he made his way down the path, he looked this way and that as if to see if anyone was following him or watching him. He couldn’t see Josh and Eddie for the bush that they had quietly pushed their bikes up behind and had no idea that they were there.

  The two boys weren’t sure what Brad Radcliffe would be doing at the water’s edge with milk jugs and a long pole, but they were certainly curious enough to stick around and find out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Brad Radcliffe made his way down the narrow path that led to the water’s edge, moving the milkweed aside as he lugged the long pole and empty jugs behind him. The jugs were all strung together with what looked like a long length of old sash cord and the long wooden pole was stripped of all its bark and was straight as an arrow, maybe twelve feet in length and as big around as a climbing rope at school.

  Just off the riverbank was a small version of Josh and Eddie’s sand bar, like the one they spent so many hours on every summer. This one only went out into the flow of the river about ten feet, however. Again, a mix of flat river rocks and sand, it was just big enough for Brad Radcliffe’s little project. As he reached the area at the end of the path down the bank, he lay his jugs down and dropped the long pole behind him. The boys watched through the bush as Brad took a deep breath and stepped over to a brown tarp that was tied down to small trees with the same type of sash cord that had been used to haul the jugs down the bank. It was covering something that was nearly twice as long as it was wide. He began to untie the cords from the trees as Josh and Eddie decided it was time to get a closer look. They stepped from behind the bush and moved closer to where they could see what Brad was up too. They were about twenty yards away now, but a Honeysuckle bush hid them from Brad..

  Brad untied the last cord and then grabbed the tarp by the edge and flipped it like a bed sheet to uncover what lay underneath.

  Both Josh and Eddie lifted their eyebrows at the same time as their mouths flew open. They instantly knew what they were looking at even though they had never seen one before. Brad Radcliffe was constructing a Milk Jug Raft!

  Brad had three sheets of ¾ inch plywood that looked to be secured together underneath with lengths of two by fours. Each sheet of plywood was four feet by eight feet. Two of the sheets were laid side by side lengthwise and then the third sheet was laid across the front of the two others to add four additional feet to the length of the raft. The whole raft would measure eight feet by twelve feet.

  Underneath he had secured milk jugs for floatation. There had to be at least one hundred milk jugs already attached to the sheets of plywood with very little room for any more. From what the boys could see, Brad had drilled about a gazillion small holes in the plywood in order to run the string through to attach the jugs to the wood. Not the most highly engineered vessel in the world, but it did look like it would work.

  Brad had come down here today to attach the remaining jugs to his own private little river raft. Before he could start, he had to flip the raft up to be able to get to the underside. The boys watched as Brad grabbed one side of the raft and heaved as hard as he could to lift the raft up and put a short log, maybe three feet long, under it like a kick stand on a bike. Brad tried over and over to pull off the maneuver but once he got it up in the air, he couldn’t get the log over and in place with his foot. He tried standing the log up, lifting the edge of the raft up into the air and then sliding the log over with his foot but every time, the log would fall over onto the sand and rocks.

  Josh and Eddie looked at each other and decided without words to go down and give Brad a hand. The boys stood up and made deliberate noise so that Radcliffe would know that they were there. Brad looked around to where the boys were coming down the bank and was surprised at what he heard.

  “Need a hand?” Eddie asked as they stepped onto the small sand bar.

  Brad hesitated for a moment, not knowing why the boys were there or what they wanted. He looked back at his work and said, “I’m trying to get this edge propped up so I can get under it.” He was a little out of breath from all the previous tries. “Whata you guys spying on me?”

  Josh ignored the comment, looked the raft over and said, “Brad… this is awesome! What a great idea.”

  Brad gestured with his hands, shrugged and replied, “Just a little project.” Brad was maybe a little embarrassed.

  “Let’s get it up,” Eddie said.

  Eddie and Brad grabbed the raft and easily lifted it as Josh took the log and securely wedged it underneath. Teamwork. The boys could see that there was just enough room underneath for the jugs that Brad had hauled down the bank a few minutes earlier.

  “Where did you get this idea, Brad? This isn’t like you to do something like this,” Eddie said.

  The old Brad returned for a second as he glared at Eddie because of his comment. Eddie felt that he probably deserved it.

  “It just came to me,” He said nonchalantly. “I was fishing from the riverbank one day and about six jugs went down the river all tied together with rope for some reason, probably from a trot line that broke loose upriver, and I thought it would be great to put under some plywood for a dock for fishing off of. The flotation is great as long as the caps are tight.”

  “Yeah,” Josh agreed.

  “And then I thought on it some more and figured, why not a raft?” he continued. “Then I could get up and down the river to the really good fishing spots, ‘cause, ya know, I don’t have a boat anyway.”

  Josh and Eddie looked down and then over at each other, both picking up on a different side of Brad Radcliffe that they had never met before and feeling like they should have let him in their own little fishing club long before today. Brad had never owned a boat nor had his dad or uncles or anyone else in his family. It’s a wonder he liked the sport of fishing at all. He was never taught to fish, never learned about the great outdoors from any father figure in his life.

  “So I started saving the milk jugs and it wasn’t going very fast, ya know, I was only getting a couple jugs a week out of our house. And then a light bulb went on. I thought, ’Recycle day!’ Building a raft out of jugs is recycling, right?”

  Josh and Eddie looked at each other and shrugged a yes.

  “So on Monday last week, I went out real early before most people were up and raided their recycle bins for jugs. Jackpot, man. All I wanted. I picked out the ones with the caps still on them and then I strung them together with cord and hid them over in the weeds over there. Then I started bringing them down here and tying them on. It only took me two weeks to get one hundred jugs. All I needed.”

  “Where did ya get the wood?” Josh asked.

  “Up where they are building the church. They have a stack that they used for forming concrete. The guy said I could have a few if I wanted. They are perfect too, with some of the little cement chunks still on them. I figured they wouldn’t be as slippery.”

  “Wow.” Josh was amazed. “This is a big raft, Brad. How are you going to get it up and down the river?”

  “Down the river won’t be a problem. I just have to attach a tiller with a rudder on the end of it for steering, and then when it’s time to come back up river I will pole it. The river is shallow enough.”

  “Might be hard. You couldn’t do it with a fast current fighting you.” Eddie figured. “Upstream, I mean. You might need some help.”

  “NO WAY!” The old Brad again. “The reason I am building this is so I can single hand it! Go alone!”

  J
osh and Eddie gave each other a glance, not about to put up with Brad if he got an attitude with them.

  “Well, you’re going to have to put a sail on it then.” Josh returned fire.

  There was dead silence as Eddie looked at Josh as if he’d been accidentally struck with brilliance. Brad looked at both of them wondering what they were thinking and if they were plotting against him telepathically.

  “Josh, you’ve got it” Eddie said.

  Brad listened.

  “Think about it,” Eddie said with a laugh. “This river runs pretty much southeast with the exception of a few bends and turns. In the summer, the wind comes right out of the south to southwest. We know that from fishing, right?”

  Josh shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “So, you rig up a square sail, like on the old ships, pirate ships, the old Galleons, that you can rotate a little to suit your wind direction. The wind blowing out of the south, southeast, southwest or even out of the west, will blow you right back up the river with a little help from the pole.”

  Josh and Brad looked at Eddie with curious looks on their faces.

  “What do you know about sailing?” Josh asked.

  “I read a lot of books, buddy!”

  Brad said, “Could you guys help me with that? I mean, I don’t have the slightest idea….”

  “We’ll help,” Eddie said. He had something in mind. “In exchange.”

  “Exchange for what?” Brad responded, turning up his palms.

  “We need the first ride down the river. Five miles to Tater Holler.”

  Josh’s head turned toward his friend with a grin and he thought you’re a genius!

  “You got it!” Brad agreed.

  Their dilemma of how to get down the river was solved. They just wrote themselves a free ticket to go see Burl Otis.

  Now, they had a raft to complete. A sailing raft!

  The boys all jumped in to finish attaching the jugs to the bottom of the plywood, all excitedly conversing as they worked. This was a new Brad Radcliffe that the boys had never seen before and they wondered how he could be so arrogant a few hours ago and so much easier to get along with now. Actually creative and industrial. They had, at the very least, become business partners.

  Once the jugs were finished, they lifted the raft again to remove the “kickstand” and lower it onto the small sand bar. Brad then tied a rope to one corner and the boys all looked at each other.

  “Well, should we?” Brad asked.

  “Let’s do it,” Josh said.

  The boys all grabbed a corner of the raft and lifted. It was lighter than they thought it would be. All the jugs underneath created a false sense of mass. They walked it over to the water as Brad waded in with his corner. As he waded in deeper and deeper the raft began to hold itself up! Brad was up to his waist when the whole raft was floating on its own. The boys all had huge smiles breaking out on their faces as Brad let out a whooping “WHOO YEAH!!! IT FLOATS!!! IT FLOATS!!! YEE HAA!!!”

  Brad waded out of the water and climbed on board his new river vessel. He walked from one edge to the other and then from one end to the other.

  “Stable!” he said “Really stable! We gotta make a sail now!” Brad was excited.

  The raft sat as level as could be as Brad walked over its deck and it didn’t sit down in the water more than five inches. It was extremely buoyant.

  Eddie reached down with his foot and shoved Brad off from the bank so he could get the feel of it in deep water. Josh held onto the rope. Brad smiled bigger than anyone had ever seen him smile before. He put his arms up in the air like a prizefighter that had just won the title belt. Brad had something to be proud of and the boys were proud of him for it. At this point they had forgotten the incident on the railroad tracks a few hours earlier.

  After a couple of minutes, Josh reeled the raft back into the bank and Brad jumped from his new vessel, back to the small sand bar with the boys.

  “We gotta think about the sail,” Eddie said. “What we need to do next is make the tiller and rudder.”

  “I got a hatchet. I’ll go up on the bank and get another pole, a shorter one for the tiller handle and then I was just going to screw it to a piece of plywood cut to look like a rudder,” Brad said. “I have another half sheet up on the bank. There’s a hand saw up there too.”

  Josh said, “Me and Eddie will cut the rudder then, and you make the handle, how’s that?”

  “OK,” Brad said. He then paused before heading up the bank. “ Hey, guys?” he said in a solemn tone. Brad kind of looked down at his feet for a second and then looked them right in the eye, “I, uhh…appreciate your help on this, and all. I,…know I probably don’t deserve it, and uhhh, well…thanks.”

  Josh and Eddie each gave him reassuring smiles.

  “Hey man. No problem,” Josh said. “Let’s make a tiller.”

  The three business partners now teamed up on a steering mechanism for Brad’s river raft. Brad chopped down a small tree about two inches in diameter and then took the hand saw and cut it to three feet long while the other two boys marked out the shape of the rudder on the half sheet of plywood. Sawdust was flying as the team worked to fabricate the steering system for the raft and it wasn’t long before they had it all cut and shaped.

  To make the tiller attach to the rudder solidly and not come apart, Brad ingeniously cut a slot in the end of the three-foot pole about three inches long and ¾ inch wide. The tiller handle will slide over the rudder and screws and wood glue will fasten the two together. Josh made a couple of trips to his garage and back to fetch tools and supplies for the project as the other two boys engineered and thought out the design.

  After about an hour the tiller/rudder project was complete. They had a well-designed, sturdy, very functional way of steering the raft. Eddie had even come up with a way of locking the tiller in place to keep a straight-ahead course without having to constantly keep a hand on the tiller, sort of an autopilot for Brad’s raft.

  Brad was ecstatic. He was grinning most of the evening and couldn’t be any happier with his raft and the two guys who stopped to help him. He was a different person that day and felt good for it.

  Nightfall on the riverbank stirs up a multitude of bugs, frogs and things that go splash in the water. As the sun goes down the critters come out. And tonight was no different as crickets and bullfrogs sang back and forth to each other from bank to bank.

  The boys had worked until they could hardly see what they were doing and decided to call it quits for the night. They weren’t out of energy or enthusiasm. Young boys have plenty of those. They were just out of daylight.

  “I have an idea for the sail design,” Eddie said. “Shouldn’t take too long in the morning if you guys want to meet back here. We’re gonna need about three more long poles, some thin but strong rope and some material for the sail.”

  “Well, I’ll get the poles, no problem,” Brad said as he looked up the bank at the dark profiles of hundreds of tall thin trees standing there like sentries watching over his project.

  “Dad has lots of rope I can grab, too,” Josh said. “Nylon stuff, I think.”

  “That would be perfect. Strong and thin, ”Eddie replied. “I’ll think about what we can use for sail material and try to come up with it for tomorrow. With any luck we could test sail by noon.”

  “Awesome.” Brad smiled. He probably wouldn’t sleep that night.

  The boys left the riverbank and made their way back to their respective houses, excited about tomorrow’s plans to launch the raft for a test sail. It wasn’t Josh and Eddie’s raft, but they were pretty enthused about it nonetheless.

  Josh took his mom up on the pot roast offer and, after filling himself on that, he showered and hit the sack. Tired from a full day of private detective work and shipbuilding, he lay down and flicked on his two-dollar ham radio receiver to the AM band, and once again tuned in to another captivating episode of Mystery Theater. He didn’t make it to the second scene. Sleep comes easy after har
d work.

  A few houses down, Eddie pulled the yellow copy from his backpack and crawled into his own bed. With a small light on, he studied each letter, each fragmented word and each line. Trying to fill in the blanks, he took one word at a time and ran through the alphabet. It was a great idea, albeit time consuming, to help solve the puzzle but it only took about five minutes of this before he zonked with the yellow copy still in his hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Josh, get your rear end out of bed! The Sheriff’s here!” Emily Baker commanded.

  “What?” Josh rolled over sleepily, squinting from the morning light coming through his window.

  He looked at his clock on the bedside table: 8:01 a.m.

  She yanked the covers off of him. “What are you kids into? Tell me before we go downstairs.”

  “Nothing. Holy cow, Mom! What’s going on?”

  “The Sheriff is here and wants to speak with you and your father and me. Are you doing anything illegal? Tell me now.”

  “No. Gosh, Mom,” Josh said.

  Still bleary–eyed, his left arm half asleep, he rolled out of bed to go throw water on his face. His mom followed.

  “Are you sure?” she asked sternly.

  “Mom, you know I don’t get into anything I’m not supposed to,” Josh replied as he turned on the sink water and made a bowl of his hands.