Pioneer, Go Home!

by Richard Powell

  By the time we finished helping around the motel, the Jenkinses and Browns had come in from our bridge. Mr. King and the State Highway Patrol had brung them across the drawbridge real careful with ropes and all, which was mighty nice of Mr. King and proved he warn't taking no chances of anybody slipping through that gap. The Jenkinses and Browns said the wind was starting to pile up water in our pass, and if it kept on it might come clear over the road. The truck had towed the Jenkinses' trailer back but had had to leave it the other side of the drawbridge.

  We had dinner and set around listening to the radio. The feller on the radio was gloomy about the hurricane but glad about some triple-track aluminum storm windows for seven-fifty each and a sewing machine for no money down and a dollar a week. Fellers like that is likely to make storms sound bad and windows and sewing machines sound good, so I bet on Mr. King to know more about the hurricane than the radio feller did. Pop and Holly was worried about our place, though, and got out maps to see if we could drive there in a roundabout way. But to do that we had to go up the coast fifty miles and inland twenty and down eighty and back forty. That was a lot of miles with maybe some roads under water and trees down, so all we could do was wait.

  The next morning things had got worse. The palm fronds was tattered from laying out in the gusts, and there was a roaring like you might hear listening at the bottom of a chimney in a gale. We left the twins with the Jenkinses and Browns, and drove to the drawbridge. It hadn't been fixed yet. I got out and walked up to the gate. Mr. King warn't there but two fellers from the State Highway Patrol was on duty. I told them we was real worried about our place, but they said they had orders not to let nobody cross until the bridge was fixed. The last word they had was the mechanic was on vacation and no telling when the bridge would get working. It was raining hard and I went inside the bridge tender's house to talk with them. They was right nice fellers and sorry to hear about how we might lose our land if our shack blowed away.

  It was an upsetting thing to be in that bridge tender's house next to all them big gears and things that lifted the bridge up and down, and to know that them gears couldn't budge that bridge. While I was looking around I seen a big greasy nut lying on the floor next to the machinery, and picked it up.

  One of the patrolmen said, "You better leave things alone, Mac."

  I said, "I don't know of an easier way to lose a nut than to leave it lay on the floor, and I wonder where it belongs."

  "I don't know how you can tell," he said.

  "Well," I said, "this machinery is big but it don't look a lot different from the machinery of them bulldozers they learned me to run at Fort Dix, and if I don't miss my guess, over there is some bare threads that look like they is meant to take this nut. Let me see if it fits."

  I started screwing it on the threads at the end of a shaft, but it come up against a gear wheel. I had to push the gear wheel back on the shaft so it meshed with another wheel before I could get room to screw the nut on all the way.

  "I hope you're not doing anything wrong," the feller said.

  "It looks all right to me," I said. "Now that nut won't get kicked around and lost. But to make sure things are all right, I will trace back this gear assembly and see." I traced it back and seen where everything come to a lever. "Just to prove I didn't do nothing wrong," I said, "I will pull this lever and show you that the gears work good."

  "I don't think you better," the feller said, but by that time I had already give the lever a little pull.

  There warn't nothing but a little hum, and them gears turned nice.

  "Well, all right," the feller said. "But don't touch anything else."

  Just then Pop come busting in and yelled, "The bridge is down! The bridge is down!"

  "Oh God," one of the fellers said to me. "You broke it!"

  "No, no, it worked!" Pop yelled. "The bridge is fixed!"

  "Oh, it couldn't be fixed," I said. "It was just a little old nut I put back on the end of a gear shift."

  "Come out and see," Pop said.

  Well, we went out, and that bridge was down as nice as you please. "Jeez," one of the patrolmen said. "Imagine a guy being able to figure that out."

  "It warn't nothing," I said. "It is just that a nut is meant to go on threads, and that gears is meant to mesh with each other. Do you reckon we could drive across now?"

  "You sure can, Mac," the feller said. "Ill open the gate."

  "And I'll run and find Mr. King," the other feller said. "He'll be glad to get this news."

  So the one patrolman run off to find Mr. King, and the other opened the gate, and we drove across and headed back toward our place.

  It was the kind of drive where you would be happier with a bulldozer than with a car, on account of it is not easy to blow a bulldozer over and they come in handy for moving trees. In open spaces where the wind come from the side it tipped the car like a sailboat, and we had to crowd over to windward to hold her down. Every little while I had to stop for a tree down across the road, and hitch up our towing chain and drag it aside so we could get by. It took us nearly three hours to make the twelve miles, and when we got to our bridge you might have thought it warn't there if you hadn't known it had to be. There was half a foot of water running over it already, and nothing but the rails showing. I walked over the bridge in front of the car while Pop drove, to make sure the roadway was still in. I didn't drop out of sight nowhere so the roadway was all right.

  We had a real busy afternoon. Them rowboats we had drug up next to the shack had started drifting away, and I rounded them up and tied them to pilings of the rest room. The Browns' shack was lower than ours, and we got all their furniture and stuff and stowed it in the rest room, which Pop had built extra big so he could put in wash stands and showers some day. We opened windows on the side away from the wind, and I strung a rope between our place and the Browns so I could get across and back if the water come higher. Holly cooked food for us ahead of time, and I brung in fresh water from the water barrel. You might think the last thing we needed right then was water, but it can take a long time to fill a cup with water by holding it out in the rain, and it can take even longer if the wind is blowing the rainwater out of the cup as fast as it comes in.

  We was all ready by the time it come on night. By then there was two feet of water under our shack, and in the big puffs of wind you could feel the shack getting kind of restless. The way the wind was working on things, it sounded like we was setting inside a big old violin with somebody running wet fingers up and down the strings. After a while we thought we better move all our stuff from the shack into the rest room, and we carried everything across the walkway. While I had time I tied them rowboats higher on the pilings. A little later I thought I would see how the Browns' place was getting along, and took hold of the rope I had strung over to it. But that rope seemed loose, so I got a flashlight and aimed it across the road. Well, there just warn't nothing over there.

  "Pop," I said, "the Browns' place has gone."

  Pop and Holly come to the door of the rest room and looked out. "What is that big thing drifting by, right in front of us?" Pop said. "Could that be the Browns' place?"

  "I don't reckon so."

  "It looks like a real nice little shack."

  "Well, it is, Pop," I said. "In fact I think it is ours,"

  "Oh. It come off the pilings, did it? It's good somebody in this family knows how to build a place. You don't see my rest room drifting off, do you?"

  "There is also somebody in this family that grabbed the best pilings I cut," I said. "We are a foot higher in this rest room than in the shack, and on bigger pilings."

  "Something is nuzzling around at my feet," Pop said, looking down and trying to see in the darkness.

  I turned the flashlight on, and seen it was just one of the rowboats coming up to the door. "I think I will bring this rowboat inside," I said. "Just in case it gets damp underfoot."

  The rowboat was pretty full of water, but I bailed it out and got it
through the doorway into the rest room. We closed the door to help keep out the water if it come higher, and piled heavy things against it to keep it shut. Then we fixed cushions in the rowboat and clumb in, and it was real cosy with the kerosene lamps going. We kept the window open toward the road. Now and then I went to the window and looked out. All you could see in the flashlight beam was water going by. When I listened I could hear the gusts of wind passing overhead like express trains. There would be a roaring way off, and it would get louder and louder, and then the train would thunder right over us and the place would shake.

  "You did build this real good, Pop," I said, after one of those looks out the window. "That water outside is up a foot above our floor level, and we haven't got hardly a drop in here."

  "You know what?" Pop said. "It's lucky we didn't stay in Gulf City, or everything out here would have gone. And that there law said we had to keep a building up on our land for six months before we could claim it."

  Holly said, "I hope we don't end up needing a periscope."

  "That's a woman for you," Pop said. "Always wanting something she don't have, whatever a periscope is."

  Holly said, "I think you built this place too well. Have you noticed how the floor seems to be bulging up?"

  Pop said, "What's wrong with a little bulge?"

  "That's water pressure," Holly said. "It's going to lift this place off the pilings if it goes on."

  "I don't know what we can do about it," Pop said.

  "Well," Holly said, "if the right thing to do is open windows to let air pressure out, maybe the right thing to do is open the floor to let water pressure in."

  "Don't you touch my floor," Pop said.

  "Pop," I said, "I think Holly is right."

  Just then we heard a couple of screeches as a spike or two started pulling out of wood, and the place give a little jump.

  "Well, go ahead," Pop said. "But I think it's just pure envy of the way I built this rest room."

  I jumped out of the rowboat, thinking of opening the door. But we had piled too much stuff agin it, and I warn't sure I had time to move things. So I grabbed a crowbar and rammed the sharp end down where the ends of two boards come together, and it hit the joint and sunk down to the beam underneath. I levered on the end of the crowbar, and that board come up. Along with it come a jet of water that hit the roof and sprayed all over the place and put out our kerosene lamps. I had the flashlight in my pocket and switched it on. For a couple seconds that jet of water kept on hitting the roof, but the pressure was easing and I felt the bulge in the floor settling down. Finally the jet give one last spurt, and dog me if a ten-pound snook didn't come right up in the middle of it. All I got was one look at him in the flashlight beam but that snook was not happy. He landed in the foot of water we had on the floor, and shook himself and went off to sulk in a corner.

  "Pop," I said, "I bet you will never guess what happened. A big old snook come in here with that jet of water."

  "I don't like that," Pop said. "It's a discouraging thing when the fish start swimming around in your home."

  "Oh, he was just hanging around the pilings like snook always do," I said. "Then he got caught in the water pressure."

  Pop said, "All I got to say is, if you start fishing for him, I am going to leave."

  Well, I warn't planning to fish for him, because that snook was no better off in some ways than we was and I could feel for him. I waded back to the rowboat and helped Pop get the kerosene lamps going again, and we set in the boat and waited. The wind kept howling outside and the water kept creeping up little by little. Now and then I hunted around for the snook with the flashlight beam and found him still sulking in a corner. In a couple of hours the water was lapping within six inches of the window sills, and I began to wonder if I could bust a hole in the wall and get the rowboat out, if the water lifted much higher.

  Finally Pop said, "I hear splashing somewhere in here. Have we come off the pilings?"

  I listened, and heard the splashing too, and switched on the flashlight and located it.

  "Will you look at that," Pop said in a disgusted tone. "That snook is chasing a shiner. Toby, I think the fish have took over and we are goners. Should we bust open the window and try to swim for it?"

  "No, no, Pop," I said. "That snook chasing the shiner is a good sign. It means the water is settling down and he is feeling better. Look there." I held the flashlight beam on the wall, and you could see by the wet marks that the water had dropped two inches.

  Well, after that we knowed it was just a matter of waiting for the water to drop and the wind to quiet down. In another hour there was moonlight outside the window and the hurricane had gone, and that snook was having himself a time with the pinfish and shiners that had come in our place.

  Pop said, "We could have a good fat snook for breakfast."

  "No we couldn't," I said. "There is such a thing as sentiment in this world, and nobody is going to harm this snook."

  I clumb out of the rowboat and moved all the things away from the door and opened it. Pretty soon that snook happened on the doorway and went out with a swish of his tail, so all of us come through that hurricane all right.

  18

  THE next morning there was still a lot of puddles, and plenty of mud and trash was lying around, but nothing you couldn't clean up. Pop's car had been under water and warn't working much to speak of, but his johns in the rest room had been under water too and was working fine, and Pop was willing to take the bad with the good. Our shack had come to rest right by the end of the bridge and partway across the road, and it wouldn't be no trouble to get it on rollers and move it back where it belonged.

  On account of Mr. Brown was a good carpenter his place had held together good when it drifted away, and it had grounded on a beach a couple hundred feet down the pass. The Jenkinses had lost the platform their trailer had set on, but it looked like we could round up most of the lumber. One nice thing the hurricane had done was clean off the fill where Little Nick's and Blackie's had burned down. The big dock they had built had come through good. We could use the planking from it to help repair things, and we could haul out the dock pilings and use them too. We hadn't lost none of our rowboats or outboard motors or any stuff we had been able to move into the rest room, so we was in real good shape.

  We worked all morning starting to clean things up,

  and early in the afternoon I heard the noise of some kind of engine over on the island and went out on the bridge to see what was coming. Pretty soon a bulldozer waddled around the bend and come up to a couple trees across the road and pushed them out of the way. Then a jeep cut around the bulldozer and zipped down to where I was waiting on the bridge.

  Mr. King jumped out. "I see you made it," he said. "All of you get through?"

  "Yes sir," I said. "It is right neighborly of you to come out and ask."

  "You had to find that loose nut and fix the drawbridge and come out here and risk your lives, didn't you? I should have known it wasn't any use to try to keep you in Gulf City. You Kwimpers are crazy."

  "Mr. King," I said, "there has been times when I would let that pass, but the judge says we are not crazy and I got to call you on it."

  "All right, all right. You're completely sane, in an idiotic sort of way." He turned back to the jeep, and said, "Benny, get out and start taking photos. I want a complete set showing exactly what happened here." A feller got out of the jeep and began fixing his camera, and Mr. King peered along the bridge at our shack, which was kind of blocking his view of our land. "That's your shack, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Yes sir," I said. "I am sorry it's blocking your road but we will get it drug out of the way as soon as we can."

  "You admit it's no longer on the land you squatted on, don't you?"

  "Yes sir."

  "You admit the law says you had to keep a building up on the land six months before you could put in a claim?"

  "You got it right, Mr. King."

  "You admit that bui
lding can hardly be called up?"

  "It is what I would call down."

  "Take a picture of it, Benny," Mr. King called to the feller with the camera.

  "I already got it," the feller called back. "And do you want a photo of the building beyond this shack?"

  "What building are you talking about?" Mr. King said. "Everything has been swept clean on both sides of the road."

  The camera feller called, "You got to get down here to see it. Where you're standing the shack's in the way."

  Mr. King give me a kind of hunted look, and run down to the feller with the camera and looked past the shack. I walked down after him, and heard Mr. King saying, "Oh no! Oh they can't do this to me!" He was staring at Pop's rest room.

  The feller with the camera said, "Did you want a photo of that, Mr. King?"

  "No," Mr. King said. "But keep your eyes open. Maybe you can get a shot of me cutting my throat." He looked at me and shrugged and said, "All right. I give up. I guess it's your land. But get this damn shack off my road, you hear?"

  "Yes sir," I said. "Now if you could lend us that feller in the bulldozer, I could lay down planks and cut piling for rollers and have the shack out of your way in no time."

  "Gee, it's nice of you to be so helpful, Kwimper."

  "Oh, it will help us out too," I said. "But there is just one thing before I borrow that bulldozer off you. Has it got rubber tracks, Mr. King? I wouldn't want no metal tracks scarring up the planks of the bridge."

  Mr. King done some deep breathing, and said, "It has rubber tracks. It won't hurt the bridge. Anything else you want?"

  "Well, if you are going back to Gulf City now in the jeep, I'd take it kindly if you would give Pop a lift, on account of our car is not running and Pop would like to get to the Courthouse and put in our claim for the land."