Secret of the Satilfa

by Ted M. Dunagan

  “I ain’t figured that out yet. You don’t do nothing but ask questions; why can’t you come up with some answers?”

  I thought about it for a little while and it came to me. “After we drill a hole in the center of the board, we have to drill a hole in the center of the stump, drive an iron bar or something into that hole, then just drop the board on it so the iron bar goes through the hole in the board.”

  “Hey! That’ll work, but where we gonna get an iron bar?”

  We had an old Radio Flyer wagon that we had worn the wheels off pulling it through the woods and fields hauling everything from water to watermelons. Since then it had been over in the shed just rusting away. “Why don’t we take one of the axles out of that old wagon in the shed?”

  “But we been planning to put new wheels on it,” Fred protested.

  “Yeah, we been planning to do that for two years now, and besides, we way too big to be playing with that wagon anymore.”

  We headed to the shed where we extracted one of the axles from the disabled wagon, took our father’s auger and a large drill bit and a tape measure, and returned to the stump and the board.

  After measuring and finding the exact center of the board, I held it steady while Fred drilled the hole in it.

  I brushed away the curly wood slivers and said, “Now let’s get to that stump.”

  We didn’t even have to measure to find the exact center of the stump. On the inside of trees there is a perfect circle for each year of its age starting from the center and working outward. The circles were still faintly visible on the old stump. I had counted them before and knew the tree had been eighty years old when the lightning bolt killed it.

  Fred placed the point of the drill bit on the dot in the exact center of the stump. I thought the tree must have been just a little bitty fellow when that dot first appeared.I watched as my brother began drilling at the spot indicating when the tree had been born.

  “How long you figure that axle is?” Fred asked after he blew the wood shavings from the hole he had drilled in the stump.

  I placed the tape measure on it and announced, “It’s exactly two feet.”

  “That hole I drilled is deep enough then. It’s four or five inches. We’ll drive the axle down about halfway so it’ll be real tight and still leave a foot sticking out of the stump to go through the board. Go get the ax off the chopping block so I can drive it in.”

  The flat part of the ax made a chiming sound as it drove the axle deep into the stump. Fred stepped back and said, “Does that look like it’s about halfway?”

  “Give it one more little tap,” I told him.

  He did, and I said, “Whoa, that looks just about perfect.”

  “All right,” he said, as he cast the ax aside. “Grab the other end of the board and let’s put her in place.”

  After we had that accomplished, we stood back and admired our work. “What do you think?” Fred asked.

  “Uh—I don’t know. How does it work?”

  “Can’t you see? We each grab a hold of opposite ends of the board and start running in a circle. When we get to going real fast, we jump on the board at the same time and ride it as it spins around the stump.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “Where did you hear about this thing—what was it you said you called it?”

  “It’s a spinning jenny.”

  “I understand the spinning part, but where did the jenny part come from?”

  “I don’t know, that’s just what it’s called.”

  “Well, who told you how to make it?”

  “You know what else?” he said without answering my question.

  “What?”

  “Instead of two people running around the stump and then jumping on the board, they both could just go ahead and get on and let a third person push them real fast, and I bet it would just about sling you off that board.”

  “But wouldn’t the board hit the person pushing when they stopped pushing?”

  “If they was dumb enough to just stand there, I ’spect it would. But it wouldn’t be hard to just get out of the way real quick after it got going real fast. You want to let’s give it a try?”

  I was still a little leery of that spinning jenny. “I don’t know. Maybe if we done it real slow at first, you know, just run at about half as fast as we really can, then I would.”

  “Okay, get at your end of the board,” Fred said. “And remember, when I yell ‘go,’ stop running and jump on. I’ll do the same thing. Oh, and one more thing, when it stops we both have to get off at the same time?”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause if one person gets off before the other one without the other one knowing, your own weight can pull you down and you can mash your foot under the board.”

  When we were both in place my brother nodded, and we began running around the stump, each of us holding on to our end of the board. After about three circles Fred yelled the signal, and we both leaped simultaneously onto the board.

  I expected it to spin so fast that it would make me dizzy and sling me clean off. It barely made one slow circle before it came to a stop, making a grinding sound on the surface of the stump.

  We sat in dazed disappointment for a few moments. Finally Fred said, “Okay, let’s get off. It didn’t exactly sling us off, did it? Something’s wrong.”

  He stood there studying the situation for a few moments before he said, “There must be something I forgot.”

  I certainly didn’t know what it was.

  Suddenly he exclaimed, “I know what it is, wait right here!”

  I watched as he dashed off toward the tool shed again. In no time at all he returned with a can of axle grease in one hand and a stick in the other and began dipping a gob of the dark, heavy grease out of the can with the stick. Next, he pushed the grease into the hole where the wagon axle went through the board.

  Then he smeared more grease all over the surface of the stump, and I knew I would have to find a new place to crack nuts.

  When he finished he set the can of grease aside and tossed the stick off into the woods.

  “All right, smarty pants,” he said, “let’s give it another try. And let’s run harder this time before we jump on.”

  I didn’t expect the results to be much different, so I agreed.

  When we were poised at each end of the board, Fred instructed, “Same rules as before, okay?”

  I agreed and we began running. I noticed right off the board was much easier to push.

  “Come on, just a little faster,” he yelled.

  We were running almost full out when he yelled, “Go!”

  When we leaped on that board it seemed to have an engine running it. I managed to hold on for two, maybe three turns, before it slung me off. I heard a yelp of pain from Fred as I went tumbling through the grass. He came limping over toward me and asked, “You okay?”

  I sat up, felt of myself, and said, “Yeah, I think so. How about you?”

  “My foot got smashed a little under the board when you went flying, but it’s okay. That thing really took off!”

  I could hear the excitement in his voice and could tell he was proud he had gotten the spinning jenny to work, in spite of the injuries we had both narrowly escaped. “I know what it needs to keep you from being slung off.”

  “I ain’t getting back on that thing,” I told him.

  “Aw, come on,” he implored. “What it needs is something on the board, kind of like handle bars on a bicycle, for you to hang on to.”

  “I don’t know—that thing was flying!”

  “I know it was. But I’m gonna nail a strip of wood on each end of the board so you can hang on with both hands, and I promise we’ll go easy until we get the hang of it.”

  It didn’t take us long to find two strips of hickory, strong and straight, from the
woodpile. In the shed we took our father’s hammer and pulled four rusty, but serviceable, nails from a board on the shed’s exterior.

  Once again, I held the board steady while my brother did his work. He drove two nails through each of the hickory strips and into the board, leaving room to sit on the end and hold on with both hands. I held the board up while he clinched the points of the nails underneath; then we stood back and surveyed our work.

  Suddenly Fred stepped forward, put both hands on one end of the board, and said, “Stand back. Let’s see how fast it’ll go with no one on it.” Then he slung it as hard as he could.

  That board took off like an electric fan blade. I leaped back in alarm as it whipped around going, “whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.”

  It finally stopped and we stood there in awe. “It went around twelve times,” I said. “I counted them!”

  “Now that’s a spinning jenny,” Fred said, all puffed up with pride. “Let’s give it another try.”

  “Are you plain crazy? I’m not getting back on that thing. Next time it’ll probably sling me way off yonder into the woods.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what, let’s just get on it while it’s sitting still, push it along real easy with our feet and kind of get the feel of it. You’ll try that, won’t you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose I’ll try it like that.”

  We each headed toward opposite ends of the board. “Remember the rules now,” Fred instructed. “We both get on and off at the same time.”

  When we were seated and had firm grips on the handles, Fred said, “This feels a lot better with something to hold on to, don’t it?”

  I had to admit he was correct. “Uh-huh,” I nervously replied.

  We used our toes and the balls of our feet to get it moving, and I was amazed at the ease with which the board moved around its axis on the stump.

  After a few turns, Fred said, “What do you think? You want to try it with a running start again?”

  I did feel much better about the thing now that I had something to hold on to, so I agreed to give it another go.

  We were both running hard and fast when Fred shouted out the signal to get on board. As soon as we jumped on, the spinning jenny seemed to have a power source of its own as it whipped us around the stump. I hung on for dear life and felt as if I would be lifted off the board and laid straight out in the air and slung off out into a nearby tree top if I dared let go of the handle.

  When the jenny finally slowed to a stop, we dizzily stumbled off the board and collapsed breathlessly onto the ground.

  Fred was the first to speak. Between heaving breaths, he said, “That was great! I can’t believe how fast it went! Did you count the times we went around?”

  “No, I was too busy trying to hold on. But I guess at least fifteen.”

  Fred sat up and yelled out to the world, “We got us a spinning jenny!” Then he turned to me and said, “You ready to go again?”

  “Shoot yeah, let’s see if we can get it going faster this time.”

  The spinning jenny turned out to be the best thing my brother had built or invented so far. And for a while it was the number one thing on our list to do when we got home from school and on every opportunity we had on weekends. But then it turned into a nightmare.

  Chapter Three

  Going Fishing

  The word got out about the spinning jenny and it wasn’t long before our cousins, our friends, and their cousins were all coming in droves.

  We had discovered that if two riders got on, and a third person, preferably a strong and fast one, pushed the board around as hard as they could and jumped clean at the last second, then the spinning jenny would sling all but the most tenacious off the board, making it a contest to see who could stay on and who would be slung off.

  It was used so much a round trench was worn in the ground underneath the ends of the board.

  Soon there were crushed toes, skinned elbows and knees, heads conked when someone fell off instead of being slung off, and fights over who was going to ride it next.

  Fred decided we were going to initiate a charge to ride, but before he could implement his toll, one of our cousins broke an arm.

  Her parents, along with others, descended upon our momma with numerous complaints until one Saturday afternoon she marched out to the spinning jenny with my brother Ned and had him pull the plank off the stump and deposit it under the house.

  And that was the end of the spinning jenny, which was all right with me. The thrill of it had diminished, and the only thing I regretted was that my friend Poudlum Robinson hadn’t had an opportunity to ride it.

  I hadn’t seen Poudlum for a while. That was because he was black and we didn’t go to the same school. Since the warmth of summer had faded, I had only seen him a couple of times on weekends over at Miss Lena’s Store.

  The store was halfway between his house and mine, so we met there sometimes and had us both a peach-flavored Nehi soda and an ice cream sandwich. We used the money we had secretly stashed away back during the summer. It was the reward we had given ourselves after discovering an illegal whiskey-making operation and the bootlegger’s cache of cash in a hollow tree way back in the woods on Satilfa Creek.

  Thanksgiving weekend was coming up and Poudlum and I had planned weeks ago to spend it camping out at a fishing hole on that same creek.

  My momma wasn’t too keen on the idea, but when I came home from school with the first prize for the Thanksgiving Poem, she relented and gave her permission.

  My fifth-grade teacher had assigned everyone to write a poem about what they were thankful for. We had to turn them in on Tuesday, and on Wednesday afternoon before we were dismissed for the long weekend, she announced she was going to recite the winning poem.

  I just about fell out of my seat when she began reading my Thanksgiving Poem:

  I’m thankful for dressing and gravy

  And the boys serving in the Navy

  I’m thankful for turkey and ham

  And for tough old Uncle Sam

  I’m thankful for squash casserole

  And for the heroes of old

  I’m thankful for pecan pie

  And for the beautiful sky

  I’m thankful for bread and butter

  And for my two brothers

  I’m thankful for sweet potato pie

  And for being old enough not to cry

  I’m thankful for sweet ice tea

  And for the opportunity to just be

  I’m thankful for green beans and butter beans

  And for all the children and the teens

  I’m thankful for lemon glazed pound cake

  And for being able to swim in the lake

  I’m thankful for potato salad

  And for the numbers when my friends are tallied

  I’m thankful for being physically sustained

  And for the grace of being spiritually without blame

  The teacher gave me an A-plus and wrote a note to my momma on my poem informing her I had won first place. I could tell by the look on Momma’s face when she read it that I could go camping for a week if I wanted to.

  Poudlum and I planned to meet at Miss Lena’s Store on Friday after Thanksgiving Day, right after our noon meal. That way we would have time to walk to the Cypress Hole on the Satilfa, set up camp, and get in some fishing before it got dark. I just hoped he had done something to make his momma happy, too.

  Thanksgiving Day came and went. Since my daddy was gone we all went to Aunt Cleo’s and Uncle Elmer’s house and ate turkey and all the trimmings with them.

  On Friday, I was anxious to get going. My momma served up big bowls of steaming vegetable soup with corn bread and buttermilk, which was a welcome change from all the rich food the day before.

  While I was sopping up the dregs of the soup with a p
iece of cornbread, she was fixing me a bag of biscuits left over from breakfast. She would bore a hole into them with her finger and pour the hole full of Blue Ribbon cane syrup, pinch the hole closed, and then wrap them up in waxed paper.

  “These biscuits will fill you up in case you and Poudlum don’t catch any fish,” she said. “But I ’spect y’all will, cause black folks know how to fish. I want y’all to be real careful around that water now,” she concluded as she began packing my stuff into a small cotton picking sack.

  She had allowed me to take one of her old skillets, a small one, along with an old quilt, a box of matches, a packet of salt, some cornmeal, and a half-pint jar filled with lard to fry the fish in.

  “You got your pocketknife?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, and Ned sharpened it real good for me this morning so I can scale them fish and clean them properly,” I said as I slipped the strap of the sack over my shoulder.

  My momma hugged me and said, “Now remember, if y’all get too cold or hungry just go to your Uncle Curtis’s house. It’s not too far from the creek.”

  The strap of the sack was cutting into my shoulder before I got to the store. I hoped Poudlum’s load was lighter so we could take turns carrying mine. The only thing I had told him to bring was a quilt and some fish hooks.

  He was nowhere in sight when I arrived at the store, so I set my sack by the steps at the front door, went in, and started gathering some supplies just in case the fish weren’t biting. I didn’t want to be stuck in the woods hungry with nothing except biscuits to eat.

  We planned to be there two nights, so I counted the meals in my mind while I selected cans of Vienna sausage, sardines, potted meat, pork and beans, and four dime boxes of saltines. We didn’t have to worry about anything to drink; we could just drink water from the creek.

  “Good Lord,” Lena cried out when I piled it all on the counter. “Son, what you planning to with all this stuff?”

  “Me and Poudlum gonna camp out and fish on the creek. This stuff is just in case we don’t catch any fish.”

  After she bagged it all up I paid her and went outside and stuffed it all into my sack even as I became concerned about the weight of it.