What is the sense of a man going on the river drive unless he can handle something sharp?
“Remember,” she reminds Stinky Pete, looking him square in the eye, “this is a child who hurt himself simply looking at an ax.”
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Stinky Pete nods. Granny nods. Mama’s face softens.
If Mama has her way, I’ll be tied to the shore like a dog on a leash.
This is not quite the river drive I had in mind.
I want to be very clear,” Mama says. “You being on this river drive is against my better judgment, so the minute you get yourself into the slightest bit of danger, we are on a wagon to St. Ignace.”
I’m an expert on danger and handling the river, I don’t mind saying. I’ve been getting buckets of water from it for months—we’re practically on a first-name basis. But I let her cool off a little and stay near the cook shanty for a few days until even she gets tired of having me underfoot.
“Go outside. But stay away from trouble,” she warns.
As if I would ever get in trouble.
I meander around camp, innocently hoping to find ways to prove my skills with both logs and water. Unfortunately, even if your mama says you are allowed to go on the river drive, it doesn’t mean you jump on a log and become immediately famous for your natural logrolling abilities. Apparently debris has to be cleaned out of the rivers and along the paths to the rivers while the waters continue to swell with melting snow and bitter rain. No one tells you about that humdrum part of the river drive.
Some of the lumberjacks leave when the work in the woods is done to make way for the river pigs. Hoot and Knut and Cager all wave goodbye, pay in hand.
And I’m still not out on that river.
Of course Mr. Crutchley is still here.
And Stinky Pete.
The bad ones never leave.
Stinky Pete has had his twinkly eyes on me. All the time.
For example, one day last week I simply wanted to light a little match to start a fire in Cooter’s blacksmith shop. Just to see how hot the fire could get. And maybe try my hand at a little blacksmithy kind of work, just to see if I’m a natural.
I’m pretty sure I’m a natural.
Guess who kept coming up behind me to blow out the match as soon as I got it lit?
That’s right. Stinky Pete and his bad breath and twinkly eyes.
“Stan…,” he said. But I ran off before he could carry on about how great the Chicago White Stockings were when he was a kid.
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Then yesterday I approached an ax leaning against the van, the one gleaming in the sun, the one I was not even going to touch, just simply examine for possible bloodstains from my violent accident, when Stinky Pete ran over from the bunkhouse, snatched the ax from my hand like it was a twig fallen from a tree, shook a finger at me, and winked.
“Stan…,” he said. But I ran off before he could carry on about quotes and the meaning of life.
And just today I ran down to check out the river pigs preparing the logs for the river drive. The water rushed by like it couldn’t wait to be filled with men and logs and salty language. Every time I hear it or see it, my heart speeds up to match its roar.
Some of the men are building wanigans for the cooks to follow the river pigs with hot cooked meals. I will be spending most of my time on one of these boats and want to get my two cents’ worth in.
Plus, I am a whiz at building, I don’t mind saying.
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So I meandered down to the water, and lo and behold, there was Stinky Pete, barreling behind me like a bull after a matador. So I took off running, zigzagging around stumps and over logs, so fast I was a blur, as fast as Frank Goodale when he rode Chant in last year’s Kentucky Derby.
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I ran and ran and I never ran out of breath. I ran and ran and I never ran out of speed. I ran and ran. And suddenly I did run out of land.
And ended up smack-dab in the icy river, the current pulling me like the hand of the devil himself.
Stinky Pete was right behind me, however, and fished me out with one arm and a twinkly grin.
I got the feeling he was enjoying this. And why is he always so twinkly?
“Why am I so what?” he asked me, still holding my shoulders so I couldn’t escape.
“Um, I just wondered why my shirt’s so wrinkly.” I tugged on my collar and tried to examine it like wrinkles offend my very soul.
Stinky Pete looked at me, puzzled. Then he took a deep breath. “Stan,” he said with a sigh, “I have been running after you all morning. Could you please hold on one dad-blamed minute? I want to ask you something.” He let go of my shoulders and straightened himself up.
My eyes darted around to see if I could make my getaway, but I was too waterlogged to give much of a fight. I just sighed and Stinky Pete ran his fingers through his hair as he caught his breath.
“Okay. Now. I have to head down to the curve in the river and dynamite some rocks so the logs don’t get caught up. I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”
I stared at him. And stared some more.
Had Stinky Pete just said “dynamite”? That right there is one of my favorite words.
“Why didn’t you say so?” I asked, exasperated. “It would have saved me a lot of running.”
Plus, I am a whiz at the dynamite, I don’t mind saying.
Stinky Pete grinned, his white teeth sparkly and twinkly in the sunlight. “I thought so,” he said.
You do realize I’m not a murderer, right?” Stinky Pete looks at me. We are walking to the crook in the river, a stick of dynamite in Stinky Pete’s hand and a box of matches in his pocket.
I wave an arm between us. “Yeah, yeah,” I answer. “Whatever you want people to believe. Your secret is safe with me,” I reassure him with a wink.
Stinky Pete laughs, throws an arm around me, and squeezes my shoulder. “Well, that’s a relief,” he says.
“Did you really kill a man?” The words spill from my mouth before I even have a chance to think about them.
Stinky Pete stops suddenly. His eyes, for once, don’t twinkle. He doesn’t wink. Instead his arm drops and his hands clench, and I wish, once again, that I thought about something before I actually said it.
“Stan,” he says without looking at me, “the past is the past. I can’t do anything about it. So I”—he takes a deep breath—“I choose to live in the present and plan for my future. Life is short.” And then he takes off and I have to jog to keep up with him.
What just happened? Did I say something? Of course I said something! I asked the exact question Uncle Henry told me not to ask. This isn’t some little insult like I spurt out at Conrad McAllister. No, I think I hurt Stinky Pete, a guy who has never been anything but nice to me. Unlike Conrad McAllister, who whitewashed my face until I said he was the smartest person I knew.
By the way, just because I said it doesn’t mean it’s true. I was being tortured.
All Stinky Pete has ever done is play games with me or show me how to whittle or teach me to whistle all the verses of “Oh, My Darling Clementine.”
I’m having trouble keeping up with him, and before I know it, just like my dad, Stinky Pete is gone.
I stop. Is that what happened with my dad? Did I run him off, too?
There’s a robin poking around the ground. The running river water, loud and rushing, reminds me that I’m finally, finally getting to ride the river and prove I’m a man. I’ll prove I can take care of my mama and that we don’t need any other men, or Granny, in our lives telling us what to do. I have waited my whole, entire life for this.
But all I can think about is Stinky Pete and how he’s long gone.
I plop myself onto a downed log. Even the possibility of dynamite doesn’t matter to me now. Nothing matters anymore. Not the river drive. Not bacon.
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Okay, maybe bacon.
I haul myself up and turn to head back
to camp. Maybe there will be something to eat when I return. I can drown my sorrows in food. I start trudging through snow that seems a lot harder to tromp through than it was earlier. Of course that’s when I was heading toward an explosion. Now I am just returning to some bossy women.
“Stan!” I turn to see Stinky Pete walking quickly toward me. “What are you doing? I thought you were right behind me.”
“I’m heading back to camp,” I say, not looking at him directly.
“Back to camp?” Stinky Pete scratches his head with the end of the dynamite. “Why? We haven’t even set off the explosion yet.”
“Well,” I say quietly, “I figured you wouldn’t want me to go with you now. You know, since I asked you about, well, that thing I shouldn’t have asked you.”
“Why would you think that?” Stinky Pete asks.
“You still want me to go with you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he says. “You’re my partner in crime!” Stinky Pete stoops to my height. “I guess I forgot to tell you,” he says, laying his large hand on my shoulder. “When someone knows life is short, they also know what’s important. And what’s important to me is spending time with my favorite people, one of whom is you.” He messes up my hat and stands. “Now c’mon. Let’s do this job so we can get going on the river drive.”
Exactly! I will soon have the chance to show the world my natural logrolling talent. My insides suddenly feel puffed up with air and I’m as light-footed as a cat. I follow Stinky Pete thrashing through the brush.
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“Stan, I saw you stand on the log we use for chopping firewood over by the bunkhouse. No offense, but your sense of balance could use some improvement,” Stinky Pete says.
“You are so wrong,” I reply, offended. “I have been practicing nonstop and am now a whiz at balancing, I don’t mind saying.”
“Well, you fell five times yesterday alone, so I’m hoping you don’t have any foolish ideas floating around in that head of yours,” Stinky Pete says, glancing back with his twinkly eyes.
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Oh, how I missed those twinkly eyes. It has been so long since I last saw them.
Also, I am just about sure I have never entertained a foolish idea. Plus, how am I supposed to even get a chance to practice on the river if Stinky Pete is watching me like a hawk? He keeps checking to make sure I’m right behind him. I wave and give him a thumbs-up, but really I’m lollygagging a bit. I listen to the birds chirp in the trees and the sound of the rushing water and the yells from the river pigs. I am lost in my thoughts when I hear a squeaky voice off in the distance.
“Stanley!” It sounds like someone is calling my name.
“Stanley!” I hear again. I turn around and who should I see tiptoeing through the forest in his fancy trousers, white shirt, and suspenders but Mr. Crutchley.
He scampers up to me, all out of breath. “What, young man, are you doing here alone and unsupervised?”
“I’m here to make sure Stinky Pete sets off the dynamite correctly,” I reply.
Stinky Pete has jogged back to us. He looks at me and grins.
Mr. Crutchley regains his breath and swats me away like a pesky fly.
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“So, Peter,” he says, limply slapping Stinky Pete on the shoulder, “I thought I’d check out the operation here so I can give a report to the boss.” He stomps through the woods without giving me a second thought. Stinky Pete glances at me and wriggles an eyebrow. He nods as Mr. Crutchley informs him how both dynamite and a ten-year-old boy should be handled.
“I’m almost twelve!” I shout. Mr. Crutchley doesn’t even listen, but Stinky Pete gives me a smile from behind his back.
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We pass a roll-away of logs along the riverbank, ready to be dumped into the roiling water. I imagine riding those logs: I will run across them, hoot and holler, all the river pigs will hoot and holler, and people on the banks of the main river will hoot and holler and tell stories of my feats for generations to come.
I pause next to one very large pile, ready to scale it and get this show on the road, when a hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“Stanley Slater! Don’t even think about it! This is how people get killed! You simply jostle one wrong log and the entire stack will come tumbling down upon you, and you are flat as a pancake and killed.” Mr. Crutchley purses his lips and shakes his finger.
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“Peter, this is what I was talking about,” he says. “The boy is simply not to be trusted.”
Stinky Pete pushes me away from the logs and doesn’t stop pushing me until we’re far from the temptation of my destiny.
“He needs to leave this camp full of hooligans and ne’er-do-wells, and I am certainly the only one to provide him with that opportunity.” Mr. Crutchley blows about like a stiff winter gale, his tiny lips pursed in disapproval and his long pointy nose sticking out from under the brim of his hat like the head of a rat.
Stinky Pete burrows himself into his collar, punches his hands deep in his pockets, and barrels ahead like he’s walking into the wind. He just nods as Mr. Crutchley blathers on.
“When Alice accepts my hand in marriage, I will be able to provide for her son as well,” he says. I whip my head up just as Stinky Pete’s neck seems to disappear into his coat. He doesn’t say a word, but I’m starting to realize something.
“There’s a fine military academy in Indiana where Stanley will learn manners and discipline. They will teach him how to conduct himself as a proper young gentleman before he starts his military career.”
Stinky Pete throws branches into the river as if they have offended the good name of his mother, and the wild current whips them up like butter in a churn.
And then suddenly it becomes clear. As clear as the water of Lake Michigan in June.
Mr. Crutchley is Granny. Only worse.
And Granny in comparison is only 56.7 percent evil.
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The rock juts out of the river like Granny’s crochet hook, ready to snag anything in its path. Stinky Pete wades in, dynamite in hand, the long wick held above the water, while Mr. Crutchley shouts directions like he knows what he’s talking about. He tiptoes over the wet ground in an attempt to get closer to the raging water.
“Over more to the right! Don’t get the wick wet! You’ll need to be careful!” The river roars like a bear waking up from a winter’s nap. I am pretty sure Stinky Pete can’t hear a word, which means I’m on my own. With Mr. Crutchley. He glares at me, standing right beside him. “Don’t move an inch, young man,” he warns. “This is the work of men, not boys with no common sense. I haven’t the foggiest notion why Peter McLachlan thought you needed to join us in this endeavor. You are sure to be a nuisance.” He points a warning finger at me and continues shouting at Stinky Pete. I stuff my hands in my pockets and watch Stinky Pete wade to shore, hanging the long wick over low-lying branches.
“That looks good!” Mr. Crutchley yells. Stinky Pete winds his way forward, looks in our direction, and holds up three fingers. Three seconds and he will light the fuse and blow the rock to smithereens.
“Don’t move,” Mr. Crutchley warns again. We’re right on the shore, a safe distance from the dynamite. Does he really think I’m going to run over to that rock and jump on it?
I might be brave and handsome and dangerous, but I am no fool.
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Stinky Pete lights the fuse and runs toward us, head down, weaving through the branches, stumps, and trees, covering his ears. I watch the lit end of the fuse snake its way toward the rock. Mr. Crutchley jumps up and down, as excited as a little girl with a new doll.
“Oh! Dear me!” he yelps.
I am standing like the mast of a ship. Tall and straight. If I’ve seen one explosion, I’ve seen a hundred. They’re all the same. A loud boom, a blast of water, a…
The noise is so loud I spring up from the earth like a tightly wound jack-in-the-box.
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I wave my arms and thrash around, the river close to my feet, churning and bubbling, a whirlpool of menacing water, ready to claim another body, leaving only my boots as a memento of my time here on earth.
My shoulder grazes Mr. Crutchley’s hip. The earth seems less solid, less secure, more like a pitching swell, and as my feet dive forward, I reach to grab on to the only thing that might save me, even if it’s the devil himself.
And Mr. Crutchley spins and spins into the bubbling abyss of churning water.
“Yeeoow!” he hollers as he tumbles headlong into the river. I stop myself from following him by grabbing a willow branch on the bank. Stinky Pete takes hold of my wrist, pulls me up, dumps me on the ground, and makes a beeline down the shore for Mr. Crutchley, who is being swept away like a dry leaf in a tornado. I follow closely behind, weaving through the poky branches, slogging through the wet earth as Mr. Crutchley’s pinhead bobs up and sputters through the foamy, cold river.
“We have to hurry and get him out!” Stinky Pete calls to me, trusting I’m right on his heels. “He’ll freeze in there for sure! Run ahead! I’m pretty sure there’s a curve in the river where we can reach him!” I run past the both of them. Stinky Pete cuts down a long branch with his jackknife and Mr. Crutchley raises his arms in the angry water and pleads for help.
I run up ahead a bit farther and sure enough there’s a narrower stretch where we just might be able to reach Mr. Crutchley from shore.
Mr. Crutchley, who wants to marry my sweet mama.
Mr. Crutchley, who is more evil than my granny.
Mr. Crutchley, who wanted to hit me with a switch.
Mr. Crutchley, who wants to send me to a boring military school.
Would someone please remind me why I might want to save him?
I stand on the shore, frozen. Stinky Pete’s mouth is saying something, but I can’t hear him because of the roar in my ears. Mr. Crutchley is being swept right toward me, his head bouncing around like a crab apple in a barrel of water, and it makes my ears feel full.
My Near-Death Adventures (99% True!) Page 13