The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs

by Betty G. Birney

  “Just asking folks if they have something special to show me.”

  “Mrs. Payne says Orville caught you snooping around. Of course, I’m sure you meant no harm.”

  Aunt Pretty snorted. “Poor Almeta. Orville has plenty to hide, if you get my meaning.” She brought a cupped hand to her mouth in a gesture that meant one thing: drinking. That habit was frowned on by both the Baptist and the Community Churches, except for medicinal purposes.

  “I have nothing to hide,” said Lessie. “Eben, if you want to see something special, come over and I’ll show you my log cabin quilt. I was just a young woman when I won second place at the county fair with that quilt.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, even though everybody had a log cabin quilt somewhere. Aunt Pretty had two or three.

  “Well, Lessie, this boy looks hungry,” Aunt Pretty said at last. “I guess I’ll have to feed him.”

  As we left the churchyard, Lessie called after me, “You come on over and see it, boy.”

  After Aunt Pretty’s big Sunday spread, Sal and I trudged back up Yellow Dog Road. Though my full stomach slowed me down a bit, I was feeling hopeful … until I heard footsteps running down the hill behind me. Without a doubt, Rae Ellen Hubbell knew how to ruin a perfectly nice afternoon.

  “Are you ready for my Wonderful now?”

  “No, I am not.” I took a firm tone with Rae Ellen.

  “Well, Junior Watkins’s Wonderful didn’t pan out, did it?”

  Sassafras Springs didn’t have a newspaper, and we didn’t need one either with Rae Ellen poking her nose into everybody’s business.

  “I may have to call the county sheriff and tell him you’re making a nuisance of yourself,” I told her.

  “Ha, ha, ha.” Rae Ellen didn’t sound the least bit scared. “You don’t have an idea of where to look, and I have a Wonderful for you. So you might as well see it.”

  “I’m looking for Wonders. And I’m looking alone.”

  I set off down the road at a fast clip. I knew she was behind me, but I didn’t look back, not all the way down to town.

  On Sunday, what few businesses we had in Sassafras Springs were closed. Hiram used to keep the gas pumps open, but there wasn’t enough traffic to make it worth his while.

  Sal and I crossed the County Road and headed for the creek. Jeb was already there, fishing.

  “I thought you were looking for Wonders,” he said.

  “I thought you were going to dig worms.”

  Jeb grinned. “Already did. I got a full bucket, so I decided to do some fishing.”

  I squatted down next to him. “Better not let Parson Carson see you.”

  “The fish must know it’s Sunday,” said Jeb. “I haven’t had a nibble. At least I don’t have to look after the young’uns.”

  Jeb’s parents always gave Maggie and him Sunday afternoon off.

  “Gee whiz, it’s boiling hot!” I lay back flat on the rock with my feet dangling in the cool creek water. “I’m trying to ditch Rae Ellen,” I explained, taking a quick look behind me. She was nowhere to be seen.

  But Maggie and another girl from school, Carrie, were wading through the water toward us. Maggie was scrawny as a stick, but us boys admired her because she was the only girl ever to win the watermelon-seed-spitting contest at the Sunday School Picnic. Carrie was teacher’s pet, but she deserved to be, since she never did a bad thing in her life.

  “Coogie Jackson’s got a Wonder for you!” said Maggie, waving her arms toward the woods. “He wants you to come—now.”

  Coogie (short for Jacob Coogan) Jackson had a Wonder? Now that got my attention. Coogie was no ordinary boy. At six, he ate a fly on a nickel bet and declared it tasted fine. At eight, he kissed a toad in exchange for a dish of ice cream. He said it tasted like chocolate (the toad and the ice cream both).

  At nine, Coogie ate a June bug on a dare. He rubbed his belly and said June bugs had more flavor and crunch than flies. He liked them both fine.

  Last year Coogie Jackson ate some leaves for two bits and got poison ivy all through his throat and innards. They thought he’d die, but he managed to pull through … barely. He ended up a little thinner, a little paler, and a lot hoarser than before.

  Some of us would try to rile him about it. “Got a tickle in your throat, Coogie?” we’d ask. Or “Eat any good leaves lately?”

  Coogie never got upset, but he didn’t eat anything for money after that either. Still, he had our respect. He knew things the rest of us would never know. That gave him power.

  I sat up straight. “Is it true, Carrie?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t ruin her reputation by lying.

  Carrie nodded. “He told me himself. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  It was hard to pass up a summons from Coogie, and it was hard to pass up a Wonder, except if it was from Rae Ellen.

  Jeb and I got up to follow the girls. Sal was already way ahead of the rest of us.

  There was nothing like a bridge over Liberty Creek, but there were spots where you could walk across a trail of fallen trees and big rocks to get to the other side. We followed the girls deep into the woods, to a place I’d never been. Jeb and I’d tried to explore those woods a few times, but if the chiggers didn’t discourage us, the poison ivy did. I wasn’t happy about going over there, but like I said, Coogie had power.

  We stopped in a small clearing, in front of an old, abandoned outhouse, weathered to the color of ashes and looking like a gust of wind would knock it flat. There were inch-wide gaps in the splintering wood and a tangle of weeds wrapped around it.

  There was nothing unusual about an outhouse in Sassafras Springs. Most folks still thought a bathroom inside the house was unnecessary, expensive, maybe even unsanitary, though Aunt Pretty sighed a lot when she read about big-city houses with indoor plumbing and wringer washers and iceboxes.

  This outhouse hadn’t been used in a long, long time. What it was doing out in the middle of nowhere was a puzzle. There was no house or even a shack in those woods. And you sure as shooting don’t need an outhouse if you don’t have folks living nearby.

  Deep in the woods, you don’t need a bathroom at all.

  “Are you funning me?” I asked, trying to make my voice low and even, like Pa’s.

  Coogie stepped out from behind the back of the outhouse. He had hair the color of cotton. If he wasn’t a boy, you’d have thought he was a white-haired old man. Instead, he was a white-haired young man, with pale skin and light blue eyes and almost-white lashes.

  Albert Bowie stepped out from behind him, like he was Coogie’s shadow.

  “What took you so long?” Coogie asked in his husky voice.

  “I hope you’re not telling me this old outhouse is a Wonder,” I told him. “Looks more like a calamity.”

  “You want a Wonder or not? I might decide to go home if you’re not interested.”

  “You’d better listen,” said Albert. “He’s got a humdinger for you.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying, “Who doesn’t?”

  “I want to hear it,” said Maggie, almost breathless.

  “Me too,” said Carrie.

  Nobody on Earth, except maybe Pa, could have kept me from hearing that story, but I didn’t want Coogie to know it.

  “I only have a few minutes,” I warned him.

  “Good enough,” said Coogie. He pointed to a fallen tree nearby. “Have a seat and I’ll tell you why this outhouse is a Wonder of the World.”

  Maggie, Carrie, and Jeb plopped down as they were told, but not me. I stood face-to-face with Coogie.

  “How would you know?” I asked. As much as I wanted a Wonder, I was suspicious.

  “My pa told me. Maybe you don’t know it, but he didn’t come from around here. He come all the way from Gladiola, Georgia.”

  “So what?” I asked. After all, my pa’s people came to Sassafras Springs by way of Virginia. Every family started somewhere else, except maybe the Indians

  “It’s not where he come
from that’s important,” said Coogie. “It’s how he come here. Do you want this dang Wonder or not?”

  It sounded like a challenge.

  “I’m listening,” I told him. But I still didn’t sit down.

  Coogie Jackson’s Story

  Flight from Georgia

  It’s my pa’s story, but he don’t tell it often ’cause he figures no one would believe him. The truth is hard to swallow sometimes. Anyway, Gladiola is a good five hundred miles from Sassafras Springs as the crow flies. Pa says even a crow couldn’t get from there to here in ten minutes. That’s exactly how long it took my pa to get here. They was the longest ten minutes of his life.

  He come in this very outhouse. It may not look like much now, but it was the finest outhouse made by man. My grandpappy built it with his own two hands. Pa told me my grandpappy said the devil himself couldn’t knock this one over.

  See, there was a bunch of scalawags around Gladiola—family by the name of Pitt. They gave Pa a terrible time at school. Gave everybody a terrible time. They scared the little girls and cheated at games and even tried to burn the school down. They ran roughshod over the whole county—tearing down fences so the cows would get loose, helping themselves to everybody’s crops, and stealing the storekeeper blind.

  But their favorite trick of all was knocking over outhouses. You might say it was a hobby of theirs. They’d let a person get good and settled inside, then rush up and tip it over. It’d take a while for the victim to crawl out, but the yelling started right away.

  They did it to Grandpappy late one night, and he was madder than anything. He vowed that would never happen to him again, and he set to building a tip-proof outhouse! My pa says everybody thought he’d lost his mind. He let the crops go to seed and hammered on the dang thing night and day. He had a few failures and had to start over, but Pa says he was busting with pride when he finished.

  It was a two-seater with a window, so if there was mischief, Grandpappy could look out and see who the culprits were.

  He made Pa and his brother try and tip it over. “Harder! Push harder,” he yelled at them. Well, Pa was sixteen and pretty strong, but that old outhouse wouldn’t budge. Grandpappy said it was solid as the rock of ages.

  I don’t know if those Pitts ever tried to tip it over, but if they did, they must have been disappointed. Anyway, Grandpappy and his family could sit in that outhouse with no worry of being tipped again!

  Then there come a scorcher of a day in August. The air got heavy and still. The sky had a sickly greenish color. And whoever heard of a green sky?

  Pa felt the call of nature and ducked inside the outhouse.

  He wasn’t setting there long when he heard what sounded like a train coming—and it sounded like it was coming right for the outhouse. However, the train didn’t even pass near their farm, much less Gladiola. As he was pondering that thought, the outhouse started bumping and bouncing like a bucking bronco. He figured the Pitt family was back again. He held on tight to the seat and waited for the outhouse to tip over, but the banging and the shaking got worse.

  Just as Pa thought Judgment Day had come, the outhouse started spinning around like the merry-go-round at the county fair.

  He decided to look out the window and see how the Pitts could manage this. Was he surprised to see he was surrounded by fluffy white clouds! He wasn’t on the ground no more—he was flying high, smack dab in the middle of a cyclone!

  He thought he was on his way to heaven, and he hoped he’d be able to stay there. So any little bad thing he ever done—a white lie here, a small mistake there—whirled through his mind as he twirled through the clouds.

  Next, a funny thing happened. The clouds parted and Pa could look out the window and see what was under him. What he saw was pure amazing: blue water as far as the eye could see. It was the ocean, rolling right under him! Quick as a blink, he was looking down on castles. He must have been going over Spain or England. He spun around some more and saw those mountains with the snow on top. The Alpines. Before he knew it, he was over that Big Wall of China, right next to the famous Pyramids of India!

  He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was dreaming, and when he looked down, he was over a big old desert somewhere and whoosh—he was gazing down at blue waters again. He spun around faster and faster and higher and higher, and you know what? He was whirling over ice and snow in all directions. There was the North Pole, with Santy Claus waving at him!

  Pa didn’t have a chance to wave back, ’cause he twirled his way straight down along a big river that was so muddy, it had to be the Mississipp. He held on for dear life as the outhouse started jerking and jolting, ’most shaking his teeth loose. Pa figured this was the end, and while he was preparing himself, the outhouse dropped straight down and hit the ground like a load of bricks.

  Pa says it got real still, real quiet. Quiet as snow falling. Quiet as, well, dead quiet. It took a while for him to get up the courage to look out the window. He dang sure didn’t know what to expect. But he took a deep breath and looked out and saw: this. He had landed on this actual spot. All the way from Gladiola, Georgia, clear across the world, to Sassafras Springs by way of one of the biggest, baddest cyclones to hit the country!

  He was stunned at first. Shucks, who wouldn’t be? He wandered outside, kind of ginger-like. He stumbled his way across the creek, to the General. Hiram Yount’s father run it back then. He called the preacher, who listened to the story and let my pa stay at his place for a while. Pa wrote home and got a letter back saying that the cyclone had flattened the house, killing my grandpappy. Grandma and the other young’uns were all right, but they’d lost everything. Poor Grandpappy Jackson. If he’d built his house like he built his outhouse, he might still be alive today.

  And that’s the story of this here Wonder: The outhouse that flew around the world.

  I looked over at Jeb, Maggie, and Carrie. Their jaws were just about setting on the ground. I guess mine was too. I never heard such a story before.

  Albert stepped forward. “You putting that down with your Wonders?” he asked.

  “You got any proof?”

  Albert and Coogie exchanged a quick look. “I got proof,” said Coogie. “You go inside there. You’ll see those two seats, and next to the window, my pa scribbled a map of what he saw. Dated and signed it, right there on the wall.”

  My good sense made me hesitate.

  “There’s your proof, waiting,” said Albert, pointing at the door. “Go on.”

  So I went inside and the door slammed hard behind me. Right away I noticed something wrong: There was one seat, not two. I turned to the window, looking for some writing and a map. I realized I’d been had about one second before that rickety, rackety, falling-down outhouse tipped on its side.

  I crashed down with it and lay there, listening to Coogie and Albert whooping and hollering outside, and Jeb and the girls giggling up a storm.

  I’d been had and I should have known better. I was probably the only person in Sassafras Springs, except for Violet Rowan, who knew the Great Pyramid was in Egypt, not India like he’d said.

  And that thing about Santy Claus waving, well, like I said, I’d been had.

  I crawled over to the window, which was way down low to the ground.

  “Go eat some leaves, Coogie Jackson!” I shouted. “Go eat poison ivy!”

  He kept on laughing and I didn’t blame him.

  Sal came up to the window, sniffing and whining, but I was in no hurry to get up. I stayed in there, thinking, until the light coming in through the window started to fade.

  “You can come out now. They’re gone,” I finally heard Jeb say.

  I crawled out through the window.

  “That Coogie,” I grumbled, brushing spider webs off my clothes.

  “Sorry you got tricked,” said Jeb. “It was a good whopper, though, don’t you think?”

  “Yep. But it wasn’t a Wonder.”

  Jeb snickered. “That thing about Santy Claus, that was good.�
�

  I shook my head. “Coogie Jackson would do or say anything.”

  On my way home, I wondered how long it would take me to live the whole thing down. The girls had already told Rae Ellen, no doubt, and Albert wouldn’t be shy about spreading the word. I was ready to hop a train to Colorado and never come back.

  Pa was heading out of the barn when I got back home.

  “Find yourself a Wonder?” he asked.

  “Naw. Just saw some friends down at the creek. Pa, you know about an old outhouse in the woods?”

  “Other side of the creek?”

  I nodded.

  “Built by a fellow, oh, twenty years ago,” said Pa. “He was a squatter who pitched a tent in the woods and built that outhouse.”

  Pa stared out at the barn with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “He seemed like a nice enough fellow until Marvin Peevey found out he was stealing folks’ horses and selling ’em over in Oak Grove. The fellow picked up his tent and left in a hurry, but he had to leave his outhouse behind. I can’t believe it’s still standing.”

  “It’s not, after today.”

  Pa looked over at me, squinting his eyes. “You in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. I was tricked and tricked good by Coogie Jackson. And I’m never going to live it down,” I said.

  “Folks forget over time,” Pa said after a long pause. “I know some upstanding people who’ve lived down worse than that. I’m not going to tell you which ones, though.”

  When we got to the porch, Aunt Pretty was sitting in her rocker, but for once, instead of crocheting, she was sewing with a needle and thread, and she wasn’t darning socks, either.

  “What’s that you’re making?” Pa asked.

  “Well, a boy can’t travel on a train in rags and tatters, can he? I’m making Eben a new shirt. And I’m going to take Grandpa’s old trousers out of the trunk in the attic and cut them down too.”

  “Going to knit him up some shoes, too?” Pa asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Aunt Pretty chuckled. “Could if I had a mind to do it.”