pressure on a real bad gunshot wound.
Nope, this was unusual. But it was the Amos I knew. It was also the Amos I needed to see. In the past, when he let his hair down this far, we usually got in trouble, but that was before the badge.
"Amos," I started, "when was the last time we got into trouble?"
"Tonight," he said, kind of dancing around the kitchen with a sandwich in one hand and another in his mouth. He was dressed in cut-off shorts, a worn and ragged John Deere cap, his beeper, a torn-up T-shirt that said "Protected by Kimber," and no shoes. This could only mean one thing.
The river.
WHEN AMOS AND I WERE TWELVE AND ELEVEN RESPECTIVELY, we built a raft. We had spent the previous month reading Robinson Crusoe and were in the middle of Huckleberry Finn, so we had a hankering. The raft took us most of a month, but we were a lot smarter about it than Crusoe. We cut cedars growing out of the water, so that when they fell, they fell into the water. We couldn't understand why old Rob didn't think about that before he cut that big tree so far from the ocean. We saw it coming the moment he cut it. I said, "He'll never get that thing in the water," and Amos said, "Yeah, how's he gonna drag it? It's not like he can move it." We were right. Rob never got it to the water.
We trimmed the top branches and bound together twelve cedar trees, about a foot in diameter each, and then floated the whole thing downstream to the main river, where we floated it into shallow water and tied it up. We did most of the work in the water, covering the base with about thirty smaller trees. We cut them in half and sanded the tops so that we actually had a flat floor that fit rather tightly into the subfloor beneath it. Made for a pretty good raft. At least Papa thought so.
On top of the flooring, which was twelve by twelve, we built a lean-to that could sleep both of us. We even put a woodburning stove in it. We had planned to float to the Gulf, but then found out that our river didn't dump into the Gulf. Whoops.
The whole thing weighed a ton, and once it got good and waterlogged, probably more. Cedar trees are pretty heavy. It needed about eight inches of water to float. We'd travel downriver, however far we could get in a night, and then hook the raft to a barge going north to pick up soy, corn, or whatever the farmers were trying to get to the railroad in Brunswick.
In the span of a summer, we got to know most of the usual captains. We'd float a day or two, fish, eat whatever we caught, smoke a pipe like Rob and Huck, get dizzy, sleep, and then about Sunday afternoon, we'd throw a rope, hook a barge, and it'd pull us north. We could reverse in five hours what had taken us nearly two or three days.
That's not entirely fair. On our float down, we'd tie up and fish for a few hours, sometimes a day. It depended on if and where the fish were biting. Then we'd float until we felt like fishing again. On several occasions we thought about ditching the raft, but after all that work, we just couldn't do it. Too much invested. Besides, the barge captains were lonely and liked having somebody to talk to, and we liked not having to row that thing back up that river.
We tried that just once. Floated downriver about twelve miles, spent the night, then thought we'd paddle back up it. Not a chance. You'd think, as critical as we'd been of Crusoe, we'd have thought of that. Funny how you can think of some things and not others.
Then about fifteen years ago, I found an old forty-horse Evinrude that belonged to Papa. All the times I worked and played in that barn, and I never knew it was there. We took it to Bobby's small engine-repair shop in town, and Bobby spent a week tinkering with it, replacing this hose and that seal. Pretty soon he had it puttering like a champ.
Bobby helped us rig up a platform out of steel. We sank the bolts all the way through the timber and hooked the Evinrude to the back of the raft. That was the day that heaven came to
Nope, this was unusual. But it was the Amos I knew. It was also the Amos I needed to see. In the past, when he let his hair down this far, we usually got in trouble, but that was before the badge.
"Amos," I started, "when was the last time we got into trouble?"
"Tonight," he said, kind of dancing around the kitchen with a sandwich in one hand and another in his mouth. He was dressed in cut-off shorts, a worn and ragged John Deere cap, his beeper, a torn-up T-shirt that said "Protected by Kimber," and no shoes. This could only mean one thing.
The river.
WHEN AMOS AND I WERE TWELVE AND ELEVEN RESPECTIVELY, we built a raft. We had spent the previous month reading Robinson Crusoe and were in the middle of Huckleberry Finn, so we had a hankering. The raft took us most of a month, but we were a lot smarter about it than Crusoe. We cut cedars growing out of the water, so that when they fell, they fell into the water. We couldn't understand why old Rob didn't think about that before he cut that big tree so far from the ocean. We saw it coming the moment he cut it. I said, "He'll never get that thing in the water," and Amos said, "Yeah, how's he gonna drag it? It's not like he can move it." We were right. Rob never got it to the water.
We trimmed the top branches and bound together twelve cedar trees, about a foot in diameter each, and then floated the whole thing downstream to the main river, where we floated it into shallow water and tied it up. We did most of the work in the water, covering the base with about thirty smaller trees. We cut them in half and sanded the tops so that we actually had a flat floor that fit rather tightly into the subfloor beneath it. Made for a pretty good raft. At least Papa thought so.
On top of the flooring, which was twelve by twelve, we built a lean-to that could sleep both of us. We even put a woodburning stove in it. We had planned to float to the Gulf, but then found out that our river didn't dump into the Gulf. Whoops.
The whole thing weighed a ton, and once it got good and waterlogged, probably more. Cedar trees are pretty heavy. It needed about eight inches of water to float. We'd travel downriver, however far we could get in a night, and then hook the raft to a barge going north to pick up soy, corn, or whatever the farmers were trying to get to the railroad in Brunswick.
In the span of a summer, we got to know most of the usual captains. We'd float a day or two, fish, eat whatever we caught, smoke a pipe like Rob and Huck, get dizzy, sleep, and then about Sunday afternoon, we'd throw a rope, hook a barge, and it'd pull us north. We could reverse in five hours what had taken us nearly two or three days.
That's not entirely fair. On our float down, we'd tie up and fish for a few hours, sometimes a day. It depended on if and where the fish were biting. Then we'd float until we felt like fishing again. On several occasions we thought about ditching the raft, but after all that work, we just couldn't do it. Too much invested. Besides, the barge captains were lonely and liked having somebody to talk to, and we liked not having to row that thing back up that river.
We tried that just once. Floated downriver about twelve miles, spent the night, then thought we'd paddle back up it. Not a chance. You'd think, as critical as we'd been of Crusoe, we'd have thought of that. Funny how you can think of some things and not others.
Then about fifteen years ago, I found an old forty-horse Evinrude that belonged to Papa. All the times I worked and played in that barn, and I never knew it was there. We took it to Bobby's small engine-repair shop in town, and Bobby spent a week tinkering with it, replacing this hose and that seal. Pretty soon he had it puttering like a champ.
Bobby helped us rig up a platform out of steel. We sank the bolts all the way through the timber and hooked the Evinrude to the back of the raft. That was the day that heaven came to
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