The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (11 page)

Jack parked his bike behind the house and went in the back door. His mother was in the kitchen.

“Hey, Jack,” she greeted him. “Y’all have a good time?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

“What did y’all do?”

“We caught a lot of fish, cleaned, cooked and ate them and found lots of arrowheads for my collection. We got to bed early so when we got up this morning, we decided to come on home early.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t have any trouble,” she said.

Chapter Eight

The Water Tower

Jack was sleeping off his weariness from the adventure at the tenant house. His dreams were pleasant and he was sleeping well in his own bed. He could probably sleep forever.

“Jack, Jack, wake up,” the insistent voice said.

“What’cha want,” Jack asked with a sleepy, puzzled voice.

“It’s Daddy, Jack. I need your help.”

“To do what?” Jack asked, still puzzled.

“Get up and get dressed, I’ll tell you then.”

“Okay. What time is it?” Jack asked. He felt as if he had just gone to bed.

“Two AM or there about,” his father answered. “Get dressed.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be right there.”

Jack’s father knew Jack would get dressed now that he had said he would and didn’t need watching. He retreated to the kitchen to wait.

Within two minutes, Jack appeared in the kitchen fully dressed. “Yes, sir. What do you need?” he asked.

“We’ve talked about this before. I can’t get ahold of Willie or Leonard and they’re the only ones who have done it before. You’ve never done it before either but you’ve watched and I have explained it to you. Somebody’s gotta do it and I think you can.”

“Can do what?” Jack asked, still puzzled.

“Unstick the float in the tank,” his father said.

Jack was dumbfounded. Sure, he had told his dad that he “could do that” as they watched one of Daddy’s hired hands climb the leg of the water tower to unstick the float that stopped the well pump from pumping.

Normally, when the well pump had pumped enough water into the tank to reach a predetermined “full” level, the float would rise with the water and activate a switch to turn the pump off. Sometimes, the float arm would stick and the pump would not shut off. In those cases, the pump would continue to put water into the tank until it overflowed. When that happened, somebody had to climb up the tank leg onto the catwalk, up the metal ladder on the side of the tank, open the entry hatch, reach into the water, grab the float arm and shake it loose. That would stop the pump and the overflow.

“You said you could do this. Now let’s see if you really can,” his dad said with the tone of a challenge.

After a terrified pause, Jack said, “I’ll try.”

“Good,” his father said. “I could turn the pump off at the pumphouse but if I do that it will take two days to recycle the three city pumps to the right sequence. If you can do this, it will go right back to its proper sequence.”

They walked out through the breezeway to the garage and got into the rickety old pickup truck. Jack’s father started the truck and backed out of the garage. Terror built in Jack for the two-block drive to the tank. He would be able to, he hoped, climb the tank leg and the tank ladder. However, he had been told by Leonard and Willie that the scariest place was where the ladder leaned out from the tank to get around the tank roof lip. They had told him that you feel as if your back is parallel to the ground.

Jack told himself, “Get that out of your mind. You gotta do this. Willie and Leonard do it all the time and they never fall off. I can’t have Daddy thinking I’m a coward.”

Jack’s father parked the truck beside the pumphouse under the tank and said, “Come on. Let’s talk about what you’re gonna do.”

They walked around to the tank leg that Jack was going to ascend.

Jack’s mind was still saying, “Can I do this? What if I can’t do this and freeze halfway up?”

Sometimes Jack wished that his father was a bricklayer or a carpenter rather than the superintendent of the Waterworks. Some people even called him “Gildersleeve” after the character on the radio show
The Great Gildersleeve
. His dad had even tried to impersonate the laugh of Gildersleeve as done by the actor, Willard Waterman, and he had gotten pretty good at it.

“Now tell me what you’re gonna do,” his father said.

“Uh, I’m gonna climb this leg to the catwalk, climb the tank ladder up the side and onto the roof and open the hatchway to see inside,” Jack said haltingly.

“Then what?”

“I lock my legs around the ladder, reach into the water and find the float arm. It should be to my right. I pull on the float arm toward me and up. I keep pulling on it until I hear it go into the ‘off’ position, a click.”

“What if you pull your hardest and it won’t come loose?” his father asked.

“I get the crowbar that Leonard has left up there wedged in the hatch door brace,” Jack continued. “I put it between the float arm and the frame piece that it’s mounted on and pry on it hard and steady. That should loosen the jammed arm and let it float free.”

“You’ve got it,” his dad said. “Now, coming down is where some people have trouble. As you go off the roof lip, it does get scary. Your feet and legs are hanging out in space until you can bend at the waist to put your feet back on the ladder rungs. Just be careful and don’t get in a hurry. Hold on tight with both hands and slip your hands down the railing. Don’t turn loose with either hand. When you are able to bend your waist, hold on tight with your hands and feel for the ladder rungs with your feet. Move one foot or hand at the time. Then ease down the ladder. Don’t get in a hurry. After that roof lip, you have it made. Take it slow all the way to the ground. You have any questions?”

“No, sir,” Jack said, trying to sound calm.

“I wish I could do this but I’ve gotten too old and fat,” his dad said.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Jack put one hand and one foot in the rungs of the tank leg. He had begun.

“Don’t look down,” Jack told himself as he ascended to the first cross brace to the legs, about twenty feet up. He continued on up toward the second cross brace. He sorta wished he had worn his leather gloves. His hands were smarting a little. Maybe he was holding onto the rungs too tightly. He thought about that for a minute but decided he would rather have sore fingers than lose his grip and fall off.

At the second leg’s cross brace, he stopped to rest. He thought about what he had learned in school. The energy used to move a given weight to a given height was the same no matter whether you pushed it up an incline, carried it up steps or climbed a ladder with it. He didn’t know what that had to do with this but it did get his mind off falling for a minute.

“Okay, let’s try this final third of the tank leg,” he told himself as he started to climb again.

“Just a few feet further,” he consoled himself, “to the catwalk where I’ll be safe.”

The wind had begun to blow fairly briskly by the time he stepped off the last leg rung and onto the catwalk. He backed up against the tank and closed his eyes, trying to relax. It worked to some degree but he was not able to fool himself that he was not sixty to eighty feet in the air. He also knew that he still had the tank ladder to climb and the dreaded roof lip to climb over.

Jack opened his eyes and looked into the clear, starry night. He could see that he had attracted a small crowd of rubberneckers. They were on the sidewalk across the street and there were about ten of them.
What are they waiting for, me to fall?
he briefly wondered.

Enough rest,
he thought.
I gotta get this over with.

He eased around the tank catwalk to the metal ladder welded to the side of the tank. The rungs were round so this would not be as hard on his hands as the flat leg rungs had been. His dad had turned on the catwalk lights so he could see fairly well. He had thought the ladder leaned out at the roof lip only but it actually angled out from the catwalk to the roof lip. This made the angle much more bearable and not nearly as dangerous as he had imagined.

“Here we go,” he said aloud without realizing that he had.

Starting as he had on the leg, he placed one foot and one hand on the ladder and slowly started up. From the catwalk to the roof lip, Jack estimated it was about forty feet, but the going would be faster.

Occasionally, as he moved up the ladder he felt drops of water on his face. “Huh, with all those stars out, it’s still raining.” Then he realized that it was not rain. The water overflowing the tank was on the other side of the tank, but this wind that had come up was blowing it around the tank and it was hitting his face.
That’s okay,
he thought,
that’ll keep me awake,
and he almost laughed aloud at his little joke.

He kept climbing and hardly realized that he had climbed over the lip and was on the roof. There were two lights up here—one steady light that his dad had turned on and one on a short pole in the center of the roof. It blinked.
That’s the one for airplanes so they won’t hit the tank,
Jack thought.

He continued to pull himself along the ladder until it abruptly ended. Jack had a moment’s panic until he saw the hatch handle. He started to reach for it then had second thoughts about that. He wrapped his legs around the ladder rails as best he could and then reached for the hatch handle with his left hand. The hatch opened to the left. Jack saw the crowbar wedged in the hatch brace as the hatch folded over and lay on the tank roof. “Now what?” Jack wondered.

He peered into the opening but could see nothing except the reflected lights on the water. It looked like a little ocean.

Reach into the water and feel for the float arm,
he thought.

To do that, he had to move forward on the ladder until his upper torso was almost all hanging over the opening.

He reached into the water to his right and felt metal. Examining it with his fingers, it seemed to be a flat bar. He moved his fingers up the bar and found that it was attached to the tank frame by a metal pin held in place by a cotter key.

That must be the float arm,
he thought, running his fingers back down the bar toward what he assumed was the float.

After reaching as far as he could down the bar, he remembered what his dad had said: “Pull the arm toward you and up.”

He grasped it tightly and pulled toward him and up. It moved ever so slightly. Encouraged, he grasped the bar again and pulled harder.

The arm moving up so swiftly startled Jack and he moved back on the ladder. He also heard something strange, or rather, didn’t hear it. The whine of the pump that he had heard since he had been here had stopped.

He wanted to go to the edge of the roof and yell, “Did that do it?” But he knew he couldn’t do that. He would have to wait until he reached the catwalk, at least, before he could yell down that question.

He thought about resting a minute before he started back down but he knew he couldn’t do that. He wanted to get back on the ground. He backed down the ladder a couple of feet and pulled the hatch closed.

As he backed down the ladder and around the roof lip, he heard the applause of the people on the sidewalk across the street. He wanted to look at them and wave but he was too afraid to turn loose with one hand to do that. He kept going down the ladder. On the catwalk he turned toward the small audience below and waved. They applauded again.

He went to the break in the catwalk railing but remembered his dad’s admonition to “go slow and be safe.” Actually, he didn’t have to remember that bit of advice. It took a lot of nerve to hold the railing with his back to open space and feel for the tank leg rung. He did it very carefully and started easing down. At the bottom he jumped to the ground with a sigh.

His dad wanted to give him a hug but knowing that would embarrass Jack in front of the crowd, he settled for a manly handshake.

“Good job, son,” he said as loudly as possible so Jack’s audience could hear it.

Jack looked at the group of people, and right up front was Billy Joe.

“What you doin’ here, Billy Joe?” Jack asked.

“We’re sposedta be goin’ fishin’. We still goin’?” he asked.

The crowd laughed.

Chapter Nine

The Summer Camp

Jack laughed along with the crowd who had been watching him unstick the float valve. He knew that he would go fishing with Billy Joe even though he had had little sleep. “Yeah, let’s go,” he said, and the crowd laughed again.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t wanna.” Billy Joe gave him a way out.

“Naw, let’s go,” Jack decided. It was settled.

They rode their bikes out to Ed Merchant’s pond. Within fifteen minutes, Jack was asleep with his fishing pole in his hand.

“Aw shoot,” Billy Joe said. “This ain’t no good. You can’t stay awake. We had better get on back home so you can rest up for goin’ to Roosevelt Park tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack mumbled.

Billy Joe managed to get Jack packed and on his bike headed toward home. Jack slept all afternoon and all night. He was very tired.

Jack’s mother dropped him off at the courthouse early the next morning. She helped him unload all his gear and insisted on giving him a big hug before she drove away teary-eyed.

Sure am glad I got here thirty minutes early,
Jack thought. He wouldn’t have wanted his buddies seeing that mushy hug from his momma.

The street was very quiet. Jack had gotten in the habit of looking all around to see if Lige Garner was in sight. He wasn’t, so Jack breathed a sigh of relief.

Billy Joe’s dad pulled up beside Jack within the next five minutes and delivered Billy Joe.

“Enjoy yourself, son,” he said and Billy Joe replied, “Yes, sir.”

Now that’s the way to say goodbye,
Jack thought.
Why can’t mommas do that?