The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (7 page)

“Oh, you poor baby,” one of the women said as she came toward Jack with a clean kitchen towel. She put the towel over Jack’s head and blotted and wiped most of the water from him.

Her efforts only tended to make Jack look more pitiful.

“You come over here by the stove, boy, and dry off and warm up some before you get back out in that rain, and you keep that hood up, ya heah. You gonna catch your death of cold.”

“Yes, ma’am, but I’m late now and people are expectin’ their papers,” Jack said in his best hero’s tone.

“Well, I tell you what,” she said, “you’re gonna eat one of these sausages and a biscuit to warm your insides before you go back out there.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” Jack gave in to her insistence.

After he had eaten the delicious sausage and biscuit, he thanked the ladies again and returned to his route, which was just one more paper at the junior college’s president’s house.

From the president’s house, home was just a block away. Jack rode his bike into the garage and parked it in the front so it wouldn’t block the car or the pickup truck.

He went into the house through the breezeway from the garage so he could leave his wet slicker there to drip.

He said hello to his mother as he passed through the kitchen and found his dad in the living room to give him the paper.

Jack’s mother stuck her head out of the kitchen door and said, “Jack, you go to your room and change those wet pants and shoes. Bring the wet ones back to the breezeway so I can put them in the wash. Supper will be ready in about ten minutes. “You hungry?”

“Not too much but I could eat, thank you.”

Chapter Five

The River

It was good that spring break started the next week. Billy Joe was about to come unglued. He and Jack could get their substitute newspaper carriers to run their paper routes for a week while they fished and camped in the woods if their mommas would let them go.

Jack did foresee a problem getting their mommas to let them go for a week without adults.

“I think we need to go out with the Methodists on their sleep-out at the Boy Scout camp. Your momma and mine would, for sure, let us go on that and the Methodists sure eat good.”

“You mean you wanna go waste a week with those sissies in the woods?” Billy Joe asked. “Most of ’em ain’t never been out all night without their mommas.”

“They ain’t sissies,” Jack said. “They’re just not used to being out in the woods. The only reason I wanna do it is, that’s the only way Momma will let me spend the night out there.”

“Yeah,” Billy Joe agreed. “My momma thinks bears and alligators are gonna eat me or somethin’ but I don’t know if it’s worth it to go out with this Methodist Youth Fellowship bunch or not.”

“You know the Methodists have the best parties and eats in town. The Baptists and the Presbyterians pray a lot but they don’t eat near as well. Besides, what you don’t like is the Easter egg hunts but it ain’t Easter. They won’t do none of that,” Jack argued.

“What men are goin’?” Billy Joe asked.

“Louis Jackson and Ted Ward, Jr. is what I’ve heard.”

“Louis Jackson! When he was scout master, he used to make us march and he would kick us if we got out of step. I think he was a marine or somethin’ in the war,” Billy Joe protested.

“Aw, he ain’t gonna make us march on a campout,” Jack said. “The worst he can do is make us bring in too much firewood.”

“Where they havin’ this ‘campout’?” Billy Joe asked.

“Out at the scout camp on Leaf River,” Jack answered.

“Now that they built the shelter with the big fireplace and put in the generator wheel on the river, it ain’t like bein’ in the woods a’tall,” Billy Joe protested.

“What we gonna do if we don’t go with them?” Jack asked.

“We could borrow Mr. Ezell’s boat and run some trotlines further on up the river,” Billy Joe proposed. “The river’s just right, I hear.”

“Now you know as well as I do that neither your momma nor my momma are gonna let us do that after what happened last time,” Jack said.

“Now we couldn’t help it if the river rose and Mr. Ezell’s boat got away. We had plenty of food and a good fire on that sandbar. The only danger was in our mommas’ minds,” Billy Joe pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s still in their minds and they ain’t gonna let us go,” Jack rightly stated.

“Okay, I’ll go, but only ’cause my momma will let me go with the Methodist Youth Fellowship but she wouldn’t let us go by ourselves,” Billy Joe agreed.

The boys rode their bicycles up to the Methodist Church, where church ladies were signing up boys to go on the weeklong campout.

Mrs. Nelson gave each boy a paper and said, “Give this to your momma. It tells them what we are doing to make sure you are safe and tells them that we will have a car out there to bring anyone back to town if need be. On the back, there’s a list of the things you will need to bring. All the food will be furnished by George Moyers’ grocery store and on Jamboree night, Mr. Moyers and Mr. Dick Mills will come out and fry chicken for everybody. Just give this paper to your mommas and tell them they can call me if they have any questions.” She paused then added, “Oh yes, each of you must have a bicycle in good shape with a basket on it. The campers will leave from right here at the church at seven AM the morning of June fifteenth.”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” both boys said and left, each with his sheet of paper.

“That fried chicken by Mr. Moyers and Mr. Mills does sound good,” Billy Joe said.

“Yeah, and I like hearing that we are gonna ride our bikes and not have to walk. Walkin’ on a gravel road is not good,” Jack said. “On a bike, I can ride the hard ruts or the shoulder and make good time.”

“They’re not gonna let you ‘make good time,’” Billy Joe said. “You’re gonna have to wait for the slowest ones.”

“At least I can pump on up ahead a bit and then wait for the slow ones.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Billy Joe agreed.

The boys easily got their parents’ blessing to go on the campout, and their mothers made sure they had everything called for on the list, including soap, a toothbrush with toothpaste and a towel. The mothers also added essentials of their own conception, such as a small first aid kit, a flashlight, an extra cap and pencil and paper to write what happened every day. The boys called this their “daily report.”

On June 15th, Jack and Billy Joe were at the door of the church recreation center at six thirty, the first ones there.

Louis Jackson came at about a quarter to seven. He made all the boys lay out the items in their packs for his inspection and yelled at them if he didn’t like what he saw.

In the end, none of the boys were not allowed to go, but he seemed to think this little bit of marine boot camp was necessary before they departed.

“Okay, men,” Mr. Jackson bellowed, “we’ll ride single file on the left shoulder facing the traffic. I don’t want to see anybody wandering off. I’ll be riding in the back and if I see you horsin’ around, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t. Do you understand me?”

There was a half-hearted chorus of “Yes, sir” from the boys.

They started off down the road with Jack and Billy Joe making sure they were in the lead. Mr. Ward was driving to the camp in his car so they would have an emergency way back to town if anyone needed it. Mr. Jackson was the only adult riding a bicycle and, the boys reckoned, he would be in the rear and out of their sight.

Jack led the string of about twenty-five bicycles through town at a leisurely pace. This gave the boys and Mr. Jackson a chance to get used to that pace and to settle in.

Jack had to stop for the red light at US11, the only traffic light in town. He glanced at the service station across the highway and saw Lige Garner standing there watching him. Jack could swear it was an evil glare. When the light turned red, Jack moved on but Lige’s eyes followed him until the bike procession was out of sight.

Outside of town, Jack started to pick up the pace a little at a time. For a while, all the riders were able to keep up, but when they hit the slow rolling hills outside of town, some started to drop back. Jack knew that Mr. Jackson couldn’t pump his pedals fast enough or long enough to catch him to slow him down.

The bicycle ride to Leaf River was something that Jack and Billy Joe had done many times. They both could go twice as fast as the other riders with little strain.

“Mr. Jackson’s gonna chew you out when he gets here,” Billy Joe warned Jack.

“I don’t think he will.” Jack smiled. “What’s he gonna say, ‘You pumped too fast for me to keep up’? Not that marine. He’ll never admit that I put him under any kinda strain.”

Jack and Billy Joe arrived at the scout camp on Leaf River with the next nearest bicycler not in sight.

The main structure of the camp was a very well-built shelter with a roof and open sides on three walls and a very large fireplace in the end wall. The roof was held up by twelve-inch-by-twelve-inch wooden rough sawn posts firmly implanted in a concrete floor. There were six large plank tables with seats built onto their sides placed around the big room. No trees that didn’t actually stand where a building was to be placed were cut. The camp was very well built.

The lumber had been donated and specially cut by the Jones Lumber Company. All nails and other hardware were donated by Will Smith’s Hardware Store. The county road supervisor, who was also a building contractor, supervised the county road gang—prisoners—in building the camp.

Within forty-five minutes, the first bicyclers started to come in but it was a full two hours before Mr. Jackson appeared. Mr. Ward kidded him a little but not too much.

“You did a good job in the lead, Jack,” Mr. Jackson said. “I didn’t think you could keep up that pace. Sometime you and I will have to go on a bike trip, just the two of us. Riding behind the other boys, I couldn’t go any faster than the slowest ones.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said.

“Okay, boys,” Mr. Ward said, “pick out your sleeping place and pile your gear there. I want you all outside and not under the shelter to sleep unless it rains. Let’s build a big bonfire in the center of the opening where there are no trees. To do that, we can dig a fire pit and clean off the ground of all plants, leaves and twigs for fifteen feet all the way around it. There will be details of boys to take care of all our chores. The water truck will come out every day to fill the water tank but we still need to conserve water. Bathing and washing will be done in the river. The tank water is only for drinking. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” one boy said, holding up his hand. “How do we know what detail we are on?”

“I’m gonna sit down at this table”—he pointed toward one of the tables under the shelter—“and you’ll form a line. As it is your turn, I will assign you to a detail. Whatever that detail is, you will be stuck with it for that day. Each day, I will post a new detail list beside the fireplace in the shelter. Each of you will check it each morning and be on that detail for that day.”

“What are the details?” another boy asked.

“The fire pit detail I have already mentioned,” Mr. Ward said. “We have the firewood detail, the generator detail, the police-up detail and the lifeguard detail. The duties of each one will also be posted with the detail list. Each detail should elect a captain who will be in charge.” He paused, looked around the boys and asked, “Any other questions?”

There were none, so he took his place at the table to make the list and the boys lined up.

“Let’s go to the river,” Jack said after they had both signed up and were on the generator detail. “We’ve got an hour until we have to be at the generator.”

They walked the fifty yards or so to the clay bank overlooking the river and looked down. It was a high bank, about thirty feet above the water.

The river itself appeared to be at a normal level, not too high and not too low. At this point, the river was more narrow than usual so the water flowed fairly swiftly, but at no point was the Leaf a fast-moving river at its normal level. As a matter of fact, the boys camping here swam every day and had no problem swimming against the current.

The two boys walked down the clay steps that earlier camping groups had hewn into the clay bank to get to the water’s edge.

“We’re not far from where Mr. Ezell docks his boat,” Jack pointed out. “Maybe a mile up river.”

“Yeah,” Billy Joe agreed. “But you know Mr. Jackson won’t let us go get it and if we did, he’d make us haul other boys.”

“Maybe next week our mommas will let us camp out on the river and we can run some trotlines,” Jack speculated.

“Nah, they won’t unless we can get our daddies to ask them for us,” Billy Joe said. “We better go put on our bathing suits if we’re gonna make it to the generator detail on time.”

The generator was the camp’s source of power—for lights only—and was run by the river itself. The camp’s builders had used a pile driver to sink two large poles into the bottom of the river and had run guy wires from the tops of the poles to the base of trees on both sides of the river to hold them steady and straight up. The generator was on a moving contraption between the poles and could be lowered to water level by a windlass. The windlass had a crank on both sides so four boys could operate it at one time, two on each side.

The generator, of course, never touched the water. It was on a shaft with a cog on one end that meshed with a cog on the water wheel. The water wheel floated up and down on two fifty-five-gallon drums so that only its paddle fins touched the water no matter what the river level.

The job of the generator detail was to swim out to the poles, climb them using the climbing spikes that had been driven into each pole and lower the generator until the cogs meshed and the generator started to turn.

Any time the generator was on the lights would be on. The lights furnished the proper load for the generator output.

Jack and Billy Joe liked this detail since it involved swimming in the river, and that was the only time they were allowed to dive off the generator tower.

Mr. Ward was in charge of this detail and explained each part of the operation to the boys as they went along.