Aquifer: A Novel (2 page)

Twice a year Armenda set up the twenty-five-gallon, cast-iron caldron which hung from a chain secured to a tripod straddling an outdoor fire in the weed-infested, gravel and dust patch they called the front yard. Assisted by her daughters, she rendered a pig and mixed the fat with lye produced from fireplace-ash to make her own soap.

Armenda taught her daughters in all the arts of food preservation; teaching them about drying, smoking, bottling, salting, jamming, and pickling. They even water-glassed eggs, in spite of the fact that they never had a shortage of setting hens.

Any food they needed which they could not gather from the forest or grow on their farm, Otho and his sons got by going down the hill to the Current River, which ran through their property, and there, they caught it - fish, crawdads, turtles, eels; or they went into the woods and shot it - squirrel, rabbit, possum, coon, deer. Poaching was something that only rich people did. When you were hungry, you ate what came along, regardless of the season. That was the code of the woods.

Armenda and the girls scoured the hills for mushrooms, dandelions, sumac, lamb’s quarters, and other assorted “greens,” along with nuts, berries, honey, and anything else edible. In fact, there wasn’t much that they didn’t consider edible.

Cash money was the hardest commodity to come by. The Suttons scrimped and labored to save up enough money to pay the $12 annual rent on their home and farm. Somehow, though, they always managed to earn the money, but it was usually just in the nick of time. To say that they lived in poverty, however, would not be entirely accurate – truth is, they didn’t have it nearly that good.

Doc chuckled to himself as he thought of the Suttons. As was true of many of the families he attended, the Suttons staunchly resembled the stereotypical caricature image of backwoods Hillbillies. They were poor, uneducated, backwards and proud; yet Doc had a profound respect for them. The Suttons were hard-working and honest. Times were hard for them but they struggled to be independent and beholden to no one. The fact that Doc liked the Suttons made this visit particularly difficult for him.

State Road 106, or “the highway” as it was called, was perpendicularly dissected by the Current River. There was no bridge where the road and river met. The graveled road simply fanned out onto the gravel bar which formed the riverbank, making it impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Doc slowed the DeSoto to a stop at the ferry landing. The landing was only discernible by a stob, or steel spike, two inches in diameter, which protruded about three inches above the gravel near the river’s edge.

The introduction of the ferry had been a relatively recent innovation. The natural ford at Owl’s Bend had been used since settlers first entered the territory nearly 150 years earlier. The crossing point was considerably narrower and much shallower than the river’s deep channels which ran for several miles both above and below Owl’s Bend. This, of course, made the river’s current much swifter, providing the power necessary to push the ferry from bank to bank. The low, solid bank on the east side made for easy access, while the west side had a narrow, “S-curved” road cut into the hillside that rose sharply from the river’s edge.

The small community of Owl’s Bend - consisting of a one-room schoolhouse, a tiny postoffice, and a handful of cabins - was built atop the hillside along the west bank of the Current River. Almost directly across the river was a cave from which saltpeter had been mined during the Civil War to manufacture gun powder. The
powder mill
had long since been dismantled, but its namesake lived on; hence the crossing at Owl’s Bend became known as the Powder Mill Landing.

The bedrock and hard-packed gravel of the river bottom allowed teams and wagons to cross the Current River in relative safety. To an automobile, though, the natural ford was an impassable barrier. To help supplement his family’s income, a fellow named Tom Nash built a ferry at the crossing around 1930 and dubbed it the Powder Mill Ferry. He charged ten cents to transport a car from one side to the other. But that was twenty-some-odd years earlier. Doc would have to pay a quarter. He honked the DeSoto’s horn to signal the operator on the other side that a fare was waiting. Then he got out of his car to stroll along the picturesque riverbank. He even skipped a few rocks along the river’s smooth surface while waiting for the lumbering ferry to make the crossing.

Current River was not particularly wide, as rivers go, not more than a couple of hundred feet across; nor was it particularly deep, as demonstrated by the teenagers wading and splashing near the shore. Its waters; however, were crystal clear, revealing a riverbed composed entirely of gravel and large flat rocks. Fed by thousands of springs along its winding path, the water was bone-chilling cold. The springs insured that the river’s temperature was kept at a constant fifty-four degrees, year-round. Aptly named, the Current River’s many treacherous under-currents, whirlpools, and white water rapids had claimed the lives of numerous, unsuspecting swimmers, though most of its victims had been doing things that they had no business doing, because they weren’t particularly safe.

Having heard Doc’s horn, the striking young ferry operator, Roger Fears, who could have served as the inspiration for “Little Abner,” immediately placed the ferry into motion.

The rickety wooden ferry was small, barely accommodating two cars at a time. It was not much more than a flat-bottomed barge. Long tethering cables at each end anchored it to a pulley which rode an overhead cable spanning the river. On board, the tethers passed through another set of pulleys, one at each end of the barge, allowing both tethers to meet in the center of the ferry. At that point they wrapped in opposite directions around a windlass, a horizontal drum or spoked barrel, similar to a ship’s steering wheel, only considerably smaller. Roger spun the windlass clockwise, shortening the tether at the bow and simultaneously lengthening the tether at the stern. This inclined the ferry’s nose slightly upstream, causing the river’s current to lazily push the ferry from bank to bank.

Ozark ferries were constructed of rough hewn timber cut within a few hundred yards of the ferry landing. They were designed to ride high in the water while drawing a very shallow draft. To assist in maneuverability and speed regulation, an oar-board was fastened below the upstream gunnel. Oar-boards were usually made of a single two-by-six board that ran the length of the ferry and positioned underwater, about four inches below the upstream gunnel and fastened by steel brackets. In this manner water could flow both under and over the oar-board, thereby forcing the river’s current to push the ferry from one bank to the other. Current-powered ferries never achieved much speed. Crossing a river even a hundred feet wide often required several minutes.

Slowly the ferry approached the shore where Doc, who had returned to the DeSoto, sat patiently waiting. Just before impact, Roger spun the windlass in the opposite direction, straightening the nose. The ferry’s inertia carried it slightly up onto the shore, beaching it precariously. Immediately Roger jumped off the front end, dragging a mooring chain which he wrapped several times around the stob protruding from the gravel bar. Then he signaled Doc to drive onto the ferry, motioning him to pull forward to the far end. The weight of the vehicle pressing down on the floating end shifted the ferry’s weight, allowing the beached end to rise slightly, releasing the ferry from the frictional grasp of the riverbank.

With the DeSoto securely stowed on board, Roger unwound the mooring chain from the spike. Dragging it with him, he jumped back onto the ferry, dropped the chain in a heap and grabbed the ferry-pole, a fifteen-foot-long, three-inch-in-diameter, stout, wooden pole. With his brawny muscles he shoved the end of the pole deeply into the graveled riverbed and pushed against the pole to completely free the ferry from the shore’s grasp, slowly nudging it into the river’s swift current. Then he spun the windlass again, only this time tilting the other end of the ferry slightly upstream. Again the river’s current leisurely carried the ferry back across the river.

Arriving at the other side of the river, the DeSoto disembarked the ferry and continued up the graveled road as it ascended the steep hill in a lazy “S” curve. At the top, the car turned left onto a much narrower tree-lined dirt road. The trees formed a canopy overhead allowing the thick forest to swallow the vehicle as it vanished out of sight.

*

Nestled deep in the woods, secluded by the thick forest that engulfed the entire area, was an incredibly deep, turquoise-blue spring. It flowed from the base of a one hundred foot high bluff and formed a lagoon nearly seventy-five feet across. A small wooden platform, barely protruding above the surface of the water, extended three feet into the spring.

Valoura Sutton, who had just turned fifteen, knelt on the platform filling a wooden bucket with water. There had been talk of digging a well closer to the cabin but the spring was only one hundred yards away and it provided a chore that even the youngest of the girls could do. Chores were always divided according to gender. As destitute as they were, Valoura’s father, Otho, would never consider allowing the girls to help with the heavy farm chores. Like all the dry farmers up and down the river he still used a mule to pull the plow because he could not afford a tractor. Yet even if he had a tractor, the hard, stone infested, red clay soil produced such a poor crop yield that he would never be able to grow more than what was needed to provide for his growing family. His was a life of hard work from dawn to dusk, but he prided himself in working hard to provide for his family, even if it was only a meager subsistence.

Valoura stood, hefted the heavy water-bucket, then slowly started up the dirt path toward the rickety old cabin at the crest of the tree covered hill before her. The young girl was barefoot, wearing tattered bib overalls and an oversized flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her pregnancy was just beginning to show. The laborious pace she took made her appear unusually tired. After only a few steps she saw her sister Ellen, two years her senior, running down the path toward her. Ellen had always looked out for Valoura, taking her under her wing since their mother was always busy with the eight younger children.

Ellen slowed her gait to a brisk walk and approached with a worried expression. She stopped just a few feet from her younger sister where she hesitated a second. As Valoura took the final step to close the gap between them, Ellen reached out and grasped her sister’s free hand. “Doc’s here,” she said with grave concern.

Valoura stopped suddenly, frozen in fear. She dropped the water bucket with a crash, spilling the cool water onto the narrow dusty path. Her lower lip began to quiver. “They can’t do this to me. Papa has to understand! Help me make him understand!”

“But Valoura, don’t ya see, it’s the only way,” Ellen tried to explain.

But Valoura didn’t hear the words. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she briskly walked past Ellen, then began to run up the path that led to the house.

*

Otho and Doc stood beside the DeSoto talking in the front yard of the ram-shackled, run-down Ozark cabin that looked like a good sneeze would destroy. Thirty years earlier the farmhouse, bunkhouse, garage and barn had been built by the land owner as a hunting lodge. He had hoped to make his fortune by luring duck hunters and fishermen from the big cities. But his dreams had never materialized. The Great Depression affected not only Wall Street and Main Street but even backwoods hunting and fishing guides. Finally he abandoned the project. Fifteen years earlier he had leased the land and buildings to Otho on a year-to-year basis.

Valoura’s mother, Armenda, reluctantly stood in the doorway of the screened-in porch, propping the screen open with her elbow as she observed Doc and her husband. She desperately wanted to hear what was said and to be part of the important discussion underway. Nevertheless, she knew her place and resigned herself to defer such talk to the menfolk.

Otho reached into his hip pocket and took out a plug of tobacco. With his pocket knife he cut off a chunk, stuffed it into his mouth and slowly began to chew. Chewing tobacco was his only vice, but one which thoroughly disgusted his wife.

Chickens scratched in the dirt nearby as several young children ran wildly through the yard, rolling an old car tire with a toddler spinning inside. They were headed to the edge of the hill, just past the out-house, to roll their younger sibling down the gentle slope into the meadow where the cows grazed. Funny thing about young children, no matter how poor they were, they never knew it.

At the far corner of the yard, near the screened-in porch where Armenda stood, Otho’s oldest son, Lee Roy, was swinging a heavy sledge. It took several cords of wood to get them through the winter. The head of the wedge he used to split the tough oak logs was flared and splayed by the many poundings it had received at Lee Roy’s hand. Stacked against the side of the cabin was a large pile of already split wood, but this was kitchen-stove wood. Wood for the fireplace and the heating stove was stacked at the back of the cabin.

“Any idea who the father is?” asked Doc.

“Nah. She just said he was the son of some slickers down here on vacation,” answered Otho.

“Sorry to hear that. City types have no respect for our way of life. I ought to know, I used to be one. The family I found is a good one though, Otho. I can’t tell you who they are, of course, but I can assure you that they’ll do well by the child.”

At that moment Valoura breathlessly ran around the corner of the cabin. She stopped for a moment to size up the situation. Then she cautiously approached the two men. She knew that this was
man-talk
. It was best to not barge in on their conversation.