The next cache was at a horse statue, too. I guess the ranch behind the fence had more than one way in. One gate had a reddish horse. That was the Gift Horse. The other gate had a very dark, chocolate brown horse and the cache was called The Dark Horse. The swag in the cache was black chess pieces from a cheap chess set. Some geocachers had traded for the pieces and left typical swag but enough chess pieces remained for us to see it started out with only chess pieces in the cache. Predictably we didn’t find a black knight in the cache. The two knights had probably been the first ones chosen.
“Do you want to trade?” Twiggy asked as the rain dripped down his hair and into his face.
“No, though I feel like a pawn in this game.”
After The Dark Horse the road ran right along the ranch fence and there wasn’t any place to hide a cache for half a mile or so. The rain continued in a relentless light drizzle and the road began to get muddy. Twiggy thought the mud was wonderful fun to drive in. He splashed through the puddles and I imagined the back end of the van changing from avocado green to a muck brown.
“What are we going to do for dinner?” I asked. “We’re a long way from town now.”
“I hate to turn around. These caches have been safer than most of the ones so far and they’ve been interesting, too.”
“I know. What do we have for food in the back?”
“Chips, two warm sodas, week old beef jerky and a half a package of M&Ms.”
“We still have the M&Ms?”
“The Travel Bug has to eat, too, you know.”
“What’s the name of the next cache?”
“It’s Anybody’s Call.”
“What is?”
“The name of the cache.”
“Nah uh, we cannot call it anything we want. It has a title what is it?”
“It’s Anybody’s Call.”
“Somebody had to name it,” I declared.
“Gabby, drop it, okay?”
“What if it’s fragile?”
We pulled up to ground zero and we saw the cache before we even opened the van door. The cache was an old fashioned rotary dial payphone attached to a good, sturdy railroad tie fence post.
“I want a picture of this one. Pretend you’re calling somebody,” I said.
“Take it quick. We don’t want the camera to get wet.”
“This is so cool! I’ve never seen a telephone like this. How old is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve used one a time or two though.”
“Where?”
“Belle Fourche, South Dakota.”
“Isn’t that where the contest ends?” I asked.
“Yes, and it happens to be my home town and the geographical center of the United States.”
“You came from the town at the center of the country?” I asked.
“Yeah. Why? What’s so weird about that? I know several people who are from there.”
“I guess you do,” I admitted. “So, who do you think is the most likely to win the contest?”
“I don’t know. That’s your call.”
“Mine? Why?”
“I, uh… I wonder how to get the cache out of this telephone,” he said.
“If we can get the cache out of an ATM we can figure out this phone,” I answered.
He checked for change but there was no container inside. He picked up the receiver and unscrewed the ear piece, then the mouth piece. He put the receiver back together. The next obvious place to look was the metal plate where the serviceman emptied the money from the phone, but it required a key. We stepped back and thought about the problem at hand, the telephone standing there on the post waiting for nobody to make a call, the receiver dangling from its cord and swaying gently in the breeze.
“Maybe there is a key hidden somewhere,” I suggested.
“Could be,” he said, “though the description should tell us if there is.”
He absentmindedly hung up the receiver as he turned to search the nearby hiding places for a key, but when he hung up the phone the bottom of the phone box lowered about three inches and inside was a small, black, metal box.
“Wow, coolio!” said Twiggy. He removed the black box and shook it. It rattled like it had quite a bit of swag in it. When we opened it up there were wires, switches, computer chips, connectors and a dead cell phone. “It looks like people don’t trade because they think it’s a theme cache,” he said.
“Or they don’t have a use for a switch.”
“Neither do we.”
“But the telephone is cool,” I pointed out. I signed the log before it could get wet. “I want to add something so people will start trading other stuff.”
“We should read the description. If it really is a themed cache then we shouldn’t divert from its theme. Let’s see… no, it doesn’t say anything about a theme. Go ahead and add something if it fits.”
Unfortunately we only had the keychains to add.
“Where can I get different swag?” I asked. “We need more than just keychains. A kid doesn’t want a college keychain. Maybe an adult, but…”
“You don’t like my swag?” he asked.
“Well, I do, but I like a little variety, too. We see things that little girls and boys would like. We should get some little toys.”
“That’s going to cost us.”
“And we need to finish this road,” I said as I dropped another keychain into the black box.
Halfway to the next cache we had to splash through a wide puddle. Twiggy thought it was great fun. He took a good run at the puddle and water sprayed up above the widows until the van began slowly sliding to a stop in the middle of the puddle. He hit the gas and the tires spun but the van didn’t go anywhere.
“Stay in the van,” he told me. “I got this covered.”
“Yeah, covered with mud,” I said.
He opened the van door and all I could see below us was murky water. He hesitated before hopping out and splashing through the puddle. He waded around the van checking over the situation, but there wasn’t much to check out. It looked the same from all angles.
“Can you drive the van?” he shouted.
“Sure!” I said, though I had never driven a van before. I moved over to the driver’s seat, turned the key and eased off the brake. I hit the gas a little.
“Whoa! Hold on!” Twiggy yelled.
I waited until I heard an, “Okay, I’m ready!”
I tried the gas again and heard the tires spin uselessly. The van slid through the mud about three feet and I watched the rear view mirror as Twiggy slowly slid out of view. His feet had slid in the mud more than the van had and he splashed face first into the puddle. He stood up completely drenched in muddy water.
“Are we there yet?” I asked.
He splashed around to the driver’s side window so I rolled it down.
“Are you okay in there?” he asked.
“Yeah!”
“Good, because I don’t think we’re going anywhere soon. Normally I have a few tricks to try but it involves there being less water.”
“I hate to inform you,” I said. “But there isn’t going to be less water for at least a day.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. All my solutions require dry roads.”
“We could call for help.”
“Help costs money, something we have very little of right now.”
“We have to eat,” he pointed out.
“So you suggest we walk back to town in the rain to eat dinner?”
“That doesn’t even come close to sounding like fun.”
“It’s bound to be several miles.”
“We could hike back to that ranch and see if they have a truck and a tow strap.”
“We can’t ask them to come out in this rain just to pull us out of a puddle,” I insisted.
“We can offer to buy some produce from them. They had trees. Maybe they had a fruit stand out on the highway. At least it’s something to eat.”
I looked uncertainly at the constant rain and thought about walking back to the ranch.
“Let’s wait out the rain.”
“Do you really want me to climb in there like this?” he asked.
“It’s your buddy’s van,” I pointed out.
“I’m going to hike to the ranch,” he declared.
“Well, you’re not going alone,” I said.
He folded his arms across his chest.
“I promised your dad I would take good care of you.”
“Okay,” I said as I opened the van door and looked down into the muck.
“No, Gabby, stay there. I’ll go get help.”
“From a crazy, shotgun toting rancher?” I asked.
“If they are crazy, shot gun toting ranchers I don’t want you along.”
“If you’re going, I’m going.”
“Grab a bottle of water,” he said.
“In the rain? We couldn’t die of thirst if we tried!”
“I’ll carry it.”
I found a bottle of water and climbed out into the five inch deep mud puddle. It was slick and I slipped and slid my way to the edge of the puddle, trying not to fall in.
“No wonder the tires just spin,” I said.
On the way to the ranch we talked.
“Will we get to finish geocaching this road?”
“Not if my stomach has a vote,” he replied.
“Rats. They were funny ones and now we’ll have to put miles in again.”
“We’ll bookmark the road and come back to it someday.”
“Will we? School will take over. We’ll never be in this part of the country again.”
“We won’t?” he asked.
“I’ll be at my parents’ house, you’ll be… I guess with your dad. What do you do over the summer?”
“Work.”
“How come you’re not working now?”
“I’ve got something more important to do.”
“You really think you can win this contest?”
“I hope so, but we can’t be sure.”
“That’s okay. I’m never sure of anything these days. I think it goes along with college life. You think you’re getting a C and surprise you get a B! Or it can work the other way around, too. One test and your grade gets flushed down the toilet. At least my whole future doesn’t hang on this contest.”
“Uh… yeah,” he said. “Though you never know. Sometimes a little thing like a contest can have lasting consequences.”
“Why is it,” I asked as I splashed through yet another mud puddle. “That I am constantly glad my shoes are almost worn out?”
“Because geocaching is hard on shoes. If you’re going to make a real hobby out of it you really should buy some good, sturdy hiking boots.”
“I don’t know if I could walk in them. They are so stiff. I’m used to shoes that bend with my feet.”
“Hiking boots will, too, after you break them in.”
“How long have you been wearing them?” I asked.
“Since I was about ten, when my dad and I decided to do more than wallow in our situation. We decided there was more to life than one woman and began getting out more. We bought camping supplies and fishing rods. Eventually we figured out that our tennis shoes just were not going to keep up with our active lifestyle and we switched to boots.”
“What’s it like growing up without a mother?”
“It’s… dang, I wish I knew. I mean I do know. It’s just that… I think it’s different for everybody. At first we were angry. Then we tried to turn it into a bachelor’s life sort of deal. That worked until Dad saw me turning into a bachelor before my time. Then he decided I needed more than a bachelor buddy and decided to be a family again. That’s when we tried the camping and eventually geocaching.”
“Do you wish you had a mom?”
“Gabby… you can’t go back. You can’t know if it would have been better any other way. People do things to you and you just make the best of it. I can’t blame dad for how things turned out. He did the best he knew how. So, no, I don’t really wish I had a mom. I wish I could erase the angry years and just live like they didn’t happen.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to get off on such a serious topic.”
“It’s okay. It’s not a serious topic unless you make it one. So, what was it like growing up with two sisters and a brother in the house?”
“Chaotic.”
“Would you go back and change it?”
I was glad he asked it in a lighthearted manner. I just smiled because he’d proven to me that you can’t go back and what would you change if you could? We are dropped into this world to live a life and we can only live it to the best of our abilities.
“I’m glad you found geocaching,” I told him. “I think that was a positive change.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. And I’m glad you told me about it.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re glad.”
“I’d even be glad if this rain would stop.”
“Mabel! There’s two drowned rats standing on the doorstep!” yelled the rancher who answered the door.
“Sweep ‘em off with the broom! Or step on ‘em!”
“Not that kind!” yelled the rancher.
“Well then what in tarnation… oh! What are y’all doing standing out there in the rain! Come on in!” yelled Mabel.
“I uh, I don’t want to get mud on your floor, or drip on your carpet,” I said as I slipped off my shoes. Twiggy had a little rougher time getting his boots off.
“This here’s a farm,” Mabel said. “If mud will hurt anything in this house it’s ruint already. Farms is where they grow mud in the off season.”
“Our van got stuck down the road from here. We were wondering if anybody had a tow rope to help point us toward town again,” Twiggy said.
Mabel had been in the act of untying her apron and putting it away, but she walked over to us with it still in her hand and looked us up and down.
“You ain’t had a lick to eat today, have you?” she asked.
“Well, we did have breakfast,” Twiggy began. “But…”
“I knew it! Come on in. We can fix you up some grub. Can’t let you starve on our property. No, siree!”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I began but Twiggy glared at me.
“I think I got some good old fashioned ham ‘n’ beans and cornbread. That oughta stick to your ribs.”
“That’s good cornbread,” the rancher said. “Ask her for some homemade peach preserves, too.”
They didn’t even have a microwave. Mabel spooned some ham ‘n’ beans into a sauce pan and heated it up on the stove. It was an old stove that she had to light with a match. It was a monstrous white and black affair and the oven looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel. Everything in the kitchen looked like it was from another era. It was freshly painted and carefully cleaned but as old as the house, which I took to be the original building.
The house had wooden siding and a big porch in front. Wisteria grew in lavender cascades across the front of the porch and I felt like I stepped back in time. The kitchen only reinforced that feeling. There was a pie on the window still and the kitchen smelled like a bakery. I caught the aroma of yeast, as if she had been making homemade bread, but also of something sweet.
“So, who are you and where are you from?” Mabel asked.
“I’m Tony and this is Gwen,” Twiggy said. “We’re students in Franklinburg.”
“Ah, I see. So what brings you to our neck of the woods?”
“Geocaching,” Twiggy said.
“Did you find the two out front?” she asked.
“Yes! We did! And we were going to find more but then we got stuck in the mud.”
“You should wait out the storm. You two must be freezing!” Mabel said.
“It’s summer. We’ll be okay,” Twiggy replied.
“Bertha needs to get out,” the man said. “We’ll take ‘er down once you get some vittles and we’ll pull your car out, no problem.”
Mabel continued, “A friend of ours put the caches out front. We’d never heard of geocaching, but he explained it to us and asked if he could put them down at the front gates, said it might be entertaining to watch folks lookin’. If we see em out there, which doesn’t happen too often, we want to coach ‘em along. No! It’s not over there it’s over thataway! And if they see us, oh my! You’d think they was going to jail or something. Heaven forbid they might get caught,” she laughed.
“Yeah, we’re like that, too,” I said.
My stomach was growling loudly by the time the ham and beans were warmed through.
“Mabel’s got to feed everybody who comes over. Doesn’t matter who they are. If they’ve eaten they get dessert, if they haven’t eaten there’s plenty to share. If it’s not already in the works it can be warmed up perty darn quick.”
“Dessert?” Twiggy said.
As college students our idea of dessert was a pastry from the snack machine. Or, if we were extremely lucky one of the girls would make chocolate chip cookies in the dorm kitchen and share. I’d taken cookies to Twiggy’s dorm a time or two but real, homemade dessert was one of the most sought after things in college life, probably even more so than a good grade, or knowing we had a test aced. I remembered getting a care package from home. I had fourteen girls gathered around me as I opened the mysterious treasure before me. My mother had layered cookies in between clothing to protect the cookies from becoming nothing but crumbs. I opened the box and discovered… fuzzy socks! Although we all enjoyed new fuzzy socks there was a sigh of disappointment. I took the socks out and discovered… snickerdoodles! Now I have to hand it to my mom. She knew snickerdoodles was not my favorite cookie but the girls were so thankful that I shared my snickerdoodles that they happily took those. A few of the girls even went back to their rooms. Then there was a sweater, scarf and gloves. When those were removed I found a layer of sugar cookies. Then a new shower wrap. My mom placed the double chocolate chip cookies and the brownies in the very bottom and by the time I reached the bottom of the box only Sarah and I were left. I managed to make a lot of friends and still keep my favorite snacks for myself. I took some over to Twiggy and Skippy and rationed the rest for the next few weeks, only allowing myself one brownie or two chocolate chip cookies per day until they started going stale.
“Oh, my, would you look at the boy!” Mabel said. “You look like you need pie in the worst way!”
Mabel put a large piece of peach pie into a bowl and added a large dollop of ice cream, then she left it next to the pot on the stove until the ice cream began to melt. Twiggy was drooling. I thought, when she set the pie down in front of us, that there would be no way we’d eat ham and beans after a large piece of pie and ice cream. I admit I only ate a little lunch after the dessert but Twiggy managed to polish off pie, ice cream, and a large bowl of beans. Mabel sat and watched Twiggy eat and seemed content that she did her part in saving him from total starvation.
Gradually we began hearing a loud rumble outside, but it wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of a large engine.
“Oh dear,” Mabel said. “She needs a tune up. I can tell by how the windows shake.”
The windows were indeed shaking and we could feel the rumble through the wooden floor of the old house, too.
It turned out Bertha was an enormous green tractor. She towered over the porch when we went outside to see what the rancher had in mind.
“Let her warm up a bit,” the rancher shouted over the rumble of the engine. “She ain’t seen work in weeks, not since I dragged the orchard. Snapped a few branches off in the process. Guess I ought to go do some trimmin’. Always something gotta be done. Gotta drag the orchard so the water flows right. If it don’t we get all our peaches in one part of the orchard and not the dry part. Shoulda used little Moe but Bertha needs to work every once in a while, too. All good machinery likes a workout now and again.”
I noticed there was only one seat in the cab of the tractor.
“How are we going to get back to the van?” I asked Twiggy.
“I guess we get to hike,” he said.
“Never you mind,” the rancher said. “The grandkids pile on this thing and go for rides through the fields. If you can hang on tight, we’ll make it.”
I couldn’t see any place to sit except in the driver’s seat.
“You climb up here,” he pointed out to Twiggy. “See that bar? Sit beside the seat and hang onto there. Ma’am? You see him? What he’s doin’? Jus’ climb up the other side and hold on tight. Bertha lurches a bit but you sit tight and hold on we’ll find your car on down the road.”
“Thank you Mabel!” I yelled and waved as the tractor began moving. “You make the best peach pie!”
She just waved as Bertha’s wheels churned through the mud of their driveway and carried us toward the road.
“As long as the sheriff don’t swing by we’ll be fine,” the rancher said. “He don’t like the idea of folks fallin’ off and gettin’ run over.”
“I don’t blame him,” Twiggy said.
A tan farm dog trotted after the tractor until he noticed it raining, then he squinted into the drizzle and retreated to the porch.
“Hey,” Twiggy called to me. “Just one more thing I’ve done because of geocaching. I never rode a tractor before.”
“You know how to drive?” the rancher asked.
Twiggy looked at the configuration and said, “Not this.”
“All right, just thought I’d check. Can’t do much wrong on this here road. I’d even let JR have a try on this road and he’s only twelve. A big twelve.”
Twiggy watched the rancher’s movements, the coordination between hands and feet, and by the time we reached the place where the van was stuck he thought he had an understanding of the workings of the big tractor.
The rain had settled down to a fine sprinkle. I felt like I’d be damp for a week after this little geocache hunt.
“Which way are you headed?” the rancher yelled over the roar of Bertha.
“How bad is the road likely to get if we continue on?” Twiggy yelled back.
“Eh… if the rain don’t get worse you oughta be okay. The road widens a bit where folks have driven around the puddles. If you follow their example you should be able to get through.”
“And where is through?”
“Dickens.”
“Is there a motel there?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Hard to tell. Sally never seems to know the why or where for when she gets booked up but likes it when she does. She a can use the money. She’s got little ones in school and growing like weeds in the spring.”
“To Dickens then,” Twiggy said.
The rancher hopped down from the tractor and slogged through the mud to the front of the van. He wrapped a chain around a bracket that held the bumper onto the van and he attached the other end to the back of the tractor.
“Can I try it?” Twiggy asked.
“You sure you want to?” the rancher asked.
“Hell yeah!” Twiggy said.
“Okay, it’s your wheels,” he said. “Ain’t no way you can hurt Bertha but you might oughta go easy. Easy does it, or you’re likely to do some damage to the frame there if you’re not careful.”
“Really?” Twiggy asked. “I can drive her?”
“I didn’t say you could. I said you could try.”
“All right!”
Twiggy scrambled up into the driver’s seat and looked over the controls eagerly. Boys and their toys. Would he ever grow up?
“Like this?” He asked as he made artificial shifting movements.
“Oughta work. Now nice and easy. She’s a might touchy. You tell her to go an’ she’ll for sure go. Them big tires on the back weren’t made for piddly little lawn mowing jobs. They were made to haul ass.”
It was a little ironic when Twiggy shifted the tractor into gear and quickly ripped off the van’s bumper. He hauled ass all right. He hauled it right off the van, across the road, and up a hill!
“Boy, I told you to take it easy! Well, I’m glad you did it and not me. Your van’s going to need some work though. Police won’t take kindly to your bumper being wired in place so’s you have the proper ID on your vehicle.”
I didn’t think now was the right time to bring up the fact that the van wasn’t ours and the registration was expired. The rancher slogged over to the van and gazed underneath.
“Yup, you’re going to need a welder. Only one welder in Dickens and that’s Charlie Mosely. Tell him I sent you.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t get your name,” I said.
“Gib Collins. Short for Gilbert, but folks around here call me Gib. Put her in reverse and ease her down the hill,” Gib shouted to Twiggy.
I thought Twiggy should ease himself down the hill and leave the tractor driving to Gib. I heard a grinding noise and then the tractor began rolling backwards.
“Hit the brakes! Hit the brakes!” Gib hollered. “Easy, boy, easy!”
He went easy alright. He easily went over the bumper, through the puddle and over the other side of the road.
“Forwards is easier,” Twiggy said. He pulled the tractor onto the road again and jumped out happily proclaiming, “Your turn!”
Gib grumbled all the way to the chain where he detached the useless bumper and looked for a new spot to connect it to.
“Now you need a bumper but the nearest Chevy dealership is fifty miles away. Might oughta look at some junk yards. It would be cheaper.”
The bumper reminded me of a cartoon character when it freezes in surprise in mid air, but it didn’t as much when Twiggy opened up the van and tossed the muddy bumper onto the futon mattress. I wanted to say, “Hey! I might have to sleep on that tonight,” but I thought Gib might get the wrong idea.
I stood back while Gib expertly maneuvered the large tractor in the narrow dirt road and dragged the van to higher ground pointed toward Dickens.
“Can I pay you for your time and gas?” Twiggy asked Gib when the van was on safe ground again.
“No, siree, we don’t take money for helping folks around here. All I ask is that you do the same for the next person that needs a helping hand.”
“Will do and thank you,” he said. “Thanks for trusting Bertha to my inexperienced hands.”
“Too bad tractors can’t talk. I bet she’d like to tell little Moe all about you.”
“Tell Mabel she makes the best ham ‘n’ beans and peach pie I ever had,” Twiggy said.
“I guess that means I raise the best peaches you ever had, too.”
“Yes sir.”
“Ya’ll enjoy the rest of your trip. Be careful and go around the puddles. You go through them and they’re likely to swallow you whole.”
“Okay.”
He climbed back into the driver’s seat and laughed as he pointed Bertha down the road toward home.
“That really was good peach pie,” I said to Twiggy.
“Yeah.”
“I need to find some of that sugar topping she had on the crust. It was like sugar but the crystals were bigger.”
“Sugar is sugar.”
“But hers was better.”
“If you make a pie I get a piece.”
“Of course. But I’ve never made a pie.”
“Maybe someday you will.”
“So…” I said. “Are we going for the next cache?”
“We don’t have much time left in the day, but… why not?”
“Daylight might not be needed for this one. It’s called Bats in My Belfry.”
“Oh, great, this better not be like Insane Asylum!”