My Dad was a traveling salesman, back in the days when the roads in East Texas were very long mud holes. Fortunately, he never ran into a problem like this….
Only the Lord knows why I ever took the old road that day, particularly since the water was out all over the map from the big rains. I could have stuck a dozen times, coming across the bottom lands. It’s a wonder in this world that none of the rickety little bridges were washed out—or that one of them didn’t go out with me halfway across. Still, Pa’s old 1939 Plymouth could mighty nearly swim, and we always took it out when we were going way down into the boondocks.
The whole thing was a lot of foolishness, anyway. I didn’t get a degree from Texas A&M in order to go paddling around in the river-bottom in the middle of a flood to count hogs. But try telling the boss that. He sits in his air-conditioned office, thinking up dumb schemes, and never knows if it rains or shines. And he can come up with some of the gosh-awfulest ideas. A hog census! Now I ask you, how he thought that knowing where every hog in the county was located would help him sell his damn feed, I don’t know.
Anyway, there I was in the river bottom in a car twice as old as I was, sloshing down a road that wasn’t much more than a lane, when I could see it, which wasn’t often. The wet sweetgum saplings were bent way down and slapping across the windshield. I was crawling along, cussing some, when I saw something out in the woods.
I crept on until I could feel gravel under the wheels; then I stopped. I could have sworn I saw an old man sitting on a stump. I stuck my feet into the rubber boots I had learned to take along with me, being as most hog-pens can’t be said to do shoes any good at all. Then I got out and started off into a thicket. And sure enough, there was a grizzly-headed old cuss, soaked to the bone, dripping water off his nose and his eyebrows. He never acted as if he saw me, just muttered to himself as if that’s what he’d been doing for quite a while.
When I got close enough to hear, I stood there for a minute, admiring his style. You don’t hear cussing like that any more, with real feeling and meaning to it. And he was cussing the weather, which deserved everything he gave it and then some. But it was wet as all get-out, and finally I went up and touched him on the shoulder.
“Sir, I beg your pardon,” I said, “but would you like a ride someplace? Out of the wet?”
He gave a jerk and looked up at me for a minute, sizing me up. Then he gave me a couple of cusses too.
I shook my head admiringly. “It’s a privilege to listen to a man who can handle the language the way you do,” I said. “Even my Pa, and he’s no slouch, can’t touch you. But it does look like you’re set to catch your death of cold, if you sit out here much longer.”
Then he squinched up his eyes and looked me over, real carefully. “You look to be a Jenkins,” he said, when he had gone from top to bottom. “Got that Jenkins jaw. Any kin to Ralph Jenkins?”
“That’s my Pa,” I said. It’s the darndest thing—anyplace I go, people spot me for Pa’s son right off. Even if they never laid eyes on me before.
He grunted and shifted on the stump. “Tell you, Son,” he said, “I ain’t got no place to go that you can take me to in no car. But bein’ as you’re Ralph’s boy, why, you might help me out a little bit.”
Now that’s where I should’ve said goodbye and been off to count hogs. But Pa raised us all to be polite and helpful to old folks, and I can’t seem to break the habit. When an old geezer looks at you kind of slant-eyed, with his head cocked on one side like he’s figuring out how far he can con you, it’s time to take off. Not me, though. No brains, that’s me.
So pretty soon I found myself slogging down a pig-trail through the woods, looking sharp for cotton-mouth moccasins and stump-holes. He kept talking all the time, as if he was scared I’d change my mind and leave him. Nothing he said made me anxious to keep on.
“I’ve got a kind of boat a little piece further on, tied up along Eel Creek. If it’s still there, we can take it and get up to my house. The house ain’t washed away; it’s just the damn creek’s done riz so I can’t get to the yard. With a strong young fellow like you to help me with the boat, I kin make it.” He paused and panted a while. I could see that he wasn’t in too good shape.
I turned around and said, “Why, Pa could put you up until the water goes down. He’d be glad to. Why don’t you just go back to the car with me, and I’ll take you straight on in and have you dry in no time at all.”
He started shaking his head before I was done. Then he looked all around, really careful, as if anybody but a couple of fools would have been out in the woods with the river out of its banks.
“I guess I ought to tell you, Son, seein’ as how you’re helpin’ me and all. I’ve got my life’s savings buried in that yard. If the river backs the creek up too high, it’ll likely wash it right away. It’s all I’ve got to stand me through my old age. I just got to get back there and get it out before the water comes up any more.”
Well, he did sound pitiful. I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t dig up his money before he left, but I guessed that you might be forgetful at his age. So we went on, and the water was mighty near the tops of my boots before we came to his boat. Then I saw why he called it a kind of a boat. The baling bucket was the only thing that didn’t have a hole in it. A good, sound log would have been a lot safer to try to travel on.
“You sure you want to risk that thing?” I asked him.
“It’s a sight better than it looks,” he answered. “I been fishing in that boat for twenty years and never drowned yet.” I never was one to believe in miracles, but maybe such things happen, or else he was an uncommonly solid ghost. But I was pledged to help him, so I bailed out the water that was sloshing around in the bottom of the thing and heaved it out into the creek. I stood there and watched the little wiggles of water come through the holes and start moving down the sides.
He got right in and started bailing. “Reason I had to have help,” he said, “is somebody has to bail while the other one rows. I always borrow one of Rupe Miller’s kids to do the bailing, when I go fishing, but they left when the water got high. Get in, Boy. Let’s get moving. That water’s not going to wait on us.”
So I said a prayer, which would have pleased Ma, and got in. Then I didn’t have time to pray. That water was wild as a yearling colt. It took everything I could do to keep the boat from taking off in ten directions at once.
I fought with the paddle to fend us off floating logs and brush-piles. I guess I came nearer to poling it along than paddling. In the middle of all that, it came to me...I didn’t know his name. I twisted my head round and yelled, “Hey, Mister, what’s your name?”
He looked up from his bucket, kind of startled. “Why, I’m Abe Willitts. I thought everybody in the county knowed of old Abe.”
Then I really started to sweat. Everybody knew about Abe Willitts, sure enough. When I was little, Ma’d hush me up with, “Crazy Abe’ll get you, if you don’t be good.” When his wife died, all the women looked at each other and said, “He finally killed her. I knew he would one day.” And nobody could prove them wrong, because she was buried by the time he got around to letting anybody know she was dead.
Even Pa, who wouldn’t hear a bad word about anyone, had to be still when that hunter disappeared. He’d told his wife that he was going to bird-hunt down in the bottoms, and he’d intended to get Abe and his setter to help him find the birds. Nobody ever saw nor heard from him again. They looked too. All over the place, with dogs and men. Abe claimed he never got there at all, and nobody could prove different.
So here I was in a leaky boat in the middle of a flood with a crazy man. A hog census looked mighty calm and peaceful, when I thought about it. Still, I hadn’t time to worry overmuch just then. Working that crazy piece of junk around the bends in the creek took all my energy. By the time we came in sight of the house, I was done in, sure enough.
Abe jumped out onto the bank, only it was the yard fence, the bank being a hundred yards behind us in the middle of the flood, and tied his rope to a fencepost. “Here we are, Boy. You just wait right here, and I’ll go round and dig up my savings and be right back.” His eyes slid round at me and didn’t look quite sane.
“I’m too tired to move, Sir,” I said. “You just get your stuff, and I’ll rest. It’ll take all we both can do to get us back up that creek.”
Soon as he was gone around the house, I slid out of the boat and eased up the slope. It took a while, and once he looked out around the corner of the porch to see if I was still in the boat. Luckily, I’d propped up the bucket so it looked like a head leaning against the edge, and he didn’t go down to check. I stayed hidden in the bushes for a while to let my heart quit thumping, then I went on.
When I peeped around the porch, he was digging hard. You could hear his shovel going “Shloop! Shloop!” in the mud, because the water had got around to that side of the house too. He was in an almighty hurry. I scootched down and watched. I don’t quite know why, but I just had to know what it was he was in such a hurry and a sweat about. He had to be living on Social Security, just like Pa and everybody else their age. I figured he couldn’t have saved up enough to amount to anything.
When a shovelful of mud came out of that hole with something dark and solid on it, I perked up. It was a hunting jacket, as I could tell after it lay there a while and the rain washed off the mud. The kind with a bag in back for shot birds and shell-pockets across the front. Then Abe’s hand came up with a shotgun in it and laid it on the ground.
I didn’t wait to see more. All of a sudden, I figured I’d better be back at the boat—or further still—when Abe came around the corner of that house. I made it a lot quicker than I’d come and leaned back in the boat as if I’d been dozing. Then I got to thinking.
Whatever he was getting out of that hole, he’d likely send down the flood. Maybe he’d feel safe then. Maybe not.... The more I thought about going back up that creek with him bailing behind me, the less I liked the notion. I had a little money in my pocket. Probably about what that hunter had had. And nobody knew where I was or what I was doing.
I eased out into the bushes and crept along until I found a likely log. It was half afloat, already, so I goosed it out into the current and held onto a stub of branch, with my head close under the side so it couldn’t be seen. That log and I whirled and twirled and twiddled down the creek with the rest of the stuff floating there until we lodged way down on Bobcat Ridge. I guess Abe never did know what happened to me.
He must’ve tried to make it back in that boat, all by himself. We’ll never know, though. They didn’t look for him nearly as hard as they did for that hunter.