Dreamland Lake (12 page)

We talked it over between ourselves later. Like why Flip’s comment had had this electrifying effect on Ralph. I happened to remember that once my mom had said it was bad etiquette to make personal remarks in conversation. But that didn’t seem to make much sense because most remarks are personal, including everything my mom ever says. Besides, we didn’t figure Ralph was too involved with etiquette or anything like that.

“Maybe he thought it had something to do with sex,” Flip said. But then we didn’t see why Ralph, the big hero of all our adventures, would be shy on that subject.

Later that summer, we saw him again. He was riding down East Lincoln Avenue in a four-door Dodge. And a girl was driving. That was really the end of him as far as we were concerned.

Anyway, that’s how we learned to swim, two years before the end of the friendship between Flip and me.

“
GOD ALMIGHTY
,
IT
’
S A COBRA
!” Flip yelled and fell back flat on the mud bank. I was halfway up a convenient tree before the words were out of his mouth. We were both so scared we didn’t know whether we were in India or down along Warnicke’s Creek.

And it wasn’t a cobra. It was a puff adder—what my dad calls a “hognose.” When we came across it, our faces were about a foot and a half straight over the snake, which was puffing up fast and thinking seriously about going into a coil.

I hate a snake worse than anything. While Flip
was pulling himself together and darting around for a long branch to pester the puff adder with, I was yelling out instructions from my tree to get a big rock to drop on its head. But Flip was conquering his shock by trying to see how close he could get to the snake. By now, it was going into its second act.

When they get excited, puff adders swell up around the neck and look even uglier than they usually are. They may even start striking, pretending to be poisonous, which they aren’t. But if they sense this isn’t convincing anybody, they roll over and play dead. They’re big fakers and harmless, but they can scare you to death.

As the old saying goes, snakes will leave you alone if you’ll leave them alone. But we met up with this one purely by accident. It was the middle of that summer after seventh grade. We were down exploring along Warnicke’s Creek a little way above the big railroad bridge. It’s complete wilderness along there, and we were slogging through the undergrowth when we came on this old rowboat about halfway out of the water.

It wasn’t anything but a wreck, but Flip thought maybe if we pushed it into the creek, it might float. Then we could continue exploring by water. We hadn’t thought about details like oars, of course. We got behind the boat and started trying to push it down into the creek. It was dried hard to the bank, so we gave it a couple of kicks before it budged. Then it began to slip a little, and we were bent double giving it an almighty shoulder shove.

Suddenly, it shot right down into the water—and sank. And we were staring straight at the snout of the puff adder lying under it. It’s a miracle we didn’t sprawl right on it. There it was stretched out in a
cool, damp, sunken part of the bank. The next thing I remember, I was up a tree and looking down.

While Flip thrashed around, looking for a long stick, the puff adder rolled over on its back, turning up a cream-colored belly. It was playing dead. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Then it changed its mind, and rolled back, and started oozing toward the weeds. I kept quiet, hoping it would get away before Flip came back. But he came charging up, swinging a big stick. And the snake stopped—“dead.”

“Come on, move, you big con artist,” Flip said, dancing around at a safe distance and poking at it with the stick. But it didn’t quiver a scale.

“It’s alive,” I advised Flip from my tree.

“I know it,” he said, and slid the stick under its body at the thick middle part. He lifted it up off the ground, and the big monster just hung there, limp as a dishrag.

“Throw that damn thing in the creek!” I yelled down, but Flip was acting cute now, so the show had to go on. For one thrilling flash, he hauled off like he was going to give it a pitch up on my branch. But instead, he let it slide down off the stick. It just lay there in a big S on the patch of pale grass where the rowboat had been.

He watched it for a minute, then threw the stick down and picked up a rock—about twice the size of a softball—and dropped it on the snake’s head. Its body lashed once, looping off the ground. After that, it was still. And the rock, which was smooth, rolled down into the water. “It’s not dead,” I heard Flip say, low. There was a dent in the snake’s head, and its neck was puffed about halfway out. Flip sidestepped it and retrieved the rock from the water. He dropped it on the snake’s head again.

There was a lot of blood that time. It looked black from where I was. I said, “Don’t. Let it go.” But only to myself. Anyway, it was too late. The rock stayed on the snake’s head. Its big body was rippling again, but, of course, that could mean it was dead for sure. They jump around a lot after death. Till sundown, some people say. I felt kind of dizzy and got a good hold on the trunk of my tree. It was okay to come down, but I hung on up there.

Later, when we were farther downstream, hacking our way through the vegetation, Flip said, “He might not have been dead.” Dead or alive, it didn’t make much difference to me. Snakes scare the devil out of me either way. I was ready to change the subject since I was so busy watching out for what might be coiled on the ground or draped over a low branch that the day was about shot for me anyway. But it was on Flip’s mind. He really hated unfinished business.

Finally, I said to him, “Look, we’ll go back later and see. If it’s dead, it’ll still be there. If it isn’t, it’ll be gone.” But I was privately hoping Flip would forget the whole thing.

We were right under the railroad bridge then, which is like being in kind of a big, natural cathedral. Only it’s higher than any church I’ve ever been in. It has three tall stone arches, and Warnicke’s Creek runs through the center one. The bridge looks like one of those ancient Roman aqueducts. Even more so because now it’s abandoned, and the railroad doesn’t run trains over it any more. It’s like a big ruin that’s being reclaimed by nature.

We were probably the last generation to hear about the boy who fell off it. It was way back in the days of fast passenger service. This kid accepted a
dare to walk across the bridge, which is strictly forbidden by the railroad. Anyway, he was right over the center arch when the train came—full steam ahead, so he couldn’t outrun it. And since it’s a single track bridge, this kid only had one chance. And that was to hang over the side till the train passed. He couldn’t drop into the creek because it’s too shallow—and a long drop. So he heaved himself down and swung over the side as the St. Louis train came whooshing by.

He nearly made it. But the vibrations must have got to him because he lost his grip, and fell into the creek, and split his skull. They fished his body out way downstream where it was snagged on a willow hanging down in the water. It’s one of the local tales.

So we took a breather and looked straight up at the underside of the bridge and wondered about what that kid must have been thinking on the way down, if he had time to have any last thoughts. And this took our minds off the puff adder.

The reason we were out there was that we were in the last gasp of our local history study. It was the middle of the summer, and we were pretty bored. Nothing that used to be fun seemed like fun anymore. And it was kind of a strain trying not to think about Elvan Helligrew. And things were pretty quiet generally. The dead man business was ancient history by then.

So Flip took one last look through Estella Winkler Bates, which he’d illegally kept out of the library over the vacation. In an early chapter we’d overlooked because it didn’t have any pictures, Estella told about how the first people in the area, not counting Indians, were a family called Warnicke, who’d built a log cabin on the east bank of the creek in 1824. They’d planned to put in a sawmill on the creek and build
an inn. They were hoping that the stage coach would stop off there. But nothing came of it. The creek flooded every spring, so they didn’t get their sawmill built, either that, or it washed away. And the stage crossed the creek a couple of miles above them where the ground was flatter. So the Warnickes just moved on farther west, Estella thought. Though she said there were some stories that the Indians got them. Anyway, the Warnickes were sort of losers, even though they were the original settlers.

According to the book, if you looked in the right place, you could still make out the foundation of the Warnicke’s cabin and their stone fireplace, as of 1929. Flip thought if we went out there and explored, we might be able to find it again. Then maybe the newspaper would run a local-color story on it—and us, of course. I guess it continually ate at Flip that we carried the paper every evening without being in it, except for that one time.

So on the hottest day of the summer, we headed out to Warnicke’s Creek by following the tracks, which is the easiest way to get there. We walked the rails until the hot steel blazed up through our sneaker soles. Then we stumped along on every fourth tie, which is just as hard going. It’s a couple of miles out there at least. Past the park, through the edge of Beechurst Heights, then some farmland waiting to be subdivided, then a stinking part past the sewage treatment plant. After that, the track cuts through a high hill, and you come to the bridge across the creek valley and a large, faded-out, wooden signboard that says:

So when we came to this sign, we skittered and slid down the gravel bank and a steep dropoff until we were down level with the creek. We’d been on the lookout for the Warnickes’ cabin remains for an hour or so before we and the puff adder found each other.

Even though it was cooler down there in the creek bottom, we were working up a sweat trying to find the Warnickes’ traces. After the snake bit, I was getting less interested every minute. It wasn’t much past noon, and we hadn’t got farther than maybe a hundred yards south of the bridge. We came out on a wide spot in the creek—muddy, but it looked deep enough for a swim. So we had the same idea at the same time. Snakes or no snakes, we were ready for a dip.

We weren’t the Tom Sawyer types. Most of our swimming had been in the Y pool back in the Ralph Harvey days. But we were out of our T-shirts, Levis, and underpants in a flash. Flip waded right in. I let him get in butt-deep before I got my feet wet because the water was light brown, and you couldn’t see where where you were stepping.

I was just starting in when he disappeared completely. But he bobbed back up like a cork with his hair matted down all over his face, sputtering and spitting. “Damn slimy dropoff,” he said. “Start swimming.” So we eased off, dog-paddling and trying
to keep our chins out of the water, which was probably polluted. It was lukewarm too, but we horsed around in it awhile, and he tried to duck me, but my arms were longer so I could keep him off. Then we got out and remembered we didn’t have any towels. So we flopped down in the long grass—after I made a careful check for reptiles.

We talked about this and that. Like what we ought to have brought for lunch, except we’d started out so soon after breakfast that we hadn’t been hungry then and didn’t think ahead. Then we talked about how big Arlene DeSappio’s knockers were and wondered if she was still growing. Then we got a little sleepy, and I’d have drifted off except I still had snakes on the brain.

But Flip gave me a jolt by saying, “Doesn’t look like we’re catching up with Ralph Harvey, does it?”

This came as a slight shock since neither one of us had mentioned Ralph for two years. But I knew what he meant. I was getting a wisp or two of hair in my armpits and beginning to use spray deodorant when I thought of it. And I had some hair coming in down below too, but nothing to speak of. Flip was still slick as a whistle. I didn’t know whether what he said was embarrassing or not. I decided it wasn’t, seeing as how Flip said it, and we were alone. “Yeah, well,” I said, “who wants to look like an ape?”

“Yeah, who?” Flip said. After a slight pause.

He had his head propped up against a tree root, looking back in the direction of the bridge. And I was headed the other way. Pretty soon, he gave a little jump, and then he was up on his feet in a crouch, squinting off in the distance.

“By God, there’s somebody up on the bridge,” he said. I looked around and, sure enough, way off in the
distance, there was somebody standing up there, right in the middle, directly over the creek. Facing toward us.

It was weird. Way out there away from everything. For a second, I had a feeling whoever was up there was about to jump. But he didn’t. He just stood up there, silhouetted against the blue sky—like a trapeze artist.