John Fitzgerald GB 05 Great Bra (12 page)

That night after supper I was sitting on the floor in the parlor reading Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain to Frankie. Tom was studying the World Almanac. I was reading the part in the book about the trip down the river on the raft. Tom stopped reading and listened until it was time for Frankie and me to go to bed.

The next morning, while we were getting dressed, Tom asked me, “How would you like to go exploring on the river on a raft, like Huckleberry Finn?”

“Oh, boy,” I said, “that would be a great adventure.”

“Would you be willing to pay for it?” he asked.

“Sure,” I answered. “How much would depend on how long the trip took.”

“Say it took from half an hour to forty-five minutes,” he said. “How much would you pay?”

“At least a nickel,” I said. “Why?”

“I’m going to build a raft,” he said, “and run exploring excursions on the river.”

Eddie Huddle came over to play with Frankie just as the morning chores were finished. Tom saddled up Dusty and asked me if I wanted to take a ride with him. I got up behind him on the mustang. We rode to the swimming hole.

“I’ll start the excursion on the raft from here,” he.. said. “But now I have to find out how far downstream to go.”

We rode Dusty along the riverbank until we came to the rapids. It was a place where the riverbed dropped, causing the current to flow swiftly. I pointed at the rapids.

“You will never get a raft upstream through those rapids,” I said.

“I’ll have to bring it back over land,” he said. “Now to find a good landing place.”

We rode until we came to a big bend in the river. Just around the bend the river became twice as wide and the current slow. We rode Dusty across the river and back to find out how deep it was. It was only about two feet deep all the way across.

“This will be the landing place,” Tom said. “I figure the trip from the swimming hole to here on a raft would take about half an hour.”

We returned home for lunch. After eating, Tom harnessed up the mare of our team.

“What are you going to do with Bess?” I asked.

“I need her to pull logs for my raft,” Tom answered.

“Can I go with you?” I asked.

“Not unless you want to work,” he said.

“How much will you pay me to help you build the raft?” I asked.

“Pay you?” Tom said as if I’d insulted him. “I am giving you a chance to learn how to build a raft and you want to be paid. You must have cockroaches in your head. I can get any kid in town to help me for nothing.”

I sure as heck didn’t want to lose out on learning how to build a raft. Someday I might be lost in the mountains and the only way to save myself would be to build a raft and float downstream to civilization,

“You don’t have to pay me,” I said. “But we can’t leave Frankie alone.”

“We’ll cake him with us,” Tom said.

We got the two-man saw, the hand saw, and a tow chain from the toolshed and the ax from the woodshed. We rode Bess to Cedar Ridge, on the outskirts of town. It got its name from the cedar trees growing there. But there were also a lot of pine and aspen trees.

Tom picked out a young pine tree that had a trunk about eight inches thick. He cut a notch with the ax on one side to make it fall the way he wanted. Then we started sawing on the other side with the two-man saw. It was hard work, but I pretended I was a lumberjack and that made it fun.

“Timber!” Frankie shouted as the tree began to topple and then fell to the ground.

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We cut off the top with the saw and then trimmed all the branches off with the hand saw and ax. When we finished we had a log about twelve feet long.

“We will need three more the same size,” Tom said.

He hooked one end of the chain around one end of the log and the other end of the chain to tugs on Bess’s harness. Bess pulled the log to our corral, with the three of us riding her. Frankie and I got off. Tom rode Bess in-side the barn, pulling the log-It took the next two days to get three more logs the same size and cut them in two. Tom laid the eight logs side by side on the ground in the barn.

“When we finish,” he said, “I’ll have a raft about five feet wide and six feet long.”

“How did you learn how to build a raft?” I asked because nobody in Adenville had a raft.

“Out of Papa’s book,” Tom said. “Mountain men and trappers used vines or strips of animal skin to bind the logs together in the old days. I’ll have to use rope instead.”

It was now time for The Great Brain to part with some cash. For Tom this was like a soldier going to war parting from his sweetheart. And, oh, how it must have broken his money-loving heart to part with one dollar to buy fifty feet of rope. We returned to the barn with the rope. I helped Tom bind the logs together. We used slip-knots to tie the logs together about a foot from each end.

“Get a bucket of water from the water trough and soak the ropes,” Tom said.

“Why?” I asked.

“To shrink the rope and make it good and tight,” Tom answered.

We soaked the rope and then took Frankie’s wagon and went to the lumberyard. Tom asked Mr. Hoffman if he had any scrap lumber.

“Going to build a doghouse?” Mr. Hoffman asked, probably because Brownie and Prince were with us.

“No, sir,” Tom said. ‘T’m building a raft. I want to put a deck on the logs.”

“How big is it?” Mr. Hoffman asked-

“About six feet long and five feet wide,” Tom answered.

“You should have a solid board across the front and the rear,” Mr. Hoffman said. “Then you can use scrap lumber for the rest of the deck.”

“I wasn’t figuring on paying for any lumber,” Tom said. “Maybe Mr. Harmon at the Z. C. M. I. store has some old wooden crates he will give me.”

“Who said anything about paying?” Mr. Hoffman asked.

He gave Tom two boards a foot wide and five feet long and more than enough scrap lumber for the deck. And I’ll be the son of a sailor if he didn’t give Tom a pound of nails free of charge too.

We returned to the barn. It was a good thing Tom had put the ropes binding the logs together a toot from each end. The two boards Mr. Hoffman gave him fit per-fectly. We nailed them first. Then we used pieces of scrap lumber to finish the deck.

Tom stepped back to admire the raft. “All I need now is an oar and a oarlock,” he said.

“What is an oarlock?” Frankie asked.

“It is a thing shaped like a horseshoe with a bolt on

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the end,” Tom said. “I’ll show you a picture of one in Papa’s big dictionary.”

The next morning Tom took the dictionary with him when we went to the blacksmith shop owned by Eddie Huddle’s father. Mr-Huddle was the strongest man in town. He was wearing his leather apron and shaping a red-hot horseshoe on his anvil when we arrived. We waited until he had shaped the horseshoe and, using his tongs, dunked it into the barrel of water to temper the steel.

Tom showed Mr. Huddle the picture of the oarlock in the dictionary. “I want you to make an oarlock like this one for me,” he said. “I figure you can use a horseshoe and forge a bolt to the bottom of it.”

“Why do you want it?” Mr. Huddle asked.

“For my raft,” Tom said. “But first, how much will it cost me?”

“Not a thing, Tom,” Mr. Huddle answered.

The blacksmith put a horseshoe and a bolt on his forge. Tom turned the handle on the blower of the forge until the metal was red hot. Mr. Huddle used his tongs, blacksmith’s hammer, and anvil to forge the two pieces of metal together. Then he dunked the oarlock into the barrel of water to temper the steel. Tom thanked him and we started for home.

“One thing I can’t figure out,” I said. “Why did Mr. Hoffman give you the lumber and nails for nothing and Mr. Huddle make the oarlock free of charge?”

“Because they have guilty consciences,” Tom said. “Both of them would have lost money in the Alkali Flats swindle if it hadn’t been for me. And it they had tried to charge me, I was going to remind them of it.”

“But you had to pay for the rope.” I said.

“Because Mr. Harmon at the Z. C. M. I. store didn’t invest in Alkali Products Incorporated,” Tom said.

Tom got Papa’s brace and a one-inch wooden bit from the toolstied. He drilled a hole near the center of the rear end of the raft. He put the bolt part of the oarlock into the hole in the deck board and log. He twisted the horseshoe back and forth.

“Now for the oar,” he said.

I watched him make an oar out of an old pitchfork handle and a piece of board about six inches wide and a foot long. I didn’t understand how the oarlock worked until he put the handle in the horseshoe part.

“Get the idea, J. D.?” he said as he moved the handle back and forth in the oarlock. “The oarlock does two things. It holds the handle of the oar and gives me the leverage needed to steer the raft.”

“It’s a beaut,” I said. “Now all you’ve got to do is to figure out how to get the raft to the river.”

“My great brain figured that out before I started,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t drag the raft over land or it would wear out the ropes around the logs. I’m going to use our stone sled to haul it.”

Almost every family in Adenville had a stone sled. They were used instead of a wagon for small hauling jobs. We used ours every fall to haul manure to put on our vegetable and flower gardens and front lawn. The early pioneers used them mostly for hauling stones to build fireplaces. That is how they got their name.

Tom had told Papa that he was building a raft in the barn. During iunch he let Papa know the raft was com-pleted.

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“I’d better take a look at it,” Papa said, “if you intend sailing it on the river.”

Papa inspected the raft after lunch and pronounced it seaworthy.

“Now, J. D.,” Tom said, after Papa had left the barn, “I want you to round up all the kids you can and tell them that they can get to see the first river-going raft ever built in Adenville. And all it will cost them is two cents.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want anybody to know you were building a raft,” I said. “But they will get to see it for nothing when you take it down to the river.”

“Don’t mention anything about me taking the raft to the river,” Tom said. “Just tell them they get to see the raft and that’s all.”

Then Tom put his arm around my shoulders. “I’ve decided to make you a ten percent partner in this business venture,” he said generously. “Your job will be to ride Bess, pulling the stone sled down to the landing place and hauling the raft back upstream to the swimming hole. You get ten percent of all the money I collect for fares-Of course, you can’t expect ten percent of the money I get for showing the raft to the kids the first time.”

“Shake on it,” I said quickly. This was one time I was positive there was no way I could possibly lose making a deal with The Great Brain.

We shook hands. Then I rode my bike to Smith’s va-cant lot. The kids usually gathered there to play while waiting an hour after lunch to go swimming. A couple of kids in town had almost drowned from cramps because they went swimming right after eating. There were about a dozen kids there already. I told them about the raft. Those who didn’t have any money with them went

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nome to get some. Another bunch of kids showed up. I told them about the raft. News travels fast in a small town. I waited about half an hour but no more kids arrived. I found out the reason when I entered the barn. There were about fifty kids in our barn. But none of

them had seen the raft yet. Tom had it covered with a horse blanket.

“I guess everybody is here,” I told Tom. He walked over and took hold of one corner of the horse blanket. Then, with a dramatic movement, he threw back the blanket revealing the raft. I’d never seen such a bunch of bug-eyed kids in my life.

“Behold the good raft Explorer!” Tom shouted. “The first river-going raft ever built in Adenville!”

Danny Forester’s left eyelid was wide open as he

stared at Tom. “Are you going to sail it on the river?” he asked.

“There will be morning and afternoon trips down the river,” Tom said. “For a mere five cents you get to go exploring on a raft just like Huckleberry Finn. The trip includes shooting the rapids. Never before in the history of Adenville has such a thrilling, exciting, and dangerous adventure been offered to the kids in this town-The first trip will be this afternoon, starting at the swimming hole.” Then he picked up the coil of left-over rope. “Basil,”

he said, “you and Parley and Danny hold up one end of the Explorer.”

I watched Tom loop the rope around the middle of

the raft as the three boys held up one end. He tied a good strong knot in it.

“In case you are wondering,” he said, “the rope is for the smaller kids to hold onto when we shoot the rapids.”

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I helped Tom hitch up Bess to the stone sled. The raft was lifted onto the sled. I got on Bess. Tom led the way out of the barn. When we reached the street a lot of adults stared at us. I guess they had never seen a raft being hauled on a stone sled with about fifty kids following be-hind.

When we arrived at the swimming hole, Tom stripped except for an old pair of pants.

“Line up, fellows,” he said, “for the maiden voyage of the good raft Explorer. The fare is just a nickel, the twentieth part of a dollar, for the greatest thrill of your lifetime.”

Every kid there wanted to go on the maiden voyage. There would have been a dozen fistfights over it if Tom hadn’t solved the problem.

“We will go by your birthdays, beginning in January,” he said.

Howard Kay was the only one born. in January. Danny and Basil were born in February. Nobody had been born in March. Pete Kyle and Hal Evans were born in April.

“That’is all for the first trip,” Tom said, “because I have to take Frankie and only six passengers can go at a time.”

The raft was carried into shallow water, and every-one climbed on board.

“You sit down, Frankie,” Tom ordered, “and hold onto the rope.”

Tom used the oar to push the raft into deeper water. Then he put the oar in the oarlock as the current began carrying the raft downstream. I got on Bess and began pulling the stone sled downstream. The kids who had been left behind ran with me, waving and yelling at the