The Ridge

Creeks are strange creatures! They are usually nothing but stinking, mud-filled gullies, more likely to produce mosquitoes and water moccasins than bass or brim or crappie. It’s likely in your average, shallow creek that a person wouldn’t even be able to work up a decent dog-paddle. But for some reason, young boys are drawn to creeks like flies to a moldy peach.

My little brother, Ronnie, and I were no different, of course. We were constantly playing in, on and around the creek that ran only a hundred feet or so from our house. It was the perfect place for a kid to transform a couple of cantaloupe rinds into a seagoing armada worthy of Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood". Or a kid could take a Heinz bottle, toss it in and have the perfect, floating, bobbing target for a leaver action Daisy.

And skipping rocks.....what better place was there than the creek to take a finely polished skinner and make it do a five-hopper, before it dove to the murky bottom. Without a doubt, the creek was a grand place for a kid to be, most of the time.

It was 1959 and Halloween was only a week away. After two days of monsoon-type rains, the weather had turned brisk, signaling the advent of winter. I noticed the cold immediately when I got out of my bed that Saturday morning. Something else I noticed was the creek.

From my bedroom window, I could see that the rains had gorged it, making it three times deeper than its normal two to three foot depth. And it was churning and rushing like I had never seen before. Even at the age of nine, I could see that my lazy old friend had suddenly turned wild, swift and dangerous.

We were finishing our breakfast, when my dad gave us his “now-hear-this” look.

“Both you boys,” He said. “stay away from that creek today. That thing’s too high for ya’ll to be messin’ around it. Now, do ya’ll hear me?”

He was staring mainly at me, I guess since I was older.

“Yessir,” I answered, quickly, but reluctantly.

My dad nodded once then forked a final bite of sausage into his mouth, drained his water glass and stood up.

“I’ve gotta haul a couple of loads of corn up to Bay after lunch.” He told my mother as he pulled on his jacket, then picked up his cap and lunch sack. “Might be after dark ‘fore I get home.”

My mother smiled up at him and said, “Be careful goin’ through those hills.”

My father nodded again then looked at me once more.

“You boys remember what I told ya, now.” He reminded us then strode out the door.

“You boys hurry and get your chores done,” My mother said as she began clearing away the breakfast dishes. “Gonna get colder this afternoon and I don’t want either of you out in it.”

“Oh, Baba,” I whined and screwed my face up as much as possible. “do we have to do ‘em right now?”

“Baba” was Ronnie’s and my name for my mother. I had been told when I was a baby, just beginning to talk, that whenever I tried to say “mama”, “baba” would come out instead. Thinking it was cute, my parents never bother to correct me. Then when Ronnie came along nearly four years after me, he naturally followed my lead. So from that day on, she was “Baba.”

“You heard me!” Baba answered, disregarding the agony on my face.

So unable to put off the inevitable, my brother and I bundled up and stepped out into the forty-five degree morning. The sky had a slate grey overcast and to the west looked darkly ominous.

“Get your basket,” I told Ronnie when we got to the barn breeze-way. He had bent to inspect a dead sparrow, ignoring me.

“Did you hear me?” I scolded big brother style.

“I will,” He bawled, still staring at the bird.

I opened the feed room door, grabbed a five gallon bucket and began scooping a mixture of corn chops and egg mash into it. Ronnie finally strolled in, snatched up his egg basket and headed across the barnyard toward our flimsy chicken house. I followed behind, lugging the bucket of feed. At twelve to fifteen pounds, a hefty load for a nine year-old.

Once there, I started filling the feeders while Ronnie set about searching for the white and brown treasures that our sparse flock of White Leghorns and Bard Rocks deposited daily. Finishing this, we went about the rest of our tasks methodically, if somewhat reluctantly, and were finished in a little more than an hour. We put our feed buckets away and, as my mother had instructed, but only after some serious dawdling, we returned to the house and settled in front of the television to see if Elmer, in all his black-and-white glory, was going to have any better luck with Bugs than usual.

Now, I guess it could be said that I was a pretty normal kid since I liked watching television in general and cartoons in particular. My brother, on the other hand, didn’t particularly care to watch cartoons, westerns or anything else. That wasn’t his idea of fun. As far as he was concerned, doing anything outside beat sitting in front of a picture tube. I will admit, though, that on that particular day, cabin fever had inflicted me as well.

When I was able to find nothing but reruns, I started to harass Ronnie. Naturally, he began to fight back and before long we were in the midst of a full-blown civil war. Baba hollered at us a few times and even came through and swatted us in an effort to bring about a lasting peace. Her efforts, of course, had little effect and after close to an hour of conflict, she threw her hands up in surrender.

“All right,” she roared. “That’s it. If you’re gonna play, go outside.”

That was all we had been waiting to hear. We jumped up, grabbed our coats and thundered out the back door.

“Pull your hoods up,” She called after us.

We halted just outside the door long enough to tug our sweat shirt hoods over our heads and knot the drawstrings. Then we were gone.

For half an hour, we were content to use out Tonka trucks to construct a scale model of the Hoover Dam. With a kid’s attention span being what it is, though, we soon agreed that land development was much too mundane an activity for men such as ourselves.

“Let’s get our B-B gun,” Ronnie chirped.

“Our B-B gun?” I huffed. “Who’s birthday was it?”

Showing his age, my brother scowled and popped his bottom lip out.

“Oh, all right,” I relented. “Go get it.”

Ronnie beamed and raced to the screened-in side porch to retrieve the gun.

We set a couple of cans on two of the fence posts running beside the driveway and took turns plinking away at them. Somewhere around the fiftieth shot, they finally tumbled to the ground. A blackbird whizzed overhead and I clipped off a quick shot at it, swearing to Ronnie that I had only missed it by an inch. I looked around for another target and when nothing caught my fancy, the sound of the creek drew my attention. After gazing at it for a moment, I turned to Ronnie.

“Come on,” I announced with the authority of an almost-ten-year-old. “Dad won’t care if we just go to the fence and shoot from there.”

Ronnie nodded vigorously. “Yea!” He grinned.

“Get the cans,” I commanded. “We’ll throw ‘em in.”

I strode toward the creek while Ronnie gathered the targets, then raced to catch up with me.

We set up our firing line ten feet from the water’s edge, at the crimped-wire chicken fencing my father had put up to keep our two cows from wandering too close to the creek. For a few minutes, though, we stood mesmerized by the simple movement of the flood waters. Eddies would materialize around the few boulders scattered on the bottom forming two-foot wide whirl-pools in some spots while in other spots, white breakers appeared then vanished then appeared again.

The four-barrel raft that dad had built for us the previous summer bucked at its hemp mooring, threatening to break free at any moment. The true power of the rushing water could be heard, and even felt, through its deafening roar.

“Throw one in,” I yelled.

Ronnie, in turn, grinned, nodded, then reared back and launched one of the cans. It hit the flow and sped off at 30 miles an hour. I shouldered my weapon and managed to snap off two shots before the can disappeared behind a half submerged tree down stream.

“Throw the other one.”

My brother threw again, but this time, only succeeded in skipping the can off the top of the fence. It fell short of the creek, rolling to rest at the upper edge of the bank’s sharp down-slope. Ronnie peeked up at me, grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

“Way to go, dummy!” I said. My glower, along with the distinct irritation in my voice, turned his grin to a frown and then to a determined scowl. He glanced from me, to our house, to the can, then back at me.

“I’ll get it!” He grunted and was instantly going over the fence.

“Wait!” I yelled and grabbed at him, but he pulled away. In an instant, he was over the barrier and running to the edge of the creek to retrieve the can. He stretched down, but it was just inches beyond his fingertips. Adjusting his position, he stretched out a little farther touched the can with his finger when, suddenly, he fell forward, plopping into the water.

“Hey,” I yelled after a moment of disbelief, then scrambled over the fence. Hitting the ground, I raced to the bank and frantically searched the waters for my brother, but there was no sign of him. He was gone.

“Ronnie!” I screeched. “Ronnie!”

A sputtering sound grabbed my attention. I looked to my right, toward the sound and spotted Ronnie’s red hood and almost as red face. The creek had pulled him some fifteen feet downstream but then grabbed him in an eight-foot wide whirlpool in which he was now circling. I ran to the edge of the bank, right in front of him, and stared at his dazed face. His eyelids were only partially open and he wasn’t moving other than from the force of the water. As I watched him circle he suddenly slipped under the water again.

“Baba!” I screamed.

Seconds later, he popped up again and came around toward me. I knelt down and reached out for him as he swept by, but he was too far out. Then, again, he went under.

“Baba.....Baba.....Baba!” I bellowed, darting from the water to the fence then back. Afraid to run for help and afraid not to. Afraid to take my eyes off of him, thinking if I did, that the creek would swallow up and sweep my little brother away forever. He was bobbing, now, like a loose fishing cork..............lifeless. I began crying.

“Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba!” I sobbed, over and over.

“What are you screamin’..............”

I jerked my head around at the sound of my mother’s voice and cut her words off.

“Ronnie’s in the water!” I cried.

There was no hesitation. My mother, who was as wide as she was tall, leaped off the porch and charged toward me.

“Tell him to kick!” She yelled.

I turned back to the creek and my brother who was just coming up again. “Kick, Ronnie, kick!”

In two steps, Baba cleared the fence and, even though she had never learned to swim, plunged feet first into the frigid creek. She pushed into the chin-high water toward the center of the whirling circle Ronnie was trapped in. He swept by and she reached out for him, but he dropped out of her reach, sinking again.

She turned, looking for his next appearance. A split second later, he popped up again and this time, she lunged at him, snaring his hood. Reeling him in, she clasped him in her arms as she began moving through the water toward the bank

“Grab him!” She gasped, thrusting him toward me. I took hold of his arms and dragged him up onto the bank.

“Get over the fence,” Baba said as she struggled out of the water. I did as I was told and had barely touched the ground when she was handing him over the fence to me. She cleared the barrier almost as quickly as before, grabbed Ronnie from me, then raced across the yard and into the house.

“Find me some blankets,” she directed as she laid him on her bed. I ran to my room and jerked two quilts off our bed. She rolled him up in them, then laid down and hugged him to her, trying to give him some additional warmth. My brother looked dead to me and I began to cry.

She saw my tears and spoke very calmly, “Get the phone and call Dad.”

I grabbed the black receiver and pressed it to my ear. After a moment, the operator came on the line.

“Number plea.....”

“Three-six-seven!” I blurted. “Hurry!”

I watched Ronnie and my mother as the ringing began. She was rubbing his chest and arms and talking to him. “Honey! Wake up, baby. Ronnie, wake up, Ronnie.”

I could sense the fear in her voice.

Suddenly, my brother’s head twitched slightly. Then his eyes shot open and he sprang up into a sitting position. He gagged and a stream of creek water shot from his mouth and nose, soaking my parent’s bed.

“Cough it up, baby,” My mother comforted him as she bent him over the bed, patting his back.

Three, four, five times Ronnie convulsed, then, finally, it was over. He laid his head on Baba’s shoulder and whimpered. My mother looked at me and I could tell that everything would be alright now.

When they got my dad to the phone, Baba told him what happened and he left early to come home. Doctor Crain was called and he phoned in a prescription which Dad picked up on the way home. I expected to get a whippin’, but I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even get a good “talkin’ to.” Guess my parents knew that fear was a pretty good punishment.

Two days later, Ronnie was back to getting in my way and giving me the dickins, as usual, seemingly no worse for his experience. And the creek? Well, we were banned from it for a couple of weeks, but when those fourteen days were over......