by Ruth
Little by little a new feeling was coming into the air. A quietness. A moist warmth. Not a leaf was stirring.
Beanie and Annie Mae and Tough Enough reached a part of the creek where a lot of little waterfalls were tumbling and tinkling. And there Beanie found just the place for his wheel. He set it up on two forked sticks, so water would go pouring over it.
It began to turn.
“It’s pretty,” said Annie Mae. She made the word sound like “purty.”
Beanie smiled. “It’s the purtiest thing in the cove.”
He gathered some twigs, then he scooped up some of the best mud he could find. He made a little log millhouse, beside the turning wheel, out of the mud and the twigs.
His sister looked at him hard. “Beanie, I declare, there’s mud all over you, pretty near’.”
Beanie said quickly, “Aw, it’ll dry up and shake off. I’m hungry, let’s eat our lunch.”
So Annie Mae opened the lunch bag. Tough Enough came wagging and barking in a begging way. The three ate their lunch.
Pretty soon Annie Mae stopped chewing. She looked all around and around.
“There isn’t a whuff of air,” she said. “Things are all scary-still.”
“It’s fixin’ to rain,” Beanie said.
“Look-a-there!” said Annie Mae. “It’s rainin’ already, ’way back up the cove.”
Beanie turned and looked. He saw huge purple-black clouds piled up and up and up. Gray curtains of rain were falling from them, hiding the mountains behind.
“It’s bucketin’ down back there,” he said. “It’s a regular gully-washer and it’s headin’ our way!”
He picked up his waterwheel.
A brilliant tongue of lightning licked down, then thunder came crashing and splitting. The mountains rolled and rolled and rolled the great sound back.
“Let’s light out for the store!” cried Annie Mae.
BEANIE and Annie Mae hurried on down, on down, on down.
Suddenly the sun was gone. A chill, gusty wind began to blow. It pushed at the silver-bell trees and scattered their blossoms.
Annie Mae and Beanie put their jackets on.
“I felt a drop,” said Annie Mae.
“I felt two drops,” said Beanie. He and his sister and Tough Enough moved still faster down the trail. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed around them.
Now they were in a narrow part of the cove, a part where the banks of the stream sloped up steeply. Ahead they saw an old cabin standing close to the creek.
More and more drops came driving until it was raining hard.
“We’ll get plumb soaked,” said Annie Mae, “if we don’t wait out the storm in that empty old cabin yonder.”
“Aw, we’re not sugar,” said Beanie. “A little rain won’t melt us down.”
“Beanie Tatum,” said his sister, “you quit talkin’, you just run.”
She led the way fast toward the cabin. Beanie made a face, but he followed.
The cabin door was hanging slightly open. Beanie shoved and it swung wide. The three ran in. He pushed the door tight shut.
“Whew!” said Annie Mae. She brushed a cobweb from her forehead. “We’re lucky we’re in here.”
She and Beanie looked around in the light that seeped through a dirty, broken window pane. Tough Enough was exploring with his nose.
There was nothing in the single room except bits of glass. The thing Beanie noticed most was noise—the long boom-boom-booming of thunder, the wind tearing at branches overhead, the rain on the roof like the beating of drums, thousands of little drums. Already the roof was leaking in three places.
The drumming grew louder, faster. Outside the window the cloudburst hid the view.
“Lan’s alive,” cried Beanie, “I feel like we’re deep under water!”
Tough Enough finished his sniffing. He stood still. His large, intelligent ears were up. He seemed to be listening alertly, listening to sounds outside the cabin. He whimpered.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he started to run from wall to wall like a wild thing in a cage. He was barking now.
Beanie had never heard him bark in such a strange way. The noises came shrilling out of his throat as if they were hurting him. His eyes looked restless and unhappy. He seemed like a different dog.
“What’s the matter with him?” Annie Mae called out. “He’s actin’ crazy-like.”
Tough Enough came running toward Beanie. He was trembling. He seized a leg of Beanie’s trousers and tried to pull Beanie toward the door. Then he let go and jumped up on Annie Mae., His jaws closed on the edge of her skirt. He held on, tugging and tugging.
She jerked her skirt out of his mouth. “Bad dog,” she cried, “bad dog!”
Tough Enough rushed to the door. He scratched and he scratched and he scratched on it. He looked back with begging eyes. He whined and whined and whined. His big, worried ears were up and quivering a little.
Beanie said, “He’s actin’ like he’s wild to get out and wild to get us out. Looks like his ears are tellin’ him things and he’s tryin’ to tell ’em to us. I’m goin’ to open that door and see why he’s all in a swivet.”
“Don’t you dare open that door!” Annie Mae screamed at him. “All the wind and rain in the world are waitin’ to come in. That dog’s a crazy killer-dog, don’t you pay him any mind. He’s not worth a worm a robin’s got a-hold of.”
“He is too worth a worm!” Beanie said hotly.
Beanie put out a hand to pull the door open just as Annie Mae pressed both hands against it, to hold it shut. For a few moments they struggled, Beanie pulling on the handle, Annie Mae pushing. Both were working hard, but the door didn’t budge. It stayed shut.
Tough Enough was scratching at it more desperately than ever, and jumping and jumping and jumping up against it.
Suddenly, with all his strength, Beanie gave the handle an inward jerk. The door swung partly open.
Out darted Tough Enough. He turned and he looked back and he barked in a “Follow me!” way. Beanie squeezed out into the driving downpour.
For a second or two he just stood staring and listening. He didn’t call out. He couldn’t.
His eyes were on the creek. His ears were full of its rushing and its roaring.
It did not look or sound like the creek he knew. It was rolling its high waters right up to the cabin steps. Swirling and foaming, yellow-red with mud, it was sweeping along dead leaves and dead wood and the torn-away branches of trees. Second by second it was rising. Beanie could see it reaching up.
He got back his voice. “Come out!” he shouted. “Annie Mae, come out! The creek’s gone wild, it’s goin’ to flood the cabin.”
She came running. Beanie caught her hand.
Up behind the cabin, up in a laurel thicket above a steep bank, Tough Enough was barking loud “Come here!” barks.
Beanie and Annie Mae splashed through water up to their knees as they ran around a corner of the cabin. They started to climb the clay slope behind it, the bank directly under Tough Enough.
Wet leaves and stones kept sliding under their feet. Again and again they stumbled and slipped back. Whenever they could, they pulled themselves up by grasping small tree trunks and branches.
There came a snapping sound. “Oh!” screamed Annie Mae. A branch had broken. She was sliding toward deep water swirling at the bottom of the slope.
Beanie reached down. He clutched her jacket. Pulling, tugging, sometimes slipping, he drew her up.
They struggled into the thicket. Close to its outer edge, where the bushes grew thin, they rested.
Tough Enough was there. He threw himself on them, yelping, wiggling all over. He licked their faces, he licked their hands, he licked as much of their necks as he could lick.
Annie Mae and Beanie were panting. They lay on their stomachs, looking down at the flood. The cabin was half under water now.
They saw an uprooted tree come driving down in the current. End on, it struck the cabi
n with a muffled thud. And suddenly there wasn’t any cabin. There was nothing but logs and boards and shingles swirling downstream.
“Mercy on us!” cried Annie Mae.
Beanie caught hold of Tough Enough. He hugged him. He said, “You’re just about the smartest little old dog there is.”
Annie Mae petted and patted and petted Tough Enough. “If it wasn’t for you—” she said to him. “If it wasn’t—for you …” She looked at the rushing waters, at the place where the cabin had stood.
The rolling of thunder had stopped. The rain was slackening.
Annie Mae stood up. When she spoke again her voice was sad. “It’s easy walkin’, now, to the road the store sets on. We’d best get goin’.”
Off again the three started. Beanie wasn’t hurrying. His feet didn’t want to move. He and Annie Mae and Tough Enough reached the rutty road too soon for him.
Rain was still falling. It was running down out of Beanie’s and Annie Mae’s hair. It dripped from their noses and their chins, it squished and it squnched in their shoes. It was giving Tough Enough’s coat a glued-down look.
Beanie waded right through a puddle, kicking it up in yellow-red splashes and spurts. Tough Enough was right behind him, wagging a yellow-red tail.
“Beanie Tatum,” Annie Mae shrieked, “quit messin’ in that puddle!”
“Aw, we’re wet and dirty anyways,” said Beanie, “so we might as well get the good out o’ puddles and mud.”
Pretty soon Tough Enough put up his large ears. He barked. He started to run back up the road.
“I reckon he hears something,” said Beanie.
Before long, Beanie and Annie Mae heard it too. It was a chug-chug-chug and a clunk-clunk-clunk and a rattle-rattle- rattle and a wheeze-wheeze-wheeze.
“There’s just only one thing rattle-bangs thataway,” said Beanie. “Our old truck. Pa got it started after all.”
The chugs and rattles and wheezes sounded closer and closer. The truck’s old nose came poking round a bend. Tough Enough was running along beside it, barking and barking away.
“Look-a-there,” cried Annie Mae, “who all’s in the truck!”
Pa Tatum and Ma Tatum and Buck and Serena and Irby were all squeezed together on the front seat.
“Hey!” Pa Tatum called out to Annie Mae and Beanie. His whole face was a grin. “We been worried up about you. Bad flood. Tore things up and flattened ’em down.”
“I declare,” cried Ma Tatum, “you young uns look like drownded pups—bless you both!”
“Beanie,” said his father, “I got something to tell you. After the three of you put out to go, I got to thinkin’ about Tough Enough, how he’d be chained up soon and low in his mind and him maybe not the chicken killer a-tall. I figured I ought to keep a sharp lookout and try to catch the killer at his killin’.”
Ma Tatum put in, “And the more your pa figured and looked out sharp, the less work he done.”
Pa Tatum grinned. “I just stood around and tried to keep an eye on every last chicken. I had my gun handy. Pretty soon I heard a hen squawk, quick and surprised. Out o’ the corner o’ my eye I saw a big chicken hawk come half a-runnin’, half a-flyin’. He grabbed him a young banty hen. Before I could git a shot at him he was up and gone with her. But you just wait. I’ll git that killer yet.”
It seemed to Beanie that he had never felt so happy. Happiness filled him full.
Then he and Annie Mae told how Tough Enough had warned them.
When they finished, Pa Tatum and Ma Tatum and Buck and Serena and Irby were loving Tough Enough. They were loving him very, very much. They were petting and patting and petting him. There were saying “Good dog, good dog, good dog.”
And it wasn’t long before everybody heard how Tough Enough had saved Beanie and Annie Mae. Beanie’s teacher heard. Grandma Tatum heard and Grandpa Tatum heard. And so did the eleven aunts and the fifteen uncles and the thirty-one cousins and the two other grandparents and the seven great-aunts and the five great-uncles.
So they all loved Tough Enough very, very much. “Good dog, good dog, good dog,” they said.
But Beanie said a better thing: “That little old Tough Enough, he’s the best dog in the world, I reckon.”
Tough Enough’s Trip
To
James McClure Clarke, who told us about the Waites Averys.
The Waites Averys, who told us about their remarkable trip in their remarkable truck.
Tom Alexander and Burt Teague, who helped us keep our story on the road.
“RATTLE-rattle-rattle, wheeze-wheeze-wheeze, chug-chug-chug,” said Beanie. Beanie Tatum was being a truck, the truck he was riding in with his mother and father and brothers and sisters. He was trying to cheer himself up in a loud brisk way. He was afraid he was going to cry. Even though he was the youngest Tatum, he was too big to cry. So he was making the funny noises the truck was making.
But it didn’t do a bit of good. He still felt sad. He couldn’t stop thinking about his dog, Tough Enough.
His father had told Beanie and his brothers and sisters, “Well be leavin’ all our dogs and cats behind, here on our farm with Cousin Judd. He’ll feed ’em and milk the cows and keep things goin’ while we’re away. Your great-grandma and your great-grandpa asked us to visit ’em. They didn’t invite a whole mess o’ critters.”
So before the Tatums had left their mountain farm early that morning, Beanie had whistled and called, “Here Tough, here Tough, here Tough!” He had wanted to pet his dog and say a long good-by. But Tough Enough hadn’t come. Beanie couldn’t find him anywhere. Had Tough Enough run away?
And now, sitting in the back of the truck, Beanie was still worrying, still wondering where in the world Tough Enough could have got to.
He winked a new wetness out of his eyes. He almost wished he had been left behind, so he could have kept looking for Tough Enough.
Beanie and his brothers, Buck and Irby, and his sister Annie Mae were sitting on old split-oak-bottomed chairs lashed to the sides of the truck. Now Beanie got up and stood close to the window above the front seat. He wanted to talk to his father.
Pa Tatum was driving the truck. With Pa up in front were Ma Tatum and Serena Tatum, Beanie’s older sister.
“Oh, Pa!” shouted Beanie. “Pa, why are we puttin’ out to go now? Do we have to, Pa?”
Pa’s answer came back through a crack where the glass was broken: “Now’s the time, son. Our heavy farm work’s done. With your great-grandma and your great-grandpa too old to come back home to us, seems like we just naturally ought to go to them.”
Beanie went back and sat down. Great-grandma and Great-grandpa … He wondered what they were like. He knew his grandparents well. They were very old indeed. But Ma Tatum had told him his great-grandparents were even older. He tried to imagine anybody older. He couldn’t.
He looked at his oldest brother, Buck, and asked a sudden question: “What all do you reckon we’ll see on our trip?”
Buck said, “Cities and fact’ries and trains. And folks. More folks than rocks in our pasture.”
“The ocean!” cried Annie Mae. “We’ll see the ocean!”
“The great big Atlantic Ocean,” said Irby, who was older than Annie Mae. He went on happily, “So much water, it could plumb cover up the Great Smoky Mountains.”
The canvas over the rear of the truck had been rolled partway up to let in air. Beanie looked along the road ahead, as far as he could see. But his thoughts flew along much farther, across hundreds and hundreds of miles. “Lan’s alive!” he said to himself. “Sure hope I get to see that ole ocean.”
The truck went on nosing along a steep dirt road, a road that twisted down, down, down out of the mountains. It looked like a tent on wheels. It shook and wobbled and lurched. The Tatums had given it a name. It wiggled so much, they called it Mrs. Wigglesworth.
Slowly, very slowly Mrs. Wigglesworth went around a sharp curve. Beanie got a last glimpse of the Tatum cabin sitting up in a clearing with a dark d
eep forest behind it. He wondered if Tough Enough had come back to the cabin and was looking for him right now. He felt sad again.
Mrs. Wigglesworth reached the end of the dirt road. She swung out onto the paved highway and rolled along at her very best speed. Her very best speed was slow.
Cars began to pass her. Beanie made a face at each one. He had to make so many faces that his face got tired. So he stopped.
Here on the highway, riding was smoother. Annie Mae and Beanie and Irby and Buck were no longer bouncing up and down on their chairs. All the bundles and boxes and other things on the floor had stopped shaking and sliding around, all except one. This was an untidy pile of quilts in a corner. It was still in jerky motion.
Beanie stared at it. Quilts couldn’t move all by themselves. There must be something inside them, something wriggling and twisting.
“Lan’s alive!” he yelled. He had seen a nose. It was small. It was black. It was pushing out between the quilts.
“Looky there!” Beanie cried. He and Buck and Irby and Annie Mae stared down.
Out popped a mouth. Out popped two eyes full of mischief.
”It’s Tough Enough!” cried Beanie.
“Tough Enough!” squealed Annie Mae.
“That good-for-nothin’ Tough Enough!” Irby said loudly.
Buck was grinning. He asked, “Well, what about that little ole Tough Enough?”
Tough Enough himself came wriggling out. He jumped up on Beanie’s lap. His wet tongue stroked Beanie’s hands and Beanie’s face.
Beanie laughed. He turned his head away and said, “It was shivery-cold up on our farm early this mornin’. I reckon Tough scrouged himself between those quilts to get out of the pinchin’ wind.”
