by Richard Peck
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:
ACCESS TO THIS BRIDGE IS NOT ONLY DANGEROUS BUT ILLEGAL. ENTRANCE UPON THIS RIGHT OF WAY IS FORBIDDEN TO ALL BUT AUTHORIZED RAILROAD MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL. POSITIVELY NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF
ST. LOUIS, EFFINGHAM & TERRE HAUTE RAILROAD
“We Opened the West”
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.
“It’s a tramp,” I said, quiet, because your voice carries out in the open like that. And it scared me. We both started pulling on our clothes. When we were dressed, whoever it was on the bridge h
ad walked a few paces in the direction of town and was sitting down with his legs hanging over the side.
I don’t know why it scared me. Just that it was somebody up there, watching us maybe. And our being naked and all. I wanted to head off downstream, away from the bridge, and maybe come out on the route and walk back home that way. I wanted to put some distance between us and the bridge. I don’t know now if I remembered about the dead man in the woods being a tramp or not. I don’t think so, but I was tense anyway.
But Flip was heading back toward the bridge, keeping close to the trees. He looked back once and motioned for me to follow. It was his I’ve-got-a-plan gesture. And like a sheep, I followed him. Like a dumb sheep.
Cutting along in a straight line, we were back by the bridge before I knew it. There was open territory just before you get to the bottom of the arches. And Flip shot across it and under the bridge. I realized that if the tramp was still up on the bridge, he could look straight down as we crossed under him. Maybe he could have been watching us all the way up from the swimming place. I couldn’t tell for sure. But I felt his eyes burning into the top of my head as I broke cover and made a dash under the bridge.
“He’s still up there,” Flip whispered when I came up next to him. “I looked up and saw his feet.”
“What are we doing?” I whispered.
“Be quiet and keep up with me,” he muttered. Then he headed on, still staying next to the creek. I had to stay right on his heels to keep the branches from whipping back and cutting me across the face. We were moving so fast I couldn’t think about where we were going. I was wondering if the tramp had got up and turned around and might be watching us from this side of the bridge. I didn’t look to see, though.
So we were right back by the scuttled rowboat and the puff adder before I knew where I was. The snake was still there, and I threw on my brakes before I got up to it. Flip circled in on it and grabbed it by the tail. My knees nearly gave out on me. I wanted to beg him to leave it alone. But he’d already jerked it so that its squashed head flipped out from under the rock. It was the deadest snake you ever saw. And I was the scaredest kid.
“Come on,” Flip said, like I was supposed to know what he had in mind. “We’ll head up this side of the hill and come out right over the railroad cut. Maybe we’ll get there before he comes on down the track.” Then Flip started scrambling up the hill, dragging the dead puff adder behind him.
I stood there, mad, with tears in my eyes. Flip turned around and said, “Come ON!” in a hoarse whisper. So I did. At a distance. It was a tough climb. I kept Flip in sight ahead and above me, with the bloody-headed snake bobbing along behind him. It must have been about three feet long because its head grazed the ground. At some places, if he’d turned loose of it, it would have dropped back on me. And why the thought of this didn’t stop me cold, I don’t know. I was just running and climbing because he was.
We were out of the trees and up in the high grass on top of the hill. Behind us, you could see a section of the tracks crossing the bridge, wavering in the sun and heat. Flip was running in a low crouch right up to the cut where the man-made cliff face dropped straight down to the tracks. He flopped down in the weeds and crawled up to the edge. I dropped down too, but circled way around to one side of him because I knew he was dragging that damned snake through the grass, and I didn’t want to come up on it all of a sudden.
So I got up to the edge of the cut a few feet nearer the bridge than he was. The sun was getting over in the west by then so I was about half-blinded by it. I had to squint to see if somebody was walking along the tracks. But I had to look all the way back to the bridge before I saw him. He was just getting up from where he’d been sitting. He was coming our way. Just a shape in the distance, dark, with a halo of light around him.
“He’s headed this way,” I said.
“Right.” Flip was rustling around in the grass, doing something with the snake.
I could just see this shape way off and thought it was funny he wasn’t carrying anything. I knew tramps didn’t carry all their gear in a red bandanna on the end of a stick in real life. But I had seen a couple before—live ones, I mean. And sometimes they had old beat-up cardboard suitcases. But this one was just walking along, slow, with his arms free—a big guy. I inched back from the edge of the cliff.
I had time then to realize what we were doing. Or rather, what Flip was about to do. Throw the dead snake down on the tramp and scare the wits out of him. Or maybe, throw it down right in front of him. Then a funny thing happened to me. A couple of things. It was like that dream I’d had. The one where I was dreaming I was walking along with Flip but I was somewhere else at the same time—standing way off, watching. It felt like a dream too. The sun dazzling everything, making the whole world either pure light or black shadows. It was like I was the tramp, walking along down there, maybe knowing we were up above, maybe not. But I was walking along the track instead of the tramp, feeling the rocks through the holes in my shoes. I was the tramp and I was about to get a dead snake dropped on my shoulders—if Flip’s aim was any good. I could feel the snake hit me and the black spatters of snake’s blood on me.
And for the first time in my life, I thought something Flip had thought up was senseless. Not just not worth doing. Senseless. I was going to tell him not to do it, tell him he wasn’t going to do it. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the tramp, who was getting bigger and closer. So I put my head down in the grass and counted up to ten, which would bring the tramp ten paces closer. Then I was going to get up and stop Flip, who I could hear breathing.
But when I looked up, and then over the cliff, and then down at an angle, the sun wasn’t in my eyes anymore. And I was looking down at Elvan Helligrew. And he was looking up at me.
I stood up, and Elvan stopped. I thought for a minute he was going to turn back. But it was too late. I was pretty sure I could read his mind. That he was remembering our dire warning about not following us around. That he was pretending he hadn’t really followed us out there and spied on us all he could. And maybe how he’d even let us see him on the bridge to show us how brave he was.
But Flip whispered, “Get your damn head down.”
“It’s Elvan,” I said. “It’s him down there.”
Flip poked his head out of the weeds to make sure. “For Chrissakes,” he said, “that’s better yet.” He rustled around, getting ready to let fly with the snake.
“No,” I said and walked over to him. He had the snake all lined up with the edge of the dropoff, ready to grab it and drop it. “We’re not going to do it,” I said to him, loud.
“Maybe you’re not, but I am.”
Elvan had stopped walking, so there was no big hurry. But Flip grabbed the snake just under the neck. And I stepped up and put my foot on his hand that was holding it. I was free of my snake phobia for the time being. And Flip looked up at me, more surprised than I’d ever seen him.
“No, you’re not,” I said. And I don’t think he even heard the shake in my voice. His hand opened out, even though I wasn’t putting much weight on it. He moved it away from under my sneaker, and he never took his eyes off my face.
Now—two years later—I can see the advantage I had right then. I can see what I might have been able to do with it. I might have been able to change things for all of us, for Elvan too. But I didn’t see it then. I wasn’t really ready to stop being a follower. Not yet.
Flip stood up, and I kicked the snake back into the tall grass without looking at it. My foot tingled where my shoe touched the snake.
All this time, Elvan must have been standing down there wondering what in the hell was going on. But I turned away and walked up over the crown of the hill. I was shaking—maybe because of the snake. And I decided I’d walk a long way home, through some pastures away from the tracks. I didn’t care if Flip came along or not.
He did. We were over a woven-wire fence and walking along through a field spattered with cow pies when he finally said, “I do
n’t think we’d have done it.”
“You’d have done it, all right. Without thinking.”
“Yeah, I would have,” he said after a few more steps. “It’d of been a dumb-ass thing to do. You were right. This time.”
Thirteen
Summer was slipping away, and I’d been nagging my dad, when he was home, to take me on the truck with him. By August, he was still holding out, but getting quieter about it. Since he’s generally pretty quiet anyway, it took me awhile to realize he was getting even quieter. So I kept at him every chance I got, especially when Mom wasn’t around.
Finally, he gave in and said he’d take me on an overnight down to Memphis and back, but he couldn’t see why I wanted to go. He’d rather stay home if somebody gave him the choice.
When my mom got wind of it, she carried on awhile till Dad finally told her, “I give him my word, and that’s that.”
I’d wanted to have Flip along too, but I knew that wasn’t in the cards. With Dad, and the relief driver, and me, it was a full cab. As it was, one of us had to lie up in the bunk behind the seat while the other one rode next to the driver.
Flip and I had gotten over the snake business without going over it. It made a difference with us for awhile. We were a little bit more polite with each other. More careful with each other, anyway. So when I found out I was going to get to make the Memphis run, I told Flip I wished he was coming too. Since it meant he’d have to carry the route alone for a couple of evenings, I had to say something.
The afternoon we left I was pretty worked up, but I played it very low key around Mom. She was saying things like, “I don’t want you sitting up all night. You sleep in the bunk.” And, “I don’t want you eating that slop in those all-night truck stops. And no coffee.” And, “Don’t sit on the toilet seats in those places. You don’t know what you could pick up.” Talk about personal comments.
