Sophie

Until I grew too tall; and my head started bumping against the dome light in grandpa’s red and white International Harvester pick-up, I would ride standing up in the seat, with my elbow on his shoulder.  As far as I could tell he knew just about everybody and everything of any real importance. 

“How come we’re gettin’ the groshuries, granpa?”

“I’m just pickin’ some up for our neighbor.”

“What neighbor, granpa?”

“Sophie Latham, peanut.”

“How come she doesn’t get ‘em herself?”

“Cause, she lives way back up the creek and can’t hardly drive her old car down to the store anymore.”

“Well, how come you gotta get ’em?”

“Because she called and asked if I would.”

“Why did she call you up, granpa?”

 “Because, she lives all by herself up there, and I kind ‘a look after her when I can.  And besides, she’s our neighbor.”

“How come she lives all by herself?”

“She doesn’t have any family around here anymore.”

“How come she doesn’t have any family around, granpa?”

“Because they’ve all died or moved awa…. Did anyone ever tell you –

you ask too damn many questions for a half-pint?”

“What’s a half-pint, granpa?”

“Just hang onto those groceries, boy.  Don’t let ’em tip over.”

We turned off the paved, county two-lane, onto a twisting gravel washboard called the Old Cedar Fork road.  This was the poorest part of the county and the main reason was the ground.  Or the lack thereof.  About six, and no more than eight inches below the surface of this knotted hilly landscape was a layer of reddish brown chert.  Iron laden gravel really.  And below that for the next three or four hundred feet was solid limestone.  It didn’t make for good farming.  Only fields along creek bottoms produced any kind of row crops.  The other cleared ground around Silver Lake, usually across a broad backed ridgeline, went to pasture cattle or make lespedeza hay.  Any trees on these stunted hills large enough to be commercially valuable, had been logged out long ago.  What remained was pretty scrubby fare.  Post oaks, burr oaks and soft maples; hackberry, sycamore, shag barked hickory and above all, eastern red cedar.  The one advantage to the ground out here was that they never needed to gravel the roads.  You could drive a truck through just about anywhere once are twice, and bingo, you had a road.

After a bone jarring, stiff-legged mile down Cedar Fork road, grandpa downshifted into a tight, right hand turn that catapulted us straight off the little cliff where everybody in Silver Lake dumped their trash.  But, when the nose of his pick-up finally dropped down, we were on what looked to be two parallel footpaths about as far apart as a car’s wheels, running through the woods. 

“Where we goin, granpa?”

“I told you… out to Sophie Latham’s farm.”

“She lives way out here?”

“Uh uhm.”

“Doesn’t she get scared out here all by herself?”

“I don’t think so, pipsqueak.  I think she’s beyond scarin’.”

“Wow, I bet there’s even Indians out in these woods.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, squirt.  Keep your eyes peeled, maybe you’ll see one.”

“Really, granpa.”

“Sure, peanut.  There used to be lots of ’em around here.  I find arrowheads every time I plow that field below Sophie’s spring.”

“Real Indian arrowheads, granpa?”

“As real as they get.”

Just then we made another sharp right turn and slammed down into the dry wash of an old creek bed.  As the button on my ball cap hit the ceiling of the cab, grandpa downshifted again, put the gas to his old International, and bucking and jolting we shot up the other side throwing gravel like Roman candles behind us.  At the top of the bank, the track leveled out before it turned through a stand of sycamore trees.  The sycamores lining the road framed a simple stone farm house beyond, like some master landscape artist had laid them out for just that effect. 

The house was built of the same pottery colored stone that filled the creek banks and littered the surrounding woods and fields.  It was situated half way up a steep hillside, so the road brought us up on a level with the cellar door, underneath the broad porch that ran across the front of the house.  The perspective made the single story house appear much taller than it was.  The narrow, low beamed door in the cellar wall was nearly hidden in shadow below the open porch.  Whoever laid the stone foundation, left three narrow, vertical openings, too small to be windows, but wide enough to slide a rifle barrel through.

A woman with hair the color and texture of cobwebs, wearing a thin cotton dress and black lace-up shoes, opened a screen door and stepped onto the porch.  The door slammed shut behind her with a sharp crack.

“Now behave yourself, peanut.  Don’t go pesterin’ Sophie with a thousand questions like you do me all the time, you hear?”

“How come, granp… awright.”

“Hand me that sack, and come on.”

“Howdy, Mizz Sofie.  I got those grosh’ries you needed.”

“Why, thank you John.  Just bring ’em on up on the porch here, if you don’t mind…

Who’s that with you?”

“That’s one of Nancy’s boys.  I don’t guess you’ve ever met this one.  His names Simon, but he answers to ‘Peanut’… Never stops talkin’, I can’t get him to shut up.”

“Aw, granpa!”

From the bright sunlight, I looked up to Sophie’s wrinkled, parchment-skin face. She had locked her full attention on me. The way the light fell across her face darkened her eye sockets into pools of shadow. Black holes, each with a point of light reflecting from her eyeballs. That look pierced through the warm afternoon and froze me to the ground where I stood.  I would never forget it.

“Well, you bring him on up with you so I can get a good look at him… 

…I’ll bet you boys could use a cool drink of spring water.”

I didn’t know it then, but the spring on Sophie’s farm was the biggest, clearest one in the whole county.  In later years, I’d come with grandpa to disc the lower field he farmed for her, and we’d stop in the middle of a hot day and walk the quarter-mile over to her spring for a drink of the coldest, sweetest water I ever tasted.  She kept a long handled, tin ladle tied on a string around the branch of a black cherry tree that leaned out over the water.  The spring bubbled up below a limestone shelf and made a pool fifteen feet across and two feet deep.  It never ran dry.  A thick stand of watercress always grew around the border, and for several hundred feet down the spring branch. 

Something in the geology of the hardscrabble ground in that region gave it redemption from its lack of rich topsoil.  It produced clear-water springs in abundance.  Silver Lake itself was fed by seven separate springs. From a boat you could look down through openings in the moss and see where they rose, clear and cold. And grandpa was right about the Indians, too.  They’d camped and hunted and lived around these springs generation after generation before Europeans came and drove them from their homes.  I filled up coffee cans and shoeboxes with arrowheads, spear points, hide scrapers, stone mallets, mortars, and other flinty remnants of the lives they left behind.

The main stream in the county was called Saline Creek, which I never understood, ’cause I could taste no salt of any kind in it.  The headwaters of the South Fork of the Saline formed in the hills and springs above Silver Lake.  The upper reaches divided in two main arms; one called Nation’s Branch and the other, the Upper South Fork is largely fed by the spring on Sophie Latham’s farm.  These two branches came together with the mill race below Silver Lake at a place known locally as “The Point”, because of the peninsula where they met.  Grandpa owned the land on the north bank of the Saline from a mile below “The Point” all the way up to Sophie’s spring. 

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My family lived a hundred miles away from Silver Lake, in the St. Louis suburb called Kirkwood.  But every summer my brothers and I were packed up and sent to stay with grandma & grandpa on the farm.  Each fall, I was the envy of my city classmates when I told stories about “…what I did during summer vacation”.  I was also the “bad seed” at W.W. Keysor grade school.  The freedom of roaming the countryside at Silver Lake all summer made it hard for me to stay close to home when I got back to the city in the fall.  So I had a tendency to ride my bike in ever widening arcs as I grew from one grade to the next.

Gary Shockheimer was a kid of the suburbs. He had a face full of freckles and kept his hair combed. Gary was the kind of kid mothers liked.  He was polite and tucked in his shirt and had those freckles, and was small for his age, like me.  I guess that’s one reason we were friends.  Being friends, it was arranged that Gary come to Silver Lake one summer.  I guess his mom looked at it like a trip to camp.  Or an outing in the country.  Whatever, I looked forward to having a friend around.  I had lots to show him.  Not least of which was  my “secret hideout”. 

The “secret hideout” was my special place.  About two miles upstream from grandpa’s house, the branch that emanated from Sophie’s spring poured into one arm of the Saline’s South Fork forming a narrow neck of land.  Cedar trees had grown up along both banks, forming a ‘V’ shaped grove.  Inside this natural arbor, the dried needles from the cedars, made a dense, springy carpet.  The cedars were old, and close together, and had grown tall enough to create an awning over all but the very center, leaving a clear spot for campfire smoke to drift up through.  A perfect alcove for camping-out, daydreaming and meetings of the Blackhawk Club. 

Now, the Blackhawk Club was strictly private.  Only me and CJ, my friend from Silver Lake, and his cousin Jeffrey were certified members.  The official clubhouse was in the abandoned chicken coop behind the widow Ayles house; down the road from CJ. But, the sacred ceremonial site was situated on a smooth limestone shelf that jutted out from a hill just south of the “secret hideout”.  One of the major activities of the Blackhawks was smoking cigarettes stolen from various sources.  Chesterfield Kings from my grandma and Salems from aunt Cozy, CJ’s mom unknowingly contributed Parliaments and Marlboros came in thanks to Jeffrey’s dad. 

As Blackhawks we acknowledged our unrecorded Indian heritage.  Because of our family’s denials, we had to reconstruct our true bloodlines.  Cherokee, Sauk and Osage we figured most likely.  But, no matter which tribe, we felt a strong disposition to all things Indian, and therefore natural.  We knew without doubt, that a Blackhawk could survive indefinitely alone in the woods.  A Blackhawk could prosper nicely off roots, berries and the fish and small game he killed.  So, much of our time in the hills was spent hiding behind trees, catching crawfish, camouflaging our tracks, hacking down small trees to build campfires and practicing the sundry pioneering skills essential to any earnest backwoodsman. 

That summer, when Gary finally arrived, the Blackhawk Chief’s Council, decided he should undergo the full Blackhawk initiation ritual.  This rite was not a rigid ceremony, but adapted to meet the qualities of each new inductee, although, a pilgrimage to the sacred spot was mandatory for all members.  The ceremony could only be sanctified there.  And, only after dark.  So, an overnight camping expedition was required. 

After careful acquisition of supplies, and appropriate clearance from our Caucasian mothers, the Blackhawks embarked on the holy journey.

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“You got your sleeping bag?”

“Yeah.  ‘d you bring the bottle rockets?”

“Two gross.  Think that’s enough?”

“That should do.  Jeff, ‘d  you pack anything to eat?”

“I got 3 cans a’ beans, and some Spam.”

“Good.  CJ, you got the smokes?”

“A pack of Parliaments, and half a pack of Salems… about five Marlboros.”

“Cool, give me one, will ya?”

“Si, did you bring your hatchet?”

“Yeah, and my Bowie knife. too.”

“Tent?”

“Nah, it’s too heavy.  We won’t need it.  It aint gonna rain, anyway.”

So, with backpacks and sleeping bags over our shoulders, up the creek we went. The day passed by, as summer days go by for young boys; very quickly.  Just as evening began its war on the day, sunlight turned heavy banks of clouds brilliant crimsons, ambers and purples over the horizon.  In a ring of stones, we built a towering bonfire of driftwood and broken branches.  Angry orange flames reached high up through the cedar arbor, echoing the sunset.  Before bubbling hot cans of baked beans cooled enough to eat and pocketknife-carved hunks of Spam were scorched to a blackened crust and devoured; night slipped in and took the surrounding forest hostage.

            “CJ… Put that big log on the fire, will you?  I’ll hunt around for some more wood.”

            “Awright.”

            “I’ll look, too.”

            “Hey, where’s my sleeping bag?”

            “I hung ’em all in that big Sycamore over there.”

            “Where’s the flashlight?”

            “I dunno… I thought you brought it.”

            “Nope, I didn’t bring it… I thought Jeff had it.”

            “Uhnn Uh.  I didn’t bring one.”

            “So we don’t have a flashlight?  That’s great.”

            “Ahh, we don’t need one.  Just get that fire blazin’… it’ll throw enough light.”

Expanding the search area, dead trees trunks, broken limbs and green wood was stockpiled and sleeping bags were rolled out around the fire.  By now, clouds had blanked out the stars completely.  If the moon was out that night, it never showed itself.  Beyond the rim of campfire light, the woods were black as a windowless basement. 

            “Man, it’s really dark tonight.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You hear that?”

            “What?”

            “Nah, I don’t hear nuthin’.”

            “Wait, there it is again.  You hear it?”

            “Ahh, it’s nuthin’.  Prob’bly a squirrel or som’mun.”

            “You guys know that just up the creek is where Sofie Laytham lives?”

            “Sofie who?  Who’s that?”

“She’s an old spinster lady my granpa knows.  Lives up in the woods there in a old stone house, all by herself.”

            “How come?”

“Well, granpa told me a story about her.  She used to be married, but her husband died.  Henry Laytham was his name.  Granpa said he was a little bit odd.”

            “What’d’ya mean odd?”

“Well, he’d had some bad luck farmin’.  Or, he wasn’t a very good farmer… or the ground just wasn’t very good for farmin’.   I don’t remember exactly what it was, but they were broke all the time.  Then, granpa says, one morning Henry told old Sophie that the night before, he’d had himself a magic dream. A foretelling. Henry claimed that a powerful old Indian chief came to him in a vision and, pointing with his raised arm, told Henry there was “much silver” in those hills behind his big spring.  Not too far from where we’re camping, tonight. That spring branch we got water from… well, that comes from Sophie’s spring.” 

“Really?”

“You betch cha.”

            “What’d he do?”

            “Well… Henry, set out to find that silver and get rich.”

            “Was he crazy, or what?”

            “Well… you know this area is called, ‘Silver Lake’?”

“Ahhh, come on. You don’t expect us to believe…”

            “…Shut up you bozos, let him tell the story. Then what happened?”

“Yeah, well, Henry, he started diggin’ to find that silver.  Starting spending all his spare time digging holes. Finally, stopped farmin’ altogether and just went out prospecting for weeks at a time.  Had an old mule that pulled his wagon, with his pickaxes and shovels and wrecking bars and provisions and such. He spent every day diggin’ holes in the sides of these hills. Looking for that rich vein. True believer.”

“Did he find any?”

“Well, ya know, from what I’ve seen, these hills are nothin’ but rock.  Hard as hell, really.  So, eventually, Henry decided he wasn’t getting anywhere, fast, mining by hand. That what he needed to use was dynamite.  I don’t know how he paid for it, or where he got it, but granpa says, he started blasting these big holes in the ground.  He’d dynamite out a big chunk, then jump in, clean out the rubble, set new charges and blast down further, like that.  I can show you guys some of the mines tomorrow, still a few up there on that ridge.  Just shafts that go straight down in the rock. Open pits going fifteen or twenty feet down some a ‘em.”

“Cool… I’d like to see those.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“They aren’t dangerous, are they?”

“Well yeah, let me tell you… Henry got some of ’em pretty deep, like I said, and then one day, he must a slipped or som’thin… nobody really knows for sure… but he fell in one of his mine shafts and broke his leg or his back or som’thin.  Laid down in the bottom and couldn’t get out.”

“Wow, really…”

“Yooo, that’s spooky!”

“Yeah, but that’s not the really spooky part.  After Henry didn’t come home for a couple days, his young bride, Sophie, began to get worried.  So, she started looking in these hills all around us, searching for her husband, Henry.  Walked around in these woods for days but couldn’t find him. 

Then finally, after five or six days looking; she thought she heard something, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. ‘Sophieeee…. Sooophieeeeeee… Sooooophieeeeeeee….’  Sounded like it was coming out of the ground.  Or the wind. It was Henry, lying in the shadows at the bottom of that pit wailing, ‘Sophieeee…. Sooophieeeeeee… Sooooophieeeeeeee….’  She finally narrowed down where the noise was coming from and found the hole Henry was in.  But, it was too deep for her to get him out by herself, with his broken leg.  And, his mule was nowhere to be found. So, she had to go for help…”

“Wow, what happened to Henry?”

“I’m getting to that.  They didn’t have a phone in those days, and their old truck was broke down, so she had to walk out.  She walked over these very hills to granpa’s farm… must a hiked right past where we are now.  And, by the time she got there and they could get a tractor back up in the woods where Henry was, and get him out of that hole… well, he’d died from blood loss or dehydration or exposure, or som’thin, I guess.”

“No way!”

“Yeah, he was dead by the time they got back.”

“That’s too weird, man.”

“Yooo, that’s spooky.”

“No, that’s still not the really spooky part.”

“Well, what is.”

“I’m tryin’ to get to that, if you’d shut up a minute.  After that, Sophie stayed in her little rock house by the spring up there all by herself.  For years. Years. All alone. Granpa says it kinda worked on her mind after awhile.  He says that she started hearing Henry’s voice calling out to her from the woods around here.  ‘Sophieeee…. Sooophieeeeeee… Sooooophieeeeeeee….’ and, she took to wandering around in these hills at all hours of the day and night.  Still lookin’ for Henry, maybe, or confused or lonely.  Or, just out of her mind with grief, or whatever, but granpa says he used to find her sometimes up in this area.  Glassy eyed and filthy and worn out from not eatin’ or sleepin’ and everything.  And, that’s when he started running groceries and stuff up to her house once a week. “

“Jeeezus, that’s just too weird, Simon.”

“Yeah, I’m not liking this story at all.  Have you ever seen her?”

“Oh yeah, I used to go up there with granpa when I was little.  And, I’ve seen her a couple times when I was messin’ around up here.  But, I never said anything to her.  But, the really spooky part about  the whole deal is… sometimes when I’m up here by myself, I’ve heard that voice too.  Real soft.  Like the wind moving in the branches, sorta… calling, ‘Sophieeee…. Sooophieeeeeee… Sooooophieeeeeeee….”

“Shit man, cut it out.”

“Yeah, you’re just makin’ that shit up…”

“Hells bells, Simon, quit it.  You know that’s bull.”

“Oh yeah?  Keep real quiet for a minute.  Maybe Henry’s callin’ her out tonight, too.  Listen, listen….   “

Everyone was silent.  The only sound the fire popping, and steam from the rotten wood hissing. 

Then I sprang straight up and moaned like a hurt bull,

“Look, that’s Sophie right there behind that cedar tree!” pointing into the darkness.    

All three boys came straight up from their sleeping bags, eyes wide and peering

into the surrounding darkness. 

“Where?”

“I don’t see anything.”

Finally, I couldn’t hold in the laughter.

“Maybe it was over there,” I pointed in another direction.

“You’re full of shit, Simon.”

“Yeah, that stuff don’t scare me.”

“You fucker, you.  Just cut it out.  That’s enough.”

“Okay, okay.  I don’t know if it’s all true.  That’s just what granpa told me.  She does live up there alone, though.  I’ve seen her. And drank from her spring. And, I’ve seen those deep mine holes in the ground right around here.  But, it’s probably not true.  I don’t know, really.  Forget about it.  It’s just a story.  Might as well hit the hay. “

“Yeah, I’m done. Think I’ll turn in.”

“Not me! I’m stayin’ up all night, now. In case S-o-p-h-i-e comes around…”

“Me too.  I ain’t tired at all.  Simon, throw some more wood on that fire.”

“Okay.  See you guys in the morning.  You gonna be alright out in the open, Gary?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Awright.  CJ, give me one last cigarette, will ya?”

“Sure.  Here.”

“Sooophieeeeeee… “

“Cut it out, man. “

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We’d been going at it hard all day. It had to be pretty late, by then.  Bold talk of staying up ‘til dawn was forgotten. The campfire cast a tangerine glow on the cedars and dying down, whispered its mesmerizing incantation of warmth and safety. Chatter drifted off and disappeared.  Soon enough, we were all asleep. 

What I remember next was water drops peppering my face and bonfire embers hissing as raindrops fell on them.  I crawled deeper into my sleeping bag and tried to go back to sleep.  The rain came down faster.  The bag soaked up water like a sponge and I began to feel the clammy chill that dampness brings. 

“Simon.  Wake up.”

“What?  What’s the matter.”

“I’m soaking wet.”

“Yeah, me too.  I’m freezing.”

“Aw shit, you guys.  Just, pull your sleepin’ bag up over your head and go back to

sleep.  This rain will let up in a little while.”

“I can’t man, my bag’s drenched.”

“Yeah, mine too.  And, the rain put the fire out.  We’ll never get another one started.”

“Well, what’d ya want me to do about it?  Huddle right up against that cedar tree.  The branches will shed some of the water off you.  This will blow over before long.  Go back to sleep.”

Right then a blinding stroke of lightning lit up the “secret hideout” followed by a huge crescendo of thunder.  Then another, right overhead.  The rain, which had been a steady drumming around us, suddenly swelled into a full symphony.  The air was liquid.  Rain poured from the cedar branches like waterfalls.  Anything that had been dry before, sopped up the water like a dish-towel.  Sleeping bags became giant pillows which couldn’t be wrung out.  Shoes and backpacks began to float in the little streams created by the downpour.  At the next lightning flash, I glimpsed the creek beside us.  It was rising.

“Awright… I guess we better try to get out of here.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have a flashlight.  How will we keep on the path?”

“Shit, I don’t like this.  I want to go back to your granpa’s.”

“Okay, but it will be a long slog to get there. “

“Simon, you know the way best, you got to lead.”

“Awright.  We’ll never stay on the path in the dark. It’ll be too slippery, anyway.  I guess we’re gonna have to wade down the creek.  Grab your stuff.  Let’s go.”

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            Now, all the extraneous camping gear we’d brought along to facilitate the Blackhawk initiation ceremony became the “chains we’d forged in life”. And, we’d have to drag it all back with us through a howling thunderstorm, in the dark, down a raging creek. By this point everything; blankets and socks and knapsacks and denim jeans and underwear and sweatshirts, everything, had soaked up twice its original weight in water and was now twice as heavy as it was when we carried it in. None of us could see to repack our gear, so to add to the extra weight, we slung our waterlogged sleeping bags over our shoulders and they dragged behind us in the water, like sheet anchors, to make our going even slower.  Four blind mice, we stumbled down the middle of the South Fork of Saline Creek in the thundering blackness.

The storm continued its cannonade against the night. Periodic claps of thunder summoned blue-bright streaks that lit our path, but only for a millisecond. Only long enough for me get a quick reckoning of what part of the creek we were on. I didn’t say anything to the other boys, but the water was rising pretty fast around us. We were wading through water, waist deep. I’d fished here for years and this stretch never came over my ankles. I tried to guide us through the shallows, avoiding the deeper holes, but as the creek started to carry more water, it became harder to see ripples where the main current shallowed out over gravel bars. I finally settled on trying to stay midway between the two creek banks. Water was nearly up to our armpits now.

I never could get any of my buddies to admit seeing her, and maybe they were so focused on plowing forward they never did; but I’m certain that during one of those flashes of lightning I saw Sophie on the north bank of the creek, standing on a limestone shelf. Time froze in that infinitely brief moment, long enough for Sophie to lock her dark eyes on me, as she had done those many years before. Like a hot spotlight on a concert stage, the fierce exposure of the lightning from above, threw her eye sockets into deep shadow. The pinpoint gleam reflecting off each of her eyeballs pierced mine and froze me in place.

Then, in that time-stalled instant, I saw her jerk her head to the side, beckoning me to come that way. Time restarted again in darkness. Sure, what was I thinking? What a dumbass. We needed to get out of that creek bed before a flash flood came roiling down it, fifteen feet deep and booming. Slipping and stumbling over those limestone outcroppings would be safer than staying where we were. I saw I low spot on the bank and yelled, “Let’s get out over here.” Everyone followed without a grumble and we pulled our drenched burdens and tired legs up onto a rocky ledge and collapsed on our backpacks. Rain pummeled my face. I brushed my hand across my eyes to wipe off some of the water and looked around for Sophie. Lightning struck again. She was gone. Or hiding. Or, maybe, she had never been there at all?

Once we all were moving again, I found an old deer path up the hill, that ran parallel to the creek. Even with the storm thundering overhead, we managed to stay on the trail the deer had worn smooth. It was another thirty minutes or so, when we broke through a stand of blackberry bushes and come out in the branch below grandpa’s house. I knew where I was, now. I could see a yellow light from one of the windows. At the top of the clearing, we all piled into the screen porch, dropped the dripping burdens from our shoulders and collapsed on the floor. Mom walked casually out the door and asked,

“What are you boys doing back here so soon? I thought you were on an overnight camping trip?”

“Aw, mom” I said. “This storm got too strong for us. We were soaked. Do you got some towels or something we can dry off with?”

“Wait here, I’ll find something. Don’t track water all through the house. You boys dry off before you come inside.”

“Hey,” I asked, “What time is it anyway? Must be pretty late. What are you doing up, still?”

“No honey,” she answered, “It’s only quarter after ten.”

“Really? No! Ten Fifteen? Is that all? Sure thought it had to be later than that.”

Singing softly to herself, mom walked inside to hunt up some towels.

Well the fox ran out of his den one night.

And he prayed to the moon, for to give him light.

He had many a mile to go that night,

before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o…

The rain hammered on the corrugated tin porch roof like someone dumping buckets of nuts and bolts on our little sanctuary. Thunder rumbled with the sound of tympani just after keen flashes of lightning. The storm was right overhead.

“Hey Jeff, you still got any of that spam left? I’m starving.”

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I learned the next day the South Fork of Saline Creek did flood its banks and the water got so high it ran over the bridge on “T” road. It was strong enough to carry off some cattle and left a track of mud and gravel, brush and tree limbs all across the bottom fields. Granpa had to replant a hundred acres of corn. 

Every so often over the years, I’d think I saw Sophie out of the corner of my eye, in the crowd leaving a football game or shadowed behind trees bordering some river bank when I was fishing or under a street light on a darkened corner driving home. Maybe she still wanders those cedar woods above Silver Lake looking for Henry. But to be honest, I’m not sure it was Sophie I saw that night. Or ever again. I can say, the Blackhawk Club never held another initiation ceremony.

• FINIS —