The dog days are passing and daytime gets just a little bit longer each day, it’s nice to see a little bit of night time before bedtime. Jimmy and Ricky are in their homes, sitting on sofas with their parents, watching TV. Sally pats along the sidewalk, a pink tongue showing around black gums rests on slobber saturated white chin hair. Sally’s leash is attached to her collar and drags along behind her. She has been taught never to leave the yard without her leash, it’s not something that makes any since to her but she doesn’t think about it much. The cool, evening air is a nice change. Long hot summers and long white fur are not the best combination, but Sally hasn’t thought about that much either. Sally just pats along listening to the sounds her paws make on the concrete and dripping a bit of saliva that leaves a trail to be followed. The trail only lasts a few minutes on the still warm sidewalk. The sidewalk changes to bricks. Bushes and shrubs are provided at intervals that must have had a dog in mind. Sally has no destination in mind, she is not leaving, she’s just on a walk, a nice, quiet, uninterrupted walk. Pat, pat, pat she walks for the sound of walking just as much as for any other reason.
Ricky pushes aside the sliding glass door that opens to the backyard. The pool light is the only light on and it gives a creepy, shadow filled unnatural feel to the backyard.
“Sally!” Ricky shouts and waits by the door for the blob of white fur to bound into the open space and find her bed for the night.
“Sally!” he shouts again, a little louder and he throws the switch next to the doorway and turns on the back porch light. He waits a few more seconds and then steps into the backyard, barefoot and wearing PJ’s.
“Sally!” the backyard is small with very few hiding places. Ricky looks behind the few unlikely hiding places and then he sees the open gate. He runs back into the house.
“Mom!” he runs down the hall and finds his mother in the bathroom putting on face cream. “Mom! Sally got out!
His mother looks at him with blotches of white cream under her eyes and a dash of white on her forehead. “Where did you look?
“She was in the backyard, I’m sure of it. When we came in from our walk she saw the sliding door open and took off so fast for the backyard that she pulled the leash out of my hand,” Ricky paused for just a second to get his breath and then added, “the gate to the street is open!”
Ricky’s mom started wiping cream from her face, “get dressed, I’ll go down into the basement and tell your dad.”
The day warms up until we are both covered in sweat, the house next door has a big yellow water jug sitting where one of the front windows will someday be installed, we take turns letting the cold water pour over our faces. And then, “Boom!” it sounds like a bomb has gone off up the street near the first house we cleaned. Ricky gives me a quick look and we both drop our shovels and take off running toward the explosion. By the time we get to the site a group of workmen have gathered and Jimmy’s father’s pick-up is parked on the dirt in front of the house. There was no explosion. A delivery van with a load of sheetrock, in a big hurry, backed up to the garage. The driver misjudged either the length of the driveway or the height of this truck and now the truck is jammed under the crossbeam at the entrance to the garage. The driver starts up the engine of the truck and gently tries to pull forward, the whole front of the frame of the house pulls forward an inch.
“Stop!” Jimmy’s father shouts, “you’ll pull the whole house down!” The group of men look for an alternative.
One man shouts, “We could cut the beam out!” Carpenters shake their heads.
“That’s a bearing wall, we’d have to shore the whole thing.”
“How about if we rock the truck, back and forth, kind of loosen it up?” a man in white overalls asks.
Jimmy’s father considers the situation, he doesn’t look real happy, and he looks around for a better idea. Ricky gives Jimmy a push on the shoulder and points.
“Sir,” Jimmy starts. He looks at his father and waits.
“You have an idea Jimmy?” Jimmy’s father looks at Jimmy as all the men in the group turn toward him and silence falls.
“We could try letting some air out of the tires.” Without waiting for a reply from Jimmy’s father a couple of the men start letting air out of the back tires, in just a few seconds the header over the garage creaks back half an inch and then, while the tires still have well over half their air, a quarter inch gap can be seen between the truck and the wooden beam. The driver pulls up slowly. A cheer goes up and everyone either shakes Jimmy’s hand or pats him on the back.
“Ricky’s the one who thought of it,” Jimmy states fairly and this leads to Ricky getting handshakes and pats on the back too. A painter backs his pick-up next to the delivery truck and with the compressor in the back of his pick-up he starts refilling the truck’s tires. Everyone heads back to their various jobs.
“That was perfect!” Jimmy says to Ricky as they hero walk back to the house they have been cleaning.
The three of us sit on the single bench seat of the white pick-up and watch the road as my father drives to the outskirts of town where the new houses are being built. He pulls into the driveway of a house that has uncovered two-by-four walls and a roof of plywood sheets.
“Take the brooms and the square points, the wheelbarrow is in the backyard,” my father instructs. Ricky gets the brooms and I grab the shovels, my father drives up the street of unfinished homes.
We start at the back bedroom and shovel all the big stuff into the wheelbarrow. It’s still cool, the day is just getting started and the wheelbarrow fills quickly.
“Next time we only fill it half full,” Ricky announces as we try to get the wheelbarrow to move.
“You hold that handle and I’ll take this one,” it looks weird but with one of us on each of the wheelbarrow’s wooden handles we slowly move the pile of construction waste to the dumpster. The unloading took just as longer or longer since it needed to be done by hand and everything had at least sliver potential if not a sharp edge or nail. The work continued all morning, it moved from loading to sweeping, from sweeping the floor, to raking the dirt around the framed future home. By eleven o’clock it was looking pretty good and when Jimmy’s father showed up with an ice chest filled with lunch it was something to be proud of.
Jimmy’s dad has a big smile on his face, “this looks great!” he says looking around, his smile only getting bigger. “It really makes a difference. “The sheet rockers do a better job if they have a clean place to start and the plasterers take more care with their mess if the area looks this nice!” He leans up against the wall of two-by-fours that will someday be someone’s bedroom and opens up the lunch chest, Jimmy and Ricky sit on the concrete floor on each side of him and realize just how hungry all the work has made them.
After eating and resting a few minutes Jimmy’s father shares, “And now I’ll let you see the mess the sheet rockers and plasterers leave behind. He points out an earth tone, green gray, house up the street in a cul-d-sac, they load all their stuff onto the wheelbarrow and head that way. Jimmy’s father takes off in his pick-up truck to do what ever is next on his list.
“Your dad wasn’t kidding,” Ricky says before even getting inside the house, the yard is filled with bags, piles of green and gray plaster, coffee cups and lunch bags. What must have been a hamburger or burrito left on the front porch had been stepped in and tracked into the front room. Inside the house is the same but with joint compound and fall off pieces of sheetrock instead of piles of plaster.
“We’d best get started,” Jimmy says. “This could take awhile!” Out come the shovels, it will be some time before brooms can be used. “Just think what this would be like if it hadn’t been cleaned up after the framers finished!”
By the time my father makes it out the front door of our house we are both sitting in the front seat of the fifty-four Chevy waiting. My father opens the driver’s side door and looks at us, checking to see if we are wearing clothes fit for the workplace. He doesn’t say anything, which means we pass the test. He bumps the starter and the engine runs with almost no noise or vibration, my father takes good care of his car.
“First thing I want the two of you to do is load some stuff into the pick-up,” my father is mostly talking to himself, planning our day but if we listen closely we will have less questions to ask later. “Load the big stuff first. There are several sheets of plywood. Load that first,” he looks over at the two of us, “if it’s too heavy get help. Put the toolbox on last, it will help hold everything down. When we get to the jobsite I’ll let you off at the house we just finished framing. Put everything that’s not nailed down into the dumpster and sweep the concrete floor clean.” He pulls into the construction yard and parks in his regular spot. As he walks toward his pick-up he points to the pile of stuff set aside to be taken to the job site so Ricky and I walk there and wait while he backs the pick-up up to the pile. I grab the handle on the tailgate just as the pick-up stops and pull down the tailgate without letting the tailgate drop, my father never lets the tailgate drop on its own. Ricky moves to one side of the stack of plywood and with me on the other we have the first sheet loaded almost before my father gets out of the cab of the pick-up. He looks at us and almost smiles before he heads into the office to do office things.
“How much are we making?” Ricky asks as we put another sheet of plywood into the pick-up bed.
“More than you could imagine,” I say between breaths. “My father pays good.” There are bags of hardware, rolls of paper, two-by-fours. The pick-up starts to look a little loaded, “Make sure nothing will blow out,” I instruct Ricky and we both look over the load to see if anything needs tied down or covered with something heavy. Lastly each of us takes an end of the heavy steel toolbox and just barely make it to the edge of the tailgate, from there we slide it the rest of the way.
“You guys got that?” my father asks as he looks over the load, checking to see if anything is going to blow out. I see the look in my father’s eye that tells me it’s okay and put the tailgate into place without slamming it.
The sun isn’t up yet. The mountains to the East have an orange glow where the sun will soon be and there is too much light to see the stars. Ricky’s still asleep. He’s curled up in his sleeping bag at the far corner of our tree house. He doesn’t snore. He just breathes heavy. I watch the top of the mountain until the top edge of the sun appears. I turn away; you’re not supposed to look at the sun.
Ricky rolls over and looks at me through half open eyes, “Is it morning?” he asks.
“Not sure,” I answer, “when exactly does morning start?”
Ricky rolls back the other way and looks toward the mountains, “it’s morning,” he informs me, “and we’re going to make real money?”
“That’s what I was told. He said if we wanted to make some money to be ready when the sun came up.”
Ricky crawls out of his sleeping bag, stands and stretches. I’m ready,” he announces just as my father pokes his head out the back door and shouts, “ten minutes!” We both put on our shoes and take the rope exit to the ground.
Ricky found some old scuba gear in his garage. We tried to get it to work but the hoses are old and leak a lot of air. We ended up taking the tank of air to the pool. We let the tank fall to the bottom of the pool. We would dive down to the tank and try to get “drinks” of air but we just about popped our lungs, too much air would come out all at once. So, instead, now we are diving down to the bottom of the pool, filling our shorts with air and shooting back up to the top of the water, it’s not as easy as it sounds!
I hold myself straight up and down so that when I reach the surface I bob out past my waist. “So what yah want to do now?” I ask Ricky for the third time, he’s just sitting on one the pool’s concrete steps half in the water half out.
“I don’t know, what you want to do? He answers for the third time. I head back down to the air bottle, it seems to have less air pressure than it did but it has enough to shoot me to the top one more time. I dive back down to get the empty scuba tank, when Ricky sees what I’m doing he dives in and gives me a hand.
“So your dad is a diver?” I ask as we put all the gages and hoses back where we found them.
“I’ve never seen it,” Ricky answers, “could be my mom’s I guess. Or maybe they just bought this stuff in a yard sale.”
It isn’t long before the path is lost completely and we are hiking over boulders and rocks. Sometimes we walk right over the creek and watch the water find it’s way around rocks through cracks between rocks two or three feet below us. The walk is much steeper here and both of us are breathing hard and covered with sweat when we realize we have reached our destination. At the base of a rock mountain the creek ends. Water seeps out of the rocks on each side of us and over our heads. Ferns and grasses cling to any surface that is not rock and green moss covers most of the rock’s surface. The air is filled with moisture and it’s almost like a light rain when we get close to the mountain. We find a huge rock that reaches up high enough to be just damp and not completely wet. We push and pull each other until we reach the dome of the rock. Sally watches until she understands what we are trying to do and then she runs off, not wanting any part of it.
“Nice,” is all Ricky has to say as he pulls off his shirt and shoes and lies down on the slightly curved top of the rock.
I sit cross legged and look back at the creek seeing it’s green path all the way back to our town. “It’s like our town came for a drink.”
Ricky rolls over onto his side to see. He follows the curves of the creek just like I did, “You think this creek is why the whole town is there?” he asks.
“Got to be one of the reasons,” I guess.
“Funny,” he says and lays back down looking at the sky.
“What’s so funny,” I ask when it becomes clear he’s just going to go to sleep.
“I thought it was just a place for the pollywogs to live. It never occurred to me that we were like the pollywogs.”
With that I decide it might be better if Ricky does sleep a little so I quit asking him questions and just sit in silence broken only by the sound of water and enjoy the view that only changes when small birds come to drink or when the breeze moves the white clouds above our heads.
With one bag of cookies finished we get back on the trail. Ricky takes the point. Sally and I hang back just in case Ricky starts singing again. Ricky stays quiet but the brush grows thicker and the path narrows. The trees start to cover the creek completely and it’s like we are walking through a green-lit tunnel. Sally lags behind me as she checks out every little opening into the brush and grass; once in a while she finds something to bark at, just one bark and then she moves on.
After almost an hour of walking in silence Ricky stops still in the middle of the path. He makes a couple clicks with his tongue and whispers, “Sally,” he pats the side of his legs with his hand. Sally knows what he means, comes to his side and sits beside him.
I keep silent and walk up to him looking to see why he has stopped.
Ricky points to a spot on the upper side of the path. At first all I see is a pile of old clothes covered with a short piece of old stained carpet and then I see the feet. Sticking out past the edge of the carpet are two, bare, dirty, gray feet and two skinny gray calves.
“Is he dead?” I whisper to Ricky but in the absolute quiet it sounds like a shout. In response to my whisper the toes wiggle and one of the feet moves.
“Try to be quiet, he’s trying to sleep,” Ricky whispers and starts to walk past the feet.
“Trying is the key word,” the man under the carpet says in a gravelly voice still not ready to start a new day. There is movement under the carpet, “wait, and let me find my pants.” We follow orders and stand in the path while the carpet, the roof of the man’s home moves up and down as he prepares to meet the day. The feet are replaced by a dirty head covered with curly light brown hair. His blue eyes, the only washed part of the man, look us over and seem to approve.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting company,” he explains as he crawls out of his dwelling and buttons his shirt and pants. “What brings you boys to this part of the river?” he asks like we have come for tea. We just stand there. “That’s a fine looking dog you have there,” he slaps the side of his leg a couple of times and Sally goes over to him in order to get her head rubbed. “Fine dog,” Sally gives him a nudge with her head.
Ricky asks the expected question, “you live here?”
“I’m here,” he pretends to pinch his arm, “I’m alive. Sure, I live here. So far I’ve lived every place I have ever been. Make yourselves at home,” he motions with his arm for us to find a place to sit just like my father does when people come to visit. Ricky and I find rocks to sit on. Sally curls up next to the man on the ground. “I’d invite you to breakfast but I haven’t been to the grocery lately and…”
Ricky takes the hint, “we have a few things we could share.”
I add, “it’s time for our lunch,” and pull the backpack off my back.
“You boys are going ta make fine neighbors,” the man says, all of a sudden looking very hungry. “Names,” he pauses for a few seconds like he’s selecting one, “name’s Jack” he doesn’t offer his hand to shake, like he understands he lives beneath a layer of dirt so we just exchange names.
My mother has packed four sandwiches and food for Sally along with several apples and juice boxes, “Peanut Butter and Jelly or Turkey?”
“P and J please,” Jack makes it sound like food from a fancy restaurant in town. “Hard to get a good P and J out here,” he unzips the sandwich bag and takes a huge first bite. “Did the angels send you?”
It sounds a little crazy but I answer like it’s a regular question, “we’re just on a hike to where the creek begins.”
“That’s what they tell people. They, the angels, tell people to walk up the creek and bring lots of P and J’s!” He gives me a grin that does nothing to let me know if he’s serious of not. He takes another huge bite that almost finishes the sandwich so I offer him a turkey sandwich to have at the ready. “Great neighbors,” he says as thanks so I dig out a juice box and apple too and hand them over. He takes care to make a nice neat pile next to him with the juice box on the bottom and the apple on top of the sandwich. “Real pretty up there.”
It takes me a moment to realize he talking about where the creek begins, “we saw it from an airplane.”
“You been up there?” he says in awe. “Are you angels?” he asks without a hint of a joke but Ricky assumes it is and laughs.
“We’re just regular boys!” Ricky explains. “But thanks.”
Jack just nods and looks at the ground like he’s okay with us not being angels but a little disappointed. He looks back up at us and says, “well, you regular boys have made my day.”
Ricky notices the turkey sandwich and apple have disappeared so he digs in this sack for another small bag of cookies and hands them over.
The man looks like he might cry but instead pops a whole cookie into his mouth at once, with his mouth still full of cookie he says something that sounds a little like, “good cookie” and then pops in another one. I figure it’s time for a water bottle and hand one over but he turns it down and after swallowing his cookie says, “only drink pure creek water,” and then he rethinks his action, “not that your water’s not good enough.” We start packing up. “Shame you need to leave so soon,” he says sounding just like my father again. “See you on the way back down?”
We say our good-byes and get back on the trail as Jack crawls back under his carpet to finish his nap.
The trees start to grow taller, the brushes and grass are replaced by pine needles. The creek spills over rocks now and sometimes the path is hard granite instead of dirt.
My uncle flew away but he left behind a bit of his wonderment. Ricky and I loaded our backpacks with food and water early this morning and headed for the creek. From the plane we saw the creek follow the low places between foothills until it disappeared at the base of the mountains east of town. The plan is to follow the paths along the creek until we reach that point. Ricky’s mom gave him her phone, just in case we get lost – I’m not sure that’s possible but there are other unknowns out there, I can’t tell you what they are.
“I love to go a wondering along the mountain track,” Ricky has decided a true hike requires music but he doesn’t know the whole song so he just sings that one bit over and over and over. Sally got tired of the music and ran on up ahead some time ago. She runs back to check on whether he’s still singing every five minutes or so, she just checked and he still is. I have my walking stick which identifies me as a hiker so there is no need for me to sing. I let Ricky take the lead and I fall back a bit in order to enjoy the quiet morning. The creek is running about half full leaving us plenty of room to walk along the bank. So far the trails that run on each side of the creek are well defined. I don’t know if they are kept that way by fishermen, kids, or animals but they provide an easy path around rocks and trees and tall grasses. Frogs jump into the water just ahead of us warned by Ricky’s song. I watch for snakes hoping they are driven away by his song too. A cottontail rabbit stops to watch us pass, waiting for us to leave the area so he can get a drink from the creek. All at once the music stops. Ricky stops walking. Sally doubles back to see what has happened and I almost walk into Ricky before I stop next to him.
“Time for a snack,” Ricky proclaims as he sits on the log that was his reason for picking this spot. He pulls the pack off his back and starts looking through it. I sit next to him on the log as he pulls out a sandwich size plastic bag of cookies. He hands me one of the homemade cookies.
“Thanks,” his mom makes the best cookies; they stay chewy instead of getting hard and crumbly like store bought cookies.
“We’re making good time,” Ricky says as he chews on a cookie of his own.
I think the time has come to get something said, “About the hiking song, Ricky,” I start.
“Oh, that’s over. Sorry if you’re going to miss it,” he says with a grin. “Getting a sore throat.”
“How much farther do you think?” I ask.
“Five miles,” Ricky answers between chews.
I hold my hand out for my second cookie, “How far have we come?” Ricky is petty good with distances.
“Two miles,” he answers with complete confidence that lets me know he hasn’t got a clue.
We fly above our town and pick out places from the air. The flat top roofs of the stores along Main Street are covered with strips of gray roofing, air conditioners and vents. On top of the movie theater is a short tower my uncle tells us is an old style chiller that uses water to cool the theater. Woolworth has a bunch of empty clothes racks stacked in one corner. My uncle circles wider and we see all the squares of farmland, different colors for different crops. He follows the creek until the farms become pasture, and then up into the mountains until all the creek is is water seeping from rocks and then he takes us up higher and shows us the lake the water is seeping from and then he follows the river that feeds into the lake. Way before we are tired of flying he turns the little plane back toward the airport and radios the tower for a place to land.
“This is the hardest part,” he says to us in our headsets.
“Is it hard to land the plane?” I ask with a little concern.
“Oh, no,” he answers with a big grin, “I just hate to leave the sky.” He lands just as smooth as peanut butter on bread, not a single bump or squeak. He taxies the plane back to the space it had been parked in before and lets the engine idle down while we take off our headsets and unbuckle from our seats. Nobody talks much on the way back home, there is just too much to think about. As we drive into the residential area everything looks different, smaller and less impressive compared to the view of mountains, and rivers, and grasslands from high above.
david blankenship 
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