Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Jasper shrugged again. “That’s the way it is with the old lore. Sometimes you run across something that seems like it couldn’t possibly make sense.” Then he added, “But then one day you find out it was true and right all along.”

“What other feechie lore do you have in here?” Aidan asked, thumbing at some of the manuscripts on a reading stand.

Jasper walked to the shelf where he kept scrolls of children’s stories and folk tales. “Let’s see,” he muttered. “I had a scroll here that Maynard used to come in and read quite often.”

“Maynard?” said Aidan, surprised. “When did Maynard ever come to the library?”

“Oh, he and I spent many evenings in here reading together after you went to Tambluff,” said Jasper.

Aidan was floored. “I just never knew Maynard to be interested in the old lore or in anything the rest of us were interested in. What sort of thing did he read?”

“Feechie tales mostly.” Jasper gave up looking for the scroll of feechie lore, which obviously wasn’t in its place. He noticed the look of open-mouthed wonder on Aidan’s face. “I know, I know. Maynard always thought you were lying about the feechie in the bottom pasture. He acted like feechie talk was the craziest thing he had ever heard of. But people can change.

“After you went to Tambluff,” Jasper continued, “Maynard tried harder to be a good son and a good brother. He even took your place watching sheep in the bottom pasture for awhile. It was like he was trying to make something up to you, or to Father.”

Jasper shook his head. “I think that’s part of the reason Father has taken Maynard’s death so hard.”

Aidan looked out the window. Father was returning from the melon field with Percy. He looked very old. “Poor Father,” Aidan whispered.

The morning sky was still pink with the sun’s first rays when the alligator hunters boarded their raft. A night’s rest in real beds had rejuvenated them, and they were eager to take on the river again. The previous day’s difficulties seemed a distant dream.

Besides, they now had an extra rafthand. They had convinced Aidan to float with them to the Big Bend. They would need him, for they had another oar-sweep now. Carver, besides replacing the broken oar-sweep, had carved them a second one and built another oar bench in the front of the raft. It would make the raft more maneuverable, but it also meant they could use an extra pair of hands. For his part, Aidan couldn’t resist the adventure of a raft trip down the river, even if he could get to Last Camp more quickly on the Overland Trail. Besides, he liked the alligator hunters, and he preferred not to travel alone if he didn’t have to.

Errol rode down to the landing with Percy and Jasper to see his youngest son off. He didn’t say much. The only smile he could muster looked tired and sad. Somehow he sensed that Aidan’s journey was to be much more perilous than he had let on. When everything was in order, just before Aidan stepped onto the raft, Errol caught him by the tunic and enfolded him in his arms. The strength of his father’s embrace nearly squeezed the breath out of Aidan. There was plenty of life left in the old man, despite his haggard, world-weary appearance. That knowledge heartened Aidan and strengthened him for his journey.

“God go with you, Aidan,” said Errol. “And be careful.” Then, where no one else could hear, he whispered, “I couldn’t bear to lose another son.”

Aidan embraced his brothers and exchanged farewells. Jasper handed him a small cage containing one of his homing pigeons. “Take this with you,” he said, “and send us a note when you get where you’re going.” Aidan knew he wouldn’t be taking a pigeon into the Feechiefen, but he took the bird with the intention of sending his family a note from Last Camp.

Aidan joined Massey and Floyd on the raft. Jasper and Percy untied the heavy mooring ropes from the cypress trees and tossed them onto the raft timbers. The alligator hunters leaned against the sweeps, pushing off from the landing, and Aidan felt the Tam’s strong, slow current catch the timbers and carry him away-away from the safety of his father’s house, toward a wilderness that would never be tamed, a wilderness that nobody came home from. He watched his father and brothers get smaller in the growing distance. Then he raised his hand in a silent salute as they disappeared around the bend.

In the cool of the morning, scattered fog-the last of the night airs-lay in wisps on the surface of the water. The trees along the riverside were loud with the songs of birds exulting in a new spring day. The forest bugs, too, were coming to life, tuning up the click and buzz that would grow slowly louder throughout the day and finally reach a crescendo in the hour before dark. The water was high with the spring rains and muddied a little more than usual, but the floods were past. It was perfect rafting water: high enough to submerge most of the logs and snags that might slow them but not high enough to sling them over the banks and into flooded swamps beyond.

Aidan discovered he had a natural talent for reading the river’s current, and he assumed the role of pilot. The key to raft piloting, he discovered, was not reacting to the current’s push but anticipating it-having the raft in position to manage every swirl, shoal, and eddy before it got there. He kept his two-man crew busy at their posts, but he stayed busier himself, running from bow to stern and back again to help whichever oarsman was pulling hardest at the moment.

They named their craft the Headstrong, for once it went in the wrong direction, it took the strength and perseverance of all three raftsmen to get it back on course. The greatest danger was the raft’s tendency to drift out of the current. Sometimes, when the nose drifted toward the bank, the current would whip the back end around and send the raft into an uncontrolled spin. Other times, the raft might languish in the sluggish water near the river’s edge, requiring great effort to get it moving again.

But when they did it right, the river did most of the work for them. Aidan soon learned to keep the Headstrong in the swiftest current even in the river’s sharpest, most treacherous turns. It was always tempting to pull into the slower water, to take what would seem the safer route and avoid the inevitable, bone-jarring slam of the stern on the high outside bank as it swung around in the current. But a river bend was no place for shrinking back. Aidan adopted the old rafters’ cry as they shot into the river bends: “Keep to the current, boys, and let her slam!”

Even Massey and Floyd, it turned out, weren’t bad at guiding a raft now that they could steer from either end. Under Aidan’s guidance, the two alligator hunters were able to keep the raft booming along. The previous day’s bickering over who should be captain disappeared. Everyone was too busy with his own tasks to worry about anyone else’s.

For long stretches, the river was mostly straight and the raftsmen had little to do but talk and watch the river go by. For sheer joy of the river, Massey sang a rafting song he learned from timber rafters on the Eechihoolee River: My sweet Eileen Is the prettiest thing, The ferry-keeper’s daughter. My heart’s own queen Is sweet Eileen, She lives beside the water.

I gave Eileen A ruby ring To be my wife forever. But she just sung, “Boy, I’m too young!” And threw it in the river.

So I departed Brokenhearted, Lonesome ever after. I left the farm And my mother’s arms To be a timber rafter.

Now every spring I see Eileen Beside the ferry landing. I wave and sigh As I float by, And there I leave her standing.

My sweet Eileen Is the prettiest thing, The ferry-keeper’s daughter. My heart’s own queen Is sweet Eileen, She lives beside the water.