CHAPTER LIII

FISHING IN THE BUSSERON AND A COUNTY FAIR

It was just outside of Sullivan, a mile or two or three, that we encountered the Busseron, the first stream in which, as a boy, I ever fished. The strangeness of that experience comes back to me even now—the wonder, the beauty of a shallow stream, pooled in places, its banks sentineled by tall trees, its immediate shoreline ornamented by arrogant weeds and bushes blooming violently.

The stillness of the woods, the novelty of a long bamboo pole and a white line and a red and green cork; a hook, worms, the nibble of the unseen creature below the yellow surface of the stream. Even now I hear a distant gun shot—hunters prowling after birds. I see a dragon fly, steely blue and gauze of wing, fluttering and shimmering above my cork (why should they love cork floats so much?). My brother Ed has a nibble! Great, kind heaven, his cork is gone—once! twice!!

“Pull him out, Ed.”

“For God’s sake, pull him out!”

“Gee, look at that!”

Oh, a black and white silvery fish—or a dark, wet, slippery cat—as lovely and lustrous as porcelain. Oh, it’s on the grass now, flipping here and there. My nerves are all a-tingle, my hair on end, with delight. I can scarcely wait until I get a bite—hours perhaps—for my brother Ed was always a luckier fisherman than I, or a better one.

And then late in the afternoon, after hours of this wonder world, we trudge home, along the warm, dusty, yellow country road; the evening sun is red in the West, our feet buried in the dust. Not a wagon, not a sound, save that of wood doves, bluejays, the spiritual, soulful, lyric thrush. On a long, limp twig with a fork at the end is strung _our_ fish, so small and stiff now—so large, glistening, brilliant, when we caught them. On every hand are field fragrances, the distant low of cows and the grunts of pigs. I hear the voice of a farmer—"Poo-gy! Poo-gy! Poogy! Poogy!"

“Gee, ma kin fry these—huh?”

“You bet.”

Brown-legged, dusty, tired, we tramp back to the kitchen door. There she is, plump, tolerant, smiling—a gentle, loving understanding of boys and their hungry, restless ways written all over her face.

“Yes, they’re fine. We’ll have them for supper. Wash and clean them, and then wash your hands and feet and come in.”

On the grass we sit, a pan between us, cleaning those penny catches. The day has been so wonderful that we think the fish must be perfect. And they are, to us. And then the after-supper grouping on the porch, the velvety dusk descending, the bats, the mosquitoes, the smudge carried about the house to drive out the mosquitoes, tales of Indians and battle chiefs long dead, the stars, slumber.

I can feel my mother’s hand as I lean against her knee and sleep.

By just such long, hot yellow roads as Ed and I traversed as boys Franklin and I came eventually to Vincennes, Indiana, but only after traversing a region so flat and yet so rich that it was a delight to look upon. I had never really seen it before—or its small, sweet simple towns—Paxton, Carlisle, Oaktown, Busseron. The fields were so rich and warm and moist that they were given over almost entirely to the growing of melons—water and cantaloupe, great far flung stretches of fields. Large, deep-bodied, green-painted wagons came creaking by, four, five, and six in a row, hauling melons to the nearest siding where were cars. There were melon packing sheds to be seen here and there, where muskmelons were being labeled and crated. It was lovely. At one point we stopped a man and bought two watermelons and sat down by the roadside to eat. Other machines passed and the occupants looked at us as though we had stolen them.

“Here we are,” I said to Franklin, “three honest men, eating our hard-earned melons, and these people believe we stole them.”

“Yes, but think of our other crimes,” he replied, “and anyhow, who wouldn’t—three men eating melons by a roadside, the adjoining fields of which are dotted with melons.”

The man who had passed in the buggy had leered at us in such a convicting way.

And yet I have Franklin and Bert to witness we paid ten cents each for two of the best melons we ever tasted.

At Paxton and at Carlisle again we came upon coal mines—that vein of soft coal which seems to underlie this whole region. Miners in droves were to be seen walking along the roads as at Wilkes-Barré, their faces smudgy, their little lamps standing up from their caps, their big tin buckets hanging on or tucked under their arms. We stopped at one town and examined the exterior of a mine because it was so near the road. Every few seconds out of its subterranean depths (three hundred and fifty feet, the man told me) up a deep, dripping shaft would come a small platform carrying several small cars of coal, which would be shunted onto a runway and “empties” pushed in to take their places. I asked the man who ran the engine in the nearby shed how many tons of coal they would take out in a day. “Oh, about four hundred,” he said.

“Any men ever killed here?”

“Yes, occasionally.”

“Recently?”

“Well, there was an explosion two years ago.”

“Many men killed?”

“Eight.”

“Were there any before that?”

“Two, about three years before.”

He wiped his sweaty forehead with a grimy hand.

“Wouldn’t like to go down, would you?” he asked genially, after a time—quite unconscious of our earlier conversation, I think.

“No, thanks,” I replied.

I had a sicky feeling, conveyed by that dark, dripping shaft. Three hundred and fifty feet—not me!

But I said to myself as I looked at all the healthy, smiling miners we met farther on, “If I were a prince or a president and these were my subjects, how proud I would be of a land that contained such—how earnest for their well being”—I had so little courage to do what they were doing.

But in spite of these mines, which were deep and far-reaching, as we learned, in many districts stretching for miles in different directions, the soil manifested that same fertility and the land grew flatter and flatter. All the towns in here were apparently dependent upon them. There were no rises of ground. Interesting groves of trees crowded to the roadside at times, providing a cooling shade, and excessively marshy lands appeared, packed with hazel bushes and goldenrod, but no iron weed as in the East. The roads were sped over by handsome automobiles—much finer in many instances than ours—and I took it that they were representative of the real farmer wealth here, a wealth we as a family had never been permitted to taste.

In about two hours we entered Vincennes—a front tire having blown up just outside Sullivan on the banks of the Busseron. At its edge we came upon a fairgrounds so gaily bedecked with tents and flags that we parked our car and went in—to see the sights. The Knox County Fair. It seemed to me that this farmers' show supported my belief in their prosperity, for to me at least it turned out to be the most interesting county fair I had ever seen. The animals displayed—prize sows and boars, horses and sheep of different breeds, chickens and domestic animals of various kinds,—were intensely interesting to look at and so attractively displayed. I never saw so many fat sheep, dams and rams, nor more astonishing hogs, great, sleek rolling animals that blinked at us with their little eyes and sniffed and grunted. Great white pleasant tents were devoted to farm machinery and automobiles and by these alone one could tell that here was a prosperous and buying population, else the manufacturers had never troubled to send so much and such expensive machinery. All that the farmer could use—machines for ploughing, planting, cutting, reaping, binding, fertilizing, baling (I think I counted a score of separate machines of this kind), to others intended for use around the home—kerosene cook stoves, well pumps, cream separators, churns, washing machines—a whole host of these—to the latest inventions in motor ploughs and motor driven farm wagons—were here. The display of automobiles was lavish—really all the important makes were represented and in addition there was a racetrack with races going on and a large number of tented amusements—the wild men from Boola-Boola; Calgero, the mindreader, several moving picture shows, a gypsy dancer, and the like.

Franklin and I browsed around at our leisure. On so fine and so hot an afternoon it was amusing to idle under these great trees and study the country throng. A hungry boy was treated to “weenies” (the Indiana version of “hot dog”) and coffee by him—a treat he was very backward about accepting. Hundreds, judging by the parked cars outside, possessed automobiles. Various church congregations of the region had established restaurant booths to aid one or other of their religious causes. At a table in the booth of the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church of Vincennes I ate a dish of chicken dumplings, a piece of cherry pie, and drank several glasses of milk, thereby demonstrating, I think, that no inalienable enmity existed between myself and the Catholic Church, at least not on the subject of food. At this booth, besides the several becalicoed and bestarched old ladies who were in attendance, I noticed a tall Bernhardtesque girl of very graceful and sinuous lines who was helping to wait on people. She had red hair, long delicate tapering fingers, a wasplike but apparently uncorseted waist, and almond shaped greenish grey eyes. No edict of the Church prevented her from wearing hip tight skirts or one that came lower than perhaps four or five inches below the knee. She had on rings and pins and, quite unconsciously I think, took graceful and dreamful attitudes. There was a kind of high scorn—if not rebellion—in her mood, for one aiding a religious cause——

I wondered how long Vincennes and the sacred precincts of the Church would retain her.