Chapter Five: A Joke and a Cougar Evangelist
The day they reached the Mississippi River in Cairo, Illinois, Benny just stood and stared. He had seen the Atlantic Ocean, of course, but here people, riverboats and barges were everywhere. Traffic flowed up and down the river day and night with hardly a pause. Jeremy and Benny had talked very little since the incident at the farm. Benny had struggled to learn about woodcraft without asking Jeremy a lot of questions.
It was very difficult, but he finally began to feel like he was doing his share of the work, getting firewood before Jeremy awakened in the mornings, hurrying to wash dishes before Jeremy was finished eating and cleaning up most of their things while Jeremy was away from the camp washing up or setting traps. Benny's attitude toward Jeremy had changed from fearful to angry and resentful. For a time Jeremy seemed to accept Benny's sullen silence and let him do as much of the work as he could. But on the day that they stepped onto a boat to head up the river, Jeremy cleared his throat.
"It's about time you realized that God isn't going to strike me dead with a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning just because you hate me, Ben. Maybe God isn't quite as interested in your life or mine as you've been taught to think."
"God hates your drinking, lying, stealing, and gambling," Benny said coldly. "He hates everything you do."
"Everything I do? And so do you, I suppose. You hate my feeding you, and singing you silly songs, and pulling you out of the poison ivy, and picking leeches off you …."
"You know what I mean!" Benny interrupted.
"I'm not sure I do. I know you're a self-righteous little son of a so-and-so, who says God's always with him, but can't show a smile of gratitude or lend a hand without grudging everything you do that helps me. Things just haven't turned out the way you seem to think God ought to make them go. Doesn't it occur to you that maybe they aren't going to? Maybe you're the one who's going to have to change how you think."
"I'll never think what you do is right." Benny turned away from Jeremy. He bumped into a short, broad-shouldered man who grabbed hold of him.
"Boy for sale?" he demanded of Jeremy in a thick, strange accent. Benny tried to pull free, but the man held him fast. Jeremy calmed Black Switch, who had begun to start and stamp, but made no move to help Benny.
"You need boy?" Jeremy asked with a slight smile. "You should be honored, Ben. This is the captain of this sorry scow."
"Yah. Odder boy die," the man said, spitting into the water. "Too liddle, too veak. Dis vun look priddy strong."
"He works pretty good," Jeremy shrugged. "Stubborn though."
"Eh?"
"Lazy," Jeremy said. "Argues too much."
"I fix dat," the man said with an evil smile. "How much for boy?" He had begun to poke and prod Benny, feeling his arms, looking in his mouth.
"How much you offer?" Jeremy asked.
"Tventy dollar," the man said
"Forty," Jeremy countered.
"Nah! Tventy-fife."
"Thirty-five."
The man spat into the river again and said something Benny couldn't understand. Benny had been too stunned to react at first, but he was beginning to believe Jeremy was actually going to sell him to the man. He looked at Jeremy and saw a wicked gleam of amusement in his eyes.
"T'irty." the man said.
"Thirty-five," Jeremy repeated.
"T'irty!" the man roared.
"Thirty-five."
The man shoved Benny away and turned to go. But suddenly he turned back.
"Yah, t'irty-fife." He reached into his pocket.
Jeremy pulled Benny close to him. "No, I've changed my mind," he said. "I think I'll keep him."
"Hah?" snarled the man, stopping with his hand half-out of his pocket. "Vat you say?"
"Not sell boy," Jeremy answered, turning and pulling Benny along with him.
"You sell boy to me! T'irty-fife dollar!" The man pulled out a wicked, curved knife and grabbed at Benny again. The sudden jerk made Benny drop his mother's Bible and it fell into the deep, murky river.
Black Switch thrust his head forward and grabbed the man by the shoulder. He lifted him almost completely off the deck. Jeremy thrust Benny safely behind him and stepped up to the screaming man.
"Not sell boy. No trouble. We go quick, or you go in river," Jeremy said in a low, firm voice. He nodded and Switch's head began to turn toward the low railing. The man turned white.
"No trouble," he repeated. "You find 'nodder boat. No trouble." Jeremy grabbed him and set him down on the deck. The captain clutched his bleeding shoulder and staggered away on wobbly legs.
Jeremy hustled Benny and Switch off the boat onto the dock again. Benny sank down on the dock. He covered his face with his hands and burst into tears.
"Ben, Ben, I'm sorry." Jeremy knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "It was just a joke. I never would have let him have you. He'd have beaten you to death. Ben, please forgive me."
"You don't care about me!" Benny cried. He shook Jeremy off and started to stumble away. Black Switch blocked his path and he stopped, not knowing where to go. He turned back to face the bank robber and rubbed his eyes angrily. "You've stuck a knife in my face and said you wanted to kill me. You've called me a liar and made everyone believe you. You've tried to sell me!"
"Ben, I do care about what happens to you," Jeremy said earnestly. "I certainly don't want to kill you anymore. All right, so I've done some things that hurt you. I was trying to stay alive. Some of the time I was trying to keep you alive. That boat captain wasn't the first fellow who wanted to take you away from me. As God is my witness, I wouldn't let anything happen to you."
"Maybe you're smart and strong and you've kept me alive when I would have died out here on my own. But you'd better not ask God to be your witness because He's seen everything you've done and you know it isn't all right!"
"Let's call a truce," Jeremy said finally, after a long silence. "I'll swear off drinking and gambling and anything else you don't like. You help out with the camp chores and talk about God all you want. I'll even take you to your Uncle Tom's if that's what it takes to get you to stop hating me. I don't want you to hate me, Ben."
"Well, it's around here somewhere. Have you made up your mind yet?" Jeremy and Benny had finished straightening up their camp for the night and were about to go to sleep.
"What's around here somewhere?" Benny asked.
"Uncle Tom's farm," Jeremy said casually. "You didn't realize we were getting that close, did you? We've been following the Missouri River quite a while now. I figure if we strike south we'll probably trip over Osage and Laughlin Estates in a day or two. Are you going to tell me what you've decided?"
Benny lay staring up at the stars. He had been with Jeremy a long time. He wasn't even sure how long but he knew it was now late summer and he and his mother had started from Philadelphia in May. The trip up the Mississippi from Cairo to St. Louis had been endless, going from one boat to another, sometimes working themselves to exhaustion polling, sometimes lounging on a steamboat.
Jeremy had not taken a drink or gambled since they had crossed the Mississippi. Benny had stuck close to him, fearing the hard, rough men who crowded the boats and the shore towns more than the bank robber. In fact, he had become closer to Jeremy all the time. Jeremy had taught him some of the tricks he used to train Black Switch, and the horse seemed very fond of Benny.
Jeremy had also taught Benny to protect himself from the brawlers and drunks and thieves they encountered everywhere. Benny had enjoyed learning a strange kind of fighting called Jujutsu, which Jeremy had picked up from some Japanese acrobats he had traveled with. It was a little like wrestling, and allowed a smaller, lighter person to surprise and catch a bigger man off-balance and sometimes send him flying. Benny had seen Jeremy leave a tough hoodlum with a broken arm, screaming on the dock as they poled away.
They had left St. Louis behind long ago, but the river travel wasn't very much different as they headed in the general direction o
f Independence. Benny and Jeremy were getting along fairly well. But the loss of his mother's Bible had hurt Benny more than he had realized at the time.
"'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,'" Jeremy had mocked him. "Is that the only Bible verse you know? The Bible must not be a very important Book to you if you don't know any more of it than that!"
Benny wished he had learned more Scripture. The few verses he knew he had said to himself over and over again until he was tired of saying them.
"Stop moping around wishing God would do something, Ben," Jeremy had told him. Jeremy put on his wigs and makeup and made Benny howl with laughter. He sang wonderful, funny, sad songs.
"Let me guess what you're thinking right now," Jeremy said. Benny had almost forgotten Jeremy had asked him a question. "You're trying to figure out why everything's gone wrong in your life. Do you think you're the only one who's had that happen?
"Imagine being born in a cheap theater right after your mother and father got off the stage from doing a sleazy little play. Imagine all your friends being horse trainers and clowns and magicians. I learned card tricks instead of playing with blocks. I was a target for a trick knife-thrower when I was littler than you.
"My mother died of Cholera when I was fifteen. I bet you never saw anyone die from that, did you, little Benny boy? My older brother drank himself to death. Ricky was only nineteen. My dear old pa taught him how, but pa lasted till he was almost fifty."
Jeremy took a deep breath. "I had a pretty face and could always lie to anyone about anything, so I managed to get schooling that got me out of the show circuit and into some good jobs. What good has God ever done you or me?
"Your father's dead, your pretty little mother's probably dead too. You've got nothing to look forward to but a farm boy's life. Ben, what if you just kept on traveling with me? We'd have some high times. You'd never be bored."
Benny still didn't answer. They had made out very well living off the wilderness. Benny had learned to set traps, to find wild plants and berries to eat, to build fires and shelters. Jeremy had finally quit calling him a "city boy."
On this night as he lay out under the stars, Benny was surprised to discover that he no longer wanted to return to the city at all. Was it wrong to think of Jeremy as his friend and to want to stay with him? If he stayed with Jeremy, it would mean accepting his belief that God simply wasn't there. Everything that had happened had seemed to prove Jeremy right.
But Benny still couldn't shake the few Scriptures he did know. They reminded him of God's presence, His love, His promise to take care of those who knew Him. Even though Jeremy had changed some of his sinful ways, Benny was sure it was wrong to want to stay with him. He had never admitted to Jeremy how much he had grown to like the bank robber. He was sure that once he did so, it would be the same as rejecting the Lord.
Black Switch pawed the ground and snorted. He began to pull at the rope that held him to a fallen log just outside their camp. Benny heard a kind of snuffling sound. Leaves rustled, and a shadow moved in the bushes. A big shadow.
Benny sat up slowly. A round, pale head thrust itself out of the bushes beside him, topped by dark, laid-back ears above two catlike eyes that stared at Benny.
"Jeremy!" Benny shrieked. Jeremy sat up very quickly. The cougar, startled by the shout and sudden movement, pulled back and snarled. Black Switch gave a scream that frightened Benny as much as the cat had. He remembered the draft horses dragged into the river with the barge.
"Throw that pack beside you at him, Ben," Jeremy said softly. "He's just hungry. Maybe we can get away if we can distract him."
Jeremy drew his knife and inched forward. Benny twisted around to grab to pack. At that moment the cougar sprang on top of Jeremy. Benny got a glimpse of the great open mouth and long yellow teeth – so many teeth –
Jeremy screamed and tried to fight off the cat. It paid no attention when Benny threw the pack. Black Switch broke the branch off the dead tree to which he was tied and galloped off.
Benny pulled a long stick out of the fire and beat at the cat's humped shoulders. His tawny fur smoldered and sparks flew from him, but he only became angrier and more fierce. Benny saw Jeremy's blood dark on the fire-lit grass, but he could do nothing to stop the cougar's attack, nothing to stop Jeremy's terrified, pain-filled screams.
"Oh, God, please don't let him die! He needs to believe in Jesus! Please help him somehow! Please!" Benny cried out loud.
An explosion right behind Benny made him jump. Another sounded, and another. Benny realized that a giant man with a long rifle stood at the edge of the clearing, pumping shot after shot into the cat as fast as he could reload. At last the cougar's grunts and snarls died away. He lay still beside Jeremy.
The man and Benny got to Jeremy at the same time. The man first checked to be sure the cougar was dead then turned to Jeremy. Benny stared in horror. Blood covered Jeremy. His clothes were rags. His face was terrible to see. The man shook his head.
"Reckon he's dead, son," he muttered.
"But I prayed …" Benny said in a low voice. "And you even came. Doesn't God care about anything?"
" 'Course God cares, boy," the man said in a rough voice. He put a hand on Jeremy's chest. "See that? He is alive." Jeremy gave a short, sharp gasp and moaned. "Come on, my cabin's not far away. If you asked God to save this fellow's life, we'd better not be hindering Him from doing His work."
The man was so big he picked Jeremy up easily and carried him over to the tall brown and white horse that waited patiently nearby. Benny followed him to a rough cabin at the edge of a meadow and opened the door for him to carry Jeremy in.
The man laid Jeremy on a bed in the corner of the single room. It was made of notched logs, with a straw-filled canvas bag slung on crossed ropes. Benny looked around at the fieldstone fireplace, small table, two chairs, some rough-cut benches, and cupboards that furnished the room.
Then his eyes fell on the walls, which were crowded with books. Every open space had books packed on crude shelves. The man wore fringed deerskin, a big black felt hat with an owl feather, and his beard and hair were long and white. He looked like a trapper or a mountain man, not a book-lover.
"Come on, son, let's do what we can for him. 'Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.'" The man gave orders as he removed Jeremy's tattered shirt.
"Get that pitcher and bowl from beside the fire, and then stir up the coals and fill the pot with water from the well. Bucket's by the door. There's cloth in that cupboard –" he pointed " – to tear up for bandages."
Benny helped all he could, but he felt like he was walking in his sleep. Nothing seemed real. Jeremy struggled and moaned and cried out so much that it was hard to clean and dress his wounds. The old man was very strong as well as very big. After a long time he poured the last bowl of bloody water out the door, washed his hands, and threw himself down into one of the chairs by the table.
"Sit down and rest yourself, son," the man said kindly. "You must be about worn out between being up in the middle of the night and nursing your pa."
"He's not my father." Benny was surprised that he would think that.
"Your brother?"
"No."
"But you were trying to help him – praying for him. What is he to you?"
"I-I'm not sure," Benny said slowly. "I think he's my friend."