Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (5 page)

The morning we walked out of Conway on Highway 64 East, it was hotter than any day so far. Above the pavement, the air wavered like a desert scene in a movie. The four lanes of cars and trucks charging past us created a wind that felt like it came from a blast furnace. And the forecast was for even hotter days ahead. So we decided to find a shady place to camp for a few days.

Several people suggested Lester Flatt Campground. They said it was in a pretty mountain valley with lots of shade and a spring-fed lake. Going to Lester Flatt meant an eight mile detour, but everybody said it would be worth it.

That morning, as we walked down Highway 107 toward Lester Flatt, it was so humid I felt like we were wading there. I usually wore a bandana headband under my straw hat to keep perspiration out my eyes. But that day it didn’t make any difference. I was constantly wiping sweat out of them. Each time we stopped to drink water, I had to wring a small stream from my headband. It was like the water was flowing directly from my mouth to my pores.

Around two in the afternoon we got to the dirt road that led into Lester Flatt Campground. It had taken us nearly five hours to walk eight miles. Worn out from trudging through the mugginess, we were more than ready to put down for the day. Especially if it was in shade next to a spring-fed lake.

But it was still a mile back into the campground and most of it was uphill. In that mile we stopped to rest and drink water more than any other mile in my life. Finally, at the top of the hill, we found ourselves gazing down at a shimmering pool of blue cradled in the lush green Ozark foothills. It was oblong and prettier than I had fantasized it would be. Just the sight of it refreshed me. Before long we’d be soaking in cool spring water.

But on the road down to the campground we came to a hand-painted wooden sign nailed to a tree that read, “Absolutely no horses.”

“It doesn’t say anything about mules,” Patricia said, as she handed me the water jug. “Maybe when we tell them what we’re doing, and that we walked out of our way to camp here, they’ll let us stay.”

Before I took a drink, I said, “That sign is mighty emphatic.”

“We’ve come this far, I say we go down and ask.”

“And if we can’t use the campground maybe we could set up in the woods.”

The park was only on the east end of the lake. The rest of it was undeveloped woodland. Camping in the woods might be a solution to the “Absolutely no horses” rule at Lester Flatt. So we walked down into the valley.

Lester Flat had a sand beach, several RV sites, a large pavilion and a small store. When we stopped in front of the store, a man in his late sixties, wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, walked out. His right arm below the elbow was missing. With that stub he pointed up the way we came and said, “We don’t allow horses here. There’s a sign up on the hill.”

“We saw it,” I said. “But we walked out of our way to get here because everyone said we’d be welcome. Are you the owner?”

He shook his bald head. “No. The lady who owns this place isn’t here. She works in Cabot. I camp here and keep an eye on the place for her. And one of her rules is no horses.”

It felt like I was whining when I said, “If I’d known that before, we wouldn’t have come here. It’s awfully hot. I sure would hate to go back out on the road in this heat. Do you suppose we could camp tonight in the woods somewhere around the lake? We’ll leave first thing in the morning when it’s cooler.”

He thought about it a moment, then said, “I don’t know if she’d go for that or not. She owns all the property around the lake. Let me call and see what she says.”

A few minutes later he came out of the store with a frown on his face. “She said no. Not in the campground or anywhere else.”

Now it felt like I was begging. “Did you tell her we walked out of our way because everyone said we’d be welcome here?”

Up to this point I had the feeling the one-armed man wanted to help us. But now he had a job to do. “She said those people don’t own this place, she does. And they had no right to tell you to come down here. She wants you to leave now!”

Flabbergasted I said, “I can’t believe as hot as it is she’s going to make us leave!”

“That’s not her problem. Her words were, ‘If I let one outfit traveling with a mule and a cart come in then I’ll have to let them all in.’ ”

“Right! And how many mules and carts does she have come by here?”

According to our map, there was a dirt road that would take us through a forested area to State Highway 5. Rose Bud was our first mail stop, and it was on that highway. I figured if we took the dirt road we’d find a shady place in the woods to camp. And at one time Ballard Road probably
was
a shady lane–but not when we walked on it. Property on both sides was private, fenced and posted. The forest had been cut back from the road to make way for pasture and lawns. It’s a valley road that skirts the base of the Ozark foothills. Long steep driveways led to hillside homes among the pines, cedars and oaks. It was fence after fence with signs written in various verbiage, all of which boiled down to one meaning–“Keep Out!”

Most of the folks who lived in that valley worked in or around Little Rock. So as our shadows grew longer, the traffic got heavier and the road dustier. The afternoon heated up and commuter dust turned our sweat into rivulets of mud.

Near the junction of Red Bird Lane, we stopped under an ancient pine whose shadow graced Ballard Road. We were there less than a minute, when two pick-ups sped past us. They were jacked-up and riding-high with wide knobbed tires that kicked up such a thick cloud of dust that Patricia and I couldn’t see each other. We both were coughing when she screamed, “I’m sick of this!”

I was too, but I didn’t want to feed her despair. So I said, “Something good is going to come out of this. I can feel it.”

Patricia snapped, “Oh yeah, like what? A Holiday Inn?”

In the two years that we’d been together, that was the first time Patricia ever snapped at me. I had seen her angry before, but she was never nasty like that. I didn’t know what to say.

She wiped her face with a sweat soaked bandana as she grumbled, “I knew we should have stayed on the pavement. It might have been longer, but at least we wouldn’t have to eat all this god-damn dust.”

Earlier, after looking at the map, we had mutually agreed to take this road. I toyed with the idea of reminding her of that, but thought better of it. The moment was too volatile. I simply said, “Well, we’ve gone too far to turn back.”

With a smart-ass expression she quipped, “Ya think?”

Suddenly, behind us was the roar of an engine approaching. We both turned to see a sedan racing toward us with a plume of dust behind it. Patricia clinched both fists and growled, “You’d better slow down, Shit-head!”

And it did. Not enough to have no dust at all, but it wasn’t a choker. When the man and his Mercedes slowly cruised past us, Patricia put on her best fake smile and waved as she muttered, “Thanks a lot, Ass-hole.”

The next two miles took an hour and a half to walk–every foot of it was sweat and hot dust. I had grit in my mouth, behind my knees and inside my elbows. Every once in awhile, I had to take my sunglasses off to
pick a batch of crud from the corners of my eyes. You can imagine what it was like inside my nose.

We paused at nearly every speck of shade we came to. If it was a wide spot off the road, we stopped to consider it for a campsite–especially if there was water nearby. Like a house with a spigot, or a pond to dip a bucket into, but every one of those places had something wrong with it–usually a sign that told us to keep out.

Ballard Road crossed a creek with a few scummy puddles, then made a sharp left turn and went up a steep slope. At the top of the hill, on the right hand side of the road, sat an abandoned brick house. Some of the windows were broken and the yard was knee high in weeds. Along the front of the property was a line of pine trees that made shade where we needed it, and there were no signs telling us to keep out. So we walked up the overgrown driveway, and stomped through the crackling dry weeds to get to a shady spot where we could tie Della.

We had two big blue plastic water jugs with us. Each held seven gallons, and all the water we had left was about two-thirds of a jug. I filled Spot’s drinking bowl, poured Patricia and me each a tall tumbler and dumped the rest into Della’s bucket. After I took our folding chairs off the back of the cart, my wife and I sat down to a tall drink of tepid water. It sure felt good to be off my feet. According to the pedometer, I’d walked over sixteen miles that day. And I felt every hot one of them.

With a damp rag across the nape of her neck, Patricia leaned forward in her chair and took a sip of water. Then she smacked her lips, turned to me with a Cheshire-cat grin and said, “Yes sir, after a hard hot day on the road, there ain’t nothing I love more than a big tall glass of piss water. Nope, it don’t get no better than that!” She paused, then asked, “So, is this the great treat up ahead?”

Okay, it wasn’t great. The only shade was from tall thin pines, which is better than nothing. But it’s not as refreshing as a big spreading oak, or maple, or just about any other deciduous tree. And the graze for Della wasn’t good either. Mostly thistles and some tall parched grass. But we had plenty of hay for her.

I said, “Well, it’s better than nothing.”

Patricia grunted. “Not much.”

Catty-corner across the road was a mobile home with porches, decks and wheel chair ramps around it. Earlier, when we walked up the hill toward the abandoned house, I spotted a garden hose in the backyard of that place. So I stood up, grabbed the jugs and said, “I’ll see if I can’t find us some fresh water.” Then I headed toward the mobile home.

On the way there, all I thought about was how ugly Patricia had been earlier. The heat, sweat and dust were bad enough, but now I had to deal with an attitude, too? While I walked up the wheel chair ramp toward the front door, I was thinking,
Should have stuck with just having a mule!

The small bent old woman who came to the door said I could use the faucet behind her house. She was standing on the back step watching me fill the jugs, when I asked, “Do you suppose it’d be all right if we camp tonight in the yard across the road?”

Her voice was weak and it shook when she said, “Well, I can’t give you permission ‘cause I don’t own it. But those people haven’t been down here in a couple years. I don’t imagine anybody’s going to say you can’t.”

Back at camp, we had just unhitched Della from the cart when a four-wheeler with a man wearing a straw hat pulled out of the driveway from the house next door to the old woman. He drove across the road, stopped behind our cart, turned off the machine and said, “You aren’t going to camp here, are you?”

I’m six foot two, and he was a couple of inches taller than me. He was in his late fifties, and the left side of his face drooped as if he’d had a stroke. The way the question tumbled out the left corner of his mouth, I couldn’t tell if he was for or against us being there. So I was cautious when I said, “We’ve had a tough day, and need to get off the road for the night. I asked the lady–”

“I know. That’s my mother.” His speech wasn’t halted or stammered like most folks who’ve had a stroke. Still some of his words were slurred because of the way his jaw tugged down on his mouth. “Like she said, nobody’s going to care if you camp here, but you don’t want to.”

“We don’t?”

When he climbed off the ATV and walked toward us, his back was straight, and he didn’t limp like someone who’d had a stroke. “The chiggers and ticks will eat you alive.”

Patricia and I both had lived in Arkansas long enough to recognize a tick and chigger haven, and this was definitely one. For that matter, every patch of tall grass or weeds in those parts had the connotation of itch to it. We used insect repellent more than most folks use deodorant.

“You’d be better off in my yard. I’ve got lots of good grass for your mule.”

His modular home was almost a hundred yards from the road. The lawn was lush with a few shade trees here and there. This man had obviously spent a lot of time taking care of his yard, and Della could do it a lot of damage. Most folks figured she’d just trim the grass and leave a bit of natural fertilizer behind. But her steel shoes could dig up big hunks of sod, and Della loved to roll and roll and roll. She’d roll so much that by the end of the day a dust-bowl would be where once was lawn.

“I know about livestock.” The man’s voice was as deep as he was tall. “I used to own a stockyard. Trust me, she won’t hurt anything, and you can use our shower.”

In less than fifteen minutes we were hoofing it across the road to Bill McKinney’s place. After Della was unharnessed, I hosed her and Spot down. The dirt flowed off both of them in brown ripples. But after I tethered her, the first thing Della did was drop down and roll in the only patch of dirt in that part of the yard. When she rolled, Della moaned like some people do at the peak of their private pleasures with perfect partners. For Della, a good roll was always better than sex.

We pitched our tent in Bill’s front yard, then went into his air-conditioned home to take showers. Anything wet poured over my body would have felt luxurious. When I hosed off Della and Spot, I nearly turned the nozzle on me. But I knew a real shower was coming up, and Bill’s was heavenly. It had a massive head that created a rain effect that really did wash away the day.