The Floatplane Notebooks (6 page)

Now he's putting family trees in there.

Anyway, Meredith and Mark are always going out there sitting in it and pretending they're flying. It's going to be made mostly out of aluminum and tight canvas. One problem is that some of the kit is missing, which Papa says is okay because he can tell from the parts already there how to make the missing parts.

So now Meredith can't go out there and sit in the frame for a week because he got called to the principal's office.

I swear, Meredith.

I seen this thing with him and the well coming. If you told
me somebody was going to fall down the well—the open well under the rotten spot in the kitchen floor—I could have told you it would be Meredith. Anybody could—from the way he pushed on the spot all the time. To make it creak. It creaked like a little moan. Day or night, he'd be standing over there pushing down with his foot, making them noises.

He came in, pushed on the floor one time too many and there he goes like a rope had jerked him straight down through the floor, turning his head to look at me—his face following his shoulders on down through the floor, and down into the well. Swallowed up.

Served him right.

We abandoned that well six, eight years ago because he threw a litter of kittens down it. Papa told him to put them in a potato sack and drown them in the pond, but oh no, not Meredith. Too much trouble. So he just drops them down the well, one at a time. Then Mama comes along, pulls up the well bucket and there's a drowned kitten in there—looks like a soggy black sock—and I bet you could have heard her scream a mile away. She swore off cooking with that water and said there was no choice but to dig a new well and put in regular plumbing. Everybody else had regular plumbing and it was time we had it too, she said. Papa said plumbing won't nothing but a passing fad. And Mama wanted a new kitchen added on to the house over the old well.

So anyway, Papa got a new well dug, tore down the old well shed, covered the hole, and built the new kitchen over that hole.

The problem of the floor getting rotten was because of several things. For one, the joists were four instead of two
feet apart. Mr. Hoover told Papa about that but he didn't pay no mind. Another thing was that the kitchen had about a five degree slant down toward the backyard, so that if something leaked, like the sink or refrigerator, the water ran to a spot in the floor which happened to be right over that open well.

Meredith had this game with marbles and a glass. He'd turn a marble loose up at the high end of the floor and let it roll down toward a turned-over glass—one of those colored aluminum glasses that get real cold when you put ice in them—the kind with the turned-out lip. The marble would go right up in there. Meredith wouldn't play except when Papa was home.

Then there was this post stuck in the middle of the floor. It was supposed to be there for support, but it was nailed about a foot off the nearest joist and didn't support nothing.

Another problem was that Meredith kept crawling up under the kitchen, throwing things down the well, and leaving the top off—which made the floor damp right in front of the refrigerator. See, Meredith was using that well as a place to get rid of things, and if it was alive he'd shine the flashlight down there and watch it drown.

So the dampness coming up from the well, and the fact that people stood right there in front of the refrigerator a lot, sort of suspended between those far-apart joists, and the fact that the sink and refrigerator leaked—all this worked together, and that place in the floor got to be like the soft spot on a baby's head, and Meredith just couldn't get enough of making it creak and moan.

On the night it happened, two, three weeks ago, I'm standing at the kitchen sink washing arrowheads. Mama, Bliss, Meredith,
and Noralee are in the living room watching “I've Got a Secret.”

Papa has his teeth out, which makes him lisp. “Thun,” he says, “go get me thum buttermilk.” Mama hates it when he talks with his teeth out.

Well, Meredith mumbles something, then comes on back. He's in his pajamas. And while he opens the refrigerator door, he pushes down with his bare foot on the rotten spot, just to make it groan. Then he gets the buttermilk, steps back on the rotten spot, and the floor, all of a sudden, sort of crunches open with a loud crack and there he goes—turning his face to look at me with this “Lord, it did it” look; there he goes right on out of sight
still holding on to that jar of buttermilk.

You hear this deep splash, with a kind of a bathtub-bottled sound.

I stood there. I was in no hurry.

Papa, Mama, Bliss, and Noralee come running in and Papa bends over the hole and yells, “You down there?”

“Where you think I'm at?” The echo hangs in the well.

Then there's this little splashing around, like he's moving. I walk on over to the hole.

“Joists were too far apart,” I said to Papa.

“I could have told you them joists were too far apart,” Meredith yells up.

Mama stood up straight, looked at Papa, and then bent back over the hole. She was scared. And Bliss was scared. I could tell by the way she looked. Didn't scare me. I knew Meredith was too hard-headed to get hurt falling down a well.

Papa says, “We uth to keep thoup down the well—dropped it down in a clean bucket with cheeth cloth acroth the top.”

Bliss looked at me like “do something,” but I figured it'd work out. Just give it a little time.

Papa told me to get the flashlight, but I couldn't find it, so he struck a match, got on his knees, and reached down into the well with the match as far as he could. Didn't do no good.

“I'm going to shinny up,” yells Meredith.

“Wait till we find the flashlight,” says Bliss.

“I don't need no flashlight.”

About then Papa found the flashlight in the pantry, came back, shined it down the well, and we all saw Meredith. He was coming up, pushing with his hands and knees against the well casing—one hand, one knee, the other hand, the other knee. Down below him you could see the dark water reflecting the flashlight. And his pajamas, the blue ones, printed with the crossed rifles, were all wet and stuck to his shoulders—the wet making the skin show through. He wears that same pajama top to baseball practice.

“Wait a minute and we'll throw you a rope,” says Papa.

“Never mind,” says Meredith, grunting. “I can make it like this.”

“Whereth a rope?” says Papa, looking around, still shining the light down on Meredith.

Meredith looks up at us and his face is all splotchy white and red, and he tells Papa to turn off the flashlight because he can't see how far he is from the top. So Papa clicks off the flashlight and lays it down and that flashlight just slowly rolls right into that black hole before anybody can grab it and when it hit Meredith it sounded solid, like a hammer hitting a tree—got him right on the head. Then there is this heavy,
scratchy scrambling followed by a short silence, then this loud, deep splash.

Meredith goes through his teeth: “What the hell was that?”

“The flathlight. Can you uth it?”

“You dropped the flashlight?”

“Look around. It'th suppoth to float.”

“Meredith cussed,” said Noralee. “You're not supposed to cuss in the house,” she says down to Meredith.

“I ain't in the house. I'm in the well.”

Mama tells Bliss to go call the fire department and I could tell they were both worried. Papa said we didn't need no fire department, and then he remembered the rope under the front seat of the truck and told me to go get it. I told him that rope was only five or six feet long. Meredith was a good twenty-five feet down.

But Papa gets this idea: add sheets onto the rope. So I went out to the truck, got the rope, came back, and Mama had collected a few sheets from the beds. Bliss had called the fire department.

In a minute, Bliss and Papa were passing these tied-together sheets, one at a time, down into the well. About the time the sheets were out of sight and just the rope was left above the floor, Meredith yells up, “Okay, tie that end to something. I've got aholt to this end.”

Well, we look around for something to tie the rope to.

The post.

Papa gets positioned on the side of the post away from the well, wraps the rope around the post, ties it into a knot, braces his foot against the post, and wraps what's left of the rope around his hand. I had my doubts, but I didn't say anything.

Noralee, who's standing there with her arm stuck between her legs she's got to go to the bathroom so bad, says, “What if that post comes loose?”

“Mr. Hoover said that post won't put in solid,” says Mama.

“Poth ain't coming looth,” says Papa. “Joe Ray Hoover don't know everything. He thirtenly never built bridgeth in the war.” Papa does his jaw motion. He has this habit of—with his teeth out—bringing his lower jaw right up under his nose, in this chewing motion, so that the whole bottom half of his face disappears up into the upper half. And he needed a shave.

“It could come loose,” says Noralee.

Papa don't pay her no mind at all. He just yells down to Meredith, ‘All right, climb on up.”

“You got that end tied to that post?” Meredith wants to know.

“The rope is thanchioned, Meredith,” says Papa. “Climb on up.”

“It's what?”

“Thanchioned.”

“What?”

I didn't know what it meant either.

“Thanchioned! Thanchioned! Now climb on up like I told you!”

The rope tightened and squeaked on the post—which held. It held for a right good while, as a matter of fact, until Meredith was about halfway up, and then it snapped free real loud there at the bottom, jerked the rope out of Papa's hand, shot to the hole and wedged there. The damn knot held. And Meredith held on to the sheets. I guess he
dropped about five feet. Papa can tie a knot. I'll say that.

“What happened?” Meredith yells up, shaky.

Papa says, “Nothing. Keep climbing.” He hadn't no more than got the words out of his mouth when this little bitty rip starts somewhere in one of them sheets, sort of speeds up, then goes real fast, and there goes old Meredith again. Right back where he started from. Another loud, bottled splash sound.

Noralee says, “He ain't gonna ever get out of there.”

Mama turns on Papa. ‘Albert, this kitchen has gone all this time rotting through, and you messing with them rabbit boxes and airplane plans. How do you expect to build an airplane if you can't build a kitchen? And now something like this happens. This floor ought not to ever got like this in the first place. Joe Ray Hoover told you about this kitchen.”

Papa's mouth dropped open and his eyes darted around all over Mama's face. Then he did his jaw motion, turned, and walked out the back door.

“Papa, I could of told you that post would pop out,” Meredith yelled up.

“He ain't up here, Meredith,” I said.

The fire truck drove up. We could hear the loud idle of the engine. The fireman hit the siren for a low growl.

“We don't need no fire truck,” said Meredith.

I walked out onto the back doorsteps and saw the firetruck headlights shining on Papa, sitting on the ground beside the well house, spotlighted, his head in his hands. The firemen, a tall one and a short one, walked up to him. Papa pointed to the kitchen, and they came on in and dropped the rope ladder down the well, hooked the end to the well curb, and in a
minute out climbed Meredith, his pajamas dripping water. A red bump was on his hairline in front. Served him right.

Bliss thinks there is no end to his cuteness.

“Where's Papa?” he said.

“He's out in the backyard,” I said.

Mama says, “Go on to the bathroom, Noralee.” Then she went to get a towel for Meredith.

“Y'all didn't have to come,” says Meredith to the firemen. “I could have got out.”

“Then jump back down there and climb out,” I said.

He gave me his go-to-hell look, then followed the firemen out. He stood on the back doorsteps. Me and Bliss stood on the porch. Papa was still out in the yard.

“What do we owe you?” Papa said to the firemen.

“Not a thing.”

“What about that ‘natural suspension,' Papa?” said Meredith. “In the kitchen floor?”

Papa walked over to the base of the steps. Meredith was on the second step. The backdoor light shined in Papa's eyes. “Don't talk to me about ‘natural thuthpension' becauthe you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know nothing about building bridgeth, and Joe Ray Hoover don't neither.

“Why don't you write
this
up in the notebook?” I said.

“I ain't studying no notebook,” he said, sort of digging his hand down in his overall pocket.

“Go put your teeth in,” says Mama.

The leg belonged to Timothy Cook who worked at the mill.

Timothy's mother Delphi came the morning after the explosion and sitting in her buggy talked first to Caroline. I just don't feel right about burying his leg in the same graveyard with Thadeus you know at the same time and all she said. It just don't seem right somehow. And that's such a nice little graveyard out there.

It's fine with us I'm sure said Caroline.

I favor a small ceremony. Timothy of course won't be able to come. If I could just get a body to holp me a bit.

We will Mrs Cook. One of us. Where is the leg now?

Well they brought it wropped up and put it in our smokehouse. It's from his knee down. It's just awful but gracious sakes it can't stay out there.

We'll send Ross after it and build a box for it. Then after supper about sundown we'll have a little service. You come on over and bring whoever you want to.

Walker came up.

We're going to bury Timothy's leg out here in our graveyard said Caroline.