The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [48]
But then the members of the Stay More Debating Society proposed a new topic: Which is worse, a drought or a flood? Sides were drawn, and the oratory and rebuttals kept them busy until dawn. But Jacob, the referee, decreed that the match was a draw, even-Stephen, and the jug of whiskey that was to go to the winners was shared, all around. At dawn, the men began constructing a raft, which Jacob piloted, leaving his house and grounds for the first time since the frakes had got him, and beginning his return to normal life.
With Elijah Duckworth and Levi Whitter as first mate and boatswain, Jacob poled the raft down the broad yellow-brown river to the holler where his first cabin was; but it was no more. Probing with his pole for some sign of the roof or chimney, Jacob reluctantly concluded that the whole cabin must have washed away. “NOEY!” he called, but only the roar of the river answered him. He let the raft drift aimlessly downstream, continuing to call out for his brother, until Duckworth and Whitter suggested that they would like to inspect their homesteads too. These, it turned out, were still standing, although the livestock were drowned, except for a flock of chickens on the ridgepole of Duckworth’s place, and a pair of goats on Whitter’s ridgepole. The other buildings, too, of Stay More had survived, except for the rude trading post, whose roof could be seen floating in an eddy off Banty Creek. What was better, the men noted, the water level seemed to be dropping rapidly, and the rain had stopped and the sun was shining marvelously in a near-cloudless sky. Before the day was over, the people could return to their homes and drag out their wet bedding to hang in the sunshine, and begin scraping mud off their floors and furniture, and start the long hard reconstruction of their lives.
But even after the floodwaters receded, Noah was still up in that tree. Not by choice; he was helplessly entangled in the blackjack vines that he had used to bind himself to the trunk. He would husband his strength for a while and then tug and tear at the vines, but to no avail. Whenever he did not feel completely exhausted, he would draw breath into his lungs and yell “AHOY!” but if anyone heard him from afar they probably took it as an echo of their own voices calling “NOAH!” or “NOEY!”
This was true in Jacob’s case; since his own house did not require drying out and cleaning like the others, he could spend all of his time searching for his brother…or his brother’s body…but whenever he went far enough downstream to hear the distant, faint “ahoy” he took it as only an echo of his own voice calling “NOEY!”
In time, Noah became too weak to yell very loudly. It is a marvel how he survived, but he did. Some of the details of his survival technique are not pleasant to dwell upon, but a few of the less unsavory may be mentioned: the sunshine dried his cold wet buckskins (although also drying, and tightening, the black-jack vines that bound him to the tree); there was a small saucer-shaped depression in a tree limb near his head which contained rainwater, or spunkwater as they call it, and which he, by craning his neck, could dip his tongue into and slake his thirst from time to time; his hands were still free, and he could use these to: (1) tear off leaves from the tree to chew upon; (2) unfasten his trousers in order to relieve himself; (3) seize, and pluck the feathers off of, pigeons, whose uncooked flesh was better than nothing. In this manner he managed to subsist for nearly a week, until he was found. He slept well without fear of falling into the water—or, now that the flood was gone, the ground, thirty feet below him. He was bothered by backaches occasionally,