Lyndon State College - Northern Lights Yearbook (Lyndonville, VT)

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January - 1938 trudged, it seemed the earth around, although in reality it could have been only a few miles. Higher to the rocky formations peculiar to New England’s hillsides. Up eventually to the gorge. Sure enough there swung the bridge. His memory had not played him false. There swung the bridge, swung like a pendulum, slowly like his beating, laboring pulse, swung by one cable far, far into the depth of the gorge below! The one remaining cable stretched across the taunting gap. One strand of wire tied the world together. One bit of rusty cable connected him with his home, his family and relief from this nightmare. In frustrated desperation he lay up- on his stomach and tested the wire. Grasping it he snapped it as he would snap the garden hose back home or as he would a piece of rope. It rose and fell in snaky waves, annoyed at being so rudely handled. The vibrations reached the otherside and returned in all haste as if to protest such rude treatment. Back and forth, back and forth between wall and hand and yet came no tearing wrench, no slipping, no pulling loose, no rusty screech. The cable had been well strung. It held firm and true as the day it was hung! Could he cross? Would it hold his weight? Slowly, experimentally, he hooked his elbows over the iron, loosed his footing and swung free. There he dangled. Spiders on a thread matched his acrobatics and he the helpless fly. Slowly, inch by inch, he shortened the gap. Stubbornly he gained a foot or two. Favoring his frosted hand made it the more difficult. His pulse pound- ed in his head. He could feel his neck getting thick. A kaleidoscope of color- ed sparks darted here and there. His shoes pulled him down. His arms ached and pulled unmercifully at his shoulder sockets. Over and over, one hand clenched before the other let go. Don’t look down. Stop thinking. Go a little slower so the cable won’t rock. Time and again his will alone saved him. A weak- er man would have long since gone hurtling to the depths below, to be smothered by the frenzied water and ground to pulp by the waiting rocks. At last after tremendous toil his toes scraped the opposite wall. In one last superhuman exercise of inspired strength he crawled up and stumbled panting to the ground. He could go to sleep. The moss here was soft and com- fortable. Green feathers grown just to sleep on. But he must not. When his breath had returned to normal and the mists had cleared away from before his eyes he struggled to his feet and plodded onward. Each minute, each step, brought pain, and each etched as acid every detail of his struggle in his mind. That afternoon he stumbled into the dooryard of a highland farm. The owner, a young fellow, stood in the doorway of the red barn studying mi- nutely his flooded fields and making mental calculations of the damage. Now he started forward as Jimmy came into view around the corner. £ sjc :: Days later he entered his own warm kitchen to surprise a grief-stricken wife and round-eyed family. With stories of the flood so fresh and vivid in their minds they gazed at the apparition before them almost with disbelief. [7]

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V E R L Y N behind him. He was alone. Inside the railway station, halfway through Davis’s message, the buzzer stopped dead. Somewhere on the road, on that winding ribbon of mud, was a man in a truck and now nobody knew where. Mile after mile, a snail could have kept pace, racing motor, grinding gears, pick, shovel, chain and sweat. Mile after mile like an atom at creation. If ever a machine could become human, this one did. Twice the jar of the rumbling truck vibrated bridges loose from their already undermined foundations. They dropped with a deadened sound, like coffins in a mud- dy grave. Miraculously the spinning wheels found firmer ground, missing the maws of the falling trap by inches. Sticky, slithering mud, quicksand if he stopped an instant, oozed tenacious- ly around his struggling wheels. Some- where ahead in this New England no- man’s-land lay the deadly menace, dy- namite. One smashing blow; then one less truck, one less man — oblivion. Suddenly the motor gave a choking sputter, one last lurch and stopped, never to continue. Cautiously the driver pushed open his door and step- ped out upon the water-washed running board, like some futuristic explorer from his rocket, to gaze at the desola- tion of a new world in wonder. The grey dawn only accentuated the hor- rible reality. A cow or two already dead and bloated, floated swiftly by. Ironically enough, a bedraggled bantam rooster perched panic stricken on a warped plank, followed in the wake of his barn- yard intimates. Then, in rapid suc- cession, the house, barn, the family horse and wagon, and the trees that once grew around the homestead sped swiftly by in the mad race to nowhere. Jimmy took a deep breath and stepped with an experimental step into the water and on to the ground below. Step by step he began the long trek back, retracing those tortuous miles. Jimmy guessed that he was not an angel after all. Angels’ feet didn’t hurt and his did. His puttees chafed his ankles. He had lost a glove; his hand, stiffened with cold, turned blue and lost its feeling. It seemed years before the first bridgeless river twisted into view. Over acre after acre it spread its overflow. Jimmy had long since abandoned the roadbed, and had taken to the low hog- back ridges. Here was safer and high- er ground. He gazed with a sense of futility at the impassable sea below. It looked as if he would have to swim. He had an almost insupressible urge to laugh aloud. Just laugh and laugh and laugh. He had been hunting here not many seasons ago. All he had caught had been a cold. In that instant a way of escape came to him. That day while hunting, the party had come upon a deep gorge cut by the river, cut so deep that an overflow would be im- possible. Across that cut had been swung a crude cable bridge. It had been placed there to aid the game war- dens in guarding the private estate of an embittered and exiled aristocrat, who had chosen to withdraw from a hostile society and die alone, like an injured animal. To cross the river was his one thought. Hungry and cold but un- daunted, Jimmy Davis swung to the northeast. Over hill and valley he [6]

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V E R L Y N In an instant each had a flood of questions. How? When? Where? If you look carefully you may detect a certain expression that memories bring when soldiers are asked to relate their experiences. Jimmy had that look as he shook his head and contemplated the funny, mis- shapen shrub, the crack on the second step and the uneven lawn that sur- rounded the little old house. Star Gazing By KATHRYN MUNN ‘‘Will someone tell me where you girls are going? What? Looking at the stars — oh yes! We’re to do that for nature tomorrow, aren’t we? Hey, wait a minute and I’ll go with you. “Flora, where are my mittens? Who borrowed them? Somebody must have! Oh, that’s so; I lost them last year, didn’t I? “Well, are you ready? There’s the telephone—wait a minute ’till we see who it’s for. Me! Now who do you suppose would be calling me this year? Don’t go without me. “Well, now we’re out here, where are the stars? Oh, I see it—look! Right over there! What? Well, my soul, I never saw a street light up that high before! Will you turn off that flash- light? Now — you say that’s the big dipper: perhaps if you get your mitten off that map we could find them just as quickly. If you ask me that’s the Milky Way right up there. That’s what I said — that long white streak. “Did you bring the protractor? We’ve got to measure the latitude of the North Star you remember. Well, don’t be silly. Of course I knew we had to find it first; but I thought you’d done that long ago. “Gee! Isn’t it cold here? Who’s that standing in front of Mason’s? He looks familiar, doesn’t he? Oh, you’ve found the North Star. “Well, why doesn’t somebody meas- ure it? Hold the cold cream jar steady. Don’t get the protractor in your eye, Esther! Wait! You’re looking at the flashlight, not the North Star. 45 de- grees! Let me look! You know we have to take the average. I hope I’m looking at the right star. That’s close enough — come on, let’s go. I was never so cold in my life. All right — measure it again if you want to — I’m going in. Who thought of this crazy idea, anyway?” r 8]