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

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January - 1938 brought an uncomfortable feeling of homesickness. He wanted to go home. Then, as flashes upon a screen, the streets of the endangered village flitted past. If he could only stop thinking; but he could not. In his imagination rose a vivid picture of turbulent waters on the cellar walls that crept to the window sills, trickled over and filled the room. The wall paper dampened and curled. Higher, driving man, wo- man and child to the house tops, crept the merciless tide. Up the blinds, mocking at the eaves, sneering at the roof itself, rising every second higher. Sure he had to go. He was the only volunteer wasn’t he? Everything might turn out O. K. There was a chance anyway. In those few seconds the past and present, a lifetime flashed by. Davis was a bit surprised to hear his voice, quite dry, but perfectly clear to all in the room. All eternity seemed to hang upon his words. “I’ll go.” The operator had not expected this answer. He looked up, a little lop- sided smile of disbelief on his face. As if to test the validity of Davis’s state- ment he said. “Not over that road you won’t. The Governor has ordered all heavy vehi- cles off the road by midnight. Bridges are going out right and left. You would have to have wings to get through. Not only that, the French and Conley Con- struction Company just sent a warn- ing. They’ve lost a box of dynamite in the confusion and haven’t been able to trace it. It’s on the road you go over.” “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.” “It’s a long chance. There’s enough explosive in that box to blow the whole State of Vermont to Kingdom Come!” “Never mind that. I said I’d go and I’m going. Tell them if I’m not there, not to expect me!” Then in a mo- ment of grim humor, “There’s more than one way of finding a box of dyna- mite !” Davis was standing by the door as he said this. Now he turned the knob. The door clicked open and when it shut Jimmy Davis was on the other side. Outside there was neither moon nor stars, nor beginning nor end. There was just now. His truck loomed near like a smudge of charcoal against the pale yellow buildings across the street. The rain streaked his glasses, dripped from his shin and ran in a chilly stream down inside his coat collar. For a mo- ment he wished he hadn’t said he’d go. He could turn back before it was too late. Jimmy stopped in his tracks. Dynamite indeed! The man was right: he’d have to be an angel to get through. Childishly and in a half amused man- ner, he wagged his shoulder blades. Angel or no angel he’d make one aw- ful try. Davis stepped off the curb, stum- bled on a sewer cover, recovered his balance and crossed to his truck. He surveyed the oil tins with a practiced eye. “Lucky”, he thought, “to have sal- vaged those.” With the oil he already had it would be quite a help. Tires O. K. Good brakes. The battery was in “Al” condition. Sure, he took care of his truck. It pays to be good to your truck. Jimmy slipped into his old ac- customed place. His foot found the starter. The engine turned over, shivered and started with a roar. A second to warm up; then he slipped the gears. Water obliterated his tracks [5]

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V E R L Y N Davis sat eating his supper in a down- town restaurant. The door slammed as the clock beat out the hour of six. Davis crumpled his napkin, rose and sauntered to the coat rack. He contem- plated the glistening street with a wary eye as he struggled into his jacket. Behind the hotel across the pave- ment the silent river continued its ceaseless, fettered way. Davis bit his toothpick in two, paid his check and went out. He did not enter his hotel as he ordinarily would have done but climbed into his car and it was not many minutes before he was rolling along the broad highway that stretch- ed away to the north, out of the valley to higher, safer ground. That night he would sleep more easily. His dreams presumably would not be troubled by rushing rivers and straining dams. The luminous dial of a ticking watch shone faintly through the Stygian gloom. The hour was eleven. There came a heavy step outside the door, a sharp rap followed quickly by another. Mr. Davis opened the door to be con- fronted by the landlord who stood up- on the threshold. In one breath and half another Mr. Davis was informed that he must leave. Flood waters were rising and the dam above the town was reported to be in danger. The strain was nearly to the breaking point. A few minutes later, truck, landlord and three choice pigs were heading for higher ground. Then, pork and owner safely deposited, man and truck sped back to town to hear reports. The railway station was packed to overflowing. Message after message crackled over the sagging wires. Stories of death and disaster came in dots and dashes. Across the room a woman sobbed quietly. In her hand she held a bit of ribbon and a tiny shoe. Davis with the rest watched the op- erator as would a gambler the wheel of Fortune. He, with the rest, noticed a sudden intensity of concentration in the manager’s air. His nervous fingers clenched and with the other hand he adjusted the ear-phones a little more carefully. Evidently the need for a written message was unnecessary, for suddenly the pencil dropped and quite without warning the operator faced the breathless group. “Any of you fellows a mechanic? Waterbury is calling for gasoline and fuel and a couple of experts. They are in a bad way and say that our road is the only possible entrance. You know, the one that’s being cemented.” There was silence except for the heavy breathing and the scuffing of nervous feet. The tense crowd moved uneasily. A couple of overall-clad workmen looked at each other, one shook his head; they broke the gaze and dropped their eyes. Davis felt stifled, his throat was dry and his hands wet. The woman suck- ed in her breath hesitatingly in little broken gasps. She no longer cried aloud but only sat and stared at the bit of pale yellow ribbon and little wrinkled shoe that was a little scuffed. Fifty miles to the westward his fam- ily would be waiting in helpless anxi- ety. Why not go home instead of risk- ing his life on such a hazardous mis- sion at this was certain to be. One by one the faces of his family rose before him. Each turned away, silent thoughts unspoken. The old house with that funny misshapen shrub, the uneven lawn, the crack on the second step [4]

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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]