Tick Cooper

By John Vance

“I swear by everything I ever owned that my adventure will be the honest truth—even if I had to tell a few lies along the way to get to the meaning of that truth.” So promises Tick Cooper, a twelve year old Ohio boy who’s about to accompany his Uncle Ned down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. It’s the autumn of 1860, right before the election that will send Abraham Lincoln to the White House. With his mother deceased and his father having deserted him for the chance of gold in California, Tick has been most fortunate to receive the care and love of his father’s older brother and his wife—Aunt Clara. Although she has recently passed away, she and Uncle Ned have educated the boy about living a good and proper life. But Tick hasn’t had much of a chance to put what he’s learned into practice—nor to face the moral challenges every young person will face as he or she grows up. But the river journey will provide plenty of those experiences and tests of character. Yet, reaching New Orleans does not conclude the lessons and challenges, for there Tick witnesses a slave auction, and on the block is a thirteen-year-old freed black girl named Clarissa, whom Tick had briefly met in Ohio. Now Tick faces his most significant challenge. Can he help get Clarissa back to Ohio all the way from New Orleans?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Opal Books
• Release date: Oct 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781626947726

John Vance

During his career as a former Professor of English at the University of Georgia, John Vance published six academic books and some forty articles and reviews, including Samuel Johnson and the Sense of History and William Wycherley and the Comedy of Fear. A return to theatre activity (as actor and director) inspired forty dramatic and comic plays, most of which were staged. Now he is concentrating exclusively on fiction, with eight other novels published by independent presses. He holds three degrees from Florida State University and is a military veteran. John lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife Susan. They have two adult children and three grandchildren. 

Book preview

I swear by everything I ever owned that my adventure will be the honest truth--even if I had to tell a few lies along the way to get to the meaning of that truth. So promises Tick Cooper, a twelve year old Ohio boy who’s about to accompany his Uncle Ned down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. It’s the autumn of 1860, right before the election that will send Abraham Lincoln to the White House. With his mother deceased and his father having deserted him for the chance of gold in California, Tick has been most fortunate to receive the care and love of his father’s older brother and his wife--Aunt Clara. Although she has recently passed away, she and Uncle Ned have educated the boy about living a good and proper life. But Tick hasn’t had much of a chance to put what he’s learned into practice--nor to face the moral challenges every young person will face as he or she grows up. But the river journey will provide plenty of those experiences and tests of character. Yet, reaching New Orleans does not conclude the lessons and challenges, for there Tick witnesses a slave auction, and on the block is a thirteen-year-old freed black girl named Clarissa, whom Tick had briefly met in Ohio. Now Tick faces his most significant challenge. Can he help get Clarissa back to Ohio all the way from New Orleans?

KUDOS FOR TICK COOPER

In Tick Cooper by John Vance, Tick Cooper is a twelve-year-old boy traveling by riverboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans with his Uncle Ned in 1860. Tick’s mother died and his father ran off to California to hunt for gold, so Tick has been raised by his Uncle Ned and Aunt Clara, and now Aunt Clara has died too. As he and Uncle Ned travel down the river, Tick faces a number of challenges, not the least of which is peer pressure when a gang of boys wants Tick to do things he knows are not right. As he struggles with his moral dilemmas, Tick also gets exposed to the larger world outside his sheltered life in Ohio. The story is told in the voice of twelve-year-old Tick, laid back and informal, and full of common sense, combined with a good deal of humor. A thoroughly enjoyable read. ~ Taylor Jones, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

Tick Cooper by John Vance is the story of a young boy in 1860, whose uncle takes him on a riverboat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Tick starts out as a normal, somewhat sheltered twelve-year-old, but he grows up on the river trip as he deals with a number of challenges along the way--from peer pressure of a local gang, to his first serious encounters with the opposite sex. Resourceful and clever, Tick manages to turn things to his advantage, most of the time, but when he can’t, he struggles to take it like a man. But things quickly get out of control, and Tick is thrown into a world of chaos, danger, and the feud between the North and the South over the issue of slavery. Siding with the North and opposing slavery, he soon discovers, is a dangerous position while traveling in the South. I quite enjoyed the book. Told in the fashion of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Tick Cooper takes us back to a simpler time, but one with big problems--a turbulent time in our history, when the color of your skin determined your fate, and people who loved freedom put their lives and fortunes on the line for what they believed in. Very well done. ~ Regan Murphy, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the staff members at Black Opal Books for their editorial work and impressive cover art; to my children, Hope and Jimmy, for their love and support; and to my wife, Susan, for her enthusiasm and keen editorial eye.

TICK COOPER

John Vance

A Black Opal Books Publication

Copyright © 2017 by John Vance

Cover Design by Jackson Cover Designs

All cover art copyright © 2017

All Rights Reserved

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626947-72-6

EXCEPT

I thought I had trouble defending myself against Tom’s gang, but I never expected this...

I went straight to the front of the second deck so I could see the river ahead of us. Louisiana was now on both sides of the river. Baton Rouge would be the next river town we’d stop at, and Uncle Ned told me that was French for Red Stick. I kept thinking that all the wood--on the dock and the buildings would be painted red. That would be a sight, for sure.

So here you are. It was Uncle Ned. He looked a little better, and I was glad to see him outside in the sunshine. He put his arm around my shoulder and took a deep breath. I always love coming down south in the fall. The weather isn’t too bad and the bugs aren’t as many.

I was about to say something about the two red wasps that flew around my head earlier this morning, but then I heard a very loud hissing noise. The next thing I knew, Uncle Ned pulled me down to the deck floor and covered my head with his body. I never even got out a What are you doing? before my ears went numb from the sound of a blast, which was followed by pieces of wood landing everywhere--even on Uncle Ned’s back and on my legs.

Uncle Ned groaned. The boilers.

Then we felt the boat tipping backward.

Grab hold! Uncle Ned shouted, and we both grabbed on to the lower rail.

When my ears were working again, I could hear other passengers crying out and moaning. I heard Mr. Simpson and Mr. Slade shouting, Where’s the captain? Where’s the captain?

I could feel it. The St. Paul was sinking!

TICK COOPER

CHAPTER 1

There I was, jumping from the top of one tree to another. It wasn’t exactly as if I was flying, because I had to land on the top branch of each tree, but it sure felt like flying. Geese were following me and honking away, like they were trying to warn me about something. But when I decided to forget about the tree tops and just fly, I fell hard to the ground thirty feet below and started rolling down the side of a hill while I was hiding my face in a pillow. I kept feeling the feathers from the goose down pillow sticking out and poking my cheeks and the side of my neck. Try as I might, I couldn’t pull that pillow off my face, and it got to be stained with the blood coming out of me. But I kept rolling and rolling until I was stopped by something firm but soft. But by the time I finally pulled the pillow away from my face to see what or who had stopped me, I woke up and I never found out. That happens to me in dreams a lot. Wish it didn’t, though.

What woke me up was my Uncle Ned telling me it was time to leave our house and get on the train to Cincinnati where we would get aboard the steamboat the St. Paul and head down to New Orleans. I was about to leave on the greatest adventure of my life. I swear by everything I ever owned that I’ll be telling be the honest truth--even if I had to tell a few lies along the way to get to the meaning of that truth.

Time to catch the train, Tick, Uncle Ned shouted from the front porch of our house in Oxford, Ohio.

That’s my name--Tick, Tick Cooper. Or what they’ve always called me anyways. Uncle Ned said I’d always remember this day as long as I lived, but I still wrote it down when we got on the train, in Hamilton, so I’d be sure never to forget November the first, 1860. We would ride some thirty-five miles to Cincinnati, the largest city in the whole state. I’d been on the train only once before, when the railway first opened, when I was six. But what gets a boy excited when he’s six and what gets him excited at twelve are quite different things--so this time I acted all grown up like I’d ridden the railroad every week. I didn’t jump around and bother Uncle Ned the way I did the first time. Even so, it was still pretty special chugging along in such high style.

Nothing much happened on the train for the first twenty miles or so, but two more passengers got on and, right afterward, I heard some commotion going on in front of where we were sitting.

"I say that’s my seat you’re sitting in. Get out of it now. The man who said that was an elderly gent who looked like he had gotten into many tough scrapes in his life. He had long white hair and side-whiskers, but what grabbed my attention most was his scarred-up face. It looked like someone had dug trenches on his cheeks and above his right eye. And he seemed much bigger and stronger than men as old as he was. He was talking to a boy who looked younger than me--maybe nine or ten. The boy was in the seat by himself and was just too scared to say anything back. You had better come up with a good reason why you took my seat or I’ll rip your nose right off your face, boy."

Because Uncle Ned had fallen asleep, it was up to me to do something. I just had to be sure that boy kept his nose on where it was, so I ran up to the man. Excuse me, mister. My brother here is in the wrong seat. Come on, Ben. Your seat is back with us. That boy almost flew out of the seat and headed to the back of the train car. Excuse my brother, mister. He doesn’t hear well and sometimes I have to tell him things twice. I turned and walked back to my seat, expecting that that white-haired old devil would grab me and try to take my nose off. But he didn’t say or do anything. He just grunted and sat in the seat I guess he always sat in when he rode on that train.

I found out that Ben’s real name was Peter Butler and that he was put on the train by his grandpap so he could take a steamboat from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, where his mother, father, and baby sister had just settled in a house. I told him I’d look out for him until we reached Cincinnati, where his grandpap’s brother lived and would take him in for the night. We talked about the man with the scars on his face--I mean we talked softly so we wouldn’t wake Uncle Ned or let that old buzzard hear us. I told Peter that some folks believe they really own whatever they use often--cups, chairs, and such--and that it’s easy for someone big to get what they want from someone smaller, who can’t do anything about it. And if that big someone is also real ugly, it’s all the easier.

When I told Peter my name, he wanted to know if I was born with it. I told him that when I was born my father named me John Polk Cooper, but those first two names never really suited me much. Aunt Clara was the first one to call me Tick because when I was a baby I used to burrow into the blanket like a tick into a dog’s back. But the name really stuck when I started running around and hiding in bushes, old dead trees, and holes in the ground. I also like the sound of Tick Cooper better than John Cooper or John Polk Cooper any day of the week. One of my teachers said that Tick Cooper wasn’t as easy to pronounce as John or John Polk Cooper, because the first name ended with a k sound and the second name began with the same sound. But she was educated, and I guess those things matter to those kinds of folks.

Ben said that Polk was a funny name to be stuck with--and it was, but from what Uncle Ned told me, I got my middle name because of the then president of the United States, James Polk, who they say kicked the Mexicans out of Texas and took it for the United States. Uncle Ned said that my father thought Polk did the right thing, but from what Uncle Ned also told me, my father once shot a man in the leg who claimed that the twelve feet at the very back of my father’s land rightfully belonged to him. They say the man showed my father the papers, but my father shot him anyways, saying that it was the law that those who live on the land and cultivate it have all right to it. I guess old President Polk never heard of that law when he took Texas. So since I was born on March 3, 1848, I got stuck with a Polk between my first and last names. If I was born three years ago my name would have been John Buchanan Cooper, which was worse than the name I had.

As Aunt Clara used to say, Thank heaven for small favors.

When the train stopped in Cincinnati, we waited until the foul-looking man left the train car before we did. Uncle Ned woke up and finally met Peter, who thanked me for helping him and waited until he saw his grandpap’s brother before getting off the train. I wished he was going to New Orleans instead of Pittsburgh, because I knew I’d never see him again, but my Aunt Clara used to say that the older you get the more often folks would come in and then out of your life--sometimes on the very same day.

Aunt Clara. I guess I forgot to say that she was Uncle Ned’s wife and was always like a mother to me, since my own mother died when I wasn’t yet two years old. I’m still very sad that Aunt Clara got real sick and died a few months back. The day before we left Oxford, we went to see her grave at the Old Yard Cemetery. Uncle Ned had been going there every week since she died, but he never made me go with him. I just did it on my own every few weeks or so, but it was more to be with Uncle Ned than because I really wanted to go. Not that I’m afraid to visit the graves of all those dead people. I’ve been there after the sun went down with three of my friends and was the very last to run out of there, which won me the wool cap we found snagged on a tree limb the day before. Anyway--at her grave, Uncle Ned told Aunt Clara that he’d be going away for a spell and he’d be thinking of her all the time. He also told her that he’d be taking me with him. She was so good to me--she really was.

As soon as we got off the train, we heard a noise on the wooden platform--a kind of ker-thump every several second or so, so we looked around and saw a man who looked like he hadn’t shaved his whiskers in a hundred years, limping along with a wooden crutch under his arm, which he dragged as he took a step with his good leg. Good leg? I should have said only leg! Uncle Ned reached in his pocket for a coin or two, which he liked to do whenever he saw someone who couldn’t walk or see too well. So I reached in mine and pulled out one of my two new Indian head pennies. My other one was back in my room at home, but I always carried one of them with me for good luck. But when I looked at the coin, I wanted to think that Uncle Ned’s contribution would be enough that the one-legged old soul wouldn’t hold it against me if I jammed my lucky coin back in my pocket. I sure didn’t want to be without luck on my grand adventure to New Orleans. But I didn’t think or act fast enough because the next thing I knew I had put my Indian head penny in the man’s hand. He closed his old fist around it, and I felt like I dropped my hunting rifle down a well. My stomach became as heavy as a cannon ball, and my throat felt as dry as if I had swallowed a campfire. Being charitable isn’t always its own reward, as Aunt Clara used to say.

The poor man had only limped about ten feet away when two men in fancy clothes, with new top hats and walking sticks came up behind him and started laughing and pointing at his crutch. I guess these were men because they were dressed in all high fancy, but they acted like boys not much older than me. The one in the striped pants took his walking stick and swung it like he was chopping at a low limb and knocked the crutch out from under the old man, who fell to the platform before I could get close enough to break his fall. Those two dandified gents both burst out laughing as the old man let out one of them painful old man’s screeches, with a whistling sound--probably because he lacked some front teeth. The coins he had gotten from me, Uncle Ned, and some other kindly folks were scattered all over the platform. And then you know what those two popinjays did? They threw down several coins themselves! I couldn’t believe it. I guess they paid for the right to hurt the old man. Or maybe they did it to make sure their consciences wouldn’t bother them none. Uncle Ned told me once that some folks believe they can make up for their being cruel and thoughtless by giving money. And these two gents were nothing compared to what I’d see later on my adventure.

But I’m running ahead of myself. When I went over to help up the old man, I saw my Indian head penny about six feet away, picking up the bright sunshine, which made it sparkle. When I got the crutch situated under the old man’s arm, I walked over and picked up the coin. I was afraid someone else would take it and use it to buy something useless. No. Now wait. That’s not all of it. I better come clean or this tale isn’t going to be worth your taking the time to read it if I don’t. To tell the honest truth, I picked up the coin mostly because I wanted to think more about his need for it, since four other folks gave the old man more money. I picked up my coin as the lame old man was walking away with the rest of the money that someone had picked up from the platform, along with the new coins just placed in his hand. I knew he wouldn’t miss my Indian head penny--not one bit--and seeing that it and the other penny back home were gifts from my Uncle Ned, I decided to put the penny back in my pocket.

For about a second. I caught up with the old man and gave him my good-luck penny for a second time. Maybe I was wrong, but I just felt he needed the good luck much more than I did. Then I heard Uncle Ned calling me, and that was the last I saw of my penny and the old man. But not the last I’d see of those two high-hatted, dandy-pants scoundrels who knocked the old man down.

CHAPTER 2

Uncle Ned took me to this fancy hotel for our dinner, the Coronet House, and it was grand. From the hotel, you could look across the Ohio River and see the hills in Kentucky. The man at the door must have known Uncle Ned, because he said it was a pleasure seeing him again, although he looked at me funny, wondering who I was, I guess. Uncle Ned pointed out some things to me--like a special room where only ladies had their meals. He said they were unescorted, which I guess meant, to be without husbands, mothers, father, aunts, and uncles. I’ve been to two different eating houses where I live, but nothing compared to this place. I bet old James Polk never had his meals in a better place.

A fancy-dressed man gave me a listing of what kind of food they had--and I’ve never seen such choices. Soups, fish, boiled and roasted meats, side dishes, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and desserts. Well, I picked some macaroni soup, some roast chicken, pickles, boiled potatoes, and raisins.

I stayed away from the leg of mutton, sheep’s tongue, beets, and currant jelly tarts--all the things I get sick just looking at.

Now when we were almost finished with all that food, Uncle Ned grabbed my arm. Hey, Tick. It looks like you’ve caught the eye of a very pretty young lady. Look to your left.

I’ll admit my skin felt kind of fuzzy then, especially all over my face--I guess because I’m now old enough not to say I hate all girls the way I used to. I mean not that I really hated them when I was five, eight, and ten, but I said that I did. If I didn’t, the other boys would have made me out to be a girl lover and that would have knocked me down a few pegs in their eyes.

But this past year I noticed that those same boys hardly ever say that anymore. Girl lover must be okay when you get to be thirteen and fourteen.

Well, I slowly turned my head and saw that at the table was a man between my age and uncle Ned’s--somewhere in there--and with him was a boy probably about nine or ten and a little girl who couldn’t have been more than five or six. And that girl was staring right at me and smiling!

I think she likes you, Tick. Uncle Ned was in one of his teasing moods--and he was likely to keep it up for five good minutes or so. Pretty soon you’ll be needing a wife--in about eight or nine years--and she might be worth your time then.

I turned back to my boiled potatoes, but every time I looked over at that table, that girl was staring at me and smiling.

But then she did something worse. She waved right at me.

Uncle Ned was watching along with me. Wave back at her, boy.

I told him I shouldn’t since she was so young, but he said I’d risk hurting her feelings. Well, I knew I’d feel worse if I did that, so I waved back. I might even have smiled for good measure. I was about to give her a look that said, Okay, we’ve done been social. Now it’s time for me to finish my meal, but the sound of dishes crashing to the floor interrupted me.

You clumsy fool. Look what you’ve done with my food!

I saw the poor waiter on the floor, looking like he was going to be sick, while he tried to pick up the broken plates and scoop the food into some kind of pile. But a lot of the food was runny and mushy and didn’t gather into a pile all that well. Standing over the man was this other man--the one who was red-faced and mad. He was tall and had side whiskers that were sticking out every which way like some porcupine ready for a scrap. But the thing I noticed most about him was a head that looked as though a cannon ball blew up inside it without opening up the skin. Now I’ve seen big-headed men before, but for the most part they’re big all over, but this whiskered man didn’t seem to have any big size on him at all--except for that blown out head--the kind you could hide from the sun if the head got in the way of it. Maybe he was so mad because he could only go so long without refilling all that wide space with food. My jaw dropped when I saw that man kick the poor waiter right under his chin!

You’re no better than a--

I don’t want to write the word he used because I was brought up never to say it, but that’s the first time I heard it directed against a white man. It kind of made me feel like I got hit with a rock in the back of my head because I never expected to hear that word in this hotel with everyone in it being white.

Get me my food--now! Big head let the waiter get up, just when another one came to help him clean up the mess.

I was getting madder all the time, but I couldn’t challenge that man to a fair fight because I’d like to live to see thirteen. But for some reason I thought I had to do something to make him look foolish, because what he did to the waiter was wrong, so I took my plate, which had a little roast chicken and pickles left on it, and walked to where he was standing.

I could hear Uncle Ned sputtering, as he had just bit into his piece of pie and was sending out little pieces of it as he said, Tick, Tick, stop!

I went up to the man with that full half-acre atop his neck and said, I know you must be hungry, sir. Here, take my last piece of chicken and what’s left of my pickles.

I don’t lie when I say I heard other people suck in their breath and probably a few feathers at what I said. And you probably think I might have taken the back of the man’s hand across my mouth or been butted through the wall by that pile-driver head--but I didn’t think of that then. No matter--what he did was almost worse. He took the plate in both hands, lifted it up, ran his ugly gray tongue--the size of an eel--across the plate, and sucked down the chicken and pickles. Thank you, boy. And then he patted me on my head!

I guess that shows what my Aunt Clara told me the Scottish poet once said, The best paid plans of mice and men too often fail to go the direction you think they should.

After we left the hotel, I told Uncle Ned that I’ve never even dreamed of eating a meal in such a place as the Coronet House.

Just wait until we get down to New Orleans, Tick. I’ll take you to more places like this--but with a different flavor of food.

Well, I couldn’t wait to get down there--until I began to speculate on what those different flavors might be. I heard that food is different in New Orleans and that they eat things from the water you’d be afraid to even dream about. And I’m not talking about frogs, which I have eaten and liked on occasion. Instead, I heard there are things that crawl and can grab a grown man by the moustache and drag him under water where the alligators then take over and finish them off. There’s also something that lives in a shell and that once you open it up it loses all its bones and what’s left is a glob of something that looks like you spit up into the shell. Some say that pearls are also in there, but I’ve never heard of anyone eating pearls. Women like to wear them and if you could eat them, their husbands would gnaw them off their wives’ necks, making quite a ruckus in the house, to say the least.

I asked Uncle Ned more about Cincinnati, the town we were about to leave. He said that of all the cities in these United States, it was the sixth biggest, with over 100,000 folks living there. And I don’t doubt it, because I hadn’t been there very long before I saw at least a hundred just walking in the street in front of the hotel. He also told me that it was about the same size as New Orleans, where we were going. I then asked Uncle Ned what was special about Cincinnati besides its size and its pork.

Remember what I told you about the Underground Railroad, Tick?

I forgot some of what he told me, but I remembered that it really wasn’t a train that traveled into caves and under the Ohio River and such, but that it was a secret way of getting slaves out of the South so they could be free and live in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Canada. There were roads and houses used to get the slaves up here and safe. I even know a girl who used to be a slave, who lives with a white woman near where we do. I’ve seen her a few times. Her name is Clarissa and she’s nice and speaks better than I do. I’m not sure she’s smarter than I am, but if it comes down to books and writing