Deep Well, Sweet Water

By sam l. sullivan

The yearthats what his mother called 1967 after everything that happened. Juniors pa died on the first day of January, his house was blown away in March, and his baby brother is due in August. His mother must sell whats left of the farm and move to a city to live with family members Junior hardly knows.

What can thirteen-year-old Junior Tuttle do to keep from losing everything, including his dog Buck? Because most of the young men are off fighting in Vietnam, Junior manages to talk cranky old Elvis Crabtree into giving him a job as farmhand. He learns about job insurance from the black housekeeper and risks doing whats right even when it feels wrong and could get him into worse trouble. But is it enough? Will Junior and his mother ever reach the sweet water?

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489713568

sam l. sullivan

In 1970, the author graduated from Arkansas State University, accepted his first teaching job, got married, and received an invitation from Uncle Sam—all in the space of four months! After two years in the Army, which included eleven months in Vietnam, he resumed his career as business teacher (BC—before computers!), and he and his wife Jan raised two sons. He later earned a master’s degree in school counseling and worked with kids K-12. He became a Licensed Professional Counselor, retired from the school business in 2006, and spent nine years at a juvenile facility, working with incarcerated and DHS kids. He retired again in 2016. Inspiration for Deep Well, Sweet Water came from the author’s memories of being raised in the south by poor, working-class parents. Racial problems were a daily part of life. Lillie Tuttle is loosely based on the author’s own mother, a stay-at-home mom who somehow managed to feed and clothe four boys.

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Copyright © 2017 sam l. sullivan.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1357-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1358-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1356-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950330

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 11/22/2017

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

A Note From The Author

All Newspaper Citations From

Dedicated to my wife Jan. Still my

best friend after 47 years of marriage.

IN MEMORY OF

A friend

Carlyn [kär′ lin] Regina Horton

August 6, 1949-June 18, 2002

Gina told me this story should be published. She often mentioned how much she loved that dog. She insisted that Junior apologize for kicking Buck and that Buck somehow show his forgiveness.

My father-in-law

Payton Ryan Watkins

November 7, 1917-November 2, 2003

P.R. taught me more than I ever needed to know about stringing barbed wire fences and doctoring cows. He had no idea he was helping me write a book. It’s all true, even the part about the horsefly.

When he spelled out W-O-R-K, he was usually talking about someone who didn’t want to do it. Rumor has it, he sometimes might have been talking about me.

My father

Marshall Lamar Sullivan

July 11, 1919-June 24, 2016

Dad was always quick with a word of encouragement or praise. He had a positive attitude to the end, and he really did talk about the law of averages.

THE JONESBORO EVENING SUN                   1967

Tractor Accident Fatal to Local Man

A Crabtree man died Sunday from injuries suffered in a fall from a tractor. An ice-covered hill reportedly caused James Benjamin Tuttle, Sr., 37, of Route 2, Crabtree, to lose control of his tractor while he was carrying hay to feed a neighbor’s cattle. Tuttle, a farmer, sustained head injuries when the tractor slid down an embankment and overturned in a ditch. A passing motorist called an ambulance, and Tuttle was rushed to the hospital, where he later died.

Tuttle leaves behind his wife Lillie and one son, James Benjamin Tuttle, Jr.

CHAPTER 1

I T WAS The Year . That’s what Ma called it after everything that happened. It didn’t waste any time, either. Pa died on the first day of January. As if that wasn’t enough, a twister came through in March and took just about everything we had.

Now it was June. During summer vacation, there weren’t many rules around our house. Ma let me do pretty much as I pleased. Pa always had plenty to do, but he rarely asked me to help. Now that he was gone and Ma was working, I was on my own. The way I looked at it, I had the summer all to myself. It didn’t turn out that way.

Sunday, June 4, 1967

JUNIOR, TIME to get up, Ma hollered from the kitchen. It was Sunday, but I kept hoping it would go away if I didn’t think about it. James Benjamin, do you hear?

I raised up and looked out the window beside my bed in the room that used to be the back porch of the house we were renting from Elvis Crabtree. Besides owning the store where Ma worked, Mr. Crabtree and his wife Sophie handled rent property all over the county. The town was named after Elvis’s grandpa, Josiah Crabtree, who was one of the first settlers in the 1800’s.

I dragged myself into the bathroom, washed a little and slicked down my hair. I put on my church clothes, which included a pair of pants that were too snug around my middle. They also had a patch on one knee. Ma said she wouldn’t have me wearing holey britches to church. I thought the patch looked worse than the hole.

This morning, I noticed that my striped shirt had somehow gotten a little hard to button. I slipped into a pair of sneakers instead of the black shoes that Ma called my good shoes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the sole had started to peel off one of them.

In the kitchen, Ma was swishing a worn-out broom across the linoleum floor. The smell of beans and ham came from a pot on the stove, and a pan of cornbread was cooling on the counter. The back door stood open, and my dog Buck lay on the other side of the screen. When I came into the kitchen, he hopped up and pressed his nose against the screen, his flag tail waving like crazy. Spotted Kitty and her four new kittens were resting in the sun beside the steps. We didn’t actually claim the cats as ours. They seemed to have come with the house. They wouldn’t let anyone touch them.

About time you was on the move, Ma said as I took a seat and poured cornflakes from the box that sat on the table. Your pa didn’t like to be late for church. She always did that—talked about Pa like he was still there.

I ain’t forgot, Ma. You up to going today?

I’ll make it, I reckon. Ma looked down at her bulging tummy and stroked it like she was petting a puppy. She was wearing her plain black dress, the one that still fit. I wondered what she would do when she outgrew that one. I feel like I’m carrying a hundred extra pounds these days.

Did you get this big before you had me? I asked between mouthfuls of cornflakes.

Pretty close. I’m blessed to have big healthy babies. Of course, I was thirteen years younger the first time. She motioned toward the Sunday edition of The Jonesboro Morning Sun, which lay neatly re-folded on the side cabinet. Paper says today’s gonna be hotter than yesterday.

I glanced at the weather report. A nearby headline read, Death and Destruction In Newark, N.J. Rioting. I didn’t want to read that story.

Ma jabbed the pointed side of the old broom into the corner beneath the cabinet. I hate this ugly floor. No matter how hard I sweep, it still looks dirty. I thought I saw her dab her eyes with a tissue she kept handy in her apron pocket, and then she flung the broom into the space between the refrigerator and the cabinet. She glanced at the clock on the shelf in the living room. We’d better get moving. Go put on your good shoes. I don’t know how she knew what shoes I was wearing. Best I could tell, she hadn’t looked at my feet a single time.

If you left our front doorstep and turned right, you headed toward the town of Crabtree, Arkansas. The sign at the edge of town read, Pop. 413, which probably included Pearlie Mae Primm’s five cats. Knowing how she felt about those cats, I figured she made sure they were counted.

If you turned left on the road instead of right, you went toward the church, about a fifteen-minute walk. On past the church, down a gravel road, was the farm Pa’d managed to buy five years ago, when I was eight.

If a body had to walk anywhere, at least it was a good day for it, if you could keep your mind off how bad your good shoes hurt your feet. Buck walked with us, and when he spotted a squirrel, he considered it his duty to see that it scampered up a tree.

The sun was shining, and a breeze rustled the tops of the trees. Mosquitoes weren’t too bad, and the birds sang in the woods along the road. It was going to be the kind of day that last summer might have found me and Buck and Will Kirby down at the creek at the back of our farm. The water wasn’t much more than knee deep, but it sure felt good to wade in, clothes and all, on those hot afternoons when even my pa would burn out and head back to the house. Ma’d already said she didn’t want me going over to the creek now, since it was so far and away. That was okay, since Will lived way out on the other side of town and his folks were too busy to bring him over.

The little white church house was surrounded by a grove of pine trees. There was a gravel area on one side where people parked their cars if they had them. Only three were in the lot when me and Ma got close enough to see.

Old Brother Ledbetter stood at his usual place near the front door, under the sign that read, The Crabtree church of Christ meets here. I didn’t understand why the first C in church wasn’t capitalized. The preacher always said it had something to do with the church being the people, not the building. It looked to me like something any self-respecting English teacher would take objection to.

It didn’t seem right either for the church to wear the name Crabtree right along with the name of Christ. The Crabtrees didn’t even come out here for church. They were prominent members of a big Methodist church in Jonesboro.

Morning, Lillie, Brother Ledbetter said, his wire-rimmed glasses glinting in the morning sun. Fine Lord’s Day morning, ain’t it?

Why, yes, it is, Clyde.

Brother Ledbetter offered me his thin, wrinkled hand. Morning, Junior. My, if you don’t look more like your pa every time I see you. You’ll soon be as big as him, too. Your ma must be feeding you good.

Yessir. I turned Brother Ledbetter’s hand loose as fast as I could, trying to make it look like I was in a hurry to get inside, which I wasn’t.

All the windows were raised in the church building, and a pine-scented breeze scurried through, along with an occasional fly or mosquito, since there were no screens on the windows. Some of the women were already swinging cardboard fans under their chins. It was never any trouble finding a seat, so me and Ma claimed our usual place about halfway up on the left. I looked around to see Sister Pearlie Mae Primm watching me. Sister Primm’s family were long-time residents of Crabtree, though they were among the few that the Crabtrees didn’t control somehow. Royal Primm, Pearlie Mae’s pa, was vice president of the Mercantile Bank in Jonesboro for a long time. Folks said Mr. Primm would have been president of the bank sooner or later if he hadn’t up and died.

With Pa gone, there were no men in the congregation except the preacher and a couple of others even older than him. That meant Brother Ledbetter had to serve as preacher, Bible class teacher, and song leader. I sure hoped he didn’t die any time soon. That would probably leave me in charge.

We didn’t do much singing, since Brother Ledbetter’s voice was failing him, so he made up for it in his sermons. I figured he wanted his sermons