Perseverance in Mobile Bay

By Kent Horner

“I’m going to cut your thumbs and big toes off right before I toss you to a bull alligator in this Mobile Bay Swamp.” So said the psychopath to Sam Logan from Columbus, Ohio, just before Sam arm-wrestled him unmercifully. Sam had paid his ten-thousand-dollar fee for this deer hunt. Twenty industrialists had hoped many African hunters would make this hunt. None did, only Sam.

Sam’s efforts were aided by a long-forgotten Black lady, Josephine Walker. She had no electricity, cooked over an open fire grate, read the Bible and The Wall Street Journal, received in a unique way. So she knew that Sam might smell her cooking and show up on her door stoop. He did. And with her muzzleloader, Josephine gave Sam safety to harvest his million-dollar eight-point buck. Now he could financially help his son, Robert, a former smoke jumper, wounded in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662475368

Book preview

Chapter 1

Fourteen years later

Sam Logan sat drinking coffee and reading the Columbus Dispatch at the kitchen table. He wore faded-blue jeans, a brown cotton shirt, and pair of Red Wing boots; his salt-and-pepper hair he had trimmed yesterday. The Longines watch on his left wrist said the time was four o’clock in the morning.

Lynne, your coffee is getting cold, he said, believing that a cup of black coffee should not be mistreated by neglect.

Sam looked up from the newspaper and watched his wife, clad in a white top, blue sweatpants with an orange reflector stripe down each leg, sit in one of the white kitchen chairs and tie on her pink Reebok tennis shoes.

Sweetheart, how far are you and your jogging crew going this morning?

Today we plan on jogging out to our lake and back. That will be about three miles, said the tall lady, showing medium-length hair the same color as her husband’s.

I think it’s great that you ladies do that. We need to keep going long as we can. When some people retire, they just sit down and stay there. That’s not for me, though. I need to keep moving. That’s why I still use my old push lawn mower, Sam said while rattling the news in turning a page to the sports section.

I may or may not jog today, depending upon when Robert and his family arrive. I want them to have a good breakfast after such a long drive. You’d think that they would call on a cellular phone and let us know when they plan to get here, but I guess they don’t want to wake us up since it’s so early in the morning.

It’s 1,900 miles from here to Missoula, Montana, said Sam. Anything can happen to you when you’re driving that far. Maybe they had trouble with their old car or got caught in a traffic mishap. The last word that I had from Joey was that they intended to drive all night. I know they’ll be worn out when they arrive. And he reached for his coffee cup and did his part in seeing to it that the good liquid was consumed at the correct Fahrenheit.

What Sam could not know, nor anyone else for that matter, was that Robert had decided to mentally play back the last fourteen years. He sat in the backseat of the car and watched Joey do a fine and safe job driving. He imagined that he was in a theoretical grandstand, observing major smoke-jumping processes around Missoula up to the present moment as Joey steered toward Sam Logan’s house.

It’s awkward for them to travel. Whenever they stop, Joey and Jessica have to help Robert with his wheelchair, and that adds to their travel time. Sam heard Lynne, his wife of forty-eight years, say as she now started preparing more breakfast fare than usual, cracking five eggs instead of two into a white bowl.

Sam, I’m going to work around your shoulders and set the table just in case they get here soon. I’ll wait until they arrive to fry the bacon and eggs so they’ll have a hot breakfast, said Lynne with as much levity as she could muster to help hide the hurt in her heart over Robert’s tragic condition.

Sam, wanting to make the expected meeting as cheerful as he could, tried to help. Sweetheart, these shoulders of mine come in handy sometimes, right?

You know that I’m just kidding around, but where did you get those shoulders anyway? asked Lynne, just continuing their lighthearted conversation.

Okay, I’m going to tell you—a product of nature and nurture. Nature from my father and nurture from my learning to walk on my hands when I was a kid. That gave me better balance, which sure did help later when I became a steeplejack. No. I didn’t walk on my hands while hanging big steel, but that ability helped to keep my upper body in good shape. You know that I played center position on our high school football team. During practice sessions, the other players delighted in seeing me walk on my hands. However, Coach Drew didn’t, and he’d sometimes call me down for it and make me run laps. And Sam chucked at those bygone days of his youth.

Oh, be quiet, Sam. I know that you can walk on your hands. I’ve seen you do that many times. Just don’t do it now! If Robert and his family drove up and saw you doing that, they’d wonder what you were up to.

Sam looked at Lynne’s smile, but he knew that it was difficult to drum up levity at certain times in life. Lynne, sweetheart, Robert’s accident is the worst thing that has ever happened in our family life. Bad luck may come in many ways, and we just never know what it will be. In Robert’s case, it was just one of the mishaps that can happen to a smokejumper. The laws of nature don’t cut slack for anyone. That fall sure did break him up.

Robert seems to have adjusted to his accident quite well except for his inability to speak, Lynne said as she intermittently looked out the kitchen window, pushing aside the yellow-and-blue patterned curtains in hopes of seeing car lights coming up the driveway in the predawn darkness. He’s fortunate to be alive because the puncture wound that he suffered not only damaged his vocal cords, it also injured his trachea. I don’t know if he will ever be able to work again. He and Jessica are in financial straits, and I don’t know if Joey is going to start college.

I remember that Larry Dexter told us about Robert’s multiple injuries when we went to be with Robert for a while at the Saint Luke’s Medical Center in Boise. Larry said that the medic in the rescue helicopter had to give Robert oxygen, or he would have suffocated before they got him to the hospital, Sam said as he now labored with the thought that perhaps he should try to find a job and come out of retirement in order to help his son and grandson’s financial situations.

It frustrates Robert in family conversations when he has to write all his thoughts. Jessica is the only one who can understand his garbled utterances, and she can do that only by piecing it together by observing his body movements and facial expressions.

Lynne, now not able to hold back her tears, Sam watched her cry into a blue table napkin that she had started to place down and quietly turn away into the adjoining den. He heard her crying and thought it best to respect her private anguish. Sam put down the newspaper and solemnly thought how best to help both his son and grandson because he knew that Joey had ambitions to become a medical doctor. Sam thought Joey had chosen that academic major because he had seen his father suffer so much. Joey could not remember his father in the epitome of human health because a two-year-old little boy—at the time of his father’s accident—hasn’t yet that memory ability.

Within his side vision, Sam saw Lynne return from the den.

I’m sorry, but to see Robert in the physical condition that he’s in now is more than I can bear sometimes, said Lynne as she regained her composure and continued arranging the breakfast table.

Sweetheart, since we’ve retired, we’re making it okay financially—I guess you’d say—but we just don’t have enough money to help Joey through medical school. That degree takes so long. If Joey applies for student loans, when he graduates, he will be thousands of dollars in debt. That would put a lot of pressure on a young doctor, said Sam.

You’re right, but I don’t know how we can increase our income.

Maybe I should go back to work, but if I do, it won’t be in raising big steel. There’s no way that I’d climb and walk steel beams anymore.

I know that, Sam. For all the years that you worked as a steelworker, you could have fallen, and from the heights that you usually worked, driving all those rivets into steel beams, such a fall would have meant sure death. Thankfully, though, that never happened.

We were lucky in that you got to work with me in all the construction companies that I worked for. That sure helped our income. I told every company CEO whom I ever worked for that if they got me, they’d have to hire my wife too. You were a good secretary and accountant for those companies.

It only worked because the companies were in a hurry to raise steel quickly, and not many men are willing to risk falling, said Lynne as she opened a jar of grape jelly and placed it on the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth near Sam’s orange-colored coffee cup.

Permit me to modify that a little. You earned every penny those companies ever paid you. Men just have a way of not taking time to tidy up the paperwork of their own activities in that kind of business. You kept the inventories up, time cards all in order, purchase orders correct, and all equipment receipts on file. If you hadn’t done that, Mr. Lambert might have gone to prison about the accusations made by the company that had lost the bid on that high-rise-building job we constructed in Boston.

Sam smiled and listened to Lynne explain one of the court proceedings when Lambert’s lawyer called on her to testify: Sam, that opposing lawyer tried to prove to the jury that Mr. Lambert was stealing equipment from another building contractor who had a construction job going on across the street—air compressors, jackhammers, pneumatic and hydraulic riveters, you name it.

Your records proved otherwise, right?

Sure did. I showed a paid receipt for every item that the opposing lawyer said Mr. Lambert had stolen. When the jurors saw my receipts, they no longer believed the other lawyer. The next week Mr. Lambert gave me a raise.

Lynne, they’re here! I wonder if that big, strapping grandson is driving. He turned sixteen a few months ago and can legally drive now, said Sam as he saw the headlights of a car drive past the window and park by side of the yard.

Without hesitation, Sam picked up his coffee cup and headed for the front door of the big white-frame house that he’d bought forty years earlier. With a mixture of emotions while standing in his house slippers and holding his coffee cup, Sam watched Joey get from the driver’s seat and help Robert into the wheelchair.

Joey, I’ve just finished putting in this ramp up to the door for Robert’s wheelchair. That will make it easier for him to maneuver in and out.

Thanks, Grandpa. Dad has written this note for you to read. Sam heard the tall, black-haired, athletic, young man say as he pointed to a small rectangular sheet of paper, which his father held with his right hand instead of trying the task with his prosthetic left hand.

On this trip, Robert played back in his mind the last fourteen years. He pretended that he was another person watching what had happened to him.

Sam watched Robert struggle with the wheelchair, backing away from the five-year-old beige-colored Buick LeSabre. Then the handicapped man got the wheelchair going good and rolled across the grass of the huge yard to the concrete walk and then to the wood ramp leading to the front door and presented the note to Sam. Sam marveled at the gutsy demeanor that his forty-year-old son still had after fourteen years of trying to recover the best he could from a traumatic injury, which took away many of his physical abilities. For expeditious purposes, Robert sometimes relented and allowed himself to be pushed along in the wheelchair. He didn’t do that this time, though, because Robert was in a hurry to see his father.

The two men, now in the dim light of dawn, Sam standing and Robert sitting in his wheelchair close by, Sam read:

Dad, I never thought that life’s situation would bring me to this, but I must ask you to permit me and my family to live with you and Mom again. As you already know, I’ve been unemployed for fourteen years. I have hopes of getting a job back with the Forest Service when I’m able, but in fairness, that agency requires certain abilities—and it should never become a hospital for an invalid. To make matters worse, Jessica got terminated from the hospital where she worked. The CEO told her that he had no other choice because of the current economics. So, the mortgage company foreclosed on our home when we couldn’t make payments. As we’ve talked before, Joey wants to enter college soon and become a medical doctor. I guess he will have to give up on that. Someway, I’ll pay you back, Dad. Signed: Robert.

Sam folded the note and placed it in the left pocket of his well-worn khaki shirt, and his eyes moistened. Robert, you and your family may live here with me and your mom as long as you need to. We have more room in this old house than we know what to do with it.

Robert held out his good right arm and thanked Sam as father and son sealed their bond of need and acceptance. Then Sam saw Joey looking around the yard in the gray dawn as if the young man had lost something.

Grandpa, where’s Toby-Dog?

Joey, I hate to tell you this, but Toby-Dog’s bad habit of chasing vehicles finally caught up with him. The UPS delivery truck’s back wheels ended his vehicle chasing forever. Like most athletes as they age, they lose a step or two in the execution of their movements. In Toby-Dog’s situation, the big tire won. So we buried Toby-Dog in the backyard next to the bed of pansies. For a teacup Chihuahua to challenge a big brown truck, the advantage goes to the truck, and Toby-Dog wound up flattened as the driver moved on without even knowing about the mishap. Toby-Dog was fifteen years old, and his old age caught up with him.

That’s too bad, Grandpa. If you ever get another teacup Chihuahua, name him Toby-Two. Sam now pushed Robert’s wheelchair through the open door into the den. Lynne and Jessica followed as Joey tagged along behind, saddened by the loss of Toby-Dog. Sam knew that Joey would miss sitting and petting the little dog.

Since we’ve retired, I’ve taken on some of the domestic tasks around the house. How about a round of coffee for all of you? Then we’ll have breakfast, offered Sam as he presented cups and saucers to all the guests seated in the brightly lighted den, and Lynne followed immediately with the coffeepot.

All of you, use this house as if it were your own home. I want you to feel comfortable here. Lynne and I understand that, by necessity, you may need to be here for quite a while, said Sam as he well meant to help take care of his family.

That attitude started back in pioneer days when the Logan clan had moved from Norton, Virginia, and settled not far from Lexington, Kentucky. Times and technologies were certainly different then, but Sam’s interpretation of family responsibilities remained the same as they were in those days when he was raised on the family farm. Cooperation between families was just understood by the people living within a tough environment.

Sam had now positioned himself in a green La-Z-Boy recliner to match the carpet beside a pole lamp that reflected his tanned face, showing a two-inch scar on his left cheekbone. He had won that in hand-to-hand combat in Viet Nam during a nighttime invasion by the Viet Cong upon the Army platoon that he led.

Joey, I understand that you want to become a medical doctor?

I sure do, Grandpa. Since I’ve seen Dad suffer so much following his accident, I think that I could help make a difference in people’s lives for the better.

In the gravity of the moment, conversation was a difficult task as each person pondered his/her possible fate for a while, and no one knew with certainty just what that might bring.

Sam continued to cut the thick air of hesitancy and tried to keep the sense of family misfortune from winning out. All of you, keep on the lookout for some kind of job that I might be able to do in order for us to increase our income. As for right now, Lynne has breakfast well underway. We didn’t know just when you would arrive.

We would have been here sooner, but we had a flat tire about midnight, and that slowed us down, said Joey. Also, we hit a deer about an hour after we left Missoula. That put a dent in the right front fender of the Buick. We were lucky that the big doe didn’t come through the windshield. When that happens, it often kills the driver, so I’ve heard. I don’t want to leave this earth in that way, said Joey.

Sam, sitting close to Robert, placed his left hand on the right wheel of the wheelchair and moved it ever so slightly. Robert, have you ever told Joey the origin of that huge set of antlers upstairs, down at end of the hall?

Robert, with a smile, nodded his head in a positive response and gave a victory pump with his good right arm. He remembered that cold, frosty morning when the buck walked directly under the tree stand locked twenty feet up a yellow poplar.

Joey, since you will probably be living here for a while, I’m going to merge you into some of my activities this summer. I’m going to teach you how to push a lawn mower.

Grandpa, you know that I already know how to do that. I may not do it just like you do, but I can mow the lawn. I told Mom and Dad on the drive over here that I’d mow the lawn to help pay for our upkeep. You do have the biggest yard that I’ve ever seen, and you have a lot of flowers.

Lynne, I think the menfolk will work on these outdoor summer activities until it’s time for breakfast, said Sam, and he cast a smile toward her as a cue to hasten her cuisine effort.

Come on, Jessica. Let’s leave these macho fellows to their own interests. I held off the cooking of bacon and eggs until your arrival so they would be warm, said Lynne as she and Jessica headed for the kitchen and Sam returned to the tutelage of Joey concerning lawn-mowing. Lynne was glad to take Sam’s timely hint because she was not only hungry but also happy to talk privately with her daughter-in-law.

Joey, I don’t have a riding lawn mower because old men need to sweat, and pushing the lawn mower gives me a good cardio workout. Did you know that? Joey, if you didn’t, you’d better learn it just in case that you do become a medical doctor. Sam gave a hearty laugh. For instance, should an elderly man darken your office door, let’s say ten years from now, and tells you that he’s feeling a little puny, you might just write him a prescription to the local hardware instead of to the drugstore down on the corner, requesting one push lawn mower instead of a bottle of pills.

What if he buys the push mower and then has a heart attack?

That’s simple. Write him another prescription for a push lawn mower. His doctor should have told him to be active after the heart operation. Sam heard Robert utter a garbled guffaw at the counseling given to the sixteen-year-old youngster.

Grandpa, I know when you’re lying and when you’re not.

Joey, I try not to lie. I just like to tell tall tales. It’s wrong to lie.

Grandpa, I enjoy your tall tales. I still remember some of the stories that you told me when I was only four years old.

Now, to a few words about your sleeping quarters upstairs near those big antlers. We’ll reminisce a little bit about Robert shooting that well-racked buck. I remember the morning that your dad shot that trophy buck. I was located about one hundred yards from Robert, who had climbed a tree down on a game preserve in East Tennessee.

How old was Dad then? inquired the youngster to his grandfather, and he scooted forward upon the seat of the red leather sofa in anticipation of the story about the set of big antlers.

Sam didn’t have sufficient time to answer Joey’s question because Robert, from the service pad placed upon the front of his wheelchair, in a fluster of movement, quickly scribbled "15!" and gave it to Joey to read. Then Robert pumped his good right arm again to emphasize the bow shot. That came accompanied by his unique attempt at laughter, and it caused Jessica to scramble back from the kitchen to ascertain the cause of such happiness from her husband. Seeing that Robert was okay, she just turned back without comment or question to help Lynne, and Sam gave her a silent wave of approval with his right hand, accompanied by a broad smile.

Fifteen? Dad, you were one year younger than I am now! I’ve seen pictures of you when you were a young man and a smoke jumper. Mom said that you weighed two hundred pounds with no body fat. What a physique!

With admiration, Sam watched his now physically challenged, forty-year-old son give another victory pump with his right hand in agreement with Joey’s statement, and Sam knew that spirit of survival was what kept Robert going on his way to as much recovery as possible.

Grandpa, even though you have a yard bigger than the law should allow, said Joey, pushing the lawn mower won’t take all my time. What else is there to do around here this summer? How about if I paint the house?

"The house doesn’t need painting because I did that just a few months ago. But now the yard is a different story. Last April, I won Yard of the Month award given by the Sparkle and Shine Club. So, you see, I have my legacy to protect. What I’m trying to tell you, Joey, taking care of the lawn approaches that of a full-time job. Even though that may look simple to you while sitting here in the den. When you get out there in the hot sun, pushing that lawn mower, you’ll be singing a different tune."

If I run with the lawn mower, it won’t take me as long, will it? A smile crossed Joey’s face.

Hold on just a minute. Running while pushing a lawn mower might cause you to have a heat stroke. There’s more need concerning the yard than just pushing the lawn mower. As you can see, we live on edge of the city adjoining woods and farmland. The gist of the matter is that the deer population has exploded around here, and the little hoofed pests invade our yard and nip the pretty yellow flowers off top of my pansies. The Game and Fish Division did too good of a job elevating the deer population in this state. Consequently, the pansy beds need refurbishing a lot. You can help do that too, Joey.

I’ll do whatever it takes.

That’s the kind of answer that I’d expect from a Logan—do whatever it takes—that can’t be topped in way of dedication and character. I’m proud of you, Joey.

Sam had just started to conjure up another bit of ribbing on how to prepare Joey for lawn work as he turned his head toward the footfalls coming from the kitchen. Sam, if you’re through giving Joey his work orders for the summer, I’d suggest that you fellows hoof it in here to the kitchen table. Jessica has just finished frying the bacon, and we don’t want our efforts to get cold while you’re kicking Joey around the den.

Sam now knew that Joey could interpret between lying, hyperbole, tall tales, and hunter camaraderie. Grandma, Grandpa wasn’t kicking me around the den. He has just given me a lesson in both psychology and economics of the workplace.

Each of you, find one of these white chairs. After you do that, I’ll thank the good Lord for our blessings. Sam did that, ending with a well-meant Amen, and then he patted Joey on his left shoulder as the young man sat by him at the table.

Just before Robert deftly used his fork with his right hand, he wrote a message and passed it around for all to read: I’m still glad that Jessica and I decided not to take our agent’s suggestion and continue our band in making tours and going full-time in that career. That would not have been a good culture for our family life. I’m crippled up, but our family life could be worse off.

Sam read the note last because he sat next to Robert, and the note had circled in the opposite direction around the table. He gave the note back to Robert and then looked at the facial responses of all at the table. He sensed both compassion and honesty on the face of each member of the Logan family. He felt good about the integrity of his son even though Robert had paid a high price in physical discomfort and personal embarrassment of mortgage foreclosure on his home. Sam now was more dedicated than ever to find some way to help them out of the deep financial hole that fate had fallen them into.

"Robert, you and Jessica take the lower tier of rooms in this house during your stay. That should give you better mobility around and in and out as you use the ramp. Joey can climb the winding stairs and use the room, as I’ve already told him, down at end of the hall upstairs for sleeping