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untitled excerpt
by Cesca Janece Waterfield The road is named for Wellford’s Wharf which used to lie at its end on the Rappahannock River. All that remains of the wharf now are a few pilings and stories about its heyday when steamboats from Baltimore regularly came and went. It was by steamboat that word was sent to my great-great grandmother that my great-great grandfather had died in a Baltimore hospital. It may be possible that on Wellford’s Wharf Road I have cumulatively spent a year of my life behind Bruce Forrester’s gunmetal gray car, staring at a rusting screwdriver tied to the car’s “boot” and dropped through a metal ring welded between the brake lights. As long ago as my eighth year Bruce was old beyond comprehension, but he was resourceful, and the screwdriver kept the boot closed on his travels throughout the county. In case you’re unfamiliar with this colloquialism, a “boot” is known as a “trunk” everywhere else. Riding with my mother, we would see Bruce’s car a couple fields ahead– Oh, no! we would groan, and quickly coming upon him, we envisioned lunch growing cold, or pictured Tommy, who’d scheduled a tire rotation at Standard Garage, looking up the highway for our car. My mother would enumerate the chores whose completion were at this minute being delayed, but out of respect she wouldn’t think of passing him. Bruce, possibly unaware of our presence continued to inch down the road so slowly, one would think his speed impossible to achieve in an automobile. In addition to his love for leisurely drives, Bruce was a master craftsman of ox yokes and leather whips. In his weathered hands, the crack of these whips was an unmatched experience. But because it tended to infuriate Jo, Bruce’s much younger yet ancient wife, he usually treated us to the event out of sight, somewhere in the woods. The whip makes a sound something like, ka – SNAT! Only Bruce could achieve it with such consistency, with such intensity. That instant of sky-splitting aural power made me shiver, made my shoulders and the corners of my mouth curl quietly up. Quietly, because I knew if he did it once, he would do it again, sending Jo’s surliness spiraling to outright anger. The crack snapped time still and horizontal, traveled over the tree line, then began a tight vibration that grew loose, like a plucked guitar string. At the sound, our heads would jolt up, eyes scanning the trees, picturing Bruce hidden among them, grinning. Jo’s wide, wrinkled forehead would narrow in anger because the cardiologist has told that man! It was true. The magical wind-up of the whip in air that conjured such excitement; the wide circle above his head that Bruce achieved with remarkably little movement of his arm, put strain on his heart. Jo’s rankled complaints concerned my mother, and my father would head off in the direction of the sound, his lower lip all business. Standing before Bruce, however, he just laughed his laugh. The old man’s eyes matched the corona of a fading violet and were usually rheumy and bowed in a gentle droop. Now, however, it was as if to his scruffy brows and stubbled jowl were attached dozens of invisible strings that had been lifted smoothly taut, and his eyes were delighted, alert. I always marveled at the sound and wondered if people across the river had heard it; if the resonance might have traveled all the way to Baltimore. Occasionally I voiced this question and Bruce, as some kind of answer would tell a story about a boy in a cart, or children who went barefoot from April to September.
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