Footloose in America: Dixie to New England Read Online Free PDF

here. It’s awfully hot. I sure would hate to go back out on the road in this heat. Do you suppose we could camp tonight in the woods somewhere around the lake? We’ll leave first thing in the morning when it’s cooler.”
    He thought about it a moment, then said, “I don’t know if she’d go for that or not. She owns all the property around the lake. Let me call and see what she says.”
    A few minutes later he came out of the store with a frown on his face. “She said no. Not in the campground or anywhere else.”
    Now it felt like I was begging. “Did you tell her we walked out of our way because everyone said we’d be welcome here?”
    Up to this point I had the feeling the one-armed man wanted to help us. But now he had a job to do. “She said those people don’t own this place, she does. And they had no right to tell you to come down here. She wants you to leave now!”
    Flabbergasted I said, “I can’t believe as hot as it is she’s going to make us leave!”
    “That’s not her problem. Her words were, ‘If I let one outfit traveling with a mule and a cart come in then I’ll have to let them all in.’ ”
    “Right! And how many mules and carts does she have come by here?”

    According to our map, there was a dirt road that would take us through a forested area to State Highway 5. Rose Bud was our first mail stop, and it was on that highway. I figured if we took the dirt road we’d find a shady place in the woods to camp. And at one time Ballard Road probably
was
a shady lane–but not when we walked on it. Property on both sides was private, fenced and posted. The forest had been cut back from the road to make way for pasture and lawns. It’s a valley road that skirts the base of the Ozark foothills. Long steep driveways led to hillside homes among the pines, cedars and oaks. It was fence after fence with signs written in various verbiage, all of which boiled down to one meaning–“Keep Out!”
    Most of the folks who lived in that valley worked in or around Little Rock. So as our shadows grew longer, the traffic got heavier and the road dustier. The afternoon heated up and commuter dust turned our sweat into rivulets of mud.
    Near the junction of Red Bird Lane, we stopped under an ancient pine whose shadow graced Ballard Road. We were there less than a minute, when two pick-ups sped past us. They were jacked-up and riding-high with wide knobbed tires that kicked up such a thick cloud of dust that Patricia and I couldn’t see each other. We both were coughing when she screamed, “I’m sick of this!”
    I was too, but I didn’t want to feed her despair. So I said, “Something good is going to come out of this. I can feel it.”
    Patricia snapped, “Oh yeah, like what? A Holiday Inn?”
    In the two years that we’d been together, that was the first time Patricia ever snapped at me. I had seen her angry before, but she was never nasty like that. I didn’t know what to say.
    She wiped her face with a sweat soaked bandana as she grumbled, “I knew we should have stayed on the pavement. It might have been longer, but at least we wouldn’t have to eat all this god-damn dust.”
    Earlier, after looking at the map, we had mutually agreed to take this road. I toyed with the idea of reminding her of that, but thought better of it. The moment was too volatile. I simply said, “Well, we’ve gone too far to turn back.”
    With a smart-ass expression she quipped, “Ya think?”
    Suddenly, behind us was the roar of an engine approaching. We both turned to see a sedan racing toward us with a plume of dust behind it. Patricia clinched both fists and growled, “You’d better slow down, Shit-head!”
    And it did. Not enough to have no dust at all, but it wasn’t a choker. When the man and his Mercedes slowly cruised past us, Patricia put on her best fake smile and waved as she muttered, “Thanks a lot, Ass-hole.”
    The next two miles took an hour and a half to walk–every foot of it was sweat and