He was going to be late for dinner and he could already hear his father grumbling about it. He punched the accelerator, pushing his old Ford to pick up even more speed, racing down hill in the evening dusk. Every Thursday since moving to town earlier in the year, he had come home for supper. It was easier that way since Friday was his day off and he could stay over. If his luck held he might still make it. Then he heard them.
Half a dozen bluetick hounds burst from the underbrush and clambered across the dirt roadway in front of him. Ben Darling tromped on the brakes, locking up the back wheels on the thin gravel, sending his Ford Model A spinning nearly out of control. As the roadway divided at the state park entrance, he fought to keep from slamming into the fast approaching trees. He caught a glimpse of a scrawny man on a startled mule as the vehicle skidded by. Junior Kendrix was also struggling to regain control of his transportation as the animal kicked wildly at the sight of the careening automobile.
“Junior!” Ben employed a mule kick of his own to the car door as fast as his wheels found purchase on the roadside weeds. “Are you crazy?” Ben leapt out onto the road and started back towards the man in ragged overalls who had finally managed to calm the whirling mule.
“Good evening to you, Deputy Darling,” Junior chuckled with a red face. “I have to admit. I do like the way that sounds. Deputy Darling. Flows real nice, don’t it?”
“Well, never mind that.” The deputy tried to sound stern, despite the circumstances. As the youngest member of the county sheriff’s department, he still found coming across as authoritative to be a major challenge. Here on his home territory at Bennett Spring, it was even more of a struggle. “You ‘bout got both of us kilt!” Ben hoped righteous indignation might carry him through.
“Now, Ben…er, Deputy,” Junior stammered. “You know how it is. You can’t control where them puppies run. Once they take off, you got to listen and do your best to catch up.”
Junior leaned back as far as the laws of physics would allow while still astride his mule and squinted at Ben. “Does that uniform make you look taller? I swear, Deputy, you are taller than when I last saw you!”
“Sure, Junior,” Ben replied with more than a touch of skepticism. “You’ve known me all your life and it’s just now dawned on you I’m not twelve years old anymore!”
The man on the mule snickered with a near toothless smile. “Well, maybe that’s so. I do still tend to think of you as—whoa! Listen for it! There it is! Them puppies have got something!”
Junior’s eyes brightened as the distant warbling of the dogs had indeed changed, indicating they had treed their quarry. “Sorry about the mishap, but you seem to be none the worse for it. Those dogs are a-callin’. Got to go, son. We’ll talk another day!” He laid a switch in a gentler fashion than not to the mule’s backside and jauntily set off across the road, following the dogs’ excited calls.
Ben shook his head with a grin in spite of the momentary aggravation. It was good to be home. He drove the short distance from what was now the park’s official entrance, past the exquisite ever-flowing waters of Bennett Spring. If he wasn’t already late to his mother’s dinner table, he would have gladly stopped to enjoy the blue-green spring’s calming influence. It was nearly impossible to describe and yet it was something he had missed desperately since moving to Lebanon, over ten miles away. Instead, he glanced longingly at the deep beautiful waters of the great spring as he drove past slowly and let his thoughts drift back to days gone by.
“Benji!” His little sister, Esther, squealed the family nickname and ran to give him a hug as he opened the front door to his parents’ home. His own home, no matter where he lived, he thought with a smile. He returned a quick embrace of his own.
“How are you, Sprig?”
“Good to see you, Benji.” His older sister, Becky, looked up from where she was setting the table. Hannah, their mother, tended to steaming pots on the hot wood stove and Zeb Darling, seated in the far corner of the room, peered around the side of his newspaper long enough to mutter, “It’s about time.”
“I know, I know,” Ben tried to explain. “I’m sorry. I got a late start and then I nearly collided with a couple of Junior Kendrix’s best coon dogs, coming down the hill tonight. I swear, he’s a menace to other folks sometimes.”
“You act like that’s something new,” Zeb Darling retorted as he tossed the newspaper aside. “It’s been that way ever since he took over for his older brother, Buster, when he got hisself shot. It’s what finally landed your brother in jail—”
“Ma, are we nearly ready?” Becky interrupted, narrowing her eyes in her brother’s direction as a clear warning.
“Yes, are we ready to eat yet, Hannah? We’re getting pretty hungry here.” Zeb allowed his attention to be easily diverted.
“Sorry,” Ben mouthed silently in Becky’s direction with more than a hint of mischief on his face.
“I daresay you are,” his wife answered with a glance in Zeb’s direction. She pulled a pan of golden brown biscuits from the oven and continued, “But then you are always hungry. I think you must have been born with a tapeworm, Zeb. I can’t imagine any other way you could eat as much as you do and still stay so skinny!”
“I ain’t skinny.” He feigned insult with a grin and patted Becky’s protruding belly as he smiled broadly. “I just work hard to keep my girlish figure, unlike some folks I know.”