Jack H. Schick

Wendigo (Tohanny Creek)


Posted: Friday, January 01, 2010

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The Tohanny Creek began among the thick tufts of grass at the lower end of Mumbaur's cow pasture up behind the old machine shop on the road just north of town. Brian had followed it upstream to there. It emerged from the clumps of grass at the edge of the marshy meadow as a dozen small trickles that accumulated in a shallow merky pond at the edge of the briars. The oozy ground along the edge was discolored blue with a tint of orange. An oil like film that glinted the same metalic blue covered parts of the pool. Clouds of gnats and flies flitted and swarmed above the still, dark water. It smelled of manure and sour mud. A small, steady stream emerged from the other side of the bramble thicket then percolated through the spongy ground, covered with ferns and club moss, purging and cleaning itself before consolidating into a fixed rill that had scoured a narrow channel in the yellow clay. Within a hundred yards it was joined by other rivulets that drained the stunted, swampy woods that extended from that corner of Mumbaurs' all the way over to the dirt lane past the brick yard and up to the back of Clarkie's place.

After emerging from the swamp and continuing nearly a mile between pastures and cornfields, the Tohanny was still only wide enough to step across, though there were some deeper holes that cut back under the sod banks where Brian once gigged a catfish and an eel. Then it was joined by Little Run coming down off Rock Hill north of town and it became a real creek. In another mile it came into town under the stone bridge at Danaker's store where they'd dammed it and made the swimming hole and the park. It ran right through the middle of town and got dirty again with paint cans and tires and funny colored water running out of pipes in the cement walls they built to keep it from flooding people's yards. There was another dam at the end of town, but it has washed out around it and the creek was wide but shallow. In dry weather it was mostly a mud flat where they hunted crayfish and clams and found things that had washed down from town. The channel ran down the center then around the far side of the dam where the ground had washed away.

The Tohanny crossed the farms below town in a narrow stip of trees and brush then, at Hager's, it went into the woods again. It wound back and forth in wide turns, was joined by two other small creeks then entered the Big Woods. It finally came out at the bolder field near the junk yard down at Dragon Hill and went over a falls into the Tohanny Canyon. Brian had never been beyond the falls. His trap line ran just from town down to Big Woods, but he'd followed the creek as far Dragon Hill.

There were stories about Tohanny Canyon but he thought it was probably just to scare kids from going down to the falls. Brian knew where the Tohanny came into the lake, but he wanted to follow the stream all the way some time.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)
» left by Maxine Headd
 2 years 41 days ago.
8 fans.
But where is the rest of the story? What is the subject line? Where is your ending or problem? Other than chemical problems? Is this story finished. The writing is great.
» left by Anonymous
 2 years 35 days ago.
Jack, you paint a great visual picture. In particular, I like the reference to a "sour mud" smell.
» left by Jack H. Schick 2 years 35 days ago.
89 fans.
Thanks for reading!
» left by Geoff
from sellersville 2 years 29 days ago.
fine writing, your words paint a picture, but dont tell a story. Your memories are vivid, and help us to paint the picture, but of what? Looking for the climax.
» left by Jack H. Schick 2 years 29 days ago.
89 fans.
Just the start of a story, more later, maybe
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