The Great Hardisty Creek Deluge, Gumboot Caper & Whodunnit – Saga 2

(A tale best told, sung, read or listened to after quaffing copious tankards of mead.)

INVOCATION: “In the name of mighty Thor, I do hereby invoke Thorslov for the following tale, an ikke en tilståelse, (un-tilståelse or un-confession).” – Nordic Nu-Saga

Hardisty Creek, as most everybody knows, is amongst the most mild-mannered and polite of Canadian streams. In the few short months when it isn’t frozen, there are stick bugs doodling under rocks and water beetles skimming the torpid surface of a few languid pools between green, slime-covered rocks. These pools are scarcely more than puddles barely deep enough to host a few wary trout and to slop over into your gumboots if you wade in to retrieve a snagged hook or to gather a slime ball to hurl at your friends.

In winter, the water is just inches deep in most stretches, but the ice can become surprisingly thick. Repeated thawing from the warm Chinook winds allows water to flow over the surface of the ice then it freezes again. This cycle of flow and freeze creates undulating layers of frozen rapids to build up over the winter that make for some of the worst teeth-rattling skating imaginable.Then the spring rains come and all this pack ice breaks loose creating tumbled ice jams and deep pools of swirling icebergs. The creek floods its banks as it rushes towards the mighty Athabasca River and off to the Arctic Ocean, and onwards to the frigid lands and raging seas of the Vikings. Oh, my friends, it is a sight to behold. And it is very, very scary.

So, my trusty Friend, without further adieu, this is how it all went down….

Early Spring. Boystown. Back in ‘62. The ice was breaking up on Hardisty Creek, but there were still no leaves on the gnarly, winter-worn trees lining its banks. Maybe a few plumped up poplar buds and a couple of bedraggled pussy willows, but that’s about it. It had been raining non-stop for weeks. Great, fierce terror-inducing thunderstorms. We call them cloud bursts, out here in Alberta. And that’s what they are. A month’s worth of rain bursts from the skies in seconds – and it keeps coming, night and day, sometimes for weeks. Swirling walls of water whipped up by the wind. Torrential! That spring we experienced repeated deluges of historical, if not Wagnerian, proportions. And, on the night in question, there was the mightiest deluge of them all. Thunder rumbled and roared for 500 miles in all directions commanded by Thor himself and the apocalyptic sky was filled with shrieking Valkyries. The whole town had storm fever, a terrible, highly contagious affliction, resulting in an intoxicating mix of exhilaration, mind-numbing boredom and sheer terror. Everyone was going shack-wacky, stir crazy, totally bonkers. Worse, much, much worse even than any grade-six math class on a sun-drenched Friday afternoon in June. Tensions were running mighty high. So was the creek.

On this particular night, Hardisty Creek was truly a raging torrent. Our own unleashed Niagara – times a hundred, times a thousand, even. On one side of Hardisty Avenue the water had turned into a swirling maelstrom with entire trees being sucked into the whirlpools that formed at the mouths of the twin culverts running under the road. On the exiting side the water gushed out in two giant geysers of black water and tangled debris. Boulders the size of truck tires rumbled along the corrugated metal culverts and logs pounded and raked the ribs of the tunnels. The echoing sound was deafening. Terrifying. Magnificent! Along with the torrential downpours that dumped unbelievable volumes of cold water from the skies and the accompanying drama of thunder and lightning this epic flood was a powerful, hypnotic lure for stoopid boys – like me and Slick, for instance.

Of course, we had been repeatedly warned – by parents, teachers, Scout leaders, and the storm gods themselves – to stay clear of the creek and especially the great, log-sucking, boy-drowning culverts. Hah! This only made us more curious. More stoopider than ever. There is nothing like the threat of instant death to entice a small-town numbskull to creep closer and closer to peer into a swirling, tumbling hypnotic maelstrom.

On Thursday evenings we had Scout’s night in the Kinsmen Hall – conveniently located right next to the culverts running under Hardisty Avenue. (Thus, perhaps, the many, many warnings.) Between lightning flashes, it was dark as pitch, but the rains had subsided just barely enough to allow the Scout pack to hear the clarion call from our Scoutmaster. “Meeting’s on!”, shouted the absolutely thrilled voice on the phone tree!” (Obviously, someone’s shack-wacky, boy-weary, Scout den mother.) We scurried through the dark in twos and threes from all over Crescent Valley to our dank and boisterous den where a barely controlled riot was in full force as soon as the doors flung open.

Slick got the phone call too. He lived a few houses down from me on Chetamon Drive and made the sprint to my place in record time but still arrived drenched to the bone and crazy-eyed from the storm. As always, he was accompanied by Scruffy, whose name pretty much describes him. Wiry, yappy little mutt, but also, smart, loyal and totally fearless. Like, I really mean it, no bloody fear of anything at all. This night he was his usual bedraggled, bold and gutsy self, checking out whatever stinky dog-delights the storm had blown in, brought down or washed out. But Slick and I were admittedly terrified at the growling and roaring coming from either side of Hardisty Avenue as we inched along the dead center of the road.

We could see little except when lighting flashed, but we could hear the flood swirling and gushing on either side of us and feel the fierce wind that was sucked downstream along with the flood waters. The worst of it all was the rumbling and thumping sounds beneath our feet as the creek roared through the culverts. The earth shook underneath our boots like we were riding an earthquake or atop a volcano about to erupt. Scruffy pranced way too close to the swirling waters and completely ignored our shouts and we were too damned chicken to go and fetch him. Anyways, he could always take care of himself. More brains and survival skills than us any day.

Our skinny legs were shaking in our little scout shorts as we inched forward. Almost paralyzed with the fear of being sucked into that hidden vortex that we could barely see. Then, about halfway across the creek we both freaked and started yelling uncontrollably. We raced each other to the clubhouse as fast as our thumping gumboots would carry us. Scruffy bounced all around us yipping in sheer delight. We flung open the doors to the hall. Hearts pounding. Scared witless. So much fun! Couldn’t wait to do it again.

In the mud room of the Scout Hall we kicked off our boots, gave our dragging socks a bit of a tug and joined the rest of the pack ignoring all the calls to order and the ritual we-dub-dubs in favour of a discordant chorus of simulated wolf howls and unleashed mayhem. The room reeked of a nasty brew of rubber boots, wet wool, thick mud and the mystery aromas that only thirty or forty boy scouts crowded together in a musty hall can muster up. The light bulbs dangling in their green shades were flickering ominously. A cloying damp mist hung in the air around them creating an eerie, unearthly glow. Evil was surely afoot this night.

Now there’s not a lot an overwhelmed scout leader can do – no matter how zealously earnest and determined they might be – when competing with a stretch of unending storms that had cooped up their always unruly charges for more than a week. Good luck with that! Despite the din inside, we could easily make out the rumbling outside, the lights would flicker and fade to orange. Bolts of lightning would flash through the small windows. Thunder rattled the panes and shook the doors and timbers. The tension kept building and building. Something had to break. And then it did….

Slick and I shared a furtive conspiratorial glance across the room. Like cunning thieves, trained assassins or prison escapees, we instantly knew what the other conspirator was plotting. There were always boy schemes in the works, that’s a given, but you also had to be constantly prepared – opportunities for mischief and mayhem could present themselves at a moment’s notice.  This was one of those moments. The storm. The creek. The wild night was calling, we knew not where, but we did know when. This piercing call to action was raw boy instinct. More haunting, more chilling, more compelling than any howling, delirious pack of Scouts will ever be, and that’s saying something.

We waited for just the right instant. The signal; a quick almost imperceptible flick of the head. No response needed. We made a dash for the mudroom, undetected in the unprecedented tumult and din of the gathering. Hearts thumping with anticipation, we scrambled to find our gumboots in the jumble of nearly identical black gumboots with red soles. We finally found matching boots with our names written in motherly script on the canvas lining. We hastily booted up, paying little heed to the “R”, for right, and “L”, for left, that they also wrote so helpfully. (All very confusing at the best of times, let alone when you’re making an escape.) Then we threw on our stiff rain gear.

Scruffy went sproinging all over the room in excitement threatening our stealthy getaway. Slick had to keep hushing him up making more noise than the bouncing dog. We were just about to open the heavy double doors and head into the torrential rains that were once more bucketing down outside. A split-second pause. Again, the assassins flash glance. We looked at the piles of gumboots all around us. Then evil grins from evil boys.

The mudroom was literally stuffed with the jumble of gumboots. Some were stacked neatly on the shelves provided but most, as you might well imagine, most were strewn willynilly across the floor. Wordlessly we went into bandit mode. We hastily gathered up as many boots as two nasty, skinny boys in slippery oilskins could possibly carry. One from here, two from there, top shelf, bottom shelf, those wisely hidden in the shadows, shiny new ones – especially the shiny new ones – along with weathered veterans of many mud holes and school yard scuffles. We just took everything we could carry. Slick even gave Scruffy an oversized clodhopper to stifle his barking. Then we butted the doors open and headed into the night – straight to the creek – straight to the roaring culverts.

We hesitated only for a second as we stared into the twin whirlpools sucking into the tunnels. Then came the first toss. A high graceful arc tumbling slow motion through the air. At the height of the throw the gumboot was suddenly caught in midair then instantly swooshed into the roaring maw before it even touched the water. “Holy crap!!!” That boot was soon followed by one of the new shiners flung into the air by the other bandit. Then another. And another. No turning back now. With delirious glee we tossed and flung and hurled. Scruffy leapt into the air with each toss his barking lost in the roar of the twin tornadoes. The pull of the vortex was so strong I could feel my feet skidding under me drawing me ever closer to the event horizon where nothing could escape the sucking black holes. Dauntless we carried on. Gumboots went catapulting through the air and into the swirling vortexes where they were instantly disappeared into the culverts to be shot like cannon balls out the other side. It took only a couple of minutes to unload our armloads of boots into the black waters, but there was no time between volleys to rush to the other side of the road to see them being spit out. They instantly disappeared into the hell holes and were gone.

With all the boots duly dispatched we ran to the other side of the culverts where the black geysers spouted forth. Logs, rocks, stumps – and now gumboots – were being blasted through the air to make their way downstream to the mighty Athabasca River and off to the Arctic Ocean.

“Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap!!!”, we shouted into each others faces. “What have we done? What the hell have we done!!!”

We gumbooted it home as if the hounds of hell were on our tail. As well they would be soon – in about half an hour – as soon as the rest of the pumped-up Scout troop was finally released back into the stormy night. And we both knew that we would find no refuge anywhere in this town for this most heinous of crimes they were just about to discover. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever! We ran! OMG, how we ran!

The next day and for days and weeks afterwards we would hear of the horror that ensued seconds after the last we-dib-dibs were we-dub-dubbed in the Scout Hall. The shrill whistle of the Scoutmaster sounded. The pack was unleashed, with a mighty roar. With deafening shouts and much wolf howling, the pack leapt en masse to the mudroom. There, a great melee erupted as the troopers grabbed for their gumboots only to find them – gone.  Elbows, knees and shoulder checks soon followed. Snatch and grab. Tug-of-war. Push and shove. Thumps and bumps and some very foul language. Ownership meant nothing.  Brute force ruled. Some boots exchanged hands many times over the next half hour of pure chaos. Left-or-right, too big-too small, old-or-new. Nothing mattered. Only possession. Only the strength and determination of your grip. And the crazed look in your eyes.

The Scout troop had descended into homicidal madness. Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Flies. Trench Warfare. Law of the Jungle. Some ended up with two left boots of greatly different sizes. Some had only boot, and that was won only after fierce hand-to-hand combat. Some, I heard, exited the skirmish with no boots at all. Sock footed they went wailing into the stormy night. The Scout leaders gathered some of these bootless refugees along the way and drove them to totally flipped out parents. All over Hinton were yells of rage and fury rising above the raging storm. Total madness. Delirium.

The next morning, we both woke in a cold sweat well before dawn – the time of Viking raids – and well before the nerve-rattling clanging of the school bell. We skinnied out our respective bedroom windows and instinctively headed straight for our war room, the small work shed in my back yard.

But the gig was already up! The Bezouvie brothers, delivering the early-early edition of the Hinton Herald, had spotted a gumboot high in a willow tree nearest the culverts. Another boot perched jauntily atop the remnants of Mac McKenny’s pigeon coop, part of a mountainous log jam. They sounded the alarm. It is shocking how fast an army of outraged boys can be roused for war.

Desperate! We needed a strategy to escape the furious mob already swarming into the streets. Abject terror is the mother of invention, or so they say. An emergency plan was quickly hatched! Do what any Viking would do, what else. We grabbed our well-worn copy of the Berserker’s Field Guide & 12-Step Program, with its great marauder strategies, like: Dawn raids; Lightning Strikes; Hit Early; Hit Hard; Go Absolutely Nutso. Go Berserk!!!

Stage One: Arm for Battle. No swords, spears, catapults or dragon boats laying about. All we had at hand was a couple of sling shots with a pockets full of marbles for ammo, our puny fists – and our bad-ass attitudes. These would have to do.

Stage Two: Dawn Raid: (Get them while they’re still drunk or early morning dopey.) We were already running late. No time to waste. We could already hear the war whoops of our fellow troopers gathering in the mist and heading towards the school armed to the teeth and ready for battle. “Blood, Blood, Blood,” yelled one gang. “Skulls, Skulls, Skulls,” cried another.

Stage Three: Masters of Disguise to Take Them by Surprise: (With tips on camouflage, disguises, subterfuges and other deceits. More Berserker advice: Act now – think later.) I had some skanky high-top sneakers hanging in the shed, that I used for fishing and tanning moose hides and were thus resolutely and permanently banned from the house. Perfect. We deviously flung our gumboots under the shed and quickly donned the putrid runners. Then we jumped and kicked around in the nearest mudhole completing our disguise.

Stage Four: Thor’s Hammer Blow – Thunder & Lighting Strike: (Shock and Awe – Fire & Fury – Attack, Attack, Attack.) We sucked in a couple of deep breaths and charged out onto Hardisty Avenue to join the chanting homicidal throngs. At the top of our lungs, we screamed profanities while dramatically shaking our fists and sling shots at anyone and everyone we saw accusing them of being the rotten, dirty scoundrels that stole our boots. This over-the-top theatre was acted out with convincing effect, worthy of any sword wielding, gun slinging, swashbuckling Saturday matinee at the Roxy Theatre. We were greatly impressed.

For weeks the manhunt for the gumboot bandits continued unrelenting. Every school recess turned into shakedowns that would put a prison riot to shame. Lunch hour descended into brawls as the inquisition identified new perpetrators and they were summarily threatened, terrorized and pummeled. Repeatedly, the ugly mob turned on itself. Nobody was spared. Eventually everyone enjoyed multiple opportunities to be both accuser and accused, perpetrator and victim, hangman and hanged. Boy justice at its very best!

The only thing that united the pack was the lust for revenge. And unless you’ve seen it yourself there is nothing scarier than a pack of savage, ruthless, cursing, bootless boy Scouts hell bent for blood and guts and eternal glory. And Slick and I were the hunted. Every second of every day, we lived in mortal dread. But then so did every other Scout. Everyone was guilty until the real perpetrators were caught out and hung from the yardarm, drawn and quartered, flushed through the culverts. All of the above!

Stage Five: Attack, Attack, Attack. Slick and I kept up our loud, boisterous attacks. We had no choice. It was do or die. At lunch time and after school we joined the gang of boys digging through the debris field left all along the creek, screaming and howling along with the rest of our pack. We pried and pulled the tangled strips of rubber out of the muck and rubble and retrieved other bits and pieces stuck high in the branches of trees. The rubbish trail led all the way down to the Athabasca where the river was still running high with chunks of ice and flood still rushing down from the mountains and on to the Mackenzie River and the Beaufort Sea.

Stage Six: Guerrilla Warfare: Infiltrate, Befuddle and Confuse. Despite our constant fear of detection and the unpleasant and inconvenient death that was sure to follow, we still needed gumboots ourselves. We were boys after all. And, we reasoned, there were two perfectly good pairs of boots stashed under the shed. This fact kept nagging us as we tromped through the cold mud of spring, prime time for gumboots. We, of course, didn’t dare wear perfectly good gumboots anywhere for fear of the avenging hordes. So, what to do? Evil boy genius, once again.

Slick and I sneakily traded boots with each other. He grabbed the two lefts and I took the two rights. We checked and triple checked the “Rs” and “Ls”, just to be sure. Wearing boots of significantly different sizes added to the deceit. Clever beyond words, we were. Within about six steps, however we both had humungous blisters, throbbing bunions, pinched toes and club feet from the mismatched boots. But we definitely fit in with the rest of the troop who were also limping and gimping and thumping around town in whatever manner of boots and shoes they could salvage or rob from one another. And at least we had gumboots, unlike so many of our buddies who were now sloshing around the spring mudholes in canvas runners or flip flops, or horror of horrors, their Sunday-school brogues.

Stage Seven: Never Retreat; Never Surrender. Thus, in our shared misery with our fellow Scouts, we passed scrutiny of the vengeful, carnivorous mob. But we knew our luck could change in an instant. One small slip up and we were done for. For the next few weeks every boy scrutinized every pair of gumboots that clobbered by looking for their missing kicks. Roadblocks and impromptu barricades were set up all around town armed by the pack and their conscripts and hired mercenaries. The mud room at school was inspected three or four times a day to try and reunite boots and boys. Pretty darned futile and pathetic, I’ll admit, but it does show that even beastie boys possess a primitive sense of justice.

So convincing were we that I think we even started to believe that we were the victims instead of the perpetrators. The Donald himself could have taken lessons from our Viking playbook. We became totally confident that we had managed to deceive the entire town. Very smug we were. And as every tyrant and school yard bully comes to know, smugness, sure as anything, is what’ll bring you down.

Stage Eight: Never Confess. Never Apologize. Inevitably, it was our turn to face the court martial presided over by the dreaded, all-powerful Scout Disciplinary Tribunal, three of the grimmest looking Scoutmasters you could possibly imagine, one each from Hinton, Jasper and Edson. Their job – get to the bottom of the bedlam in town – whip the troop back into shape – restore order to the universe. They were perfect for the mission. Scoutmaster clones they were. Right out of typecasting. Lean, fit, chiseled faces, steely eyes and brush cuts and all so damned, deadly earnest. Damned scary that personal attribute. Very intimidating to those of us who weren’t and aren’t possessed of it.

Their sleeves and chests and pointy hats were bedecked with the full regalia that international Scouting offered. Yards of brightly coloured cloth badges and pounds of brass, silver and gold medals. Multi-colored scarves with intricately woven brown leather woggles. White lanyards dangled around their necks with special edition compasses and the biggest, shiniest whistles you could possibly imagine. Wow, I marvelled, who the hell has that much spit for whistle polish and still enough left over for their tall leather boots? Veritable spit machines they were. These three were obviously veterans of countless worldwide rallies, conferences and jamborees – and, undoubtedly, many disciplinary tribunals too.

Slick and I stood smartly at attention in front of their table our knobby knees shaking in our mismatched boots, a key prop in our defence strategy. Even Scruffy was shivering and cowering at our feet. Oh, yes, my Friend, our fate was in the hands of these three grim-reaper Scoutmasters. But, what we feared – infinitely more than even the most grievous penalty they could possibly dispense – were the unspeakable horrors awaiting us at the hands of the rabid mob gathered outside the hall. Any guilty verdict that came down in court would undoubtedly unleash the pent-up wrath of the murderous hordes that impatiently lay in wait outside of each and every interrogation or trial. The banging of broken hockey sticks on garbage-can lids reverberated throughout the hall. And the blood-curdling wolf howls and cannibalistic chants of “Blood, Blood, Blood.” “Bones, Bones, Bones.” And, “Skulls, Skulls, Skulls” were rising to a fever pitch. Hanging from the gallows tree would be too kind a fate for any scout judged guilty here. And believe you me, this swarming vengeful horde had no shortage of ingenious punishments they were eager to meet out on anyone convicted for this crime of the century.

Stage Nine: Play Stupid. (Let them Think They’re Smarter Than You. Act even more stoopider than you really are.) “Well, troopers do you know why you’ve been summoned here today? asked the Leader from Hinton, in an ominous sounding voice, oozing with disdain. “Promotion to Queen’s Scouts? I chirped, meekly, thinking some timely wise cracking might ease the tension and win us some friends. “Don’t get smart with us troooooperrr; you know why you’re here.” Very bad start to our trial!

Stage Ten: Deny, Deny, Deny. Being seasoned hands at hourly interrogations over the past weeks, we immediately launched into a well-rehearsed flurry of denials arm waving, head shaking denials and shotgun blasts of our best alibis, each one better and more convincing than the last. They weren’t buying it.

Stage Eleven: The Ambush or Sneak Attack. “We are outraged”, I shouted. “Outraged,” Slick, added for emphasis, with no clue where this was going, but with enough smarts to cover my back. “We demand justice,” I declared. “We want to talk to your boss, whosever the chief guy on top.” “Call him up!”, Slick said as boldly as he could muster, but his voice was quavering and cracking. They icily stared us down.

Stage Twelve: Go Berserk! We were now beginning to panic. No choice but to call on the most terrifying of all Viking battle strategies, The Berserker. We launched into our wildest, craziest performance ever. Incoherent ranting and raving. Crazy talk. Total Bonkers! More stone-cold silence. Nothing worse for a Berserker than to slam into an impenetrable battlement of wordless contempt and scorn.

“Stage Thirteen: Bebrejde Dine Lille Søster” Total desperation now. No choice but to employ the Berserker’s Top-Secret Weapon, the defence of last resort. Written in secret runic code in the back of the Official Twelve-Step Viking Marauders Manual: “STAGE THIRTEEN”, Bebrejde Dine Lille Søster – or Blame Your Little Sister.” I had one split second to choose – Blame Joanie. Blame Carolyn. Blame Anybody. Blame Everybody. Blame Eds…!

“Its those Edsoners”, I blurted out, in an admittedly desperate act of yellow-bellied, lily-livered cowardice. At the mention of Edsoners, our standard, every-day, go-to scapegoats, Scruffy started barking uncontrollably. “Oh, yeah, they did it all right”, I shouted over the dog racket.  “Everybody says so.” I then started pitching out names of likely gumboot-stealing bandits from Edson: “Bill, Butch, Snake Eyes, Doug. The Shirley brothers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You gotta talk to those guys, all right. You just know they done it!

As quick on the draw as ever, Slick started slamming our historic rivals. Pure survival instinct. Pure tradition. “I bet every last one of them Edson kids is parading around town in our gumboots. Right now. Right this very instant. Especially those Switzers! Must be a hundred of them. A thousand. And they’re always doing stuff! Always up to something!”

The instant Slick said “Edson” again, then Scruffy truly lost it, barking, frothing and doing aerial dogwheels. In the midst of Scruffy’s total freakout furball frenzy, however, time suddenly slowed for me – ground to a halt – stood still. Frozen.

“Oh, hell! Oh, hell, Oh, hell”, I muttered deep inside my sorry-ass carcass, as my blood turned to icy slush. “Oh, Man. Oh, Man. We just totally blew it!” Slick had just punched a gaping hole in our otherwise masterful rhetorical argument. How the hell could them Edsoners be decked out in our boots if the creek outside was stuffed full of ‘em? “Dammmmnnnn!”

Quick! My turn to cover for Slick…. “The boots in the creek are probably all the ones that didn’t fit anybody,” I blurted out frantically. But Slick and I both knew we were rhetorically sunk. “Bloody, damned boot robbers from Edson”, I squeaked out in a final, pathetic quavering voice. The Tribunal had grimly stared us down and turned us into blathering idgits. God they were good. Damned good! The bass drum of the condemned started booming in the judgement hall, the terrible throbbing sound only the guilty, the condemned, and the eternally damned can hear: “DOOM. DOOM, DOOM.”

The Scoutmaster from Edson scowled the most sinister condescending scowl. BANG! went his fist on the table. “Who said anything about gumboots? His face was purple with big green veins jumping all over it. “You’re here about the cussssssing,” he hissed through his teeth. “The cussssssing… AND, the curssssssing!” And then all three gave us the most god-awful collective stink eye you ever did see. Oh, my Friend, it was a loathsome, fearful site to behold as they held us in that serpent’s gaze. We were struck dumb.

Slick and I stood there for an eternity our mouths gaped open and brows scrunched up in a word-sucking seizure. My brain was in overload, a fuse had blown. “Whaaaaaaaaaa???”, I struggled to process it all. Slick and I finally shot off another of those instantaneous sidelong bandit glances. “You mean”, I finally sputtered tentatively. “You mean this isn’t about the gumboots?” “CUSSING”, the Tribunal roared back in perfect unison. “AND the cursing!”, re-emphasized the Edson judge.

So, now, get this, Friend. Apparently, our fervent swearing and profaning over the previous weeks had been duly observed and reported on by many of the most outstanding citizens of Hinton the Good. They were mightily affronted by our, admittedly impressive, Huck Finn vocabulary and especially our outstanding oratorical delivery and dramatic flourishes. And, believe me, for an Alberta bush town, that’s saying something!

“We’ve had complaints!”, said the Scoutmaster from Jasper, emphatically thumping two red folders each stuffed to overflowing with incriminating testimonials and official complaints.

We stood there stunned, as this whole unexpected turn of events slowly sunk in. “You’ve got to be kidding, right?”, I thought to my witless self. Like, instead of being busted for creating the whole darned gumboot debacle and subsequent worldwide mayhem, we were being taken down for, what… Like, cussing???

“What the, h – e – double toothpicks?”, I muttered under my breath, earning a quick elbow to the ribs from Slick.”

Obviously, we were as thick as turnips, so the Hinton Scoutmaster, resolutely clarified the charges against us. “You’ve been found guilty, he sneered, of “Language and Behavior Unbecoming of a Scout”! His voice faded into the distance, as he cited from the International Scouting Code of Ethics; Section One, Number…. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….

A rumbling started deep inside my gizzards then shot up my spine until a cherry bomb burst in my boy-addled brain. “Holy crap, we got away with it!!!”, knowing my co-defendant would be brain bombing the same conclusion. We were just about to jump up and down and slap out some high fives, when the Tribunal slammed us back down to earth. “Aaannnddd…,” the Hinton Trooper snarled in slow motion. “Aaannnddd, don’t bother returning to the pack!” A dramatic pause, to make sure his point hit home. “You’re obviously not Scout material.” All three blasted their whistles, in a vaporous cloud of spittle and spray. Then, in perfect synch, sounded out: “DISMMMMMMMIIISSSSSSEEDDDDD!” 

We snapped a salute and bolted for the door. As we scurried past him, I overheard the Scoutmaster from Jasper snide, just loud enough for us to hear, “I smell a rat!” “Yeah! Two rats and a rat dog,” snorted the Trooper from Edson.”

We burst out of the clubhouse double doors into the sweet air of liberty, our fists punching the air in triumph! Still kicking. Unhung. Alive. Alive. Alive! Jubilantly, we charged straight into the slack-jawed vigilante mob waiting ravenously outside. The mob parted like the Red Sea before us. You can’t possibly imagine the shock and profound disappointment in the eyes of that blood-thirsty mob at the sight of our rapturous faces racing by. Heart breaking. Pitiful. Nevertheless, we didn’t slow to console or stop to comfort them. Oh, no. We just kept a running… And, Man, did we ever run.

“What the heck just happened?” croaked an incredulous Slick when we were out of earshot. “Hell, if I know, Man” I responded equally flabbergasted and equally breathless. We switched gumboots back and forth a few times while on the fly, hopping on one foot at a time, but barely breaking stride. We skidded to a stop on Hardisty Avenue, above the culverts, Scene of the crime. We scanned our surroundings – north, south, east, west, up and down the street, up and down the creek. No posse on our tail. No ambush in waiting.

A swirling black cloud rising high above the clubhouse behind us explained why. The tornado was shot through with fists of fury, slashing hockey sticks, horse dung, chicken feathers, lidless garbage cans and the occasional tenderfoot being flung into near-earth orbit. The hugely disappointed mob had once again turned on each other. The sea of rage had rushed back in swallowing them whole and spitting them out again in all directions. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

A churning maelstrom back there, perhaps. But, for us, a victory twirlwind! Jumps, spins, cartwheels, kicks and a flurry of high fives, back slaps, karate chops and shoulder punches – along with a prancing dog. The Berserker’s Dervish, they call it. (Or, The Berserker’s Waltz, in the more formal version seen at weddings, viking burials, sock hops and other co-ed events.)

“Did you hear that Scruffy?”, Slick shouted over the excited yipping and pirouetting. “You hear that? They called you a RatDog! How damned cool is that?” We yipped, yelled, tarzan-yodelled and howled some more. Victory was ours! Of course, Slick and I were ecstatic. Who wouldn’t be? Kicked out of Scouts for cussing!?!? “Wow! Can you believe it?”, We kept saying this over and over again. Even as shocked and intrinsically stoopid as we were, the marvel we experienced slowly, slowly started to sink in. Holy crap! We had just been handed a total Get Out of Jail Free card.

Obviously, the mob was even denser than we were. They foolishly assumed the dreaded Scout Tribunal had cleared us of drowning their gumboots, when the court had instead nailed us on the infinitely more serious charges of “Language and Behavior Unbecoming of a Scout” – an offence so heinous in their eyes it would surely have Lord B-P himself rise from his tomb to smite us with his spit whistle or leather woggle. We had escaped the executioners. Plus, our street creds as true-blue bad asses had been supremely exalted because we had been thrown out of Scouts for cussing. We had even managed to slag some Edsoners, although this was, admittedly, not one of our most dazzling, chivalrous or neighbourly performances of late. Nevertheless, we awarded ourselves the rare and greatly coveted boy prize, “The Triple Whammy”. You gotta admit, it doesn’t get much better than that!

Stay Tuned For Saga 3 – “THE AFTERMATH” – The Exciting Conclusion of this Series

Coming Soon to Your Favorite Blog Post: wayneswanderings.ca