I would climb into the bed and curl against his body, listening to the rain sifting through the branches of the big poplars, pattering on the tin roof of the canning house, and dripping into buckets and cans. My grandfather actually placed objects around the house to catch the drip from the eaves. I remember the soft "doc, doc," from an old bucket, the "ting, ting," of rusty cans and the faint drumming of the shingled roof, all blended into a symphony of percussions.

"Jerusalem oak seed," he would whisper. "Lespedeza and jimson weed," the beginning of his evocation to sleep. He didn't call it that, of course, but he believed that repeating the names of plants and flowers would produce a growing drowsiness. "Sweet juniper, sheep's tongue and love lies a-bleeding."

Once, I asked him if he liked the feather bed so much, why didn't he sleep in it all the time? "Moderation," he said, "like the preacher says. Some things are sweeter if they are taken in sensible doses." After a moment, he added, "Besides, Agnes would take it amiss."

There was a night when my grandfather woke me.
"Wake up, Harley. Wake up and listen." Instead of a soft drip and patter, there was a harsh discord of clattering and thunder. Wind shook the windows and the liquid sound of rushing water was everywhere.

"Cloudburst," he said, and we stumbled down the steps to the kitchen where he jiggled a dead light-switch.

"Power's out." I felt a rising excitement. This was not going to be an ordinary day! In moments, my grandmother appeared with a kerosene lamp,
and peered out the kitchen window. Then, my grandfather found his big three-celled flashlight and we were all on the front porch. Silver needles fell through the beam, and a loud gurgling came from the branch. We could see muddy water lapping at the foot-log. Our little branch was turning into a creek! When the slender beam was directed toward Painter Knob, it didn't go far. The rain was so thick, we couldn't see across the yard.
"Ain't seen one of these since I was a boy."

My grandmother retreated to the kitchen and in minutes I could smell coffee and frying bacon. I stayed on the porch listening to the hearty chuckles and thumps that came from the darkness.

By daylight, the creek had become a river! We watched logs, brush and barrels come bouncing down the holler, rush through our front yard and
disappear into the fog. I got pretty excited about the unique turn of events and started rushing back and forth on the porch, calling out the names of the items that whizzed by - pig pens, bushes with live possums in them, dead chickens and Willard Carnes' outhouse!

"Harley, go put some dry clothes on and stop acting like a fool," said my grandmother. "You seem to think this is fun." It was! The water was up in the yard now, a dark chocolate flood that swirled around the steps and ran through the big boxwoods around the house. By the time the rain stopped, most of the new corn in the bottom was on its way to the Tuckaseigee river. This was better than the Cherokee Fair! Suddenly, a large collection of barrels and buckets, followed by hundreds of jars rode by, the contents of somebody's can-house, and I tried to imagine their journey. From here to Cope Creek, then into Scott's Creek and then into the Tuckaseigee. The journey got a little vague after that, but I was pretty sure that the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico couldn't be far. Then what? France? Africa? Alpha Centuri?

Papaw went off to check on his oil truck which set fender-deep in the muddy water. Granny went to the barn to feed the cow, who, although well
out of danger, had been bawling mournfully all morning. That is when I decided to do it. In minutes, I had hauled all of my grandmother's canning
jars out of the canhouse, and I lined them up on the porch. I wrote each note in my Blue Horse notebook. Generally, they went like this:

I rolled each note like a scroll, put it in a Mason jar with a "seal-tight" rubber ring and screwed on the lid. Then, I threw them one by one, into the flood, and watched as they rode away on their way to the ocean.

My grandmother "took a fit." She canned a lot of stuff and was proud of her stock of jars. She used a lot of mayonnaise jars that summer. I was pretty optimistic for a couple of weeks and spent a lot of time on the porch looking down the trail that ran through the swamped cornfield, waiting for someone with one of those jars - a kid about my age, maybe with an elderberry popgun, a cigar box full of marbles and a complete set of Captain Marvels.
"Why are you staring down the trail, Harley? Expecting somebody?"
Granny would rock in her old White Oak rocker and shell peas.
"No, just looking."
"Think somebody might bring some of my jars back?" Sometimes,
she would tell me, "The only person who is likely to come up that trail looking for you is the folks down at the insane asylum at Morganton. Sometimes, they come looking for little boys with what your teachers call
"an overly active imagination" and they give them....the cure."

"What's the cure?"

"I've been told that it is mostly hard work. They make you hoe corn,
chop wood, milk cows....all them things you don't like to do."

"How would they know about me?"
"Somebody would have to write them a letter, I guess. It would be
a letter that went by post office, not by Mason jar. Now, why don't you make yourself useful and go get a load of stovewood for your poor old Granny."

I figured she was "just funning," but I got the wood anyway.

POSTSCRIPT

As the years passed, I still thought about the jars. Sometimes, I had elaborate dreams about them. In my teens, I sometimes dreamed that the jar-bearers finally appeared, but now, they were usually female and looked a lot like Debra Paget in "Broken Arrow." Captain Marvel wasn't as important as he had been, and in my dreams, Debra's clothing was getting skimpy. The years passed, flowing away like the little stream in front of my grandparents' home. I went to college, married, taught school, got divorced, taught college and got divorced again. Now, I am back, sitting on that same porch in Rhodes Cove, and on summer evenings, I sit in the old white-oak rocking chair and watch the light fade in the Balsam mountains. I still dream of the Mason jars and see a weary traveler who finally arrives at the foot of the steps. The face is indistinct now, but the traveler says, "It has taken a long time to find you, Harley. Do you still want to play?"

The attic is still up there, of course, still filled with trapped wasps and forgotten relics; but the one I dream about is the one with the featherbed (gone now) and the soft rain and the warmth of my grandfather's body - and the sense of security that he gave me in the warm darkness. Sometimes, on rainy summer nights, I climb the stairs and unroll a sleeping bag on the floor.
"Lespedeza and jimson weed," I say. "Jerusalem oak seed."