Suckow's "The Crick" reconsidered

Seemed a little overdone, the field artillery there in the park in the middle of a town overrun by the river it's lived with since the very earliest days of Sioux County colonization. All around, really, there was little more than destruction, houses marked with yellow ribbons and red notices on front doors. There was sufficient sadness all around; I didn't need to be reminded of war.

That howitzer is in a park in the middle of town, and although you can't quite make it out in the background of the picture, the lay of the land makes clear that once upon a time, many years ago, a creek ran merrily along to the Big Sioux, no more than a block away.

For years already, I have wanted to assume that that creek, now almost entirely filled in to ward off even more flooding, was the place where the girls--big ones and little ones--in Ruth Suckow's "The Crick," took such great delight. Suckow spent a goodly portion of her girlhood here, right here, somewhere very close, born into the manse of the church where her father held forth weekly.

It's hard not to imagine a creek inhabiting that wide space that runs through the park. I'm guessing that long ago the creek was disarmed, after yearly floods pushed the Big Sioux up and into its tributaries. Someone determined flood control could at least keep the heart of the village from drowning, so a huge berm was constructed a block west. The crick--as Suckow remembered it--was forever gone.

But before that, in a wilder time, the big girls waded in here, the little girls dreaming of someday being brave enough to do likewise; the crick offered an authentic Hawarden right-of-passage.

They longed for summer, for the hot dreamy hours when they explored beyond the bend where the weeds grew rank and high. Fearfully they would extend their orbit a little farther and farther, knowing they might be cut off from the safety of the house by Cricket Larson and those other girls from down the crick; but they had to experiment.

Down came the rains and up came a flood that threatened the entire village, both sides of the crick's inhabitants. The flood in Suckow's story must have been something akin to what happened here a month ago when it became clear to first responders that the river was up and rising. Delight is the girl at the heart of things, in all likelihood a member of Hawarden's sweetest children. Cricket Larson was on the other side, scrubby and poor and headed toward delinquency.

The story is very simple. A flood, right here at the place the crick once ran, pushed Cricket and Delight together, both homeless. They're pressed together in a safe house higher up the hill, forced by the mess outside to take mutual refuge. In the face of the storm, a friendship borne of mutual suffering grows.

Nice things happen in the writing of Ruth Suckow, but bad things happen too. Once the crick gets over its anger and pride and settles back into a playground, the score is clear: Delight's home--and her cat--made it through; Cricket's home was borne away by the Big Sioux. Delight, still a child, tries to measure out what happened in what she sees as God's way.

Delight's eyes were wide with awe. It was true, then. God, with a big curly beard and His arms spread out, sat on a cloud watching. He had kept the water from their house. She could not help feeling the fine importance of being specially looked out for by God. But it was mean of God to have let Cricket's house – and the chickens! – be carried away. She wanted God to have sent a little board down the crick for the chickens to float on.

When summer comes, things move back to normal. Cricket's mom does Delight's family laundry and shows up at the back door to pick up what needs to be washed. Cricket sometimes come with, but when Delight sees her, she picks up her cat, almost in defense, and tell Bluebell what's plain as anything in her mind:

Now when Cricket came to the back door of the parsonage, with the washing in a clothes basket covered with a blue apron on her little wagon, she stared at Delight with bright hostile eyes. Delight picked up Bluebell from his snug place on the chair and stood clutching him. When Cricket was gone, Delight whispered insolemn warning:

"No, Bluebell, I can't let you out. I can't let you go where that Cricket Larson might get you. Because she's mean. She throws rocks. She lives 'way down the crick, and she plays with those other girls."

I couldn't help wonder about this other flood, just a month ago, and the havoc it wreaked once more on the streets of Hawarden, a town now stacked up with trailers. I'd like to think it didn't have to be the way things went with Delight and Cricket. I'd like to think maybe Suckow was wrong.

That's what I couldn't help thinking when I stood there just out of range of that howitzer.