Little Bell makes a discovery

Little Bell makes a discovery

fiction
edward w pritchard

Little Bell's grandfather let her play at the back of the farm along the Cuyahoga River. Her friend Jamie who was nine always brought his pocket knife along for their protection, which worried her because she was afraid he would fall on it and cut off his finger. Today Bell was alone and was studying the terrain along the back of the farm leading up to the Cuyahoga River.

Her Grandfather had told her that the Iroquois Indians used to come to this part of Ohio to fight with other tribes. They called the River here Cuyahoga because it coiled and furled around and around. Her Dad called it a meandering River.

Bell was drawing and had a pad and a couple of colored pencils. Both pad and pencils were put aside for now for Bell had made a discovery. There was an indentation in the brush and weeds that lead up to the River and Bell had followed the indentation and trail through the fields and brush and eventually it came out on the main road through Clinton, Ohio which is where her Grandfather lived. She deduced that animals must have came down the path she discovered to drink at the River a long time ago and people must have used the animal paths to build the original roads through this area. Unlike the River which meandered and swerved the animal path and main road were very straight through here. Bell ran back to the farm to tell her Grandfather about her discovery.

Later at School when the class had a picture to draw of themselves the teacher had called her Dad because her picture was the only one where her face didn't fill the entire front of the paper the children were given to draw on. Little Bell had drawn herself as a small part of a wooded landscape. The landscape was colored and there was a river at one end and a road at the other. Her Grandfather put the picture on his refrigerator and kept it there for a long time until the magnets holding it up got ruined.
end