A galvanized tub lay empty on the sandy bank where the river made a lazy curve, its waters surging on occasion to the nether sweep of the bend. A few small ripples reached the sucking at its lower rim, calling it to the wash of the current. It submitted so much as a handful of sand taken one by one until the tub lost ground, first tipping, then rising, and sliding from its perch on the dry land. It hugged to the shore as if to stay, but had yielded too far to the wayward current, and bobbing along swam to the indolent calling of the river.
The owner of that tub—a grizzled man in his sixties—looked up in time to see the thing belly down where the river cradled to the shore drawing the tub away as if it held it in a fond embrace. He held his Bible in his hands, for he had been reading Ecclesiastes as he had pledged himself to a pure life after years of debauchery. He stretched his legs, but losing ground on the tub flung his Bible in the brush, and cursed God, for he took his name in vain. He raised his voice in angry disputation with his God: "Why have you done this to me… taken the only tub I have, and so left me as much as destitute? No other father would so abuse his child.” So, it happened that this wayward tub by its very impassivity caused others to fall from Grace.
The tub made the bend, hovering at the outer sweep of the current drifting in the sunlight as splendid as any boat of the trade. There, on the bank, on either hand, the wondrous forest ran, and there, the quaint farmhouses, the tilled fields, the sweet encumbrances of the land as sewn by the hand of man. Now, and again, a melodious bell, the sad whistle of some machine proving the betterment of the race—and then, the crackle of gunfire shooting from a beautiful copse of trees.
All that morning, a band of gunmen had sequestered in that copse scrutinizing the other shore for their enemy whom they decried as ungodly, and meant to teach them a lesson as written in the Word. One of them saw the tub, and so quick as one thought chases another, and for no other reason, he decided to put a hole in it, a careless couple of rounds which went astray skipping off the surface of the water, and whining into the opposite woods.
As quick as the shots resounded, fire blazed from the opposite woods where the enemy had been waiting for such an opening. A fusillade rang from bank to bank as the tub sailed past, but the bullets found their targets as blood flowed where the just, and unjust fell. One of the dying men croaked: “Hell! I died for nothing more than trying to plug a tub.”
Two ducks flying close in the airy currents above the river caught the glint of the tub in the sunlight. It seemed a curious thing, and no more comprehended in an instant as nothing to eat, or useful in their ample lives, they glided over it seeking a refuge in their pond they had left for a pleasant journey in the glory of the day. In languid, fluid motion they lofted without much occasion for the querulous event.
Several boys saw the tub as they swam naked in the eddies of the river. They stopped their plunging in the water to stare at a big tub sailing as an invisible hand steered it. “Hey, that’s weird,” one said. “Don’t seem right. I bet there’s something in it.”
“What’d ya mean? Like a body? I heard ‘bout people being killed, and stuffed in a barrel, and put afloat in the river so no one would know where they came from. Anyway, don’t wanna find out?”
Later, they told their father they had seen a body floating in a tub. He questioned them, and convinced they told the truth, called in the police. A search the night long did not find the tub, and it was assumed it had sunk. In fact, it had drifted under some willows until dislodged the following morning. However, the boys arose to stardom in the legends of that place.
The river, by its accustomed morning tide pulled the tub, sweeping it from the willow bowery, but several boughs had twisted in its handles by the gently gyrating tug of the current. Now, they dragged like oars on either side as to give the appearance of someone hidden in the tub making a makeshift paddle.
A man squatting on a log with his line in the water saw the strange craft turning this way and that as though a feeble oarsman sought to bring it to shore. He gave a second thought to jumping into the rescue as he surmised, for he could not swim.
However, a headline popped into his head: “Man, who could not swim saves child adrift in a tub”, and the compulsion to give all in the name of doing good swamped his better caution. He plunged into the river flailing arms and legs to haul the helpless victim to shore.
In mounting despair, he saw the tub glide away while he gulped water and air, and perceived he had lost everything: He’d lost the race, lost the heroic salvation of the headlines; and now, must lose his life. He thrashed the water, and managed a cry or two for help and with eyes rolling cursed his folly.
He sank, but no more than a yard where his churning feet struck the bottom. They took hold, and shot him toward the bank where he lay gasping and vomiting water and thought of nothing so precious as his next breath.
The river flowed in its solemn way, and the sun went up on the left to hang in the circling dome of heaven to go down on the right, and the morning and the evening were another day. Through idylls, through mystic glades, through wilderness whose haunts seldom visited by men the tub silently went. The willow fronds dragged in its wake disguising its mortal frame, for it had been fashioned by hand, and must in time degrade like dust to dust. In sweet unconsciousness of its fate drifted on the breast of the dreamless river, for neither knew sin. Oh, it had many ventures, but none so extraordinary, or mundane as to make a difference.
Several natives of the wilderness were awestruck by a singular event they witnessed with the tub. A swirling eddy in the river caused by a huge snag sent the tub spinning in a violent motion, flinging out the willow boughs to make an aureole about its rim. The natives saw it in moonlight, and shaken by the specter of what they thought to be a maiden rising from the river scrambled to their encampment with the tale. It came to pass that thereafter each year, a maiden was sacrificed at the spot to appease the river goddess.
Years later, a missionary convinced the tribe they had seen the virgin Mary ascending to heaven. Consequently, they consecrated the place with a tabernacle and a gold altar the natives slaved to build. Imbued with the doctrine, the natives went forth to kill any who did not subscribe to it.
The tub, long since, had gone its errant way within the kind caress of the river until at last, one day, the backwash of the current spun it onto a sandy beach where it lodged as in the beginning. Two natives of that wilderness came on the tub one morning, and saw that it had the resemblance of things they had seen when visiting the civilized communities, for it might have been used to get about. Truly, it seemed the remnant of some vehicle the townsfolk called a car. They hung it between them to capitalize on their find, for they had learned something of money.
For days, they journeyed in the wilderness at last entering a place known as the village. Of course, they presented a most engaging sight to the village folk who thought them first to be mad, but afterward, thieves. “Why, there’s no telling how much stuff they could steal, and haul away in that tub.”
When the natives perceived these folk meant to kill them, they thought the tub to be a devil and flinging it away, fled to the wilderness, and thereafter avoided any object of similar shape, or order.
The villagers went about searching for the owner of the tub, and finding no one who claimed it dropped it off at the ramshackle cabin of an old man—a ne’er-do-well. He lay in a drunken stupor, and they placed the tub on his porch. “Maybe, he’ll start washing his clothes, and take a bath, and go to church. The Lord worketh in strange ways.”
Now, the old man was that one who lost the tub, and awakening from his delirium saw it high and dry on his front porch. He rubbed his eyes, and the tub remained as no fiction of his drink. In tottering steps, he approached the tub, running his fingers ever so gently over its shape. Then, he fell on his knees sobbing: “The thing I had lost, and cursed God because of it, he has returned to me, and it is some way from the river. Oh, my God! How have I forsaken thee."
He was struck so passionately that he sought his Bible in the brush, holding it to his heart, and praising God went prowling along the streets. Such changing of a sinner none of that village had ever seen, for he rose as from his ashes to fly in the vigor of his youth. He put away the sin, and the wages of sin, and all who saw him declared: “Now, here is God made manifest.”
God blessed him in his increase as those without hope flocked to his teaching, and he profited in his labor. For collections at his sermons he used the tub, and over and over again it filled to the rim, and many were the blessings showered on the poor and needy.
He died in due season reverenced in the village, and far and wide. In the churchyard where he had drawn so many to the Lord, the folk placed the tub as a monument to those who love God. Still, it fills to its rim with the pennies of the poor, and gratuities of the rich. Scribbled in letters around its rim by persons unknown, or perhaps an angel, are these words—
I will provide for thee in a way ye thought not of.
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