The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel (13 page)

I tie the old, dull hatchet on one of the saddles, and then the last matter I try to figure is the mule. Less chance of them men catching up to me if I got hooves under me and they don’t. If I try to take that mule with me, he’s likely to carry on and fuss with the horses and make noise, though. I can turn him loose, and if the luck’s on me, he’ll wander off in the woods looking for fodder. If the luck ain’t, he’ll linger near the home barn.

Opening the stall door, I say to that half-starved old soul, “Shush now. If you’re smart, you won’t ever come back here. These’re bad men. They done you in a terrible way.” The hide of that poor mule looks like the skin of the old folks who had come as marriage dowry from the Loach plantation. The Loaches used to brand the little ones when they turned a year old. Said it made them harder to steal. Branded the runaways, and any slave they bought, too.

This poor old mule’s been hot marked a dozen different times, including by both armies. He’s got to carry all that with him forever. “You’re a free mule now,” I tell him. “You go be free.”

He follows out of the barn when I lead the horses away, but I shoo him off, so he trails at a distance while we pick up our poke and wind out from that cabin and through the woods, working inland. The hound follows, too, and I let him. “Guess you’re free, too,” I tell him when we’re well enough away. “No bad men like that oughta have a dog, either.”

Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane’s heads flop loose against stirrups. I hope nobody’s dead or dying, but there’s no help for it. Not one thing I can do, except get us far from here, be careful, quiet, keep my ears peeled, keep off the wagon trail, stay clear of sump holes, or swamp cabins, or towns, or wagons, or folks. Hide from everybody till Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane can talk on their own. Ain’t no way of me explaining what looks like a colored boy, toting two white girls, half dressed and tied belly-down on horses.

I’ll be dead before I can even try.

BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987

I slip silently through the house, tracking the sound. I picture mice, squirrels, and the giant nutria rats I’ve seen swimming in the canals and pools of stagnant water during my walks.

Images of ghosts and ghouls and hideous insect-like aliens percolate through my thoughts. Ax murderers and vagrants. I’ve always been a horror movie junkie, proud of the fact that I can watch things like that and never take them seriously. Even after years of dating, Christopher hated that I was too busy trying to figure out the next scene and plot twist to actually be scared.
You’re so stinking analytical,
he always complained.
It’s no fun.

It’s all just pretend. Smoke and mirrors. Don’t be such a sissy,
I’d tease. Growing up as a latchkey kid, you can’t panic at every little noise.

But, here in this place, with generations of history I can only guess at, I feel my own vulnerability with strange acuity. Being alone in a shadow-filled old house is different than watching one on TV.

The sounds emanating from the kitchen area are definitely not those of someone stepping casually through the door. Whatever’s there, he, she, or
it
does not want to be seen. The movements are quiet, cautious, deliberately careful…and so am I. I want to see
it
before it sees me.

At the butler’s pantry doorway, I stop and search the long rows of tall mahogany cabinets and well-worn countertops where servants must have staged elaborate meals. The mirrors on the opposing sideboards merely reflect one another and the upper cabinets. Nothing unusual or threatening…except…

Shifting to gain a better view, I watch in consternation as a skinny rear end in jeans with silver embroidery backs its way out of the lower-left corner cabinet.

What in the world?

I recognize the jeans and color-block T-shirt. I’ve seen them in my fourth-hour class. Albeit not as much as I would like to.

“LaJuna Carter!” I say before she has even straightened. She whirls about, stands at attention. “
What
are you doing?”

I don’t ask if she is supposed to be here. No need. It’s clear enough from the look on that face.

She effects a jaunty chin bob that reminds me of Aunt Sarge. “I ain’t hurtin’ nothing.” Long, thin fingers circle her skinny hip bones. “How’d you think I knew about all the books? Anyway, the judge
said
I can come. Back before he died, he told me, ‘Stop by whenever you want, LaJuna.’ Wasn’t like anybody else ever came…unless they want somethin’. All the judge’s kids and grandkids, kept too tied up with their houses on the lake, takin’ their boats out fishing. Got to go sit on the beach, because they own places there, too. Can’t let
that
go to waste. You have
all
them
houses,
you are a busy person. No time to go sit in some old place with some old man stuck in a wheelchair.”

“The judge doesn’t own this house anymore.”

“I don’t steal anything if that’s what you think.”

“That isn’t what I said, but…how did you get in, anyway?”

“How did
you
?”

“I have a key.”

“I don’t need a key. Judge showed me
all
this house’s secrets.”

I’m intrigued. How could I not be? “I took your suggestion about the books—thank you for that, by the way—and got permission to come here and see what might be useful in getting a classroom library together.”

Her eyes widen around their pewter centers. She’s surprised and…dare I assume…impressed that I’ve managed to breach the ramparts of the Gossett world. “You
find
anything?”

My first inclination is to gush about the book hoard. The library is an amalgamation of the generations of residents in this house. The dust of their reading lives has been left behind like sedimentary layers of sandstone, year upon year, decade upon decade. New books and old ones that probably haven’t been touched in a century. Some may be first editions, or even signed. My former boss at Book Bazaar would be weeping on the floor in sheer ecstasy by now.

But the teacher in me is possessed by a completely different agenda. “I haven’t been here long…because
I
went to school today. That makes
one
of us, doesn’t it?”

“I was sick.”

“Speedy recovery, huh?” I squat down and stick my head in the cabinet she seemingly just crawled out of. Something’s not normal about it, but I can’t figure out what. “Look, LaJuna, I know your mother works quite a bit, and that you help out with your little brothers and sisters, but you need to be in class.”

“You oughta mind your own business.” The sharp-edged retort hints that she may often be in the position of defending her mother. “I hand my papers in. You got plenty of kids who don’t do their work. Go hassle them.”

“I do…well, I try.”
Not that it works.
“Regardless, I don’t think you should be sneaking in here.”

“Mr. Nathan wouldn’t care, even if he did know. He’s not so bad like his uncles that own the company now. All their snotty wives and all their snotty kids think they run this town. My Great-Aunt Dicey says Sterling was different. Nice to people. Aunt Dicey was right here making lunch for the harvest crew the day Sterling got sucked up in the sugarcane combine. She stayed overnight to look after Robin and Nathan while their daddy was life-flighted off. After he died, his wife packed up the kids and moved away to some mountain. Aunt Dicey knows
all
the business about the Gossetts. She kept house for the judge forever. Used to bring me out here when she took care of me. That’s how I knew the judge and that’s how I knew Miss Robin.”

I picture the players in my mind, imagine the long-ago afternoon when everyday life went horribly wrong.

“Nobody wants this house, anyhow,” LaJuna goes on. “Judge’s son died out there in the field. Judge died three years ago in his own bed. Miss Robin died two years ago, just walkin’ up the stairs one night. Her heart quit. Aunt Dicey says that in every generation of Gossetts there’s blue babies, and they had to do surgery on Miss Robin’s heart when she was born. But my mama says Miss Robin saw a ghost and it’s what killed her. Mama told me there’s a curse on this place, and
that’s
how come nobody wants it. So you might best get what you need of the books and get out.” She shrugs toward the door in a way that lets me know she’d like to limit my tenancy on her turf.

“I’m not the least bit superstitious. Especially when books are at stake.” I lean farther into her point-of-entry cabinet, try to discern how she managed that.

“You oughta be. Can’t read if you’re dead.”

“Who says?”

She snorts. “You go to church?”

Elbowing in beside me, she grumbles, “Move your head.” I’m barely out of the way before she flips a lever behind the cabinet frame, causing the shelves to fold upward and reveal a hatch underneath. “I told you…this house has secrets.”

An ancient-looking ladder descends into the raised basement below.

A huge gray rat scurries across a bit of discarded wrought iron garden furniture, and I jerk my head out of the hole. “You came in through
there
?” I catch myself nervously brushing off my hands and arms as I stand up and LaJuna lets the cabinet fall back into place.

She rolls a glance my way. “Those rats’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

“I doubt that.”

“Rats are
always
scared. Unless maybe you’re sleeping, then you gotta watch out.”

I don’t even ask how she has come by that knowledge.

“The judge told me, in the old-old days, they’d bring food in through the basement and pass the trays up this hatch. That way, the kitchen slaves didn’t get seen by the guests in the dining room. In the war, the Gossetts could use it to sneak away to the canebrakes if the Yankee soldiers came to arrest people for helping the Confederates. The judge
loved
to tell tales to little kids. He was a nice man. Helped Aunt Dicey get me out of foster care when my mama had to go away to prison.”

She says it so naturally, I’m dumbfounded. To cover that up, I change the subject. “Listen, LaJuna, I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise me you won’t sneak in here anymore, you can come and help me in the afternoons…with sorting the library books, I mean. I know you like books. I saw you with a copy of
Animal Farm
in your back pocket.”

“It ain’t the worst book.” She scratches a sneaker along the floor. “Not the best book, either.”

“But…
only
if you’re in school when you’re supposed to be. I don’t want this to interfere.” She’s noticeably unimpressed, and so I try to sweeten the deal. “I need to get a good gauge on what’s in that library as quickly as I can before…” I swallow the rest of
before there’s trouble with the rest of the Gossetts.

A sly look comes my way. She knows. “Now, I
might
help you. Because of the judge. He would probably like it. But I got some conditions, too.”

“Fire away. We’ll see what we can settle on.”

“I can’t always come here. I’ll try. And I’ll try better about school, but lots of times, I need to keep the little kids for Mama. They sure can’t go stay with their daddies. Losers. It was Donnie that got Mama in trouble for the drugs. All
she
did wrong was be in the car. Next thing, there’s police dragging us off to the emergency children’s shelter, and Mama’s got three years in the pen. I’m just lucky I had a great-auntie on my daddy’s side who could keep me. The little kids don’t got that. Can’t let them go back in foster care again. So, if you’re out to get in our business, make trouble about my school and all, then I ain’t part of this book project.”

Or you,
her expression adds. “I need to know up front, though. Yes, or no.”

How can I make that promise?

How can I not?

“Okay…all right. Deal. But you have to keep up your end.” I offer a handshake, which she avoids by staying out of reach.

Instead, she adds a late-coming codicil to our agreement, “And you can’t tell nobody at school that I’m helping you.” She grimaces at the thought. “In the school, we ain’t friends.”

I take heart in the fact that this could mean that outside of school we
are
friends. “Deal,” I say, and reluctantly she steps closer, and we shake on it. “You’d probably be bad for my reputation anyway.”

“
Pppfff.
Miss Silva, I hate to break it to you, but your reputation can’t go anyplace but up from where it is.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Miss Silva, you stand there and read to us from that book and then ask us what we think about it and then give us a quiz. Every. Single. Day. It’s
boring.
”

“What do you think we should be doing?”

Lifting her palms, she turns and starts toward the library. “I dunno. You’re the teacher.”

I follow along as she moves confidently through the house, and we switch into project mode. Safer territory. “So, my thought about the books is to start a stack for ones we might use in a classroom library,” I tell her as we enter the room. “Anything from third or fourth grade level through high school.” The reality is that I’ve got kids who are years behind in their reading skills. “Newer books only, though. Nothing antique. Maybe we can clear off the desktop and start putting the antique ones there. Carefully. Old books are fragile. Let’s stack the classroom books over by those doors to the porch.”

“That’s the
gallery.
The judge liked to sit out there and read, when the flies and the skeeters weren’t bad,” LaJuna informs me. I watch as she steps over to peer out the doors as if she expects to find him there.

She studies the yard for a moment before she continues, “Back in the old-old days, little kid slaves had to stand there with feather fans and chase flies from the rich folks. And in the house, too, but in the dining room they had this old-timey ceiling fan called a punkah. You pulled it back and forth with a rope. They didn’t have any screens back then. Just sometimes you’d put cloth on the windows, but that was mostly in cabins like where the slaves lived. Those used to be right out back of the barn and the wagon shed. There was, like, a couple dozen. But folks moved the cabins away on big rollers, so they could sharecrop different patches of land on their own.”

I stand openmouthed, amazed, not only that she knows so much history, but that she recites it in such a matter-of-fact fashion. “Where did you learn all those things?”

She shrugs. “Aunt Dicey. And also the judge told me tales. Miss Robin did, too, after she moved in here. She was studying up on stuff about the place. I think she was writing a book or something before she died. She’d have Aunt Dicey, Miss Retta, other folks come out here, tell her what they remembered about Goswood. What tales their relatives passed down. Stuff the old people knew.”

“I asked Granny T to come to class and share those stories with us. Maybe you can talk her into it?” From the corner of my eye, I catch what looks like a spark, so I add, “Since
Animal Farm
really isn’t all that interesting.”

“I was just telling the truth.
Somebody’s
got to help you out.” Tucking her hands into her pockets, she takes a long breath and surveys the library. “Or else you’ll just leave like everybody does.”

A warm feeling settles into my chest. I do my best to hide it.

“Anyhow,” she goes on, crossing the room, “if you’re from around Augustine, and your last name is Loach, or Gossett, no matter what color you are, your way-back history goes to this place, some time or other. Your people didn’t get too far from where they started. Probably won’t, either.”

“There’s a whole big world outside Augustine,” I point out. “College and all kinds of things.”

“Right. Who’s got the money for that?”

“There are scholarships. Financial aid.”

“Augustine School’s for poor folks. The kind that stay put. What’re you gonna do with a college degree here anyhow? Aunt Sarge’s been to the army and got a college degree, too. You see what she’s doing.”

I don’t have a smooth answer, so I revert to library talk instead. “So, let’s stack classroom books over there. But…nothing that’s going to give us trouble with the parents. No steamy romances or hot-blooded Westerns. If there’s a high skin-to-clothes ratio on the cover, set it on the pool table for now.” One thing I learned in my student teaching is that trouble with the parents is the bane of a teacher’s existence. It is to be avoided at all costs.