The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel (14 page)

“Miss Silva, you don’t gotta worry about parents. Around here, they got bigger things to care about than what their kids are doin’ in school.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“You’re stubborn, you know that?” She flicks a bemused glance my way, studies me for a minute.

“I’m an optimist.”

“I guess.” Hooking a toe on a bottom shelf, she starts climbing upward the way tree frogs scale my windows on their suction-cup toes.

“What are you
doing
?” I move into position to catch her if she falls. “There’s a ladder over here. Let’s move it.”

“That ladder can’t reach all the way around here. Look at it. Its little slider track stops at the door. The track’s broke on this side of the room.”

“Then let’s work with the bottom shelves today.”

“In a minute.” She keeps right on going. “But you oughta see what’s up here, first.”

HANNIE GOSSETT—LOUISIANA, 1875

It’s deep in the night when I start to say the Our Father over and over and over. Scaredest night I’ve had since Jep Loach dragged me from the trader’s yard and left Mama behind. I whisper the Our Father now, just like I did that night all alone under the wagon, trying to call down the saints.

They came when I was a child, them saints. Took the form of a old pasty-skinned widow woman that bought me at a courthouse steps sale—did it out of pity because I was poor and thin, crusty with tears and snot and dirt. She took my chin in her hand, and asked,
Child, how old are you?
Who is your master and missus? Say the names and do not lie. I’ll allow no one to harm you, if you speak the truth.
I stuttered out the names, and she called for the sheriff, and Jep Loach run off.

The Our Father worked that time, and so I hope it’ll save us now. Never been in the swamps at night. Heard folks talk about it, but I ain’t ever been. Fear walks over me as I balance behind the saddle on the gray, Juneau Jane slumped like a sack in front of me, and Old Ginger dragging along behind by the reins, lagging and stubborn.

I’m scared of the snakes, I’m scared of the gators, scared Ku Kluxers might find us now that I’ve had to go along the road to travel by the strip of moonlight threading through the trees. I’m scared them woodcutters might be on our heels by now. I’m scared of haints and the ol’ rougarou coming up from his watery hiding place, but more than anything else, I’m scared of the panthers.

It’s them you need to worry about most in the swamp at night. Panther can smell you from miles off. He’ll come up without a sound, stalk you quiet, so’s you don’t even know till he jumps on you. He’s got no fear of a horse. Panthers go after folks traveling the road alone at night, and the only way anybody can live to tell about it is to outrun the devil, horse and all. Run all the way home. Panther will chase a man right to the barn door and scratch round, try to get in.

I hear one off in the black woods, the call like a woman’s scream. Cuts into me and drives through the bone, but that one’s far off. It’s what I hear closer, to the left, then to the right—that’s what gives me the all-overs now.

The dog barks, but he don’t go off after it. Seems like he’s scared as I am.

I touch for Grandmama’s beads, then remember they ain’t there to comfort me no more.

Something rustles down the little slope below of us. I jerk at the noise.

Sounds like two legs,
I think to myself.
Them men…

No, four. Four legs. Something heavy. Black bear?

Comin’ closer, stalking us.
Taking our measure. Coming in.

No…farther off now.

Ain’t nothing there. It’s just your mind, Hannie. Plain crazy with fear.

The panther screams again, but he’s way over yon still. A owl hoots. I shiver hard and hold the neck of my shirt closed, even though I’m sweated down underneath it. It’s keeping the mosquitos from sucking me dry.

I push the horses farther, listen into the night, try to think what to do. This old road might stretch on for miles, used for hauling cypress timber out of the swamp and goods to the river, but it ain’t a road that goes from one place to the other. Been on it for a long way, and I hadn’t seen or heard a sign of people yet. Not even a lamp burning in a cabin or a settlement off through the trees, or a whiff of smoke from a cook fire. Just old wagon camps and the tracks of iron tires and horseshoes. That’s all there is showing that folks come and go this way.

Ginger stumbles over a felled branch and falls to her front knees, nearly jerking me over the tail of the gray before I get him stopped. The reins slide through my hands and trickle onto the ground with a soft slap.

“Whoa,” I whisper. “Hooo, now.”

I get down in a hurry, and it’s all I can do to drag Old Ginger back to her feet, without her just laying over on her side and crushing Missy Lavinia, who I guess is still living, but I don’t know for sure. Not a sound comes out of her.

“Hooo, now. Easy,” I whisper and steady a hand on Ginger’s neck. She’s got no more in her. Not tonight.

The smell of wet charcoal sifts up in the damp. I move toward it and find what’s left of a wagon camp against a upturned tree. Roots reach toward the moon like hands with skinny fingers and long, pointed claws. It’s shelter, at least, and the tree’s been dead awhile. I can break off dry timber to start a fire.

My bones complain while I go to work at it, rake the ground to scare off any critters, untie the poke and lay the oilcloth flat to sit on, hobble the horses so they can’t run off if they get spooked. Last thing, I pull Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane down, drag them over, and pile them against the tree. They smell so bad, at least the mosquitos don’t want them. Their skin’s cold from the night and the wet, but both still draw breath. Juneau Jane groans like I hurt her. Missy Lavinia don’t move or twitch or make a sound.

Dog stays by my side every step, and though I never been easy round a dog, I’m grateful for his company.
Ain’t fair to judge all of something by just a few, Hannie,
I tell myself, and if I survive this day, I’ve learned something from it. This half-growed pup is a good dog. Got a sweet, kind heart and only needed somebody to be kind back.

A good heart can’t ever let the bad get in,
Mama’s voice whispers in my head.
You got a good heart, Hannie. Don’t let the bad get in you. Don’t open the door to it, no matter how much it comes knockin’ or how sweet it sounds askin’.

I try to coax some water down Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane, but their eyes roll back and their mouths hang slack and the water just dribbles out over their swelled-up tongues. Finally, I give up and just lay them against the roots again. I drink and eat and hang the dry meat in a tree a little ways off and hunker down. Whatever else happens to us tonight, it’ll have to be in the hands of the saints. My hands are too weary to fight, now.

I say the Our Father and wait for sleep to come to me. I don’t even make it all the way through.

In the morning, I hear voices. I open my eyes, thinking it’s Tati, and John and Jason, already at the fire, stirring up a meal. Summertime, we cook outside to keep the hot out of the cabin.

But sunlight comes bright through the lids of my eyes, little needle points of shadow and color in pretty patterns like Old Missus’s Turkish carpets. How’s the sun so far up this early in the morning? Every day but Sundays, we rise at four, just like the work gangs did back in the old times. Only there’s no overseer’s bugle to chase us from our beds. No more field hands with the little homemade box ovens balanced on their heads, carrying coals from the fire, with meat and a sweet potato inside, to be left at the edge of the field and finish cooking for the first few hours of the day.

Now that we’re croppers, nobody can make us squat in the dirt and eat like animals do. We sit in a chair, take our meals at a table. Proper. Then we go to work.

I open my eyes, and the sharecrop farm is gone. I trade it for mud-spattered horses. A dog. Two gals slumped together in a bed of oilcloth, half dead or dead, I don’t know yet.

And voices.

I’m all the way awake then. I get up in a squat and listen. Ain’t close, but I hear somebody. Can’t make out the words.

Old Ginger’s got her ear cocked toward the road. Dog is up on his feet, looking that way. The gray has his nostrils wide, sniffing. He nickers down in the throat, soft like a whisper.

I scramble to my feet, slip a hand over his muzzle.

“Shhhhh,”
I whisper to him and the dog.

That them sawmill men coming for us?

I put the other hand on Ginger to keep her still. Dog creeps to my feet, and I hook a leg over him, squeeze him twixt my knees.

Out on the road, wagon springs creak and rock. Hooves make a
squish-pop, squish-pop, squish-pop
in the wet dirt. A wheel bounces in a rut. A man grunts. Could be them woodcutters got their mule back.

I lay my head against the gray’s muzzle, close my eyes and think,
Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t move,
while the wagon goes right on by. It’s disappearing past the bend by the time I dare let loose of the horses and go look. I don’t follow after it. More than likely all I’d get is trouble. I’m still toting two girls who can’t explain theirselves and traveling with horses too fine for me to own.

Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane hadn’t changed. I tip them up against the felled tree, try again to put water down them from the canteen. Juneau Jane flutters her eyes open just a touch, swallows a little, but she retches it up, soon as I set her against the roots. No choice but to turn her over on her side and let it come back out.

Missy Lavinia won’t take any at all. Won’t even try. Her skin’s the color of deadwood, gray and puffy, her eyes matted and her lips swole-up, cracked and sealed over with blood, like they been burned. Both of the girls been fed a poison. That’s all it could be. Poisoned with something to kill them or just to keep them quiet in them boxes.

Missy’s got a hard, swole-up knot poking out of her head, too. I wonder if that’s why she’s worse than Juneau Jane.

I know about poisons like the ones old Seddie conjures from the roots and the leaves, the bark of a certain tree, the berries of this plant or that one. She’d give somebody the right one, depending if she wanted to make them too sick to work, or too addled, or too dead.

Keep clear a’ that ol’ witch woman,
Mama told Epheme and me when we first went up to the house to nursemaid Missy Lavinia.
Don’t look Seddie’s way. And don’t let her get thinking Ol’ Missus favors you better than her. She’ll slip a poison on you. You keep clear of Ol’ Missus, and Young Marse Lyle, too. Jus’ do your work and be good to Old Marse, so’s he’ll let you come visit me on Sunday afternoons.

Every Sunday evenin’, she’d tell us the same thing before she had to send us back.

No way of knowing if somebody’s to live or die after a poison. Just wait while the body decides how strong it is, and the spirit chooses how much desire it has for its earthly home.

I need to find us a hiding place, but I don’t know where. Another day lopped over the back of a horse might be more than Missy and Juneau Jane can bear up to. And the breeze smells of rain.

It’s a chore, getting all us back moving again, but I manage it. I’m weary before even starting on the day, but to save the horses and to keep us clear of the road, I start off afoot, leading the sorrel and the gray behind like pack mules.

“Let’s go, dog,” I say, and we do.

I put one foot down and then the next, pick my way through the woods, poking the ground with a stick to check for bogs and suck holes, and push off the sharp palmetto leaves. Keep on like that far as I can till a long, wide blackwater slough blocks the way and I got no choice but to start back toward the road again.

The dog sniffs his way to a path I didn’t see at first. There’s tracks along the banks of the bog. Big ones…man tracks. Smaller ones, also. A child or a woman. Just the two of them, so they’re not the men from the sawmill. Maybe folks fishing or hunting gators or seining crawfish.

There’s been people here at least, and pretty recent.

I stop on the trail when the road comes in sight up the hill, and I listen hard. No sounds but the bayou. The
pop-pop
of bubbles in the mud, the heavy-throated bullfrog, the skeeters and the blackflies buzzing. Dragonflies hum back and forth over stands of saw grass and muscadine vines. A mockingbird sings his borrowed songs all hooked together like different-colored ribbons tied end after end.

Dog pushes through the brush into the clear of the road, stirs up a big ol’ swamp rabbit and gives a howl and bounds off after it. I wait and listen some more to see if another dog might answer, if there’s a farm or a house near, but no sound comes.

Finally, I follow the footprints up the slope.

The tracks turn and go down the road. Two people, still heading someplace afoot. Both got shoes on. The big tracks travel along straight, but the little ones wander to and fro, on the road and off it, showing there was no hurry at all. Don’t know why it’s a comfort, but it is. The footprints don’t go far before they turn off the road and start up some high ground to the other side. I stand and look, try to set my mind on whether I should follow or keep on straight. A swish of breeze blows from the dark sky ahead, and answers my question. A storm’s rising. We need shelter, a place we can lay up. That’s all there is to it.

Dog comes back. Didn’t catch the rabbit, but he’s got a squirrel he wants me to have.

“Good dog,” I tell him and gut the squirrel quick with the old hatchet, then tie it to one of the saddles. “We’ll have that later. You catch another one if you see it.”

He smiles in a dog way, and swings that ugly bare-skin tail of his, and starts off down the road along the foot tracks, and I follow.

The trail takes us up a little hill, then down again, ’cross a shallow creek where the horses stop to drink. After a while, more tracks come in from other directions. Horse tracks. Mule tracks. People tracks. The more that come together, the more they make a clear path, trod through the woods, down into the soil. People been walking in this way a long time. But always walking, or riding a horse or mule. Never a wagon.

Me and the gray and Ginger and the dog add our tracks to all that’s passed through before.

Rain catches us just after the trail gets better. Rain in kettlefuls and pails. It soaks through my clothes and runs rivers off my hat. Dog and the horses clamp their tails and arch their backs against it. I tip my head down, fighting the misery, and the only good thing is it washes the stink off of me and the saddles and the horses and Missy and Juneau Jane.

Now and again, I squint against the curtains of water, try to see,
Is there anything around?
But I can’t make out five foot ahead. The path turns to mush. My feet slide. The horses slip round. Old Ginger stumbles and flounders on her knees in front again. She’s so fretful about the rain, she gets right back on her feet.