The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel (16 page)

“Well, if it’s going to end up
just you,
it’s better to know when he’s only the fiancé, right?” She recalls our conversation during the roof recon, and I feel the tug of kinship again.

“Truth.”

“Look,” she offers, “I’m sorry I was hard on you the other day. It’s just that it’s not a far trip from believing you can change things in Augustine, to going nuts. That’s all I was trying to say. I’m not much of a diplomat, which is mostly what cut short my military career. Sometimes, if you’re not willing to blow smoke at people, you find yourself ditched on the side of the road.”

“Sounds a little like the faculty in a college English department,” I admit. “Minus the Humvees and camouflage, I mean.”

Aunt Sarge and I actually chuckle. Together.

“Is this your house?” I say, by way of keeping the conversation going. “It’s great. I’m a sucker for anything antique or vintage.”

She thumbs over her shoulder. “Aunt Dicey’s place. My grandmother’s baby sister. I came by last spring to visit after…” A labored sigh, and whatever she was about to divulge is quickly rerouted to “Didn’t plan on staying, but Aunt Dicey was in a mess. No propane in the tank, the plumbing cut off to most of the house. Ninety-year-old woman heating bathwater on the stove. Too many no-account kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, and nieces and nephews. Whatever Aunt Dicey has, if somebody asks for it, she’ll give it. So, I just moved in.”

She rubs the back of her neck, stretches it one way and then the other. A rueful laugh hisses between her teeth. “And here I am, picking okra in Augustine, Louisiana. My dad would turn over in his grave. Best thing that ever happened to him was getting drafted into the army and discovering a whole new world out there.”

Obviously, there’s a much bigger story under Sarge’s crusty exterior. “Looks like you’ve made a tremendous difference on the house.”

“Houses are easy. People, not so much. You can’t just strip out the lead pipe, re-run the wires, slap on a coat of paint…and fix things in a lot of these families.”

“Speaking of family”—I avoid the sinkhole of what
can’t
be done in Augustine—“the reason I stopped by is LaJuna. She and I had an accord of sorts last week. She promised not to miss any more school, and I told her that if she didn’t miss, she could help me with a project I’m working on. That was Thursday afternoon. She didn’t come to school on Friday, and I haven’t seen her since. I went to the home address on file for her, and the guy there told me to get lost.”

“That’d be her mama’s old boyfriend. Tiffany hits him up when she needs a place to land. Tiffany’s always hitting somebody up—been doing that since she snagged my cousin senior year of high school and had LaJuna. That’s how Tiff gets by.” She pulls a bandana from her pocket, takes off the hat and mops her neck, then fans some air under her T-shirt. “Tiff’s hard on people. Left LaJuna here for years while she was in prison and never has done a thing to pay Aunt Dicey back.”

“Can you tell me where they are? Living, I mean. LaJuna said her mom had a new job and they were doing fine.” I know a little about intentionally misleading the adults in your life to keep secrets under wraps. Things that, if they knew, would send your whole world tumbling end over end. “I don’t think LaJuna would break her promise. She was so excited about sorting”—I catch myself—“our project.”

“Honey, you coming back?” Aunt Dicey calls out. “Bring your friend. She wants to help us pick, then she can stay over for some okra and fried green ’maters. That’ll be good! Don’t have much meat to put with it. Couple slices of roast left from my Mealsie Wheelsies. We can have that, too. Tell her to come on in here. No need in being bashful.” Aunt Dicey cups a hand around her ear, listening for a response.

“She has things to do, Aunt Dicey,” Sarge calls, loudly enough to be heard in the next town down the road. “And we have meat. I bought a ham.”

“Oh, hi there, Pam!” Aunt Dicey says.

Sarge shakes her head. “She doesn’t have her hearing aid in.” She hustles me toward the car. “You’d better get out of here while you can. She’ll tie you up until midnight, and I know that’s not what you came here for. Listen, I’ll do what I can about LaJuna, but her mama and I aren’t each other’s favorite people. She ruined my cousin’s life. I’ve caught Tiffany over here more than once, looking to mooch food or money from Aunt Dicey. Told her if she shows up again, things’ll get ugly. Tiff needs to pay her own bills, stop skipping out on work to hang with that loser ex-boyfriend of hers down in New Orleans, which, if I had to guess, is where she’s at right now. Taking the baby for a visit with his daddy. LaJuna’s probably stuck there, looking after the rest of the kids and trying to get her mama to go back to work before she gets fired.”

I have a sudden and crushing picture of LaJuna’s life. No wonder she’s bossy with adults. She’s parenting one.

Sarge angles an appraising look my way when we get to the car. “You need to know that it’s not LaJuna’s fault. Kid’s stuck at the bottom of a well and has to drag four people up the rope with her. Multiply that by a half dozen different batches of kinfolk, and you’ll see why some days, I just want to get in the car and drive. But man, I loved my granny and she loved her baby sister, Dicey…well…I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“I get it.” The problems here are deeply rooted. If the way of things was easy to change, people would’ve done it already. “Like throwing starfish back into the ocean.”

“Huh?”

“It’s just a story I had on the bulletin board of my old office. Perspective, sort of. I’ll xerox a copy for you if I ever find it again.”

Sarge leans over to peer through the Bug’s window. “What’s all that?” She’s studying the library questionables I’ve stacked in the backseat in hopes of showing them to Nathan at the farmers market tomorrow morning—a few valuable old books I’m worried about, along with the plantation ledger and the family Bible with the burial records in it.

I consider trying to obfuscate, but what good would it do? Sarge is looking right at the ledger that bears the Gossett name. “I wanted to make sure I got a chance to study these more closely…while I could. Coach Davis roped me into handling gate duty tonight at the football stadium. There’s some kind of a fundraiser concert for the athletics department and I guess they were desperate for workers. Anyway, I thought I could do some reading in between, or after.”

“You’ve been in the judge’s house?
That’s
where you got all this?” She slaps the car’s hood. “Oh Lord.” Her head falls back and the straw hat slips off, drifting soundlessly to the driveway. “Oh
Lord,
” she says again. “Did LaJuna let you in there?”

“Nathan gave me a key,” I blurt, but I can feel the steam building next to me. Sarge is like a pressure cooker, about to blow.

“Put that stuff back where you got it.”

“I’m looking for books for my classroom. Nathan said to take whatever I could use, but I don’t think he has
any
idea what’s in that house. The library closets are full. Half of the bookshelves are double stacked. Behind the first row of new books, there are old books, rare books. Things like those.” I nod toward the seat.

“
This
is the project with LaJuna?” Sarge demands. “I don’t care if she messes around in the gardens over there, but I told her to stay out of that house.”

“She showed up the first day.” I can feel my relationship with LaJuna potentially being shredded. First I invade her secret place, now I’m getting her in trouble with her aunt. “She knows a lot about the place. Its history. The stories. She spent quite a bit of time with the judge while she was with her aunt…or great-aunt…your Aunt Dicey. There’s an old hatch in the floor under the—”

“Stop. Don’t. Not interested.” If I didn’t before, now I fully understand that I am into something much bigger than I can grasp. “Put that stuff back. Don’t let LaJuna in that house again, either. If Will and Manford Gossett or their wives find out she’s involved in this, Tiff won’t be clinging to that new job at Gossett Industries, she’ll be out. You get on their wrong side, you better start packing your boxes and rent yourself a moving van. Trust me.”

“I can’t just
quit.
I need the books, and they’re sitting there going to rot.”

“Don’t think you’re safe because
you
don’t work for Gossett Industries, either. Manford’s little blond trophy wife is
on
the school board.”

“My understanding is that the house and land are Nathan’s, though.”

“Look, before Nathan’s sister died, things might’ve been different.” Shaking her head, she focuses on the pavement as if she’s sorting her thoughts. “When Robin inherited that house from the judge, she stood guard over it. She cared about it. It was hers and she wasn’t about to let her uncles steal it out from under her. But she’s gone, and, yes, technically the house passed on to her brother, but the only reason Nathan hasn’t sold it is out of respect for his sister—because Robin fought Will and Manford for it until her dying day.”

“Oh…” I murmur.

“It’s a mess,” Aunt Sarge says. “Stay away from the Gossetts. Stay away from the house. Don’t take those books around town with you, and, whatever you do, don’t show them to anyone at the football stadium. Put that stuff back where you found it. I’ll try to get LaJuna straightened around about school, but you keep her away from Goswood.”

I meet Sarge’s gaze. A lot goes unsaid between us in that quick look before I climb into the car. “Thanks for the help with LaJuna.”

“It’ll depend on what’s up with her mom.” She rests a hand on the open window. “I know that story about the starfish. I get what you think you’re trying to do. But around here, the tide’s pretty strong.”

“Point taken.” Driving away, I lift my chin and set my jaw. I can’t stay out of Goswood Grove House. I won’t. I need a tide wall, that’s all, and I’m going to build it with books.

I do heed Sarge’s advice and cover the books in my car while I sell tickets at the fundraiser. I park where I can keep an eye on the Bug, because the door lock on the passenger side doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, gate duty turns out to be more involved than I’d expected. I’m not just in charge of taking ticket money, I have to run around under the bleachers, flushing out teenagers who are wrapped around each other like twist ties. I’m pretty sure I cause permanent damage to a few potential romances.

Kids have changed a lot since I was one. It’s a scary world in the hidden realms of the football stadium.

I am more than relieved when I get back to the Bug, and the books are safely where I left them. I plan to stay up late, ignore my prep work for school tomorrow, study these materials and take notes. I want every minute I can get with them, just in case tomorrow’s planned conversation with Nathan Gossett doesn’t go well.

I’m not the least bit prepared to find Sarge pacing back and forth on my porch when I pull into my driveway.

HANNIE GOSSETT—LOUISIANA, 1875

“We got to
leave,
Juneau Jane.” Ain’t ever spoken to a white person that way in my life, but Juneau Jane ain’t white, ain’t colored. I don’t know what to call her. No matter right now, because she could be the Queen of Sheba in a new pink dress and we’d still have to get from this place before things go bad. “Need you to help me push Missy Lavinia up on that horse, and we’ll make our way back to the road. Won’t be much longer before that old woman figures either we’re dead or we told a lie about having the fever.”

Four more days now, we been holed up here in this church in the wood. Four days of nursing, and feeding, cleaning the waste from feverish bodies and praying. Four days of leaving coins in the tree at the edge of the clearing, and hollering to the woman what I need for her to bring me. She’s kindly, merciful and good. Even took the dog home with her so’s to care for it proper. She’ll be good to that dog, I know, and I’m happy for that, but the woman gets more nervous every time she sees us still here. Word must’ve spread about the fever, and folks’ll be wondering,
Should they burn this place to the ground to save their family from the sickness?

Them sawmill men could come sniffing after us, too. Can’t take that chance.

Juneau Jane don’t answer me. She just keeps on with whatever it is she’s doing over there by that wall of nailed-up newspapers. Got herself facing into the corner, so’s I can’t see. She’s mostly been a quiet thing since she come to. Confused and scared and twitchy, like the soldiers that wandered the roads after the war, their minds tangled, their nerves skittery and strange. When the mind’s been lost from the body, it can’t always find the way home. Might be that’s the soul’s way of preserving itself. Far as she’ll say when I ask her, she don’t remember a thing about how she came here, or what was done to them by that man with the patch eye or his helpers.

Missy Lavinia ain’t said a word so far. She was a big, heavy rag doll when I washed her clean with a bucket from the rain barrel and got her dressed in the clothes I paid the old woman for. Boys’ clothes and a hat. If we do see anybody on the road, it’ll be a whole lot easier to explain ourselves that way.

“Time we move on.” I keep talking while I gather up the food and quilt and wool blanket I bought from that woman. We can use them to sleep under or stretch over ourselves like a tent. “I got the horses caught. Saddled. You help me push Missy Lavinia up on that mare, now.”

Still not a word comes, so I cross the room and touch Juneau Jane’s shoulder. “You listening at me? What’s over here in this corner, so important you ain’t got time to answer? I saved your life, you know? Saved both your lives. Coulda left you two locked up in that poacher’s room, that’s what I coulda done…and should’ve, too. I don’t owe you nothin’. I
said,
for you to come help.” I’m about to the end of myself and the sun’s just barely up past the trees. Might be time I just leave, let them shift for theirselves.

“Soon,” she answers, low and flat, sounding older than the child she is. “But I must first complete my task.”

She’s got one of them newspapers pulled off the wall, and her bare foot set on top of it, and she’s cutting the shape of her foot out of the paper, using the tip of the skinning knife the woman brung me.

“Well, I’m sorry if them shoes I got for you ain’t to your pleasure. We hadn’t got time for you to fix paper to pad them. You can stuff them with grass or leaves on the trail. I’d be grateful just to
have
shoes, if I was you. That woman couldn’t even get me any to fit Missy Lavinia. Have to leave her barefoot for now, worry about that later. We need to leave from this place.”

The girl turns them strange eyes my way. I don’t like it when she does that. Gives me the shakes. She slips a hand under her leg, pulls out a pair of them newspaper feet that’s already been cut and holds them out toward me. “For your shoes,” she says. “To keep the conjures away.”

A witch’s fingernail slides up my back bone and down my rib bones, and along every other bone in my body, making a chill under my skin. I stay away from any and all conjures and even the talk of them.

I don’t believe in conjures, Lord,
I say in my mind.
Just so you know.
This being a church and all, it’s best to make that plain.

I say to Juneau Jane, “How can a little paper keep a conjure off?”
I don’t believe it, Lord, but it might be the quickest thing if I just do what she says.
I sit down in that chair, start kicking off my brogans. “If it’ll get you to movin’, I’ll do it. But it ain’t conjures that brung us all this trouble we’re in. It was bad men, and you and Missy Lavinia and the addled brain plan you two hatched, and me being fool enough to dress myself up for a boy and go along with it.”

“You need not have them if you prefer none.” All of a sudden she’s right talkable in that high-tone way of hers. Maybe even got a little sass. That’s a good sign for her health, at least.

She tries to take my shoe newspapers.

I grab them up before she can. “I’ll
do
it.”

She pulls some more papers off the wall, folds them and tucks them down the boy shirt that bags where her new britches are tied up. The shirt rides so loose on her, the shoulder seams hang to her elbows.

“Hadn’t oughta be stealing from a church house,” I say.

“For later.” She waves a hand toward the wall. “They have many.”

I look up at the slab logs, at them pages stretched floor to ceiling. All that writing sectioned up in little boxes. I hadn’t noticed them much while we been trapped in this room. Too busy. But somebody took the time to put them up there real careful, so that not a one covered over any part of the other. Don’t seem like the way you’d do it to keep the weather from coming in.

“What’s all that say?” I’m wondering it to myself, but I speak the question out loud.

“Have you not read them?” She goes on with fitting newspapers in her shoes. “Not in all this time?”

“Can’t read.” No shame in admitting that, I figure. “Some of us don’t get a house to live in and money for clothes and food just handed out. Some pay our way in toil and sweat, since before the freedom, since
after
the freedom. Before the freedom, if Old Missus was to catch us trying to learn reading, she’d have us whipped good.
After
the freedom, we work from see to can’t see every day of the planting time and the hoeing time and harvesting time. In between
them
times, light up the tallow candle or the pine knot, go to making socks, darning socks, or sew up clothes to wear, or clothes to sell. Whatever money we get goes to buy our goods at the plantation store and the seed for next year, and to pay the contract to Old Mister so the land will be ours one day. Glory! That day is comin’, if I ain’t wrecked it all for you and Missy Lavinia. No, I can’t read. But I can work, and I can cipher good. Can do numbers in my head faster than most folks will on paper. What do I need to know past that?”

She lifts her skinny shoulders, keeps lacing up her shoes. “If you were to purchase your land, for instance, and there would, of course, be a paper requiring signature, how would one, unable to read the paper, avoid being hoodwinked?”

She’s a smart-mouth little thing. Full up with herself. I think I liked her better when she was sickly. Quiet.

“Well, now that is the dumbest question. I’d just ask somebody to read it
for
me. Somebody I know’s truthful. Save taking the time to learn reading, just for one little paper.”

“But in what way would you be assured of the faithfulness of this person?”

“Well, ain’t you a suspicious little thing? There’s people that can be trustable for reading. Colored folks, even. More all the time, with them teachers from up north coming down and setting up the colored schools. Why, you can’t turn over a rock these days, but you find
somebody
who can read.” Truth is, though, Old Missus don’t tolerate her people having to do with carpetbaggers or northerner teachers.

“And one might read for pleasure, as well. Enjoy stories.”

“
Ffff!
I’d as soon somebody
tell
me a good tale. I know plenty of them kind. Tales from my mama, tales from Tati and the old folk. Some of them tales been told to me over
clothes
that was being sewed for
you.
I could sit right here and speak a dozen, just out of my head.”

For the first time, she looks at me interested, but we ain’t going to be together long enough for stories. I want no more to do with this business or her and Missy Lavinia, once we get back to Goswood Grove.

I finish up with my shoes. “Now, what’s the words in our shoes say that’s gonna keep a conjure off us? Explain me that.”

“Not the words.” She tries her shoes out. Seems happy enough with them now. “The
letters.
Before a conjurer can throw a conjure beneath your feet, all the letters in your shoe must be counted by him. In that amount of time, you are long gone away from the place, yes?”

I stand up and hear the crinkle under my feet. Feels funny. “Guess I should’ve counted the letters before I put them in there. That way, I’d know how long I got to run away
if
a conjurer wanders along by and says, ‘Hold up, there, and let me count them letters a minute.’ ”

She gives me a smart face, braces up her skinny arms, elbows out. “And yet, you have added them in your shoes.”

“To get you to hush up and start moving, only.” I look at the rest of the papers on the wall. I hope they wasn’t important. “You at least plan to tell me what them papers say, before we go? I’d like to know we didn’t take something matterful.”

She wiggles round, grabs the butt of her knee britches and tries pulling it down, then yanks the whole thing up higher. This girl ain’t ever had a pair of britches on in her life, I bet. “They are seeking lost friends.”

“The papers?”

“Those by whom the advertisements were placed in the newspaper.” She moves to the wall, points to the top corner of one of the pages. It’s all in little squares, like the Bible Old Marse would bring when somebody was to be put under the sod in the burial ground. There in the front pages, he’d make a square and write the grave number in it.

Juneau Jane’s hand ain’t much darker than the water-stained newspaper, as she runs a finger along the top block. “Lost Friends,” she reads. “We receive many letters asking for information about lost friends. All such letters will be published in this column. We make no charge for publishing these letters to subscribers of the
Southwestern.
All others will please enclose fifty cents….”

“Fifty cents!” I puff out. “For marks in a newspaper?” I think of all the things fifty cents will do.

She turns over her shoulder, frowns at me. “Perhaps we should be on our way.”

“Tell me the rest.” There’s an itch in my mind, but I can’t guess why that is.

Standing at the wall in her droopy britches, she looks up again. “Pastors will please read the requests published below from the pulpits and report any cases where friends are brought together by means of letters in the
Southwestern.
” She moves down the wall a bit. “It’s a newspaper for churches. Colored churches.”

“Colored churches got a
newspaper
? Down here in the state of
Louisiana
?”

“Many states,” she answers. “This newspaper is delivered to many states. The
Southwestern Christian Advocate.
It’s a paper for the pastors.”

“And they read it to the people? All over everywhere?”

“I would assume so…if it has found its way to this place.”

“Well, I never. What’s it say? In all them squares?”

Juneau Jane points to one. It’s a small block compared to some others. “Dear Editor,” she reads out loud. “I wish to inquire about my people. They left me at a trader’s yard in Alexandria, with a Mr. Franklin. They were to be sent to New Orleans. Their names were Jarvis, George, and Maria Gains. Any information of them will be thankfully received. Address me at Aberdeen, Mississippi. Cecelia Rhodes.”

“My Lord,” I whisper. “Read me another.”

She tells the story of a little boy named Si, five years old when a Mister Swan Thompson passed and all his worldly goods, including the folks he owned, were divided up by his son and daughter. “It was in eighteen…” Juneau Jane stands on tiptoes to read the paper. “Eighteen thirty-four. Miss Lureasy Cuff was standing in the house and talking to my mother and saying, ‘I think Pa should give Si to me because I raised him to what he is.’ Uncle Thomas drove the wagon when Mother left. She had two children then, Si and Orange. Address me at Midway, Texas. Si Johnson.”

“My Lord,” I say again, louder this time. “He’d be a old man by now. A old man, off down in Texas, and him still looking. And word’s come all the way to here, in that paper.”

My mind swells like the river after a hard rain. Grows and turns and runs and picks up everything that’s been heavy in my soul, that’s been laid up on the banks for months and years. I float myself along to where I ain’t been able to let myself go before. Are my people up there on that wall? Mama, Hardy, Het, Pratt…Epheme, Addie? Easter, Ike, and Baby Rose? Aunt Jenny, or li’l Mary Angel, who I saw the last time in that slave pen when she was just three years old and the trader’s man carried her off?

She’d be growed big by now, Mary Angel. Just three years younger than me. Fifteen, I guess. Maybe she’s gone to one of them schools for colored folks. Maybe she’d write in one of them little squares on the newspaper. Maybe she’s there on that wall, and I don’t even know it. Maybe they all are.

Need to find out. Learn what each of them little squares say. “Tell it to me. All that’s up there,” I ask Juneau Jane. “I can’t go from this place without knowing. I lost my people, too. When the Yankees kept coming up the river in their gunboats, Old Mister made a plan for all us to go refugee in Texas till the Confederates could win the war. Missus’s nephew Jep Loach stole some of us away, instead. Sold us all along the road, in ones and twos. I was the only one the Gossetts got back. The only one in my family that ended up refugee in Texas with him.”