Just before I’d shot him dead—or thought I’d shot him dead—I’d seen the possibility of a good man in Jack. Then he’d turned. I knew some of that dark shift was caused by the alcohol, but I had no idea what other factors might underlie what seemed the dual nature of the man. So I held off telling him the truth. Instead, I said, “We split up after we left your place. We thought it was safer if we all went our own ways.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Buck. They were your family. A man loses his family, he’s lost everything. Little Emmaline, she’s okay?”
“She’s fine.” I couldn’t help thinking about the mattress in Jack’s attic that had been cut to shreds in what I’d imagined was a fit of murderous rage. “So what about Rudy?”
“Rudy?” Jack shook his head sadly. “I read him all wrong. I thought he was after my Aggie and Sophie, but that was the booze twisting my thinking. Turns out he was just worried that I might do them harm. After he delivered them to Aggie’s sister, he headed for Fargo. Has family there.” A sudden darkness crossed his face. “You know, Buck, I feel terrible about the way I treated you all. Kept you locked up like animals. And I’m ashamed to say I took your money. Used it to keep the farm from going into foreclosure, which was a big reason I’d been drinking so much. At the time, I figured I was just taking cash you’d stole yourselves from those folks in Lincoln, but that still didn’t make it right. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
I thought about the money I’d given to Mr. Schofield and the good I hoped it had done. And here was Jack before me, a changed man, and I understood that the money he’d taken had played a part in that change. And, honestly, I was so relieved to have the weight of the guilt over that dead man lifted off my shoulders that I felt almost giddy.
“Like you said, it wasn’t ours to begin with. I’m glad it did some good.”
Jack had been so focused on me that he hadn’t even seemed to notice my companion. Now he smiled at John Kelly. “Who’s this?”
“This here is . . .” I began, but because things had turned so quickly in his barn that once again offering the truth didn’t seem like the most judicious choice, I hesitated.
It was John Kelly who piped in with “Rico.”
“Rico, huh? Well, Rico,” Jack said, shoving out his hand, “pleased to meet you.”
John Kelly gave the man a good, firm handshake and winked at me.
One-eyed Jack stood. “I’ve got things to do, so I’ll be on my way. You ever find yourself down in Fremont County, you’re always welcome in my home.” He didn’t leave us immediately but stood a moment with his good eye closed and his face lifted, as if breathing in some sweet aroma. He touched his chest on the place where I’d put the bullet and he smiled. “Life’s stranger and more beautiful than I ever thought possible. Thank you, Buck, for that gift.”
He shook my hand and he walked away.
“Rico?” I said as we started back toward the bridge across the river to the Flats.
“You never seen Little Caesar? Edward G. Robinson? Rico? He’s one tough mug.”
My time with Jack made me late in getting back to Gertie’s, and Mose and Emmy were already hard at work. Gertie threw me immediately into helping prepare for the meal crowd that night, and I didn’t have a chance to say anything to the others about my encounter with the undead man. Dinner was a busy affair, but when we sat around a table together afterward, slopping up the stew that had been set aside for us, I braced myself to tell them about Jack. Before I could, however, Albert, Tru, and Calvin arrived, all in high spirits.
“Genius,” Tru declared, clapping my brother’s shoulder. “We’ve got us a bona fide mechanical genius here. Flo, give this man some food. And, Gertie, I think we need beer to celebrate.”
Flo rose from her chair immediately, but Gertie didn’t move. She cast a dour eye on Tru Waters. “What’s the deserving occasion?”
“I believe we got ’er licked,” Tru said. “The Hellor’s going to be ready to push tows down the river in a day or two, mark my words.”
Gertie looked to Calvin for confirmation. “The kid’s got the knack,” he said. “Even Wooster Morgan was impressed. Wants to hire Norman for the boatworks.”
“Over my dead body,” Tru said. “This kid’s joining my crew.”
Flo brought out beef stew, and Gertie brought out two glasses with foamy heads.
Tru said, “A glass for Norman, Gertie.”
She eyed my brother, who told her with a very un-Albert-like impish grin, “A beer would sure hit the spot.”
I knew Albert had been involved with Volz in bootlegging back at Lincoln School, but I’d never seen him consume any alcohol. He did that evening, and plenty of it, raising glass after glass.
* * *
I’D INTENDED TO tell them about Jack that night, but the beer had got to Albert, and he stumbled onto the bunk he shared with Mose and immediately began to snore up a storm. It had been a long day for Emmy, and she fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow. Albert’s snoring made it impossible for Mose to sleep, and he finally stood and stepped out into the moonlight. I’d hoped that learning I hadn’t killed Jack would end my insomnia, but my brain was so full that, yet again, sleep seemed impossible, and I finally got up and joined Mose outside.
There was a smell to the Flats, the odor of slow decay that was due in part to the annual spring floods that lifted the Mississippi out of her banks and set her flowing among the ramshackle houses, so many of which, like the home of John Kelly, carried the high-water mark from the most recent occurrence. In spring, everything was soaked through and through and slowly rotted in the summer heat that followed. I stood with the reek of decay all around, and I saw that a light was on above Gertie’s place, and I watched, along with Mose, as silhouettes passed back and forth across the drawn shades.
I like them, Mose signed, his hands milk white in the moonlight and graceful. They remind me of Emmy’s mother. Good hearts.
“Forrest knew what he was doing when he sent us here,” I said. “His brother’s a lot like him.”
Good people. Then he signed, I like it here. Albert likes it here.
I’d known Mose a long while. More often than not, I understood from the expression on his face and the way his hands moved what kind of tone his words would have carried had he been able to give them voice. What I interpreted now scared me a little.
“What does that mean?” I asked cautiously.
Tru wants us to join his crew. He’s offered us jobs.
Although I’d heard Truman Waters say as much, I’d thought he was just blowing smoke, exuberant because, thanks to Albert, his towboat was going to be in service much sooner, and undoubtedly with a great deal less expense, than he’d anticipated.
“He was serious?”
Dead serious, Mose signed.
“Both of you?”
Both of us. Cal says we should take him up on it. Says finding a job these days is near to impossible.
“You like Cal.”
He’s my people.
“I thought Albert and Emmy and I were your people.”
Still are. There’s room in my heart for all of you.
“What about Saint Louis?”
I don’t know Saint Louis. But I’m getting to know the Flats, and it wouldn’t be a bad place to settle down. Gertie and Flo love Emmy, and she’s taken to them. And you’ve got a friend here now, best friend, the way you talk.
Albert had always been my best friend. But he was changing. I’d seen how proud he was to be sitting next to Truman Waters, drinking with the man as if they were almost equals. Since his near death from the snakebite, he was becoming someone different, and I felt a deep sadness, as if I was seeing the end of us somehow, or at least the end of what we’d been to each other.
The growl of Albert’s snoring had ceased inside the shed, and Mose signed, Breakfast comes early. Better get some sleep. He put his hand on my shoulder in a way that felt shockingly patronizing, as if he were an adult urging a child to bed. An
d that simple gesture nearly broke my heart.
I pulled away from him, and he returned to the shed alone.
I felt like crying, but that would only have confirmed Mose’s assessment that I was yet a child. Instead, I turned everything inside me to anger. The Flats, I understood, was just another promise that would somehow be broken. We’d been lulled into a sense of the possibility of belonging, but if we stayed, I knew it would destroy us, or at least destroy our need for one another. It would end what we’d been for each other. It would end our search for our true home. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I vowed to see to it that the Flats wasn’t the last stop on our journey. We had started for Saint Louis, and by God, I’d see to it that we got there.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“TELL ME ABOUT Saint Louis and Aunt Julia,” I said to Albert the next morning.
We sat at a table in Gertie’s eating breakfast before my brother and Tru and Cal headed off to the boatworks. The sun was barely up.
“Why?” he said, sipping black coffee and looking badly hungover from his night of drinking with Truman Waters.
“It’s been a while, and I forget sometimes.”
Which was true but not the reason I’d asked. I wanted to get him back on track, thinking about Saint Louis as our ultimate destination and our real family there as the true purpose of our journey. I planned to segue into memories of Aunt Julia and our mother and father, and tug at Albert’s heartstrings until the resonant music of longing brought him to his senses.
He hung his head and stared at his plate, and I was afraid that instead of reminiscing he was contemplating puking into his scrambled eggs.
Emmy proved to be immensely helpful. Bright-eyed, she asked, “Is Saint Louis really big?”
“Uh-huh.” Albert gave a nod so faint I thought maybe he was afraid his head was going to fall off.
“What do you remember about Aunt Julia?” I asked. “I only remember that she was really nice to us.”
Albert put his fork down and closed his eyes. When he spoke, it was with great effort. “I remember she was pretty. And she smelled like flowers. Lilacs. We only visited her once and that was after Mom died, but I remember she was nice to us.”
“I remember her house was huge and pink.”
“And near the river,” he said.
“Do you remember the street?”
He shook his head. “Some Greek name, but I can’t recall what. I remember there was a confectionery on the corner, and she gave us both a few pennies to buy fudge.”
“I remember that fudge,” I said.
“Best I ever tasted,” Albert said.
I saw what I thought was a wistful look in his eyes as he recalled these things.
“Mose told me you’re going to work for Tru,” I said carefully, looking to Mose for confirmation. He had a forkful of eggs almost to his mouth, but he paused long enough to give a nod.
“Are you?” I asked.
“Sure, why not?” Albert said.
“Because it’s dangerous to stay here.”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
That’s when I hit them with it: “I saw one-eyed Jack. He’s alive.”
Albert’s bleary, bloodshot eyes grew suddenly focused. “You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
Mose put his fork down and signed, Why didn’t you tell us?
“I didn’t have a chance. But I’m telling you now. We need to leave.”
The door was thrown open, and Tru and Cal walked in, full of early morning exuberance, Tru especially.
“Ah, there he is,” he said, slapping my brother so heartily on the back that Albert looked as if he was going to toss up what little he’d been able to get down that morning. “We have a big day ahead of us, Norman.”
Mose signed, Talk later.
The men pulled chairs up to our table and sat with us, and Gertie and Flo fed them. Tru did most of the talking, laying out his plans to push a tow downriver the following week. “You have a lot to learn,” he said, addressing this to both Albert and Mose. “It’ll be hard work, but you’ll be learning life on the river, and I swear to God, boys, there’s no other life like it.”
Flo was pouring coffee, and she smiled and explained to us, “We grew up on the river, Tru and me. We’ve been up and down the Big Muddy more times than I can remember.”
“Nothing like watching the sun come up on the Mississippi, Norman,” Tru said. “The water like fire all around, and the whole river empty except for you and your tow. I swear, standing in the wheelhouse on such a morning, you know what a king must feel like when he’s looking out from his castle across all the land he owns.”
“You don’t own the river, Tru,” Cal reminded him.
“Feels like it sometimes.” He put his hand on my brother’s shoulder. “You’ll see, Norman.” Then he smiled at me. “We’ll find something to keep you busy too, Buck.”
I looked at my brother, his eyes bloodshot, his face pale, nodding his head like some stupid lackey at everything he was hearing, and in that moment, I hated Truman Waters, the man who was stealing my brother away.
* * *
IN THE AFTERNOON, I set out to mail Maybeth’s letter, but first I visited the boatworks, where the Hell or High Water was docked. When I stepped onto the towboat’s deck, I spotted Mose and Cal in the wheelhouse. Through the open door to the engine room came the clank of metal on metal and the voices of Albert and Truman Waters as they discussed things. Engine parts lay on the deck, some cleaned and gleaming, others still steeped in grease and reminding me of the innards of a slaughtered animal rotting under the hot July sun.
“Cal!” I heard Tru holler from inside. “Bring us the starboard piston rod!”
But up in the wheelhouse, Cal hadn’t heard.
“Cal!” Tru called again. When no reply came, he swore loudly, then stepped from the engine room onto the deck, caught sight of me, and to my surprise, smiled as if he were quite glad to see me. “Hey there, Buck. Came to help?”
“Just to have a look-see.”
“Well, come on in and take a gander.” He beckoned me with a greasy hand.
The engine room was a cramped space filled with the great machinery that was the heart of the towboat, a long boiler tank to which was attached a web of rods and pistons and cylinders and pumps. Albert was on his back, staring up into that steel web, covered in grease, a big crescent wrench in his hand, and wearing maybe the fattest, happiest grin I’d ever seen. It was clear to me this was my brother’s element, the world of machines. His ordeal with the snakebite had shaken him, and he’d seemed lost in a way, but I understood that in the bowels of that towboat, he was finding himself again. I wanted to be happy for him, but my angry heart had put up a wall. He was so intent on his work that he didn’t notice me.
I left the Hellor, headed across the arched bridge, but stopped halfway to study the Mississippi, which was shit brown under the afternoon sun. A big island called Harriet lay west of the bridge, and above the island’s public beach stood a great bathhouse with no bathers anywhere in sight. The Mississippi in those days had become a foul run of sewage, and although the city would eventually grow into a better steward of that precious resource, in 1932 not even the bravest of souls would dare bathe in the water.
I stared up at the Heights, where fine homes overlooked the squalor of the Flats, and I wondered why Flo and Gertie and Tru and Cal and John Kelly and all the rest of them were content to live with just enough to get by.
I looked down at the boatworks, at the idled Hellor. Although I’d spent a more than a month on the river, the towboat seemed alien to me, big and clumsy. Give me a canoe any day, I thought.
Somewhere downtown a clock struck four, and I realized I needed to get back to Gertie’s to help with the dinner crowd. I hadn’t mailed Maybeth’s letter yet. As it turned out, I never would.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
“GONNA HOLD A little celebration on the Sweet Sue tonight,” Tru announced a
fter dinner that evening. “You’re all welcome to come.”
“Sweet Sue?” Emmy asked.
“My shanty boat,” Tru explained to her. “It’s where Cal and me live.”
When we finished cleaning the eatery and the kitchen, we trooped down to the river, where a line of weather-beaten, floating shacks sat drawn up to the bank. They were, if possible, poorer-looking than the ramshackle constructions that housed folks on the streets of the Flats, but I thought maybe they had one slight advantage in that when the floods came every spring, the shanty boats rode the rising waters and stayed high and dry. People—whole families—sat on the decks and hailed Tru and Cal as they passed.
Tru pulled bootlegged beer from his icebox and handed it out liberally. The adults drank, but Albert judiciously passed on the offer, accepting like Emmy and me and Mose, the alternative sarsaparilla. Tru had a steel barrel on his deck, cut down to half its original height. As dusk gave way to hard dark, he built a fire in the barrel. Kerosene lanterns glowed on the boats along the riverbank, and we found ourselves in a tiny community within the larger gathering that was the Flats.
Emmy and Flo and Gertie sat together on empty, overturned crates, Mose and Cal next to them. Tru had corralled my brother and was chewing his ear off with talk of adventures on the Big Muddy. I sat alone, apart, fuming silently, until Cal rose and crossed the deck and settled down beside me.
“You’re an onion in a petunia patch, Buck. And every time you look at Tru, it’s like you’re throwing rocks at him. He’s really a good man.”
“He drinks too much.”
“Not when he’s pushing a tow. He’s sober and all business then, one of the best pilots on the river.”
I drank from my sarsaparilla and made no reply.
“Here’s something you might find enlightening. The cops who beat up Gertie, they got the living daylights beat out of them. They claimed not to know who done it, and maybe that’s the case, but everyone on the Flats knows who made those two cops pay. Who do you suppose that was?”
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