“Don’t worry about that. You can go another time,” Naomi said. “If Daddy says okay,” she added.
“Okay,” Beto whispered.
Henry reached for his hat, and the twins went to put on their shoes.
NAOMI Naomi sat for a while at the kitchen table. She figured Wash would be fine fishing alone, but it seemed unkind not to let him know that the twins weren’t coming. She hesitated for a moment, thinking of the curtains. Then she saw her schoolbooks in their tidy stack on the counter by the kitchen door. That was where they usually stayed unless the twins wanted to read them.
She scooped up her school things and headed out the door toward the river. The half-truth was that she had homework. The whole truth was hidden in some inner pocket of her heart.
BETO Beto and Cari sat in the booth, leg to leg. They pressed wordless messages into each other’s hands under the table. Henry tugged on his ear and rubbed at his neck. The jukebox rattled out one honky-tonk tune after another.
The food came, and Henry prayed. Beto held his fork in his left hand. Cari held hers in her right. They each cut a bit of golden-fried pancake dripping in syrup. Beto looked at Cari, and she nodded. They put the food in their mouth at the same time, each chewing five times before swallowing. The pancakes were perfect. Naomi would have loved them. But he’d read the sign on the restaurant door, and that changed things.
HENRY Henry ate his eggs and bacon and grits, barely tasting the food. He watched the twins match their bites and felt again how little he knew about them. They always seemed to be conspiring, although he couldn’t say what it was exactly. He did know that they didn’t really want to be here, pancakes or no pancakes.
Pastor Tom would tell him to make it easy for them. But what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? He pushed his plate away and dug his hands into his pockets. “I could show you where I work. One of the drilling rigs,” he ventured. He groped for the warmth he’d felt earlier.
Beto glanced at Cari, who gave the slightest shrug. “Sure,” Beto said. “I mean, please, sir.”
WASH Wash held the fishing rods and tackle box loose in his hand as he walked down the path to the river. There wasn’t any hurry; unless the twins had taken up a vow of silence, they weren’t there yet. He could always hear them half a mile off. When he got to the bank, he walked upstream toward his favorite fishing spot.
Then he saw her.
Naomi was sitting on a broad, flat rock at the edge of the river. Her knees were down, and her feet were tucked up under her dress. Her braid hung loose along the length of her back, the curled tip just touching the stone behind her. A book lay open on her lap, but her eyes were closed. Her face tilted up toward the sun. Listening.
As he stood there on the bank above her, he thought, I’d like her to listen to me like that.
Something in him jumped back from the thought like a hand pulling away from a stovetop even if it’s not on. Wash felt the warning, but he didn’t heed it.
“Hey,” he called. “Did you go and drown the twins for all their craziness?”
Her eyes popped open and her brow furrowed. She turned and stared at him, not speaking.
“It was a joke,” he said. “Ha, ha.”
“Not funny.” She straightened her legs out.
“Probably not.” He walked a few steps closer to her. “But then, you don’t have to be mean about it. Wouldn’t kill you to smile,” he said.
Her frown deepened. “I’m not mean.”
“So what do you call it then?” He lifted his chin and grinned, a friendly challenge.
She shrugged. “I’m just ... careful.”
“Careful? I thought that was when you remembered to look both ways before crossing the street.” He walked closer to where she sat by the river. “But, hey, what do I know? You’re the one with all the fancy schoolbooks.”
She glanced down at the book in her lap and shut it quickly. “A waste.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
She pushed the book toward him like she couldn’t wait to be rid of it, but he thought he saw a bit of a smile. He picked it up and sat on a fallen tree a few feet from her rock. He was thumbing through it when he realized he had forgotten to ask where the twins really were, so he did.
“Their dad took them to breakfast.”
“Oh,” he paused. “So he’s not your dad?”
She shook her head. “My father drowned.”
Wash winced. “No more drowning jokes from me. Sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” Her fingers slid along her braid. “It happened before I was born. There was a flood. He was trying to save the house he was building for my mom and me, but he didn’t know how to swim. The creek took him.”
“So Henry’s a stepdad?”
She nodded. “My mother married Henry when I was little, but I never really knew him. We went back to live with my grandparents when she died.”
“Sorry to hear that, too,” he said.
She did not look at him but smoothed the sides of her dress and tucked the fabric around her thighs. She had a sweater, but it was too chilly out for the thin dress she had on. He thought about offering her his jacket to cover her legs, but he didn’t want to let on that he’d been looking.
She watched the river and then closed her eyes again. Her eyelashes stood out dark against her cheek.
After a few long moments, he thumped the book with his fist and asked, “What do you think of all this?” When she looked, he pointed to a page with the Pythagorean theorem.
Her face reddened. “I don’t. I mean, I try, but it doesn’t really make sense to me. The teacher doesn’t expect me to get it anyway.”
“How do you figure?”
She dragged a stick through the shallows of the river. “Teachers usually think Mexicans are too slow to bother with.”
“Come on, anybody can learn anything.”
“Maybe you. And the twins, of course. They’re smart. Everyone says so, even people who think Mexicans are only good for shelling pecans and picking strawberries.”
Wash whistled. “Those two are quicker than the Holy Spirit on Judgment Day.”
She smiled at that. “Like you. I can tell by how you look at the books. And how you teach them things.”
He fingered the edge of the book. “I like doing things more. One of my uncles was a carpenter. I think that’d be good, spending my days with a hammer and a saw and a bit of sandpaper.” His hands curled a little, remembering the feel of his tools. “But that doesn’t fly with my folks, especially my dad. ‘Education is the key to the advancement of the Negro’ and ‘Be a credit to your race,’” Wash said, deepening his voice so the words came out like items from the Ten Commandments. “My ma’s near as bad. Every move she makes is aimed at saving up a penny for my sister and me to go to college.”
“It must be nice. To have them believe in you like that. Your teachers too.”
“I guess,” he said. “I hadn’t thought on it.”
“Our teachers in San Antonio hated teaching us, maybe hated us, too. The Mexican kids, I mean. In the high school, they gave us elementary school books, like we were stupid. Everything was either about being a good citizen or about ‘learning a trade.’ But nothing useful. Like, we learned to make mattresses. But there’s not a single mattress factory in San Antonio, so what was the point of that? And get your English wrong once, and you’re on the teacher’s bad side forever.”
Wash thought about that for a minute. “Mexican students, white teachers.”
“What’s your school like?” she asked.
“Four classrooms, an outhouse, and a patch of packed dirt out front. Not much to look at. Or learn from. But the teachers work hard. Some students, too. I do what it takes to keep my pa off my back.
“You mind?” Wash asked now, pointing to the spot on the rock beside her. She didn’t say no, so he moved closer.
“We could take a look at your math together. Or just keep talking. It’s nice, hearing you talk.”<
br />
“Homework’s good,” she said.
And that was how the lessons started.
NAOMI Naomi felt her face warm as sun streamed through the leaves of the cottonwood tree above her. It was nearly noon, and the figures Wash had drawn with a stick in the damp dirt were now dry. Naomi had to admit that the angles and lines made some sense to her, at least more than when she was sitting in math class.
While Wash read aloud from her English book, she stared out at the river. At this spot, branches stretched all the way across the river to form a canopy. She remembered the green of a few weeks back, the kind of green made to announce the beauty of the sky behind it. Now the leaves were edged with brown. The breeze made them tremble, and some spiraled down and spun away in the currents of the river. She glanced over at Wash, who had stopped reading.
“It’s nice here,” she said. “In San Antonio, everything looks thirsty. Not like this.”
“There’s beauty here for sure.” He smiled as he stood up and stretched. “If I don’t get some paying work done, my ma will tan my hide tonight. I’m supposed to be one county over digging ditches right now.”
“Of course,” she said, jumping up. “I was going too. Thanks for the help.”
“Bye, Naomi.”
WASH Wash shot his best friend Cal a look. Cal’s bellyaching was not a welcome sequel to the morning with Naomi. “Nobody asked you to come,” Wash said.
“If I don’t,” Cal said, “I won’t have a dime to my name. And a dime is what I need to get into the dance hall Tuesday.”
“Colored Night,” Wash sneered. “There’s motivation.”
For a while, Cal’s wheezy breathing was the only sound between them. “Hey, see where that footpath breaks off?” Cal asked. He pointed to a narrow trail off to one side. “Scoot was saying the other day that that’s the way to Tall Man’s place. Think that could be?”
Wash shrugged. “From what I hear, nobody finds Tall Man; he finds them when he’s got whiskey to sell. I wouldn’t expect any path to go straight to his door.”
“You’re probably right. People that come to live out here don’t want to truck with anybody else,” Cal said.
Wash raised an eyebrow. “And you’re an expert on the backwoods folk? You’ve lived on Liberty Street since you fell out of your mama.”
“All I’m saying is, Tall Man went off to live in the woods for a reason,” Cal said.
“I’d like to try that,” Wash said. “Just light out.”
“Good luck. Your daddy’s done planned out your whole life. You cain’t go off to no shack in the woods; you’re going to the Tuskegee Institute to get learned.”
Wash scowled. “Wouldn’t mind a little peace.”
Cal fell silent for a moment. “You want to hear what I heard about Tall Man and his brother? He did the same, did you know?”
“Made whiskey?”
Cal shook his head. “Naw, lived way out. You’re saying you never heard this?”
“Just tell your story, Cal,” Wash said. He wasn’t going to beg for some yarn that was sure to be more gossip than truth.
Cal gave in. “My aunt SueSue said Tall Man’s brother, Blue was his name—”
“Short for Blue Balls?”
“SueSue said he was real dark, kind of blue-black. Anyway, Blue went to work on a logging camp in Louisiana, but Tall Man was digging ditches for the oilmen over in Kilgore right after the Boom hit. Money was better logging, but he wanted to stay close to home and be with his honey. SueSue said she died trying to have a baby. Baby died, too.”
“And so did their pet goat?” Wash rolled his eyes.
Cal ignored him. “When Blue came back, he didn’t stay with his folks in Egypt Town or the Bottom but went and built himself a cabin on some backwoods scrap of land. Nobody could pin Blue down for why he wanted to be way out like that when before he was plenty sociable. Folks started noticing things, like how he bought flower seeds and carried home more food than even a big man like him could eat.”
“We’re five minutes from the oil yard,” Wash said. “You’d better get to it if you want to finish your story.”
“Well, talk started that Blue had some Louisiana gal tucked away in that little cabin of his. But the question was, why wouldn’t he bring her around none?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe she was ashamed of not being married.”
Cal shook his head. “You know that ain’t it. Plenty of folks take up with each other. Even more back then when the logging camps hired blacks and the men went off to the camps and found new lady friends. So it came down to either Blue’s gal was crazy or she was so ugly that he didn’t want to claim her in public. Folks started teasing him till he’d get real mad, but he still wouldn’t bring her down.”
“And none of the fine ladies of Egypt Town could satisfy their curiosity with a little housewarming visit?” Wash asked.
“No one knew for sure where he was staying. At least until the day when Dusty Matthews—you know, from the icehouse, only he was just a kid then—until Dusty decided to follow ole Blue back to his hideout. And do you know what he saw?”
“Oswald the rabbit.” Wash said. Before Cal could answer, Wash jogged ahead of him toward one of the creeks that fed into the Sabine. He sped up and jumped across the creek. The water was low, but the bed was deep. Jagged rocks stuck up through the red clay. These were things you worked at not noticing until you were safe on the other side.
“Show-off,” Cal grumbled.
“Go on, granny.” Wash nodded at the fallen tree somebody had laid over the creek. “I came this way to make sure you’d have a way.”
Cal stared into the creek and hesitated.
“Come on.” Wash got out his wristwatch. “Let’s see if you can beat your record. I think it took you seven minutes the last time we crossed here.”
Cal glared at him and eased out across the log, crouching low to keep his balance.
“Don’t lose your glasses, man,” Wash called.
Cal jutted his chin out to keep his glasses well back on his nose, but he kept his hands close to the tree. When he was almost to the other side he dove onto the bank and scrambled up, grabbing at the brush for balance.
“Three minutes, forty-two seconds.” Wash slid the watch back into his pocket and gave a single, mocking clap.
Cal exhaled and brushed the grit off of his hands. “You fix everything else, how come you don’t fix the band on that watch?”
Wash shrugged. “I meant to, but now I’m used to it. And sometimes I don’t want to know the time. Now, are you gonna finish that story?”
“So Dusty saw Blue going up to a little shack in the woods. Said there was clothes hanging out on a line in the sunniest spot there was. And there was flowers, too, planted neat in old oil cans that somebody’d split in two. And then when Blue went to open the door, Dusty saw a white woman in a raggedy dress come out and give Blue a kiss.”
Wash felt a sudden coldness between his shoulder blades, a tightening in his groin. He could feel the pull of the story, its inevitable downward turn.
“Thanks to Dusty’s big mouth, the talk went around that Blue had him a white woman hid up in them woods, but nobody knew if it was true. They’d never seen her and couldn’t really count on what Dusty said since he was just a kid. Some folks said she wasn’t white, just looked it from afar. Said how in Louisiana a lot more mixing happened during the slave days.”
“So they let them alone and then the two of them took off for someplace else? If that ain’t the ending, I don’t want to know any more,” Wash said.
“Black folk didn’t like it much, but the white folks...” Cal shook his head and paused. “You too sissy for the rest?”
“Tell the damn story, you little shit.” Wash swatted Cal’s arm.
Cal jumped back. “No telling how the white folks caught wind of what was happening. But one way or another, a crew of old loggers and some of the roughnecks who came with Pop Joiner, they all decided they’d
ride out in their sheets and pay Blue a visit. Some say it was Tall Man that left the tracks they followed, others said Blue himself was careless. Anyway, I guess the gal looked white to the whites, and that was enough to get Blue hung by the tree in front of his house with his balls stuffed in his own mouth.”
“Jesus,” Wash breathed.
“Tall found Blue. SueSue said some of the folks over in Kilgore still have the photos they sold down at Longhorn Drugs. Souvenirs.”
Wash felt the story lodge in his gut.
“Well,” Cal said. “We almost there?”
“Just about.” Wash swallowed hard, then tried to smile. “Better start pretending you’re a hard worker. It’s just over that rise. And hurry up. We don’t get out there before every other black fool, we’ll be out of luck.”
NAOMI Naomi braced herself back against the seat. Henry drove fast and then faster, a grin plastered across his face.
When the truck hit a bump, Cari and Beto flew up off the bench. They stayed standing, bouncing with excitement and the rough road.
Naomi yanked them back down.
“Aw, let them have a little fun,” Henry said. “Just stay out of the way of the gear shift, and it don’t matter.”
“Slow down a little, please,” Naomi said.
Henry shook his head like a dog, then raised a mud-splattered arm and whooped, “Black gold ahead!”
“The twins didn’t have dinner.” Naomi had been laying food on the table when he’d burst into the kitchen calling them all out to the truck.
“Never mind that. Once the oil comes in, the place’ll be crawling with folks. Somebody always sets up a stand to sell burgers. Well’s gonna come in any minute now. Salter didn’t believe me, but I knew that was the spot.”
Naomi seethed. Almost everybody at school and church and around town had some connection to the oil field, and when there was nothing else to talk about, people would start in on stories of things that had gone wrong. Boiler explosions, well fires, men slipping into the tanks they were cleaning, sinkholes that opened up right under the happy spectators who came to celebrate a new find. All she could think of was the risk—and how willing Henry was to put Cari and Beto in the middle of it.
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