by Lisa Wingate
All afternoon, I wonder if Arney will be at the boat tonight when Fern and me get there. But I figure she will, because when she thinks about it, she’ll see there’s not much to hold her here. She needs to get away down the river as much as we do.
The Seviers talk in their bedroom again before Mr. Sevier heads into Memphis for his meeting. When they come down, he’s carrying a little overnight bag.
“If the meeting runs late, I may stay in the city,” he says, and then he kisses Fern on the head and me too, which he’s never done before. I grit my teeth and try really hard to be still while he leans over me. All I can think about is Mr. Riggs. “You three take care of each other.” He looks at Mrs. Sevier. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
Zuma hands him his hat as he walks out the door, and then it’s just us womenfolk. Mrs. Sevier tells Zuma and Hootsie they can go on out to the carriage house and kick their feet up. There’s no need to fuss over a meal. We girls will just have ourselves a tray of finger sandwiches.
Zuma fixes the tray real cute before she leaves.
“A little pajama party just for us. Captain Midnight is on the radio tonight,” Mrs. Sevier says. “And hot cocoa too. Maybe it’ll settle my stomach.” She licks her lips and presses a hand over her tummy.
“I don’t think my stomach feels too good either.” I’m itching to get upstairs and gather some things together. I won’t take any more than I have to of what the Seviers bought for us. It’s not right. Anyhow, we have things on the Arcadia. Not fancy things like these, but we’ve got what we need. What would a river gypsy want with ruffled dresses and shiny leather shoes? The clackety soles would scare all the fish away.
“You girls go on and wash up, and put your gowns on. May, you’ll feel better once we’re all settled in with some cocoa and treats.” Mrs. Sevier wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, then pushes her lips into a smile. “Come on, now. We’ll make a lovely evening of it. Just us girls.”
I take Fern’s hand and head upstairs.
Fern’s so excited about our party with Mrs. Sevier, she washes herself and gets her pajamas on lickety-split, even if her nighty is backward.
I fix it and put her robe on over the top and get mine on too, but I keep my clothes underneath. If Mrs. Sevier notices, I’ll just tell her I was chilly. Lately, it’s been cool in the house at night. One more reminder that it’s time to get back to the river before winter sets in.
I try to act like I’m happy about our radio party, but I’m nervous as a cat while we’re eating our finger sandwiches. I drop one on my robe and stain it, and Mrs. Sevier wipes the mess up for me.
She checks my forehead for a temperature. “How are you feeling now that you’ve had a little something to eat?”
All I can think is that I wish she was Queenie. I wish Queenie and Briny owned this big house, and I wish Mrs. Sevier could have babies one right after the other like Queenie does so she wouldn’t be lonesome after we’re gone.
I shake my head and whisper, “I might oughta just go on up to bed. I can take Fern with me and get her settled.”
“No need for you to bother.” She runs a hand along my hair, gathering it in her fingers and lifting it off my neck the way Queenie used to. “I’ll bring her up when she’s ready. I’m her mommy, after all.”
Everything in me goes cold and hard again. I barely even feel it when she kisses me on the cheek and asks if I need her to come tuck me in.
“No…Mommy.” I hurry out of the room quick as I can, and I don’t look back even once.
Upstairs, it seems like forever before Mrs. Sevier brings Fern to bed. Through the wall, I hear her sing a lullaby. I push my hands tight over my ears.
Queenie and me sang that song to the babies a lot.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleep, little baby.
When you wake,
You shall have
All the pretty little horses.
All of it tangles in my head: The Arcadia and this place. My real parents and Mrs. Sevier and Mr. Sevier. Queenie and Mommy and Briny and Papa. The big river. The oxbow lake. The slough. Long white porches and little ones that drift, and drift, and drift over the water, not painted at all.
I play like I’m asleep when Mrs. Sevier comes into my room and feels my forehead again. I’m afraid she’ll try to wake me up and ask how I am, but then she leaves. The door closes at the end of the hall, and I can finally breathe easy.
The moon’s just coming up when I put on my coat and shoes, strap a little poke onto my back, and slip into Fern’s room and lift her out of bed. “Sssshhh…be real quiet. We’re gonna walk to the river and see if we can spot some fireflies. If anybody hears us, they won’t let us go.”
I wrap my little sister in a blanket, and she’s asleep on my shoulder before we’re down the stairs and out the door to the porch. It’s dark and shadowy there, and I hear something scratching in the gardens near the house, a coon or a skunk maybe. Mr. Sevier’s hunting dogs bark when I step off into the grass, but they quiet after they see it’s just me. Nobody lights a lamp in the carriage house. Dew flicks up and sprinkles my legs as I hold Fern tight and hurry toward the trees. Over branches, the moon shines high and full, as bright as the lantern Briny always hangs on the Arcadia at night. There’s plenty of light to see by, and that’s all we need. We’re down to the lakeshore quick. Arney is waiting, just like she promised.
We whisper, even though she tells me her daddy’s dead-dog out cold from whiskey, like usual. “If he wakes some and wants me, he ain’t gonna git hisself upright to come lookin’.” But Arney hurries us into the boat anyhow. Her eyes are wide white circles in her thin face when she checks over her shoulder toward the camp.
At the last, she stands there with one hand on the little jon boat and two feet on the shore. It seems like forever that she’s turned toward the camp, just watching.
“Get in,” I whisper. Fern’s waking up a little in the bottom of the boat, yawning and stretching and blinking around. If she figures out what’s going on, I’m afraid she might raise a fuss.
Arney’s fingers drift off the boat until only the tips are touching.
“Arney.” Is she thinking of sending us on alone? I’ve got no idea how to run the motorboat by myself, and I don’t know the way through the slough. We’ll get lost in there and never come out. “Arney, we gotta go.”
Past the treetops, the shadows shift on the lawn, and I think I see streams of light moving over the grass. They’re gone by the time I stand up for a better view. Maybe they were only in my mind…or maybe Mr. Sevier decided to come home tonight instead of staying in the city. Could be he’s parking his car and walking into the house right now. He’ll look in our bedrooms and know we’re gone.
I wobble across the hull and grab Arney’s arm, and she jumps like she’s forgot all about me. Her eyes grab on to mine through the moonlight. “I don’t know if I oughta,” she says. “I won’t never see my people again.”
“They treat you bad, Arney. You have to leave. You have to come with us. We’ll be your people now. Me and Fern and Briny and Queenie and Old Zede.”
We stare at each other for a long time. Finally, she nods and casts off the boat so fast I fall over the top of Fern. We take the paddles and row out a ways, letting wind and the current pull us along toward the slough until we’re well out from shore.
“Where’s…a fi…fireflies?” Fern mumbles when I crawl over her.
“Sssshhh. We gotta get all the way to the river first. You might oughta sleep awhile yet.” I pull her blanket up tight and put her shoes on her bare feet to keep them warm and let her use the poke for a pillow. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to look.” There won’t be any fireflies, but when Fern finally sees the Arcadia, she won’t care a bit.
Arney starts the motor and sits down in the stern to run it. I take my paddle and move to a place up front to watch for drift logs. “Light the lamp,” Arney says. “There’s matches in the box there.�
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I do what she asks, and just a few minutes later, we’re slipping down the middle of the wide, clear lake, stirring the night critters as they skitter away from the circle of lantern glow. I feel free as the Canada geese that pass by overhead, honking their call notes and dotting out the stars. They’re headed the same way we are. South to the river. I watch them pass and wish I could catch on to one and let it fly me home.
“Best keep a lookout up there.” Arney slows the boat when the lake narrows and the trees squeeze in closer. “Push off the drift if ya spy any. Don’t let us run up on it.”
“I know.”
The night air cools and thickens and smells of the slough. I button my coat tighter. Trees shut out the sky, their bottoms wide and twisted and rooty. Their branches reach at us like fingers. Something scrapes along the hull and lifts us on one side.
“Keep us offa them,” Arney barks. “One splits the boat, we’re goners.”
I watch for logs and cypress knobs and any sort of driftwood. I push it away with the paddle, and the miles go by slow. Here and there, skiffs sit tied ashore and swamp houses float on skids, their lanterns flickering, but mostly we’re alone. There’s nothing except us and miles of low, boggy country where the otters and the bobcats live and moss hangs heavy from the branches overhead. The trees make shapes that look like monsters in the dark.
A screech owl sounds off, and both Arney and me duck low. We hear it pass right over our heads.
Fern roots around in her sleep, bothered by the noise.
I think of Briny’s tales about ol’ rougarou and how he carries little children off to the swamp. A shiver runs through me, but I don’t let Arney see it. There’s no monsters here worse than the ones that’re waiting for us at Mrs. Murphy’s house if we’re sent back.
No matter what else happens, Fern and me can’t get caught.
I watch the water and try not to think about what might be out there in the swamp. Arney turns us this way and that, finding the channel time after time just like she said she could.
Finally, we run out of moonlight, and the kerosene in the lamp goes dry. The flame sputters until it’s just the wick burning. The breeze snuffs it out as we draw to shore and tie the bowline to a tree branch. My arms and legs are heavy like the water-soaked logs I’ve been shoving away with the paddle. They ache and crackle when I crawl to the center of the boat to get under the blanket beside Fern, who’s been asleep almost this whole time.
Arney comes too. “Ain’t far to the end of the slough from here,” she says, and the three of us curl up together, cold and wet and wanting sleep. From someplace, I think I hear music, and I tell myself it’s a showboat and that means the river’s nearby, but it could just be my mind playing tricks. As I drift away, I’m sure there’s the sound of the boats and barges far off. Their foghorns and whistles travel on the night. I listen close, try to decide if I know which ones they are. The Benny Slade, the General P, and a paddle-wheeler with its telltale puff, slap, slap, slap, puff.
I’m home. I’m wrapped in the lullaby I know by heart. I let the dark and the night sounds come inside me, and there’s not a dream or a worry anywhere. The mother water rocks me soft and gentle until nothing else is around me at all.
I sleep the deep sleep of a river gypsy.
In the morning, voices pull me from the quiet. Voices…and wood pounding on wood. I throw off the blanket, and Arney snaps upright on the other side of Fern. We look at each other for a minute, remembering where we are and what we’ve done. Between us, Fern turns over and blinks up at the sky.
“I tolt ya they’s somebody in that boat, Remley.” Three little colored boys stand watching us from the cypress knees, their overalls rolled up above skinny, muddy legs.
“That one’s a girl!” the biggest boy says, stretching out his chin to get a better look at me and tapping the boat with the end of his frog gig. “And they’s a little girl too. White girls!”
The others step back, but the biggest boy—he can’t be much more than nine or ten—stands his ground and leans on his gig. “What’re you doin’ here? You lost?”
Arney stands up and swats a hand at them. “Scamper off! Y’all better git gone if’n ya know what’s good for ya.” Her voice is deeper, like the one she used before I knew she was a girl. “We been out fishin’. Just waitin’ on mornin’ to start up again is all. One a’ y’all clamber up there ’n’ unhitch that line, so’s we can git on our way.”
The boys stay where they are, still watching us, wide-eyed.
“Hurry on now, ya hear me?” Arney shakes the paddle toward the branch where we’re tied. The water pulled us around while we slept, and the rope’s tangled in the limbs. It’ll be hard to get at it ourselves.
I scrabble in the poke and hold up a cookie. In the Sevier house, it’s never hard to make off with Zuma’s baked goods. I’ve squirreled some away the last few days to have them ready for our trip. Now they’ll come in handy. “I’ll throw you a cookie if you do.”
Fern rubs her eyes and whispers, “Where’s Mommy?”
“Hush,” I tell her. “You be real still, now. No more questions.”
I hold the cookie up for the colored boys. The littlest one grins, then drops his gig pole and climbs the branch as good as any lizard could. He works at the knot a bit, but he gets it loose. Before we drift off, I toss three cookies up on the bank.
“No need in givin’ them any,” Arney complains.
Fern stretches toward me and licks her lips.
I hand Fern and Arney the last two cookies. “We’ll have lots of food once we get to the Arcadia. Queenie and Briny are gonna be so happy to see us, they’ll cook up a mess so big you won’t be able to believe your natural-born eyes.” Ever since we started this trip, I’ve been promising Arney things to keep her going. I can tell she still wants to be back with her people. It’s funny how what you’re used to seems like it’s right even if it’s bad.
“You’ll see,” I tell her. “Once we’re on the Arcadia, we’ll cast off down the river where nobody can give us trouble. We’ll go south, and Old Zede, he’ll be right behind us.”
I tell myself that over and over and over while we start the little motor and work our way to the mouth of the slough, but it’s like there’s a line inside me and it’s still tied to something back yonder. It gets tighter and tighter, even after we turn a corner, and the trees open up, and I see the river, ready to carry us home. There’s a worry growing in me, and it’s got nothing to do with the wakes from the big boats jostling and rocking us around as we putter along toward Memphis.
When Mud Island finally does come into sight, the worry gets my breath altogether, and I half wish a runaway barge would plow us under as we cross toward the backwater. What’ll Briny and Queenie say when they see that Fern’s the only one left besides me?
The question gets heavier and heavier as we pass the old shantyboat camp, which is almost empty now, and I guide Arney into the backwater I’ve traveled a hundred times in my mind already. I’ve come here from Miss Tann’s car, and Mrs. Murphy’s cellar, and the sofa at the viewing party, and the lacy pink bedroom at the Seviers’ big house.
It’s hard to believe, even when we clear the bend and the Arcadia is waiting there, that she’s real. She’s not just another dream.
Zede’s shantyboat is tied up just down the way, but the closer I get, the more things look wrong about the Arcadia. The porch rail is broken out. Leaves and downed branches litter the roof. A shattered window shines its sharp fangs in the sunlight near the stovepipe. The Arcadia lists in the water, her hull mired up on the bank so high, I wonder how we’ll ever break her loose.
“Arcadia! Arcadia!” Fern cheers, and claps, and points, her sun-gold curls bouncing up and down. She stands in the center of the boat the way only a river girl can. “Arcadia! Queenie! Queenie!” she yells again and again as we come closer.
There’s no sign of anybody around. Maybe they got up this morning and went off to fish or hunt? Or maybe the
y’re down at Zede’s?
But Queenie doesn’t leave the boat much. She likes staying home unless she’s got womenfolk nearby to visit with. There’s nobody else around here.
“This it?” Arney sounds doubtful.
“Must be they’re not home just now.” I try to seem sure of myself, but I’m not. A thick black feeling comes over me. Queenie and Briny wouldn’t ever let the boat look like this. Briny was always prideful about the Arcadia. He kept things up real nice. Even with five kids around, Queenie made our little home spotless. Shipshape, she called it.
The Arcadia is a long way from shipshape now. It looks even worse as Arney steers us close to the gangplank, then cuts the motor so we can float in. When I grab the porch rail to pull us to, a piece of it comes off in my hand, and I almost topple into the water.
We’ve no sooner gotten tied up than I see Silas running down the bank, his long legs pumping through the sand. He jumps over a brush pile, nimble as a fox, and for a minute, I think of Camellia scampering away when the police came.
That seems like years ago, not just months.
Silas meets me when I climb off the boat. He grabs me in a bear hug and swings me and holds me up over the sand while his feet sink down into it. Then he sets me on the end of the plank.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“I wondered too.” Behind me, I hear Arney helping Fern, but all I can do is look at Silas. He’s a sight for sore eyes, that’s what he is. “We’re home. We made it home.”
“You did. And you got Fern here too. Wait’ll Zede sees!”
He hugs me again, and this time my arms aren’t pinned down by his. I hug him back.
It’s not till Fern talks that I remember there’s anybody else watching. “Where’s Queenie?” she asks.
The minute I let go of Silas and step back to look at him, I know something’s wrong. Nobody’s come out of the shanty, even with all the racket we’ve made. “Silas, where’s Queenie? Where’s Briny?”
Silas holds me by the shoulders. His dark eyes stare hard into mine. The corner of his mouth quivers a little. “Your mama died three weeks ago, Rill. The doctor said it was blood poisonin’, but Zede told me she just had a broke heart. She missed y’all too much.”