by Lisa Fowler
“Filbert, get your shoes on and get back to the wagon. I need to talk to Chestnut.”
“But, Daddy—”
“Now, Filbert.”
“Yes, sir.”
He grabs up his shoes and heads back toward the wagon, but not before he slings the loose water from his hands and arms—and pants—onto me.
I’d whack him on the bottom, but he’s already broke into a run.
Daddy sits down next to me but don’t say a word, and I realize he’s waiting ’til Filbert is clean out of sight. Goodness, I hope he’s not going to make me suffer through another one of his long silence sessions.
19
FLOPPY HATS
Chestnut, you want to tell me what’s going on with you?”
I stare at the yellowy greens of the grass and the browns and tans and grays of the rocks along the creek. I watch the tiny red ants, running to and fro, hard at their work, and wonder what their home looks like underground. Matter of fact, I wish I was an ant right now so I wouldn’t have to deal with Daddy’s question.
“Chestnut?”
I don’t answer. Maybe, just maybe, if I ignore him, he’ll stop asking.
But I know better.
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you decided to have an elixir-busting party. That little display of temper cost me money, young’un. Is that what you want? Are you trying to make me pay for something, some wrong I’ve done that you’re not bothering to tell me about?”
I don’t dare look up. Instead I stare at his brown, ankle-high work boots, comfortably broke in and a tad muddier than usual. He worked three days hauling rocks for a neighbor for them boots.
How can I tell him the truth: that all I want is to go home and that I don’t believe his stories about Mama? I should be playing with my own friends, drawing landscapes, and learning how to be a real woman, not playing nursemaid to three little babies.
How can I say, “Daddy, I’m sick and tired of trying to wash your lies off in muddy creeks.” My belly’s growling and sometimes it’s hard to think from the hunger, but I shouldn’t have to out and out tell him that. He ought to know it by now.
What words can I use to tell him how I hate wearing clothes that aren’t my own, laying my head down in towns I don’t even know the name of, and then getting up and running to another before the sun sets on the next day?”
What’s the best way to tell him I been putting up flyers in every town so’s Mama can track us down and find us when she comes looking? And what’s more, that I pray—every night—that she really is looking for us.
Do I just come right out and say, “Daddy, I stole money from that store to buy me a train ticket to Kentucky, to get back to my mama, and fix our family up proper?”
No.
I can’t.
I can’t say none of that, so I don’t say nothing at all. I just grit my teeth and stare out over the water.
“Are you sick?” he asks.
Still I don’t say anything. I cock my head and look into his eyes, so dark they’re almost black, and it seems like they almost twinkle in the sunlight. Daddy’s not a big man, but what there is of him is as strapping and strong as any man I’ve ever laid eyes to. I turn away and sit there biting my lip until I feel it starting to swell, hoping he won’t ask any more questions, especially one’s I’m not about to answer.
I try my best to turn his words off in my mind, to just stop hearing him talk, but it don’t work and before too long he starts in again.
“Is it a … how should I say it, a … a … well, is it a woman thing? I mean, do you need another woman to talk to, ’cause if that’s it, I can find one in the next—”
I interrupt by shaking my head.
Out the corner of my eye I see him hang his head. Reckon actually talking to me for a change must be a hard thing. Makes me almost feel a might sorry for him.
Almost.
“Are you sure you’re not sick or needing—”
I swallow back tears. My insides are shaking so that all I want to do is run.
Somewhere. Anywhere. But no way I can tell him that either, so I don’t say anything.
We sit, for the longest, watching speckled trout surface, swallow up mosquitoes or gnats, then shimmy and shake through the shallows for the deeper waters of the creek.
I was about the triplets’ age the last time Daddy spent any time alone with me. Matter of fact it was on a creek bank just like this one, and we was fishing. Just the two of us. No triplets. No Abraham. Not even Mama. Just Daddy and me.
Mama always saw to it that I had papers and pencils close, and while I waited for them fish to bite, I drew. After a while of looking over my shoulder watching my pencil make scratches against the paper, Daddy asked what I was drawing. Reckon my pictures weren’t as clear back then as they are now.
I told him it was a picture of me, sticking my feet into the ocean water in front of my house by the sea, drawing and painting and living happily ever after like in fairy tales.
Daddy leaned a-way back and laughed, and then he asked just where in the world I thought I’d get a house by the ocean way up here in the hills and hollers of Kentucky. But it was a nice kind of laugh.
We sat there for hours, waiting for our lines to pull and watching dragonflies flit across the water. Daddy chewed on a piece of hay and told me stories most of the day. Mama had packed us a picnic lunch. Nothing special, just a peanut butter sandwich on two slices of fresh baked bread, and an apple. But that was back when he loved me. Back when he didn’t wish I belonged to someone else. Back before he snatched me away from my loving mama and our happy home.
“We best get back,” he says now, interrupting my thoughts after a while. Reckon he finally got tired of asking questions and getting no answers. “Time to get ready for the show.”
He stands and waits, and after a bit I realize he’s waiting for me. He stretches out his hand and I think, Do I want to take it or not? And I do, because I’m not aiming to hurt anybody’s feelings, not even Daddy’s.
“Look,” he says, pointing to the side of his head and grinning. “Still got my ear. You didn’t take the whole thing off, just shortened it a bit.”
He’s wrapped his entire ear in what looks to be a piece of cloth—maybe one of his old T-shirts. There’s a string circling his ear and it’s tied in a knot at the top. Any other time I’d bust out laughing, but not now. Reckon they’s too many conflicting feelings inside for that.
He snickers and lifts my chin with his finger so’s we’re looking at each other eyeball to eyeball but I don’t snicker. I just can’t. After all, I’ve still got the picture in my mind of the sheriff coming ’round to haul me off to jail for stealing. What will Daddy do then? What’ll happen to the triplets? What will Mama say when she hears?
“You do still remember how to work the crowd, don’t you?”
I nod.
“Good, ’cause you know I’m counting on you. I mean, I can’t do the show without you. Someone’s got to spot the doubters.”
“Yes, sir.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder but I pull away. No way I want him thinking one little asking-how-I-am is going to make up for years of not caring. Anyway, I don’t believe he cares about me down deep, where it counts—least, not like he did before the triplets come along.
We walk the rest of the way without a word, but all the while my mind’s running in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
“Family’s back together, Abraham,” Daddy says as we saunter into camp. Then all of a sudden, like turning on a fancy, store-bought ’lectrical switch or striking a match to light a candle, Daddy’s jumping around like a chicken with its head cut off, ready for the show to begin.
I look at Abraham, going about his business, acting like he never even noticed I’d been gone.
“Let’s get this show started,” Daddy shouts, practically jumping up and down, his face glowing like a full moon at midnight.
“Dat’s fine, and it’s sho’ nuff good to
see’s de two o’ you. I’s ready for de show, Slim.”
Hazel runs to me, with a mile-wide smile on her face, and grips my hand. She pulls me along and leads me up the steps and into the wagon, looking up into my eyes the whole time.
“Chestnut, come and see. I can draw just like you.”
“What do you mean, draw just like me? Did you get into my papers? Did you get my stuff?”
Her smile is gone and in its place there’s an uncommon fear in her eyes. Hazel never has been one to get a lot of rebuke, so when it does come it puts a fear in her that pops out all over her face.
I look to her cot. Papers, lots of papers—some with pictures of the wagon and Old Stump on them, and some of the papers I hadn’t yet turned into flyers—strewn all over the floor and around. Pictures and words I drew ready to tell Mama where we been. Pictures and words to tell her where we’re going next.
I ball up my fists and grit my teeth so tight I can almost feel them crumbling like sand inside my mouth.
“Hazel Ophelia Hill. What. Did. You. Do.”
It’s not enough that my whole body’s shaking and trembling worse than a duck feather caught up in a twister, but now the anger’s boiling down inside of me over what I see Hazel’s done. Before I can suck them back in, words—hurtful words—come rushing out of my mouth.
“You stupid little brat! You had no right bothering my stuff! I hate you!”
Snatching up my papers, I throw them onto my cot fast as I can. Hazel’s snubbing and sniffing over in the corner.
It’s good enough for her, I think. She ought to cry. She ought to weep and wail over what she done. Them’s my things, my papers, my pencils, my crayons. She had no right! No right at all to do what she done.
Mama said Hazel was like a delicate flower and should be handled with care. Now I don’t know much about delicate flowers, but I’ve got the good sense to know that most of the time not far from a sweet-smelling flower is a bee circling ’round, just waiting for someone to get in its way so’s it can sting the living daylights out of its unsuspecting victim. As far as I’m concerned, Hazel’s not the flower right now; she’s that pesky, annoying bee.
She’s sobbing. I stop snatching papers and gape over my shoulder.
Crouched into a corner, her knees are pulled to her chest and her head dropped low into her lap. Her arms are wrapped tight around her knees and she’s rocking back and forth.
Suddenly I’m ashamed.
Mama said since I was the oldest it was up to me to set the example for the rest. Swallowing hard, my heart breaks into tiny pieces. I wish I could suck every last one of them words back in. I fall to my knees and crawl across the wagon floor to my baby sister. I scoop her into my arms and pull her to my chest.
“Hazel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. You’re not a brat. I just lost my temper, and I shouldn’t have. Can you forgive me?”
She’s sniffing, and snubbing, and jerking, trying her best to suck in air. Her face is blotchy and her eyes are as swollen and red as ripe cherries hanging from a tree. She looks me in the eyes and timidly asks, “Do you really hate me?” Then she bursts into her weeping and wailing all over again.
I hug her tighter.
“Oh, Hazel, I don’t hate you. I shouldn’t have said that. I was just angry because you got my things without asking.”
She stops sobbing long enough to look me in the eyes again. “You promise?” she asks. “You promise you don’t hate me?”
I smile and kiss her forehead. “Yes, honey, I promise. I don’t hate you. I love you, very much.”
She uncurls and throws her arms around my neck.
My arms wrap around her like a warm blanket.
While we’re still huddled together I feel Daddy hitching up Old Stump, and I reckon he’s dragging the wagon into the center of town getting ready for the show.
“Next time you want to draw with my things though, just ask, okay? All you have to do is ask.”
She nods and smiles.
“All right now, Hazel, are we good? You forgive me, don’t you?”
She nods again and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
“I think we can do better than that,” I say, pulling a handkerchief from under my pillow. “Blow. Now, I reckon Daddy’s aiming to do a show this evening and you and I both need to be a part of it, okay?”
She nods again.
I lose her hold and stand, knowing what I need to do next. But, before I can, Hazel tugs at my dress-tail.
“Chestnut?”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more, you little nut!”
I turn from her, suddenly remembering my own fears.
What if someone recognizes me and calls the sheriff? I rummage through an old trunk under Mac’s cot where we keep things we don’t use anymore. There has to be some way to disguise myself so that when the sheriff and the store owner do come looking, they won’t find me so quick.
A couple of dresses, ones I’ve outgrown, stored away waiting for Hazel to get bigger, pants with more holes in them than material, one glove, and …
Everything’s on the floor of the wagon now, everything but this large brown floppy hat at the very bottom of the trunk. I don’t remember this. Wonder where it came from and why—
“Chestnut! Let’s go! Showtime!”
Daddy’s familiar call sends a sudden chill up my backbone.
Hazel hops out first.
I swing around to the back before jumping off and walking away from my family.
Abraham starts his strumming and the triplets go to singing. Folks gather, and Daddy’s flitting and flipping around, working them like they was his puppets. When the crowd’s big enough, and the music’s loud enough, Daddy catches my eye.
He does a double take. Must be the floppy hat. He looks at me again, then gives a nod, my cue to begin working the crowd.
I start into my speech, but out the corner of my eye I see an owner stomping out of his store with his hands on his hips, and he looks mad. His face is red and his lips are formed tight in a line. He’s looking over the crowd and he’s looking at Daddy. I pull the hat down tight over my eyes, but don’t miss a beat of my speech. Matter of fact, I’m reciting it better than I ever have before.
Mister Abraham and the triplets are singing like nobody’s business and they’s money being passed to the front and bottles of elixir being passed to the back faster than a cat can lap up a bowl of milk. I’m distracted, but as soon as Daddy’s sold his last bottle of elixir and Mister Abraham and the triplets are packing up getting ready to head out of town, I look back over at the store owner.
He’s waving his arm through the air like he’s swatting every fly in the county. Suddenly I realize he’s not swatting flies though. What he’s doing is flagging down the sheriff.
20
WAYWARD BOYS
Daddy, please,” I say, as the last of the crowd’s walking away. “Please, let’s leave town tonight. I can’t stay here one more minute. I’m scared. I’ve got a bad feeling about this town. I’m just sure something’s about to happen.”
Daddy looks me up and down like he thinks I’ve lost every last bit of my mind.
“Chestnut, Abraham and I are tired. We need to get a few hours sleep before we hit the road again, and I’ve got an errand to run in town before we leave.”
“Daddy, please. You know I’ve never asked anything like this before. But we’ve just got to get out of town tonight. Something bad is going to happen, I just know it.”
Daddy looks at Abraham. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
Abraham shrugs. “Sometimes de children got smarts older folks don’t, Slim,” he says, pulling the flap down over the elixir and bolting it into place. “Sometime dey’s right. Sometime dey’s not. Jes’ don’t neber know ’bout dese things, but best to listen, I say.”
The sun’s low, and an eerie sort of quiet’s fallen over the camp.
Daddy looks at Abraham, and then
back at me. He gazes up and down the town’s streets, where there’s more than a few folks still stirring, then he lifts his tall black hat, scratches his head, and nods.
“All right,” he says. “As long as it’s all right with Abraham, I suppose it’s all right with me. I’ve still got that errand to run, but get on up in the wagon and soon as we get things squared away, we’ll hightail it out of town. Next town we come to though, I’m taking you to a doctor, girl. There’s something wrong with you. I declare, Chestnut, you’re acting plum peculiar, even for a nut.”
“Oh, thank you, Daddy. Thank you. Now, please, hurry!”
There’s still packing to do, but I run up the steps and into the wagon faster than a snake in the sunshine slithers under a rock for shade. I bolt the door, jump past the triplets, and flop back on my cot, feeling mighty fine about Daddy agreeing to something I want for a change.
“What’s wrong?” Filbert asks.
“Nothing, we’re just getting out of town tonight.”
“Why? Daddy said he was tired.”
“Don’t you worry about it. We just are, that’s all. Now lie down and go to sleep.”
Daddy and Abraham are working around outside when suddenly, I remember my flyers. No way I can forget to put those up, especially since Hazel done what she did. Then again, how can I nail them up with the sheriff on the lookout for me?
Daddy said he had to go back into town. What if he sees me nailing up the flyers? What will he say then? Or worse, what if he reads the flyers? I mean, I want Mama to be able to find me, but I got the fear of being caught for thieving running around in my mind plus the fear of Daddy finding out what I’m doing.
I lie on my cot just a minute or two more before making my decision.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to the triplets—well really just to Filbert. Mac and Hazel are already breathing the rhythm of the sleeping. “Don’t let Daddy leave without me.”
“Chestnut, I’m telling!”
“Hush, Filbert! I’ll be back before Daddy misses me. Don’t say a word, all right? This is just something I’ve got to do.”
I grab up my flyers, a handful of nails, and Daddy’s hammer, and off I go through the door, out of sight of Daddy and Abraham.