Snakes and Stones

by Lisa Fowler

  The rain’s mixing with hail and slapping me and Filbert in the face. We duck into the building after them, to find Abraham hollering, “Git out de way o’ de windows! Git back! Git back!”

  There’s not but the five of us and two other folk in the store—two ladies—and they’re looking at Abraham with their mouths gaped open, like he’s a criminal that steals young’uns like us. But with Hazel still perched on his shoulders and Mac at his side, Abraham don’t seem to pay them no mind.

  “Twister!” he yells. “Comin’ dis way! Git down! Git down!”

  Just about the time those words come spewing from his mouth, the plate glass window in front of the store shatters into at least a million tiny pieces, sending glass flying through the air like a hawk in chase of a rabbit. One end of a park bench comes barreling through the opening.

  The ladies scream.

  At the back of the store, I scooch up next to Filbert and cover his head with mine, turning my face away from the tiny pieces of glass flying through the air.

  Abraham does the same with Hazel and Mac, and he slings an outstretched arm over my shoulders too.

  The store ladies huddle together and by the way their shoulders are rising and falling, they’re the ones doing the sobbing.

  The way I’ve got it figured—this is the day the lot of us will come face to face with our Maker.

  22

  RUNNING LIKE THE WIND

  I’ve never heard such a racket in my life.

  Stuff is falling off shelves, flying through the air like mad blue jays fighting to keep a calico from their nest. And the wind so loud, can’t hear nothing but the sound of that train engine roaring through my head.

  But, as sudden as it come, it’s gone.

  The two ladies in back of the store un-huddle and chase each other to the front, to stare out over the breakings.

  “Chestnut, what … what … what was that?” Filbert asks.

  “Twister, I reckon,” I say, picking glass from his hair and looking him head to toe for cuts and bruises.

  “Ya’ll all right?” Abraham asks, helping Hazel and Mac to their feet.

  “Wow!” says Filbert, pulling from my grip and running to the front of the store. “That was great! Is another one coming?”

  Abraham’s got Hazel and Mac by the hand and is on his way to the door, not turning to answer Filbert.

  Those two store ladies must have got ahold of their selves right quick, because as we are walking from the store one of them says, right out loud for us to hear, “That’s just not proper! What’s a Negro man doing holding tight to four little white children?”

  Abraham?

  He doesn’t say a word.

  He just nods, smiles, and keeps on walking.

  The second lady opens her mouth and her words come flying to my ears. “He ought to be reported to the sheriff,” she says. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t be so quick to hold those children by the hand if he knew the law was aware of what he was doing.”

  All of a sudden something I can’t control takes over my mind. And my mouth. I stop in my tracks, right there in the middle of the store, throw my hands on my hips, and square off with the second lady who’s done the talking.

  “I’ll tell you what he’s doing,” I say, without a hesitation. “He’s saving our lives, that’s what he’s doing! We got trouble and our daddy’s nowhere to be found, but Mister Abraham here saved our hides!”

  “Well!” the lady huffed, but she didn’t say anything else.

  Now that it’s over and done, I am sorry for talking back to my elder. Reckon Mama would be fierce disappointed if she’d heard, but I’m not sorry for what I said. Those ladies are way too high and mighty for their own good, and I reckon a backwoods country gal like me can set them on the straight and narrow.

  Still, I’m so regretful for my rudeness that I stop again and turn around to face the ladies. “I’m sorry if what I said was hurtful, ma’am. I didn’t mean no disrespect.” And I turn again to go.

  Following Abraham from the store, Filbert and me run smack dab into the sheriff. Not the Beaumont sheriff, but the sheriff of this town we’re in now.

  Soon as I see that star on his shirt, I turn, hang my head, and try best as I can to hide my face in my dress. I think at first he’s come to check on the store owners and the damage. But soon as he looks me up and down, like he’s wondering if I’m the one he’s looking for, I’m in a tizzy all over again.

  I lay hold to the first triplet I come to, pulling Mac close, bending over like I’m looking through his hair for glass. And then as soon as the sheriff turns away, I take off running back down the street toward the wagon, dragging Mac behind me.

  “Chestnut? Why are we running?” Mac yells. “Is there another twister coming?”

  “Just hurry,” I say.

  First thing we see is Old Stump, still tied beside the tree right where we left her. She looks sort of wild out of her eyes too, like she’s wondering what in the world has happened, but there’s not one scratch on her hide that wasn’t there already.

  And our wagon?

  Well, our poor wagon hasn’t fared nearly so well. It’s flipped on its side—the side where Daddy stores the elixir—and it seems to me there’s elixir pouring out all over the ground, mixing in with the dirt.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere it seems, Daddy comes running. He’s out of breath and panting like a dog fresh off the hunt for a rabbit or even a pheasant or two.

  “Abraham! Abraham!” he yells, as he comes closer. “Chestnut, is everyone all right?”

  “We’s good, Slim,” Abraham yells back. “We’s all fine here!”

  When Daddy reaches the wagon, he grabs hold to the triplets first thing. Then he slaps Abraham on the back, not even noticing I’m around.

  “I saw it first, Daddy!” says Mac. “I saw it coming across the way!”

  “Yeah,” Filbert chimes in, “then Abraham snatched them up and run into town, to the store. Me and Chestnut ran along behind.”

  “And the windows all broke, and glass went everywhere,” says Hazel. “But I wasn’t scared, Daddy, not at all!”

  Abraham rubs his forehead with his sleeve and looks at Daddy and winks. He lets out a long breath.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Daddy says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, but thanks to you, Abraham, my children are alive. I owe you my life, my friend.” He shakes Abraham’s hand, then slaps him hard on the back.

  “Well, deys nothin’ hurt but de wagon, and prob’ly de elixir,” Abraham says, rubbing the side of the wagon with his hands. “Lookin’ like we gots ourselves a mess.”

  Daddy scratches his head, squats low, and tries his best to see under the wagon.

  “From the looks of the broken glass and the liquid pooled under the wagon, I’d say we’ve lost the elixir, or most of it anyway. Then again, really no way to tell until we right the wagon. We did get an awful lot of rain, so it might just be puddled water.” Daddy walks around and around the wagon, inspecting every inch of it for damage. “It’ll take all of us plus Old Stump to get the wagon upright and back on her wheels again.”

  “Don’t worry, Daddy,” Filbert says. “We can do it! We can lift the wagon. You’ll see. I’m strong!”

  “I’m stronger,” Mac yells.

  “But not as strong as me,” hollers Hazel, above the both of them.

  Daddy looks to Abraham and smiles. “Well then, I say no time like the present to put that strength to work! Let’s get to it.”

  The rest of the day we work, righting the wagon, cleaning the mess of broken elixir bottles, and tidying up the inside. All in all, Daddy lost close to one hundred bottles, but to my surprise he isn’t awfully upset. But he does surprise me with somethin’ else.

  “What’s this?” Daddy asks, and he reaches down and picks up a piece of soggy paper that had blown under the bushes.

  I swallow hard, realizing right away what’s in his hand. “Um, it’s … um …”

  “Chestnut, are these your
s?”

  23

  I GOT DREAMS

  Are these pictures yours, Chestnut?” Daddy asks again. I don’t see any way out of this but the truth.

  “Um, yes, sir.”

  “You draw them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re nice. I like the way you’ve drawn the wagon. Looks … real.”

  I need to sit. Daddy’s not paid me a compliment in as long as I can remember. Matter of fact, he don’t even know me well enough to pay me a compliment. Not really, not like a father ought to know his firstborn, that is. He doesn’t know my dreams, or my wants, so him saying something nice to me comes as a huge surprise.

  “What are you planning to do with this talent of yours?” Daddy asks looking from the flyers to me and then back to the flyers again.

  “I-I-I don’t understand,” I say, wondering if he’s on to me. Does he know what my flyers are for? “What do you mean what am I going to do with it?”

  “Chestnut’s gonna do same as you when she grows up, Daddy,” Mac says. “She’s gonna sell elixir and get rich.”

  Mac’s crawling around on the ground around the wagon.

  “Am not!” I say, puffing out my chest and feeling sort of proud I’ve told Daddy I’ve no intention of following in his footsteps.

  “I know what Chestnut’s gonna do,” says Filbert. “She’s gonna get married and have bunches and bunches of babies, like Hazel.”

  “I’m not a baby!” Hazel yells, slapping Filbert on the arm.

  Filbert takes off running with Hazel close behind.

  Filbert’s’s got me thinking. What if I did decide I wanted a happy home with a husband and young’uns in the yard? What if my husband up and run off with my young’uns, like Daddy did with us? Where would I be then?

  I tell you where I’d be.

  I’d be same place as Mama is now: pining away, crying my eyeballs out, searching the hills and hollers day and night for some no-good man who didn’t love me enough to stay and keep the home fires burning. Or worse, lying flat on my back in my sick bed, sick with worry over my young’uns.

  Not me.

  That kind of life’s not what I’m aiming for.

  “All right, you two. Stop teasing your sister,” Daddy says, interrupting my thoughts. “Abraham, let’s see if maybe we can salvage some of these bottles, at least the ones that aren’t too badly damaged.”

  And just like that, Daddy’s mind is off me and back on him and making his money.

  How I wish he would talk to me long enough to know that my dream is to go to … oh, say, Paris, France, and study drawing and painting in one of those fancy-schmancy art schools Mama told me about.

  And I want to spend my days sitting beside the cornflower blue sea, with foamy waves slapping at my legs, the lemon yellow sunshine beating down on my back, and seagulls swooping down around me, sucking up all the tiny fish they can hold in their beaks.

  I want to sit up to my waist in the ocean, with a paintbrush in my hand and all the watercolors of the rainbow circling around me. I want to paint all the blues in the sky and the whites and grays of the ocean waves that race to get to the shore.

  I want to throw away my shoes with the holes in the bottoms and dig down into the lamb’s wool–colored sand with my toes. Then I’d let the warm, salty water of the ocean wash them clean again. I want to—

  “Chestnut? Chestnut? Did you hear me?”

  “Um, no, sir. Sorry.”

  “Girl, are you daydreaming again? I said what are you planning on doing with these? There’s so many, and they’re all of the same thing, the wagon and Old Stump’s rear.” He shuffles through them like he’s expecting the picture to suddenly change.

  I stand on my tiptoes and look over his shoulder, sick with worry over what I’ll find. I let out a long sigh. Those flyers he’s got in his hands don’t have any writing on them. That means he still hasn’t got a clue what I’m doing. I didn’t even remember keeping those flyers; they were the first ones I did.

  I’ve never in my life been so happy that I didn’t finish something. Until this minute, I was always angry when Daddy called me a procrastinator. Not anymore. Matter of fact from now on I’m going to wear that word around my neck, like a medal.

  “They’re all wet and soggy now. Why don’t we just throw these away?”

  I grab them from him. “No, sir,” I say. “I want to save them. I need them for a … a … a pattern! Yes, that’s right, a pattern, so’s I can draw more.”

  “Well, all right, but I can’t for the life of me see why you would need so many pictures that all look alike. Take them and put them away inside the wagon.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, pulling the papers to my chest, sloshing in mud to my ankles to the back of the wagon.

  Hazel, on her knees near the backside of the wagon, her green cotton ragbag dress wet and soppy and as muddy as I’ve ever known it to be, is tugging and pulling at something. She mumbles to herself as she tugs.

  “Hazel, what are you doing crawling around in the mud?” I ask.

  “I found … this … box … and I’m trying to pull … it … out …”

  She rips my metal box from the mud and lifts the lid in one smooth motion.

  “Hazel, don’t!” I jump toward her just in time to slam the lid on the box.

  But not before she lays eyes to the money and gasps. “Chestnut? Where did you get all that money?”

  24

  CAUGHT

  Hazel’s eyes are as big as pumpkins.

  “I never seen so much—”

  “It’s none of your beeswax so never you mind,” I say, jerking the box from her hands and pulling it to my chest.

  “Daddy, Chestnut gots—”

  “Stop it!” I say, shoving my flyers up under my arm and covering Hazel’s mouth with my hand. I grit my teeth and get down next to her ear. “If you tell, I promise you’ll be sorry!”

  “That’s enough,” Daddy says, rounding the back of the wagon with his arms full of rescued elixir bottles. “Leave Chestnut alone, Hazel. When you get to be her age, you can have secrets too. Now into the wagon, young’uns! Abraham, let’s be on our way. We’ve salvaged all we can here. I’ll go into the next town we come to and buy some more bottles.”

  “Dat’s fine!” Abraham says. “De wagon and Old Stump, dey both be’s ready to go.”

  Inside the wagon I rub my box clean with my hands. “Hazel, I think I heard Daddy calling you,” I say, pointing to the wagon’s door with a nod of my head. As soon as she looks away, I place my box back under my cot and shove it back to the wall.

  Hazel turns back to me and sheepishly eyes me like the mouse that got away from the cat.

  “If you bother my stuff again, I’ll let you have it,” I say, balling up my fist and showing it to her.

  She sticks out her tongue. Still very much a baby, she’s every bit as sly and manipulative at seven as any adult would be, especially an adult like Daddy. If she’s got something on her mind you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll come out of her mouth before too long.

  “So, where did you get it?” she asks, approaching me slowly and planting herself like a tree on the bottom of my cot.

  “Hazel, just don’t worry about it, all right?”

  I turn away, hoping she’ll wander back to her own space. I should know better.

  “But they’s millions and millions of dollars in there!”

  “Shh! And there is not millions, Hazel.”

  “What’s going on?” Filbert asks, flopping back on his cot with his Babe Ruth picture book.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I snap. “Just Hazel making up tales again.”

  Hazel gasps.

  “Aw, Chestnut, I’m telling!”

  “Just shush, and I mean it. There’s not that much money in there, leastwise not as much as you think, so just forget it. Anyway, Daddy tells fibs, so I can too.”

  “Daddy don’t fib. Everything he says is truth,” Mac says.

  I do what I
can to get their minds—especially Hazel’s—off my things. For the next three weeks we bump along dry, dusty roads, watching nothing go by us but flat land. Daddy likes to take his time and set up camp at every pretty patch along the road that we come to.

  While we ride, I draw, and I dream of having fancy paints and canvases like the ones Mama showed me in her Sears catalog. I dream of having Mama close again.

  Late one evening, about the time I’m ready to turn in for the night to do some serious sleeping, Daddy hollers, “There she is! Houston, Texas, here we come!”

  Tired as I am, I’ve never been so happy to hear Daddy shout out a town in all my born days.

  Hazel and Mac jump to the front of the wagon and lean out the door over Daddy’s shoulder, taking in the sights. But it’s night, and we’re on the outskirts of town. Little do those two know, there’s not much to be seen from here but twinkly lights.

  “So, where did you get the money?” Filbert asks, balancing his book on his stomach like a circus performer.

  “How come you’re asking me about that now?” I say, lying back on my cot and breathing deep, worried that what he’s heard is still weighing heavy on his mind after all this time. “Anyway, it’s not that much,” I say. “You know how Hazel stretches things.”

  I look away but hear Filbert grunt, “Humph!” Just like Daddy.

  In the late afternoon of the next day, Daddy rolls the wagon into the middle of town and we do a show. Right good one too. Matter of fact, best show we’ve done since Abraham’s been with us.

  But with the bottles of elixir we lost in the tornado and the bottles we sold in the show today, Daddy says we’re off about two hundred bottles.

  “All right, young’uns, you know what to do. We’ve got to get the wagon full of elixir and that means filling up bottles—lots and lots of bottles. I’m going into town to find us some more empties, and I’ve got some other things I need to get done, but I’ll be back soon. The three of you pull up grass and tear it tiny, tiny, tiny, so folks will think it’s herbs,” he says to the triplets. “Chestnut, you find water and fill the buckets to the brim. Abraham and I will do the mixing soon as I get back.”