by Lesley Kagen
“Leave the tray,” Papa says. If I wasn’t looking straight at him, I’d swear I was hearing Grampa. Or Blackie, he’s got that sneering tone as well.
“Did Miss Shen tell ya about your neighbor?” Lou prattles on. “Yessir. Your brother came by earlier to . . . ah . . . let ya know that your horse needs new shoes soon. He told me and the girls all about Mr. Clive bein’ found dead. Ain’t that a cryin’ shame?”
As much as I wish it were, barging in like this is not an attempt on Lou’s part to rescue me. It’s just her roundabout way of reminding me to keep my mouth shut about her loving up my uncle and she’ll do the same about Woody and me escaping from Lilyfield this morning.
Papa’s voice bounces off the bedroom walls. “You’re dismissed.”
I’m hoping so bad that he means me that I try leaving. “Your sister?” he says, clamping down with his hands. His law school graduation ring is digging into the bone at the top of my right shoulder. “Where is she? And why are your shorts wet if you weren’t down at the creek?”
“She’s . . . I . . . we’ve been waterin’ the gardens so they look nice when Grampa comes,” I lie. “It must’ve been somebody else you saw under the willow or—”
“I was down to the creek this mornin’ pickin’ flowers for your mama’s room,” Lou hollers from the hall. She has not come into view, it’s just her voice. “Got a nice bunch of those lilies she likes so much right downstairs on the—”
“Louise.” Papa uses his quiet voice that is much more frightening than his loud one.
“Sir?”
“Get . . . back . . . into . . . the . . . kitchen. Now. There’s work to be done before my father arrives.”
I hear Lou scurry away, mumbling yessirs and hoodoo words to keep herself safe from the wrath of Papa, and I so badly want to run after her. He’s pressuring me much harder than I’m sure he’s meaning to. “You and your sister were up in the fort the night your mother disappeared. The moon was full. What did you see?”
I knew he’d ask me. It always comes down to this even though I’ve told him countless times what I saw that night.
Most of it anyway.
Colonel Button’s Thrills and Chills Show sets up their rides and games in Buffalo Park, which is on the other side of Honeysuckle Hill, a stone’s throw away from our place.
Woody and me were sleeping up in the fort that night because I just love the sound of folks having fun. All that hooting and hollering—it makes me feel like part of the greater good.
We’d had such a swell time at the carnival. We each got a teddy bear and rode the Tilt-a-Whirl and laughed to tears at how wavy we looked in the Maze of a Million Mirrors. Dreaming of all that fun is what must’ve been giving me such a nice slumber, but it wasn’t doing the same for my sister. She woke me up after midnight, babbling, “Mama . . . mama . . . gone.”
I tried ignoring her, and when she wouldn’t let me, I groused, “Did ya eat too many Red Hots? You’re having a bad dream. Lie back down and go to sleep.”
Woody plastered herself against me, which I usually love, but her hands were sticky with cotton candy. I rolled away, but she came after me. “Papa . . . Papa,” she moaned, and that’s when I heard him, too.
He was thrashing about in the woods, bellowing, “No . . . no. How could you?”
And then all went still, except for Woody’s whimpering and Mars, the dog, barking and the strong man bell ringing faintly from over at the carnival. I thought Papa had passed out, but when I pressed my eye to the fort peephole I could see him weaving our way. Somebody else was back there, too, but I couldn’t make out who and I stopped caring when I heard our father’s cursing effort to get situated on the fort steps. Woody grabbed onto my neck when he hollered up the trunk, “Your mother . . . she’s . . . get down here.” Knowing better than to tangle with him when he got like that, Woody and me stayed right where we were, which proved to be for the best, because a little while later Mars quit barking and gave off a blood-curdling yelp and Papa went back to the clearing, nearly crawling.
At the time I thought to myself, Papa needs to stop trying to match his father and brother drink for drink. I got so ugly with my sister for interrupting my sleep. “Quit bein’ such a titty baby,” I snapped at her. “You know he acts and talks foolish when he’s soused. You know that. All we got to do is wait him out. Mama’s around here somewhere. She’s not gone. She’s got nowhere to go.” I looked up at the house to make certain. I’d often catch our mother peeking out the curtains, like she was expecting somebody or maybe she was just watching over Woody and me, I don’t know. But that night, their bedroom window was dark and empty. So with a leave-me-alone grunt, I curled back up and was almost to sleep when Woody whispered into my ear the last words she’s spoken since that night, “Mama . . . gone.”
That’s when I recalled how little our mother enjoyed the carnival no matter how hard Papa and Grampa tried to force her to. And how later on in the evening, I got mad because she didn’t give Woody and me the money to see the Oddities Show but she was taking a ride on the merry-go-round with our friend Sam Moody. He was straddling a white horse and Mama was a few rows back in a swan. They should’ve been smiling, but they looked like they’d just lost their best friend. Good, I thought, I’m glad they’re sad, because I was still feeling so het up about Woody and me having to crawl under the tent to see the freak show like some poor children.
When that merry-go-round memory came back to me up in the fort that night, I didn’t even bother pulling on my sneakers, just a balled-up shirt and shorts. I reached for my flashlight and hissed at Woody as I undid the get-down hatch, “You’re actin’ like Sarah Heartburn, but since it looks like you’re gonna go on and on and not let me get a minute’s sleep until I do so, I’ll go look for Mama. She’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
My sister tried to stop me, but I shook her off. I didn’t let on to her, but all of a sudden it seemed possible that Papa wasn’t talking from out of the bottom of a bottle. Maybe our mother really wasn’t where she was supposed to be. What if she and Sam, neither one of them being gregarious of personality, had gotten off the ride and made their way back to his cabin to finish discussing their book of the week in peace and quiet? What if when they got done conversing, Mama dozed off? Realizing how world-coming-to-an-end horrible that would be, I told Woody, “If Papa comes back, do not leave this fort no matter how much he begs, ya hear me?”
I slid down the fort steps and charged barefoot through the front woods all the way over to the Triple S. Hopping up Sam’s cabin steps, I waved my flashlight the full length of the porch, but did not see my mother sprawled out in the swing. She might be inside, I thought. Sam had that table fan and it was so sticky that night. I pounded my fists on the front door.
Sam called out, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me.”
He opened the door sweaty and with a shotgun. “Shenny? Where’s Woody?” Sam looked out over my head into the darkness.
“Is Mama here?” I dived straight into explaining what’d happened back in the clearing. By the time I got done telling him about Papa yelling about his wife being gone and Mars yelping and Woody weeping, I was crying some, too.
“Your mother,” Sam said. “Did she say anything to you earlier in the evening? Did she leave you a note?” His scared was making my scared even worse.
“I . . . I don’t know nothin’ about that.” I backed away. “If Mama should show up, would you make her come home as fast as she can? Tell her that His Honor . . . that . . . he’s very disappointed,” I said, and took off.
I was in the middle of the station lot when Sam called out, “Be careful.”
Those warning words made goose bumps rise up on my arms, because I immediately understood that Sam didn’t mean to be careful like I should watch out for reckless drivers when I crossed over the road or shouldn’t let any branches scratch my face on my way back home through the woods. He was warning me to be careful like—be full of care. I will
never forget it. The way the neon of his station sign washed my arms red, the dog barking up the road, my heart that had galloped up to my throat. That steamy night is when I realized that Sam knew. That Mama must’ve told him private family business. I still don’t know how much she divulged, but what would possess her to go skating on thin ice like that?
“Shenandoah,” Papa says now, getting me by the upper arms. “Are you sure you’ve told me everything about that night?”
I put on my best poker face. “Yes, sir. Like always. Everything I can remember. I swear.”
He never believes me. And he shouldn’t. Because I always leave out a few details, including the part about me running off to Sam’s cabin in hopes of finding our mother there. No matter what Papa does to me, I can’t tell him about Sam and Mama’s friendship. My sister and I swore on each other’s lives that we would never say anything to anybody.
“Your sister?” Papa says, terser. “Has she told you anything?”
My poor grieving father, he’s so out of touch. “You do remember that she doesn’t talk anymore, don’t you?”
He draws his arm back. “Are you mocking me?”
“No . . . no . . . I was just trying to . . .” I close my eyes, ready to feel the sting on my cheek.
The last time he cross-examined me like this he ended up loosening one of my molars. He didn’t mean to.
“Open your eyes.” He has come so close that he’s about pressing his lips against mine.
I turn away from his overpowering bourbon breath just in time to see my twin through a crack in the red velvet bedroom curtains. It’s like watching a scene out of a matinee movie. Woody’s sprinting across the yard like a heroine getting chased by an invisible villain.
Thinking fast, I jiggle from foot to foot and point across the hall. “Your Honor . . . I apologize, but . . . I can’t answer any more of your questions right this minute. There’s an urgent matter I need to attend to. May I be excused to use the little girls’ room?”
He draws back, looks at me like I have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “I . . . I’m . . . of course you can, I didn’t—” Papa collapses back onto the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s right, that’s all right,” I tell him.
This has been going on for some time now. One minute he’s stormy, the next minute my calm papa. Mercurial is what he’s become. “Why don’t you take a lie down?” I rake my fingers through his tangled hair. “I’ll come back later and if you want, I’ll shampoo you with that Castile soap you like so much and get out your razor. We really must tidy up,” I say, baby-stepping backwards and hoping with my whole heart that he does not take his head out of his hands. If he should look up, he’ll see Woody through the window.
She cannot take another night of kneeling. She just can’t.
Chapter Eleven
My sister has been running off for months.
I wasn’t all that concerned at first. I thought she was just needing a change of scenery, you know? That she was feeling as cooped up as I was in the jail that Lilyfield’s become. Only recently have I begun to realize that her escaping is more in line with what Miss Emily Dickinson described when she wrote, “A wounded deer leaps highest.”
When my mother quoted that to me the first time, I asked her what it was supposed to mean because it didn’t make sense. If an animal is hurt, they’re more apt to curl up in a ball and lick their wounds, not go jumping all over the place. Mama told me that what Miss Dickinson meant was, “The worse something hurts inside us, Shen, the harder we try to get away from it.”
I have got to break into the secondhand shop to get her another of Mama’s scarves. Woody can use it like a bandage. She’s going to need it after I get done tearing her limb from limb.
“Would you quit chasin’ that chicken and get over here,” I shout to the other side of the creek, which hasn’t settled down at all since we crossed it this morning. If anything, it’s gotten itself more worked up. It’s practically rabid. Looks like there’s a storm coming.
“What’s wrong?” E. J. drops his ax and hollers back.
“She bolted!”
He comes barreling down the slope and across the stepping stones, skipping every other one. “How’d she get by you?” he says, arriving breathless at my side.
Neither one of us will forget that horrible day she got away and we looked and looked and it grew dark and we never found her. E. J. and I had to run over to the Jacksons’ cottage to ask for help, but wouldn’t you know it, right after I’d told Mr. Cole in tears, “Woody’s missing. You better go get the sheriff,” my twin came into the yard, looking bedraggled with her shoulder messed up. Mr. Cole took one look at her and said, “Her arm’s hangin’ odd.” Real fast, he took her wrist in his hands and he relocated those bones back into place. I screamed my head off at the sound, but my sister barely flinched and that got to me most of all.
“Did she shimmy down the trellis again?” E. J. asks.
“She musta.”
Worry is making E. J.’s face impossibly homelier. “Didn’t you tell me last week that ya was gonna do something about that window?”
“Yeah, so what?” I take out my frustration by kicking up a spray of creek water. I hate it when he’s right. I should’ve nailed our bedroom window shut or boarded it up or something! “I saw her streakin’ across the yard towards the front woods. Ya know what that means.”
Woody will take off higgle-niggle some days, but she’s mostly got two destinations when she runs away.
One of them is to the outskirts of town. To the railroad tracks, so she can visit with the hoboes.
I like it up at the camp now, too, but the first time I chased Woody over there, I felt like most folks around here do towards those vagabonds with their stringy clothes and sole-slapping shoes. I felt disgusted to find Woody looking so content amongst the patchwork of tattered sleeping bags and cardboard houses that they set up behind the water tower. After I spent more time up there, though, I kind of understood why my sister found it a good getaway. There’s something so . . . I don’t know . . . familiar about it.
I got curious as to why the hoboes chose our particular town to squat in instead of, say, Roanoke or Goshen Pass, so I got up my nerve and asked a man named Limping Larry, who is the King of the Camp even though he only has two teeth and one ear. He showed me the special secret signs the hoboes write on trees and the sides of barns to tell others of their kind that Lexington is a good place to hop off a train because it slows there to fill up with water. He told me, “Travelers don’t have to jump out of a fast mover and risk a bad injury the way I did,” which is why he is called Limping Larry.
The hoboes don’t make the town government so happy. Because when they aren’t sleeping or telling stories around the campfire the hoboes drink, a lot, which makes them surly. Every so often, Sheriff Nash and his deputy round them up. If they aren’t fast about scattering, which they rarely are because they’re sort of run-down, some of the hoboes get sent to the Colony to dry out and the rest get tossed in the clinker until they stop seeing pink elephants.
Woody’s most absolute favorite friend at the camp is Dagmar Epps. She is Limping Larry’s girlfriend and therefore, Queen of the Camp. Dagmar is not a regular hobo. She didn’t travel here from some far-off place. Dagmar was born in town, but she went up to the camp to live because she’s sort of retarded, I think. She got pregnant three times and wasn’t married. To help her get control of her loose morals, His Honor put Dagmar’s children in an orphanage and then committed her to the hospital to have her insides taken out. Dagmar is rather cool to me, but she loves my sister, who she sometimes refers to as “Genevieve,” which I think was one of her babies’ names.
A hobo named Curry Weaver is Woody’s newest friend up at the camp. He’s only been up there for a little while, but my sister has really taken to him. That hobo is like the pied piper with that harmonica of his. He takes it out of his pocket and places it on his lips and asks in his Northern accent,
“What would you like to hear this evening, Woody?” but he always performs the same tune. An excellent version of “Mr. Bojangles,” because somehow he knows that’s a very relaxing song or else that’s the only one he knows. I believe that Curry is being so friendly to us because if you’re on the run from the law, which Limping Larry told me most of the hoboes are, it helps to have friends in high places. Curry has been asking me lots of questions. About the town. My grandfather. My mother. The two of us like to sit up on the trestle that runs over the Maury River when we talk. That is as calming to me as Curry’s harmonica music is to Woody. Seeing all that water flowing below. It reminds me of Mama.
“His Honor . . . what is he like?” Curry asked last time I was up there.
“Well, he’s a real busy and important man. A great father. The best. Cares so much about the town, too.”
“Your mother? I heard she’s disappeared. That must be painful for you and your sister.” He looked over his broad shoulder at the camp. Woody was back there with Dagmar, who was combing my sister’s hair with a Popsicle stick. “When did she stop talking?”
“The night Mama vanished. But when I find her, she’ll start up again. I’ve got a plan.”
“What kind of plan?” he asked, like he was truly interested.
“Oh, a snatch of this, a snatch of that.” I didn’t know him well enough to fill him in, so we were quiet together, watching the birds swoop down for their dinners like the river was a big old buffet.
Curry asked me then, “What can you tell me about Doc Keller?”
“Doc Keller?” That kinda threw me. “Well, he and Papa have been best friends since they were kids. They’re fraternity brothers, too. Why do you ask?” I looked the hobo in his dark-circled eyes. “Are you not feeling well? I could arrange an appointment for you.”
Curry shrugged off my offer. I figured he must be suffering from something embarrassing that he didn’t want to talk about. I scooched away from him then. A lot of the hoboes have lice.