by Lisa Wingate
I stare off in the night, lay eyes on the water, deep and wide under the moon and boat lamps and shadows. Yellow and white. Light and dark. I pretend I’m back home, safe, but truth is this river’s carrying me deeper into trouble by the hour and by the day. Need to go back to my hiding spot for sleep, but looking out over the rails, all I can think is, the last time I was on a packet boat like this one was when Old Marse Gossett herded up a batch of us and sent us with Jep Loach to run from the Yankees, off to Texas. Chained one to the other, and half who couldn’t swim, all us knew what’d happen if that bloated-down boat hit a sandbar or a snag and went under.
My mama wept and cried out, Take off the chains from the children. Please, take off the chains….
I feel her close to me now. I want her to make me strong. To help me know, was it right what I done when them two big trunks went up the bow ramp onto this boat, and I heard moanin’ inside? There was a clatter of men nearby, wrestling the last of the livestock—two teams of fighting, kicking, biting, squealin’ bay mules.
Three men, only.
Four mules.
I set down my empty crate, pushed Missy’s necklace deep in my pocket, and ran to take up the line to the last mule. Onto the boat I went with that mule, and there I stayed. Hid myself in a space twixt cotton bale stacks taller than two men. Prayed not to wind up buried alive in it.
So far, I ain’t.
“Mama…” I hear myself whisper now.
“Hush up!” Somebody grabs my wrist and pulls me hard away from the side rails. “Quieten down! Git us throwed in the river, you don’t shut yer yap.”
It’s that boy, Gus McKlatchy, beside me, now, trying to pull me back from the deck’s edge. Gus, who’s twelve or fourteen years old depending on which time you ask, nothing more than a ragged little pie-eater white boy from someplace back in the bayou. He’s scrawny enough he can slip between the cotton bales and hide away like I been doing. The Genesee Star is loaded to the guards, hauling freight and livestock and people. She’s a sad, battered old thing, and drafts low in the water, rubbing the shoals and the snags while she trudges her way upriver, slow and painful. Faster boats go by now and again and blow their whistles, passing us up like the Genesee is tied on at the banks.
The folk she’s carrying are of the sort to barely scratch up money for deck passage. At night, they bed down in the open, with the goods and the cows and the horses. Cinders and ash swirl down from the stacks of passing boats, and we just pray it don’t set fire to the cotton.
There’s only a few staterooms on the boiler deck for folks that can afford cabin passage. Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane, if they’re alive yet, must be up there. Trouble is, there’s no way I can know. During the day, I can mix in with the roustabouts, who are colored men, but that won’t get me up in the passenger rooms.
Gus’s got the opposite problem. Being a white boy, he don’t pass for a roustabout, and he ain’t got a ticket to show, if he was asked. He moves round the boat at night. The boy’s a thief, and thievin’ is a sin, but just now he’s all I got to show me the way of things. We ain’t friends. I had to give him one of Missy Lavinia’s coins so he’d let me share the cotton bales. We help each other, though. Both know if you get caught for a stowaway, they throw you off in the river, let the paddle wheel suck you under. Gus’s seen it happen before.
“Hush up,” he says and tugs me back toward our hiding place. “You done gone soft in the head?”
“Come to do my necessary while it’s still dark out,” I say. If he decides I’m fool enough to get him caught, he’ll want shed of me.
“Use the slop jar, you ain’t got no more sense than to stand here a’gawkin off the edge like this,” Gus hisses. “You fall off into the water, and end up gone, then I got nobody that can go about this boat durin’ the day and be took for one of the workers, see? Elsewise, you ain’t no concern of mine. I don’t give a pig toe what you do. But I need somebody to sneak in the crew hall and brang me food. I’s a growin’ boy. Don’t like goin’ hongry.”
“Didn’t think of the slop jar,” I say of the old bucket Gus stole and that we stuffed a ways down the cotton bales from our hidin’ place. We got us a whole house set up under there. The Palace, Gus calls it.
Palace for skinny people. We tunneled it like rats. Even made myself a hiding hole for Missy’s reticule. Hope Gus ain’t found it while I’m gone. He knows I got secrets.
But I’m gonna have to tell him. Been on this slow-moving packet boat almost two days already and hadn’t found out nothing on my own. I need Gus’s thievin’ skills, and the longer I wait to ask, the more it’s likely something terrible comes to Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane. More likely it is they wind up dead or wishing to be. There’s things worse than death. You been in slavery days, you know there’s things a heap less peaceable than being dead.
To get Gus’s help, I got to tell him the truth. At least most of it.
And probably spend another dollar, too.
I wait till we’re safe back in our cotton bale house. Gus squirrels into his sleeping place, still grousing about having to go get me.
I twist over on my side, then my belly, so’s I can whisper to him, but I smell that he’s got his feet turned my way. “Gus, I ought to tell you something.”
“I’m sleepin’,” he says, irritable.
“But you can’t let on to another living soul about it.”
“Ain’t got time for yer fool talk,” he snaps. “You gettin’ to be more botherment then a wagonload of two-headed billy goats.”
“Make a promise to me, Gus. Could be another dollar in it for you, if you can do what I’m asking. You’ll need that money after you leave this boat.” Gus ain’t as tough as he talks. Boy’s scared, just like me.
I swallow hard and tell him about Missy and Juneau Jane going into that building and never coming out, and me seeing them trunks hauled up the boardwalk to the docks, and hearing noises and the man saying it was a dog inside, and then Missy’s locket falling in the mud. I don’t let on that I’m a girl underneath this shirt and britches and I was Missy’s lady maid when I was small. Afraid that might be more than is tolerable. Besides, he don’t need to know.
He sits up then. I only know that because I hear him squeeze to his feet in the dark, turn hisself round standing, then wiggle back down twixt the bales. “Well, all that don’t mean nothing. How’d you figure they wasn’t just robbed or kilt and left in the building that one-eyed fella and that Moses fella watched over for that…who’d you say…that Washbacon man?”
“Washburn. And them trunks was heavy.”
“Maybe they done stole everythin’ what them girls had and put it in them trunks.” Right now, it’s clear enough, Gus knows more about bad men than I do.
“I heard something in that box. Thumpin’. Moanin’.”
“The man said the boss had him a new dog in there, right? How you reckon that noise weren’t a dog?”
“I know how a dog sounds. Been scared of dogs all my life. Got a sense when one’s near. Smell it, even. Wasn’t no dog in them trunks.”
“How come you’re feared of a dog fer?” Gus spits into the cotton. “Dogs is good to have around. Keep ya comp’ny. Fetch a shot squirrel or a duck or a goose. Tree up possum so’s you can git it for supper. Nobody don’t like dogs.”
“It was Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane in them trunks.”
“So, wa’chew want I’s supposed do about it?”
“Use your thievin’ skills. Sneak up there on the boiler deck. Tonight. See can you find any sign of them in the passenger cabin or the staterooms.”
“I ain’t!” Gus scrabbles backward, out of reach.
“There’s a dollar in it for you. A whole dollar.”
“I don’t need me a dollar that bad. This trouble of yours ain’t my affair. I got trouble of my own. First rule a’ the river. Don’t get drowned. You’re ca
ught sniffin’ round the first-class passengers, they shoot you, then drown you. You want my advisin’, I say keep to yer own bid’ness. Live longer thataway. Them girls shoulda thunk what they was doin’ before they done it. That’s what I say. Ain’t yer affair, neither.”
I don’t answer right off. This bargain with Gus needs to be worked careful, done in fine stitching a little at a time, so’s he don’t even feel the needle going in. “Well, you got a point. That is true enough about Missy Lavinia. She’s a haughty sort, anyhow. Thinks she can crook a finger, make the whole world do her biddin’. Spoilt from the time she was laying in the cradle.”
“Well, there you go, then. Right there.”
“But that Juneau Jane, she’s just a child.” I mutter it, like I’m trying to reason it for myself, not him. “Only a child in short skirts, yet. And Missy played a bad trick on her. Not right for something like that to happen to a child. One that’s a little girl yet.”
“I ain’t hearin’ you. I’m gone to sleep.”
“Judgment Day is to come for all us sometime. Some fine day, long away from now. Don’t know what I’ll say, standin’ before the throne, when the good Lord asks me, ‘Why’d you let something terrible happen, when you might’ve stopped it, Hannie?’ ” I’ve told him my name is Hannie, short for Hannibal, a boy’s name.
“I ain’t got religion.”
“Her mama’s one of them colored Creoles. A witch woman from down in New Orleans. You heard of them? Put curses on people and such.”
“If that Juneau Jane gal’s a witch child, why don’t she fly herself outta that box? Come right through the keyhole?”
“Might be she can. Might be, she’s hearing us right now, listening at what we say. Might be she’s listening to see, Do we mean to help her or not? She dies, she’ll be a haint, after that. A witch-haint, clinging round our necks. Witch-haints, now them are the worst kind.”
“Y-you…now, you quit talk…quit talkin’ like that. Crazy talk.”
“Drive a body crazy. Them witch-haints will, sure enough. Seen it with my own eyes. Never let a body rest once they got their hackles up. Their cold hands wrap round your neck and—”
“I’m goin’.” I hear Gus stand up so quick that the cotton trash scrapes his skin, and he lets out a string of cusses under his breath. “Quit talkin’ yer crazyment at me. I’m goin’. And git my dollar ready.”
“I’ll have it when you come back.” Lord, I hope I didn’t just do to him what Missy done to Juneau Jane. “Be careful, though, Gus, all right?”
“Ain’t nothin’ careful about this en-tire thang. Foolishment, that’s what this is.”
He’s gone and I’m left there to wait. And hope.
I jerk at every little sound. It’s deep into the dark of early morning before I hear rustling in the cotton bales.
“Gus?” I whisper.
“Gus’s drowned.” But I can tell right off, his mood is good. He’s chewing on some biscuits he light-fingered up in the passenger cabin. He hands a piece over. It tastes good, but the news is bad.
“They ain’t up there,” he says. “Not where I can tell it, anyhow, and I done a right fine job of lookin’. Lucky somebody didn’t wake up and shoot me, but I’ll tell you one thang—the night before it’s time for me to hop off’n this boat in Texas, I’m gonna know right where to go lift me some fine goods. Before them up-deck passengers wake and find their watches and wallets and jewelry missin’, I’ll be long gone.”
“Best be careful about things like that. Ain’t right.” But Gus’s habits are the least worry on me right now. “Two big trunks can’t just disappear. Or two girls.”
“You said that one is a half-haint child. Maybe she done disappeared herself on purpose. You ever think a’ that? Maybe she disappeared herself, and while she’s at it, she disappeared the other girl and both them boxes. A half-haint witch child wouldn’t have no trouble doin’ that.” Bits of chewed biscuit and spit land on my arm. “That’s what I think’s happened. Makes passable sense, don’t it?”
I brush the food off, rest my head, and try to think. “They got to be here someplace.”
“Unless they’s dumped off the deck, miles back downwater.” Gus tries to share me another bite, but I swat it away.
“That ain’t right to say.” My stomach goes up my neck and burns.
“I’s just postulatin’.” Gus licks his fingers, carrying on, noisy about it. No telling all the places them fingers been since they last saw soap. “Reckon we best git a wink,” he says, and I hear him scuttle around into his sleeping spot. “Be rested up for when we make the turn off the Mississip’ onto the Red River. Point our noses toward Caddo Lake and Texas. Texas, now that there’s the place to be. Hear tell they’s so many cattle runnin’ loose since the war, why a man can’t help but make his fortune. And quick, too. Just gather ’em up, build a herd. That’s what I aim to do. Gus McKlatchy is gonna make hisself a rich man. Just need me a horse and a outfit and I’ll go round up them free…”
I let my muscles go slack, drift off from Gus’s talking, start wondering where Missy and Juneau Jane might be hid on this boat. I try not to think about trunks getting pushed off in the river, filling with water a little at a time.
Gus pokes me with his toe. “You listenin’?”
“I was thinkin’.”
“So, I’s just sayin’,” he talks drowsy and slow. “Might be a right pearly sit’ation if you come on to Texas with me. Be foreman of my herd I’m gonna gather. We rake in all that money, why then we’ll—”
“I got me a home.” I stop him before he can run on. “Got people waitin’ for me down at Goswood Grove.”
“People is overrated.” He makes a strangled sound and coughs hard to cover it, and I can tell I’ve poked someplace tender. I don’t say sorry, though. What I got to be sorry to a white boy for?
“Ain’t no place in the world like that for me.” I don’t even know the words are set in my mouth till I hear them. “No place where I’m gonna get rich for just chasin’ up a few cows.”
“There’s Texas.”
“Texas won’t be like that for me, either.”
“Can be if you want it.”
“I’m colored, Gus. I’m always gonna be colored. Ain’t nobody will let me pile up a bunch of money. If I can get me part of a sharecrop farm, I’ll be doing good as to be expected.”
“Pays to do bigger expectin’, sometimes. My pa tolt me that once’t.”
“You got a daddy?”
“Not really.”
We’re quiet awhile. I travel down my own mind like a river, try to think of, What do I want? Try to draw pictures of a life someplace in the wild, far off in Texas. Or maybe up north in Washington, D.C., or Canada or Ohio, with the folks who run off from their marses and missuses years ago and took the Underground Railroad to freedom, long before the soldiers bathed this land in blood and the Federals told us we didn’t have to belong to nobody, not one more day forever.
But I do belong to somebody. I belong to that sharecrop farm and Jason and John and Tati. To tilling the land and hoeing the crops and bringing in the harvest. To soil and sweat and blood.
I ain’t ever seen some other kind of life. Can’t conjure what you never seen.
Maybe that’s the reason why, every time Mama calls to me in my dreams, I wake fretful and washed in my own sweat. I’m afraid of the great big everything that might be out there. Afraid of all I’m blind to. All I’ll never see.
“Gus?” I whisper it soft, case he’s gone off to sleep.
“Yeahhh.” He yawns.
“It ain’t you I’m mad at. It’s just things.”
“I know.”
“I’m grateful you went up to look for Missy and Juneau Jane. I’ll fetch you that dollar.”
“I don’t need it. Got the biscuits for my trouble. Them’s enough. I h
ope they ain’t dead—them girls.”
“I do, too.”
“I don’t want them hauntin’ after me, is all.”
“I don’t think they would.”
We go quiet awhile again. Then, I say, “Gus?”
“I’m sleepin’.”
“All right.”
“What’d you want? Might as well say, since you bothered me.”
I bite my lips. Make up my mind to toss something out, like a leaf into a river, never know how far the currents might carry it, where it might wash up on shore. “You do a thing for me when you get to Texas? While you’re traveling round looking for them wild cattle and such?”
“Might.”
“Anywhere you go, and you talk to folks—because I know you talk a heap—you mind asking them, do they know any colored folk, name of the Gossetts or the Loaches? You find anyone like that, maybe you could ask them, have they been missing somebody by the name of Hannie? If you ever find somebody who answers yes, let them know, Hannie’s still living back on the old place, Goswood Grove. Same as ever.”
Hope flutters up in the hollow of my throat, clumsy like something just born and trying to find its feet. I push it down hard. Best not to let it grow too much, right off. “I got people out there, maybe. In Texas and in the north of Louisiana. All us keep three blue glass beads on a string round our necks. Beads all the way from Africa. My grandmama’s beads. I’ll show you once it’s light enough.”
“Yeah, I reckon I could ask here and there. If I think about it.”
“I’d be grateful.”
“Them’s the saddest threesome of words I ever put my ears on, though.”
“What is?”
“Them words at the tail end of your story.” He smacks his lips, drowsy, while I try to remember what I said. Finally, he gives the words back to me, “Same as ever. Them’s three mournful bad words.”
We go quiet then, and sleep. First light shines above the cotton bales when we wake again. Gus and me come to at the same time, sit up and twist to see each other, worried. The slap-slap of the paddle wheel and the engine’s rumble is gone. The cotton bale above our heads shudders side to side. We both wiggle up on our haunches at once.