by Lisa Wingate
I take a stick and shoo the thing away, and think Juneau Jane would’ve just let it crawl right on to where it was headed. She’s a mysterious thing, this fawn-skinned girl that’s a pitiful skinny, big-eyed boy now. Sometimes she’s like a quiet, sad little child. It’s then that I think, Maybe it ain’t so easy for a yellow girl to make a life, either. Sometimes, she just seems cold. A wicked, devil-fired creature like her mama and the rest of their kind.
Bothers me that I can’t cipher her out, but she could’ve left me and Missy behind at the river landing, and she didn’t. She paid the fare for us with her horse money. I wonder at what that means.
Sitting down beside her on the woodpile, I hand over the Lost Friends pages and the pencil and say, “Reckon it don’t hurt to check. Ain’t like we know where we’re going, anyway. Somebody comes by—fine white folk, I mean—you try asking real nice, where can we find that Mr. Washburn?”
A thought comes into my head while she checks over her work. “How’re we gonna talk to this lawyer man about your papa’s papers if we do find him?” I look her over, then look down at myself. “Right now, I’m a colored boy, and you’re a ragged little rat off the river.” Been so caught up with the Lost Friends on the boat, I hadn’t thought past us getting onshore. “No lawyer man will talk to us.”
She hadn’t thought that far, either, I can tell.
She chews the pencil end, looks up at all them fancy brick buildings, double-deckers, most of them. Some even triple. A gunshot fires off, cracking through all the noise of the town and the river port. We both jump. Men stop and look around, then go back to work.
Juneau Jane tips up that pointy little chin of hers. “I will speak with him.” Her lips rise at the corners, her nose, which is her papa’s turned-up nose, crinkling. “Were I to inform him I am William Gossett’s daughter and heir, he would undoubtedly assume me to be Lavinia. I believe she was not truthful in saying they had made his acquaintance in New Orleans recently, given that the man resides here in Jefferson, and this is where Papa engaged his services not long ago.”
A laugh puffs out of me, but there’s fear in my belly. Back home, what she’s aiming to do can get you dead in a hurry. If you’re colored, you don’t go pretending to be white. “You’re a colored girl, case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Are we really so different?” She stretches one arm beside Missy’s. Their skin ain’t the same, but not too far off that you’d guess the truth, either.
“Well she’s older than you.” I wave a hand at Missy. “You’re a child in short skirts, still. You ain’t even got you no…well, you don’t look much as fourteen, yet. Even if Missy was lying when she told you she’d met the man before, you ain’t gonna pass for Missy.”
Her eyes hold at half-mast, like I am thickheaded. I want to swat that look from her face. That is the exact way Missy Lavinia used to do when she was a little child. These two girls are more sisters than they know. Some things run in the bloodline just as sure as that little turned-up nose. “They skin you alive, if you get caught at this. Skin me alive, too.”
“What choice have I otherwise? I must obtain word of Father or proof of his intentions for my provision. Lavinia would leave me penniless, with no choice but that my mother bargain me off to a man.” The frost that always covers her over cracks a little now. There’s pain underneath, and fear. “If Papa is gone, an inheritance becomes my only hope.”
She’s right, I know. Her papa is the only hope for all us. “Well, we have to get you a dress, then. Dress, and a corset, and some padding to stuff it, and a bonnet to cover that hair.” I hope this plan don’t get us killed or put in jail or worse. Then who’ll carry the Lost Friends around? “But you promise me, I do this thing with you, no matter what we find out, you won’t pull foot out of here and leave me stuck with her.” I nod over to Missy Lavinia. “She ain’t my burden to bear. And it’s you and her that got me into this whole mess. You owe me something. You and me, we stay together, till we figure out about your papa. And till we get Missy sent back home. If this lawyer man does have money waiting for you, you’ll pay Missy’s passage and find somebody to get her back to Goswood. We have us a bargain?”
Her bottom lip pokes out a little at the idea of having to do for Missy Lavinia, but she nods.
“And one other thing.”
“No other things.”
“And one other thing. When we do part company, whenever that is, the Lost Friends go with me. And meantime, you learn me how to read it and write down new ones for new folks.”
We shake hands on it, and the bargain is struck. We’re in this mess, together.
Least for now.
“Making you a woman sure will be a whole lot tougher than making you a boy.” The words are hardly out my mouth when a shadow falls over me, and I look up and see a colored man, stout as a woodcutter, standing over us. He folds and unfolds a hat in his hands.
I hope he didn’t hear what I just said.
“I come ’bout the Loss Friends.” He glances toward the Katie P. “I hear…heared it from a fella. You put me in the Loss F-friends, too?”
We look toward the landing nearby and see the singing man Juneau Jane wrote the letter for on the boat, and he’s pointing somebody else our way. Word of us has spread.
Juneau Jane gets her pencil and asks the man who he’s looking for. It’s nobody we’ve got on our pages already.
She takes down names of the man’s people, and he gives us a nickel before he goes back to work, loading seed bags onto a swamp boat. Then comes another man. He tells us where to go to buy some used clothes and goods cheap, and I decide I better strike off before the day’s gone. Can’t take Juneau Jane and Missy Lavinia with me, since it’s the colored town he’s talking about.
“You stay here, and I’ll go where he said to,” I tell her and get a biscuit from our poke, and tuck Missy’s reticule in my britches, then leave them with the rest of our goods. “Watch after Missy.”
I know she won’t.
It worries me some as I follow the man’s directions and wind up in a little settlement down in a gully. First, I find a stitcher woman who sells mended clothes out the back of her house. I buy what’s needed for Juneau Jane, but I wish I could buy a miracle, because that’s needed most. The stitcher woman points me to a harness maker who mends shoes for people and fixes up old ones to sell, too. I have to guess at the size, but I get some for Missy, since her feet are gone raw and she don’t watch where she’s walking. I trade off that gold locket that was hers. Figure it can’t be helped, and the chain’s broke anyhow.
I decide against buying button boots for Juneau Jane. Too much money, and they’re lady shoes she can’t wear for a boy. We’ll just have to hide her brogans under her dress hem while she talks to the lawyer. I go to a peddler store in a tent, looking for a needle and thread, in case we need to put a stitch or two in that dress to keep on Juneau Jane’s skinny body.
I buy socks and another blanket and a cook pot. Buy some pretty peaches from a man with a basketful. He adds a nice plum to the top and don’t even want me to pay for it, since I’m new here. Folks are kind in the colored town. They’re all just like me, come off plantations after the freedom, took to working for the railroads, or the timber companies, or the riverboats, or the shops, or in the white ladies’ big houses that’re almost close enough to see from here. Some freedmen started up stores of their own, to sell to colored folk in this little gully town.
They’re used to folks coming through, traveling. I ask after the names of my people while I make my bargains, and I tell about my grandmama’s blue beads. “Ever know anybody here name of Gossett? Be free now, but slaves before the war. Ever seen somebody wear just three beads on a string?” I ask over and over. “Three blue glass beads, just big around as the tip of your little finger and real pretty?”
Can’t recollect so.
Don’t believe I
do, child.
Sounds right purdy, but no I ain’t.
You seeking after your people, child?
“Feel somewhat familiar about those, I do,” a old man tells me when we stand aside to let a dray rumble by, filled with coal. White clouds lay over the man’s eyes like sifted flour, so he has to lean close to me to see. He smells of pine sap and smoke, and he walks stiff and slow. “Think I have seen such before, but a long time ago. Can’t say where, though. Mind’s not good these days. My apologies, young sprout. God speed you along in your journey, all the same. Don’t go by the names, though. There’s many that’ve changed their names. Picked new ones after the freedom. You keep looking.”
I thank him and promise I don’t take it for discouragement. “Texas’s a big place,” I say. “I mean to keep asking.” I watch him walk back toward the colored settlement, bent over and hobbling.
I could stay here in the gully town, I think to myself. Stay here in the shadow of all them big buildings and fine houses and the music and the noise and all the different kind of folks, and wouldn’t that be something? I could ask after my people, day after day to travelers who come through from the East and the West.
The idea sparks in my head, a fire on wood that’s been laid and waiting a long time. Be a whole new kind of life to leave behind mules and farm fields and table gardens and chicken houses, and stay in a place like this. I could get work. I’m strong, and I’m smart.
But there’s Tati and Jason and John and Old Mister and Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane to think about. Promises and sharecrop papers. Life never is just about what you want. Seldom ever.
I push my mind back to the task I’m at now and commence worrying how long I been gone from Juneau Jane and Missy and what’d happen if Missy walked off or stirred up trouble. Juneau Jane might not try to stop her, and probably can’t anyhow. Missy’s bigger and stronger by twice.
I head back, walking fast and taking care to keep out of the way of farm wagons and shays and white ladies with market baskets and baby carriages. I work up a sweat under my clothes even though the day ain’t warm. I’m just worried.
In my mind, young Gus McKlatchy says, Well, that’s the problem with postulatin’, Hannibal. Brings up trouble that ain’t happened yet and likely won’t ever. Why bother with it? I smile to myself and hope Moses didn’t catch Gus and throw him off that riverboat, too.
I try to quit postulating while I make my way back to the port landing.
Missy and Juneau Jane still sit right by the cordwood. There’s colored folks gathered round—a couple men standing, couple squatted down or sitting on the grass, a old man leaning on a young girl’s shoulder, and three women. All peaceable enough. Juneau Jane’s reading to them from the Lost Friends. She’s got our quilt set out, folded in front of her. I watch a man drop a coin in it. There’s three little carrots, too, plus Missy Lavinia’s eating on one.
It takes some doing to get us away from there, but I know we need to move on in our task. I tell the folks we’ll come back later with the Lost Friends. Then I push Missy’s feet into the shoes I bought her, and thank heaven they mostly fit.
Juneau Jane ain’t happy with me when I chase off the last of the people so we can go. “You hadn’t ought to make a spectacle,” I say while we start down the riverbank.
“News of us and the Lost Friends traveled as the men from our boat visited the town with their pay,” Juneau Jane answers. “Others came. What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know.” That much is true. “Just that we don’t want everybody in the Port of Jefferson talking about us.”
We go on about our business, make our way down the river on a trail folks must use for fishing or hunting. At a brushy spot near the water, I get all us washed some, but work on Juneau Jane most.
The dress and petticoats are a sorry sight. The raggedy corset hangs on her like a sack, and the dress hem is too long. “You’ll have to walk high on your toes, like you got heel boots on,” I tell her. “Keep your feet up under the dress, don’t let them old brogans show; that’ll give us away. No Gossett lady would be in such poor shoes.”
I finally undo everything and take the britches she’s been wearing and wrap them round her middle inside the corset, and stuff the bosom part with the shirt she had on, then do up the laces again. It’s better, some. Who knows if it’ll fool anybody, but what choice have we got? I do up her spoon bonnet last, pull it up tight against her face to hide the hair, then I stand back and look.
The picture of her pushes a laugh out my mouth. “You…y-you…look like somebody been whittlin’ on Missy Lavinia.” I cough. “Look like some…somebody took her down to the nubbins.” I get to laughin’, and I can’t stop. Can’t even catch my breath. Juneau Jane stomps her little foot and scolds me to hush up before somebody comes wandering down here to see, what’s the ruckus about? But the madder she gets, the harder I laugh.
All that laughing makes me miss Tati and Jason and John, and even farther back, my brothers and sisters and Mama and Aunt Jenny and my four little cousins and Grandmama and Grandpapa. With all the ways we labored hard, planting and chopping and hoeing and harvesting, we laughed, too. Laughing carry you over a tough time, that’s something my grandmama used to say.
I go right from laughing to being heavy in my heart. Feel a lonesome burden all of a sudden. Lonesome for people I love. Lonesome for home.
“We best get on with this,” I say, and we pull Missy Lavinia up, work our way back to town, follow the directions the folks gave Juneau Jane to the lawyer man’s office. It ain’t hard to find. Man’s got him a big brick building, two floors high, with letters carved in a square stone up top. Juneau Jane looks at it and reads his name there. L. H. WASHBURN.
“Walk up on your toes,” I remind her. “Keep them shoes under your hem. And talk in a lady voice. And act in lady ways.”
“I am aware of how to conduct myself with propriety,” she brags, but she looks scared to death under that bonnet. “I have been given deportment lessons. Papa insisted upon it.”
I pass over that last part. Just reminds me how good she’s had it all these years. “And whatever you do, don’t take off that bonnet.”
We go up to the front steps, and I check her over one more time, and in she walks. I find a place to sit in the shade with Missy. She’s rubbing her stomach and moaning a little. I try to give her hardtack to quieten her, but she won’t take it.
“Hush, then,” I say. “Ought to be too scared to think about your belly, anyhow. Last time I stood outside a building while somebody went in, you and Juneau Jane wound up in a box, and I almost got shot dead.”
I won’t be falling asleep in some hogshead barrel this time, that’s for definite.
I keep a narrow eye on that building while we wait.
Juneau Jane ain’t gone very long, and I’m afraid that can’t be good news, and it’s not. The lawyer ain’t even there; only a woman that keeps his office, and she’s packing the place up, floor to rafters. Old Mister was by here sometime back, but he left the property settlement for the lawyer to argue out, then he went on to Fort Worth town, hunting for Lyle. Then, two weeks after Old Mister was through here, Federal men come to the office looking to get some files. The woman didn’t know what, but Mr. Washburn went out the back door when he saw them Federals. Next day, he gathered up some things and left for Fort Worth hisself. Said he meant to see about opening up a office there, didn’t know when he’d be back.
“She had nothing in the remaining files bearing Papa’s name,” Juneau Jane tells me. “She opened the box, that I might see for myself. There was only this. And it is just a book in which Mr. Washburn recorded the accountings of Papa’s land here—the land that was fraudulently sold by Lyle. After the turn of the year, the notations ended, and so we must—”
“Ssshhh.” I grab her with one hand and Missy with the other.
I’m looking right across the street at three men walking toward that building—two white, one tall, lean, and pecan-shell brown, his hand resting on the butt of a hip pistol. I’d know the long, steady stride of that man anyplace.
Moses looks my way while I’m pulling Missy and Juneau Jane back into the shadows. Can’t see his eyes under the hat brim, but I feel them on me. His chin draws in a little, then his head cocks to study us.
He falls a step farther back from the other men, and I figure a bullet comes next.
A question bolts through my mind.
Which one of us does he shoot first?
CHAPTER 18
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
I wake and look across the room, surprised to find myself curled in the worn recliner affectionately nicknamed Old Snoozy. My favorite fuzzy blanket, Christopher’s gift to me last year on my birthday, lies askew over me. I snuggle it under my chin as I’m opening my eyes to the gentle sunlight on the old cypress-plank floors.
Loosening one arm, I wrist-rub my forehead, blink the farmhouse into view, look across the room at the stocking-clad man feet propped crisscross on the antique wooden box I rescued from a dumpster near campus a few years back. I don’t recognize the socks on those feet, or the well-worn hunting boots kicked off on the floor nearby.
And then, suddenly, I do. And I realize the night has passed, and morning is here, and I’m not alone. In an instant of befuddled panic, I touch my arm, my shoulder, my folded-up legs. I am fully dressed, and nothing is amiss in the room. That’s a relief.
The previous evening comes back slowly at first, and then faster, faster, faster. I remember gathering things from Goswood Grove House and even a few treasures from the city library collection, to be fully prepared for my meeting with Nathan. I remember that he was late getting to my place. I was afraid he’d decided not to show.
He stepped onto my porch with an apology and a boxed cake he’d picked up as a gift. “Doberge cake. It’s sort of a Louisiana thing,” he explained. “I feel like I should apologize for the intrusion. I’m sure you could’ve made more interesting plans on a Friday night.”