Trouble the Water

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

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  For my very favorite nephew,

  Devin Jonikas O’Roark

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank Caitlyn Dlouhy, as usual, as always, with love. What a thrill to have your name on the cover of this book! Thanks to Jessica Sit, who is so, so talented and so very kind, and thanks to Justin Chanda, whom I feel lucky to know and have on my side. Thanks to Clare McGlade, copyeditor extraordinaire, and to Sonia Chaghatzbanian for yet another beautifully designed book. I’m grateful for the many fine resources that informed the writing of Trouble the Water, including The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry, Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley by Keith Griffler, and Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Kentucky edited by Winona L. Fletcher.

  Finally, thanks to my family—Clifton, Jack, and Will; and thanks to my boon companion, Travis, because there’s nothing better in this world than a dog.

  1

  The Old Dog

  The dog was old and close to dying. He woke slowly now that he was back, the sun warming the ache out of his bones. He had a flickering thought that he’d like to fall asleep and never wake, but he couldn’t die until he knew the boy was safe. So every morning he pushed himself up and sniffed the air for the boy’s scent, and when he didn’t find any trace of it, he started for the river.

  Most nights he slept on the woman’s porch, so that he could smell the river, hear the boy’s calls if they came. His first night back, he’d gone to his old house, but when he’d barked, no one had opened the door or called out, “Hey, pup, ready for dinner?” If the boy had been there, he would have answered.

  He knew that the woman would give him scraps from the table in a bowl by the door when she saw him, and he knew that if he stayed too long, she’d try to claim him. She’d snapped a collar on him when he showed up the first time, but he’d complained so loudly that she’d finally taken it off. The old dog, like most dogs, couldn’t parse out the particulars of human speech, but he could make sense of what people were telling or asking him from the pitch of their voices, the firmness or wobble of their words, so he’d known the woman wanted him to stay when she’d said, “You’d like it here, I swear you would,” before she put the collar back on a peg just inside the doorway.

  The woman lived in the house by herself. No other human smells mixed with hers, no onion stink of a man home from the fields, no sweet scent of a child fresh out of his bath, traces of soap still in his hair, an untouched patch of dirt behind his left ear. The old dog had lived close to humans when he was young, close to the boy, and could sniff one on the air. They each had a particular smell, and there was only one human smell around the woman’s house. It was a nice smell, a mix of river water and new grass and something sweet. The first small flowers of May. He didn’t have words for any of these things, but he knew them.

  “Well, hey there, pup,” the woman greeted him now as she emerged from the doorway with a basket in her hand. “I see you stayed for breakfast. Look at you, so slow to get up. Bet you got the arthritis in your bones, old thing like you.”

  He followed her around the corner of the house and through the garden gate. “Got to get your vegetables picked first thing of a morning,” the woman informed him as she set to work. “Bugs’ll eat you alive if you come out here at night, skeeters and no-see-ums, they’ll bite you all to pieces. Sun’ll burn you up, you come out at noon. No, first thing of a morning, that’s the best time. That’s when you get things at their freshest.”

  As she talked, she pulled tomatoes and squash and cucumbers off their vines and put them in her basket. The old dog sniffed the vegetables without much interest. Sometimes the woman scrambled him a pan of eggs, and cooked a few slices of bacon, and at the last minute threw in leftovers from dinner the night before. He knew all he had to do was follow along as she did her morning chores and chatted to him. The old dog liked the woman. He didn’t mind waiting.

  Breakfast this morning turned out to be fried liver mush and cold roasted potatoes. He gulped down the liver in two swallows and sniffed the air for more. “Sorry, pup, you got the last of it,” the woman told him. “Come back tonight, I might have some chicken for you. I’ll take out the bones first, lessen you choke.”

  The old dog recognized the sound in her voice as something he’d been feeling so long now it was like a natural-born part of him. It was the sound of something—someone—missing. On his long journey home, his nose in the air, hunting for the boy’s scent, he’d let out a howl now and again, and you could hear that sound in his voice too.

  After breakfast he left the woman’s house for the woods and the river, and was almost at the water when he heard a younger dog barking. How far away? Far enough that he couldn’t be sure what—or who—the younger dog was growling at. Maybe the old dog, but probably not. He understood other dogs even better than he understood humans. Still, he took cover.

  When he sensed the danger was past, he slowly took to his feet again. Should he go back to the woman’s house, rest under the cool shade of her front porch? When the sun got low enough in the sky, she’d come out to keep him company, and he liked that, liked her voice as it went up and down and drifted through his dreams.

  He was about to turn around when a feeling seized him, shot through his chest and around his ears like a winter wind. Follow the dog, the feeling told him. Sniffing the air, he understood. It wasn’t just a dog in the woods; the wind carried the scent of a boy. And though he knew it wasn’t his boy, maybe this boy could lead him to his boy.

  The old dog was dying. He knew he was dying. He knew he didn’t have much time. He turned and headed deep into the woods.

  2

  Callie, at Least a Little Bit Free

  Callie wasn’t supposed to leave the yard until she finished weeding, but when that yellow dog trotted by, she just had to follow him. She’d seen the dog three days in a row now, after never having seen him even once in her life, and she was feeling curious about him. She knew all the dogs in the Bottom, and this dog wasn’t one of them. He was an old dog, by the looks of him, the way the fur around his eyes was white and his gait had a little bit of a hitch in it. But there was no doubt about it—old or not, the dog was on the move.

  Callie tugged at a clump of crabgrass and wondered why a dog would just appear out of thin air and start patrolling her neighborhood, looking this way and that, like he was some kind of detective dog, out solving some kind of dog crime. Callie’d asked everybody she knew about him, but no one had the slightest idea who he was or who his people might be. He was too old to be somebody’s new dog, that was for sure. When people got themselves a dog, they wanted a young pup. Wanted a dog with a little get-along in his step.

  Callie decided today was the day she was going to follow the dog and find out his story. Fact was, she was bored to death and needed to be on the move herself. She was supposed to go inside and eat lunch, an old wopsided peanut butter sandwich most likely, because Regina was in charge of lunch, and Regina couldn’t put two slices of bread together straightaways for the life of her. If Carl Jr. were home, he’d do a better job, maybe stick a slice of bacon in the sandwich to give it some salt and crunch, but he’d walked over to McKinley’s Drug to eyeball some comic boo
ks. Mama’d kill him if she knew. “White folks don’t like you doing nothing in their stores but for coming in, putting your money down, and going out,” Mama told them every time she sent one of them to the drugstore or to the A&P grocery. Mama was always worrying about what white folks would do or say or think.

  But Carl Jr. wasn’t worried about nothing. You thought you heard a ghost up in your room, he was the person you needed to call. He’d come stomping in, yell, “You get yourself out of here, Mr. Ghost! I don’t even believe in you, but if I did, I’d smash you all to pieces.” That would make Callie laugh so hard, she’d forget about being scared of moaning, groaning ghosts and one-eyed, gape-mouthed monsters who liked to finish up their day by snacking on sweet-tasting children such as herself.

  Now Callie stood up and looked over the flower bed she was supposed to get done weeding before Mama got home from her cleaning job at Mrs. Whitson’s. That flower bed was Mama’s pride and joy, but Callie was sick to death of it. Oh, she loved working down on her knees after the last frost and helping Mama drop in the tee-tiny seeds—this one a quarter inch under the dirt, this one barely under the dirt at all—Callie was careful about doing it just right. She loved watching the first leaves push themselves up through the dirt to catch sight of the sun. Most of all she loved watching the flowers start to bloom, all the pretty colors waving at you from in front of the porch.

  What Callie didn’t love was the weeds—the burdock, the bindweed, the prickly thistles, the dandelions—in fact, she hated weeds worse than anything else she could think of. So how come she got elected head weed picker of the household? She understood why Daddy couldn’t do it, working from dawn till dusk at the paper mill, and she understood why Mama might not want to get down on her knees after a long day spent scrubbing folks’ floors. But Carl Jr. and Regina were free as the wind on a summer morning, so why didn’t they have to come out and help her?

  Carl Jr. would shake his head sadly when Callie asked him. “’Cause we don’t love the flowers the way you do, Little Sis. We don’t understand them the way you do. We’d be pulling up daffodils instead of dandelions.”

  “Mama don’t grow daffodils,” Callie would argue. “’Sides, daffodils come up in the spring. They die back in the summertime heat.”

  “See, Little Sis, that’s what I’m telling you,” Carl Jr. would insist. “You know all them important floral facts. Me and Regina, we’re dopes when it comes to flowers.”

  “When Mama’s gone, I’m in charge of the house,” Regina insisted if Callie said she should come outside and help. “The inside of the house. I ain’t got time for weeding.”

  That always made Callie grumble. As far as she could tell, all Regina did was wipe the crumbs off the counter ten minutes before Mama was supposed to get home in the afternoon. Otherwise, Regina, who was only three years older, if anybody was counting, lay around on the couch in the front room reading books from the stack she brought home from the library each week.

  So when the old yellow dog walked past Callie on the sidewalk right before lunchtime, she took it as a sign. She’d been waiting for something interesting to happen all summer. That’s what she dreamed about locked up in school, her legs itching inside the wool tights Mama made her wear from the first of November till the last day of March. Every scratch old Miss Pettigrew made on the chalkboard sent an electric buzz up Callie’s spine and was even more torturous to her than her itchy tights. The only relief she got was imagining the sort of adventures she’d have once she was free.

  Well, she was free now, or at least halfway, sort of, a little bit free. Free from being stuck in that old fifth grade, anyway. She plucked a handful of clover from over by the delphiniums and wiped the dirt from her hands. She’d finish up her weeding later in the day, when the shade had made its way to the front yard. Crashing into the house and beelining it for the kitchen, she yelled, “Regina, you got my sandwich ready yet?”

  “It’s on the counter,” her sister called from the front room. “Not that I’m your servant, Little Miss Bossy. A ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ might be nice.”

  “Please and thank you,” Callie muttered, wrapping the pathetic excuse for a sandwich she found on the counter—peanut butter and grape jelly, with a wilted lettuce leaf hanging from the sides of the store-bought bread—in a kitchen towel. “I’m taking my sandwich on the road like a hobo,” she called more loudly on her way back to the front door. “I’ll be home before Mama gets back.”

  “You best not be going to Cecily’s,” Regina hollered after her. “You don’t do nothing but get in trouble over at that girl’s house. It’s like the two of you lose all sense when you get together.”

  The screen door slammed behind Callie in a satisfying way. She’d let that be the answer to Regina’s harping. Regina was just jealous that Callie had a best friend. Regina’s best friend, Ruthie Owens, had moved up to Ohio at the end of the school year with her family because her daddy had heard there were good jobs to be had up around Youngstown and he aimed to get himself one, get out of the stink of the paper mill, he said.

  Callie thought the idea of moving somewhere else was exciting, and had tried to convince Mama and Daddy that they ought to move up to Youngstown, Ohio, too.

  “Who would take care of Mama Lou and Pap if we moved to Ohio?” Mama had asked. “You want to leave those old folks to fend for themselves?”

  “They could go with us,” Callie had insisted, but she knew her grandparents wouldn’t ever set foot outside of Celeste, Kentucky. Mama Lou might be near a hundred (or maybe sixty, it was all the same to Callie), but she was the pillar and post of the Rock of Ages Seventh-Day Adventist Church over on Lexington Street, and she probably would be till the day she died. You couldn’t pry Mama Lou away from that church with a crowbar. Why, the walls might fall down without her.

  “We’re stuck like a truck bogged down in the muck,” Callie complained to the air, running a stick across Mrs. Strummer’s picket fence to hear the satisfying click of it. She didn’t really feel all that stuck; at least when she wasn’t in school, she didn’t. Celeste, Kentucky, wasn’t the worst place in the world. Didn’t have volcanoes here, no pit vipers hissing at you from folks’ yards, no monsters, least none that came out during daylight hours. Even the white folks weren’t that bad, for white folks. Daddy said if you went down to some place like Mississippi or Alabama, you’d meet some real mean white people who’d hang you from a tree soon as look at you. Mama always hushed him when he said that, but Daddy said that, no, Regina, Carl Jr., and Callie needed to know the truth about the world, and truth was, even at the late date of 1953, there were some folks who’d kill you ’cause you were a different color or religion, or even just because you had an original opinion.

  White folks in Celeste mostly seemed cranky and full of themselves to Callie, though sometimes they could be downright rude. You could be waiting your turn in the checkout line at the grocery, polite as could be, and if a white lady came in, she’d cut straight in front of you, even if you were with a grown-up. Colored folks had to sit in the balcony at the movies, though the only reason Callie minded was because it was a rule. As far as she was concerned, the balcony was the place to be, way up high, with a good view of everything. White folks could have the orchestra seats, for all she cared, sitting down there with their eyes all squinched up from being too close to the screen.

  The sidewalk’s heat seeped up through the soles of Callie’s sneakers. Man alive, it was hot. She wondered if it was even worth it to follow the old yellow dog, get all sweaty, come home dirty with leaves stuck in her hair. She could go to Cecily’s instead, except she and Cecily were feuding, and Cecily’s mama, Mrs. Perkins, wouldn’t even let Callie into the house when she and Cecily were in a fighting mood. “I ain’t gonna have my whole day spoiled by you two girls yelping and yapping about who started it and who did what to who. You cool your heads a couple days, you’ll figure out a way to work things out.”

  Now Callie tried to remember what the
feud was about. What had gotten her and Cecily so mad at each other? She turned south on Marigold Lane, her brain trying to latch on to the reason she’d stomped out of the Perkinses’ house yesterday morning. What did she and Cecily usually fight about? Who was the best, mostly. In some categories they didn’t have no cause to argue. Cecily was best at composition writing and memorizing history facts. Callie was best at mathematics and running fast. No need to argue there. So what was it?

  Veering off the sidewalk onto a dirt path, still heading south, Callie suddenly remembered. They’d been feuding over whose mama had the prettiest dresses. Now, while Callie didn’t care so much about the clothes she herself wore (they were always getting mucked up as soon as she stepped out of the house—Mama said Callie was a dirt magnet, attracting every speck of dirt and dust and grime from five miles around), she did have a soft spot for nice clothes on other people, and everybody knew for a fact that her mama sewed some of the prettiest dresses ever seen in Celeste, Kentucky. Fancy, colorful dresses with swirling skirts and cute collars. Callie always felt proud walking next to Mama down the sidewalk of a Sunday on their way to church. She had the prettiest mama wearing the prettiest dress, and everybody knew it.

  Now, she wouldn’t say that Mrs. Bernice Perkins did not have style. Oh, that Mrs. Perkins could wear herself a hat, and Callie was the first person to admit it. Mrs. Perkins also had a way with a handbag. But dresses as pretty as Mama’s? Uh-uh. Don’t even think it.

  The dirt path pushed its way into the woods behind Widow Kendall’s house, and Callie brushed back some branches scratching at her face. She hoped that old Mrs. Kendall wasn’t out back tending to her garden. “Ornery” was the word for that woman. She’d start yelling about private property and trespassing, even though everybody knew didn’t nobody own the woods. Woods were free places that couldn’t be bought up. Carl Jr. said that wasn’t necessarily so, but Callie thought it should be the rule, so in her mind it was a rule. Woods = free place, no bosses.