Trouble the Water

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  She kept on walking, but now she was keeping an eye out for the old yellow dog. She couldn’t know for sure he’d gone down to the river, but it made sense he would on a day as hot as this, and the path through the woods was the way most folks got down to the water. She and Daddy walked this way to go fishing, but Mrs. Kendall never hollered at Daddy. She’d wave a hand and maybe start talking about her tomatoes, how the bonemeal she’d been feeding them was doing the trick. Daddy always made a little conversation with Mrs. Kendall, hushing Callie if she hissed, C’mon, Daddy, let’s go.

  When she heard the barking, it seemed to come from a long ways off, and it didn’t sound like the yellow dog’s, an old dog’s bark, sad sounding and weary. This bark she was hearing now was full of meaning. Vigorous. Maybe some other dog had seen the old yellow dog and was calling to it. Daddy said most of the time when you heard dogs bark, even though it might sound gruff and warning-like, mostly it was dogs asking questions of one another: Who are you? Where you from? Do I got some reason to be concerned about you?

  Callie thought this particular bark might be a Who are you? bark, and she decided to follow it, thinking it might get her to the old yellow dog and closer to finding out what he was up to. She bet that old dog was looking for somebody. In fact, Callie could feel it in her bones. Callie, well, she was looking for the story, and since nobody else knew what it was, she’d have to track it down herself.

  3

  Jim, the Almost-Visible Boy

  Hardly a day passed that Jim Trebble didn’t think about how a big, juicy hamburger from Burger World would taste, tucked into a sesame seed bun with a slice of tomato and a crisp piece of lettuce. Fred used to could down three of ’em at one sitting, plus an order of onion rings and a thick chocolate milk shake. Jim had worked up to two burgers and a plateful of french fries, but anything more made him feel like his belly might bust wide open.

  “You ain’t a man till you can eat three,” Fred had teased him, and three Burger World hamburgers had been Jim’s goal ever since, if only he could remember where Burger World was. Out on Route 16 somewhere, but he couldn’t think of the exact spot, and anyway, that was too far for him to go. He could make it into town, and once he’d even gotten out to Uncle Owen’s farm, but past that, the edges of the world seemed to dissolve into a foggy bog, and Jim was afraid to go any farther.

  When he wasn’t thinking about hamburgers, he was thinking about meat loaf and mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, turkey with gravy and dressing at Thanksgiving, rare roast beef on Christmas Eve. He liked to dream about chocolate cake, baked potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and corn on the cob fresh from the garden. He even pondered crisp cucumbers from time to time, even though he’d never liked cucumbers all that much. But you’ll get to missing anything if you haven’t had a bite of it in longer than you can recall.

  Jim tried to eat. Tried as hard as he could. Problem was, everything slipped through his fingers before it got to his mouth. Just this morning he’d gone to pick a honeysuckle blossom to get a little taste of nectar, but when he’d reached to pinch the flower off the vine, it was like his fingers were made of air. He could see them, so he was pretty sure they were there, but for some reason nothing else knew it. He’d cup his hands to get a sip of water from the creek, and the water would ignore him, slipping past his fingers like they didn’t exist.

  So Jim wasn’t sure if they did or not.

  The sun was getting high in the sky when Jim heard the dog bark, which meant that boy Wendell was out and about tramping through the woods. Jim stepped through the door and checked for his shadow, the same way he’d done every day since the beginning of the summer, when he’d woken up to find himself in the cabin, wondering what he was doing there. There’d been a dog then, too, barking in the distance, and it had sounded so much like his dog, Buddy, that Jim had rolled over and mumbled, Hush, boy, I’m still sleeping. But when he’d opened his eyes, he hadn’t been in his room. It had been the strangest thing in the world.

  Now, outside, he looked at the ground. His shadow still wasn’t there. It confounded him, not having a shadow anymore. If he were invisible, he could understand it. But he knew in broad daylight folks could see him, at least a little, tiny bit. He’d found his way to Granny’s house a few weeks ago, to see what she was fixing for lunch. She’d looked straight at him and backed into the table, rattling the ice in the tea pitcher.

  “That you, Jim?” she’d asked in a trembling voice. “I don’t believe it could be, now could it?”

  It’s me, Jim insisted, but Granny didn’t appear to hear.

  “Lord, son, we’ve been missing you a long time,” Granny went on, and Jim waited to hear more, waited for Granny to tell him where everyone else had gone to and explain why he could find her house, just couldn’t seem to find his own. But she started crying instead. Jim tried to pat her on the shoulder in a comforting way, but when he touched her, she shivered, and he thought he’d best leave her alone. On his way out he glanced in the mirror in the front hallway, and there he was—Jim Trebble, age twelve, a little bit see-through, a little bit shiny around the edges, but it was definitely him.

  Now when he went out during daylight, he stayed to the shadows and the shady parts. No point scaring folks to death.

  He hadn’t seen Wendell in a week or so. Wendell almost always brought his dog, a redbone hound named King, and he talked that dog’s ear off, told him baseball scores and his plans for building a fort in his backyard, if only his dad could get some time off from the mill. Jim could picture that fort, high up in a tree, with good, strong walls to keep the enemy out. He knew just how to build a fort like that, and it drove him crazy that he couldn’t give Wendell some help, that he couldn’t even get Wendell to see that he was there.

  He caught up with Wendell near the creek. Wendell’s nose was peeling from a sunburn, and Jim remembered how he always got sunburned in the summer. But now his skin was pale, hardly even a color. King looked over when Jim got close, the way he always did, and Jim wondered if the dog could see him even though he was standing in the shade of an oak tree. Folks said dogs had all sorts of abilities humans didn’t know about, and Jim believed it. In his opinion, most people weren’t half as smart as a dog. His own dog, Buddy, was a superior creature to himself in almost every way, except that he couldn’t talk, and even there Jim thought Buddy was just holding back, not wanting to show off.

  “Come here, boy,” Jim called to King, and to his surprise the dog growled, a deep-throated growl that made Jim step even farther back into the shadows, and then let out a deep bay that lifted into a chorus of short, high-pitched barks.

  “What is it, boy?” Wendell asked, looking around. A cloud passed over the sun. “Come on, King. Let’s head for the river.” King gave out one more low growl, a warning to whatever—or whoever—was out there, and then trotted over to Wendell’s side. They set out walking again.

  Jim didn’t follow. He hunkered in the shadows, trembling a little. He’d known King for a while now, and the dog had never growled at him before. It felt to Jim like the dog had turned against him somehow. That confused him and made him feel lonesome. He only had a few friends now, and he’d counted King among them.

  The birds in the trees overhead chattered feverishly among themselves. Jim turned to head back to the cabin, not bothering to stay out of the sun’s way. He hated it when Wendell went to the river. It gave Jim a sick feeling to even get near the water, which was funny, since he could remember fishing down there with Daddy and Fred and Uncle Owen, and a long time ago he used to go swimming at the bend with his friends. Not with Wendell, though. Jim hadn’t met Wendell until—well, Jim wasn’t so good with time anymore. He couldn’t exactly remember when he’d met Wendell.

  The sun beat against Jim’s back. He could feel the sense of it, if not the heat. He held up his hand and waved it around, but still no shadow. He kept waving and waving, though, and then, just for a second, he thought he saw a hint of a dark patch against the dirt.
/>   Well, what do you know about that? he thought. He looked around to see if there were any witnesses to this amazing event.

  But he was all by himself except for the birds, who went on chirping and twittering as if nothing had happened and nobody at all was there.

  4

  To Think of Yourself as a River

  Even if Callie hadn’t taken the path five hundred times, she’d have known she was getting close to the river just by the smell of it. Something wild and a little bit dangerous lifted into the air as you got close to the water. Something that said, Watch out.

  Didn’t scare Callie a bit, of course. She wasn’t the kind of girl who was gonna get pulled under by some old river. The way she saw things, she and the river had a lot in common. They both could be calm and relaxed, but you never knew when a storm might stir them up, and when that happened, watch out. “Callie, you better mind your temper, girl,” Mama had said on many occasions, and you could say the same thing to a river, now couldn’t you? Things could start to boil over in the water, same way they could in Callie’s mind, and when that happened, you better scoot up the banks and head for home.

  It was satisfying to think of yourself as a river, Callie decided as she made her way down toward the bank. Powerful and mighty at one bend, meek and mild at the next. Well, maybe not meek. Callie had always had problems with that part of the Bible, where Jesus tells everybody, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” She’d had to keep herself from shaking her head uh-uh right in the middle of church when Pastor Edwards got to that part. Meek folks never got nothing. Weren’t no gingersnaps left for the meek children when Mrs. Hudson passed out snacks after the Sunday-school lesson, especially not if Callie Robinson was in their class. Callie was always number one in the gingersnap line. Nothing meek about her.

  At first Callie didn’t see anybody else around, and she didn’t see that old dog, either. But when she looked farther down the riverbank, she saw a boy with a red hound standing next to him. The boy was throwing rocks into the water, and the dog was barking at the splashes the rocks made when they hit the water.

  Callie stood still as Sunday morning. It wasn’t like she’d never seen a white boy down here before, but usually she was with somebody, Daddy or Carl Jr. It felt different being by herself. The boy might think like he could say something to her, something mean and low-down, something that would make Callie feel like she had to defend herself. “White folks give you trouble, you just walk away,” Mama always instructed her children, but that didn’t sit right with Callie. Someone gave you grief, you had to give them grief right back.

  The boy glanced over at Callie, but he didn’t say anything, just kept chucking rocks. Callie scooped up a flat stone and skipped it across the water. She’d just ignore that boy, and he’d most likely ignore her, and then one or the other of them would go on their way, no harm done. Maybe the yellow dog would show up, and Callie would follow him and discover his secrets. Maybe she’d write his story up for the Weekly Advance, the colored folks’ newspaper that came out every Friday. Mr. Renfrow, the editor, liked a good detective-type story. Back in March, Callie had written an article about somebody thieving up and down Church Street, taking small items off of folks’ front porches—cigarette lighters, nickels and dimes, keys, and such—and even stealing Mrs. Pinkney’s wedding ring right off her kitchen windowsill.

  Callie had spent two weeks investigating after school, hiding behind bushes and peeking around corners. The day she saw a bird flying off from Miss Sally Henson’s porch with a pink eraser in its mouth, she knew she’d found the culprit. And didn’t Mr. Renfrow just eat that story up? Printed it on the front page.

  Callie glanced at the boy again. What if the yellow dog had already passed by here and the boy had seen him? Callie could be wasting her time standing where she was. Maybe she should be moving down the riverbank. But how would she know? She ought to ask that boy if he’d seen anything. The boy wasn’t going to do nothing to her. He was just an old white boy with his dog. He was probably all right, even if he was white. Daddy said most of the white men he worked with at the paper mill were just fine, didn’t give anybody no trouble at all. Maybe this boy’s daddy was one of them. Maybe this boy’s daddy was the sort of man who told his children, “You be nice to everybody, white or colored.”

  Besides, you ain’t scared of no white boy, she reminded herself. So she yelled across to the boy, “You seen an old yellow dog around here?”

  The boy didn’t say anything right away, just looked over at her like he was trying to figure out who she was. Finally he yelled back, “He yours?”

  “Nah, but I been following him,” Callie called. “Trying to figure some things out about him.”

  The boy moved closer to the river’s edge, his dog following at his heels. “He won’t stay with you. Friend of mine who lives downriver from here tried to tie him up in his backyard the other day. Wanted to make a pet out of him. But the dog howled so hard Will had to let him go.”

  “Don’t want him to stay.” Callie took a few steps toward the boy. “My mama won’t let us keep a dog for a pet. Cat neither. She don’t like fur on her furniture.”

  “We got three dogs,” the boy reported, sounding proud about it. “But we keep ’em outside. Ain’t civilized to keep a dog inside.”

  “I think an inside dog sounds nice. Keep you warm in the wintertime, if he sleeps on the end of your bed.”

  The boy seemed to consider this. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked up the riverbank. “Anyway, that dog’s already been here. What’re you looking for him for?”

  “Just looking, is all.”

  The boy nodded. “Well, good luck, then.” He whistled to his dog, and the two of them headed up the riverbank into the woods.

  Callie watched the boy go, and then sat down on a piece of driftwood. She felt her excitement about chasing after the dog slipping out of her. For all she knew, he was halfway to Covington by now. She scratched at a mosquito bite above her left ankle. You want to write that article, don’t you? she argued with herself, trying to work up her energy again. She remembered how Daddy had cut her bird article out of the newspaper and carried it in his shirt pocket for a week. Just think how proud he’d be if she had another one in the paper for everybody in the neighborhood to read. He might take it to the mill with him, pass it around.

  She stood up and stretched, trying to relight the spark of interest that had gotten her all the way down here at the hottest part of the day, but it was no use. She’d lost her fervor. Callie sighed. She hated when an idea that had held her in its grips suddenly let go. Now she’d have to trudge home, where there wasn’t one good thing to do, and nothing much to eat until suppertime. Since she and Cecily weren’t speaking to each other, she wouldn’t have no one to play with either. But she knew once the excitement of an idea cooled, wasn’t nothing she could do to heat it back up. She took off her shoes and walked to the water so she could dip her toes in before heading back on the path toward home.

  “Hey, girl!”

  Callie turned, and there was the boy and his red hound standing ten yards behind her, where the woods met the riverbank. Fear tugged at Callie’s gut. Had he come back to get her? To beat her up and cuss her out?

  The boy waved toward the woods. “I just saw him, that dog—up there in the woods, about two hundred yards from here. Come on—I’ll show you.”

  Callie didn’t answer. It could be a trick. He might be planning to whup her with a big stick. White boys could get into some evil mischief; she’d heard stories.

  “Come on!” the boy insisted. “He’s gonna get away if you don’t get going.”

  Callie slowly moved out of the water and picked up her shoes. “You sure it’s the old yellow dog?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have come back if I wasn’t.”

  Callie slipped her shoes back on. She looked at the boy. How old was he—eleven? Twelve? Hard to tell, but he was pretty scrawny, and Callie thought she c
ould probably take him if he tried to mess with her.

  “All right, I’m comin’,” she said. “But that dog better be there.”

  The boy looked at her. “I said he was. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “Don’t know. Just better be.”

  The boy mumbled something under his breath, then turned and disappeared back into the woods. Callie followed him. Maybe she was making a mistake, hard to tell. She guessed she was about to find out.

  5

  Wendell Crow Goes to Town

  The day had started out with his dad remembering an old cabin in the woods he and his brothers used to play in when they were boys. “I woke up dreaming about it,” he’d said, taking a sip of coffee from his mug that only he could ever drink from, the one with a University of Kentucky blue wildcat growling on it. “Bet it’s still there, too. Falling down, most likely. We never could figure out what it was doing there. Hunter might have built it, or somebody who’d cleared the land to settle on it.”

  Well, of course Wendell immediately wanted to go out looking for that old cabin in the woods, even though his dad couldn’t remember exactly where it was, maybe in the woods behind the Jerichos’ farm, maybe even closer than that. Wendell thought he’d get George to go with him to find it, and together they could turn it into a place for playing cards and holding secret club meetings and hiding out from their mothers. They’d been needing a place like that for years.

  So after he’d finished up his chores, he swung his bike out onto the road and pedaled the two and a half miles to the Franklins’, thinking how he wished his family would move into town so that he and George could just stroll in a leisurely-like way to each other’s houses, the way boys did in the movies he and his friends sometimes went to see on Saturday mornings. Whole gangs of boys would gather on a street corner at the sound of some kid’s whistle. Wendell could whistle all he wanted, but where his house was, out on a county road, only the dogs would come running.