Trouble the Water

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  Celeste, Kentucky, was proud of all sorts of things. It was proud of its brand-new school, Thomas Edison Elementary, on Green Street, and of its high school’s outstanding marching band, the Fighting Bear Cats, which had placed third in the North Central Kentucky Regional Finals two years in a row, and it was very, very proud of Marjorie Holder, the Fighting Bear Cats’ drum majorette, who was arguably the most beautiful majorette in all of Kentucky, or at least in the tricounty area.

  But Celeste, like any small town, had its secrets. For instance, only a few of the townspeople knew that the business offices of Felts Paper Products had been built on the remains of an Indian mound. The mound was discovered by the site foreman fifteen minutes after the ground had been broken to begin building. Work was stopped, the mayor was notified, a rushed committee meeting was held. All in attendance agreed the public did not need to be informed, despite the fact that the local paper, the Celeste Gazette and Informer, had recently run a well-received editorial saying that the mounds in their area should be respected and preserved.

  Celeste had even bigger secrets than that. The runaway slaves who’d made their way soundlessly through the woods to the riverbank at night were such a secret that hardly anyone in the white part of town knew about them or would ever know about them. When you crossed over to the colored part of town, which was generally considered to begin east of the intersection of South Central and Lexington and ran all the way down Marigold Lane before it stopped abruptly at the woods near the river, the secret was common currency. You might have been in the kitchen helping your grandmother make biscuits when she told you about her own grandmother rocking slowly on the porch in her old age—the age of remembering—and whistling whippoorwill, whippoorwill under her breath and then whispering, “Friend of a friend, friend of a friend.”

  Callie Robinson’s grandmother, Mama Lou, was one who remembered the stories her grandmother had told about the refugees on their way north under the dark of night, and she’d passed them on to her granddaughter. Now, as Callie followed the boy with the red dog up the path from the river, trying to avoid the tendrils of poison ivy climbing every tree she passed, she wondered if she was walking over the same ground the escaped slaves had walked over. Wouldn’t that be something?

  She wanted to tap the boy on the shoulder and ask if he knew the stories about the slaves coming through Celeste on their way to getting free, but she didn’t think she ought to talk to white folks about that kind of thing. It was too good a story just to hand over to any old body, especially some boy whose name she didn’t even know. Who knew what he might do with it—make fun, say it never happened, tell that old lie that some white folks liked, about how happy slaves had been.

  So instead she asked him about the yellow dog. “You got any guesses where he come from? That dog, I mean? Somebody around here must have owned him sometime. Otherwise, why would he be here?”

  “I’ve been thinking on that,” the boy said, holding up a branch of a bush for her to duck under before letting it whip back, which made Callie all the more sure he wasn’t planning on beating her with a stick. “I reckon he’s on the prowl for something or somebody. But I don’t know anybody who knows him.”

  “He’s a pretty old dog,” Callie said. “Maybe somebody owned him back in the day. Maybe his folks lived upriver. Could be they all died of a fever and he’s been on his own ever since.”

  “But why would he come down here if his folks lived upriver?”

  “Could’ve got lonely,” Callie guessed. “Or confused.”

  “Maybe,” Wendell said. “Maybe he’s like one of them dogs you read about sometimes that get lost on a camping trip and find their way back home.”

  “Pretty old dog to take camping.”

  “Maybe the folks who took him camping were old too,” Wendell said, and then he stopped and pointed to a broken-off stump of a tree and stopped walking. “That dog was right around here. You smell him, King?”

  As if to answer, King gave a sharp bark and trotted to where the path branched right. The boy followed him, and Callie followed the boy. King barked again, and this time an answering bark came from close by. “Come on out, pup,” the boy called. “Come on an’ see us now.”

  And sure enough, didn’t that old yellow dog show up right in front of them, wagging his tail and sniffing at King? Callie kneeled down beside him and scratched him behind his ears. “Where you gone off to, boy? I been needing you to tell me a thing or two.” She looked up. “How old you reckon he is?”

  The boy considered this. “Pretty old, I guess. Look at that white fur around his eyes. That’s a sign of age.”

  Callie stood and brushed the dirt off her knees. “What’s your name, anyway? I been meaning to ask you that for about a hundred years now.”

  “Wendell Crow,” the boy said, grinning at the “hundred years” remark. “What’s yours?”

  “I’m Callie Robinson.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Wendell looked at her hand like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it, but after a moment’s hesitation he shook. “I’ve got some cousins named Robinson, but I don’t reckon you all are related to one another.”

  “No,” agreed Callie. “I don’t reckon so.”

  They stood there for a moment, considering each other, and then Wendell said, “You don’t know anything about a cabin out here, do you? I mean, here in the woods? My dad says he remembers one.”

  Callie shrugged. “I might have heard tell of one,” she replied, trying to sound casual about it. Oh, she’d heard tell of one, all right, but that didn’t mean she had to pass on the information.

  At least not yet.

  “Well, you wanna help me look for it?”

  “You think it’s gonna help me find something out about this dog?”

  “Might could,” Wendell said. “You don’t know till you find out, I guess.”

  True enough. “Come on,” she said to the yellow dog, who obediently followed her as she started off again up the path. “Let’s go find us a cabin.”

  8

  The Woods

  Wendell wondered how long it would take to find the cabin. What if his dad was wrong, and it wasn’t anywhere near the Jerichos’ farm? His dad had plenty of stories about how far he and his brothers had roamed when they were boys. He claimed that one day they’d followed the river all the way to Covington, fifteen miles north, taken a quick look around town, then walked all the way back and gotten home before nightfall.

  That made Wendell think. If they didn’t find the cabin today, maybe he could ride his bike over to Uncle James’s house after dinner. Uncle James was the oldest of his dad’s brothers, and the one whose head rested most squarely upon his shoulders. His other uncles, Phillip and Edsel, couldn’t tell a story straight if you paid them to, and his dad could be the same way, stretching out a fact to make it just a little more colorful than it needed to be. Uncle James might thump his Bible a little harder than Wendell cared for, but he could be trusted to tell the truth.

  Wouldn’t it be something when Wendell went home and told his dad he’d found the cabin? He could just about see his dad’s face, all proud and excited. That tired look would fall away from his eyes, and he’d grab his hat from the peg near the door. Come on, son, he’d say. Show me where it is.

  “If I come home covered with poison ivy, my mama’s gonna wonder what I been up to,” the girl, Callie, said from behind him. “She’ll fuss and fuss.”

  Then Wendell had a funny thought. Did colored folks use calamine lotion when they got a rash? And if they did, did it look funny, all that pink against their dark skin? Well, the pink looked pretty strange against his white skin, that was the truth.

  “My mother makes me take a bath in oatmeal when I get poison ivy,” Wendell said. “Yours ever do that? It helps, but I still can’t sleep at night from all the itching.”

  “The first thing Mama does is rub you all over with alcohol, to cool your skin down. And t
hen she makes this nasty paste out of baking soda that she plasters all over you, and you just have to sit there and let it dry. Makes you feel like a mummy or something.”

  “Yeah, my mom does that if we get a mosquito bite. Only she just puts it on the bite. It sort of helps.”

  The problem with talking about itching, Wendell realized, was that it made you feel itchy whether you had any cause to or not. He scratched at his neck and then his left arm. Poison ivy was practically dripping from the trees around him, and he was doing his best not to rub up against it, but maybe his mother was right. Maybe Wendell could get a rash by just standing next to some poison ivy. He didn’t even need to touch it.

  They reached a fork in the path. King and the old yellow dog sniffed the air, first to the left and then to the right. The part of the path that veered left was worn and well traveled; to the right you could barely see any path at all, but it was there, hidden under the leaves. King looked back at Wendell, waiting for a command. Wendell turned to Callie. “I reckon we ought to go toward the right. It looks like it’ll take us deeper into the woods. I’m pretty sure if we go left, we’re going to be heading up to the Jerichos’ farm.”

  Callie looked worried. “We gonna be able to get back out of these woods? Maybe we ought to mark our way.”

  “King will get us out,” Wendell said, feeling proud about it. “He always knows the way back.”

  So they followed the path deeper into the woods, Wendell doing his best to avoid the ivy vines, even as the trees closed more tightly around them. He wished he were a bird flying overhead so he could see exactly where they were. He could still smell the river air, the muddy stink of it.

  But there were other smells here too, the darker, damper smells of rotting leaves, moss-covered trees, and animal scat. The woods were quieter than the river, which was funny if you thought about it, since all sorts of wild things lived here, not to mention insects. Of course, if you wanted to hear the woods get noisy, you had to come at night. Once or twice in the summer Wendell and his dad came down this way to fish at night, and critters made so much racket you wanted to cover your ears.

  King gave a sharp bark, as if he were making an announcement, and Wendell thought that maybe they’d found the cabin, and then he started to worry. What if Callie made a claim on the cabin, said that it was half hers? It might be she’d want to hold tea parties in it, and that would spoil the whole feel of the cabin for Wendell, even if he wasn’t there when the parties took place. He remembered now why he did his best to keep away from girls. The ideas they came up with could ruin your whole day. Like the time Rosemary went on a decorating kick. When Wendell got home from his baseball game and went up to his room to change, he found half of his baseball card collection pasted to the walls. His Ted Kluszewski, his Gus Bell, his Walker Cooper, all ruined, and nobody even made Rosemary pay him back. “She was just trying to be nice,” his mother said, like good intentions made up for the destruction of personal property. That was female logic for you right there.

  The path just kept rambling on, not leading toward any place in particular, it seemed to Wendell. He’d thought heading away from the Jerichos’ farm was the right idea, but the fact was he didn’t know this part of the woods at all.

  “I’m starting to think we ain’t on the right path,” Callie said, like she’d been reading Wendell’s mind. Well, maybe they should call this whole thing off, he thought. Maybe Callie and the old dog weren’t part of the plan after all. Could be he didn’t need them to find the cabin, that they didn’t have a thing to do with it.

  In fact, he was starting to doubt the wisdom of including the girl on this hunt through the woods in the first place. What if they found the cabin, and the next time around, when Wendell brought his dad or George to see the place, this skinny, knobby-kneed colored girl was sitting smack in the middle of it, maybe with a few of her colored friends? “Well, hey there, Wendell,” she might call out, and then he’d have to explain how he knew her. Word would get around town pretty fast if folks thought Wendell was mixing with colored kids.

  Now, ain’t you in a pickle? he could hear his sister Rosemary ask, and Wendell reckoned he was. He needed to do something now, and he needed to do it quick.

  “I think you’re right,” Wendell told Callie, turning around to face her. “I don’t think this is the way at all. I guess we best go back.”

  “Then let’s try another path,” Callie suggested. “Wouldn’t take long to retrace our steps, take the other fork in the road.”

  “I—I need to get going home,” Wendell stammered. “Got chores to do.”

  Callie gave him a long look. “You had all the time in the world before. How’d you get so busy all of a sudden?”

  Wendell was opening his mouth to reply when something thudded on the ground behind him.

  “Don’t move.” Callie held out a hand and took a few steps toward him. King let out a low growl, and the old yellow dog whimpered. “There’s a snake behind you. It just fell out of a tree, like it meant to block your path. I ain’t never seen anything like it.”

  “What kind of snake?” Wendell asked, his whole body going cold. He could tolerate a lot of things, but a snake wasn’t one of them.

  “Reckon it’s a black snake,” Callie said, peering over Wendell’s shoulder. “It ain’t moving. Must have gotten stunned by the fall. You don’t reckon it jumped, do you?”

  Wendell darted over to King and turned around. A thick black snake lay two feet behind where he’d been standing. Callie was right, though. It wasn’t moving or acting like it was all that alive.

  Callie inched closer to the creature. “I’d say that was a black snake, all right. Every once in a while one slips into our basement, and I’m the only one who don’t mind to carry it out. Black snakes won’t hurt you. You want to touch it?”

  To Wendell’s amazement, Callie leaned down and grabbed the snake by its middle. It wriggled in her hand, tongue flickering, its head shifting this way and that, like it was considering who it should kill first. She held it out to him, and Wendell automatically took three steps back.

  “Snakes give you the willies?” Callie asked. “I don’t know what the fuss is, myself. Now, if it was a copperhead, I’d be a mile gone already. But this here fella wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “That snake’s a sign,” Wendell said, gathering his wits. He needed to use this situation to his advantage. “I think I’ve read it in a book somewhere. Snake falls in your path, go the other way. In fact, you probably should just give up and go home.”

  “You sure are superstitious, Wendell Crow.” Callie shook her head and dropped the snake to the ground, where it slithered back into the underbrush. “Well, I reckon we’ll just have to start our journey back up in the morning, what with snakes falling from trees and you having chores to do.”

  Wendell tried to think fast. “You know, I’m starting to think there might not even be a cabin. We’re probably wasting our time.”

  “Oh, there’s a cabin, all right,” Callie said. “Sure as you and me are standing here, there’s a cabin. I aim to find it too. Maybe that’s where this old dog stays. But you can give up looking if you want to. Nobody’d blame you a bit, what with all the snakes and poison ivy around here.”

  “I ain’t giving up.” Wendell turned to King and snapped his fingers. “Come on, boy, let’s head home.”

  “Tell you what,” Callie said from behind him as they started walking. “You don’t have to even come looking tomorrow. I’m happy to be the lone explorer out here. I’ll let you know if I find anything, you have my word.”

  “I’ll meet you at the river, nine o’clock sharp,” Wendell said. He shook his head. What a mess. What in the world had he been thinking about, getting involved with this girl? Well, it was too late to do anything about it now. He’d just focus on the main point. He’d just think about how happy his dad would be if Wendell found the cabin, no matter how many knobby-kneed colored girls were trying to lay claim to it.

&
nbsp; After ten minutes of walking Wendell could see a widening up ahead and reckoned they were almost back at the big path leading up from the river. Maybe if he and Callie found the cabin tomorrow, he could bring his dad on Sunday. His dad might tell him some more stories about his growing-up days. The best days of his life, he called them. Wendell loved hearing those stories, but he always wished that right now was his dad’s best time. Once, he’d heard his mother say, “I can hardly remember life before the children were born.” His dad never said anything like that.

  9

  Thomas; or, The Other Boy Who Lived in the Cabin

  He’d watched that ghosty boy tracing over those letters on the wall with his ghosty finger and heard him say “Jim” every time he did, like he be calling out for somebody. Thomas didn’t know no letters except for X, so how he supposed to write his name and let folks know he still here? He been trying to tell that ghosty boy ever since he shown up here, but the ghosty boy wouldn’t listen. Thomas stood next to him at night and said, Listen to me! Said, Let me tell you something! And then he tell the ghosty boy the whole story, even if that boy act like he don’t hear a word.

  He’d say, Me and my folks and all the rest of them was coming down the path through the woods at night when we heard the hounds, and then that man guiding us say, Go to the cabin, hide there till it’s safe. They’s a place to hide under the floor, and the old lady, she’ll tell them catcher mens to go away.

  So then we got to this place and climbed through a hole in the floor and we was hiding and it smelled like dirt and damp and there was things crawling on me and then there was a skinny ole snake just slithering toward me—couldn’t see it, but I could hear it!—and I just set out to yelling and yelling and they was all saying, Thomas! Stop! Hush! Them mens gonna hear you!