Trouble the Water

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “Miss Callie!” Mr. Renfrow exclaimed when he saw her, sounding like he was glad to move on from the topic of dinner. “Just the young lady I was looking for!” Then he looked flustered and said, “N-n-not that it hasn’t been a delight speaking with you, Mrs. Robinson.”

  Mama turned to go back inside. “Oh, it’s always a pleasure to see you, Orin. I’m going to get you to my dinner table one of these days.”

  Callie watched Mr. Renfrow watch Mama go back inside, and shook her head. Poor old thing, liking her mama the way he did. “How you doing, Mr. Renfrow? You got some work you need me to do?”

  “On the contrary, Miss Callie,” Mr. Renfrow replied, regaining his composure. “I hope it’s I who can be a help to you. You see, after you left today, a memory began dancing around in my mind, dim and distant, about a boy who drowned. It was some time ago, I remembered that much, but I couldn’t remember when. And then it came to me—it was the week after the old dry-goods store burned down, the one Mr. Turner owned on Oak Street. You were just a baby then. But it was quite a story because arson was suspected. In fact, some thought that Turner’s store had been burnt down so that the colored community would take their business to the new A&P over on Elm Street. Nothing was ever proven, of course. But it was the week after that that a twelve-year-old boy drowned in the Ohio, just down from Jericho’s Point, where the river bends. It was in April, right after the spring rains, and the water was running wild. The boy’s dog went in after him, and it was thought they both were lost. The boy’s body was never found.”

  “That whole memory came back to you?”

  “Oh, no—just the memory of the boy’s drowning. But once I remembered that it was after Turner’s store burned down, it was easy enough to find the story in the following week’s paper. I thought you might like to read it.”

  “Oh, I’m interested,” Callie said. “Definitely interested.”

  Mr. Renfrow pulled a yellowed, folded-up paper from a large pocket inside his jacket. “You may keep this copy. There are follow-up stories for several weeks, if you’d like to come down to the office to read them.”

  Callie took the paper and unfolded it. It was dated April 16, 1943. The story above the fold was about colored soldiers from Celeste who were fighting the war in Germany. Underneath that story was the headline CELESTE BOY LOST IN OHIO RIVER; PRESUMED DEAD and below the headline were two pictures. One was a school picture of a regular-looking white boy, brownish hair, light eyes, sticking-out teeth. The other one was of the old dog, only he wasn’t old in the picture. He looked downright youthful.

  “That’s the old dog!” she told Mr. Renfrow, pointing at the picture. “The old dog belonged to that drowned boy. Only if that’s the old dog, well, he didn’t drown like folks thought.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Mr. Renfrow agreed. “Not if that’s him. Perhaps you should write a story for the paper about it. Everyone likes a good dog story.”

  Callie nodded, wishing like anything dogs could talk. Where’d that old dog been all these years? That would be the real story right there.

  “And I thought perhaps you could write something about the boy. Go talk to his family, ask for some background information, paint a fuller picture. Rereading this story, I see there’s not much about the boy at all, except his name and age.”

  His name? Callie scanned the cutline under the pictures: “Jim Trebble.”

  The boy’s name was Jim.

  So Jim wasn’t some old guy living in a shack by the river. He was a boy, and maybe that made more sense. A boy was more likely to carve his name in a wall than a man, she reckoned. What had he been doing up in the cabin, though?

  “I believe the boy’s father recently passed,” Mr. Renfrow informed her. “But his mother still lives on West Main. She might enjoy reminiscing about her son.”

  After dinner Callie took the paper upstairs to her room, sat down on her bed, and studied on it. Turned out this Jim Trebble had been fishing down at the river with two friends when a big wind came up and blew his hat off into the water. “That was Jim’s lucky hat,” one of his friends, a boy named Robert Lincoln, was quoted as saying. “Only I guess it wasn’t so lucky that day.”

  I guess not, Callie thought, and read on. Jim Trebble had gone out into the water to retrieve his hat, which was racing away toward where the river deepened. His friends reported that just as he was about to reach the hat, he slipped, went under, and didn’t come back up.

  Didn’t come back up. Callie shivered. Imagine that. She’d been pulled under the water a time or two herself, and even though it had only been for a few seconds each time, she’d never forgotten what it felt like to go tumbling over the rocks, the river pulling at you like it had some place it needed you to be. Both times Daddy had snatched her up out of the water and carried her back to the banks, fussing at her about being more careful. Now she guessed she could see his point. Looked like the river could carry you all the way away if it felt like it.

  Callie leaned back against her pillow and stared at the picture of Jim Trebble. According to the article, he’d been in sixth grade at the old elementary school on East Main Street, the one all the white kids went to before they built Thomas Edison Elementary a few blocks up. Now the old elementary school was a community center.

  Mr. Renfrow was right. The article didn’t say a whole lot about Jim Trebble as a person, only that he’d had a dog called Buddy, and Buddy had jumped into the river to save him, had yet to be found, and was presumed drowned along with his owner. Shows you how much they knew, Callie thought. That old dog’s tough like me. Takes more than an old river to bring us down.

  “Whatcha looking at, Little Sis?” Carl Jr. was standing in the doorway. He must have sniffed out the fact that Callie was onto something interesting. “Why’d Mr. Renfrow bring you that paper?”

  “I told y’all at dinner, that’s between me and Mr. Renfrow. You’ll find out when it’s time.”

  Carl Jr. walked over and sat down next to Callie on her bed. “Maybe I could help you out, whatever it is you’re doing. I ain’t got nothing else on my docket at this very minute.”

  “Where’s Everett at?” Everett was Carl Jr.’s best friend, and usually after supper the two of them would be outside hitting a ball around or getting into mischief.

  “Gone to Cincinnati to see his granny. Won’t be back till next week.”

  “So you’re bored and want to stick your nose into my business.”

  Carl Jr. looked at Callie and shook his head. “Just trying to be of service, Little Sis. You don’t got to get all high and mighty on me.”

  Callie folded up the paper and put it behind her pillow. She needed to think about this for a minute. On the one hand, she didn’t want Carl Jr. to butt in on her project. He might get the notion all of a sudden that he was a newspaper reporter and decide to take over her investigation into the life of Jim Trebble and the old dog.

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t mind having someone to go back to the cabin with her. That old Wendell Crow didn’t count. First of all, she didn’t know how to find him, and second of all, she didn’t trust him. She’d only known him for two days! White boys like trouble, wasn’t Mama always saying that?

  Still, the fact was Callie didn’t want to go back to the cabin by herself. That place felt funny. Felt cold and, well, occupied. Wendell had pretended like he hadn’t noticed it, but Callie could tell he was feeling something strange too, the way he kept rubbing his arms and looking all around, like there was a snake in there or something.

  And the way Wendell’s dog, King, wouldn’t come inside? What made him stop at the door?

  No, Callie didn’t cherish the thought of going back there by herself.

  “Okay,” she finally said to Carl Jr. “I’m gonna tell you, but you keep in mind that I’m the boss of this.”

  Carl Jr. grinned. “Whatever you say, Little Sis.”

  • • •

  The next day she and Carl Jr. had walked to the cabin, even though Ca
rl Jr. thought Callie was nuts. “You know there ain’t no ghosts, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t know that. You’re gonna feel what I’m talking about when we get there, just you wait. And I bet that old dog’s still sitting there too. Now, why do you think that is?”

  “Maybe that’s where he stay. Everybody needs a home, even an old dog.”

  “Maybe,” Callie said, just to end the argument for a minute. She was starting to feel nervous the closer they got to the cabin. Now that she knew for sure that the old dog had belonged to the boy who drowned, she couldn’t stop thinking about that name scrawled on the wall. She just knew it had to be the same Jim as the Jim Trebble she’d read about in the newspaper.

  “Might be the same,” Carl Jr. agreed after they’d reached the cabin and she’d pointed out the name on the wall to him. “Might not be, though. Probably a million Jims live around here.”

  “Jim Trebble lived over on the edge of town, is what the paper says, on West Main Street.”

  “So he could’ve been here. All sorts of folks been in this cabin over the years.”

  Callie put her hand on her brother’s arm and squeezed it. Hard. “I think this is where the runaway slaves hid,” she whispered, her voice trembling with the excitement of it. “You know, like Mama Lou told us about?” This was the first time Callie had said it out loud.

  “Could be,” Carl Jr. agreed. He looked around the cabin. “Hard to think that they wouldn’t have got caught easy if dogs got hold of their scent. Maybe there used to be something to hide inside of.”

  They’d been looking around the outside of the cabin, the old dog trailing them, when they heard someone calling, “Callie? Anybody here?” from the clearing. Had to be Wendell.

  “You stay here,” Carl Jr. told her. “Let me check this out.”

  “But you don’t even know him, and I do,” Callie argued. “That don’t make sense.”

  “You just stay here.” The tone of his voice let her know he was serious, and Carl Jr. didn’t get serious about much, so Callie stayed put.

  Once the old dog got to barking, though, she just had to go and see what the matter was. And there was Wendell Crow, looking nervous and confused, and that boy behind him, red faced and squinty eyed, waving a stick around!

  Well, that sure proved one thing, didn’t it? Callie had been right not to trust that old Wendell. Bringing boys with sticks up to her cabin! After Stick Boy ran off, Wendell just stood there, not even bothering to explain himself. Wasn’t he something, acting stuck up that way?

  But she could tell he was interested when she said she knew something about that name on the wall. And his eyes nearly popped out of his head when she said that the old yellow dog had belonged to a boy named Jim who drowned in the river.

  “But you don’t know it’s the same Jim that wrote his name in the cabin,” Wendell said. “I can think of at least four Jims who live around here right off the top of my head. I go to school with Jim Laughlin and Jim Lange, and they don’t live but a mile or two down the road.”

  Carl Jr. nodded. “I know a lot of Jims too. But Callie here thinks there’s only one Jim who ever lived in Celeste, and it just so happens he likes to sign his autograph.”

  Callie stuck her hands on her hips and was about to say something sharp as a serpent’s tooth to Carl Jr., but nothing came to mind, so she stomped off back to the cabin. Wish this old place had the kind of door you could slam, she thought as she stepped across the cabin’s threshold. It would be mighty satisfying to slam a door right now.

  “Aw, come on, Little Sis,” Carl Jr. called from the clearing. “I’m only joking around!”

  Callie ignored him. She circled around the inside of the cabin, looking up and down. Had to admit Carl Jr. was right about one thing—how could anybody have hidden in a place like this? If dogs had come to the door, that would have been that, the runaways would have been caught in a thin second. She looked over at the wooden bed frame. Could somebody have hidden by hanging on to those ropes underneath a mattress or a quilt?

  She walked over to the bed. It was awful small for hiding under. Bending down, Callie examined the underneath and figured a dog could find you there as well as out in the open. Still, she slid herself under, just to get a feel for it. She turned so she was lying on her back and stared up at the frayed ropes, imagined herself hanging on to them, pulling herself up as close to the frame as she could. No, she just couldn’t see how that would make for a good hiding place. First of all, unless you were some kinda muscleman, you wouldn’t be able to hang there for more than ten seconds.

  Callie lay there for a minute, pondering. Brushing away some dirt from beside her on the floor, she felt something, a little hole just the right size to fit her finger into. Callie bet the floor was as holey as Swiss cheese, as bad a shape as this place was in. She felt around some more, but no, it was just that one hole. Callie flipped back over and examined it, poking her finger deeper in, hoping like anything there weren’t no snakes or rats hungry for a tasty girl’s fingertip, but all she could feel was the air. As she pulled her finger back out, the floor gave a little. Callie hooked her finger into a C and pulled hard. The floor beneath her knees groaned softly, like all that was holding it down was the weight of her.

  Callie slid out from underneath the bed frame and pulled it away from the wall. The cabin was dark, but kneeling again, she could just about see the shape of a square cut into the floor. Standing so that she was on the outside of the square, she leaned over and stuck her finger back into the hole. Sure enough, the square lifted up. It was a trapdoor!

  Carefully, Callie pulled the door all the way up and over, so it was lying flat on the floor. Peering down into the hole, she couldn’t see anything, so she figured there was only one thing to do: go down inside it herself.

  Callie leaned back on her heels. Problem was, it was awful dark down there. Might be some sort of critters hiding out, a big old raccoon or some rats. Callie wasn’t afraid of nothing, she just liked to see what she was heading into. Hard to warm up to the idea of sticking her foot down blind and having something nibble on her ankle.

  Well, what was her plan, then? Wait for Wendell Crow to come and plant a flag down there? All he cared about was who got dibs on the cabin. If he found this hiding place, why, he’d say it was for putting down crates of pop or storing his fishing tackle. I went down first, he’d say, so it’s all mine.

  “Callie, where’d you go?” Carl Jr. called out from outside the cabin. Callie slipped down into the darkness. Nothing tried to bite or grab her, so maybe she’d scared away anything that called this place home. The space wasn’t deep, and it was easy to lean over and pull the trapdoor back down over her head. She was careful to do it slow, bending down as she did. There was just enough room for her to squat. She wished she had a light so she could see how big the space was and see what else was down here, but once the door was back down, there was only a tiny bit of light coming through that tiny hole, and Callie could hardly see a thing.

  Feeling around with her hands, Callie checked to make sure there wasn’t anything on the ground to bite her or get up her britches, and when it seemed like there wasn’t, she sat down on her bottom. The trapdoor was just a foot or so over her head.

  “Callie? Come on now, girl! Show yourself!”

  Callie grinned. Now she knew where the slaves had hidden, and Carl Jr. didn’t have the least little idea. Man alive, she was good at solving mysteries. Might be she’d grow up to be a private investigator someday. She guessed she could be a reporter, too, like Mr. Renfrow, since he was always looking into stuff, like who robbed the Laundromat that one time or whatever happened to Mrs. Anderson’s cat that disappeared, but she thought maybe a private investigator wouldn’t have to follow all the rules the way Mr. Renfrow had to. A private investigator might could skirt the law a little in order to get to the bottom of things.

  Even when her eyes adjusted, Callie couldn’t see much more than the back of her hand. But after a minut
e or two she could feel something sort of cold and shapeless pressing against her. She waved her hand around in the air, but there wasn’t a thing there.

  “Anybody in here?” she asked the air, hoping like anything nothing would answer her back.

  “Callie, is that you?” Carl Jr.’s voice came from inside the cabin. “Where the heck are you?”

  Callie thought about not answering, but that cold feeling kept pressing against her, and she didn’t know how much longer she was going to be able to tolerate it. She got back in a kneeling position, put her hands on the board above her head, and pushed hard.

  The board didn’t budge an inch. Callie tried three more times, but still no luck. And now when Carl Jr. called out “Callie!” it sounded like his voice had gotten farther away, like he’d given up looking for her in the cabin.

  “Carl Jr.!” she cried out. “I’m down here! Help me!” She pushed at the trapdoor again, harder this time. Was she going to be stuck down here forever? What if there was something down here, snakes or rats or something even worse? Panic rose in Callie’s throat, and she tried to yell again, but no sound came out of her.

  Then the trapdoor opened with a creaky groan, and Wendell’s face was peering down inside the hole. He reached out a hand. “You need some help out of there?”

  Callie almost said no. Wendell Crow was the last person in the world she wanted help from. But then that cold feeling pressed against her again, and she put her hand in Wendell’s. “You better not be laughing,” she said.

  “I ain’t laughing.” And he wasn’t lying; his mouth was set straight as a pencil. He leaned back his weight, and Callie popped out of the hole.

  “So what’s down there?” Wendell asked. “You reckon that’s where the people who lived here stored their food?”

  “I reckon that’s where they stored something,” Callie told him, which was all she was telling him. She brushed off the back of her skirt, wiped some dirt off of her knees. Seeing his face close up brought her angry feelings back up to the surface.