The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had

by Kristin Levine

  “A letter,” Emma said.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  “My dad passed the test.”

  “What test?”

  She looked at me. I started to choke.

  “We’re going back to Boston,” Emma said.

  “Oh.”

  “We leave in three weeks. The day of the Fourth hunt.”

  The cola burned running down my throat.

  “They’ve already hired a new postmaster. He’s got twin boys your age.”

  “Great.” My stomach felt like it had been kicked by an old mule.

  “Dit, I—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I want to tell you—”

  “Shut up!” I ran out of the cave and into the forest. Didn’t stop till my legs were aching. Finally leaned against a tree and threw up. When I was finished, I walked on till I found a little stream. I rinsed out my mouth and sat down under a pine tree.

  I didn’t know where I was.

  Maybe that wasn’t quite true. I could’ve figured it out if I’d gotten up and looked around. But I just didn’t care no more. I wanted to sit on that bed of pine needles forever.

  I sat there all afternoon and evening. Seemed like if I didn’t move, nothing would change, and Emma would stay in Moundville. I knew that didn’t make no sense, but still I didn’t move as the sun went down and the stars came out. Sat till I heard a voice in the moonlight.

  “Dit, is that you?” Jim Dang-It stepped over the small stream.

  “How’d you find me?”

  Jim snorted. “Left a trail a mile wide.”

  I didn’t say nothing.

  “Your mama’s worried herself sick. Get up and get your dang self home.”

  Slowly, I stood up. My stomach ached ’cause I hadn’t eaten anything, and my legs stung from tiny cuts I got running through the underbrush. Jim clutched my arm so tight it hurt, and we started walking home.

  After a while Jim’s grip on my arm softened. “You know, Dit,” he said in a quiet voice, “when my wife died, I was real angry. Angry at the old doctor who wouldn’t come ’cause I didn’t have no money. Angry at God for taking her away.”

  Jim paused to make sure I was listening.

  “But after a while, I thought of something worse than losing my wife.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “If I’d never met her at all.”

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. Mama was pacing back and forth on the front porch when we arrived home. Soon as she saw us, she ran down the front steps and threw her arms around me.

  “I was so worried, Dit!” Mama cried. “Don’t you ever run off like that again!”

  And that was when I finally started to cry.

  59

  THE TALK

  THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE UP EARLY AND went outside to chop some wood. My thoughts were still in a muddle, and there ain’t nothing like chopping wood to clear your head. I’d been chopping for a good half an hour when Pa came out of the house and walked over to where I was working.

  “Dit,” said Pa. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry for running off,” I said. There was a rhythm to the chopping. If I concentrated real hard, maybe I wouldn’t have to think about nothing else.

  Pa waved a hand in the air. “Shoot, I ain’t upset about that. Your mama worries too much. I knew you were okay.”

  I kept chopping. “Then what’d you want to talk about?”

  Pa was silent for a moment. “I know what you and Emma did,” he said finally.

  I let my ax fall to the ground. “You do?”

  “Dr. Griffith told me,” said Pa.

  “Oh.” I sat down on a stump. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” asked Pa.

  “Are you real mad?” I asked. Despite all the growing I’d been doing, Pa was still taller and stronger than me. I wondered if he’d make me cut my own switch for a whipping.

  Pa shook his head. “Dit, I’m proud of you.”

  I stared up at my pa. He was smiling, and in the sunlight, his hair was exactly the same color as mine. “It took a lot of courage to do what you did,” he said. “And brains too.”

  “The brains was mainly Emma,” I said.

  Pa laughed. “I ain’t too good at putting my thoughts into words, Dit. But I wanted to give you something.” He pressed some crumpled papers into my hands. I carefully unfolded them. They were two dollar bills.

  “Is this so I can enter the Fourth hunt?” I asked.

  “You can do whatever you want with it,” said Pa.

  We stood there in silence for a moment.

  “Are you ever gonna give me the talk?” I asked.

  “The talk?” Pa asked, then laughed. “Oh, that talk.”

  “Well, are you?”

  Pa shook his head. “The part about girls, it’s just too embarrassing. Ask Raymond. But the part about being a man, you don’t need that. That you already know.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and I felt like a million bucks.

  Late that afternoon, I stood on the banks of the Black Warrior. There wasn’t no more wood to chop, but throwing stones was almost as good. I skipped them across the water, watching them bounce six, seven, eight times. After a while, I got a prickly feeling on the back of my neck. I looked up.

  Emma stood at the edge of the forest.

  I nodded at her and went back to throwing stones.

  Emma picked up a couple of stones and started throwing herself. The sun went down some more, and I watched her stones skip across the pink water.

  “My pa gave me money to enter the Fourth hunt,” I said finally.

  “Oh,” she said. She opened her mouth like she was gonna argue with me, then closed it. Her shoulders dropped, but she smiled as she said, “Sorry I won’t be here to see you win it.”

  I knew how much she hated the whole idea of the Fourth hunt. Also knew that she finally understood what it meant to me. And now, suddenly, I wasn’t sure I was even gonna enter.

  “Sorry I ran off yesterday,” I said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Do we have to talk about you leaving?” I asked.

  “No,” said Emma. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  We skipped some more stones.

  “You know, I wouldn’t have told on you,” Emma said finally.

  “What?”

  “About the window. And the buzzard. Even if you hadn’t helped me. I was just bluffing.”

  “I know.” I knew that, and lots of other things. But I couldn’t say them. I just took her hand and held it in my own, my fingers next to hers. I couldn’t stop staring at them. We stood in silence for a long, long time.

  60

  THE POSTCARD

  FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS EMMA HELPED me with my chores so we could spend every waking moment together. When the cows were milked and the garden weeded, we went hiking in the woods and fished on the Black Warrior. We played baseball and drank root beer on Mrs. Pooley’s front porch and talked about Emma’s books. Me and Emma skipped stones, tossed balls of yarn for the kittens and borrowed Pa’s car for a joyride. Only thing we didn’t do was talk about her leaving.

  The afternoon of July 3, Reverend Cannon organized a goodbye picnic for the Walkers. I went, of course. There were rows of tables set up outside the wooden church and enough food for everyone in Selma. Most of the guests were colored, though my whole family stopped by. Dr. Griffith and Mrs. Seay did too. Even Jim Dang-It showed up, said goodbye to Emma and left without saying a word to anyone else.

  Don’t remember much about that afternoon. I was trying so hard not to think about what was happening the next day, I didn’t even notice what I ate or who I talked to. Emma was busy saying goodbye to everyone else and didn’t have much time for me. And so before I knew it, just about everyone had gone home and Mrs. Walker was packing a basket of leftovers to take on the train.

  I was just about ready to head on home myself when Emma raced
up to me and grabbed my arm. “I got something to show you, Dit.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, no. Not here.” Emma shook her head. “Race you to the top of our mound.”

  So we ran through the forest and up to the top of our mound. It was so easy for Emma now, she didn’t even have to look where she was going. Didn’t have to think about avoiding the pricker bushes ’cause she knew where they all were, and if a new one had grown up overnight, well, it didn’t matter ’cause she had calluses on her hands. She still wore a dress and fancy shoes, but both were patched now and she didn’t seem to care. Emma scrambled up the hill ahead of me, and a gust of wind blew a red ribbon from her hair. I stopped to pick it up.

  When I finally reached the top, Emma was laughing. “I beat you! I finally beat you.”

  “Yeah, you sure did.”

  Emma put her hands on her hips. “Did you let me win?”

  “No. Why would I do that?”

  Emma smiled.

  “You lost this,” I said, holding out the ribbon.

  “You keep it,” said Emma. “I got a million more.”

  The sun was just beginning to set and had turned everything golden, like a film of oil floating on the water. I put the ribbon in my pocket and asked, “What did you want to show me anyway?”

  Emma pulled a small card out of the pocket of her dress and handed it to me.

  I looked carefully at the card. On one side was a picture of a tall building. Below it, in printed letters, was the word Chicago . I turned the card over. It was addressed to Dit Sims and Emma Walker of Moundville, Alabama. There was a small note next to the address:

  Both arrived safe.

  Thanks again.

  I looked up at Emma. She was smiling. “We did it. They’re free.”

  “I guess they are.” I looked down at the card in my hand. Never knew you could feel happy and sad at the same time, but I did, like someone was pulling my heart in two different directions. Maybe that’s why I finally found the words to ask, “Emma, why do you have to leave?”

  “Dit, I . . .” She shook her head.

  “If only I hadn’t given your daddy a ride to Selma . . .”

  “We would’ve never found the flour sacks,” Emma finished. “And without the sacks we might not have come up with the plan.”

  “And Doc would’ve died.”

  Emma nodded. “It was worth it, Dit.”

  “But you’re my best friend.”

  “I know. And you’re mine.”

  I handed the card back to her. “You keep it. So you can remember what we did together.”

  “Don’t need a card to remember that.” But she took the postcard, folded it carefully and stuck it back in her dress pocket.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said.

  “I’ll miss you too,” Emma replied.

  The sun was almost down now and the fireflies were out, twinkling on and off like tiny floating stars.

  “Can I kiss you goodbye?” I asked.

  Emma nodded.

  So I did. Right on the lips and everything. I probably should say it was gross or something. But it was actually kind of nice.

  Then we joined hands and walked down our mound together, one last time.

  61

  GOODBYE, EMMA

  ME AND EMMA STOOD SILENTLY ON THE tracks early the next morning, waiting for the train. The Walkers had all their belongings packed in a few neat, leather trunks. Emma clutched her own small suitcase. Pearl, Earl, Raymond and the rest of our family waited nearby.

  It was gonna be a hot July day, but I felt cold. The train whistle made me shiver. When the eagle on the top of the locomotive flew into the station, for the first time ever I didn’t feel a thrill. I wanted to shoot it down out of the morning air.

  The train lumbered to a stop and people began pouring out.

  “Bye, Dit,” Emma said.

  I swallowed hard. “Bye, Emma.”

  There wasn’t time to say nothing else. Her parents bundled her onto the train. Emma turned to wave goodbye, then ducked into the car. A moment later the train pulled off.

  “There’s the new postmaster,” said Pearl, pointing.

  A white family stood on the platform. They had three children, a girl who was almost eleven, just like Pearl, and two boys, both thirteen. One of the boys carried a baseball glove.

  “Hi, I’m Billy,” the boy said brightly. “That’s Tommy.”

  “We’re twins,” said the other boy.

  “But I’m older,” said Billy.

  “Only by ten minutes.” They both had dark hair and light eyes, and if Billy hadn’t been carrying a glove, I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.

  Mama made me carry their trunk home in my wagon. The twins chattered like chipmunks the whole way. I didn’t say much, and they didn’t seem to notice.

  “Do you have your own glove?” Billy asked. “I do. See.” He held it up.

  “I have one too,” said Tommy, “but mine’s in the trunk.”

  “Well, do you?” asked Billy.

  I just shook my head.

  Soon as I could, I snuck off, leaving Billy and Tommy behind. In front of Mrs. Pooley’s store was a group of men, registering for the Fourth hunt. Mrs. Pooley carefully wrote down their names and took their money. I stood off to the side and watched them, but I didn’t join in. Didn’t even feel an urge to take the two dollars out of my pocket.

  Instead, I went to the top of our mound and lit a small campfire. I carefully fed it bits of kindling. A train whistle sounded in the distance. I looked up.

  Far off, a train was twisting along its track through the forest.

  I pulled my flip-it out of my pocket and touched the carefully carved wood. A bird twittered in the branches of a nearby tree, a sparrow sitting on a low branch.

  I put a rock into the flip-it and fired. The bird fell to the ground, dead. Gently, I scooped it up and put it down on a large flat rock. Then I tossed my flip-it into the fire.

  The fire began to smoke. I picked up an old blanket and began to shake it over the fire, creating great billows of smoke. Probably wasn’t doing it right, but I hoped she could see them from the train. Smoke signals telling her how much I would miss her.

  I sat on the mound all day till the fire had burned down and I didn’t have no more wood. Finally, as the sun was about to set, I saw Mrs. Pooley struggling up the hill, carrying the eagle in its cage.

  “I couldn’t come till the hunt was over,” said Mrs. Pooley. She put the bird down and walked over to me. “Two dollars, we agreed on.” She held out her skinny hand.

  I carefully smoothed the wrinkles out of the two dollar bills and laid them gently on her palm.

  She looked at me suspiciously. “You didn’t steal this money, now, did you?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. Don’t know why you want this old bird, but it’s yours.” She turned and hobbled back down the hill.

  I looked at the eagle in the cage. She looked sad, worn down. I approached the cage carefully and unlocked the door. It swung open with a small squeak.

  The eagle was surprised. I could tell she was thinking, This has never happened before, not in all the years I’ve been trapped in this cage. She pushed herself into the bars at the far end of the cage and cowered there.

  I picked up the small dead sparrow and put it on the ground, just outside the cage door. “Come on, baby,” I said softly. “I killed one last bird, just for you.”

  The eagle smelled the bird and hopped forward. She poked her beak out and snatched the sparrow back inside, eating it in two large gulps.

  “Come out,” I coaxed her. “You’re free. Fly away.”

  The eagle looked at me and cocked her head. At that moment, I would have sworn that she understood. She hopped out of the cage.

  I felt the smile on my face, mixing with the tears.

  The eagle hopped around once or twice, stretching her wings. Then all at once she jumped into the air. A wind picked up and
sent her soaring, far into the rosy evening air, off into the sunset.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WISH TO THANK THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE for their help with this project. First, a big thank-you to my wonderful agent, Kathy Green, and my talented editor, Stacey Barney, for making the process of completing my first book such an enjoyable experience.

  Thank you also to the many people who read this story in all its different stages: Matt McNevin, Neil Conway, Kate Revelle, Sonja Levine, Roseann Mauroni, Ruth Williams and my other friends at Tuesdays at Two; Debbie Gaydos, Kristie Kehoe, John Douglass and my test “kid” readers, Karen and Claire Adler and Ciara Flosnik.

  An extra-special thanks to my grandfather, Harry Otis Sims, for writing down his memories of his childhood in Moundville, Alabama. His recollections inspired this story. Thank you also to my grandmother, Maurine Sims, for typing those handwritten pages and to my aunts and uncle, Judy Reed, Joanmarie and H. O. Sims for copying those pages and giving them to all of the grandchildren.

  Finally, I want to thank my family: my parents, Tom and Marlene Walker, my sister, Erika Knott, my daughter, Charlotte, and especially my husband, Adam Levine. Without their love and support this book would not have been possible.