by Iacopo Bruno
At least the Mississippi didn’t care. It was so big and full of life, but it still didn’t mind letting us do our business in and around it. Can’t think of a person in the world with that kind of meekness and bigness all at once. Maybe Jesus was that way. That’s why there are so many rivers in the Bible and why He was always letting people wash His feet with river water. I stared at the Miss, watching the first bit of sunlight make flashes on the water. I wondered if Jon up in Heaven could see those flashes, if he’d met Jesus at all, and if he’d put in a good word for me.
No gangplank was down, so I scanned the side of the boat for dangling ropes. Seeing none, I switched my gaze to the shoreline and quickly found a route. I scooted up a tree that had an overhanging branch and dropped onto the silent boat, making my way to a load of ropes and boxes stacked against the railing. From that spot I’d be close to cover in case someone came aboard, but I could still look far down the waterway. Daddy said the Mississippi went all the way to the ocean.
Just imagine, Jon. The ocean.
I took the leather bag from my bib pocket and searched for the right marble to hold while I thought of my brother. Blue? The ocean already had so much blue.
The tiger’s-eye one. It was brown and yellow and shiny. I decided Jon would like that, me taking a tiger to the ocean for him. I imagined standing right where I was, tucked against the side boards with a whole world waiting to be discovered and explored somewhere in all that water.
“Hey!”
My body jerked in surprise and I nearly fell over the railing as Sam Clemens came up behind me carrying two steaming mugs. “Coffee?”
Sam didn’t look near as scruffy as me with his black pants, unwrinkled white shirt, and black suspenders, but his hair was good and messy. It stuck up all over the place, like maybe it’d gotten in a fight with his pillow the night before. He stepped alongside me and held out one of the cups.
I didn’t drink coffee any more than the next eleven-year-old girl, but it looked good enough to ignore that fact. Watching what Sam did, I blew on my drink and took a mouthful, noting how it smelled better than it tasted. Swishing around the slightly sour flavor, I wondered when people grew up enough to start preferring bitterness to sweetness.
Sam drank, smacking his lips after each gulp. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?” He didn’t say it mean, like some adults. In fact, he seemed almost happy for the company, the way he had a hot drink ready for me and was settling down on the boxes like he was expecting to have a friendly chat.
Considering his question, I decided that Sam Clemens might be the one adult I could tell the truth to. I cleared my throat. “I’m running away,” I told him, straightening my shoulders so Sam would know I was serious.
He took another sip of coffee and nodded. “This doesn’t have to do with Tom Sawyer coming into the house late last night and waking Aunt Polly, does it?”
I smacked my forehead. “He woke her up?”
He grinned. “I heard doors open a few times last night. I figured Sid would stick to using windows if he was leaving at night, so I knew it had to be Tom. Plus, he was making extra noise by pacing back and forth. Seems he was trying to figure out whether to wake her or not.”
“And he did, that lowdown slug!”
“No, Aunt Polly woke up on her own from Tom’s feet thumping all over the place. Says she’s a light sleeper with Sid sneaking out so much. Anyhow, Tom said that Sid wasn’t in his bed. Then he claimed he saw you down by the Widow Douglas’s, setting fire to something.” He shook his head, laughing. “I was up by then, so we all went to Sid’s room.”
“And?”
“And he looked to be sleeping like a baby. Aunt Polly didn’t seem to notice the muddy footprints on the floor, so I didn’t feel the need to point them out.”
I sighed in relief. At least Sid was safe. “What then? Did everyone go back to sleep?”
“I wish that had been the case. Tom was considerably puzzled. Puzzled enough that he wanted to drag Aunt Polly down the road to make sure nobody’s front lawn was on fire.”
I sucked in a breath. “And?”
He winked. “I offered to go instead. Walked over and didn’t see a thing. Where he claimed to see you setting a fire, there was a nice new garden circle dug up. Good clump of herbs growing in it too.”
“There was?” Mrs. Douglas had saved my hide. “I mean, of course there was. It’s not like anyone would be setting fire to the Widow’s yard. What happened then?”
“If you’ll believe it, Tom got a talking-to and was sent to bed with a promise of no breakfast before church.”
So I wouldn’t be getting the switch after all, at least not for something I didn’t do. Still, there was the matter of the grave robbing and a certain set of outlaws I’d seen and heard. But I didn’t want to think about the Pritchards or the Widow or anybody. I shook my head to rid it of all my thoughts and realized Sam was still talking.
“. . . I’d had enough nonsense, so I came to sleep on my boat.” Taking a few deep breaths, he looked far down the Miss. “I love this river.”
“I do too.”
He set his cup on the railing and turned to me, eyes wide and curious. “Why’s that?”
“Is that a trick question?”
He laughed. “No, no. I’d genuinely like to know.”
“Okay, then.” I’d given the matter some thought, having spent plenty of time around the water since moving to St. Petersburg. “The Mississippi’s always moving somewhere and keeps to herself, but she still lets you in for a swim and a fish now and then. She lets you skip stones and spit cherry pits far into her, which is nice if you think about it.”
“Nice?”
“Sure, it’s nice! It’d be like if someone as big as Daddy took to letting ants have picnics on his belly whenever they felt like it. See,” I said. “Look at it all.”
The morning fog was starting to burn off. Boats dotted the waterway, looking like cows grazing on the river’s surface. A thin line of smoke rose in the air right where the river bent beyond our view, indicating a steamboat heading south. Distant shouting came from upriver at the St. Petersburg dock, and a tiny splash sounded just below us when some critter took to the water. The Mississippi and her banks were alive, there was no doubt of that.
“And she’s big enough that she probably can’t tell the difference between a turtle or a child or a grown-up jumping in,” I said. I thought of how Jon never, not once, stepped lightly into the town pond back in Riley. How he always took flying leaps with the biggest, wildest smile on his face, even if you dared him on the coldest day of winter.
I wanted to be just like that, taking leaps into life instead of dipping one toe in at a time.
I inhaled and held the river air inside me. “When you’re on this river, you can stay any age and be whoever you want. The Mississippi lets you make any kind of splash you need to, and she doesn’t judge you for it one bit. She doesn’t ask you to change.”
Sam nodded slowly, giving the Miss a soft smile. “That’s true.” He reached for his cup, frowning at its emptiness. “How long you planning on staying a runaway, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I shrugged.
“A steamboat isn’t the best place for running away. There’s an island upriver that would make a nice spot. Come to think of it, though, there’s not much reason for you to be running off anymore, is there?”
“Guess not,” I said. Now that I wasn’t going to jail, I could go back home to figure out how to save the Widow Douglas without getting punished. “If I stay out any longer, people might start thinking I fell in the river and drowned. Miss Ada would be awful sad at my funeral. Come to think of it, not too many people get to see their own funeral. Might be worth an extra couple of days.”
His eyes twinkled. “Isn’t that an idea? Visiting your own funeral.” He took out his notebook and jotted something down. “So just Miss Ada would be sad, you think?”
“Amy Lawrence would be considerable sad too
,” I allowed, studying my bare feet. She might think the Pritchards snatched me. Selfishly, I wondered once again if Mama would snap out of her silence if she thought marauders had taken my life.
“They’d be scouring these shorelines with dogs,” Sam said. “Might think those Pritchards got you.”
My head whipped up, but he seemed to be joking instead of reading my mind. Like Daddy and the sheriff, he thought the Pritchards had moved on. The mention of dogs reminded me of something. The Widow’s dog ripped a piece of Billy Pritchard’s shirt. A flicker of an idea formed.
I tried to sound casual. “Speaking of dogs, do you reckon Charlemagne could pick up on a scent?”
“That’s what hound dogs tend to do, if I understand the way of things. By the way, did you ever go over there and get acquainted with the Widow?”
I shifted side to side, then twisted my legs. That coffee had hit my bladder. “You might say that. She’s not a bad witch, you know.”
“Well, I can’t say for certain, but you’re probably right.” He plucked his cup from the railing, eyed it like he was hoping it would fill itself, and walked toward the stairwell.
It occurred to me that Sam Clemens didn’t have a Miss Ada or a wife on the steamboat to fetch him more. Then again, having people around was no guarantee that they’d make good company. For a moment, I wondered if it got as lonely on the river as it had been in our house. Something else struck me. “Why’d you help set up those ghosty sheets that flew around the room?”
Sam grinned at the river. “Well, fishing line’s mighty tricky for an older woman’s hands. Did she make the oatmeal cookies? Those are real nice.” He turned back to the stairs and held out a hand of farewell. “I’ve got some shipping paperwork to get settled, so go on home after you finish your coffee. And for the love of women and whiskey, don’t let Tom Sawyer see you sneaking back to your house.” With that, he walked down the stairs to the steamboat’s lower level.
I stared downriver while the sun finished rising. The light was an aching kind of beautiful. Soft streaks of pink-red and orange-red and yellow-orange crept over the horizon and seemed to hold all the world’s memories, both good and bad.
Jon was in that sunrise.
I felt his warmth, and for some reason my mind drifted to the opposite coldness of Mama. I suspected that, for her, the thought of Jon was still a place of darkness.
I remembered the first days and weeks after Jon passed, where I couldn’t see anything but his death. It flowed inside me. Burned through me until I couldn’t breathe, let alone talk.
There are certain people that are so much a part of you, that are so loved, that they shine up your insides just by being around. They fill in all your parts that feel empty and when they leave the world, you don’t know how to be without them. You just feel the wind blowing through all those holes they left behind on the way up to Heaven.
And you can’t die with that person, but you can change yourself while you figure out how in the world you’re gonna replace all the missing pieces inside you. Miss Ada smiled at me more. Daddy didn’t joke as much, but he didn’t get upset as often either. I wondered if Jon’s death was making a difference in me, too. I pinched my knees and legs, then let my fingers drift up to my face, feeling for change. The outside of me felt the same for now.
But Mama had changed into a living ghost. She couldn’t get past the cold and dark to see that part of Jon was still here. In overalls and trees and cherry pits. In the sunrise and the water.
“My brother is gone forever to my mama,” I whispered to the river. “And she’s just about gone forever from me, too.” I leaned over the rail, waiting for tears to fall so I could leave my frustration and heartache in the water. So the Mississippi would take those things far, far away.
But no tears came. I closed my eyes, sank into the pile of ropes, and prayed hard. I squeezed everything in me that could be squeezed and begged for Mama to get better and to stop ignoring all the life around her. I pleaded and shouted at God in my head, because I wanted to be heard so badly.
But you can’t beg God for things.
God likes poor people and sad people and hurt people, but not beggars. Miss Ada told me that long ago. So instead of saying he’d fix my mama, God hit me over the head with a truth that felt like a blow from a frying pan.
I hadn’t run to this steamboat to determine my next move. I’d run away to avoid taking any action at all, and, to boot, I’d abandoned the people who needed my help. For a long minute I wondered why that notion seemed so familiar. When the truth came, it was a painful kind of light, like staring straight into the sun.
I was acting just like Mama.
When I opened my eyes, the path to responsibility and redemption was clear. It would only require a small amount of mischief on my part. Redemption mischief. Hardly any trouble at all.
Chapter Fourteen
Hunting down evidence that might free an otherwise condemned Widow from blame for the disturbing indiscretion of digging up Amos Mutton
Not caring to run into folks, I crept south along the Miss. Every time I heard a shout along the river I ducked and cringed, certain they’d started dragging for my body. With a watchful eye, I passed the town and loading docks, going as far as the sawmill before taking a rest and fixing the plan in my mind. I could hardly believe it when I saw the sun was already straight above me. Running home, I cursed myself for not paying better attention to the time. Then I cursed time, too, for not being easier to pay attention to.
Without too much effort or noise, I scooted the fallen ladder against the window of my room and climbed inside. There, I weighed both the possibility of the Pritchards stashing their Trittsville load somewhere in St. Petersburg and the odds of them using the cave Billy’d mentioned at the cemetery to do the stashing. When I was done thinking over my “taking responsibility” plan, I awaited certain punishment for not being around when Daddy left for Sunday services.
But Daddy never came upstairs, not even when I stomped around a little to let him know that I was inside the house like a good child would be, so I slipped downstairs at two o’clock dressed in a fresh fishskin. I found him at the dining table, surrounded by papers. Even though it was her day off, Miss Ada had set two spots with forks and lemonade for lunch.
“You look busy,” I said, giving Daddy a peck on the cheek. “Maybe I’ll just go eat in the kitchen, you having all this work for company.”
Miss Ada served me some green beans and patted me on the head. “Now Miss Becky, don’t you sass your daddy. He’s been at the office working nonstop. Didn’t even come home last night or get to church this morning. And your mama been sick all day.” She grinned at me, but her lips looked stiff and her eyes were just a little too narrow to be friendly, like she knew I’d been up to something. She surveyed the table. “Forgot the pecan pie.”
“Pecan pie sounds delicious,” I called to Miss Ada’s retreating hips. Luck had finally lit upon me like a thirsty skitter! Daddy hadn’t noticed a thing about me being gone. I settled into my gravy-soaked chicken, prepared to enjoy the meal.
Daddy stood and tugged on his disappearing hairline before sighing and stretching his arms out like a weary giant. “Becky, would you mind looking in on the Widow Douglas’s dog later today?” He yawned and sat back down.
Hmm. Now what on earth could Daddy be getting at with a question like that? “What for, Daddy?” I kept my head down in a heaping plate of chicken and biscuits smothered in white gravy. “That hound’ll eat me up as soon as lick me.”
Daddy finished a piece of chicken and cleared his throat. “Mrs. Douglas has to come in for more questioning about that body being dug up.” He shook his head. “If the deputy is right about his suspicions, we may have underestimated her. And if some of the folks don’t take a liking to her answers, then she’s liable to be spending the evening with us. That’s why she asked that you check on her dog.”
Well, shoot. Ladling extra gravy onto my biscuits, I had a hard time keeping
my hand steady. “What do you mean, underestimated her?”
Daddy looked me in the eyes. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself, but the deputy thinks she’s trying to cover up what she did. He and the sheriff suspect she stole the Bumpners’ shovel to hide the fact that hers was found at the gravesite. If that’s the case, she’ll be formally charged this evening.” He picked up a biscuit and started buttering.
My spoon plopped right in the gravy, slinging a mess of white sauce between my eyes. “They think the Widow stole the Bumpners’ shovel?” I asked, wiping the splatter off my face.
Daddy ignored my question, dropping the biscuit back to his plate. “And the funny thing is that we still don’t have a motive for why anyone would dig up Amos Mutton in the first place. Something’s not adding up.”
Miss Ada swept back in the room and placed the pie between me and Daddy.
“She’s being very civil about the whole thing,” Daddy continued. “Maybe they won’t make her spend the night. It’s a Sunday, after all, and none of us should even be working. Maybe we’ll just have the deputy keep watch at the Widow’s place to make sure she doesn’t take off.”
“She wouldn’t take off anywhere,” I insisted, spraying chicken skin on the tablecloth. “Why, she just put in a new flower bed yesterday. People don’t do that and then run off!”
“Calm down, Becky.” With two fingers rubbing next to his eyes, Daddy had the look of a man with an awful headache. “Based on word from some people living between Trittsville and here, the Law’s now thinking the Pritchards could be hitting St. Petersburg any minute, so you just settle yourself down and stay put. And to think, these fools are more worried about having me lock up an old woman,” he mumbled, throwing his napkin on the table. “I don’t have much control over anything in my life right now, Becky, but you’re my daughter and I’d like you to say, ‘Yes, sir, I’ll look in on the dog and stay close to home’ and have that be the end of things.”
