A Trail of Crumbs

by Finkbeiner, Susie;

The fear made everything crisper, clearer. The greens and sounds of birds. The thud of my footfall on a branch here and there. The smell of rotting wood. The way my lungs groaned with every breath. Off to the side of me a good-sized branch, thick as a baseball bat, lay on the ground. Grabbing it, I let out as fierce a holler as I could manage. It came from some untouched part of me where I guessed a warrior lived just waiting to be released.

  “You leave him be,” I yelled, my voice more of a roar than it’d ever been.

  Swinging the branch in front of me like a club, I realized there wasn’t a weapon on earth that could work against a ghost. I held onto it anyhow, not sure what else to do.

  I didn’t see a ghost, or hear one either, for that matter.

  All I saw was Ray. He was curled up in a ball on the ground three or four feet from me. He didn’t move and I thought I’d lose my mind right there.

  “Ray?” I whimpered, the brave warrior melting away from me.

  For as strong as I’d felt just seconds before, I walked with weak footsteps, just seeing Ray. Ray on the ground. Ray broken. Ray unmoving. I held hope that I’d at least see his chest filling and emptying of breath, some sign that he was still alive. Anything. Finger twitching, voice groaning. Anything.

  His body started shaking and I wondered if it was some kind of fit. I went to him, still holding that branch in case I needed to fight off the monster should he return for his prey. I just hoped if he did I’d be strong enough, brave enough.

  With my free hand I grabbed Ray’s shoulder, rolling him to his back.

  I didn’t see a bashed-in head or gashed-open face. And his eyes weren’t rolled back in his head the way I figured they’d be if he’d got a demon in him. I didn’t see a thing wrong with him. What I did see was Ray, laughing his fool head off, not so much as a bruise or scratch on him.

  The greatest danger he found himself in just then was that I’d hit him over the head with that old branch in my hand.

  “You aren’t funny,” I told him, dropping my weapon and walking away from him, trying hard to keep from wheezing too hard. “I’m never going to talk to you again.”

  “Oh, come on, Pearl,” he called after me, still laughing. “It was a joke.”

  I kept on walking, not paying any mind to which way I was going. It didn’t matter, anyhow. I’d started crying and couldn’t see what was in front of me. I stopped, leaning against a tree. At least I could keep my sobbing in. I hated for Ray to see me cry as much as he hated for me to see him doing the same.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, coming up behind me. “Pearl, I didn’t mean no harm.”

  He came around front of me.

  “Aw, don’t cry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, wiping at my face.

  “I shouldn’t tease you like that.”

  “I said it’s all right.”

  “Sure?” He took a step closer to me. “You wanna hit me or somethin’?”

  “No.” That was a lie.

  “You can if you wanna.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I am sorry.” From the look in his eyes I believed he was.

  He turned away so I could dry my face all the way without him seeing. I was glad for that kindness.

  Ray and I made it back to the house before the sprinkling rain turned to showers that turned to downpour. He said he wanted to sit on the porch and watch the storm roll in. As for me, I wanted to get out of my wet clothes. Before I went in the house, though, I wrung out my dress as best I could so Mama wouldn’t scold me for dripping all over her kitchen floor.

  I didn’t find Mama in the kitchen. And she wasn’t in her bedroom, either. I didn’t think she’d have left the house without at least leaving a note for us to say where she’d gone. She had to be there somewhere.

  I went upstairs to change into a fresh dress and to rest a little bit. My whole body felt sore and bruised from chasing through the woods.

  That was when I found her.

  Mama was on the floor in one of the spare rooms, her eyes closed and arms wrapped around a plain, regular old tan dress. She’d found the box of Beanie’s things and unpacked every single rusty nail and busted plate and such that my sister’d had in her collection of junk.

  “Mama?” I said, standing in the doorway. “You need me?”

  She shook her head no, but did not open her eyes.

  “Should I get Daddy?”

  “No, no, no,” she mumbled, rocking slightly on her behind.

  “What can I do?” I took a step toward her.

  “Nothing,” she said, opening her eyes and looking right at me. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I can try.”

  “Can you bring her back?” she hollered, spit darting from her mouth. “Because that’s all that could make me better. All I want is my child.”

  Backing away slowly, like I was trying to get away from a rabid critter, I left Mama there on the floor and inched my way to my room. Even when I closed the door I could hear her wailing and sobbing. I nearly forgot to change out of my wet dress before sitting on my bed with my Oz book. I watched the rain blur my view of the yard through my window.

  All I could hear was the rumble of coming thunder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Our first month in the house on Magnolia Street passed so fast it made me dizzy.

  With all the time Mama spent on lessons with Ray, he’d gotten better at putting words on a page. He couldn’t write a whole letter to his mother by himself just yet, but he’d write a sentence or two. And he never needed help to spell. It seemed that came real easy for him.

  His mother sent one letter and it wasn’t very long. All it said was she liked her job, that the folks there in Arkansas were kind. She didn’t say one word about coming to get him.

  Ray, though, he didn’t give up hoping.

  He was sure any day we’d find her standing on the porch, all her earthly belongings stuffed in a bag. She’d have a little more meat on her bones, he reckoned, and her eyes would be clearer. They’d go off and find an apartment or a house even. Everything would turn out great for them.

  “Just wait,” he’d say to me. “You’ll see.”

  Where Mrs. Jones had only sent one letter, Millard had sent four. I liked to think it was due to him missing us real hard. He told us how things were around Red River, who’d left and who’d come through. Nothing too exciting, really. Mostly a lot about hobos and drifters.

  When he didn’t have any news from back home, Millard would write stories about his life when he was a boy. Stories about walking through wheat up to his waist or about how his mother killed a rattlesnake one time with her frying pan. He even wrote about how his father had shot a coyote one day and they’d eaten it for dinner.

  “We didn’t have nothing else to eat,” he wrote.

  In each envelope Millard sprinkled in a pinch or two of red Oklahoma dust. I wondered if he hoped those soft dirt crumbs might lead us back to him the way I hoped the grass I mailed along with the letters I sent would bring him our way.

  Just about once a week, sometimes twice, Ray and I would walk the half mile through the woods to Uncle Gus and Aunt Carrie’s farm. The first couple times I had to take a rest once, maybe twice, along the way. But I got stronger every day, I could feel it. By mid June Ray and I were racing there.

  He still beat me every time.

  Uncle Gus let Ray and me wander in and out of the barns and fields and such. We’d visit all the critters, even Squash the goat who ended up being nicer than Uncle Gus had said he was. I’d sneak into the chicken coop to have a good talk with the hen called Billina. We’d become friends in a way. She’d sit still and listen just so long as I didn’t try touching her.

  Ray’d find good sticks to throw for the dog. Boaz, though, seemed more fond of licking our faces clean than chasing any old thing we tossed for him.

  Every now and again Uncle Gus took us for rides on his tractor. He’d tell us where to hold on
and always warned us not to touch the wheels while they were moving.

  “You get pulled off and you could lose your hand,” he told us. “I’d hate for that to happen to you.”

  I made sure to mind when I was on the tractor.

  Sometimes, standing beside him, the rumble of engine filling my ears and rush of wind pulling at my hair, I’d look at Uncle Gus. I couldn’t know for sure, but he seemed always to have a smile pulling up the corners of his lips. When I looked at him I saw he was happy being where he was, doing what he had in front of him.

  Meemaw’d told me once that it did a body good to be content.

  “It don’t matter what state you’re in,” she’d told me. “Full or hungry, happy or sad. The good Lord God is a God of contentment, darlin’.”

  That was what I saw in Uncle Gus’s face near all the time.

  I meant to ask him how long it’d taken him before Bliss started feeling like home. I sure did hope it wouldn’t take too long for me. Either that or I’d get to go back to Oklahoma.

  Homesickness wasn’t an easy ache to heal from.

  When we didn’t have anything else to do, Aunt Carrie paid Ray and me pennies to pick the ripe tomatoes from her garden. She always set a couple aside for us to take to Mama, too. I couldn’t remember ever tasting a tomato that hadn’t come out of a can Mama bought at Mr. Smalley’s store. After having one fresh I swore I’d never touch one from a can again for the rest of my life.

  I sure did like spending time in Aunt Carrie’s garden. She had every kind of vegetable and they grew nice and plump. She’d point them out to me and I’d ask her when they’d be ready.

  Aunt Carrie knew the answer to about every question I could think to ask. And she never made me feel like I was a bother when I had something I wanted to know. If I’d had to pick anybody in all the world to be an aunt to me—blood relation or not—I’d have chosen her.

  “Next spring I’ll let you help me plant,” she told me. “Do you think you’d like that?”

  I told her I would and felt the tug of nerves thinking we might still be there after a whole year had passed.

  She had a bunch of rhubarb growing beside her house and Ray and I made a game of seeing who could eat a whole stalk without making a sour face. Aunt Carrie would watch us and laugh while our eyes watered and our faces turned red.

  She never let us eat more than one stalk in a day, though, for fear we’d get the skitters.

  On days when we stuck close to home, Ray and I would finish up our chores quick as we could and we’d take off running all through the neighborhood and all through the woods, staying out until Mama called for us or our stomachs started to rumble.

  When she was having a good day, we’d have lunches at the kitchen table. Daddy’d come home, too, and we’d have us a nice meal of sandwiches or chipped beef on toast. Sometimes Mama’d have a cookie for us and she wouldn’t get sore if we dunked them in our milk.

  But if she was having a bad day, we stayed away long as we could. On those days Aunt Carrie was glad to have us at her table.

  I did my very best to put Mama’s bad days right out of my mind. None of us said a word about those days to each other. We just endured them the best we could until the sadness passed and Mama was back to herself again.

  Bert from across the street made a habit of bringing over whatever critter he’d managed to catch and telling us all about how he got it. It was always some different kind of creature like a field mouse or a garter snake. But, no matter what it was, Ray and I both knew Bert would end up killing it before the weekend. He never meant harm, he just wasn’t so good at looking after the poor things.

  I sure hoped his father was a better doctor than his son was a pet keeper.

  Ray and I took part in no less than six animal funerals. Bert cried every single time.

  Mrs. Barnett had herself the prettiest rose bushes in all of Bliss. Ray said it was thanks to Bert’s critter cemetery.

  When Mama was feeling especially generous, she’d give Ray and me a nickel and tell us to see a movie. The theater back home in Red River had shut down years before so we thought it was a treat to sit in those soft seats, completely silent, and watch whatever was playing. It didn’t matter much to us. We just liked the magic of living in somebody else’s story like we could do in the movies.

  And we liked it when they played a reel of Will Rogers doing his lasso tricks. Ray tried doing those tricks at home, but Mama hollered for him to take the rope outside before he knocked everything off the shelf.

  He never did get the hang of it.

  Opal worked for Mama without so much as a complaint or an argument even on the bad days. In fact, she hardly said anything at all unless she was spoken to. I asked Mama most every week if we could have her stay for supper. Finally, after I’d nagged her too much, Mama told me we couldn’t because white folks didn’t eat with mulattos.

  I had to ask Ray what that meant. His answer just made me feel even more confused. I couldn’t see any way a body could be half white and half Negro. Ray said I’d understand when I was older.

  I didn’t mind reminding him he was only a year older than me.

  “A year makes a lot of difference,” he said, looking down his nose at me like a snooty grown-up.

  What I couldn’t figure was how Mama’d turn her away from our table. Sure, she never would’ve let a Negro take a meal with us; she had her rules. But not once in my memory had Mama ever turned away a white person who she could bless with a plate of good food. With Opal being a little of both, I would’ve thought Mama’d at least think of inviting her.

  “For most folks, even a drop of Negro blood is too much,” Ray told me.

  Still, the Mama of Red River would’ve at least let her take a covered plate of supper home with her once in a while. Seemed the Mama of Bliss wasn’t so inclined.

  Daddy worked the days away. Not so much as when we lived in Red River, though, and I was glad. There wasn’t much for him to do in Bliss, he told us.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he said. “Not at all.”

  Things were peaceful there. At least they were that summer.

  Just about once a week, Aunt Carrie would come over after she’d done her shopping at Wheeler’s store. Mama’d make some fresh coffee or pour tall glasses of iced tea for the two of them to enjoy at the kitchen table. Aunt Carrie always did bring something special for Ray and me and we were sure to tell her thank you at least once for her kindness.

  On those days Mama was kind and she smiled easy. She didn’t get mad if the door slammed or if I had dirt under my nails. Those days Mama was her old self and it made me glad.

  It seemed Aunt Carrie was a good dose of medicine for all of us.

  I stayed on the porch under the awning on that rainy Monday, watching Ray splash in puddles with bare feet and the legs of his overalls rolled up as high as he could get them.

  It didn’t matter to him how many rainy days we’d seen, Ray never tired of them.

  Mama, though, had been clear as glass about me staying out of the downpour that day. She’d fretted and worried over me getting sick again and wouldn’t hear a single word of argument from me. I wasn’t like to give her one, either. I wasn’t the kind of girl who invited trouble, not so long as I could help it.

  So, I stayed on the porch, pretending to read my book, and daydreaming about getting drenched.

  Reaching, I put my hand out from under the awning, feeling the patpat-pat of the drops on my fingertips. I breathed in the smell of it, the rain, trying to figure out the right word to describe it so I could write to Millard about it. If I’d had the ability to capture that clean smell I would have sent it to him, folded up in my next letter. Surely that would be enough to get him to come to Michigan and in a hurry.

  “Ray,” I hollered at him from the porch. “What does the rain smell like?”

  “Worms,” he yelled back.

  I shook my head at him. He might’ve been right. I’d never taken the time to smell
a single worm and wasn’t like to start just then. I had held them, though, letting them squirm in the palm of my hand. Ray’d told me he had even seen Bert eat one. Bert had said it’d wiggled all the way down and had left a sweet taste in his mouth. Mama had been sore that night when I couldn’t stomach the noodles she served.

  Pulling my hand back out of the rain, I wiped it on the skirt of my dress before opening the Oz book again. I’d already read through it three times and wanted to read it at least two more times before returning it to Mrs. Trask.

  I wasn’t ready to leave Dorothy yet. I knew I’d miss her a whole lot if I didn’t read her into being anymore.

  I still wondered what’d happened to her mama and daddy. My curiosity grew with each reading. Maybe they’d left her, not having the money to care for her anymore. Or they’d died in some kind of accident or from an illness when she was real small.

  And I thought maybe her mother had tried protecting her from her father by wrapping her in a blanket just after she’d been born and laying her real gentle like on the steps of a church, watching from afar to be sure somebody picked her up.

  Then I remembered that was no made-up story. That was me.

  Ray ran up the porch steps and stood in front of me, water dripping off his nose and from his hair and fingertips even. That goofy smile of his made me want to shove him back off the porch.

  But I didn’t do that because I was a nice, God-fearing girl.

  “Come on, Pearl,” he said, putting his hand out for me to take. “It feels real good.”

  “I can’t,” I told him, trying hard as I could to resist the temptation.

  “It ain’t gonna hurt you.” He looked over his shoulder. “Rain’s kinda warm.”

  “Mama says it’ll make me sick.”

  “Well, you take baths, don’t ya?” He put his open hand even closer to me. “This ain’t nothin’ different.”

  “I gotta mind Mama.”

  “You can tell her I made ya.”

  He grabbed my hand and gave it a tug. Before I knew it, I was on my feet. I had just enough time to toss the book behind me on the rocking chair before I leaped off the porch.