The Book of Lost Friends

by Lisa Wingate

  It’s an uncomfortable question, and I do my best to push it out the Bug’s window, let it sail away on the breeze as I speed across town, a woman on a mission.

  I’m so filled with anticipation about what I have planned for my high school classes that I catch myself watching the clock during the first two periods of the morning, wrangling seventh and eighth graders.

  My guest speaker arrives right on schedule, at the end of my conference period. I do a quick double take as she enters my classroom, fussing with a small drawstring purse. She’s decked out in a white blouse with a high lace collar and a bow at the neck, an ankle-length black skirt, and short black lace-up boots. A jaunty, flat-brimmed straw hat crowns her thick gray hair, which is pinned into the same loose bun she wears behind the counter of the Cluck and Oink.

  She smooths her skirt nervously. “How’s this look?” she queries. “It was my costume from the Founder’s Day float, back a few years. Put on a little weight since then. Too much barbecue and pie.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to go to so much trouble,” I say, though I can hardly stand still long enough to talk. “I just want you to tell them the story of the library. How your grandmother and the ladies of the New Century Club were responsible for putting it there.”

  She smiles and sends a quick wink my way, then adjusts the hairpins on her hat. “Don’t you worry, sugar. I brought pictures to show and a copy of the letter my grandmama helped write to Mr. Carnegie. But these kids oughta hear the story from my grandmama herself.”

  Suddenly, the costume makes sense. I’m stunned and jubilant all at once. “That’s brilliant.”

  “I know.” She agrees with a definitive nod. “You said you wanted these young folks to see history. Well, I’m about to give them a piece of it.”

  And she does. She even hides in my supply closet until the class is settled in and I’ve taken roll. They’re suspicious when I tell them we’re having a guest speaker. They’re not enthusiastic. Until they see who’s here.

  “Granny Teeeee!” They squeal like first graders.

  She shushes them with one finger and a stern shake of her head. I wish I could do that. “Oh, no, not Granny T,” she says. “This is the year 1899. Granny T is a little baby named Margaret Turner, only one year old. And Baby Margaret’s mama, Victory, is a young married woman, and I am her mama, little Margaret’s grandmama. I was born in the year 1857, so that makes me almost forty-three years old right now. I was born into slavery, right out on the Gossett place, and it was a hard life when I came up as a child. Had to work picking cotton, cutting cane, and hauling water to the field by hand, but that’s a long time ago now. It’s 1899, and I just took my savings and bought a little building to start myself up a restaurant, because I’m a widow woman now, and I have to earn my way on my own. I have nine children, and some are still at home to take care of.

  “Now, I don’t mind that it’s hard work, except there is one thing that does trouble me much. I promised my departed husband that all our children would be educated, but the colored school only goes six months out of the year here, and the town library is small, and it is just for the white folks. The only other library is a little closet-sized shed room out back of the black Methodist church, started about ten years ago. We’re proud to have it, but it ain’t much. Now, at the time, all the highfalutin’ ladies in town, the wives of the bankers and the doctors and such, have what they call the Ladies New Century Club and their project is to build a bigger library…for the white folks. But guess what?”

  She bends forward in a dramatic pause, and the kids lean over their desks, their mouths hanging slack in concentration.

  “That is not the library you children passed by on the school bus today, in nineteen and eighty-seven. No, sir. I’m going to tell you about the time a handful of ordinary women, who worked hard for their living, baked pies and took in extra wash and canned peaches and sold everything else they could get their hands on and fooled everybody and built the fanciest library in town.”

  Reaching into her cart, she extracts a framed photo and holds it up for the kids. “And this is them on the steps of that beautiful library the day it was opened. These ladies here, they are the reason it happened.”

  She gives the students several framed photographs to circulate as she goes on to tell them about the town’s New Century Club unanimously rejecting the notion of using one of the highly touted Carnegie grants to construct a new library, fearing that money came with a free use for all citizens stipulation, which could mean regardless of color. The ladies of their church applied for the grant instead, the black Methodist church donated land, and the Colored Carnegie Library eventually opened in a newly created building much grander than that of the other library in town. Thereafter, the Carnegie library’s founders took the liberty of naming themselves the Carnegie Colored Ladies New Century Club.

  “Oh, mercy!” Granny T finishes, “All those women of the original Ladies New Century Club, they were pea-green jealous, I’ll tell you. That was back during segregation, you know, and the black folks never got the better part of anything, so for us to have a place so fine and finer than the town library, that was a blot on Augustine, they said. Wasn’t much they could do about it, except they did get the city to rule against the permit for the library to have a sign. That way, nobody coming through would know what it was. And so we put a statue of a saint on top of the marble base that was made to hold the sign, and for years, the building stood there that way, but it couldn’t stop the magic. In those hard times, it was a symbol of hope.”

  She has barely stopped talking when the kids begin asking questions. “How come it’s just called ‘Augustine Carnegie Library’ now?” one of the country kids wants to know.

  Granny T points the lecture finger at him and nods. “Well, now, that is a good question. Y’all been passing around the pictures. Why do you think the old saint had to move on, so a new sign saying only ‘Augustine Library’ could go up on that marble base?”

  The kids try out a few wrong answers. I’m momentarily distracted, thinking about Councilman Walker’s visit to my front porch with his dog, Sunshine. The library saint lives in my oleander bush, thanks to Miss Retta. Now I appreciate him more than ever. He’s a book lover, like me. Library history runs in his veins.

  “Who’s got the picture from 1961?” Granny T asks. “I bet you can say why it’s just the Augustine Carnegie Library now.”

  “Segregation got over, Granny T,” Laura Gill, one of my townie girls, answers shyly. Laura has never, absolutely never, spoken to me in class or in the hall. She’s clearly quite comfortable with Granny T—a relative or former Sunday school teacher, maybe?

  “That’s right, honey. And hooo-ee! Augustine might’ve fought other things as long as it could, but the city was sure happy to take over control of that library!” Memories dance behind Granny T’s thick glasses. “It was the end of something and the beginning of another something. Now, black kids and white kids could sit together in the same room and read the same books. It was another chapter in the library’s history. Another part of its tale. And a lot of people have all but forgot about that. They don’t know the story of that building and so they don’t appreciate it like they ought. But now, you kids…now you understand what it meant, and that it was hard won. And from here on, maybe you’ll care about it in a different way.”

  “That’s the reason I asked Granny T to come share with us today,” I tell the kids, joining Granny T in the front of the classroom as the students pass around old photos. “There’s so much history in this town that most people don’t know. And, for the next few weeks, we’re going to do some detective work, see what we can find out. I want each of you to discover the story of a place or an event in this town—something people probably aren’t familiar with—and take notes, copy photographs, whatever you can gather, and write the story.”

  A few groans follow, but
they’re muffled. Mostly, there are murmurs of interest, mixed with questions.

  “Who do we ask?”

  “How do we find stuff?”

  “Where do we go?”

  “What if you don’t know anything about anything here?”

  “What if you ain’t from here?”

  A desk screeches and for a bare instant, I’m afraid some form of trouble is about to erupt right in front of our guest speaker. Surely they wouldn’t…

  I follow the sound to find Lil’ Ray halfway out of his seat with one hand stuck in the air. “Miss…ummm…Miss…” He can’t remember my real name, and he’s afraid to call me by one of my dubious nicknames in front of Granny T.

  “Lil’ Ray?”

  “So we gotta write about a place?”

  “That’s right. Or an event.” Please, please don’t start a revolt. If Lil’ Ray rebels, so will his crowd of admirers. It’ll be tough to get the class back after that. “This is going to be a big part of our semester grade, so it’s important to work hard at it. But I want it to be fun, too. As soon as you’ve found your subject, let me know, so we won’t have any duplicates, and we’ll learn something different from each report.”

  I pan the room with my teacher eye, as in, I mean it. Okay?

  Another squeal of desk legs. Lil’ Ray again. “Miss…uhhh…”

  “Silva.”

  “Miss Silva, what I meant was, instead of telling about a place or a event, can we write about a person, because—”

  “Oh, oh.” Laura Gill interrupts—actually cuts him off—but she’s got her hand in the air, as if that makes the interruption okay. “At this school in New Orleans, at Halloween time, they do this thing called Tales from the Crypt. I saw it in the newspaper last year at my cousin’s house. They dress up like the person and stand there in the graveyard and, like, tell the story to everybody. How come we can’t do that?”

  The idea ignites something I’d only dreamed might be possible. Suddenly, fresh tinder is everywhere. My classroom is afire.

  CHAPTER 17

  HANNIE GOSSETT—RED RIVER, 1875

  We gather what things we own, fold our quilt, and take down the scrim cloth we hung for shade from the sun that shines off the river in waves and ripples, mile after mile. For days now, our camp’s been steaming upwater on the Red, fighting snags and grasshoppering over sandbars to get crosswise through the rest of Louisiana and out of it. We’re in Texas now, for good or for worst.

  Home’s gone. Too far for looking back or going back. The horses been sold off, and I hope the man treats them good. Was hard to see them go, hardest on Juneau Jane, but that money’s the only way we could buy goods and deck passage on this side-wheeler. Still ain’t sure if I chose right in getting on this boat with her, but before we did, I had Juneau Jane write a letter and post it back to Tati and Jason and John. Wanted them to know not to worry over me. I’ve gone off to see after word about Old Mister. I’ll be back before time comes to harvest the crop.

  I don’t tell about hoping to find news of my people. Ain’t certain how Tati would take that. Nor Jason and John, so it’s best not to say. They been my only people for most of my life. But there’s another life deep inside of me, one long back in a little slabwood cabin with the bed full of knees and elbows and so many voices you can’t listen at them all at once.

  Juneau Jane’s read the newspaper pages, all the little squares, out loud more times than I can keep count of. The roustabouts and the crew—colored men mostly, except for the officers—come down to our little deck camp. Time after time, they ask what the squares say. A few look for theirselves, read the rows of little boxes with a killing hunger and a wish to finally have what’s needed to satisfy it.

  So far, only one man’s found hope, a gal who might be a sister. He said to Juneau Jane, “Now, if I git you some paper and somethin’ to write wit’, maybe you’d write me a letter I could send off when we make Jeffe’son Port? I’d pay for the trouble.” She promised she would, and off that roustabout went, whistling and singing, “Lord, Lord, ain’t you good! Ain’t you been good to me!”

  The white folk on the Katie P. are mostly poor, hoping to find something better in Texas than what they left behind. They looked at that singing roustabout like he was touched in the head. But they didn’t look long. The notion’s gone round that we been selling voodoo spells and potions under our scrim tent, and that’s why the men come and go so much. Folks whisper about the strange silent ways of the big, barefooted white boy with us, and they don’t want no part of it.

  We still got Missy in tow. Wasn’t any choice about it. The river landing where we boarded this boat was nothing more than the leftovers of a trader town shelled flat in the war. Couldn’t leave Missy there in this kind of shape. If we don’t find Old Mister in Jefferson, we figure to put Missy in the hands of the lawyer man, let her be his burden then.

  As we’re moving off the Red and into Caddo Lake, then winding up through Big Cypress Bayou toward Port of Jefferson, the chug-puff-slap, chug-puff-slap of steamboats echo from all directions. The Katie P.’s shallow hull rocks on the wakes when we pass another boat, them going out loaded down with cotton, corn, and bags of seed, and us coming in with all manner of goods from sugar and molasses in pony kegs, to cloth, kegs of nails, and glass windows. Their folks wave, and our folks wave.

  Even from a long way off, we hear and see the port coming up. Boat whistles blow a commotion. Bright-colored buildings with heavy iron balcony rails peek through the standing cypress and grapevine on the riverbank. The town noise fights over the rattle of the Katie P. and the steam off the boiler. Never heard such racket in my life, nor seen so many people. Music and yelling, horses squealing, oxen bellowing, dogs barking, carts and wagons bouncing along redbrick streets. This’s a flaunty place. Busy and big. The farthest river port you can get to in Texas.

  A dark feel slides over me. First I don’t know the reason, but then I do. I remember this town. Didn’t come in by river last time, but this’s where the sheriff’s men brung me as a child after the Jep Loach trouble. They put me in the jailhouse for safekeeping, waiting on my lawful owners to come fetch me back.

  The memory strikes me now, as I fold up the Lost Friends papers and put them in our pack. There’s names written in all the edges of the papers, with a lead pencil a boatman stole off a gaming table in the cabin upstairs. Juneau Jane has put down the names of the men on the Katie P. who’re looking for their people, and all the names of the folks they’re missing. We made the promise to ask after them wherever we go. If we find news, it can be sent back to Jefferson in the mail, care of the riverboat Katie P.

  The men brung us a few pennies here, a dime there, a box of Lucifers for starting fires, tallow candles, biscuits and corn pone from the boat’s galley. “To help your travels,” they’d say. We didn’t ask for it, but they gave it over. Been eating better on this trip than in my whole life. Can’t recall a time when my belly was full days in a row like this.

  I’ll miss the Katie P. and her men, but it’s time to go.

  “Need to get her on her feet,” I say of Missy Lavinia, who just sits till you pick her up and move her like a rag doll, from one place to the other. She don’t fight, but she don’t help, either. The worst is taking her to the stalls at the back of the boat to do her necessary, couple times a day like a little child, which Juneau Jane won’t do. Folks clear a path when they see us come, don’t want to get close to Missy. She hisses at them if she feels like it, sounds like the boiler of the Katie P.

  Makes things easier, getting off the boat at the landing, though. Other passengers back off and Juneau Jane and me get the whole gangplank to ourselves. Even the deckhands and the cabin crew stand away. Mostly they’re kind enough, though, and slip us little tokens and another penny and dime as we pass.

  They lean close to whisper the reminders.

  “ ’Member
to keep a ear for my people, if you’re able. Surely do appreciate it much.”

  “My mammy’s name, July Schiller…”

  “My sister is Flora, brothers Henry, Isom, and Paul…”

  “My brothers were Hap, Hanson, Jim, and Zekiel. All born as Rollinses, owned by Perry Rollins in Virginee. Pappy was Solomon Rollins. A blacksmith man. All been sold south twenty-year ago, now, marched off in a trader’s coffle to settle a debt. Never thought to see them again in this world. You boys tell their names for me everyplace you go, I’d be grateful. And I’ll keep puttin’ you in the Lord’s way, so He don’t forget about you, neither.”

  “My wife name Rutha. Twin gals Lolly and Persha. Bought off Master French’s place by a man name Compton.”

  Juneau Jane steers over to a stack of cordwood and asks me for the Lost Friends papers, so she can make sure we ain’t forgot anybody.

  “I got them safe.” I pat our pack. “We already wrote down all the names they just reminded us of. Besides, I got the list in my mind, too.” I know about remembering names. Been doing that since six years old and Jep Loach’s wagon, not so far from this place.

  Juneau Jane perches herself on a log and waits for me to hand over the bundle. “What is preserved in writing is safe from failures of the mind.”

  “People lose papers.” We ain’t been friends on this journey, her and me. Just two people in need of each other right now. That’s all it is. All it’s ever gonna be. “My mind is sure to go along wherever I do.”

  “People lose their minds, too.” She gives a hard look toward Missy, who’s plunked herself down alongside the woodpile. There’s a little green snake winding through the grass toward her britches leg. Her hat’s tipped like she’s watching it, but she don’t even move to chase it off.