Before We Were Yours(100)

I grab the basket and run out the door, yelling, “I’ll take this to the camp. I’ve got a movie handbill to give to the boy down there anyhow.” I’m gone before Zuma can argue that I’ll be late for lunch.

I bolt out the back, jump off the veranda, and cross the yard as fast as my legs will take me, all the while looking over my shoulder to see if Hootsie’s following me. It’s a relief that she doesn’t.

Down by the lake, Mr. McCamey is more than ready to settle under a shade tree when I show up with the basket. Near as I can figure, he’s always willing to stop working. The only reason he’s got a sweat worked up today is because his two biggest boys went to the neighbor’s place to help cut a lightning-felled tree off their barn and fix the roof. They won’t be back for a day or two, until that job’s done. The only help Mr. McCamey’s got right now is the youngest boy—Arney is his name, but Mr. McCamey just calls him boy.

I nod at Arney, and he follows me up the path to a willow tree where we’ve sat and talked before. I slip under the branches and give Arney a sandwich, an apple, and two sugar cookies I squirreled away in my pocket. Arney’s a scrawny little thing, so usually when I come down here I bring him food he doesn’t have to share with the rest of the McCameys. I figure he needs it. He’s a year older than me but not even as tall as I am yet.

“Brought you something else today.” I give him the handbill from the movie theater.

He holds the picture of a cowboy on a tall yellow horse and whistles long and low. “It sure is purdy. Tell me how the tale went. Was there lotsa shootin’?”

He sits down, and I sit down with him. I want to share all about the movie Mrs. Sevier took us to and the theater with its big red velvet seats and tall towers that looked like they should’ve been on a king’s castle. But there isn’t time to talk about those things. Not today. Not with what’s happened. I have to get Arney to say yes to what I asked him yesterday.

The moon will be full tonight, and on the water it’ll be almost bright as high noon. With Arney’s brothers gone, there won’t be a better time. I can’t let Mrs. Sevier drag us off to Augusta. I can’t let Miss Tann make us go back to the home. And besides that, Fern’s starting to think of Mrs. Sevier as her mama. Little by little, her mind’s letting loose of our real mama. At bedtime, I sneak over to Fern’s room and tell her about Queenie and Briny, but it’s not working anymore. Fern’s forgetting the river and Kingdom Arcadia. She’s forgetting who we are.

It’s time for us to go.

“So, what we talked about yesterday. You’re gonna take us, right?” I ask Arney. “Tonight. The moon’ll be up early and long.” You don’t live all your life on the river without knowing how the moon travels. The river and its critters choose their moods according to the moon.

Arney jerks away like I’ve slapped him. He pinches his brown eyes closed. A shock of thin, reddish-brown hair falls across his forehead and parts over his long, bony nose. He shakes his head in a nervous way. Maybe he never meant to help us at all. Maybe it was just big talk when he said he could run his daddy’s boat and he knows how to get through the oxbow lake and Dedmen’s Slough all the way to the big river.

But I told him the truth about Fern and me. The whole story. I even gave him our real names. I thought he understood why we needed his help.

He rests his elbows on his dirty overalls where his knees poke through. “I’d sure enough miss ya if’n you’z gone. Y’all been the only thang good ’bout this place so far.”

“You can come with us. Old Zede’s fetched up lots of boys. He’d take you on, I bet. I’m sure he would. You’d never have to see this place again. You could be free. Just like we’re gonna be.” Arney’s daddy drinks every night, and works his boys like sawmill mules, and beats on them all the time, especially Arney. Hootsie saw Arney get whopped upside the head with a hammer handle just for bringing his daddy the wrong peck of nails. “And either way, the pearls are yours, just like I promised.”

I dig in my pocket and pull them out and hold them in my hand where Arney can see. I feel bad about the pearls. Mrs. Sevier gave them to me the night after she took Fern to get fitted for the special shoes. She thought it was my birthday on account of that’s what the papers from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society said. The Seviers figured I’d forgot all about it being my special day, and they surprised me with a party at supper. I was surprised all right. My birthday was five and a half months ago, and I’m already a whole year older than they think I am. But my name isn’t May Weathers either, so a birthday in the fall didn’t matter too much to me.

The pearls are the prettiest things that have ever been mine, but I’d give them up for Queenie and Briny and the river. I’d hand them over quick as a wink.

Besides, Arney needs the price they’ll fetch more than I do. Half the time, they’ve got whiskey but no food in their camp.

Arney touches the pearls, then pulls his hand away and picks at a scab on his knuckle. “Awww…I couldn’t leave my fam’ly. My brothers ’n’ such.”

“Think on it real hard. About staying on the river with us, I mean.” Truth is that Arney’s brothers are practically grown, and they’re just about as bad as Arney’s daddy. Once they get tired of working like dogs and finally decide to light off, Arney’s likely to starve to death or get beaten till he breaks right in two. “Briny and Queenie can find you a place, I promise. They’ll be so happy you brought Fern and me back, they’ll find you a really good place. If Zede’s not there at Mud Island anymore, you can stay with us on the Arcadia till we come across Zede again.”