Before We Were Yours(103)

“They treat you bad, Arney. You have to leave. You have to come with us. We’ll be your people now. Me and Fern and Briny and Queenie and Old Zede.”

We stare at each other for a long time. Finally, she nods and casts off the boat so fast I fall over the top of Fern. We take the paddles and row out a ways, letting wind and the current pull us along toward the slough until we’re well out from shore.

“Where’s…a fi…fireflies?” Fern mumbles when I crawl over her.

“Sssshhh. We gotta get all the way to the river first. You might oughta sleep awhile yet.” I pull her blanket up tight and put her shoes on her bare feet to keep them warm and let her use the poke for a pillow. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to look.” There won’t be any fireflies, but when Fern finally sees the Arcadia, she won’t care a bit.

Arney starts the motor and sits down in the stern to run it. I take my paddle and move to a place up front to watch for drift logs. “Light the lamp,” Arney says. “There’s matches in the box there.”

I do what she asks, and just a few minutes later, we’re slipping down the middle of the wide, clear lake, stirring the night critters as they skitter away from the circle of lantern glow. I feel free as the Canada geese that pass by overhead, honking their call notes and dotting out the stars. They’re headed the same way we are. South to the river. I watch them pass and wish I could catch on to one and let it fly me home.

“Best keep a lookout up there.” Arney slows the boat when the lake narrows and the trees squeeze in closer. “Push off the drift if ya spy any. Don’t let us run up on it.”

“I know.”

The night air cools and thickens and smells of the slough. I button my coat tighter. Trees shut out the sky, their bottoms wide and twisted and rooty. Their branches reach at us like fingers. Something scrapes along the hull and lifts us on one side.

“Keep us offa them,” Arney barks. “One splits the boat, we’re goners.”

I watch for logs and cypress knobs and any sort of driftwood. I push it away with the paddle, and the miles go by slow. Here and there, skiffs sit tied ashore and swamp houses float on skids, their lanterns flickering, but mostly we’re alone. There’s nothing except us and miles of low, boggy country where the otters and the bobcats live and moss hangs heavy from the branches overhead. The trees make shapes that look like monsters in the dark.

A screech owl sounds off, and both Arney and me duck low. We hear it pass right over our heads.

Fern roots around in her sleep, bothered by the noise.

I think of Briny’s tales about ol’ rougarou and how he carries little children off to the swamp. A shiver runs through me, but I don’t let Arney see it. There’s no monsters here worse than the ones that’re waiting for us at Mrs. Murphy’s house if we’re sent back.

No matter what else happens, Fern and me can’t get caught.

I watch the water and try not to think about what might be out there in the swamp. Arney turns us this way and that, finding the channel time after time just like she said she could.

Finally, we run out of moonlight, and the kerosene in the lamp goes dry. The flame sputters until it’s just the wick burning. The breeze snuffs it out as we draw to shore and tie the bowline to a tree branch. My arms and legs are heavy like the water-soaked logs I’ve been shoving away with the paddle. They ache and crackle when I crawl to the center of the boat to get under the blanket beside Fern, who’s been asleep almost this whole time.

Arney comes too. “Ain’t far to the end of the slough from here,” she says, and the three of us curl up together, cold and wet and wanting sleep. From someplace, I think I hear music, and I tell myself it’s a showboat and that means the river’s nearby, but it could just be my mind playing tricks. As I drift away, I’m sure there’s the sound of the boats and barges far off. Their foghorns and whistles travel on the night. I listen close, try to decide if I know which ones they are. The Benny Slade, the General P, and a paddle-wheeler with its telltale puff, slap, slap, slap, puff.

I’m home. I’m wrapped in the lullaby I know by heart. I let the dark and the night sounds come inside me, and there’s not a dream or a worry anywhere. The mother water rocks me soft and gentle until nothing else is around me at all.

I sleep the deep sleep of a river gypsy.

In the morning, voices pull me from the quiet. Voices…and wood pounding on wood. I throw off the blanket, and Arney snaps upright on the other side of Fern. We look at each other for a minute, remembering where we are and what we’ve done. Between us, Fern turns over and blinks up at the sky.

“I tolt ya they’s somebody in that boat, Remley.” Three little colored boys stand watching us from the cypress knees, their overalls rolled up above skinny, muddy legs.

“That one’s a girl!” the biggest boy says, stretching out his chin to get a better look at me and tapping the boat with the end of his frog gig. “And they’s a little girl too. White girls!”

The others step back, but the biggest boy—he can’t be much more than nine or ten—stands his ground and leans on his gig. “What’re you doin’ here? You lost?”

Arney stands up and swats a hand at them. “Scamper off! Y’all better git gone if’n ya know what’s good for ya.” Her voice is deeper, like the one she used before I knew she was a girl. “We been out fishin’. Just waitin’ on mornin’ to start up again is all. One a’ y’all clamber up there ’n’ unhitch that line, so’s we can git on our way.”