Before We Were Yours(110)

I have to peel her off to put her back under the canvas, but she stays.

Silas is waiting in the brush. He hugs me hard, and I bite my lip to keep from crying. We move off a little farther together, but not so far that I can’t hear Fern if she needs me.

“You all right?” Silas asks when we sit down in the clear spot under a tree.

I nod. “Fishing wasn’t any good this morning, though.” I don’t want to ask for food, but I’m hoping that’s what’s in the little poke he’s carrying.

He hands over a bundle no bigger than two fists, but it means a lot. Zede’s supplies are running low, and he’s got Arney to feed too. She’s moved onto his boat, where she’ll be safe. Zede wanted Fern and me to go too, but I know Briny won’t hurt us.

“Some flapjacks and a little salt fish. An apple you can split up.” Silas leans back on his hands, pulls a breath, and looks through the brambles toward the river. “Briny any better today? He comin’ around at all?”

“A little.” I’m not sure if it’s true or if I just want it to be. Briny mostly wanders around the boat and drinks and yells at night. Then he sleeps it off during the day.

“Zede says we’ll have rain this evenin’.”

I’ve seen the rain signs too. It worries me. “Don’t come back and try to untie the lines again, all right? Not yet. Maybe in a few more days. A few more days, and I think Briny’ll be ready.”

For two weeks, we’ve stayed in at the bank across from Mud Island while the weather’s turned colder. Even though Silas and Zede warned Briny it’d be easy for the police to find us here if they come looking, Briny won’t let anybody unhitch the shore lines. He almost shot Silas’s hand off for trying. He nearly shot poor Arney too. I gave her some of Queenie’s clothes to use, and Briny decided she was Queenie, and he was mad at her for dying.

“Just a little longer,” I plead with Silas.

Silas rubs his ear like that’s not what he wants to hear. “You oughta bring Fern and come onto Zede’s boat with me. We’ll move her down into the main channel and see if Briny don’t come along.”

“Just a few more days. Briny’ll get better. He’s gone out of his head for a while, that’s all. It’ll pass.”

I hope I’m right, but the truth is that Briny doesn’t want to leave Queenie, and Queenie’s buried in the thick Mississippi soil not far from here. A Catholic priest said final words over her, Zede told me. I never even knew my mama was a Catholic. Until I lived with the Seviers, I didn’t even know what that meant. Zuma wore a little cross like the one on our shanty wall. She’d hold it and talk to it sometimes, just the way Queenie did, but not in Polish. The Seviers didn’t care for that too much, because they’re Baptists.

I figure, either way, it’s a comfort to know my mama was buried proper and a preacher was there to say prayers at her grave.

“Zede wants you to tell Briny that, in four days at the outside, he’s moving our boat, and if Briny don’t want to come along, he’s taking you and Fern off the Arcadia. You’re goin’ downwater with us.”

“Who’ssss out’ere?” Briny’s voice booms from somewhere near shore. The words are thick with leftover liquor. He must’ve heard Silas talking. “Who’ssss out’ere round?” Briny comes crashing through the brush and dead grass.

I grab the poke, tuck it under my dress, and shoo Silas away. Briny staggers around while I slip away to the skiff, gather up Fern, and take her to the shanty.

Briny finds us there when he finally comes back. I pretend like I’ve just fried the flapjacks up in the skillet. He doesn’t even notice there’s no fire in the stove.

“I got supper almost ready.” I make a show of dishing up plates. “You hungry?”

He blinks and scoops up Fern and sits down at the table and holds her tight. She watches me, her face pale and scared.

A fist grabs my throat. How am I going to tell Briny that Zede’s only waiting four more days? I can’t, so I say, “Flapjacks and salt fish and apple slices.”

I put the food on the table, and Briny sets Fern in her place. It feels just like we’ve been having a proper meal together every single day. For a while, everything’s like it should be. Briny smiles at me through dark, tired eyes that remind me of Camellia.

I miss my sister, even if we did fight all the time. I miss how tough and stubborn she was. How she never gave in.

“Zede says, four days yander, the currents’ll be good, and it’s time to take to the river. Go downwater where the fishin’s fine and the weather’s warm. He says it’s time.”

Briny braces an elbow on the table and rubs his eyes, shaking his head slowly back and forth. His words are muddled, but I hear the last few anyway. “…not without Queenie.”

He gets up and heads for the door, grabbing his empty whiskey bottle on the way. A minute later, I hear him rowing off in the skiff.

I listen until he’s gone, and in the quiet that’s left after, I feel like the world is coming down around me. When I was at Mrs. Murphy’s and then the Seviers’ house, I thought if I could just get back to the Arcadia, that’d fix everything. I thought it’d fix me, but now I see I was fooling myself, just to keep on going, one day to the next.