Before We Were Yours(113)

Is it Briny?

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I call to him. My voice carries through the morning mist, echoing over and over.

A searcher in one of the boats looks my way.

When I squint down shore again, I can hardly make out the man in the slicker. He turns and walks toward the trees until the dawn shadows cover him over.

Maybe he was never there at all.

I move a few steps closer and yell again and listen.

My voice echoes away, then dies.

“Rill!” When there’s finally an answer, it doesn’t come from downriver. It’s not Briny’s voice.

A jon boat motors up to the sandy bank, and Silas hops out before the Jenny even makes it to a stop. He tugs the line at a run, hurrying toward me until he grabs me in his arms. I cling to him and cry.

“You’re all right! You’re all right!” He breathes into my hair, squeezing me so tight the picture frame and Queenie’s cross push deep into my skin. “Zede and me and Arney was scared half out of our minds when we seen the Arcadia gone.”

“Briny cut us loose last night. I woke up, and she was on the river.” I sob out the rest of the story—Briny on the roof talking out of his head, the near miss with the barge, hitting the drift pile, the fire, ending up in the water, seeing Queenie, then coming back up and climbing onto the Arcadia as the river was eating her whole. “Some men pulled us off the drift before it broke loose,” I say, finishing our sad tale, my body shivering in the cold. “They went to look for Briny.” I don’t tell Silas that I think I’ve already seen him and that, instead of coming to find us, he walked away.

If I don’t tell anyone, it’ll never be true. It’ll never be the way Kingdom Arcadia ended.

Silas then holds me at arm’s length to look me over. “But you’re all right. Y’all two are in one piece. Thank the saints! Zede and Arney will be bringin’ Zede’s boat downwater soon’s they can. We’ll find Briny too. You’ll all be with us. We’ll go where it’s warm and the fishin’s good, and…”

He chatters on about how Zede and Briny will gather boards and scrap from the riverbanks and build us a new boat. A new Arcadia. We’ll start all over again and always travel together from now until forever.

My mind wants to color in those pictures, but it can’t. Zede’s boat is too small for all of us, and Briny’s gone. Zede’s too old to run the river much longer. He’s too old to raise Fern. She’s just a baby yet.

Hanging on my leg, she burrows under the blanket and tugs my dress. “I wannnn’ Mom-meee,” she sniffles. Her fingers almost touch the edge of Queenie’s picture, but I know that’s not who she means.

I look Silas full in the face as the dawn rays catch him. My heart squeezes so tight it hurts. I wish we were older. I wish we were old enough. I love Silas. I know I do.

But I love Fern too. I loved Fern first. She’s all I’ve got left of my family.

Just down the bank from us, the search for Briny is simmering down as the early sun sheds its glow on the river. Any minute, the men will see that there’s no hope of finding another survivor. They’ll come back for Fern and me.

“Silas, you’ve gotta take us out of here. You’ve gotta take us now.” I pull away from him and move toward the jon boat, dragging Fern along.

“But…Briny…” Silas says.

“We have to go. Before the men come over here. They’ll take us to the children’s home again.”

Silas understands then. He knows I’m right. He gets us in the boat, and we move off quiet until we’re far enough away that no one notices the motor revving up. We keep to the shore on the other side from the cotton warehouses and docks and Mud Island and all of Memphis. When we get to our little backwater, I tell Silas I don’t want him to carry us to Zede’s boat except long enough to say goodbye.

I have to bring Fern back upriver and hope the Seviers will take her in again. It’s not her fault we left. It wasn’t her idea to steal things. It was mine. What happened wasn’t Fern’s doing.

If we’re lucky, they’ll let her come back…if they haven’t already got some other little girl from the children’s home. Maybe even if they have, they’ll still keep Fern. Maybe they’ll promise to love her some and keep her safe from Miss Tann.

What’ll happen to me after that, there’s no way to know. The Seviers won’t want me for sure—a liar and a thief. I can’t let Miss Tann find me again. Maybe I can get work someplace nearby, but these are lean times. I won’t come back to the river. Old Zede can’t feed any more mouths, but that’s not the real reason I can’t stay.

The real reason is I have to be close to my sister. We’ve been stitched together at the heart since she was born. I can’t breathe in a world where she isn’t near.

I tell Silas what I want him to do for us. He shakes his head, and his face gets longer and longer the more I talk about it.

“Take care of Arney,” I tell him finally. “She hasn’t got anything to go back to. Her people treated her in a bad way. Find her a place, all right? She don’t mind workin’ hard.”

Silas looks down at the water as it passes, not at me. “I will.”

Maybe Silas and Arney will marry in a few years, I think.