The Book of Lost Friends(109)

“What’d they want from him…Old Gossett?” I try to imagine the man I knew tied up in such a thing, except I can’t.

“Money, property, or if he was already an ally, perhaps just to ensure his further and complete cooperation. It’s by those methods they’ve fattened the finances for their cause. They often make use of young folk from well-provisioned families. Some are hostages. Some are volunteers. Some begin as one and become the other once they’ve caught a case of Honduras Fever. There’s temptation in the idea of free land in Central America.”

I turn my eyes downward. I think of Missy’s troubles, of the baby she’s carrying. Heat comes into my face. I stare at the cream-colored dust covering his boots. “That was how Missy Lavinia got tangled up with these people? Thinking to serve her own purposes at first, but then it went wrong?” Should I tell him about Missy’s brother? Or does he know already, and he’s testing me out? I watch him sidewards, see his thumb and finger smooth his mustache, then stay there pinched over his chin, like he’s waiting for me to speak, but I don’t.

“Quite likely so. The Marston Men devote themselves to the cause in all manner of thought and deed. This idea of returning to old times and cotton kingdoms—of new land to rule as they see fit—gives them something to believe in, a hope that the days of the grand houses and the slave gangs aren’t over. Marston demands absolute loyalty. Wife against husband, father against son, brother against brother, the only importance being that they serve Marston, remain devoted to his purpose. The more bounty they hand over, the more willingly they betray their families, their townsfolk, their neighbors, the higher they rise in the ranks and the more land they are promised in their imagined Honduras colony.”

His gaze fastens on me to see how I take that in.

A deep, hard shiver goes through my bones. “Mister William Gossett, he wouldn’t be party to something like this. Not if he knew what it was. I’m sure of it.” But in the back of my mind, I wonder, was there more to Old Mister’s trip to Texas than I knew? Is that why all the books with the sharecrop papers are gone? Did he plan to cheat us out of our contracts and sell his lands and go to Honduras, too?

I shake my head. That can’t be. He must’ve been trying to save Lyle, that’s all. “He wasn’t a bad man, mostly, but blind when it came to his son. Foolish blind. He’d do anything for that boy. He sent Lyle here to Texas to get him away from a difficulty in Louisiana that ended in a dead man. Then Lyle found trouble here some months ago. That’s why Old Mister come all this way. Seeking after his son, and that’s the only reason.”

Elam Salter looks through me like I’m thin as a lace curtain.

“I ain’t lying,” I say and straighten myself.

We face each other, Elam Salter and me. I’m a tall gal, but I have to turn my head up to him like a child. Some snip of lightning crackles between us. I feel its stings all up and down my skin, like he’s touching me, right through the air between us.

“I know you are not, Miss Gossett.” His saying my name that gentlemanly way sets me back a bit. Always been just plain Hannie. “Lyle Gossett had a State of Texas bounty on his head for crimes committed in Comanche, Hill, and Marion Counties. He was reported delivered, dead, six weeks ago to Company A, Texas Rangers, in Comanche County, and the bounty paid.”

Of a sudden, I am cold down deep, the chill of a bad spirit passing by.

Lyle is dead. His daddy’s been chasing a soul that already belonged to the devil.

“I want no part in this. None of it. Only reason I come here…only reason I did all I did…was…was because…” Any words I say will sound wrong to a man like Elam Salter. A man who ran from his owner and found his way to freedom when he was no more than a boy. A man who’s made hisself somebody that even the white men speak of in a revering way.

And here I am, just Hannie. Hannie Gossett, still called by the name I was given by somebody who owned me. Hadn’t even picked out a new name for myself, because that might vex Old Missus. Just Hannie, still living in a cropper cabin, scratching a piece of ground to make my means. A mule. A ox. Only a beast of the field and hadn’t done a thing about it. Can’t read but a few words. Can’t write. Come all the way to Texas, looking after white folk, same as in the old times.

Been nothing. Am nothing.

What must a man like Elam Salter think of me?

I clench my hands over the rumpled calico. Push my bottom lip into the top one and try to stand square, at least.

“You’ve done a brave thing, Miss Gossett.” His eyes slide toward Missy, singing to herself there on the bench while she picks them wilted wildflowers clean, petal by petal, and watches the colors fall on the parchment-dry ground. “They’d be dead if not for you.”

“Maybe it wasn’t my trouble to worry over. Maybe I should’ve let it happen, that’s all.”

“You’re not the sort.” His words melt over my skin like sweet butter. Does he truly think that of me? I try to see, but he’s got his face turned toward Missy.

“For whatsoever he soweth, that shall he also reap,” he says in his deep voice. “Are you a churchgoing woman, Miss Gossett?”

“Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” I know the verse. Old Missus used that one all the time to let us know, if she punished us, it was our own fault, not hers. God wanted us to get whipped. “I am a churchgoing woman, Mr. Salter. But you can call me Hannie, if it suits. I reckon at this point, we know each other pretty close up.” I think of that moment on the boat, when he grabbed me up in the familiarest way to toss me off. Must’ve been about then he figured I wasn’t a boy.