The Book of Lost Friends(20)

She retracts instantly when I take what she’s offering. One hand braces on a skinny hip. “That’s my Aunt Sarge’s phone number and address where she lives. She’s fixing stuff at my Great-Aunt Dicey’s house. Aunt Sarge knows how.” She watches her muddy tennis shoes instead of me. “She could take care of your roof.”

I’m stunned. “I’ll call her. Thanks. Really.”

LaJuna backs away. “She needs the money, that’s all.”

“I appreciate this. A lot.”

“Uh-huh.” Skirting a mud puddle, she departs. It’s then I notice something small and rectangular in her back pocket. I lean forward, detecting what I’m pretty sure is one of my missing copies of Animal Farm.

I’m staring at it when she stops and looks at me over one shoulder. She starts to say something, then shakes her head, then takes two more steps before turning my way again. Her arms drop in resignation before she finally blurts out, “The judge’s big old house is just across the field from that one you rented.” A glance flicks in that general direction. “Got lots of books there. Whole walls full, floor to the ceiling. Books nobody even cares about anymore.”





CHAPTER 5


HANNIE GOSSETT—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1875

Sometime, trouble can be like a cut of thread, all tangled up and wrong-twisted from the spinning. Can’t see the why of it or how to get it straight, but can’t hide from it, either. Back in the old bad days, Missus come in the spinnin’ house, find somebody’s work a mess, and go at that girl or woman with a quirt, or a spindle, or broom handle.

That old barn was a good place and a fearful place. The women would bring their children, work and sing together, boil the thread in pots of indigo, hickory bark, and copperas to make the colors. Blue, butternut, red. A pretty delight. But always, there’s the worry over a tangle, or a dropped thread, and the trouble it could bring. Even now that the wheels and the looms sit quiet and dust covered, someplace far up under the benches, where nobody but us and the mice know of it, there’s the old ruined thread and hanks of bad cloth, hiding out of sight like trouble does.

Passing through the spinnin’ house, I think of them old hideaways and I try to figure, how can I follow along on Missy’s trip so’s to find out her secrets? Then, I think, Hannie, it’d be a heap easier to drive the carriage Missy ordered up, than to try to sneak along after it. You’re already dressed like a boy. Who’d know any different?

I hurry on down to the horse barn and the wagon shed, knowing there won’t be a soul there. Percy hires hisself out, shoeing the stock on other places most days now. With Old Missus chairbound, Missy Lavinia away at school, and Old Mister gone to Texas, there’s no work for a driver.

I wait in the barn for a yard boy to come running barefoot down the lane. Don’t even know the child—house help ain’t here long enough to get known these days—but he’s so little, he’s still in shirttails. The hem catches round his twiggy bare legs while he runs calling ahead that Missy Lavinia wants the cabriolet at the back garden gate, and be quick.

“Already been told,” I bark out real deep. “Scoot on back to the house and say to her it’ll be up directly.”

Before I can blink, there’s nothing left of the boy but a dust curtain hanging where he was.

I get to work, but my fingers shake on the halter and harness buckles. My heart makes the sound of Percy’s smithing hammer, striking Tonk! Deling-ding, tonk! Deling-ding. I can barely tack up the stout copper sorrel mare Old Mister named Ginger the year before the war. She’s fretful when I back her twixt the carriage shafts and fasten the straps. Her eye rolls backward to say, Old Missus catches us at this, what’ll happen, you think?

I gather up my gumption and climb the three iron steps to the box seat that’s high over the splashboard, front of the cab. If I can fool Missy Lavinia long enough to sit her in the coach, we ought to get along all right. I’m shaky on the reins, but the mare don’t seem to mind. She’s a kind old thing and obeys, except she stretches her neck in a long whinny when the stable goes out of view. A horse whinnies back, and that a sound seems ten miles long and loud enough to wake the dead that’s buried under the soil behind the orchard.

A shiver rocks me head to foot. If Tati found out what I’m up to, she’d say I only got one oar in the water. I know that, by now, her and Jason and John are in the field, trying to give off the look of a normal day, but they’re all watching the lane, wondering and fretting about me. They won’t dare come round the Grand House, in case Old Missus and Seddie got suspicions after last night. If Missus sends her houseman out poking around, he won’t see one thing out of normal at our place. Tati’s too smart for that.

I hate that they’ll worry, but there’s no help for it. You can’t trust nobody at Goswood Grove these days. Can’t send a message by anyone.

I catch my breath and rub Grandmama’s three blue beads on that leather cord round my neck, and I pray for luck. Then I turn from the home way, steering the mare toward the old garden. Branches bow down from the oaks, bramble vines tying them together like corset laces. They needle and grab at my hat as the old horse and me push on through the clutter. A deerfly pesters Ginger’s ears, and she shakes her head and snorts, and jingles the harness.

“Sssshhh, there,” I whisper. “Hush up, now.”