The Book of Lost Friends(21)

She tosses her forelocks, rattling the carriage when I pull up just before the old bridge.

Nobody there. Not a sign.

“Missy Lavinia?” I whisper low and scratchy-like, hoping I sound like John, not quite man yet, but getting close. I lean over, try to see off the side of the bridge. “Anybody down there?”

What if Old Missus caught her making ready to sneak away?

A branch snaps and the mare turns her head, perks toward the trees. We listen, but there’s not another sound except what’s usual. Live oaks shiver, and birds talk, and squirrels argue in the branches. A woodpecker hammers after grub worms. Ginger fusses at that deerfly, and I get down to shoo it off her ears and quieten her.

Missy Lavinia’s almost on me before I hear her coming.

“Boy!” she says, and I jump out of my hide and back in. A whole string of bad memories clamor in my head. Happiest day of my life was when I left the Grand House to live with Tati, and I didn’t have to nursemaid Missy anymore. That girl would pinch, hit, swat me with whatever she could get her hands on soon’s she was big enough. Seem like she knew early on that it made her mama proud.

I duck my head down hard under the hat. I’ll know in a minute if this plan of mine’s workable. Missy Lavinia ain’t stupid. But we ain’t been close up to each other in a long time, either.

“Why haven’t you brought me the chaise?” Her voice has the high shriek that sounds like her mama, but she don’t look like her mama. Young Missy is stouter and rounder, even than I remember. Taller, too, almost tall as me. “I asked for the cabriolet, so as to drive myself. Why have you come with the calèche? When I get my hands on that yard boy…and where is Percy? Why hasn’t he seen to this himself?”

I don’t think it’s best to say, Percy’s been hiring out to keep hisself in food enough since Missus cut back his pay. So, instead, I tell her, “Cabriolet’s broke, ain’t been fixed. Nobody down to the stable, so I got the carriage up and come to drive it.”

She’s enough put out about the idea that she hauls herself into the carriage on her own without waiting for help. That’s best, since I’m trying to keep away.

“We will proceed down the field levee lane, not past the Grand House,” she snaps, settling herself into the seat. “Mother is abed. I’ll not have her disturbed by our passage.” She’s trying to sound sharp and bossy like her mama, but even now that she’s sixteen and in ladies’ skirts, she still sounds like a girl playing at being big.

“Yes’m.”

I climb up and chuck the old mare, and make a tight circle round the caved-in reflecting pond. The calèche’s big wheels bounce over loose cobblestones and ivy gone wild. Once the way is clear, I hurry the mare on. She’s still got a good trot, even though she’s up in years enough to be white-frosted at the muzzle and eyes. Her forelocks bounce, keeping the flies off.

We come three miles down the farm levee, then cut over at the little white church where Old Missus made us go every Sunday back in slavery days. Dressed all us up in same white dresses, tied blue ribbons at our waists so we’d look impressible for all the neighbors. Up in the balcony we’d sit and hear the gospel of the white preacher. I ain’t been in that building since the freedom. We got our own meetings now. Places where a colored man can preach. We move the spot all the time, to keep the Ku Kluxers and the Knights of the White Camellia away, but we all know where to go and when.

“Stop here,” Missy says, and I pull up the mare. We’re goin’ to the church house? I can’t ask it, though.

Out from behind comes Juneau Jane, sitting a ladies’ saddle on a big gray horse, her skinny legs hanging from her little-girl dress in long black stockings. Now, in the light, I can see that the stockings are more darns than threads and her button boots are almost wore through at the toe. The blue flower-stripe dress is clean, but strained at the seams. She’s growed some since that dress was bought.

The horse she’s on looks like a handful, tall with a cresty neck that says he was left for stud awhile. The girl’s most likely got a way with animals, though, devil-fired, like her mama and all the rest of her kind, with them strange silver-green eyes. That long hair of hers swirls down her waist to the saddle and into the horse’s black mane, so the two seem like one creature.

Juneau Jane rides up to the calèche with her chin propped up so high her eyes go to thin slits when she looks down into the carriage. Still, they send a shiver over me. Did she see me watch her last night? Does she know? I push my shoulders up toward my hat to fend off any curse she might try to cast on me.

The air hangs so tight between her and Missy Lavinia you could fiddle a tune on it.

“Follow behind,” Missy bites out, like she can’t stand the words in her mouth.

“C’est ce bon.” The girl’s Frenchy talk rolls like music. Reminds me of the songs the orphan children sung when the nuns traipsed them out in chorales to perform at the white folks’ parties before the war. “Indeed, my intention was thus.”

“I won’t have you sullying my father’s carriage.”

“Why should I have need of it, when he has given me this fine horse to ride?”

“Which is more than you merit. He assured me as much before he departed for Texas. You will soon see.”

“Indeed.” The girl ain’t scared as she should be. “We will soon see.”