The Book of Lost Friends(37)

“Hush up,” he says and tugs me back toward our hiding place. “You done gone soft in the head?”

“Come to do my necessary while it’s still dark out,” I say. If he decides I’m fool enough to get him caught, he’ll want shed of me.

“Use the slop jar, you ain’t got no more sense than to stand here a’gawkin off the edge like this,” Gus hisses. “You fall off into the water, and end up gone, then I got nobody that can go about this boat durin’ the day and be took for one of the workers, see? Elsewise, you ain’t no concern of mine. I don’t give a pig toe what you do. But I need somebody to sneak in the crew hall and brang me food. I’s a growin’ boy. Don’t like goin’ hongry.”

“Didn’t think of the slop jar,” I say of the old bucket Gus stole and that we stuffed a ways down the cotton bales from our hidin’ place. We got us a whole house set up under there. The Palace, Gus calls it.

Palace for skinny people. We tunneled it like rats. Even made myself a hiding hole for Missy’s reticule. Hope Gus ain’t found it while I’m gone. He knows I got secrets.

But I’m gonna have to tell him. Been on this slow-moving packet boat almost two days already and hadn’t found out nothing on my own. I need Gus’s thievin’ skills, and the longer I wait to ask, the more it’s likely something terrible comes to Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane. More likely it is they wind up dead or wishing to be. There’s things worse than death. You been in slavery days, you know there’s things a heap less peaceable than being dead.

To get Gus’s help, I got to tell him the truth. At least most of it.

And probably spend another dollar, too.

I wait till we’re safe back in our cotton bale house. Gus squirrels into his sleeping place, still grousing about having to go get me.

I twist over on my side, then my belly, so’s I can whisper to him, but I smell that he’s got his feet turned my way. “Gus, I ought to tell you something.”

“I’m sleepin’,” he says, irritable.

“But you can’t let on to another living soul about it.”

“Ain’t got time for yer fool talk,” he snaps. “You gettin’ to be more botherment then a wagonload of two-headed billy goats.”

“Make a promise to me, Gus. Could be another dollar in it for you, if you can do what I’m asking. You’ll need that money after you leave this boat.” Gus ain’t as tough as he talks. Boy’s scared, just like me.

I swallow hard and tell him about Missy and Juneau Jane going into that building and never coming out, and me seeing them trunks hauled up the boardwalk to the docks, and hearing noises and the man saying it was a dog inside, and then Missy’s locket falling in the mud. I don’t let on that I’m a girl underneath this shirt and britches and I was Missy’s lady maid when I was small. Afraid that might be more than is tolerable. Besides, he don’t need to know.

He sits up then. I only know that because I hear him squeeze to his feet in the dark, turn hisself round standing, then wiggle back down twixt the bales. “Well, all that don’t mean nothing. How’d you figure they wasn’t just robbed or kilt and left in the building that one-eyed fella and that Moses fella watched over for that…who’d you say…that Washbacon man?”

“Washburn. And them trunks was heavy.”

“Maybe they done stole everythin’ what them girls had and put it in them trunks.” Right now, it’s clear enough, Gus knows more about bad men than I do.

“I heard something in that box. Thumpin’. Moanin’.”

“The man said the boss had him a new dog in there, right? How you reckon that noise weren’t a dog?”

“I know how a dog sounds. Been scared of dogs all my life. Got a sense when one’s near. Smell it, even. Wasn’t no dog in them trunks.”

“How come you’re feared of a dog fer?” Gus spits into the cotton. “Dogs is good to have around. Keep ya comp’ny. Fetch a shot squirrel or a duck or a goose. Tree up possum so’s you can git it for supper. Nobody don’t like dogs.”

“It was Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane in them trunks.”

“So, wa’chew want I’s supposed do about it?”

“Use your thievin’ skills. Sneak up there on the boiler deck. Tonight. See can you find any sign of them in the passenger cabin or the staterooms.”

“I ain’t!” Gus scrabbles backward, out of reach.

“There’s a dollar in it for you. A whole dollar.”

“I don’t need me a dollar that bad. This trouble of yours ain’t my affair. I got trouble of my own. First rule a’ the river. Don’t get drowned. You’re caught sniffin’ round the first-class passengers, they shoot you, then drown you. You want my advisin’, I say keep to yer own bid’ness. Live longer thataway. Them girls shoulda thunk what they was doin’ before they done it. That’s what I say. Ain’t yer affair, neither.”

I don’t answer right off. This bargain with Gus needs to be worked careful, done in fine stitching a little at a time, so’s he don’t even feel the needle going in. “Well, you got a point. That is true enough about Missy Lavinia. She’s a haughty sort, anyhow. Thinks she can crook a finger, make the whole world do her biddin’. Spoilt from the time she was laying in the cradle.”