The Book of Lost Friends(50)

I follow along as she moves confidently through the house, and we switch into project mode. Safer territory. “So, my thought about the books is to start a stack for ones we might use in a classroom library,” I tell her as we enter the room. “Anything from third or fourth grade level through high school.” The reality is that I’ve got kids who are years behind in their reading skills. “Newer books only, though. Nothing antique. Maybe we can clear off the desktop and start putting the antique ones there. Carefully. Old books are fragile. Let’s stack the classroom books over by those doors to the porch.”

“That’s the gallery. The judge liked to sit out there and read, when the flies and the skeeters weren’t bad,” LaJuna informs me. I watch as she steps over to peer out the doors as if she expects to find him there.

She studies the yard for a moment before she continues, “Back in the old-old days, little kid slaves had to stand there with feather fans and chase flies from the rich folks. And in the house, too, but in the dining room they had this old-timey ceiling fan called a punkah. You pulled it back and forth with a rope. They didn’t have any screens back then. Just sometimes you’d put cloth on the windows, but that was mostly in cabins like where the slaves lived. Those used to be right out back of the barn and the wagon shed. There was, like, a couple dozen. But folks moved the cabins away on big rollers, so they could sharecrop different patches of land on their own.”

I stand openmouthed, amazed, not only that she knows so much history, but that she recites it in such a matter-of-fact fashion. “Where did you learn all those things?”

She shrugs. “Aunt Dicey. And also the judge told me tales. Miss Robin did, too, after she moved in here. She was studying up on stuff about the place. I think she was writing a book or something before she died. She’d have Aunt Dicey, Miss Retta, other folks come out here, tell her what they remembered about Goswood. What tales their relatives passed down. Stuff the old people knew.”

“I asked Granny T to come to class and share those stories with us. Maybe you can talk her into it?” From the corner of my eye, I catch what looks like a spark, so I add, “Since Animal Farm really isn’t all that interesting.”

“I was just telling the truth. Somebody’s got to help you out.” Tucking her hands into her pockets, she takes a long breath and surveys the library. “Or else you’ll just leave like everybody does.”

A warm feeling settles into my chest. I do my best to hide it.

“Anyhow,” she goes on, crossing the room, “if you’re from around Augustine, and your last name is Loach, or Gossett, no matter what color you are, your way-back history goes to this place, some time or other. Your people didn’t get too far from where they started. Probably won’t, either.”

“There’s a whole big world outside Augustine,” I point out. “College and all kinds of things.”

“Right. Who’s got the money for that?”

“There are scholarships. Financial aid.”

“Augustine School’s for poor folks. The kind that stay put. What’re you gonna do with a college degree here anyhow? Aunt Sarge’s been to the army and got a college degree, too. You see what she’s doing.”

I don’t have a smooth answer, so I revert to library talk instead. “So, let’s stack classroom books over there. But…nothing that’s going to give us trouble with the parents. No steamy romances or hot-blooded Westerns. If there’s a high skin-to-clothes ratio on the cover, set it on the pool table for now.” One thing I learned in my student teaching is that trouble with the parents is the bane of a teacher’s existence. It is to be avoided at all costs.

“Miss Silva, you don’t gotta worry about parents. Around here, they got bigger things to care about than what their kids are doin’ in school.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“You’re stubborn, you know that?” She flicks a bemused glance my way, studies me for a minute.

“I’m an optimist.”

“I guess.” Hooking a toe on a bottom shelf, she starts climbing upward the way tree frogs scale my windows on their suction-cup toes.

“What are you doing?” I move into position to catch her if she falls. “There’s a ladder over here. Let’s move it.”

“That ladder can’t reach all the way around here. Look at it. Its little slider track stops at the door. The track’s broke on this side of the room.”

“Then let’s work with the bottom shelves today.”

“In a minute.” She keeps right on going. “But you oughta see what’s up here, first.”





CHAPTER 13


HANNIE GOSSETT—LOUISIANA, 1875

It’s deep in the night when I start to say the Our Father over and over and over. Scaredest night I’ve had since Jep Loach dragged me from the trader’s yard and left Mama behind. I whisper the Our Father now, just like I did that night all alone under the wagon, trying to call down the saints.

They came when I was a child, them saints. Took the form of a old pasty-skinned widow woman that bought me at a courthouse steps sale—did it out of pity because I was poor and thin, crusty with tears and snot and dirt. She took my chin in her hand, and asked, Child, how old are you? Who is your master and missus? Say the names and do not lie. I’ll allow no one to harm you, if you speak the truth. I stuttered out the names, and she called for the sheriff, and Jep Loach run off.