The Book of Lost Friends(58)
She rubs the back of her neck, stretches it one way and then the other. A rueful laugh hisses between her teeth. “And here I am, picking okra in Augustine, Louisiana. My dad would turn over in his grave. Best thing that ever happened to him was getting drafted into the army and discovering a whole new world out there.”
Obviously, there’s a much bigger story under Sarge’s crusty exterior. “Looks like you’ve made a tremendous difference on the house.”
“Houses are easy. People, not so much. You can’t just strip out the lead pipe, re-run the wires, slap on a coat of paint…and fix things in a lot of these families.”
“Speaking of family”—I avoid the sinkhole of what can’t be done in Augustine—“the reason I stopped by is LaJuna. She and I had an accord of sorts last week. She promised not to miss any more school, and I told her that if she didn’t miss, she could help me with a project I’m working on. That was Thursday afternoon. She didn’t come to school on Friday, and I haven’t seen her since. I went to the home address on file for her, and the guy there told me to get lost.”
“That’d be her mama’s old boyfriend. Tiffany hits him up when she needs a place to land. Tiffany’s always hitting somebody up—been doing that since she snagged my cousin senior year of high school and had LaJuna. That’s how Tiff gets by.” She pulls a bandana from her pocket, takes off the hat and mops her neck, then fans some air under her T-shirt. “Tiff’s hard on people. Left LaJuna here for years while she was in prison and never has done a thing to pay Aunt Dicey back.”
“Can you tell me where they are? Living, I mean. LaJuna said her mom had a new job and they were doing fine.” I know a little about intentionally misleading the adults in your life to keep secrets under wraps. Things that, if they knew, would send your whole world tumbling end over end. “I don’t think LaJuna would break her promise. She was so excited about sorting”—I catch myself—“our project.”
“Honey, you coming back?” Aunt Dicey calls out. “Bring your friend. She wants to help us pick, then she can stay over for some okra and fried green ’maters. That’ll be good! Don’t have much meat to put with it. Couple slices of roast left from my Mealsie Wheelsies. We can have that, too. Tell her to come on in here. No need in being bashful.” Aunt Dicey cups a hand around her ear, listening for a response.
“She has things to do, Aunt Dicey,” Sarge calls, loudly enough to be heard in the next town down the road. “And we have meat. I bought a ham.”
“Oh, hi there, Pam!” Aunt Dicey says.
Sarge shakes her head. “She doesn’t have her hearing aid in.” She hustles me toward the car. “You’d better get out of here while you can. She’ll tie you up until midnight, and I know that’s not what you came here for. Listen, I’ll do what I can about LaJuna, but her mama and I aren’t each other’s favorite people. She ruined my cousin’s life. I’ve caught Tiffany over here more than once, looking to mooch food or money from Aunt Dicey. Told her if she shows up again, things’ll get ugly. Tiff needs to pay her own bills, stop skipping out on work to hang with that loser ex-boyfriend of hers down in New Orleans, which, if I had to guess, is where she’s at right now. Taking the baby for a visit with his daddy. LaJuna’s probably stuck there, looking after the rest of the kids and trying to get her mama to go back to work before she gets fired.”
I have a sudden and crushing picture of LaJuna’s life. No wonder she’s bossy with adults. She’s parenting one.
Sarge angles an appraising look my way when we get to the car. “You need to know that it’s not LaJuna’s fault. Kid’s stuck at the bottom of a well and has to drag four people up the rope with her. Multiply that by a half dozen different batches of kinfolk, and you’ll see why some days, I just want to get in the car and drive. But man, I loved my granny and she loved her baby sister, Dicey…well…I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“I get it.” The problems here are deeply rooted. If the way of things was easy to change, people would’ve done it already. “Like throwing starfish back into the ocean.”
“Huh?”
“It’s just a story I had on the bulletin board of my old office. Perspective, sort of. I’ll xerox a copy for you if I ever find it again.”
Sarge leans over to peer through the Bug’s window. “What’s all that?” She’s studying the library questionables I’ve stacked in the backseat in hopes of showing them to Nathan at the farmers market tomorrow morning—a few valuable old books I’m worried about, along with the plantation ledger and the family Bible with the burial records in it.
I consider trying to obfuscate, but what good would it do? Sarge is looking right at the ledger that bears the Gossett name. “I wanted to make sure I got a chance to study these more closely…while I could. Coach Davis roped me into handling gate duty tonight at the football stadium. There’s some kind of a fundraiser concert for the athletics department and I guess they were desperate for workers. Anyway, I thought I could do some reading in between, or after.”
“You’ve been in the judge’s house? That’s where you got all this?” She slaps the car’s hood. “Oh Lord.” Her head falls back and the straw hat slips off, drifting soundlessly to the driveway. “Oh Lord,” she says again. “Did LaJuna let you in there?”