The Book of Lost Friends(68)

HANNIE GOSSETT—RED RIVER, 1875

We gather what things we own, fold our quilt, and take down the scrim cloth we hung for shade from the sun that shines off the river in waves and ripples, mile after mile. For days now, our camp’s been steaming upwater on the Red, fighting snags and grasshoppering over sandbars to get crosswise through the rest of Louisiana and out of it. We’re in Texas now, for good or for worst.

Home’s gone. Too far for looking back or going back. The horses been sold off, and I hope the man treats them good. Was hard to see them go, hardest on Juneau Jane, but that money’s the only way we could buy goods and deck passage on this side-wheeler. Still ain’t sure if I chose right in getting on this boat with her, but before we did, I had Juneau Jane write a letter and post it back to Tati and Jason and John. Wanted them to know not to worry over me. I’ve gone off to see after word about Old Mister. I’ll be back before time comes to harvest the crop.

I don’t tell about hoping to find news of my people. Ain’t certain how Tati would take that. Nor Jason and John, so it’s best not to say. They been my only people for most of my life. But there’s another life deep inside of me, one long back in a little slabwood cabin with the bed full of knees and elbows and so many voices you can’t listen at them all at once.

Juneau Jane’s read the newspaper pages, all the little squares, out loud more times than I can keep count of. The roustabouts and the crew—colored men mostly, except for the officers—come down to our little deck camp. Time after time, they ask what the squares say. A few look for theirselves, read the rows of little boxes with a killing hunger and a wish to finally have what’s needed to satisfy it.

So far, only one man’s found hope, a gal who might be a sister. He said to Juneau Jane, “Now, if I git you some paper and somethin’ to write wit’, maybe you’d write me a letter I could send off when we make Jeffe’son Port? I’d pay for the trouble.” She promised she would, and off that roustabout went, whistling and singing, “Lord, Lord, ain’t you good! Ain’t you been good to me!”

The white folk on the Katie P. are mostly poor, hoping to find something better in Texas than what they left behind. They looked at that singing roustabout like he was touched in the head. But they didn’t look long. The notion’s gone round that we been selling voodoo spells and potions under our scrim tent, and that’s why the men come and go so much. Folks whisper about the strange silent ways of the big, barefooted white boy with us, and they don’t want no part of it.

We still got Missy in tow. Wasn’t any choice about it. The river landing where we boarded this boat was nothing more than the leftovers of a trader town shelled flat in the war. Couldn’t leave Missy there in this kind of shape. If we don’t find Old Mister in Jefferson, we figure to put Missy in the hands of the lawyer man, let her be his burden then.

As we’re moving off the Red and into Caddo Lake, then winding up through Big Cypress Bayou toward Port of Jefferson, the chug-puff-slap, chug-puff-slap of steamboats echo from all directions. The Katie P.’s shallow hull rocks on the wakes when we pass another boat, them going out loaded down with cotton, corn, and bags of seed, and us coming in with all manner of goods from sugar and molasses in pony kegs, to cloth, kegs of nails, and glass windows. Their folks wave, and our folks wave.

Even from a long way off, we hear and see the port coming up. Boat whistles blow a commotion. Bright-colored buildings with heavy iron balcony rails peek through the standing cypress and grapevine on the riverbank. The town noise fights over the rattle of the Katie P. and the steam off the boiler. Never heard such racket in my life, nor seen so many people. Music and yelling, horses squealing, oxen bellowing, dogs barking, carts and wagons bouncing along redbrick streets. This’s a flaunty place. Busy and big. The farthest river port you can get to in Texas.

A dark feel slides over me. First I don’t know the reason, but then I do. I remember this town. Didn’t come in by river last time, but this’s where the sheriff’s men brung me as a child after the Jep Loach trouble. They put me in the jailhouse for safekeeping, waiting on my lawful owners to come fetch me back.

The memory strikes me now, as I fold up the Lost Friends papers and put them in our pack. There’s names written in all the edges of the papers, with a lead pencil a boatman stole off a gaming table in the cabin upstairs. Juneau Jane has put down the names of the men on the Katie P. who’re looking for their people, and all the names of the folks they’re missing. We made the promise to ask after them wherever we go. If we find news, it can be sent back to Jefferson in the mail, care of the riverboat Katie P.

The men brung us a few pennies here, a dime there, a box of Lucifers for starting fires, tallow candles, biscuits and corn pone from the boat’s galley. “To help your travels,” they’d say. We didn’t ask for it, but they gave it over. Been eating better on this trip than in my whole life. Can’t recall a time when my belly was full days in a row like this.

I’ll miss the Katie P. and her men, but it’s time to go.

“Need to get her on her feet,” I say of Missy Lavinia, who just sits till you pick her up and move her like a rag doll, from one place to the other. She don’t fight, but she don’t help, either. The worst is taking her to the stalls at the back of the boat to do her necessary, couple times a day like a little child, which Juneau Jane won’t do. Folks clear a path when they see us come, don’t want to get close to Missy. She hisses at them if she feels like it, sounds like the boiler of the Katie P.