The Book of Lost Friends(69)

Makes things easier, getting off the boat at the landing, though. Other passengers back off and Juneau Jane and me get the whole gangplank to ourselves. Even the deckhands and the cabin crew stand away. Mostly they’re kind enough, though, and slip us little tokens and another penny and dime as we pass.

They lean close to whisper the reminders.

“?’Member to keep a ear for my people, if you’re able. Surely do appreciate it much.”

“My mammy’s name, July Schiller…”

“My sister is Flora, brothers Henry, Isom, and Paul…”

“My brothers were Hap, Hanson, Jim, and Zekiel. All born as Rollinses, owned by Perry Rollins in Virginee. Pappy was Solomon Rollins. A blacksmith man. All been sold south twenty-year ago, now, marched off in a trader’s coffle to settle a debt. Never thought to see them again in this world. You boys tell their names for me everyplace you go, I’d be grateful. And I’ll keep puttin’ you in the Lord’s way, so He don’t forget about you, neither.”

“My wife name Rutha. Twin gals Lolly and Persha. Bought off Master French’s place by a man name Compton.”

Juneau Jane steers over to a stack of cordwood and asks me for the Lost Friends papers, so she can make sure we ain’t forgot anybody.

“I got them safe.” I pat our pack. “We already wrote down all the names they just reminded us of. Besides, I got the list in my mind, too.” I know about remembering names. Been doing that since six years old and Jep Loach’s wagon, not so far from this place.

Juneau Jane perches herself on a log and waits for me to hand over the bundle. “What is preserved in writing is safe from failures of the mind.”

“People lose papers.” We ain’t been friends on this journey, her and me. Just two people in need of each other right now. That’s all it is. All it’s ever gonna be. “My mind is sure to go along wherever I do.”

“People lose their minds, too.” She gives a hard look toward Missy, who’s plunked herself down alongside the woodpile. There’s a little green snake winding through the grass toward her britches leg. Her hat’s tipped like she’s watching it, but she don’t even move to chase it off.

I take a stick and shoo the thing away, and think Juneau Jane would’ve just let it crawl right on to where it was headed. She’s a mysterious thing, this fawn-skinned girl that’s a pitiful skinny, big-eyed boy now. Sometimes she’s like a quiet, sad little child. It’s then that I think, Maybe it ain’t so easy for a yellow girl to make a life, either. Sometimes, she just seems cold. A wicked, devil-fired creature like her mama and the rest of their kind.

Bothers me that I can’t cipher her out, but she could’ve left me and Missy behind at the river landing, and she didn’t. She paid the fare for us with her horse money. I wonder at what that means.

Sitting down beside her on the woodpile, I hand over the Lost Friends pages and the pencil and say, “Reckon it don’t hurt to check. Ain’t like we know where we’re going, anyway. Somebody comes by—fine white folk, I mean—you try asking real nice, where can we find that Mr. Washburn?”

A thought comes into my head while she checks over her work. “How’re we gonna talk to this lawyer man about your papa’s papers if we do find him?” I look her over, then look down at myself. “Right now, I’m a colored boy, and you’re a ragged little rat off the river.” Been so caught up with the Lost Friends on the boat, I hadn’t thought past us getting onshore. “No lawyer man will talk to us.”

She hadn’t thought that far, either, I can tell.

She chews the pencil end, looks up at all them fancy brick buildings, double-deckers, most of them. Some even triple. A gunshot fires off, cracking through all the noise of the town and the river port. We both jump. Men stop and look around, then go back to work.

Juneau Jane tips up that pointy little chin of hers. “I will speak with him.” Her lips rise at the corners, her nose, which is her papa’s turned-up nose, crinkling. “Were I to inform him I am William Gossett’s daughter and heir, he would undoubtedly assume me to be Lavinia. I believe she was not truthful in saying they had made his acquaintance in New Orleans recently, given that the man resides here in Jefferson, and this is where Papa engaged his services not long ago.”

A laugh puffs out of me, but there’s fear in my belly. Back home, what she’s aiming to do can get you dead in a hurry. If you’re colored, you don’t go pretending to be white. “You’re a colored girl, case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Are we really so different?” She stretches one arm beside Missy’s. Their skin ain’t the same, but not too far off that you’d guess the truth, either.

“Well she’s older than you.” I wave a hand at Missy. “You’re a child in short skirts, still. You ain’t even got you no…well, you don’t look much as fourteen, yet. Even if Missy was lying when she told you she’d met the man before, you ain’t gonna pass for Missy.”

Her eyes hold at half-mast, like I am thickheaded. I want to swat that look from her face. That is the exact way Missy Lavinia used to do when she was a little child. These two girls are more sisters than they know. Some things run in the bloodline just as sure as that little turned-up nose. “They skin you alive, if you get caught at this. Skin me alive, too.”