The Book of Lost Friends(79)

“Thank you. And you boys, you tread lightly here,” he warns us again, and tucks the scrap away, too. “Fort Worth’s not the worst town for colored folk, not bad as Dallas, but not peaceable, either, and the Marston Men like this place more than most. Watch the squatter camps down along the river below the courthouse bluff, too. You can get by with pitchin’ camp there, but don’t leave your belongings behind. Nothing’s safe down in Battercake Flats. Too many folks in need, all in one place. Tough times in Fort Worth town, since the railroad’s gone bust and can’t build the line on through to here. Tough times make good people and bad people. You’ll see both.

“You need help, go visit John Pratt at the blacksmith shop, just off the courthouse. Colored fella, good man. Or the Reverend Moody and the African Methodist Episcopals at the Allen Chapel. Mind the whorehouses and the saloons. Nothing but trouble there for a young man. You want my advice—don’t stay long in Fort Worth. Move on to Weatherford or down Austin City way. There’s more future in it.”

“We have come to find my father,” Juneau Jane tells him. “We have no plan to remain after.” She thanks him for the ride and tries to pay him for the trouble, and he won’t take it. “You gave me back a hope I surrendered long ago,” he says. “That’s enough, right there.”

He clucks up the horses and travels on, and there we stand. It’s the middle of the day, and so we huddle off twixt two board-and-batten-sided buildings and eat our lunch of more pilot biscuits and peaches that won’t last much longer in our poke.

A racket takes our eyes to the street. I look up and expect that it’ll be cattle or wagons, but it’s a detachment of Federal soldiers, riding down the street in lines, two by two. Cavalry. They don’t much resemble the ragged Federals of the war, who wore blue uniforms patched up and stitched over holes, stained with dirt and blood and held together with carved circles of wood where the brass buttons went missing. The soldiers back then rode bone-thin horses of whatever kind they could buy or steal, as horses got hard to come by with so many killed in battles.

These soldiers today travel on matched bays, the whole bunch of them. The yellow cavalry stripes on their pants show bright, and the black bill caps sit square and level. The brass plates on their rifles shine at the sun. Scabbards, buckles, and hooves raise a clatter.

I step back in the shadows. A tightening starts deep in my middle and works its way through me. Ain’t seen soldiers anytime lately. Back home, if you spot one you don’t dare look his way or stop to talk. No matter that the war is over and been over all these years, you get seen talking to the Federals, folks like Old Missus don’t like it.

I pull Juneau Jane and Missy back, too. “We got to be careful,” I whisper and hurry them away to the other end of the alley. “That woman in Jefferson said it was the Federals come looking for Mr. Washburn and his papers. What if they’re looking for him here, too? Some of that trouble Lyle brought on, maybe.” I’m surprised by my own mouth for a minute. I didn’t call him Young Mister or Marse Lyle, or even Mister Lyle, just Lyle, like Juneau Jane does.

Well, he ain’t your marse, I tell myself. You are a free woman, Hannie. Free to call that snake by his given name if you want to.

Something inside me gets bigger, just then. Not sure what it is, but it’s there. Stronger now. Different.

Juneau Jane don’t seem worried about the soldiers, but it’s clear her mind’s on other things. She looks down the hill, where shanties made from all manner of wagon parts, downed branches, slabwood, barrel staves, crates, and sawed trees squat low on the muddy banks of the Trinity River. The frames lean toward the water, covered in hides, oilcloth, tarred scrim, and pieces of bright-colored signs. A little brown boy pulls wood off one shack so he can feed the cook fire at another.

“I could manage a change of clothing down there, before seeking Mr. Washburn. Some of the huts appear vacant,” Juneau Jane says.

What’s she thinking? “That’s got to be Battercake Flats. Where Pete told us not to go.” But arguing don’t do no good. She’s already finding her way to the path. Can’t let her walk down there by herself, so I go along, dragging Missy with me. Missy might scare somebody, at least. “Get me killed. Get me killed in Battercake Flats,” I call ahead to Juneau Jane. “Ain’t the sort of place I want to meet my maker, that’s for definite sure.”

“We will not leave our belongings,” she says, marching right ahead on them skinny spider legs.

“We will if we’re dead.”

Two soot-smudged white women in threadbare clothes come up the path. They inspect us over real careful, studying our bundles to see, can they steal something? I grab hold of Missy’s arm like I’m worried, say to her, “Now, you leave them two women be. They ain’t hurting you.”

“You’ns in need a’ som’pin’?” one of the women asks. Her teeth are rotted off into sharp points. “Got us a camp jus’ thar. Hungry fer some hot grub, err ya? We don’ mind to share our’n. Carryin’ any coin, err ya? You gimme jus’ a little, Clary, here, she’d skee-daddle on over to the merkateel store, git us’ns some coffee. Drunk up the las’ of our’n in camp. But it ain’t far…to the merkateel.”

I look yon, and there’s a man standing and watching us. I back off the path and pull Missy with me.