The Book of Lost Friends(88)

“Course I can.” I let my mind drift to the notion. I could leave Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane to their own troubles and go with Gus and ask after my people wherever we land. Gus would, sooner or later, figure out I ain’t a boy, but maybe he don’t even care. I’m strong, and I’m good. I can do the work of a man. “Drive mule teams, horse teams, ox teams, a plow. Know how to tack a shoe back on a hoof, and spot the colic coming on, mend a harness, too. You could tell your boss man that about me.”

“I right will. As I made a mention of, there’s some danger in it, just so’s you know. Comanches, and Kiowas and all. Come down out of Indian Territory, and raid and kill some folks, then run back north, where the law can’t get ’em. You any kind of good shot with a rifle?”

“I am.” I been getting grub in the woods and the bayous at Goswood Grove for years now. Tati figured it was better to leave Jason and John to work the crop, since they’d be stronger. “Shot more squirrel and possum than you can count.”

“You shoot a man if you had to?”

“I guess I would.” But I got no idea. I think of the war. Dead men with faces gone, arms and legs and parts of bodies left like hunks of meat, floating on the river or being hauled home by friends or slaves for burial. Food for flies and worms and wild creatures.

“Best you be sure of it,” Gus tells me.

“I reckon I’d do what I had to. I’d do about anything to get free of this place.”

“I’ll work toward it,” Gus tells me, and I take that for a hope. A blessed assurance that, some way, my freedom is bound to come. “Meantime, I got something for ya.” He digs in his pocket. “Don’t know why I held on to it, ’cept you ’n’ me was travelin’ friends and maybe was to be partners in the cow business…before you’s shucked off’t the boat, that is. And I’d spoke that promise to you, that I’d ask after your people wherever the trail took me.”

He stretches his hand out, and snaked across that dirty white palm sits a hank of leather cord and three little round dots.

My grandmama’s beads, but how can that be so? “Gus, how’d—”

“That spot you’s expulsed off the boat, I fetched these up from the deck. Seemed the least I could do was let your people know what become of you, if I’s ever to happen on your people, that is. I been asking here and there, about folk name of Gossett, wears three blue glass beads on a string. Gus McKlatchy don’t go back on a promise. Not even to somebody who’s likely drowned and dead. But you ain’t dead now, so far’s the evidence would show at this present time, so these is yours.”

I take the beads, feel that his skin is sweaty and warm where I brush across it. My fingers curl over the beads. Hold on tight, Hannie. Hold on tight, in case these could be a dream.

It’s too fine to be real, having the beads back after all this time.

“I been asking round for you,” Gus goes on. “About that Mr. William Gossett and that Mr. Washburn you made mention of, too. Didn’t learn nothin’.”

I hear him like he’s talking from the other side of a long field, acres and acres away.

I hold the beads to my face, breathe them in, roll them against my skin. I feel the story of my people. My grandmama’s story and mama’s. My story. A pounding grows in my blood and gets faster. It fills me and carries me up till I could spread my arms and fly like a bird. Fly right out of here.

“The freight wagons is going in the right gen’ral direction, see?” Gus talks on, but I don’t want him to. I want to hear the music in the beads. “Get there, find some work down thataway…Menardville, Mason, Fredericksburg, Austin City maybe. Finish saving up for us each a horse and tack. While we’re down there, I could help in askin’ after your people, if you desired it. Make some inquirin’ in places where it might be risky for a colored boy to be poking his nose. I’m a right good asker. Ask not, get not, that’s what we McKlatchys say.”

I roll the beads against my skin, breathe and breathe. I close my eyes and wonder, If I wish it hard enough, can I fly through them bars?

A rooster crows far off, and someplace closer a bell sings to the morning sun. Gus grabs a breath. “I got to go.” The donkey grunts as Gus jumps down. “Best git on about my business ’fore somebody catches sight of me here. You’ll see me again, though. As I said, Gus McKlatchy don’t break a oath.”

I open my eyes and watch him leave, his head tipping back as he whistles a song into the morning dim. Bit by bit the fog off the river takes him over, till there’s just the tune of “Oh! Susanna” and clap of the donkey’s small, round hooves and the cart singing along with each turn of the hardwood wheels. Sheee-clack-clack, sheee-clack-clack, sheee-clack-clack, sheee…

When even that’s gone, I fall back to the bunk and hold the beads in my fist and curl myself close to make sure the beads stay real.

Bright light pours through the window bars in squares by the time I wake again. It’s already halfway across the floor. It’ll go up the wall by sundown.

I open my hand and hold it high to where the light is warm and true. The beads catch sun and shine like a bird’s wing.

They’re still here. Still real.

Missy’s awake and rocking back and forth and making her noise, but I just scramble up to my feet and stand on the bunk and look out the window. Rain’s come sometime in the early hours, so I can’t see the tracks of a boy nor a cart, but I hold the beads in my hand, and so I know.