Tomorrow River (12 page)

“Shenandoah,” Papa says now, getting me by the upper arms. “Are you sure you’ve told me
everything
about that night?”

I put on my best poker face. “Yes, sir. Like always. Everything I can remember. I swear.”

He never believes me. And he shouldn’t. Because I always leave out a few details, including the part about me running off to Sam’s cabin in hopes of finding our mother there. No matter what Papa does to me, I can’t tell him about Sam and Mama’s friendship. My sister and I swore on each other’s lives that we would never say anything to anybody.

“Your sister?” Papa says, terser. “Has she told you anything?”

My poor grieving father, he’s so out of touch. “You do remember that she doesn’t talk anymore, don’t you?”

He draws his arm back. “Are you mocking me?”

“No . . . no . . . I was just trying to . . .” I close my eyes, ready to feel the sting on my cheek.

The last time he cross-examined me like this he ended up loosening one of my molars. He didn’t mean to.

“Open your eyes.” He has come so close that he’s about pressing his lips against mine.

I turn away from his overpowering bourbon breath just in time to see my twin through a crack in the red velvet bedroom curtains. It’s like watching a scene out of a matinee movie. Woody’s sprinting across the yard like a heroine getting chased by an invisible villain.

Thinking fast, I jiggle from foot to foot and point across the hall. “Your Honor . . . I apologize, but . . . I can’t answer any more of your questions right this minute. There’s an urgent matter I need to attend to. May I be excused to use the little girls’ room?”

He draws back, looks at me like I have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “I . . . I’m . . . of course you can, I didn’t—” Papa collapses back onto the bed. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s right, that’s all right,” I tell him.

This has been going on for some time now. One minute he’s stormy, the next minute my calm papa. Mercurial is what he’s become. “Why don’t you take a lie down?” I rake my fingers through his tangled hair. “I’ll come back later and if you want, I’ll shampoo you with that Castile soap you like so much and get out your razor. We really must tidy up,” I say, baby-stepping backwards and hoping with my whole heart that he does not take his head out of his hands. If he should look up, he’ll see Woody through the window.

She cannot take another night of kneeling. She just can’t.

C
hapter Eleven

M
y sister has been running off for months.

I wasn’t all that concerned at first. I thought she was just needing a change of scenery, you know? That she was feeling as cooped up as I was in the jail that Lilyfield’s become. Only recently have I begun to realize that her escaping is more in line with what Miss Emily Dickinson described when she wrote, “A wounded deer leaps highest.”

When my mother quoted that to me the first time, I asked her what it was supposed to mean because it didn’t make sense. If an animal is hurt, they’re more apt to curl up in a ball and lick their wounds, not go jumping all over the place. Mama told me that what Miss Dickinson meant was, “The worse something hurts inside us, Shen, the harder we try to get away from it.”

I have
got
to break into the secondhand shop to get her another of Mama’s scarves. Woody can use it like a bandage. She’s going to need it after I get done tearing her limb from limb.

“Would you quit chasin’ that chicken and get over here,” I shout to the other side of the creek, which hasn’t settled down at all since we crossed it this morning. If anything, it’s gotten itself more worked up. It’s practically rabid. Looks like there’s a storm coming.

“What’s wrong?” E. J. drops his ax and hollers back.

“She bolted!”

He comes barreling down the slope and across the stepping stones, skipping every other one. “How’d she get by you?” he says, arriving breathless at my side.

Neither one of us will forget that horrible day she got away and we looked and looked and it grew dark and we never found her. E. J. and I had to run over to the Jacksons’ cottage to ask for help, but wouldn’t you know it, right after I’d told Mr. Cole in tears, “Woody’s missing. You better go get the sheriff,” my twin came into the yard, looking bedraggled with her shoulder messed up. Mr. Cole took one look at her and said, “Her arm’s hangin’ odd.” Real fast, he took her wrist in his hands and he relocated those bones back into place. I screamed my head off at the sound, but my sister barely flinched and that got to me most of all.

“Did she shimmy down the trellis again?” E. J. asks.

“She musta.”

Worry is making E. J.’s face impossibly homelier. “Didn’t you tell me last week that ya was gonna do something about that window?”

“Yeah, so what?” I take out my frustration by kicking up a spray of creek water. I hate it when he’s right. I should’ve nailed our bedroom window shut or boarded it up or something! “I saw her streakin’ across the yard towards the front woods. Ya know what that means.”

Woody will take off higgle-niggle some days, but she’s mostly got two destinations when she runs away.

One of them is to the outskirts of town. To the railroad tracks, so she can visit with the hoboes.

I like it up at the camp now, too, but the first time I chased Woody over there, I felt like most folks around here do towards those vagabonds with their stringy clothes and sole-slapping shoes. I felt disgusted to find Woody looking so content amongst the patchwork of tattered sleeping bags and cardboard houses that they set up behind the water tower. After I spent more time up there, though, I kind of understood why my sister found it a good getaway. There’s something so . . . I don’t know . . . familiar about it.

I got curious as to why the hoboes chose our particular town to squat in instead of, say, Roanoke or Goshen Pass, so I got up my nerve and asked a man named Limping Larry, who is the King of the Camp even though he only has two teeth and one ear. He showed me the special secret signs the hoboes write on trees and the sides of barns to tell others of their kind that Lexington is a good place to hop off a train because it slows there to fill up with water. He told me, “Travelers don’t have to jump out of a fast mover and risk a bad injury the way I did,” which is why he is called Limping Larry.

The hoboes don’t make the town government so happy. Because when they aren’t sleeping or telling stories around the campfire the hoboes drink, a lot, which makes them surly. Every so often, Sheriff Nash and his deputy round them up. If they aren’t fast about scattering, which they rarely are because they’re sort of run-down, some of the hoboes get sent to the Colony to dry out and the rest get tossed in the clinker until they stop seeing pink elephants.

Woody’s most absolute favorite friend at the camp is Dagmar Epps. She is Limping Larry’s girlfriend and therefore, Queen of the Camp. Dagmar is not a regular hobo. She didn’t travel here from some far-off place. Dagmar was born in town, but she went up to the camp to live because she’s sort of retarded, I think. She got pregnant three times and wasn’t married. To help her get control of her loose morals, His Honor put Dagmar’s children in an orphanage and then committed her to the hospital to have her insides taken out. Dagmar is rather cool to me, but she loves my sister, who she sometimes refers to as “Genevieve,” which I think was one of her babies’ names.

A hobo named Curry Weaver is Woody’s newest friend up at the camp. He’s only been up there for a little while, but my sister has
really
taken to him. That hobo is like the pied piper with that harmonica of his. He takes it out of his pocket and places it on his lips and asks in his Northern accent, “What would you like to hear this evening, Woody?” but he always performs the same tune. An excellent version of “Mr. Bojangles,” because somehow he knows that’s a very relaxing song or else that’s the only one he knows. I believe that Curry is being so friendly to us because if you’re on the run from the law, which Limping Larry told me most of the hoboes are, it helps to have friends in high places. Curry has been asking me lots of questions. About the town. My grandfather. My mother. The two of us like to sit up on the trestle that runs over the Maury River when we talk. That is as calming to me as Curry’s harmonica music is to Woody. Seeing all that water flowing below. It reminds me of Mama.

“His Honor . . . what is he like?” Curry asked last time I was up there.

“Well, he’s a real busy and important man. A great father. The best. Cares so much about the town, too.”

“Your mother? I heard she’s disappeared. That must be painful for you and your sister.” He looked over his broad shoulder at the camp. Woody was back there with Dagmar, who was combing my sister’s hair with a Popsicle stick. “When did she stop talking?”

“The night Mama vanished. But when I find her, she’ll start up again. I’ve got a plan.”

“What kind of plan?” he asked, like he was truly interested.

“Oh, a snatch of this, a snatch of that.” I didn’t know him well enough to fill him in, so we were quiet together, watching the birds swoop down for their dinners like the river was a big old buffet.

Curry asked me then, “What can you tell me about Doc Keller?”

“Doc Keller?” That kinda threw me. “Well, he and Papa have been best friends since they were kids. They’re fraternity brothers, too. Why do you ask?” I looked the hobo in his dark-circled eyes. “Are you not feeling well? I could arrange an appointment for you.”

Curry shrugged off my offer. I figured he must be suffering from something embarrassing that he didn’t want to talk about. I scooched away from him then. A lot of the hoboes have lice.

Obviously, I haven’t told him any Carmody family secrets, but he isn’t exactly forthcoming with me neither. I’ve asked, but he won’t tell me, who or what he was before he jumped a train and landed up here. I believe he might’ve been a teacher before he hit the skids. He’s well-spoken and wordy like that. Or maybe he’s a writer and he’s doing research for a book and just pretending to be a hobo. Like that white man who colored himself dark and wrote that story called
Black Like Me
, which Mama and I read and liked. That was a real eye opener. Maybe Curry’s writing
Hobo Like Me.
His research must get dangerous at times. He’s got a revolver hidden in the waistband of his dungarees.

I told Vera from the drugstore about him when I stopped by for Band-Aids last week because I thought if Curry could clean himself up a little they might be a nice couple and I think she’s lonely being so far away from home the same way he must be. Vera handed me my sack and told me, “Oh, yeah. I know the hobo you mean. Looks kinda like a burnt stump? Short and dark? I’ve seen him talking to a few people and makin’ phone calls in the booth next to the courthouse.”

Well, whoever he is or was, I like Curry and so does Woody, who is extremely hard to please when it comes to people.

 

 

T
he other times my twin has flown off, she’s headed over to the Triple S to sit with Sam. That’s where she’s going right this minute. I could just choke her, that’s how exasperated I’m feeling. And E. J.’s pokiness isn’t helping my mood any.

“Could you possibly move any slower?” I shout back at E. J. We’re not even halfway down the path that goes through the front woods. I’m worried about the time. There’s no telling with Papa. He might be laid out in his bed for fifteen minutes or a couple of hours. “You’re a turtle, Tittle.”

My sister runs over to the gas station for a lot of reasons. She is comforted by Sam’s voice. Languid, I think best describes it. Or maybe sultry. He’s also smart. Not like my summa cum laude father, but along with his extensive knowledge of baseball and crime, Sam possesses a certain way of looking at problems and solving them. Here’s an example: When I complained to him about my lack of shut-eye because I had to stay alert against Woody’s sleepwalking, Sam suggested I tie a cowbell to my sister’s finger to warn me when she was fixing to take off. I exclaimed, “That’s genius!” because I really thought it was. But with Woody’s restlessness, her tossing to and fro . . . what an infernal clanking that cowbell made. Sounded like our fort was under attack by a herd of heifers.

I told Sam the next morning how bad his idea worked and he shrugged and said, “I guess we’ll have to come up with something else then, won’t we. No sense crying over spilt milk.”

Please don’t go thinking that sort of merrymaking is typical. Sam Moody is no socialite. He refers to most folks as “lying ass-holes”
without
saying, “Excuse my French.” He’s fond of me and Woody, though. And E. J., who he’s teaching to be a grease monkey so he’s got some way to make a living when he’s grown up that’s better than mowing lawns and chopping wood.

I guess you could say it was an act of God that sent Sam back down to us two years ago. And the murder of his police partner in Decatur, Illinois. Sam misses his beloved Cubs and his pizza-loving partner—Johnny Sardino.

And Mama.

Of course, she’d known Sam in a polite way from his visits home to check on his mother, but their friendship really got launched the day after the Welcome Home Sam party Beezy threw for her son at her house. Man alive! That bash was really something. The yard was decorated with sparkling lights and men-in-blue balloons. No other whites had been invited to the festivities except for us. Sam was the guest of honor, but he doesn’t count as white. His skin is more the color of a perfectly toasted marshmallow. It made me feel uncomfortable at first to be with these folks in this type of party atmosphere. Usually the only Negroes I associated with were Beezy and Mr. Cole, but I got in the groove quick enough when I saw how much they wanted us to have a ball, too. And, boy, did we. I already knew that they sing better than we do, because every spring I make Beezy bring me to Beacon Baptist to listen to their
Hallelujah
choir. But can the coloreds ever dance! They can do all sorts of low-down movements the likes of which I have never seen before. (There are exceptions, though. Woody and I tried to do the Monster Mash with Mr. Cole, but he had quite a bit of trouble staying with the beat. And Sam didn’t do much dancing because he was having a hard enough time standing up.)