My Father Like a River (3 page)

“Your hair being down like that—it looks good,” he
said. “I bet that's the way you wear it in bed.”

She didn't blush. Sinkler worked the crank and the
well bucket descended into the earth. Once both his buckets were filled, he laid
out his plan.

“You don't much cotton to my idea?” he asked when
she didn't respond. “I bet you're thinking we'd have to get past them guards
with shotguns but we won't. I'll wait until the chain gang's working up above
here. Do it like that and we'll have clear sailing all the way down to
Asheville.”

“There's an easier way,” Lucy said quietly, “one
where you don't need the truck, nor even a road.”

“I never figured you to be the know-all on prison
escapes.”

“There's a trail on the yon side of that ridge,”
Lucy said, nodding past the field. “You can follow it all the way to
Asheville.”

“Asheville's at least thirty miles from here.”

“That's by the road. It's no more than eight if you
cut through the gap. You just got to know the right trails.”

“Which I don't.”

“I do,” she said. “I've done it in three hours
easy.”

For a few moments, Sinkler didn't say anything. It
was as though the key he'd been imagining had suddenly appeared in his hand. He
left the buckets where they were and stepped closer to the barn. When he
gestured Lucy closer, she came. He settled an arm around her waist and felt her
yield to him. Her lips opened to his and she did not resist when his free hand
cupped a breast. To touch a woman after so long made him feather-legged. A bead
of sweat trickled down his brow as she pressed her body closer and settled a
hand on his thigh. Only when Sinkler tried to lead her into the barn did Lucy
resist.

“He can't see us from down there.”

“It ain't just that,” Lucy said. “My bleed time's
started.”

Sinkler felt so rabbity that he told her he didn't
care.

“There'd be a mess and he'd know the why of
it.”

He felt frustration simmer into anger. Sinkler
tried to step away but Lucy pulled him back, pressed her face into his
chest.

“If we was far away it wouldn't matter. I hate it
here. He cusses me near every day and won't let me go nowhere. When he's drunk,
he fetches his rifle and swears he's going to shoot me.”

“It's all right,” Sinkler said, and patted her
shoulder.

She let go of him slowly. The only sound was a
clucking chicken and the breeze tinking the well bucket against the narrow stone
wellhead.

“All you and me have to do is get on that train in
Asheville,” Lucy said, “and not him nor the law can catch us. I know where he
keeps his money. I'll get it if you ain't got enough.”

He met her eyes, then looked past her. The sun was
higher now, angled in over the mountaintops, and the new well bucket winked
silver as it swayed. Sinkler lifted his gaze to the cloudless sky. It would be
another hot, dry, miserable day and he'd be out in it. At quitting time, he'd go
back and wash up with water dingy enough to clog a strainer, eat what would gag
a hog, then at nine o'clock set his head on a grimy pillow. Three and a half
more years. Sinkler studied the ridgeline, found the gap that would lead to
Asheville.

“I've got money,” he told Lucy. “It's the getting
to where I can spend it that's been the problem.”

T
hat
night as he lay in his bunk, Sinkler pondered the plan. An hour would pass
before anyone started looking for him, and even then they'd search first along
the road. As far out as the prisoners were working, it'd take at least four
hours to get the bloodhounds on his trail, and by the time the dogs tracked him
to Asheville he'd be on a train. It could be months, or never, until such a
chance came again. But the suddenness of the opportunity unsettled him. He
should take a couple of days, think it out. The grit in the gears would be Lucy.
Giving her the slip in Asheville would be nigh impossible, so he'd be with her
until the next stop, probably Knoxville or Raleigh. Which could be all for the
better. A hotel room and a bottle of bootleg whiskey and they'd have them a high
old time. He could sneak out early morning while she slept. If she took what her
husband had hidden, she'd have enough for a new start, and another reason not to
drop a dime and phone the police.

Of course, many a convict would simply wait until
trail's end, then let a good-sized rock take care of it, lift what money she
had, and be on his way. Traveling with a girl that young was a risk. She might
say or do something to make a bluecoat suspicious. Or, waking up to find him
gone, put the law on him just for spite.

The next morning, the men loaded up and drove to
where they'd quit the day before. They weren't far from the farmhouse now, only
a few hundred yards. As he carried the buckets up the road, Sinkler realized
that if Lucy knew the trail, then the husband did too. The guards would see the
farmer in the field and tell him who they were looking for. How long after that
would he find out that she was gone? It might be just minutes before the husband
went to check. But only if the guards were looking in that direction. When the
time came, he'd tell Vickery this well was low and the farmer wouldn't let him
use it anymore, so he had to go back down the road to the widow's. He could walk
in that direction and then cut into the woods and circle back.

Sinkler was already drawing water when Lucy came
out. Primping for him, he knew, her hair unpinned and freshly combed, curtaining
a necklace with a heart-shaped locket. She smelled good too, a bright and clean
smell like honeysuckle. In the distance, the husband was strapped to his horse,
the tandem trudging endlessly across the field. From what Sinkler had seen, the
man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it.
Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at
eighteen. Sinkler stepped closer to the barn and she raised her mouth to his,
found his tongue with her tongue.

“I been thirsting for that all last night and this
morning,” Lucy said when she broke off the kiss. “That's what it's like—a
thirsting. Chet ain't never been able to stanch it, but you can.”

She laid her head against his chest and held him
tight. Feeling the desperation of her embrace, Sinkler knew that she'd risk her
life to help him get away, help them get away. But a girl her age could turn
quick as a weather vane. He set his hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly
pushed her back enough to meet her eyes.

“You ain't just playing some make-believe with me,
because if you are it's time to quit.”

“I'll leave this second if you got need to,” Lucy
said. “I'll go get his money right now. I counted it this morning when he left.
It's near seven dollars. That's enough, ain't it, at least to get us
tickets?”

“You've never rode a train, have you?” Sinkler
asked.

“No.”

“It costs more than that.”

“How much more?”

“Closer to five each,” Sinkler said, “ just to get
to Knoxville or Raleigh.”

She touched the locket.

“This is a pass-me-down from my momma. It's pure
silver and we could sell it.”

Sinkler slipped a hand under the locket, inspected
it with the feigned attentiveness of a jeweler.

“And all this time I thought you had a heart of
gold, Lucy Sorrels,” Sinkler said, and smiled as he let the locket slide off his
palm. “No, darling. You keep it around your pretty neck. I got plenty for
tickets, and maybe something extra for a shiny bracelet to go with that
necklace.”

“Then I want to go tomorrow,” Lucy said, and moved
closer to him. “My bleed time is near over.”

Sinkler smelled the honeysuckle and desire swamped
him. He tried to clear his mind and come up with reasons to delay but none
came.

“We'll leave in the morning,” Sinkler said.

“All right,” she said, touching him a moment longer
before removing her hand.

“We'll have to travel light.”

“I don't mind that,” Lucy said. “It ain't like I
got piddling anyway.”

“Can you get me one of his shirts and some
pants?”

Lucy nodded.

“Don't pack any of it until tomorrow morning when
he's in the field,” Sinkler said.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “I mean, for
good?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I was notioning California. They say it's like
paradise out there.”

“That'll do me just fine,” Sinkler said, then
grinned. “That's just where an angel like you belongs.”

T
he
next morning, he told Vickery that the Sorrelses' well was going dry and he'd
have to backtrack to the other one. “That'll be almost a mile jaunt for you,”
Vickery said, and shook his head in mock sympathy. Sinkler walked until he was
out of sight. He found himself a marker, a big oak with a trunk cracked by
lightning, then stepped over the ditch and entered the woods. He set the buckets
by a rotting stump, close enough to the oak tree to be easily found if something
went wrong. Because Sinkler knew that, when it came time to lay down or fold,
Lucy might still think twice about trusting someone she'd hardly known two
weeks, and a convict at that. Or the husband might notice a little thing like
Lucy not gathering eggs or not putting a kettle on for supper, things Sinkler
should have warned her to do.

Sinkler stayed close to the road, and soon heard
the clink of leg chains and the rasp of shovels gathering dirt. Glimpses of
black and white caught his eye as he made his way past. The sounds of the chain
gang faded, and not long after that the trees thinned, the barn's gray planking
filling the gaps. Sinkler did not enter the yard. Lucy stood just inside the
farmhouse door. He studied the shack for any hint that the farmer had found out.
But all was as it had been, clothing pinned on the wire between two trees,
cracked corn spilled on the ground for the chickens, the axe still on the porch
beside the hoe. He angled around the barn until he could see the field. The
farmer was there, hitched to the horse and plow. Sinkler called her name and
Lucy stepped out on the porch. She wore the same muslin dress and carried a
knotted bedsheet in her hand. When she got to the woods, Lucy opened the
bedsheet and removed a shirt and what was little more than two flaps of tied
leather.

“Go over by the well and put these brogans on,”
Lucy said. “It's a way to fool them hounds.”

“We need to get going,” Sinkler said.

“It'll just take a minute.”

He did what she asked, checking the field to make
sure that the farmer wasn't looking in their direction.

“Keep your shoes in your hand,” Lucy said, and
walked toward Sinkler with the shirt.

When she was close, Lucy got on her knees and
rubbed the shirt cloth over the ground, all the way to his feet. Smart of her,
Sinkler had to admit, though it was an apple-knocker kind of smart.

“Walk over to the other side of the barn,” she told
him, scrubbing the ground as she followed.

She motioned him to stay put and retrieved the
bedsheet.

“This way,” she said, and led him down the slanted
ground and into the woods.

“You expect me to wear these all the way to
Asheville?” Sinkler said after the flapping leather almost tripped him.

“No, just up to the ridge.”

They stayed in the woods and along the field's far
edge and then climbed the ridge. At the top Sinkler took off the brogans and
looked back through the trees and saw the square of plowed soil, now no bigger
than a barn door. The farmer was still there.

Lucy untied the bedsheet and handed him the pants
and shirt. He took off his stripes and hid them behind a tree. Briefly, Sinkler
thought about taking a little longer before he dressed, suggesting to Lucy that
the bedsheet might have another use. Just a few more hours, he reminded himself,
you'll be safe for sure and rolling with her in a big soft bed. The chambray
shirt wasn't a bad fit, but the denim pants hung loose on his hips. Every few
steps, Sinkler had to hitch them back up. The bedsheet held nothing more and
Lucy stuffed it in a rock crevice.

“You bring that money?” he asked.

“You claimed us not to need it,” Lucy said, a
harshness in her voice he'd not heard before. “You weren't trifling with me
about having money for the train tickets, were you?”

“No, darling, and plenty enough to buy you that
bracelet and a real dress instead of that flour sack you got on. Stick with me
and you'll ride the cushions.”

They moved down the ridge through a thicket of
rhododendron, the ground so aslant that in a couple of places he'd have tumbled
if he hadn't watched how Lucy did it, front foot sideways and leaning backward.
At the bottom, the trail forked. Lucy nodded to the left. The land continued
downhill, then curved and leveled out. After a while, the path snaked into the
undergrowth and Sinkler knew that without Lucy he'd be completely lost. You're
doing as much for her as she for you, he reminded himself, and thought again
about what another convict might do, what he'd known all along he couldn't do.
When others had brought a derringer or Arkansas toothpick to card games, Sinkler
arrived empty-handed, because either one could take its owner straight to the
morgue or to prison. He'd always made a show of slapping his pockets and opening
his coat at such gatherings. “I'll not hurt anything but a fellow's wallet,”
he'd say. Men had been killed twice in his presence, but he'd never had a weapon
aimed in his direction.