Tomorrow River (21 page)

When I come out of the woods that end at the meadow that butts up to the creek, I can see the Jacksons’ cottage lights shining through the rustling leaves. I’d never tell Lou, but I dearly miss those evenings that Woody and me spent over at their place. Her telling us those bayou stories when she was still nice. Those yummy hush puppies Mr. Cole would do up for us. I can’t remember the last time I ate. I’m so tempted to wander over there, but I can’t. I got a sisterly duty to perform. Maybe when I get back from town. If Lou’s in one of her less wicked moods, I can persuade her to tell us a Rex the alligator tale and Mr. Cole will feed us. I could get Mama’s watch back from her, too. Mr. Cole would make her give it.

Thrilled with that plan, I’m hustling even faster towards the creek stepping stones when I hear, “Where’re ya goin’?” coming from somewhere out in front of me.

I think that Lou Jackson is talking to me and I’m getting ready to answer her back until I hear my uncle say, “It’s over.”

I douse my flashlight.

The Carmody brothers have got the same booming voice, but Uncle Blackie laughs like I imagine Satan does, that’s how I know it’s him and not Papa. He’s informing Lou that the romance has drawn to an end. He’s fixing to toss her into the trash just like I warned her he would. Just like he has so many other gals who fell under his spell, including Dagmar Epps, the bad-moraled lady who lives up at the hobo camp. They were an item for almost a year and look at her now.

“But, I . . . I . . . ,” Lou whines. “Ya can’t mean it. Don’t ya want . . . I got something real nice for ya. Lookee here.”

I peek around the tree that I’ve hidden behind. They’re only about fifty feet away, but I can’t see them clearly until the lightning strikes again. Lou is being pressed up against the side of the gardening shed by Blackie, who is handsome just like Papa, but his dark hair is wilder looking. He’s got a tattoo on his muscular arm of a lady whose bosom is barely covered by two horseshoes, and his chest bulges, too.

Lou’s blouse is all the way unbuttoned and her brassiere up around her neck. Blackie is smiling down at her pointed cookie cone chest. “I told you this right off. When I say the party’s over, it’s over, but I guess there’s nothin’ wrong with one for the road.”

Lou’s moans come out of the darkness, low and long. When the lightning comes again, I see that Blackie has slid his hand up under her skirt. He’s moving it back and forth like a saw. Lou is moving back and forth, too, until my uncle does something down there that makes her give out a choked scream.

As furious as she makes me, my heart is going out to her. Until the flame from Blackie’s Zippo lighter illuminates Mama’s watch on her wrist when he lights up a Lucky Strike. The flash of silver catches my uncle’s eye, too. “Where’d you get this?” Ripping it off, he holds the watch out of her reach. When Lou jumps for it, he smacks her away. “I’ve never seen this before. Did you steal it, girl? Answer me.” When she doesn’t, he pinches her real hard on the arm.

“It’s . . . Shen’s,” Lou wails.

“What’d ya say?” I know that Blackie heard her because even though the treetops are swishing and thunder is rolling closer, I’m having no trouble at all picking up on his belittling tone.

Lou cries, “Give it back. It’s Shenny’s.”

“Where’d that brat get something this fine?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Louise says, but if I could see her I know she’d be raising her lying right eyebrow. I told her I found Mama’s watch near the old well when we were still getting along.

Blackie says, “Looks fancy. Not for a kid. You sure this watch doesn’t belong to daaarlin’ Evelyn?” I can hear the leer in his voice. He likes Mama, and not in a relative way. He was always putting his hand on her caboose and giving it a goose and didn’t care that Papa saw.

Letting go of Lou, my uncle tucks his shirt back into his pants and says, “I’ll just take the watch and return it to Walter.”

That would be disastrous if my uncle was a man of his word. I know him too good. He’ll keep it and give it to his next Kleenex gal.

“His Honor didn’t gift it to the girls’ mother so there’s no need to return it to him.” Lou is sobbing so hard that she’s begun hiccupping. “Please . . .
hick . . .
give it back . . .
hick . . .
to me.”

How does she know that somebody else besides Papa gave Mama the watch? I wasn’t the one who told her. Woody can’t.

“What do you mean Walt
didn’t
give it to Evie?” Blackie asks, suddenly interested again. “Where’d she get it from? A beau? Was she gettin’ herself a little gravy on the side?”

“Blackie, please,” Lou says, not mad but like that girl in the patched dress who got off the Greyhound bus.

“Did Evie have a back-door lover?” My uncle sounds frantic. “Did she?”

I want to stop all this before something even worse happens, but if I dare to interfere, my uncle will drag me up to the house and shout at Papa, “Look who I found stickin’ her nose where it don’t belong again.”

Thankfully, Mr. Cole Jackson opens up the door to their cottage and thrusts out his head.

“Louise, honey? The storm’s startin’ up. Better finish up what you’re doin’.” A crack of lightning finishes his sentence off like an exclamation point. “Lou? Ya out there?”

I want to shout, “Come quick, Mr. Cole,” but I know that would only make things worse. I think of them as family, but the Jacksons are the help. If they try to go up against the Carmodys, my grandfather will make sure nobody else in town hires them once they get kicked off of Lilyfield.

After Mr. Cole steps back into the cottage, Uncle Blackie says to Lou so sickening, “Thanks for the hospitality. Take care now, ya hear?” and struts off into the woods.

I hate that.

Despise it when somebody strong takes advantage of the weak, but what can I do? Nobody, not even the meanest man I know—Grampa—would want to tangle with my uncle when he gets to acting like the cock of the walk.

I’m going to drag Lou out of this storm and back into the cottage. Mr. Cole will set out dry clothes and heat a cup of milk with a splash of brandy. When she falls asleep, I’ll snip a bit off her hair and take it up to Miss Hormel at the boardinghouse tomorrow. I’ll pay her to give Lou that hump. That may sound mean, but it really is for the best. Lou’ll get tempted to take up with him again if Blackie comes scratching at her window one of these nights because she is conveniently located. She’ll get her heart broken all over again. Of course, I’m mad at her for letting my uncle take Mama’s watch, but it’ll be easy to get back. Blackie will pass out tonight, probably on the front porch swing. I’ll sneak it out of his pocket then. He won’t even remember when he wakes up tomorrow morning that he took it off Lou, that’s how hanged over he’ll be.

I switch my flashlight back on and start heading towards the shed, but before I get even a few steps, from behind me, a hand clamps over my mouth and drags me back behind the tree. I have visions of that hugging hobo, or maybe it’s Blackie. He must’ve seen me watching him being so mean to Louise. I hunch up, listening for his snide
Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!
I am too terrified to put up a struggle and get even more so when I feel his smooth small hand. Smell his English Leather.

It’s not a wandering hobo or my disgusting uncle that’s got his arms around me.

It’s Papa.

He doesn’t shout something vile or twist me around in disgust. He doesn’t push me to the ground and tower over me yelling. He’s not even slurring when he says in his kindest of all voices, the one I still hear in my dreams, “Shenandoah? Is that you?” When I don’t turn to show him my gaping teeth the way I usually do to let him know it’s me, he assumes I’m my sister. “Jane Woodrow. I was just at the fort looking for you.”

Thank Jesus I gave Woody that sleeping pill.

I feel ashamed of myself for needing him so much that I don’t tell him that it’s me and not my twin. I can’t help myself. I want him to keep holding me. Maybe he’s come to apologize, to beg forgiveness for the way he’s been treating his precious girls. I can feel myself melting into him.

Papa says, “All this time . . . I . . . I haven’t been sure if it was you or Shenandoah I saw that night watching from up in the fort, but Doc Keller told me earlier this evening that he’s almost certain it was you, and my father . . . your grandfather . . . he agrees. He wants me to send you away.” His Honor sounds like a scared little kid. “I’ve been hoping this would all sort itself out, but it’s only gotten worse. It
was
you, wasn’t it? You saw what happened that night, didn’t you?” Hearing his desperate fear, I don’t know what else to do but nod. “It’s the Lord’s work. He took your voice away to keep us safe. If you
could
talk . . . tell what you saw . . . it would be the ruination of everything that we have worked for, do you understand, sweetheart?” Gripping me harder, he says, “You . . . you haven’t told Shenandoah, have you?” When I shake my head, I feel his muscles go stringy again. “I . . . I want you to know that I’m sorry it ended the way it did. Your mother . . . she . . . Mother misunderstood.” He spins me around and snugs my head to his chest, and I can hear the beat of his heart. “Your mama’s life may be over, but ours isn’t. Things are going to be different around here from now on. You’ll see. It’s all going to go back to the way it was before . . . before . . . We’ll stargaze together and I’ll read you the Sunday comics and whenever you and your sister want to, we’ll go to the beach. You particularly liked that when Mother . . .” He breathes in, shuddery. “All you have to do is promise me that you’ll keep doing what you’ve been doing. Not saying a word about what you saw. Can you do that for your papa? For your twin?”

I want to scream, run off and hide where I will never be found when I realize what he’s telling me, but I nod again the way he wants me to. And when I do, it’s not the cooling rain that has finally come, but his warm tears that I feel falling into my hair when he presses his lips to the top of my head and rewards me with the words I’ve been longing to hear, “I love you, my little Gemini.”

C
hapter Twenty

T
he earth has tilted off its axis.

Struggling back to the fort through the downpour, I’m shaking so bad that I can barely get a grip on the splintering steps that lead up the tree. I throw open the hatch with a bang and crawl towards where I left her. Sweeping my hands across the floor, feeling for my sister, I get a handful of Ivory instead. “Woody!” It’s not until the lightning flashes again that I see she’s not sleeping. She’s kneeling in front of the Saint Jude coffee can altar, her head bowed to her chest, her lips silently moving.

The rain pelting the tin overhang is not loud enough to drown out Papa’s words. All those interrogation sessions. The root cellar. The way I protected her from him. Woody’s been listening to me going on and on about finding our mother. I feel so betrayed when I think of all the times I told her, “We’ll do this . . . we’ll question this person. . . . don’t you worry, I’ll find her. I won’t let you down.”

I strip off my soaking shirt and throw it as hard as I can. It lands on her praying back with a
plop.
“You’re gonna make your knees bleed and I don’t know where the bandages are and even if I did I . . . Get up. Get up!” When Ivory barks, I kick at him. “Papa caught me in the woods. He thought I was you. He told me that you saw something happen to Mama the night . . . he told me . . . he was sorry it had to end the way it did. That Mama’s life was . . . over.” I yank her up by the hair and shove her across the fort. “Is that true? Talk to me! What did you see?” When Woody looks blank faced and close mouthed at me, I rip those sunglasses off her eyes and pry her mouth open with my fingers and shout down her throat, “I hate you, you stupid mute. Do you hear me? I hate you! I hate Mama! You . . . her . . . you’re nothing but deceiving, disgustin’—”

My sister draws back and slaps me across the face.

The sound of the storm and my weeping and Ivory’s whimpering are all I can hear until she takes me into her arms. We drop to the floor, curl into each other as if we are still safe inside our mother. I cry out the unspeakable, give voice to the fear that’s been crouching in the corners of my mind. “She’s . . . she’s not run off. She’s not ever comin’ back. No matter how hard I look. No matter how hard you pray. Mama’s . . . dead.”

“Hushacat,”
my twin whispers under the thunder.
“Hushacat.”

Or that could be nothing more than the wind whistling in the dark.

 

 

E
ven after I had thumbed my nose at hope, I admit, I kept it in my heart. I felt it not perching, but fluttering inside me like a bird trying to get air beneath a broken wing. Hope made me think that Mama’d come home to us, even though I suspected she wouldn’t. But then I believed she would, but after . . . I don’t know. I’ve always thought of my heart beating steady, but I see now that it doesn’t. It dashes up and down and all around, searching desperately for what it craves, it never gives up. Until it flies headlong into a brick wall.

Seemed like Woody and I stayed nested together like that for two days, maybe more. We wailed on each other’s chests until there was nothing left inside us to shed. All this time I was believing . . . trying . . . I imagined our reunion, every detail. How I’d kiss Mama’s satiny cheeks until my lips got swollen. Rub her earlobes between my fingers, envisioning a velvet party dress. Beg her to sing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

It’s so hard to accept that she’s gone and never coming back. Like how her garden would feel if the sun never rose again.

His Honor came to the bottom of the fort tree one of those sorrow-ridden nights. He didn’t call up, “I love you as much as the stars and the sky.” All he said was, “Remember your promise, Jane Woodrow. You may leave Lilyfield now, girls.”

That’s when I realized why he’d been keeping Woody and me in solitary confinement. He wasn’t worried that his twins would disappear the same way his wife did. He didn’t want us to go running around town telling folks what we saw the night our mother disappeared. What
Woody
saw anyway.