When I Crossed No-Bob (4 page)

Little Bit and me, we don't say much. We just are and we are that together. We already had our fight down near Clear Creek at her brother's wedding, so it's like we've gotten that out of the way, and it was a good fight, because we were equal and neither one of us won and the two of us, we know how strong and how weak the other is.

While we are out and about we pick and collect the last of the wild plums that grow along a ditch in the thickets. We can help Miss Irene make jelly and pies.

You work and you work and you work and you eat some and you sleep some and you get up and start all over. Every now and then you get hit with hard times or good—who's to say? But then there are these tiny times in between when you look up at the tops of trees swaying or you sit down to a fine meal with a new family or you wake up alone and by the end of the day, you got yourself your first friend.

***

At my seat in the schoolhouse I look down at my slate board and I think and think. Each Monday we are to write a composition. So far our titles include "The Past," "Napoleon Bonaparte," and "A Snow Scene." Each Friday we have to memorize and recite a poem. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The title for our composition today is "Egypt."

I stare back down at my slate board. There is all that blank space that looks like my life. It is easier to look at that slate and think up funny things to do. It is easier to make mischief.

"Addy?" Mr. Frank says to me.

Everyone looks up.

"Just start. The words will come once you get started."

"I don't have any words for Egypt, Mr. Frank."

Mr. Frank, he thinks on this.

"Then write about your mother, Addy. Just talk to me. Write like you talk. Write everything you told me when we were working outside." He doesn't wait for me to complain. He just lets me sit there, picturing Momma kneeling in the front yard every morning to set up a new egg. I think of where she might be now. Somewhere in Texas where there's nothing but cowboys and tumbleweeds.

I don't follow Mr. Frank's advice. I don't want to bore him with what I already told him.

I set out to write. I write down the pictures in my head. I write about Momma and how she lifts her feet up feeling powerful whenever she wore her shoes. I write how Momma gave me sage and catnip to break my hives when I was a baby, and how later she showed me the ways to heal because, she told me, living amongst O'Donnells you need to know all the ways of healing.

I write about how right before he left, Pappy got into that brawl with Garner O'Donnell, the brother he plowed. I write how Garner shot Pappy. I write how exactly Momma sewed Pappy up and made a poultice of mullein and other healing herbs. And with that poultice, he left. Pappy up and left us.

I write and write. I write about Uncle Nub and Uncle Stick, who lived across the way from each other. Neither one of them had ears. I write until my hand hurts.

After the noon meal, while Mr. Frank naps against one of the bigger trees in the schoolyard, me and Little Bit drape a black snake across his ankles. All the schoolchildren stop the games they would not play with me. They come have themselves a look, and already they are giggling. The snake is dead, but Mr. Frank doesn't know that.

He wakes up all right and he keeps still the way you are supposed to around a snake. He lays there, waiting for it to slide away, and we children can hardly stand it. Maybe he hears someone giggle, or maybe he figures things out his own self, but when he sees that the snake is a might slow and it's not spitting out its forked tongue, licking its snake lips, Mr. Frank carefully lifts a stick and flips that snake fast. He sees that snake flop dead with a thud, and this is when we all laugh. Maybe Mr. Frank doesn't know what I know about snakes. King snakes and black snakes and green snakes aren't poisonous here. But watch out for a water moccasin, a copperhead, or a ground rattler. They are plenty harmful.

When we children see that Mr. Frank is not laughing, not even smiling, everyone around me runs and hides, leaving just me and Little Bit standing there.

Turns out Mr. Frank doesn't like the joke.

I can see from Mr. Frank's eyes that he wants to whup us both good, but he does not. He sits us down in seats in the front of the schoolhouse and he has me and Little Bit copy down over and over what he calls the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Then he takes Little Bit to the back of the room where I hear him whisper "Shameful."

I feel terrible bad about what I done. Mr. Frank and Miss Irene took me in on their wedding day, and what do I do? I lay a dead black snake across his legs. What kind of a thank-you is that?

How come being nasty comes so easy to me?

As I copy the words, I slip the heels of my feet out of my shoes. Mr. Frank gave me these shoes. He made them himself, and darn it all if they are not the hardest, stiffest, most uncomfortable things I ever wore. They are brown brogans that come up just above my ankle and they are no good for running or climbing. He made them from cowhide, tanned on his own place, but I slip them off and wiggle my toes in the air.

I think about No-Bob then, where I always went barefooted. My feet know the land there. I know the houses, the people—my people. I know every stream, field, tree, animal, and a good many rocks too. Not knowing such things here in this place, always having to consider right from wrong, wears me out. Every day there is so much thinking to do, figuring, conjecturing. And that is
outside
the schoolhouse.

On the walk home from school, Mr. Frank tells me he has read what I wrote today in school and he says I did a good job. At first I think he's talking about the golden rule lines, but then I remember the other things I wrote about No-Bob.

"I know it's hard for you to be away from your home and your people and everything that you know so well," he says. "It must be especially hard to learn new ways of doing things."

I stare at a magnolia tree then and notice the buds turning red, and it doesn't seem right or real that Momma's not seeing it too. These days feel mixed up because Momma's not here, not beside me looking, watching, telling me about the leaves on a magnolia and how they're so stiff and waxy, they almost never fall apart and come undone.

We pass the creek where we say bye to Little Bit, who walks alone the rest of her way home. Mr. Frank and I take a minute to wash our hands. I splash my face with water and rub hard on the scar that runs down the side of my nose. Dirt and water go there first and run through it like a river. I reach down to take a sip of water and catch a water beetle with my fingers, and something comes out of it because that water beetle stings me. I wonder if it hurt me because I hurt it.

"Come on, Addy," Mr. Frank says. "I'm hungry." He looks at me, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, dabs my face dry. I want to tell him how much I miss Momma, but I don't. We look at each other and smile. I guess me and Mr. Frank, we don't have to say much.

I set the water beetle in the water and turn it loose.

***

That night Miss Irene confides that she has not gotten much sleep of late because she is not used to sharing her bed with Mr. Frank, who kicks in his sleep. I decide to help out.

In the middle of the night, I sneak into their room and tie Mr. Frank's big toe to the bedpost just like Momma done me once to keep me from kicking her. But the next morning when Mr. Frank gets up and trips and falls because he didn't know his toe was hooked up with the bed, neither he nor Miss Irene think I've helped.

At school, we relearn some about the war. It all started because Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard fired the first shot, a man with a too-long name. We look at pictures of Ulysses'S. Grant. I always did think Mr. Grant was a might better-looking than Robert E. Lee, but I keep that bit to myself.

Then, finally, we put the past behind us and we begin a new subject called geography. Mr. Frank stands in front of the schoolroom with his nose bandaged up from his fall just that morning. He shows us a map from a book called
Atlas,
and it is there that we children see the world all charted out. On the page, in this book, the lines are so clear. There is the United States of America with the shapes of each state marked
with straight lines, but when you get up close, they squiggle here and there. There are lines for rivers and jig jags for mountains.

"There's still a lot of room here," I say, pointing to the West, wide open and unlined.

"Yes, there is, Addy." With the bandage and his nose all plugged up, he talks like he has a cold. "Many go out there to seek their fortunes and maybe even mark the land with their own names."

"Didn't your grandpa go out west?" Rew Smith asks Mr. Frank.

"Yes, he did, Rew. To Texas."

"That's where my pappy went." For a minute, me and Mr. Frank, we look at each other. This might be the first thing we have in common. I wonder if he misses his grandpa like I do my momma and pappy.

"Where's No-Bob? Where's Smith County? Where are all our roads and rivers?" Little Bit wants to know.

"They're not on this map. A lot of the smaller places don't get put on a big map like this. But there are the big rivers here." Mr. Frank, he points out all the big rivers. He calls them sources for the little rivers. He says if a river forgets its
source, it dries up. He points to the river Strong. I remember what Little Bit told me. Their slave, Buck, crossed that river called Strong.

Mr. Frank, he starts explaining our assignment. He says he'd like each of us to decide on a place and make a map of it. It can be our house, our neighborhood, our town, or even a road.

"Draw it out like you see here," Mr. Frank says. "Write the names of the rivers and paths if you know them. Write down what you know about this place. You can work individually or with partners." I have a feeling that today Mr. Frank wants us to do our work and leave him alone. Especially me.

"How long do we have?" Little Bit wants to know. Already we know we'll be partners. We're leaning forward ready to run out of the schoolhouse. I want to take Little Bit where I know no one else goes. We want to map uncharted territory.

Mr. Frank eyes us all there in the room. His eyes look puffy from the fall. He should be more careful when he gets out of bed.

"You got two days."

We children scatter, making big plans to chart out our own slice of Smith County.

***

Late that afternoon, Little Bit and me walk home with Mr. Frank. At the creek, Little Bit goes her own way toward her own house. As we near our house, Mr. Frank perks up when he sees who's on the front porch.

"Well, look who we have here. Addy, come meet an old friend of mine, Tempy." A small-headed, red-haired man and a pretty sand-colored woman sit on the front porch with Miss Irene, sipping coffee.

Mr. Frank makes the introductions. The pretty sand-colored woman is called Zula and she looks to be full-blooded Choctaw. She looks at me and says, "I know you," and I look back and say, "I don't think so."

She is expecting a baby and I'm guessing she's this Mr. Tempy's wife. I have never seen nor thought of a white man marrying a Choctaw woman. I think of what Pappy and Momma would say, how they would call her a bone picker, how they would wonder about this Mr. Tempy, but still, I can't help but wonder why such a pretty lady would marry that small-headed, red-haired man.

No one says so, but it appears this Mr. Tempy has traveled a ways. Miss Irene says he lives in a place on the Leaf River right outside Taylorsville.

They are on their way to Mobile to drive the fattest hogs I
ever seen and sell one hundred dollars' worth. He has brought sweet potatoes and cornmeal from a barrel marked u.s. He says years ago the federal government put him in charge of distributing federal food because they didn't trust the Confederates, but the food was so slow to get down south, most everyone has forgotten about it by now.

"If you're not a Confederate," I say, "does that make you a Yankee?"

Mr. Frank laughs and says the war's over, but he looks at Mr. Tempy to see what he says.

"I'm neither Confederate nor Yankee, Miss Addy, though I once fought for the feds. Not everyone can be so easily divided into two groups of either-or. Some would call me a deserter, but I believe I've deserted no one. I'm for peace. I'm for family. Period."

"I think my momma told me about the likes of you," I say. "You one of those Jones County deserters?"

"Who might your momma be?"

"She's an O'Donnell," Mr. Frank says, as though this should explain everything, and that gets me riled.

"She says about three hundred well-armed deserters have a little town called the Free State of Jones," I say. "She says you all are traitors and you all should be shot."

"Addy," Mr. Frank says.

"Addy, you're being rude to our guests," Miss Irene says. "You come inside with me this instant."

"No, no. She's fine," Mr. Tempy says. "Miss Addy, I would love for you to pay us a visit where we live under the tall pines and canebrakes. Be our guest. Besides, most of the folks you call deserters have moved on. Mostly it's a few of us and the Choctaw. We're free of everything there. Free of judgments from family, friends, and foes. Come whenever you'd like. I think you might like it there."

"Yes, sir," I say. "Thank you kindly. But I have supper to tend to." I go inside and start fixing up the cornbread. I'm flustered, the way I see some chickens are sometimes, and I'm not sure why.

From inside, I can hear Mr. Frank telling Mr. Tempy about the general store he wants to start. Mr. Frank would have to take regular runs to New Orleans for supplies. Mr. Tempy says he'd be happy to go along with him—safety in numbers, he says. He goes off for a while about the great cities of America before and after the war—Charleston, Natchez, Chicago, and more. Mr. Tempy says traveling now can be dangerous. You have to carry a gun, always loaded. Bandits and thieves are on the road, at the ready, knowing you're
loaded with either cash or supplies. They don't just take. They kill too. I walk over toward the open door to hear Mr. Tempy whisper about a story I already know. Two brothers rob men, rip open their bellies, take out their entrails, then stuff the bodies with stones or sand to sink them in the rivers.