The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,111

eyes, think long into my little-girl years. “And don’t read them words back to me as you go,” I tell her. “Not this time. Just write it for now. Start it with, ‘Mr Editor: I wish to inquire for my people.’?” I like how it sounds friendly, but then I don’t know what goes next. The words don’t come in my mind.

“Tres bien.” I hear the pencil scratch across the paper and then go quiet awhile. A dove sings its soft song and Pete Rain rolls over on his blanket. “Tell me about your people,” Juneau Jane says. “Their names and what happened to them.”

The lantern flame gutters and hisses. Shadows and light flicker ’cross my eyelids, tell my story back to me, and I tell it to Juneau Jane. “My mama was named Mittie. I am the middle of nine children and am Hannie Gossett.” The chant starts in my mind. I hear Mama and me say it together under the wagon. “The others were named Hardy, Het, Pratt…”

I feel them with me, now, dancing in the pink-brown shadows behind my eyes, all us remembering our story together. When I’m through, my face is wet with tears and cool from the morning breeze. My voice is thick from the lonely that comes with how the story ends.

Pete Rain stirs on his pallet with a grunt and a sigh, and so I wipe my face and take the paper Juneau Jane gives me. I fold it to a square I can carry. Hope.

“We might send it in Fort Worth,” Juneau Jane says. “I have yet a bit of money from the sale of my horse.”

I swallow it down hard again, shake my head. “We best keep that for survivin’ just now. I’ll send this letter when I can pay its way. For now, it’s enough just to know I got it with me.” A coldness goes deep in my bones as I look off into the long stretch of sky to the west, where the last stars still labor against the dawn gray. My mama used to say they were the cook fires in heaven, the stars, that my grandmama and grandpapa and all the folk that went before us lit up the fires of heaven each night.

The letter feels heavier in my hand when I think of that. What if all my people are already up there, gathered at them fires? If nobody answers my letter, is that what it means?

Later on in the day, I wonder if Pete Rain thinks the same thing of his letter. We show it to him in the wagon, when we’re riding the last few miles to Forth Worth. “You know, I believe I’ll mail that with the fifty cents myself,” he decides and tucks it in his pocket, his face pinched and sober. “So I can say a prayer over it first.”

I decide I’ll do the same for my letter, when it’s time.

Before we part ways in town, Juneau Jane tears a scrap out of the newspapers and gives it to Pete Rain. “The address for sending your letter to the Southwestern,” she says.

“Thank you. And you boys, you tread lightly here,” he warns us again, and tucks the scrap away, too. “Fort Worth’s not the worst town for colored folk, not bad as Dallas, but not peaceable, either, and the Marston Men like this place more than most. Watch the squatter camps down along the river below the courthouse bluff, too. You can get by with pitchin’ camp there, but don’t leave your belongings behind. Nothing’s safe down in Battercake Flats. Too many folks in need, all in one place. Tough times in Fort Worth town, since the railroad’s gone bust and can’t build the line on through to here. Tough times make good people and bad people. You’ll see both.

“You need help, go visit John Pratt at the blacksmith shop, just off the courthouse. Colored fella, good man. Or the Reverend Moody and the African Methodist Episcopals at the Allen Chapel. Mind the whorehouses and the saloons. Nothing but trouble there for a young man. You want my advice—don’t stay long in Fort Worth. Move on to Weatherford or down Austin City way. There’s more future