The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,114
you in your lady clothes.”
I grab Missy Lavinia’s arm, steer her away and figure I might as well look for some of my own kind to ask after Mr. Washburn. Down the boardwalk, a boy’s hollering for boots to shine. He’s a skinny brown thing maybe about Juneau Jane’s age. I work my way over there and ask him my question.
“Might know,” he says. “But I don’t give answers free, ’less I’m shinin’ shoes at the same time. Them shoes you got ain’t worth shinin’, but you gimme five cents, want it done, I’d do it, but back in the alley, though. Can’t have the white folk think I do colored shoes. Won’t let me to use my brushes on them after.”
Nothing comes free in this town. “Reckon I can find out someplace else to ask…unless you want to trade for it.”
The eyes go to slits in his tan-brown face. “What you wantin’ to trade?”
“Got a book,” I say. “Book to write the names of people you lost in the war, or who was sold from you before the freedom. You missing any of your people? We can put their names in the book. Ask after them all the places we go. You got three cents for a stamp, and fifty cents for the advertisement, we can write up a whole note about your people, and send it to the Southwestern newspaper. It goes by delivery all over Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, to the churches where they can call it out from the pulpit, case your people are there. You missing any people?”
“Ain’t got none at all,” the boy says. “My mam and pap’s both killed by the fever. Never remembered neither one of ’em. Got no people to look for.”
Something tugs my pants, and I look down, and there’s a old colored woman, sitting cross-legged against the wall. She’s wrapped in a blanket, her back so humped she can scarce turn her face up to get a look at me. Her eyes are cloudy and dull. A basket of pralines sits in her lap, with a sign I can’t read, except some of the letters. Her skin is dark and cracked as dry leather.
She wants me to come close. I go to squat down, but Missy Lavinia tries to pull my arm. “Stop troubling me,” I tell her. “You just stand there.”
“I can’t buy your goods,” I tell the woman. “I’d do it if I could.” She’s a poor, ragged thing.
Her voice is so quiet, I have to lean close to hear her over the racket of men and wagons and horses passing by. “I got people,” she says. “You help me seek my people?” She reaches for the tin cup that sits with her, shakes it, and listens hard for the sound. Can’t be more than a few cents in there.
“You keep them coins,” I say. “We’ll put you in our book with the Lost Friends. Ask after your people anyplace we go.”
I move Missy Lavinia over to the wall. Set her down on a painted bench in front of a window. She’s white, so she can sit there, I reckon.
I go back and rest on my knees beside the woman. “Tell me about your people. I’ll remember it, and soon’s there comes a chance, I’ll get it in our Book of Lost Friends.”
She says her name is Florida. Florida Jones. And while the music plays someplace nearby and folks stroll on the boardwalk, and a smith’s hammer sings out whang-ping-ping, whang-ping-ping, and horses snort and lick their muzzles, dozing lazy at the hitch racks, Florida Jones tells me her tale.
When she’s done, I say it all back to her. All seven names of her children, and the names of her three sisters and two brothers, and the places where they been carried off from her and who by. I wish I could write it down. I’m carrying the book and what’s left of the pencil, but I can’t make enough letters and how they sound. Don’t know how to work the pencil, either.
Florida’s thin hands reach out, cold on my skin. Her shawl falls away, and I see the