The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,125

people know what become of you, if I’s ever to happen on your people, that is. I been asking here and there, about folk name of Gossett, wears three blue glass beads on a string. Gus McKlatchy don’t go back on a promise. Not even to somebody who’s likely drowned and dead. But you ain’t dead now, so far’s the evidence would show at this present time, so these is yours.”

I take the beads, feel that his skin is sweaty and warm where I brush across it. My fingers curl over the beads. Hold on tight, Hannie. Hold on tight, in case these could be a dream.

It’s too fine to be real, having the beads back after all this time.

“I been asking round for you,” Gus goes on. “About that Mr. William Gossett and that Mr. Washburn you made mention of, too. Didn’t learn nothin’.”

I hear him like he’s talking from the other side of a long field, acres and acres away.

I hold the beads to my face, breathe them in, roll them against my skin. I feel the story of my people. My grandmama’s story and mama’s. My story. A pounding grows in my blood and gets faster. It fills me and carries me up till I could spread my arms and fly like a bird. Fly right out of here.

“The freight wagons is going in the right gen’ral direction, see?” Gus talks on, but I don’t want him to. I want to hear the music in the beads. “Get there, find some work down thataway…Menardville, Mason, Fredericksburg, Austin City maybe. Finish saving up for us each a horse and tack. While we’re down there, I could help in askin’ after your people, if you desired it. Make some inquirin’ in places where it might be risky for a colored boy to be poking his nose. I’m a right good asker. Ask not, get not, that’s what we McKlatchys say.”

I roll the beads against my skin, breathe and breathe. I close my eyes and wonder, If I wish it hard enough, can I fly through them bars?

A rooster crows far off, and someplace closer a bell sings to the morning sun. Gus grabs a breath. “I got to go.” The donkey grunts as Gus jumps down. “Best git on about my business ’fore somebody catches sight of me here. You’ll see me again, though. As I said, Gus McKlatchy don’t break a oath.”

I open my eyes and watch him leave, his head tipping back as he whistles a song into the morning dim. Bit by bit the fog off the river takes him over, till there’s just the tune of “Oh! Susanna” and clap of the donkey’s small, round hooves and the cart singing along with each turn of the hardwood wheels. Sheee-clack-clack, sheee-clack-clack, sheee-clack-clack, sheee…

When even that’s gone, I fall back to the bunk and hold the beads in my fist and curl myself close to make sure the beads stay real.

Bright light pours through the window bars in squares by the time I wake again. It’s already halfway across the floor. It’ll go up the wall by sundown.

I open my hand and hold it high to where the light is warm and true. The beads catch sun and shine like a bird’s wing.

They’re still here. Still real.

Missy’s awake and rocking back and forth and making her noise, but I just scramble up to my feet and stand on the bunk and look out the window. Rain’s come sometime in the early hours, so I can’t see the tracks of a boy nor a cart, but I hold the beads in my hand, and so I know.

“Gus McKlatchy,” I say. “Gus McKlatchy.”

Hard to see how a boy only twelve or thirteen years old can get us out from this place, but some days you take any hope you can find, even one as poor and skinny as that pie-eater white boy, Gus.

The day weighs a little less heavy on me while the squares of light trek over the floor. I think of Gus, someplace in this town. I think of Juneau Jane, who’s not even got a dime to