army’s come for him, anyhow. They drag him away, screaming so loud Missy covers her ears and crawls under the bunk in all the stink and mess.
The deputy shows up at our cell next, drags me out the cell door and there ain’t a thing I can do about it. “You’ll shut your yap, if you know what’s good for you,” he says.
The sheriff’s in the front room and I start to begging and telling him I hadn’t done anything. “You git,” he says, and shoves our poke into my hands. Feels like everything’s there, even the pistol and the book. “You’ve been hired for work that’s to take you out of my town. See that I don’t find your face here again, once J. B. French’s freight wagons leave.”
“But Mis—” I stop myself just short of saying Missy. “Him. I got him to see after, the big boy that come in with me. He don’t have nobody else. He’s harmless, he’s just addle-headed and simple, but I—”
“You shut yer yap! Sheriff James don’t need no word from you.” The deputy kicks me hard in the back, sending me facedown onto the floor. I land on our pack and my knees and one elbow, then scrabble around to get up again.
“The boy is to be remanded to the State Lunatic Asylum in Austin,” the sheriff says, and the deputy opens the jailhouse door then kicks me into the street and throws our goods after me.
Gus is there waiting and helps gather up the poke. “We best git gone, before their minds go to reconsiderin’ on your release,” he says.
I tell him about leaving Missy, but he don’t want no part of that.
“Look here, Hannibal. It was all I could do to get you out. You start trouble, they’ll put you in again, and there won’t be no help for that.”
I stumble along, letting Gus pull me down the street. “Act right,” he says. “What’s got into you? You’ll have us both in the stew. Mr. J. B. French and his foreman, Penberthy, they don’t stand for no guff.”
I follow along, try to reason out what to do next. The town streets, horses and wagons, colored folks and white folks, cowboys and dogs, stores and houses go past my eyes all in a mix, so I don’t see any one thing. Then there’s the alley by the courthouse and Battercake Flats. I stop and look down toward the bluff, remember sitting right there, Missy and Juneau Jane and me, eating lunch from our poke.
“This way.” Gus nudges my shoulder. “Just down a bit in the wagon yard. They done packed up the one freighter, and the last of the crew is to ride up top of the load. We’ll join with the wagons from Weatherford and then leave southward from there. We ain’t got time to dally.”
“I’ll come on,” I say, and push the pokes into Gus’s hands before he can say no. “I’ll come on, but there’s something I got to do first.”
I turn and run, through the streets and the alleys, past yapping dogs and spooked horses at hitch rings. I know I shouldn’t, but I go back to the place where all the trouble started. Where Old Florida and the shoeshine boy work their business, near the bathhouse. I ask them of Juneau Jane, and they say they ain’t seen her, and so I hurry round the back. There, I stop and watch the workers come and go, hauling the water in and out in buckets.
A wide, round-faced colored woman comes out to take clothes off a alley line. She laughs and teases with some of the others. I move her way, thinking to ask her of Juneau Jane.
I don’t even get near there before a man steps out on the gallery above. He tips his head back and blows smoke into the air from a cigar. It curls under the brim of his hat and slips away as he comes to the rail to tap ashes over. When he does, I see the melted scars along his face and the patch over his eye. Takes everything I have to turn around slow, not run, just walk. I squeeze