The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,149

bears no resembling to this one in the bed. Even the big voice that’d call out our names, now it just moans and moans.

The memories come back on me when the soldiers leave us with him in the long hospital building at Fort McKavett. Back before the freedom, there was always a big Christmastime party where Marse had gifts wrapped for each one of us—new shoes made there on the place and two new sack dresses for work, two new shimmies, six yards of fabric per child, eight for women and men, and a white cotton dress with a ribbon sash so’s the Gossett slaves would look finer than all the others, going off to the white people’s church. That party, all us together, every one of my brothers and sisters, and mama and Aunt Jenny Angel and my cousins, and Grandmama and Grandpapa. Tables of ham and apples and Irish potatoes and real wheat bread, peppermint candy for the children, and corn liquor for the grown folk. Those were better times in a bad time.

That man in the bed loved the parties. It pleasured him to believe that we were happy, that all us stayed with him because we wanted to, not because we had to, that we didn’t want to be free. I imagine that’s what he told hisself to make it right.

I stand back from the bed now and remember all that, and I don’t know what way to feel. I want to think, This ain’t none of your affairs, Hannie. Only thing you need from this man is to know, where’s the cropper contract that’ll make sure Tati and Jason and John get treated fair? He’s took up enough of your life, him and old Missus.

But that wall won’t stay built up in me. It’s set on sand, and it shifts with his every ragged breath, trembles along with his thin, blue-white body. I can’t work up the tabby I need to mortar it solid. Dying is a hard thing to get done, sometimes. This man is having a tough time with it. The leg wound from back in Mason festered while he sat in the jail. The doctor here took off the leg, but the poison’s gone into his blood.

What I feel, I guess, is mercy. Mercy like I’d want for myself if it was me in that bed.

Juneau Jane touches him first. “Papa, Papa.” She falls to his side and takes his hand, and presses her face to it. Her skinny shoulders quake. After coming all this way and keeping brave, this is the thing that breaks her.

Missy Lavinia’s got hold of my arm with both hands. Tight. She don’t move one inch closer to him. I pat her the way I would’ve when she was tiny. “Now, you go on. He ain’t gonna bite you. Got blood poison from the bullet, that’s all. It ain’t nothing you can catch from him. You sit here on this stool. Hold his hand and don’t start that squeaking noise you did on the freight wagon, or fuss, or cry, or make any commotion. You be kind and give him comfort and peace. See if he’ll wake up a little to talk.”

She ain’t willing, though. “Come on, now,” I tell her. “That doctor said he won’t wake up much anymore, if he does at all.” I put her down on the stool and lean over crooked because she’s weighing on my arm, digging her fingers into it.

“Sit up, now.” I pull her hat off and set it on the little cabinet shelf over the bed. Every plank-wood bunk in the room, maybe a dozen on each wall, looks same as this one, but the rest have mattresses rolled up. A sparrow flits round the rafters like a soul trapped inside flesh and bone.

I smooth down Missy’s thin, wispy hair, pull it behind her head. Wish her daddy didn’t have to see her this way, if he does wake, that is. The doctor’s wife was scandaled by the sight of us when we said these were the man’s daughters who’d come to find him. She’s a kindly woman and wanted Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane to wash up and borrow proper clothes to wear, but Juneau Jane wouldn’t go anyplace