pop-pop of bubbles in the mud, the heavy-throated bullfrog, the skeeters and the blackflies buzzing. Dragonflies hum back and forth over stands of saw grass and muscadine vines. A mockingbird sings his borrowed songs all hooked together like different-colored ribbons tied end after end.
Dog pushes through the brush into the clear of the road, stirs up a big ol’ swamp rabbit and gives a howl and bounds off after it. I wait and listen some more to see if another dog might answer, if there’s a farm or a house near, but no sound comes.
Finally, I follow the footprints up the slope.
The tracks turn and go down the road. Two people, still heading someplace afoot. Both got shoes on. The big tracks travel along straight, but the little ones wander to and fro, on the road and off it, showing there was no hurry at all. Don’t know why it’s a comfort, but it is. The footprints don’t go far before they turn off the road and start up some high ground to the other side. I stand and look, try to set my mind on whether I should follow or keep on straight. A swish of breeze blows from the dark sky ahead, and answers my question. A storm’s rising. We need shelter, a place we can lay up. That’s all there is to it.
Dog comes back. Didn’t catch the rabbit, but he’s got a squirrel he wants me to have.
“Good dog,” I tell him and gut the squirrel quick with the old hatchet, then tie it to one of the saddles. “We’ll have that later. You catch another one if you see it.”
He smiles in a dog way, and swings that ugly bare-skin tail of his, and starts off down the road along the foot tracks, and I follow.
The trail takes us up a little hill, then down again, ’cross a shallow creek where the horses stop to drink. After a while, more tracks come in from other directions. Horse tracks. Mule tracks. People tracks. The more that come together, the more they make a clear path, trod through the woods, down into the soil. People been walking in this way a long time. But always walking, or riding a horse or mule. Never a wagon.
Me and the gray and Ginger and the dog add our tracks to all that’s passed through before.
Rain catches us just after the trail gets better. Rain in kettlefuls and pails. It soaks through my clothes and runs rivers off my hat. Dog and the horses clamp their tails and arch their backs against it. I tip my head down, fighting the misery, and the only good thing is it washes the stink off of me and the saddles and the horses and Missy and Juneau Jane.
Now and again, I squint against the curtains of water, try to see, Is there anything around? But I can’t make out five foot ahead. The path turns to mush. My feet slide. The horses slip round. Old Ginger stumbles and flounders on her knees in front again. She’s so fretful about the rain, she gets right back on her feet.
We start up another rise, little rivers washing all around us. Water flows through my shoes, burns on the blisters there at first, then just turns my feet cold, so I can’t feel them at all. My body quakes till it feels like my bones might break in two.
Juneau Jane moans long and loud enough I hear it, even over the storm. Dog hears it, too, circles in behind her. Next thing, he’s back to lead the way, but I’m blinded enough that I trip over him and fall hands first in the mud.
He yelps, squirts out from under me, and skitters off running. It’s only when I’m climbing to my feet and pulling my hat out of the mud that I figure out why. There’s a place here. Little old place tucked in the trees, low roofed and built of cypress logs chinked with straw and tabby. The trail meets a half dozen other trails from other directions and leads us right to the front door of that little house.