The men brung us a few pennies here, a dime there, a box of Lucifers for starting fires, tallow candles, biscuits and corn pone from the boat’s galley. “To help your travels,” they’d say. We didn’t ask for it, but they gave it over. Been eating better on this trip than in my whole life. Can’t recall a time when my belly was full days in a row like this.
I’ll miss the Katie P. and her men, but it’s time to go.
“Need to get her on her feet,” I say of Missy Lavinia, who just sits till you pick her up and move her like a rag doll, from one place to the other. She don’t fight, but she don’t help, either. The worst is taking her to the stalls at the back of the boat to do her necessary, couple times a day like a little child, which Juneau Jane won’t do. Folks clear a path when they see us come, don’t want to get close to Missy. She hisses at them if she feels like it, sounds like the boiler of the Katie P.
Makes things easier, getting off the boat at the landing, though. Other passengers back off and Juneau Jane and me get the whole gangplank to ourselves. Even the deckhands and the cabin crew stand away. Mostly they’re kind enough, though, and slip us little tokens and another penny and dime as we pass.
They lean close to whisper the reminders.
“?’Member to keep a ear for my people, if you’re able. Surely do appreciate it much.”
“My mammy’s name, July Schiller…”
“My sister is Flora, brothers Henry, Isom, and Paul…”
“My brothers were Hap, Hanson, Jim, and Zekiel. All born as Rollinses, owned by Perry Rollins in Virginee. Pappy was Solomon Rollins. A blacksmith man. All been sold south twenty-year ago, now, marched off in a trader’s coffle to settle a debt. Never thought to see them again in this world. You boys tell their names for me everyplace you go, I’d be grateful. And I’ll keep puttin’ you in the Lord’s way, so He don’t forget about you, neither.”
“My wife name Rutha. Twin gals Lolly and Persha. Bought off Master French’s place by a man name Compton.”
Juneau Jane steers over to a stack of cordwood and asks me for the Lost Friends papers, so she can make sure we ain’t forgot anybody.
“I got them safe.” I pat our pack. “We already wrote down all the names they just reminded us of. Besides, I got the list in my mind, too.” I know about remembering names. Been doing that since six years old and Jep Loach’s wagon, not so far from this place.
Juneau Jane perches herself on a log and waits for me to hand over the bundle. “What is preserved in writing is safe from failures of the mind.”
“People lose papers.” We ain’t been friends on this journey, her and me. Just two people in need of each other right now. That’s all it is. All it’s ever gonna be. “My mind is sure to go along wherever I do.”
“People lose their minds, too.” She gives a hard look toward Missy, who’s plunked herself down alongside the woodpile. There’s a little green snake winding through the grass toward her britches leg. Her hat’s tipped like she’s watching it, but she don’t even move to chase it off.
I take a stick and shoo the thing away, and think Juneau Jane would’ve just let it crawl right on to where it was headed. She’s a mysterious thing, this fawn-skinned girl that’s a pitiful skinny, big-eyed boy now. Sometimes she’s like a quiet, sad little child. It’s then that I think, Maybe it ain’t so easy for a yellow girl to make a life, either. Sometimes, she just seems cold. A wicked, devil-fired creature like her mama and the rest of their kind.
Bothers me that I can’t cipher her out, but she could’ve left me and Missy behind at the river landing, and she didn’t. She paid the fare for us with her horse money. I wonder at what that means.
Sitting down beside her on the woodpile, I hand over