beside the fox, and from the trees a white man stepped down, heavy-footed over twigs and leaves. His shotgun still bloomed smoke and he whistled as he approached, impressed.
“Damn,” he said, delighted. “That thing near got you.”
Rue wouldn’t look up or meet his eyes, not even when he crouched down to inspect his kill.
“Foxes is wild in this part a’ the country,” he was saying. “Like I ain’t never seen. Distemper most like.”
“Please, suh.” Rue’s voice came out in a warble, child-thin, like it had been in slaverytime when every white man was sir. “I’m lookin’ for a li’l boy. He lost.”
The man stood and Rue took it as permission to do the same. Her stomach ached. The dead fox lay between their feet and Rue couldn’t stop watching the man’s cooling gun.
“Figured somebody done run him off,” he grunted. “That boy sick or somethin’? Eyes ain’t right.”
Rue didn’t know how to answer so she didn’t. The man whistled again, this time like he was calling a dog.
At the sound a white woman waddled down from the same direction he’d come. She was less sure on her feet over the vines, for she had a drooling baby on her hip. And she led Bean by the hand. Rue knew her at once.
“Miss Conjure, ain’t it?” the white woman asked.
Rue was surprised when Bean ran straight over to her, hugged at her waist. He smiled up at Rue, didn’t seem bothered at all by the white folks or the gun or the dead fox’s unhinged neck.
“Found him wanderin’ the woods,” the woman said. “He belong to yer missus?”
Rue blinked. So they thought Bean was white? And Rue his good nurse? She felt something rise in her throat, maybe bile or bitter laughter.
“Yes. Thank you fo’ findin’ him,” she said and scooped him up in her arms. Bean was heavy in a pleasant way, and his warmth calmed the thud of her heart. “I best take him on home before his mama get to missin’ him.”
“You oughta keep better care a’ him, girl,” the white man said.
Rue wondered if under his bloodstained overalls the white man was wearing the coon penis charm she’d made for his wife.
With Bean in her arms, she walked backward a ways before she felt safe turning away from them: the man, his wife, their thriving baby, the lifeless fox. Rue broke into near a run, best she could with Bean cuddled over her shoulder.
When they came close to home Rue stirred the boy, set him down to walk on his own.
“Where was you runnin’ to?” she asked him.
“Wasn’t runnin’. Wantin’ to see my friend.”
“Which friend is that?” But at the bottom of her belly Rue felt she already knew.
“The lady”—he yawned—“that lives in the woods.”
“The lady what found you?”
“Not her.” Bean squeezed Rue’s hand. “The other lady. With the pretty red hair.”
“How you come to know her? You follow me?”
Bean shrugged. Of course. He followed Rue everywhere ’til she’d shoo him off, tell him to find somewhere else to play. The other children were averse to his strangeness, all the things that made him different. Or was it that they remembered the Ravaging, when they had sickened and some had died and Bean had lived and died and lived on? Who would want to play with a miracle?
“Her name is Auntie V. I go there when I don’t wanna be seen.”
He told it like a riddle and Rue might’ve hoped he was speaking on an imaginary friend as children sometimes did, made real enough because they believed in them. But Rue knew he knew her, Varina. Easy as he’d told Rue about it, he might tell somebody else.
The tent still glowed as Rue and Bean neared it. There were voices within, joyous. Had they given up their search for Bean as soon as that? Or rather had they given up searching in favor of praying? Rue could’ve spat.