not a word. When Albert had gone to help Mr. Schofield fix his broken truck, I’d let on that it was just a family I’d come to know, a family in need. I wasn’t sure why I’d kept my true relationship with the Schofields a secret or my deep feelings for their daughter. I tried to tell myself it was because I wanted Maybeth—even if it was just the memory of Maybeth—all to myself, unsullied by the need to explain anything, protected from the jabs Albert might take at this first love of mine.
But as I watched that piece of driftwood going round and round, I finally accepted the truth, which was that I’d already sensed the cracks threatening to divide Albert and Emmy and Mose and me, and I was afraid that we were falling apart. In that terrible moment, I couldn’t help wondering, much to my own dismay, if I’d chosen to stay with the wrong family.
“The imp and princess didn’t get married,” I finally said to Emmy. “The princess stayed to help her people and the imp went his own way.”
“Oh,” she said, her face sad.
“Love doesn’t always work out,” I told her and threw a rock at the river.
We canoed until dusk, when we reached the outskirts of a town.
Albert said, “Forrest gave me a general idea of the river. That must be Le Sueur ahead. Let’s pull in for the night.”
We made camp in a little cove. As we settled in for the evening, we heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the town.
“Who’s shooting?” Emmy asked.
“And who are they shooting at?” I added.
Albert cocked his head and listened, then a smile came to his lips. “Not gunshots. Firecrackers. Today’s the Fourth of July.”
* * *
ALTHOUGH AT THE Lincoln School we were never allowed fireworks, every year on Independence Day, we were paraded into town, where we joined other citizens gathered near Ulysses S. Grant Park to watch the Jaycees shoot off their skyrockets and artillery shells and booming mortars. I think now how unfitting it was to force children who had no freedom, whose freedom had, in fact, been ripped from their people decades before, to take part in this observance. But the truth was we all loved these mesmerizing displays of aerial splendor, and after the lights had gone out in our dormitories, we whispered among ourselves, replaying the best moments and recalling especially the magnificence of the finale.
The fireworks in Le Sueur began not long after dusk. The park must not have been far from the river, because the explosions in the sky and the sound of their reports came very close together, the booms shaking the air around us.
“Oh, look,” Emmy cried when a huge chrysanthemum of magenta sparks blossomed amid a shower of gold. In her excitement, she grabbed Amdacha’s hand. I saw him flinch, then relax and, to my great amazement and relief, smile, the first smile I’d seen on his lips in what seemed like forever.
“Play something, Odie,” Emmy begged when the night grew quiet again.
My heart was beginning to feel light but not particularly patriotic, so I put my Hohner harmonica to my lips and blew the notes for “Down by the Riverside,” a song Emmy’s mother had taught me and whose tune and lyrics always lifted my spirits.
Emmy picked up on it right away, throwing her little heart into singing, “Gonna lay down my sleepy head, down by the riverside . . .”
Albert joined in a few bars later, “Ain’t gonna study war no more, ain’t gonna study war no more . . .”
At the third stanza, Amdacha began to sign the words.
We risked a fire that night and sat together, talking quietly around the flames, as we had on many nights since we’d taken to the rivers. It began to feel to me as if what had been broken was coming together again, but I knew it would never be exactly the same. With every turn of the river, we were changing, becoming different people, and for the first time I understood that the journey we were on wasn’t just about getting to Saint Louis.
Emmy lay her head against my shoulder and nodded off. I put her on her blanket, but she woke for a moment and held to me, so I lay down to keep her company.
Albert and Amdacha stayed at the dying fire, their faces dimly lit by the last of the flames.
“I’m sorry,” Albert said.
What for? Amdacha signed.
“I knew my mother and