dinner and maybe even breakfast for the next day.
Emmy sat in the wild grass at the edge of a plowed field pretending Puff was a hungry lion stalking Mose and me.
Offhand, I asked, “Emmy, do you remember last night?”
“What about it?” she said in a distracted way, adjusting Puff on her hand.
“Do you remember talking to me in the middle of the night?”
“No.” She growled and thrust Puff toward Mose, who shrank back in appropriate terror.
“You don’t remember giving me something?”
“Unh-uh.” She shook her head and turned her attention fully to attacking Mose. I decided for the moment not to pursue the question further.
We’d passed a farmhouse not far back, and I’d seen laundry hanging on a line in the backyard. I took three dollars from the pillowcase, told Mose and Emmy I’d be right back, and headed upriver.
Near the farmhouse, I crouched among the trees along the riverbank. There was an old barn, badly in need of paint. The bared places on the walls were gray and the wood looked soft and rotting. The structure leaned a bit, like a tired old man. The farmhouse was small and in not much better shape than the barn. There was a chicken coop with a bunch of hens and chicks inside, pecking at the ground and sometimes at one another. The clothesline behind the house held overalls and undershorts and shirts, some big and some not so big, the clothing of a man and his son, perhaps. That’s what had caught my eye when we passed on the river.
I watched for a while and saw no sign of life and finally walked carefully into the yard. The shirts were old, patched and mended many times. I carefully unpinned two of the larger and one that was smaller. As I pulled the last from the line, it revealed a little girl standing before me, as if she’d materialized as part of a magic trick. She was not much older than Emmy, with blond pigtails and big blue eyes. She didn’t look much better fed than the kids at Lincoln School. She wore a small sack dress and her feet were bare.
“Hello,” I said.
“Those are my pa’s shirts,” she said. “And Henry’s.”
“Henry is your brother?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Where are they?”
“Working for Mr. McAdams.”
“Does he live around here?”
“Has a big farm other side of Crawford. Pa used to farm here, but the bank took our land away.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“Works in town. Irons and cleans for Mrs. Drover.”
“What’s your name?”
“Abigail. What’s yours?”
“Buck,” I said.
“You stealing those?” she asked.
“Not at all, Abigail. I’m buying them.”
I pulled out the dollars I’d taken from the pillowcase and used a clothespin to hang them on the line, which was too high for Abigail to reach.
“Are you rich?” she asked.
“Just lucky. It’s been very nice meeting you, Abigail, but I have to go now.”
“Back to the railroad tracks?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Cuz that’s where everybody comes from looking for food or work or a place to sleep for the night. Ma says it’s important we do what we can. They never have money, though.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Back to the railroad tracks. See if I can catch me a train to Sioux Falls.”
“Trains don’t stop in Crawford.”
“Maybe I’ll have to hike to the next town where they do stop.”
“Lincoln,” she said.
“Then Lincoln it is. Goodbye, Abigail.”
I walked away, but not back to the river. I strolled up the dirt lane in front of the house to the place where it joined the county road, then to the other side, where the railroad tracks lay. I stood on the bed of broken rock, smelling the creosote from the ties, and stared back at the farmhouse. It was old and worn, like the shirts I’d taken, but I could understand how inviting it might seem to someone who had even less than Abigail’s family and was walking the rails in search of a kind and restful place to come to.
I headed toward town for a while, then cut back across the next field to the river. Albert had returned, and he let me have it with both barrels.
“Where the hell were you?”
“Fetching replacements for our Lincoln uniforms,” I said and proudly held up the shirts.
“Where’d you get those?”
“Farmhouse upriver.”
“Stole them?” There was such anger in his face, I thought he might hit me.
“I’m no thief. I paid for them.”
He glanced at the pillowcase. “How much?”
“A dollar apiece.”
Mose’s eyebrows shot up and he signed, For those rags?
“Who’d you pay?” Albert demanded.
I decided it was best not