can see she’s in no danger. Newspapers,” he said with disgust. “Anything to sell a few copies.” He took another pull off the contents of the mason jar. “Got to hand it to you. You’ve sure made monkeys out of a lot of cops.”
“Billy the Kid,” I said.
“What’s that?” Forrest said.
“We’re just like Billy the Kid. Desperadoes.”
“Desperadoes,” Forrest agreed and toasted us.
Albert, who’d turned quiet and dark, said it was late; we needed sleep. Forrest screwed the lid back on the mason jar and returned the hooch to the burlap bag. He took out a rolled blanket and spread it on the far side of the fire. It wasn’t long before I could hear the deep, sonorous breathing of the Indian, mixed with an occasional snore.
Mose and Emmy bedded down together on a blanket, Mose with his arm over the little girl. I’d laid myself down beside Albert. I was bone tired but feeling pretty good. The tasty catfish. The music. And the fame. Just like Billy the Kid.
Before I went to sleep I glanced at my brother. Albert lay very still, his eyes wide open, staring up at the waning moon like a man long dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE TOUCH ON my arm woke me.
At Lincoln School, because we all knew about DiMarco’s proclivities where children were concerned, we slept lightly, and an unexpected touch in the night was an alarm. My eyes shot open and I tried to rise, but I found myself pinned to the ground. When I opened my mouth, a hand clamped itself there to stifle my scream.
In the dim moonlight above me, I saw Albert and Mose. Albert had a finger to his lips, warning me to be quiet. When it was clear that I was fully awake, Mose let me go. Albert signaled for me to get up. He grabbed the blanket I’d been sleeping on and signed, Follow us. Mose handed me my boots.
Red coals still glowed among the ashes of the fire, and on the far side, the Indian still lay breathing deeply. We crept past him down to the river, where the canoe was already in the water and Emmy was waiting. Albert folded the blanket we’d slept on and put it with the other in the center of the canoe. The pillowcase and canvas water bag were there, too. Mose held the canoe while the rest of us got in, then he stepped into the stern, shoved us off, and we arrowed down the Gilead.
I didn’t know the why of it. As Mose and Albert dipped the paddles, I tried to figure what it was that had motivated my brother to sneak us off that way. I liked Forrest. He’d been decent and had seemed not that different from us, a man drifting before the wind of circumstance. Was it the hooch? Was Albert afraid of a repeat of Jack?
I waited until we were well away from our night’s camp to risk speaking.
“What are we doing, Albert?” I kept my voice low.
“Putting distance between us and Hawk Flies at Night.”
“Why?”
“He was going to turn us in.”
“How do you know?”
“That mason jar full of bootlegged liquor.”
“What about it?”
“It was square.”
“So?”
“You ever seen a square mason jar?”
It wasn’t something I’d thought much about, but I did now. “I guess not.”
“Me neither, until Brickman strong-armed me and Herman Volz into cooking mash for him. He bought special square mason jars to put the hooch in. Said they packed better if they were square.”
“Forrest got his booze from Brickman?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And he was going to turn us in for the reward?”
“What do you think? Would you throw away five hundred dollars?”
Emmy curled herself up and went to sleep. Mose and Albert paddled through the night. Occasionally in the distance, I could see an isolated glimmer, maybe the yard light of a farmhouse. I figured Albert was right. Five hundred dollars was a lot of money, but I’d have given every cent of it to be safe in one of those houses. To be in a place I called home.
In the late afternoon, we stopped. We’d put a lot of distance between us and Forrest. Mose and Albert were beat. We sat on a little hill above the river, where a great, solitary sycamore provided shade. The hill rose out of prairie and afforded a view of the whole area. The railroad bed had veered away from the river. There were no farmhouses near, no barns, no fences, nothing tainted by a clumsy human hand.