Tomorrow River

“Why, I’m sure ya don’t, an important fella like you,” Sam says. He turns to us and gives a wink. “But… well… much as I’d like to oblige ya, Mr. Remmy, my pumps is actin’ up. Coulda swore they was topped to the brim this mornin’ but they up and run dry not more’n two minutes ago. Don’ that beat all?”

I can see Remmy biting his tongue from twenty yards away. Acting a whole lot smarter than he is, he revs up his engine and throws his car into gear. But before he takes off, he smiles real ghastly up at Sam with teeth that are buck enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, then he calls over to the porch, “Heard from your mama lately, twins?”

I hop off my crate and shake my fist at him, shouting, “Get your dumb ass outta here, Remington Hawkins.” I don’t want Sam to get into trouble and he will if the mayor’s grandson shows up at supper with a black eye. Mama was Sam’s best friend and he won’t put up with that sass. “I mean it.”

With a beep of his ah oooga horn, Remmy dusts out of the Triple S, his wicked laugh not reaching our ears until it’s too late for me to do a darn thing about it.

I say, “Ohhhh… I’d like to… I’d like to…” I wasn’t counting on something like this. The station being off the beaten path the way it is, mostly only the lost and the colored stop by and none of them would tell Papa they saw us. What if Remmy goes yakking to somebody, “You know who I saw this afternoon? The judge’s girls, shootin’ the breeze with Moody over at the Triple S.” And what if that somebody is a meddler of the highest order and answers, “You don’t say,” and rushes right over to Lilyfield to tell Papa? Like I told you before, nobody in town but a few know that Papa is keeping Woody and me prisoners, but everybody knows that we’re not supposed to be hanging out with the coloreds unless they work for us. Being the most prominent family in town, we are expected to set a good example. Grampa is one of those people who believes that Negroes should be hardly seen and never heard. That’s something that Mama and Papa never have come to terms with. When she would tell him that this sort of prejudiced thinking is nothing but Southern ignorance born out of fear, he would respond with, “Feel free to take your enlightened Northern attitude back where it belongs, Mother.”

Sam steps back onto the station porch after his tangle with Remmy and he’s smiling. Smiling!

I’m still fuming! “For two cents, I’d… I’d take a garden claw to Remmy and once he was down on the ground writhing I’d-”

“Shen,” Sam admonishes. “Watch yourself.” He gets after me all the time to remember that a temper like I got can only lead to me doing something I might regret. I think of Stumpy or The Maggot lying beat to death in that Decatur back alley when he says that, and I can’t help but wonder if he is speaking from experience. “Now, what were we discussing?”

I say with a fed-up snort, “You can be super-infuriatin’ in a real calm way, you know that?”

Sam picks his glove back up and gets back to softening it, but what he’s really doing is ignoring me until I can get a grip on myself.

“Fine. If that’s the way you’re gonna be.” I take in air to the bottom of my lungs the way he taught me and count to ten. “I believe we were at the part where you’re about to agree to help me look for Mama and if you could do that sooner rather than later I would appreciate it,” I say on an exhale. “It’s gettin’ on in the day, and well, we got to get back before Papa-”

“Bawwwk… bawwwk… bawwwk.” My head swivels to my sister. She has started making a fox-in-the-henhouse racket. “Bawwwk… bawwwk.”

How absolutely brilliant!

Maybe she’s not quite as bad off as she seems. Woody’s got to know that Sam’ll feel sorry for her. Believe me, no matter how hard-boiled he seems, he’s over-easy.

E. J. pops up off his crate to soothe my sister and I flip my palms up to Sam like-see? This is all your fault. She’s never going to stop squawking unless you agree to help us find Mama. You better speak up before we all go deaf as a post.

“I’ll…,” Sam says.

“But…” I’m sure he’s about to give me another one of his excuses.

“Hear me out, Shen.”

“I would if I could.” I shout, “That’s enough now, Woody.” Instead of feeling proud of her the way I was a few minutes ago, I feel like wringing her neck. “Will you pipe down!” E. J. is doing all the right stuff, like patting her and crooning, but he’s not having much luck.

Sam scoops up Wrigley and sets him down in Woody’s lap. He picks up her hands, places them gently on top of the cat’s back, and like somebody turned her on switch off, she smiles and shuts right up. Bringing his attention back to me, he says, smooth as can be, “We’ve been over this before. You know why my asking around about your mother would not be a wise idea.”

The colored and the whites are like the birds and the bees. The birds are supposed to stick with their kind and same goes for the bees. If Sam goes around questioning folks, “Do you know anything about the disappearance of Evelyn Carmody?” somebody could start the rumor that Sam and Mama could’ve been, well, pollinating. (There’s always someone willing to fan the flames no matter how dumb the gossip.)

“How about if you discover something that seems important to your mama’s disappearance you bring it to me? I’ll assist,” Sam suggests.

“Do you mean like a double play?” I got him now. He cannot resist baseball lingo.

Sam grins from ear to ear, just like Blind Beezy does, and says,

“You’ve got a lot of your mother running through you, you know that?”

“Funny, I was just thinkin’ the same about you.” Him and Beezy both make me prett’near drag everything out of them. “How do you mean I’ve got a lot of my mother runnin’ through me?”

“You fishin’?”

He means for a compliment.

“Guess I am.”

“Well, there’s lots of ways you two resemble one another, but mainly, I was thinking about her tenacity.” He looks down at her watch on my wrist and says real seriously, “Wish you’d leave it here with me for safekeeping.”

That’s the same thing he said to me the day after I found it and came rushing over here.

“I can’t do that. I’ll take good care of it. Mama’ll be wanting to wear it as soon as she gets back home so I have to keep it at the ready.” I get a little choked up. “It… it makes me feel closer to her and… you understand?” I don’t feel bad about not granting his wish. I brought another memento for him to remember Mama by. “Hold on.” Withdrawing the dog-eared copy out of my back pocket, I tell him with my most cheerful smile, “I know she’d want you to have it until we can bring her back home.” It’s the story they were studying together right before she vanished. Mama could barely read the part to me where Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear to be dead but she really isn’t, but Romeo thinks she is, so he drinks poison and then Juliet wakes up and daggers herself so they can at least be together in heaven. What a mess.

Sam doesn’t say, “Thank you. How kind of you,” when I hand the book over to him and that’s all right. I’m not giving it to him because I’m trying to win an award for being the most generous person on earth. I just can’t have it near me anymore. Picturing Mama holding it between her hands with the bit-to-the-moon nails makes me pine too much for her, and my lunar-loving papa, too. I’ve been thinking that the book might be a hint in her disappearance. Everybody knows that it’s a story of unquiet love that takes place in Verona, which only adds credence to one of my original ideas of where Mama might’ve taken off to. “Do you… do you think she could’ve run off to Italy?” I ask.

“No,” Sam says, looking affectionately down at the little red book and then off to House Mountain. Those twin peaks are Mama’s favorites. “I… I’m hoping that your mother is much closer to home.”

“I hope you’re right. Because I’ve tried and tried, but all I’ve managed to learn from that Berlitz record so far is Buon giorno. Dov’e la biblioteca? That means-”

“Good day. Where is the library?”

His dead partner taught him some of the language when they were on stakeouts up in Decatur. I feel remorseful about bringing up Johnny’s memory. It always makes his Adam’s apple work extrahard. “Shoot, Sam. I didn’t mean to mention-”

“Y’all better start towards home.”

“Okay.” I understand that he’s not trying to get rid of us. Or chastise me. He’s being thoughtful. He doesn’t know exactly what will happen if we get back to Lilyfield too late, but he does know how strict Papa is. “Time to hit