Tomorrow River

the trail, Woody.” I reach over E. J. to remove the aviator glasses off her eyes, but she twists at the waist so I can’t get at them and starts squawking again and it’s about all I can take. I’m sticky and tired and getting real worried now about how late we stayed at the station. I holler at her, “Why ya always gotta be so obstinate? I should start callin’ you Mule Girl. How’d ya like that, huh? Mule Girl… Mule Girl… Mule Girl. Maybe I should sell you to the Oddities of Nature show when it gets here. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. You… you could stand up on that stage next to Armadillo Boy and the two of ya could-”

“Shut your mouth, Shenny!” Without warning, E. J. stiff-arms me straight off the porch. I land hard in the dirt on my behind. Shocked, I yell, “You little…” I clamber up and come charging back at him.

“That’s enough, Shenandoah,” Sam says, grabbing me by the arm before I can sock E. J. a good one.

“But-” I am struggling to break free. “That’s not fair! I’m the youngest, she should be babying me.” I get so sick of pulling on my kid gloves. Brushing Woody’s teeth. Braiding her hair. Braying those stupid show tunes. I even got to butter her toast. I deserve those aviators with shiny frames that hook behind the ears. “She’s always gettin’ what she wants!”

“Is that right?” Sam asks, pointing over my shoulder at my sister who has gotten up off the crate. She lifts her arms out to her sides and begins slow, but is soon twirling herself round and round, like a whirlygig falling out of the branches of an oak tree. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that statement.”

“I know she’s bad off, but… but what about me? I’m the one that’s always got to-”

Sam says so low in his high humidity voice, “Your sister needs them more than you do.”

I hate it when he does this. He’s trying to make me feel like I’m acting spoiled rotten.

Sam glances over at Woody again with sorrowful eyes. “Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. That expression mean anything to you, Shenny?”

Even though I know exactly what it means, I yank my arm out of his hand and say, “No, it certainly does not.” I want to hurt his feelings as much as he just hurt mine. So with my nose up in the air, I say as snippy as a girl can get, “That must be something that only Negroes who are too big for their britches go around sayin’.” And then I step off the porch and glide across the gas station lot like I’m white and you’re not so put that in your pipe and smoke it, former Detective Samuel Quincy Moody.

Chapter Thirteen

I’m leading the way back home.

Woody is sandwiched between me and E. J. so he can grab her if she tries to get away. We’re at the spot on the path where the house will soon come into sight when E. J. whisper-shouts to me, “Shen… Shenny… ya gotta slow down.”

“I’ll do no such thing.” We stayed much later at the Triple S than we should’ve. Papa will probably still be napping, but if he isn’t, if we should run into him, he’ll smell the motor oil that’s sticking to our clothes the same way I am. Woody and I are taking a hot bath tonight, no ifs, ands, or buts.

E. J. shouts even more frantic “Stop!” and then there’s this flurry of activity.

Scared that Woody has sprinted off, I spin around and am relieved to see that my sister has done the exact opposite. She’s planted herself on the path and in doing so has tripped E. J., who is lying spread-eagled in a patch of ivy next to the trail.

“Kindly give a little warnin’ before you dig in, all right?” I say, backtracking to her side. I’m sweet-talking her because I’m already feeling contrite about being mean to her up at the Triple S. Sam was right. I was acting spoiled. Put upon by my twin, who I love with every ounce of my heart. What gets into me? I know darn well that she’d stop all this twirling, flapping, and running if she could. Woody has never liked perspiring all that much. Thinks it’s unladylike. “Pea?” I brush up her clumpy bangs and blow on her forehead. “Are you overheatin’?” I tap the rose-colored glasses low on her nose and wave my hand in front of her lime eyes, but she doesn’t blink. She’s locked onto something that she’s seeing over my right shoulder. I don’t see anything except for a couple of hot-headed cardinals, but I trust that my sensitive sister has picked up the scent of something that’s beyond me. Her nostrils are flaring.

I’ve got to get closer.

“E. J., quit piddlin’ around,” I call to him in the ivy patch.

“Come get her. She’s sensing something.”

“That’s what I was tryin’ to tell ya, Shen,” he says, getting up and dusting off. “Be nice if you listened to me every third time or so.”

“Yeah, well next time, speak up. I couldn’t hear your puny voice.” Once I’m sure he’s got a good hold of Woody, I take a few steps into the woods. She whimpers, but I pull back on a hickory branch anyway.

Bringing up my binoculars, I scan the surroundings for whatever it is that’s made my sister start twitching like a cornered rabbit. There’s Mr. Cole hoeing the vegetable garden with his straw hat on. Louise is having a hissy fit at his side. The two of them are bickering about something until Lou stomps off into the house. Maybe Mr. Cole found out about Lou’s chasing around the meadow with Uncle Blackie. I might’ve gone ahead and left an anonymous note in the shed for Mr. Cole that clued him in on their midnight meetings. I’m not saying that I for sure did, but there’s times that I get so worked up. It’s like… like I drank down a bottle of hundred-proof pissiness. I can blab out this thing and do that thing while I’m in that state. Look how I just treated Sam. Next time we go over to the Triple S the first words out of my mouth will be Jackie Robinson.

My eyes are searching the front of the house now.

I really must remember to speak to Mr. Cole about painting the second story shutters, and the doorbell, it’s hanging by a wire. But none of these odds and ends are what’s got Woody worked up. This is just business as usual. I still don’t see… wait. That shadowy figure in the corner of the porch. I’d know his outline anywhere. Papa was who Woody’s nostrils were picking up. I’m surprised she didn’t start howling. His Honor is lounging in one of the tall-back woven chairs. His mouth is moving, so he must be talking to somebody. I swivel my binoculars to the swing that hangs off the porch ceiling. There’s Sheriff Andy Nash gliding back and forth with icicle-shaped perspiration stains under his arms. He looks like he’s melting. Not like Papa, who’s looking cool as an igloo. Dressed in a snowy white shirt, his hair slicked back. I can almost smell his English Leather cologne from here. He took my tidying-up advice to heart and changed himself from the sloppy, grieving man I left up in his room into his sparkling, magisterial self.

He’s doing what I call his regal routine.

I’ve seen him do this too many times not to recognize it. After Sunday Mass, he’ll stand on Saint Pat’s steps and slap the men jovially on their backs and spread the compliments so thick. “Why, don’t your wives look younger than springtime and aren’t your children cute as June bugs,” he says, like a medieval ruler passing out morsels of food to starving villagers on the way back to his castle. It’s perplexing and hurtful. How can he be so giving to them and so miserly to his own flesh and blood? I know he doesn’t mean to, but sometimes Papa makes Woody and me feel like we’re a couple of peasants who’ve got the plague.

Andy Nash has to be here for a reason. Papa must’ve come looking and rung him up when he couldn’t find us or maybe Lou opened her fat trap and ratted us out or… maybe the sheriff has come with news of Mama and I can call off my search, which quite frankly hasn’t been going too well so far.

If the sheriff is here to deliver a surprising report about our mother, then Woody and I will blow up balloons and I’ll bake a yellow cake and get out the butter brickle! But if he’s gabbing out on the porch with Papa to pass the time until his deputy arrives, I’ve got to come up with an escape route. Because after they find us, Papa’ll laugh and say, “Kids will be kids,” but once the sheriff leaves, he’ll march us to the root cellar. I can take that kind of discipline because my hide is tough, but Woody? She’s made more out of feathers than leather. I don’t think she can endure one more night on her knees, no matter how many stories I tell her.

After the first two times Papa dragged us down there, I got the idea of putting some important things inside a sack and took it to our home-away-from-home.

I pawed against the cool walls last night until I got to the bushel basket that the sack’s hid under. Opening it, I felt around for what I was looking for. Woody gets so scared of the dark that she can’t even cry so I right away lit one of the matches and set the flickering candle down close to her and said in my most loving voice, “Do you think you could draw a little?” I placed a spiral pad and a couple of pencils in the sack, too. “Something that would make