Tomorrow River

Mama’s watch. She covets it. I give her an over-my-dead-body look. She answers with a suit-yourself shrug.

“Sir?” Lou shouts. Now she’s eyeing me with Rex the alligator eyes, half-lidded like that. “’Fore I fetch you that tea, thought you’d like to know that I found what you was lookin’ for earlier.”

She means me. I can’t do anything else but slip the watch off and drop it into her outstretched claw.

Gloating, the same way she does when she’s beat me out of a big pot in cards, Lou says, “Yessir, those molasses biscuits you was askin’ after, they was in the pantry after all. You and the sheriff care for a few?”

Damnation.

I’ll get Mama’s watch back, I’m not worried about that. I’ve been gone longer than I planned on and am worse concerned about Woody, so I stick my tongue out at Lou and back out of those bushes the same way I got in them.

When I get back to where I left them, I find my sister in E. J.’s arms, but not in a romantic way. She’s wiggling, trying to get free. If I hadn’t cut her nails real close, she’d be scratching his face to smithereens.

“It’s all right. I’m all right. Let her go, E. J.” Woody throws herself at me like she didn’t expect me to come back alive. I hug her tight and sing, “Don’t be bellow-bellow,” over and over. I’m telling her not to be scared in our twin talk, but it’s not working. Woody’s teeth are chattering worse than a set of Grampa’s practical joke ones.

“What’d you do to her?” I ask E. J., like it’s all his fault that Woody’s gotten worked up.

“She was doin’ just fine ’til she heard your father and Louise yellin’,” he says, rubbing his cheek. There’s a pale handprint where Woody must’ve slapped him. “What were they goin’ on about anyways?”

“Nuthin’ you’d understand.” If I tell him how I was spying on Papa and the sheriff up on the porch, or that Louise caught me beneath the window and got Mama’s watch off me, Woody will hear and get even wilder than she already is, which is almost more than I can handle. I get her by the shoulders, square her, and say, “We’re gonna go round through the side yard and slip into the house. Get busy polishing silver like we’ve never been gone. Papa’ll be none the wiser. I promise. You hear me? I said I promise.”

She doesn’t completely stop, but her gyrating slows. I remove Sam’s aviator glasses from her eyes. “I’ll keep these for you. Wouldn’t want them to get lost.” What I’m really thinking is if by some awful turn of circumstances we don’t out-dodge Papa, if we get caught, his first interrogating question will be, “And from whom did you receive these interesting glasses, Jane Woodrow?”

E. J. says, “I think ya should-”

“Do we care what you think?” I set my fist an inch from his nose. “Even if we did, which we don’t, we don’t have time to listen to one of your dumb ideas right now.” I do not want him drawn into this mess any worse than he already is. His mama’s got a brand-new baby and his father’s got black lungs. They need their boy to bring in cash money. If Woody and E. J. and I get caught returning from the Triple S, the Tittle boy is going to find himself in a hell of a fix. Anybody who gets in trouble alongside a Carmody does. Whatever bad thing happens, it’s not our fault. It’s yours. This is what Uncle Blackie calls the family motto: Not meum but youem has got your assum in a sling.

When E. J. stands his ground, I shove his shoulder and hiss, “Am I not makin’ myself clear, Ed James? We don’t need your help. Scram.”

He bends at the waist and lifts Woody’s creamy hand to his berry-stained mouth. Upon straightening, E. J.’s less Musketeer and more mountain man again. “Tomorra,” he says to me like I’m the last person he wants to see then or any other time in his life.

All I can think about as I watch that scrawny boy disappear into the dwindling day is our mother. And how every night after tucking Woody and me into bed, she’d kiss our eyelids closed and whisper, “Today’s worn itself down to a trickle, my sweet peas in a pod. But tomorrow is a river waiting to carry us to our fondest dreams.”

I’m beginning to get the awfulest feeling that my mama might’ve been wrong about that.

Real wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

Grampa will be arriving soon with his bag of tricks.

Back when I was a kid and too stupid to know better, he’d bribe me to play practical jokes on Mama. Had me conceal a thin wire in the dining room doorway so when she was carrying the dirty plates back to the kitchen, she’d trip and go flying. Or told me to set a paint can on top of a closed door and call for Mama like I was hurt. It took two weeks to get that orange color out of her hair. Grampa got me to do stuff like that by promising me a palomino. I held up my end of the bargain and thought he would, too. Until he showed up one afternoon with a broom horse saying, “Look what I brought ya, Shenny. Your very own Trigger.” The harder I bawled, the more his jowls shook with laughter. I bet that’s the only part of Mama my grandfather misses. Making fun of her.

Gramma Ruth Love will come, too. I know she misses all of Mama. She has taken the loss of her quite hard. They would have wonderful conversations. Both of them love to garden so mostly they’d chat while weeding or watering. I’d listen to Mama telling our grandmother, “This is a new age, Ruth Love. You need to be your own person. You spend too much of your time worrying about how to get the ring around the collar out of Gus’s shirts or what to serve him for dinner. He’s bullying you into submission.”

Gramma would always answer back with a demure smile beneath her broad-brimmed hat, “I know you mean well, dear, but we do things differently down here.”

Mama would weed faster, saying something like, “Personal freedom is not dictated by the Mason-Dixon line.”

They’d discuss stimulating ideas like that for a while until Gramma would eventually start her holy quoting. “What about wives submit yourselves unto your husbands? Saint Paul said that.” And then Mama would have to give up until their next visit, because that’s true. The Bible is a real hard thing to argue against and my grandmother knows it word for word.

The reason our grandparents stay with us during Founders Weekend is so Grampa doesn’t smash his precious truck up again. Three years ago that rummy ran his Chevy into a ditch on the way back to his place. Gramma got a jaggedy cut when her forehead hit the door handle and it has left an ugly scar, but did Gus Carmody care? No, he did not. That’s why I ran a rusty nail alongside the shiny black paint from taillight to headlight when I found his truck parked in front of Willie’s Public House last month. He’s still raging on about how when he catches whoever defaced his truck is going to be sorry they was ever born. But what about our grandmother’s face? (That’s another something that I inherited from my father. I like to keep the scales of justice in balance and do so whenever I can.)

Gramma Ruth Love is very particular. She’ll get agitated when she shows up for her stay if our home is not glistening clean and we wouldn’t want to wreck her visit. That’s how come I’m saying to Woody in a no-nonsense, but entirely pleasant way, “That’s real good, keep comin’.” We’re cat-footing through the empty kitchen on our way to the dining room and all that silver that needs polishing when the rattle of the broom closet door gets my attention. By the time I remember her witchy trick, by the time I yell, “Watch out, Woody! She’s comin’,” Lou is already bounding out of the closet, bent over and cackling, “Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!”

But this time, the joke’s on her.

Woody is not dashing away, nor is she screaming her head off like she usually would while Lou doubles over in laughter. My sister’s standing stone cold still in the middle of the kitchen floor. She’s gone marble white. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s awful. Even Lou must think so, because she’s quit hopping like a hag and is eyeing Woody with an astonished face. She comes closer and reaches out to stroke my twin the way you do a statue in a museum that looks so lifelike. “Woody?” she says tentatively.

“Are ya-”

“You and Blackie think that’s so damn funny, you-” I leap, land on Lou’s chest, and knock her backwards against the broom closet door. “Look what ya did!” I slide my palms down her cheeks and jerk her head towards Woody. “Ya petrified her!” Lou is kicking at me, trying to duck under my arms, but I get her by the hair. Some strands come off in my hand and I wave them in her face. “I’m takin’ this to Miss Delia. She’ll hex ya. She will. She made Charity Thomas grow that hump on her back and she’ll do the same to you. Ya think Blackie’d come sniffing around