looked through the trees, and I saw you setting under that big oak tree. Least I thought it was you. I decided I’d drop in on you.”
Dobro thought for a minute, trying to get the details right. “No, wait a minute. It wasn’t just me. Who was it with me?” He furrowed his brow in concentration. “Wait… It was you, weren’t it, Benno?”
Benno turned around for the first time since Dobro started his story. “Huh? What’d you say? I weren’t listening.”
“I said you was with me the day I dropped in on Aidan’s brother in the sheep meadow.”
“Oh,” Benno answered vaguely. “Now that you mention it, I do remember that.”
“Anyway,” Dobro continued, “we dropped out of the tree to howdy you, only it weren’t you. It was your brother.
“And the peculiar thing,” Dobro continued, “he wasn’t surprised to see us. I mean, he was jumpified at first. I think we woke him up, if you want to know true. But it was almost like he was waiting for us to come. Ain’t that right, Benno?” Benno gave a little grunt of agreement, but he had nothing to add.
“Well,” continued Dobro, “we howdied him, and he howdied us back. And it weren’t long before he commenced to asking us all kind of questions about feechie ways. Wanted to know about your feechiemark, Aidan, and what it meant. Wanted to know where we live and what kind of weapons we hunted with and did we know about the Wilderking and did we ever make war on other feechies.”
Dobro shivered to recall it. “Made me feel uneasy in my mind. I know I ain’t been the keerfullest feechie in the swamp when it comes to civilizers, but even I ain’t gonna answer that kind of question.”
“So what did you tell him?” pressed Aidan.
“Didn’t tell him nothing,” answered Dobro. “Just hemmed and hawed, and first chance we got to climb back up the tree, we took it.”
“So you didn’t give my brother anything that would help him trick Larbo’s band?”
“Naw, Aidan. I promise. Cross my gizzard. Ask Benno.”
Benno nodded his head. “Dobro told true. He didn’t tell him nothing.”
“And Benno didn’t neither,” added Dobro. “I can vouchify that.”
Aidan’s brow creased. He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he murmured. “Maynard told me to ask my friend Dobro.” Aidan tried to piece the whole thing together. How could Maynard have gotten a start on his scheme with no more than that to go on? How could Maynard have gone from that little bit of information-no information, really-to ruling a whole band of feechies as the Wilderking?
“Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww!” Benno burst into sudden, violent tears. “Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww! It was me what brought that rascal to the Feechiefen! It was me what brought such misery and heartache! Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww!”
Aidan and Dobro stared at Benno, astounded, as he continued to wail. “Slow down, Benno,” Aidan coaxed. “What are you saying?”
“After me and Dobro was back in the woods,” Benno sniffed, “I made out like I had somewhere else to be, and we parted ways. I circled around and found Maynard again.”
“But why?” asked Dobro. His voice was full of hurt and betrayal.
“’Cause you had a civilizer friend and I wanted one too,” bawled Benno. “’Cause you and the rest of the band thought I was a know-nothing show-off, but here was somebody wanted to listen to me talk.”
Dobro looked down at his hands. It was true that he had never taken Benno very seriously. He had always waved off Benno’s attempts to get attention and gain acceptance.
“So I told him everything he wanted to know,” continued Benno, “and then some. I told him how I never got the say-so I deserved from my people, and he said he knew what that was like. I told him how I was figuring on going over to Larbo’s band where I could get some respect, and he reckoned that wasn’t a bad idea.”
Benno reached into his side pouch and pulled out a steel hunting knife, identical to Aidan’s. It had escaped the forge fires that morning. “And he give me this.” Benno sighed as he watched the sun play on its burnished steel. “I knowed I had no business with a cold-shiny knife. But it shined as pretty as the sun on swamp water. And it made me feel special, you know, to be the only feechie in the band with a cold-shiny knife. Even if I never showed it to nobody, I liked to have it in my side pouch and know I was a little better than the folks around me, with their poor old stone knives.
“Every new moon, me and Maynard met in the sheep meadow, and he’d ask me questions about feechie ways. I felt just as smart and important as Chief Gergo hisself.
“Then one day Maynard asked me if I’d take him to meet Chief Larbo. I knowed that weren’t a good idea. But I done it anyhow ’cause it made me feel important, you know, to say, ‘Chief Larbo, let me introduce you to the man can outfit you with enough cold-shiny to whup this whole swamp.’”
Benno started crying again, loudly, sloppily. “I wanted to show you I was somebody, Dobro-you and everybody else in the band who treated me like a no’count big-talker. I was mad at all of you. I just wanted to feel better.” He wiped his eyes. “By the time it was over, I’d done ruint a whole band of feechies, and we weren’t too far from ruining this whole swamp.” He moaned like a wounded animal. “And I still didn’t feel no better!”
He looked again at the hunting knife in his hand. The glint of the sun on its surface made little prisms through his tears. Then with a sudden, lurching movement he flung the knife into the deep blackness of the swamp. They watched the circles expand from the spot where the knife splashed down.
“Do you feel a little better now?” asked Dobro.
“Yeah,” Benno answered. “A little better.” A little smile softened his sorrow-crumpled face.
Aidan reached out to touch Benno’s shoulder. “You’re almost home now, Benno.”
Chapter Twenty-three
At Scoggin Mound, Benno left Dobro and Aidan to pole east toward Bug Neck. After a short visit with Aunt Seku and her grandchildren-which involved a snack of frog-egg jelly, much marveling over the frog orchid, and the happy return of Aidan’s cold-shiny hunting knife-Aidan and Dobro poled on toward the scrub swamp at the northern edge of the Feechiefen. The travelers parted ways where the scrubby tanglewood lifted itself out of the black water. They bid one another good-bye with promises to meet again at the second full moon where the Bear Trail meets the River Trail, the spot where Dobro joined Aidan and Steren’s boar hunt.
The scrub swamp was a challenge. Tree walking required two free hands, and one of Aidan’s hands was occupied with the frog orchid. He managed at last to push through to the pine flats beyond. He didn’t, however, find his backpack and civilizer clothes and so he had to cross the pine flats bare-chested, wearing his snakeskin kilt and turtle helmet. The pine forest, he was happy to find, was recovering nicely from the brushfire he and Hyko had started. In the two weeks since the fire, wire grass had already sprouted tender and green among the charred remains of its parent grass. All over the fire site, gopher tortoises munched on the fresh shoots.
When Aidan arrived at last at the broad river, he stood on the high bank and shouted toward Last Camp on the other side: “Massey! Floyd! Isom! Burl! Cooky!” Someone came to the bank on the civilizer side of the river. It was Isom, Aidan thought, but it was hard to tell so far away. Whoever it was, he didn’t recognize Aidan, who jumped, waved, and yelled like a wild man. “It’s me!” Aidan shouted. “Can you bring a boat?”
The river breeze carried Aidan’s words downstream. All the hunter heard on the other side was incoherent hollering from what appeared to be a savage in a skirt and helmet. The hunter disappeared, and a dejected Aidan began preparing to swim one-handed across the wide, alligator-infested water.
But soon the hunter was back at the far bank, and he had several hunters with him. Aidan jumped around and wheeled his arms in a broad come-here gesture, but the men only stood in a knot, talking, obviously discussing what to do about the wild man on the other side of the river.
They were still talking when another man-tall and white-haired in a dusty tan robe-pushed past them and leaped into the nearest rowboat. When two goats jumped in after him, Aidan knew Bayard the Truthspeaker was pulling across the river to him.
“Bayard!” Aidan shouted when the old man nosed the rowboat into the root tangle at the river’s edge. “What
