accident.” He stood and looked up at the sky. “Come on.”
The boy remained on the ground, sitting cross-legged. “Lucky, I’m sorry.”
Sam studied a cumulus shaped like a horse, a blue hole about where the heart would be. “So far, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”
DOUBLED UP on Garde Ca and backtracking north, they spent the afternoon losing and finding the trail in the vine-tortured gullies. For a whole hour, the mule stood like a steaming boulder in the middle of a washout for no reason they could discern. They dismounted and sat on the ground, watching him shake off flies.
The sun was low in the sky when they broke out of the woods and rode up the one street that was Zeneau. At the store they greeted the same old men and chatted their ears off until they rose one at a time and went home for supper. Sam bought two bottles of soda and pigs’ feet wrapped in wax paper, and they lounged on the front landing, eating and looking around at the board-and-batten buildings as if they’d grown up in this sorry place and knew every tick-haunted dog under every porch in town.
The storekeeper came out shortly before sundown and padlocked an iron bar across the slantboard doors. “You boys goin’ to ride the station truck out tomorrow?”
Sam took a draw of soda. “If the driver’ll let us and we can sell the mule.”
“They’s no place to take a room here. If you want, spend the night up on these cotton bales like the boy done before. Just don’t smoke if you do.”
“All right. Does that deputy make rounds?”
The storekeeper put on his fedora. “When he’s chasin’ his tail. He won’t bother you.”
“Drinks a bit?”
“A bit.”
“His cousin keep him supplied?”
“You know Ralph?”
“We’re not exactly friends, but I’ve dealt with him.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
Sam was waiting for such a signal. “Seen his old mom lately?”
The man put a hand against a post. “She comes in town maybe four times a year, loads up two horses, and heads back south. I was kind of expectin’ her last week when the weather wasn’t so hot.” He spat and looked them over. “You didn’t get down as far as the old house?”
“We did. Nobody was there.”
“The hell you say. I saw ’em all, even Billsy, plus a woman and some little cousin’s child. They rode down there four, five days ago.”
Sam turned his head toward August. “We didn’t stay around there long. When’s the last time you saw the old woman?”
“Like I said. Maybe three, four months.” He hitched his baggy pants up over his belly and cinched his belt.
“You see her pass through here last year with her little niece a second time? Comin’ out?”
“Cousin’s child,” the storekeeper said. “Told me later it was her cousin’s child from over in Arkansas. Pretty kid to spring out of that bunch.”
“Where were they going from here?”
The storekeeper shrugged and seemed aggravated. “This is last year, and they was headed north to Woodgulch. There’s a train there, as you know.”
THEY SMEARED themselves with citronella, Sam slapping it in his armpits and on the backs of his hands.
The boy watched, then took the offered bottle.
“Damned if I don’t smell like a sardine,” Sam said, climbing up on the third layer of bales on the broad front porch. He stretched out under the roof tin, listening to it pop in the cooling air.
August lay against the board wall down below. “They’ll take Lily right past here, won’t they, Lucky?”
“Only way to the rest of the world.”
“And meet the Whites in Woodgulch?”
“If I had to bet.”
“And we won’t be able to do a thing about it.”
He tried to focus on a red-wasp nest a few feet above his head, a dim copper disk promising pain. “Now you gonna kill the Whites?”
A single pained word-“Don’t”-drifted up from the darkness of the porch. It sounded like the last plea he would make as a child in this life.
“All right. It’s all right. I’ll try to figure something out.”
Sam tried to sleep, and did, but was awakened by a dim flash on the Louisiana side of the river followed a long time later by a low stumble of sound, a thunderstorm walking toward them on legs of lightning. He wondered how the girl was doing with her third set of caretakers and thought about when he was four, remembering nothing at all, neither face nor hurt or anything else, which maybe was a blessing. The next day they would go to Woodgulch and wait in sight of the little tall-windowed railroad station. Wait for what he wasn’t exactly sure, but maybe the Whites would show, arriving on the wobbly train and leaving on the return half an hour later. But what could he and the boy do to the Whites? Take the girl away and ride along with them back to Baton Rouge on the same train? Try to get the law to help? Woodgulch was a Mississippi county seat, where the high sheriff had his office, the man who probably let the Skadlocks sell whiskey and steal whatever they wanted, who hired Ralph Skadlock’s second cousin as the Zeneau deputy. There was no chance anyone there would believe two outlanders.
At daylight Sam woke and found the boy grim-faced and sitting with his arms crossed next to the locked door, his legs stretched out toward the west. When the storekeeper unlocked the building, he went in and sold the dew- rusted shotgun for a dollar less than he’d paid for it. Sam bought a tin of Vienna sausages and one of peaches in syrup. They went outside and sat on the porch like useless vagrants of a century before, hanging around to await some accident of good fortune. After he finished eating, Sam counted his money.
“You can sell the mule for something,” the boy told him.
“The old fellow told me he wouldn’t take him back. Said it cost money to hang on to it and that the ten-dollar bill I gave him didn’t eat. If I keep the animal, I’ll keep the tack.”
“Where’s that station you were talking about?”
“Woodgulch. Maybe ten miles.”
“We could ride there in two hours.”
“Let’s see.” He walked into the aromatic store and offered the animal and tack to the storekeeper, who laughed at him. Back out on the porch he looked down at August, who sat slumped against a post pulling apart a wad of cotton. “Let’s ride.”
They went out back and saddled Garde Ca and got on. The mule stood like a piano bench. They remained still on his back, waiting. Sam dropped the reins on the animal’s neck and crossed his arms. After five minutes, Garde Ca looked back at them, then began a drunken walk to the road, where he paused, looked both ways, and turned right toward Woodgulch. After a while, Sam picked up the reins and said,
They met five automobiles on the way to Woodgulch. Sam looked carefully at the faces in the machines, and some stared back at his rudeness. He watched the road in the distance as well, and suddenly he pulled the bit sharply to the right and they rode off a hundred yards into a stand of cypresses.
“Stay here,” he told August, sliding off. Stooping in a berry patch, he watched Billsy ride by on a small horse the color of axle grease. He was wearing a new tan fedora and glossy boots.
“What?” the boy asked, when Sam remounted.
“Skadlock’s brother. I’m not sure what that means.”
“He’s probably bringing news.”
