Jolene Page 4

  No, she most assuredly did not! Moving as carefully as if she and the wagon were made of glass, she eased herself down to the wood of the raft with his help. And since the dubious shelter of the cabin seemed to be the least fragile spot on the entire ferry, she plastered her back to it.

  Smoke came from a tin chimney on the roof, puffs of steam from the window in the rear of the shed, and she felt and heard a steady thumping and chuffing on the other side of that wall. A man with a cloth “bucket” hat on his head, in overalls streaked with black grease and a faded flannel shirt, came out of the shed to greet Jeb. They clearly knew each other very well, and exchanged some jokes she simply didn’t get. “An’ who’s this?” the man asked after a bit of joshing, turning to her.

  “Anna Jones, outa Soddy. I’m a-takin’ ’er to ’er Aunt Jinny Alscot up Ducktown way. Anna, this’s Cap’n Clem. He’s in charge of this here ferry.”

  “That Jinny?” The man’s eyes widened. “Tarnation! Wall, then, no charge fer extree passenger. I’d’a not be on the water without Jinny Alscot’s potions.” He held out a greasy paw to Anna, who shook it with no hesitation, since he seemed to know and be respectful of Aunt Jinny.

  “Permission t’throw a line off th’ stern, cap’n?” Jeb asked with a grin. Clem grinned back.

  “Yore th’ on’y man I know what asks permission, or calls me cap’n,” the cap’n replied. “Permission granted. Jest don’t foul the rudder.”

  Jeb took something out from under the bench seat on the wagon, and the two willow rods from the back. The “something” proved to be a cigar box with a couple lengths of string wrapped up neat, and other oddments. Meanwhile Clem bustled about, pulling off ropes from logs holding the front and rear of the ferry to the dock, then vanished into the cabin. The smoke turned from white to black, the chuffing sound increased, the wheel on the side of the raft started to thrash the water, and the whole thing started to move.

  Anna glued herself even tighter to the cabin. Jeb held out his hand. “Come along, missy,” he coaxed. “Y’all ain’t gonna fall off. And even if y’all did, water’s still as a glass here. Y’all could swim back to the ferry easy as pie.”

  “But I cain’t swim!” she wailed.

  “Then I won’t let y’all fall in,” he said reasonably. “Lookit Daisy! She’s so easy she’s a-fallin’ asleep!”

  She turned her head nervously to see that he was right; the mule was standing hipshot with all her weight on her left leg, her head hanging comfortably, her eyes closed.

  Still so terrified her knees shook, she took Jeb’s hand and let him lead her to the rear of the contraption. There he rolled up his pants legs, sat down on the edge of the raft, and went to work with his string, a willow rod, and a cork, the pasty edge, and a fishing hook—and now she knew what he was doing. In a moment he had a fishing rod all set up, with a cork for a bobber and a blob of dough made from crushed crust and crick water on the hook. He handed her the rod.

  Gingerly she sat down beside him, with her legs crossed under her skirt.

  “Jest drop th’ hook inter th’ water and let out the string while y’all hold the rod,” said Jeb patiently. “When y’all feel a fish pull on’t, lemme know an’ I’ll take it from there.”

  He did the same for his own rod, and after a while, under the warm sun and the mesmerizing, slowly changing view of the shore passing beside them, she finally relaxed. So that when she suddenly did feel a strong tug on the rod, she yelped.

  Quick as quick, Jeb handed her his rod and took hers, and patiently, with much waiting, reeled in the string hand over hand. Finally he brought up a struggling catfish, which he hit on the head with the haft of his knife, before carefully taking the hook out of its mouth and stringing a piece of string between its gills. Then he tied the piece of string to the raft and dropped the fish over the side.

  “What—” she asked.

  “I knocked it out, an’ the water flowin’ through’ll keep it alive till we git t’other side. That way it’ll be fresher when we et it, than it’d be if I gutted it now.” He re-baited the hook and let it back into the water, then grinned at her. “I was a-hopin’ y’all’d hev beginner’s luck.”

  Slowly Jeb persuaded Anna to pull up her skirt a little and let her feet dangle in the water. She was still unreasonably afraid, right up until the point where she actually did it, that the water, or something in it, was somehow going to grab her feet and pull her in. After nothing of the sort happened, she relaxed, as the ferry chuffed its slow way upstream north and east to the landing point.

  “Why don’t the ferry go straight across?” she asked Jeb when she had caught her third fish and he his second.

  “Two reasons. On account’o this’s still Soddy Crick, the water’s a-flowin’ south, an’ if y’all tried t’go straight across y’all’d end up south of where y’all wanted to land. T’other reason is on account’o the carts are mostly goin’ east empty an’ west full, like mine. So Clem gets the he’p o’ the Crick when his load is heavier a-goin’ west by letting the Crick do most’o th’ work for ’im, an’ saves on the coal by goin’ downstream. Comin’ this way, we’re lighter, an’ it don’ take as much coal t’head upstream.”

  It was nearly suppertime by Anna’s reckoning when the ferry chuffed and wallowed its way into the dock on the other side. He overshot the dock, which alarmed Anna all over again, until she understood he was letting the stream help him turn the unwieldy craft so that Daisy and the front of the cart would be getting straight off rather than having to be backed off. Clem left Jeb to do the tying up; he was fussing with his little steam engine and just gave them a dismissive wave from the shed. Anna got off ahead of the cart; the poles, fishing tackle, and fish, still somewhat alive and now wrapped in wet cheesecloth, went into the back of it, and Jeb led Daisy out onto the dock. By this time Anna knew how to get up onto the seat herself; she pulled herself up next to Jeb and off they went.

  Jeb frowned at the sun, though, which made her worry. “Reckon it’s jest as well we got corn’n fish,” he said. “Gonna be too late to stir up m’farmer, so best we set up camp fer the night. This here—” he waved at an inlet just to their right “—is Blue Springs Slough. There’s a nice liddle crick runs inter it, Blue Springs Crick; we kin use the crick fer water, an’ there’s plenty’o green stuff fer Daisy. We’ll be all right.”

  There were a few houses in the distance to the north, but Jeb evidently didn’t know the people who lived there, or at least didn’t know them well enough to ask for shelter, she guessed. She supposed she should have felt alarmed at the prospect of spending the night without even canvas over her head, but she was getting too tired and hungry to think about anything other than food and a place to lay her head.

  The spot Jeb picked was very like the place he’d chosen for lunch: in the woods, near the crick he’d talked about. But it differed from that one in that they were actually in a little meadow among the trees, where a bigger tree had fallen and taken several more with it, leaving a place that others had clearly used in the past to camp, because there was a circle of bare earth with the dead cinders of a fire in it.

  “Y’all go pick me up as much dead wood as y’all kin carry an’ bring it here t’ the fire-circle,” Jeb instructed. “Do thet ’bout four times. Then iffen y’all wanta sleep soft, break off stuff t’pile up an’ y’all kin either sleep in th’ wagon or under it. Whichever y’all pick, I’ll take t’other.”

  “Wagon bed, please, Mistuh Jeb,” she said, thinking about all the creepy-crawlies on the ground. Then she trudged off in the direction of the top of the felled tree. She didn’t have a lot of hope of finding much deadfall there, if this was commonly used as a place to camp, but to her surprise, there was quite a bit, and all of it of a size she could handle.

  She brought in her first lot and returned—

  And that was when things took a turn for the odd. Because she was certain she had
picked that particular spot bare—but there was wood there. All of it a convenient size, both for the fire, and for her to carry.

  She stared at the spot for a moment, then shook her head. Must be gettin’ so weary I’m all a muddle, she thought, and stooped to start gathering again, bundling it all in her apron for ease in carrying.

  Sure this time she had picked the spot bare, she left the load beside Jeb, and went back to explore further—

  And there was more wood. Right in the same place she had picked over.

  A chill ran up her backbone. Wood just didn’t walk itself over to that spot. Something or someone had to have carried it there.

  Was Jeb trying to play a trick on her?

  She looked back over her shoulder. No, she could see him at the edge of the trees.

  Was someone out there in the woods, watching her? Right now?

  She almost ran away, back to the safety of Jeb and the wagon. But she had been told to gather wood—so she fumbled it up as fast as she could, and scuttled back to Jeb and the security of the campsite. To her immense relief, he told her, “Thet’ll be enough an’ t’spare, missy. Now, take this here spade t’the crick an’ scrub it down with a rock an’ sand till all y’all kin see is bare metal.”

  Well the crick was well within both line of sight and earshot; she could be back to Jeb in a lick if someone was out there. She told herself sternly that nothing bad had happened; in fact, whoever had been piling up that wood for her had been doing her a favor. Maybe it was a trapper or hunter who didn’t like to bother other people, or thought he might frighten her with his wild appearance. She knelt beside the crick, found a good piece of sandstone to scrub with, and scoured away.

  When she brought back the immaculate spade, the sunset had turned the tops of the trees above them to flame, and in the deepening shadow beneath the trees and in the little meadow, the campfire Jeb had lit looked very welcoming. He took the shovel from her and directed her to ferns to break off and grasses to tear up until she had a decent pile in the wagon bed.

  At that point she was so tuckered out that she dropped down next to the fire and stared at it for a long time before she realized that, besides the ears of corn roasting in their shucks at the edge of it, Jeb had the blade of the shovel over the coals and was frying the fish in it.

  She blinked in surprise at how clever that was. She never would have thought of doing that!

  The basket with the remains of the blackberries and the termaters was between them, and as Jeb tended the fish, he ate ’maters absently. She reached in and got one herself, and bit into it. It was wonderful. Much better than the peaches of her imagination.

  Jeb had split one of the larger chunks of wood in half, and presently he scraped some of the fish off onto the raw, fresh wood of each half. He’d left the skin on, so while the skin stuck to the shovel, the meat didn’t. He turned the shovel on its side in the middle of the fire to burn the skin off, then reached into the chest pocket of his overalls and pulled out a twist of paper, sprinkling some of the salt that was in there onto each pile of fish and bones. Once again, he clasped his hands and said a brief “grace.” “Don’t et them bones,” he warned her as he handed her the chunk of wood. “Go slow and be careful.”

  She was no stranger to catfish. Before Pa had got Miner’s Cough, if he had time and strength, he’d take a try at catching a fish or two himself. ’Twasn’t as easy as catching ’em from the ferry—lots of competition, for one thing. But it was always worth trying. Fishing was free, so were worms, and you could get a decent meal without debt to the Company store.

  The fish was hot, so she had to be careful not to burn her fingers; she knew to go slow and mindful and eat nibbles, not bites. She even knew to suck the bones bare and put them in a pile at her feet. When the roasted ears came out of the fire, all they needed was a squoze of ’mater juice to hold the salt, and they was heaven.

  For the second time that day she stuffed herself, finishing up with ’maters and berries, and there was still some of everything but the fish left over for breakfast. The cornbread, which she split with Jeb, filled in all the rest of the corners.

  Jeb rummaged under the seat, which seemed to be a mysterious place that held practically anything, and came up with a folded bit of old canvas she could put between her and the pile of vegetation. When she lay down, it was no worse than her corn-shuck mattress at home, though it seemed strange to be sleeping in her dress.

  She said her prayers lying down and silently, because she didn’t want to disturb Jeb, and she made sure to include Jeb and Cap’n Clem in her “God blesses” because both of them had been so good to her on this trip, Clem not charging a fare for her and all, though what she would have paid for a fare with, she had no idea. She heard Jeb grunt and snort for a while as he got himself comfortable, and then there was silence filled only by crickets and . . .

  . . . and strange sounds.

  She hadn’t noticed them so much when she and Jeb were eating, but the night was full of sound. Some, she did know: the peeps of little frogs and toads, the louder croaks of big ones, and the booming of bullfrogs. And crickets. But there were other noises out there she’d never heard before, and some of them were hair-raising enough to wake her right out of drowsiness. Hisses and screeches, and a weird huh-huh-huh-huhHOO-ah that put the hair on her head straight up.

  Bears? Panthers?

  Wisht Jeb wasn’t asleep . . .

  But she heard him snoring away, and she heard Daisy shifting her weight and making smacking noises, and it finally occurred to her that if the mule wasn’t alarmed, there probably wasn’t anything out there to be alarmed by.

  And she started to relax. As she started to relax, she started to get sleepy again. And just as she was about to fall asleep, she noticed how there were stars peeping through all of the branches overhead.

  Wait . . .

  There was a dense canopy of leaves over them, enough to block out all the sun by daylight. So how could there be stars shining through the leaves now?

  And . . . those stars were in pairs!

  Pairs of eyes!

  Dozens and dozens of them, and what she had taken for twinkling was the eyes blinking now and again.

  She absolutely froze.

  What . . . are . . . those?

  She stared at the eyes. The eyes stared back, blinking every now and again.

  She could not have told how long she lay there, staring at all those eyes, but at some point exhaustion overcame her.

  The next thing she knew, she was curled up, having somehow wrapped the old canvas around herself, and had awoken to the smell of the campfire, the sound of Jeb moving about, and birdsong.

  She unwound herself from the canvas and got out of the wagonbed. Daisy had eaten everything around her and strained at her rope, so she dragged all the bedding out of the wagon and dropped it in front of the mule, who seemed pleased enough to see it.

  “Iffen y’all’re gonna wash up, it’s private up that-a-way,” Jeb said, nodding toward where the crick cut through the trees. She hesitated a moment, remembering the incident with the wood last night, then took the canvas to dry off with and her bundle from home with her. Iffen I see anythin’, I can scream, she decided.

  She got a good scrub without taking more off than her dress. Her comb was in the bundle, so she was able to tidy her hair and rebraid it. Not as good as Ma could, but good enough. She was old enough to put her hair up, of course, but they couldn’t afford hairpins, and Pa hadn’t been able to find any bits of wire to fashion into pins for her the way he had for Ma, so she kept her hair in braids like a child. She’d tried to make pins with bits of this and that, mostly garden stuff, but they always broke or were too slippery to work.

  There was no hint of anything out in the woods but the things that ought to be there, but she hurried over her wash and got back to Jeb quickly. Grace said, breakfast over, f
ish bones and corn shucks buried (Daisy ate the cobs with gusto), fire put out with water and the dead coals buried, they were on their way again.

  3

  THIS was not farmland. This was real forest. Once they got out of sight of the couple of cabins near the shoreline—and she guessed the people living there were probably more fishers than farmers—there was nothing on either side of the road but trees. She kept taking deep breaths of the air, because after Soddy, it was absolutely intoxicating. She realized with a sense of wonder and surprise that she had literally never felt as good as this in her entire life.

  Maybe she was getting better? Maybe she could stay until fall with Aunt Jinny, then go home? If she felt like this, she could do anything Ma asked her to do—all the garden work, and go out a-foraging, and help with the housework! Why, feeling this good, she might could get a little extra money by working in the kitchen of one of the mine owners or foremen! Last night’s alarm seemed ridiculous now. The firewood? She’d likely misremembered, and each time had just gone farther than she’d thought. The eyes? Tree frogs, more than like. And mice, there were mice everywhere, the Good Lord knew. She’d just never seen eyes shine in the dark like that, but they were probably reflecting the campfire. And of course it seemed as if there were more of them than there actually were, because she was so scared.

  And this place was just beautiful. Pa had said Aunt Jinny lived all alone out in the woods, so maybe her place was just as beautiful. If that was true, well . . .

  She found herself looking forward to getting there.

  “Mistuh Jeb?” she said, as a thought occurred to her. “What d’y’all take t’Soddy iffen y’all go there all the time?”