Queenie’s not here. It barely gets through my head before I know what’s pulled me from my dream.
Somebody’s knocking on the door.
My heart jumps up, and I jump with it, tugging one of Queenie’s shawls over my nightgown while I cross the shanty floor. It’s Zede on the other side of the door, and even through the window glass, I can see that his white-whiskered face is long and sad. My gut turns into a slipknot.
Outside, the storm’s gone. It’ll be a nice day. The morning air’s turned warm and steamy, but I open the door and step outside and feel cold right through the old cotton nighty Queenie sewed a ruffle to because I’d gotten so tall. Queenie said a girl my age hadn’t oughta have her legs showing so much.
I pull the shawl tighter over my chest, not because of Zede or because I’ve got any woman parts to hide—Queenie says that’ll happen when it’s time, and it just ain’t time yet—but because there’s a boy in Zede’s jon boat. He’s a skinny thing, but tall. He’s got dark skin like a Cajun or an Indian. Not quite a man yet, I’d say, but older than me. Maybe fifteen or so. Zede’s always got somebody under his wing. He’s the grandpappy of the whole river.
The kid hides his face under a raggy newsboy cap, looking at the bottom of the boat, not at me. Zede skips the introducing.
I know what that means, but I wish I didn’t.
Zede’s hand feels heavy on my shoulder. It’s meant for a comfort, but I want to run away from it, scat off somewhere down the bank, my feet flying so fast they barely leave tracks in the washed-up sand.
Tears shove up my throat and I swallow hard. Fern’s face presses against the window behind me. Figures she’d wake up and follow along. She never lets me get far.
“Queenie’s babies didn’t make it.” Zede’s not one to chase round the bush with his words.
Something dies inside me—a little brother or sister I was planning to hold like a new china doll. “Not either one?”
“The doc said no. Couldn’t save neither of ’em. Said it wouldn’t of made no matter if’n Briny’d got yer mama to the hospital sooner. The babies just wasn’t meant for this world, that’s all.”
I shake my head hard, trying to wick those words out of my ears like water after a swim. That can’t be true. Not in Kingdom Arcadia. The river is our magic. Briny always promised it’d take care of us. “What’d Briny say?”
“He’s pretty broke up. I left him there with yer mama. They had some hospital papers to sign and whatnot. They hadn’t told her ’bout the babies yet. Reckon Briny will when she’s woke up good. She’ll be all right, doc said.”
But I know Queenie. She won’t be all right. Nothing makes her happier than a brand-new, sweet baby to cuddle.
Zede tells me he figures he’d better go back to the hospital. Briny wasn’t in a good way this morning. “I was gonna see if’n there wasn’t a woman down in the river camp who’d come look after y’all young’uns, but the pickin’ was sparse. Been some trouble with the police, and most all the shanty folk done took to the river. I brung Silas to watch out over ya till I can git yer daddy back home.” He motions to the boy in the boat, who looks up, surprised. He didn’t know that Zede meant to leave him, I guess.
“We can look after ourselves all right.” Mostly, I just want Queenie and Briny to come home and get us on down the river. I want that so bad, I hurt for it deep underneath the knot in my belly.
“We ain’t got nothin’ to feed him.” Camellia is in the door now, offering up her two cents.
“Well, good mornin’ to you, Miss Rosy Ray a’ Sunshine.” Zede calls Camellia that all the time on account of she’s the exact opposite of that very thing.
“I was gonna go gig us some frogs.” She announces it like she’s been made captain of the Arcadia.
“No, you ain’t,” I tell her. “We’re not supposed to leave the boat. None of us.”
Zede points a finger at my sister. “You kids stay put.” He narrows an eye back toward the river. “Don’t know what’s spooked the folks out of Mud Island camp. It’s good y’all are over in this li’l backwater by yerselves, anyhow. Just keep quiet. Don’t be callin’ any attention or nothin’.”
Something new weighs on my chest. Something heavy. Worry scratches a setting spot inside me and takes up nesting. I don’t want Zede to leave.
Fern sidles over to hang on my leg. I pick her up and snuggle her wild curls under my chin. She’s a comfort.
Gabion comes out, and I pick him up too, and their weight pins my feet to the floor. Queenie’s shawl binds tight around my shoulders and squeezes into my skin.
Zede puts me in charge again, and he brings the boy, Silas, onto the Arcadia. Unfolded, Silas is taller than I thought. He’s skinny as a rail, but he’d be handsome if it weren’t for the busted lip and the shiner. If he was hoboing trains, like Zede said, he’s lucky the railroad bulls didn’t do worse to him.
He hikes himself up on the porch rail, like that’s where he means to stay.
“You watch after them now,” Zede tells him.
Silas nods, but it’s clear enough he ain’t happy about it. A Cooper’s hawk flies by looking for prey, and he watches it pass, then keeps his face pointed toward Memphis.
Zede leaves food behind—a bag of cornmeal, a bundle of carrots, ten eggs, and some salt fish.
Silas watches as Zede climbs into his boat and disappears.
“You hungry?” I ask him.
He turns my way, and it’s then I remember I’m in my nighty. I feel the sticky air touching my skin where the neck pulls low from the babies on my hips.
Silas looks away, like he noticed. “Reckon.” His eyes are dark as midnight on water. They reflect everything he looks at—a heron bird fishing nearby, branches drooping from a half-broke tree, the morning sky with its foam-white clouds…me. “You cook?” The way he says it makes it sound like he’s already decided I can’t.
I lift my chin, square up my shoulders. Queenie’s shawl cuts in deeper. I don’t think I like Silas much. “Yeah. I can cook.”
“Pppfff!” Camellia spits.
“You hush up.” I set down the little kids and push them toward her. “And watch after them. Where’s Lark?”
“Still in bed.”
“Look after her too.” Lark can slip off quick and quiet as a whisper. One time, she laid up in a little clearing by a creek and fell flat asleep, and it was a whole day and half the night before we found her. Scared Queenie clean outa her mind.
“Reckon I better make sure you don’t burn the place down,” Silas grumbles.
I decide it right then: I don’t like this boy at all.
But when we go through the door, he looks my way, and his split lip turns upward on one side, and I think maybe he ain’t so bad.
We light a fire in the stove and cook the best we can. Between Silas and me, neither of us knows much. The stove is Queenie’s territory, and I’ve never cared a thing about it. I’d rather be outside watching the river and its animals and listening to Briny spin stories about knights, and castles, and Indians out west, and far-off places. Briny’s seen the whole world, near’s I can figure.
Silas has seen a bit himself. While we cook and sit down to eat, he tells tales about riding the rails, and thumbing his way across five states, and scratching up food in hobo camps, and living off the land like a wild Indian.
“Why ain’t you got a mama?” Camellia asks as she finishes the last of a hoecake that’s just a little bit burnt on the edges.
Lark nods, because she wants to know too, but she’s too shy to ask.
Silas waves a fancy silver fork that Briny dug up in the sand by the wreck of an old riverboat. “Had a mama. Liked her all right, till I was nine. Then I left and ain’t seen her since.”