I’m ready to leave my spot and hurry to the river to pull Jerome out of that heartless rock when a specter floats through the woods in a white dress and pale skin. It heads for that riverbank.
Though I don’t believe in spirits, I hang back and watch it. My heartbeat is on the rise, and I lick my lips a time or two cause they dry. The ghost slows its pace when it gets to the rocky shore and wrings its hands. It looks at the rock like it can see the secret buried in the heart of that stone. Then the phantom, with arms and legs as white as bone, wades into those whirling waters. Sheer cloth rides on the surface, and long hair streams behind, and thin arms paddle.
Then it sinks outta sight!
I can’t help it. I start downhill to get close. I part fall and part slide. A shoe comes off and gets left in the leaves. My sock’s got a hole big enough for three toes to come through. Before I know it, I stand on the damp chill of the riverbank and pray in earnest, holding my breath to see what’s likely to happen and what’s not. When my lungs about burst from worry, a small white head pops up. Then comes Jerome Biddle pulled by its pale arm.
The ghost calls out above the din of the water, “Help me, Tattler.”
It shocks me! It knows my name!
“Who are you?” I ask, fearful.
“Sadie. Sadie Blue. Sadie Tupkin.” Her teeth rattle from the cold.
I wade in fast and grab holt of Jerome Biddle and Sadie’s icy arm. We pull our friend up on the bank away from the strength of the current and lay him down. The poke tied round his waist is flat.
Sadie moves Jerome’s soggy beard to the side, puts her ear on his chest and listens, then says, “Build a fire, Tattler. I hear a tiny beat under his ribs.”
We get dry twigs and leaves stashed under rocks and logs, and right next to Jerome Biddle’s cold body, we coax a little starter blaze. Then some heat comes, then serious comfort. I pack a wall of evergreen branches and moss behind his back to keep the warm from wandering up the hillside. Sadie’s lap is Jerome Biddle’s pillow. She lays her small hand on his bald head and keeps it there. In the golden flames, she don’t look real. She looks like the porcelain doll Mama’s got on a shelf to keep away from breaking.
Eyes steady on Jerome Biddle’s face, she asks me, “I scare you, Tattler? Think I was a haint?”
I cannot tell a lie. “The thought crossed my mind.”
I ain’t seen much of Sadie Blue since Roy Tupkin up and married her on a bet back in late summer, her carrying his baby. That’s what I hear rumored some months back, and don’t believe it’s true till I hear it again. Sadie don’t belong with Roy and his meanness. I think I see bruises on her skin. It could be from the fire glow casting shadows. I don’t wanna look close. Don’t wanna know, but I am curious; Roy don’t seem the kind that would take favorable to his wife running off in the night to save Jerome Biddle. Maybe he’s off on mischief of his own.
My head is stuffed with questions that need answers but I bide my time. We won’t go nowhere fast. We gotta wait for a froze man to thaw.
I try to think what else Boss Man could have said besides baby killer. The churning water made it hard to hear. Broken tiller. Basic miller. Nothing makes sense.
When the fire cracks and shifts and a column of sparks flares up in the air like a little celebration, Jerome Biddle flutters his clumpy eyelashes, snorts a little air, and farts. Then he opens his eyes and talks a rhyme that’s off. He says “Hey, Miss Sadie, lady. Hey, Tattler, baby” like it’s natural for the lot of us to be on a riverbank, in the middle of the night, beside a fire, with his bald head in Sadie’s lap.
“Hey, Jerome Biddle,” I say, feeling kind of foolish, and wonder why he called me a baby.
He sits up straight and cracks his back and shakes his head and gets back to his kinda normal fast. Even his matted beard dried and now flutters in a breeze like usual.
He pulls the soggy sack up on his lap and holds it tender. His lips hardly move, and he riddles, “I tried, Miss Sadie, and failed you bad; and now you got nothing and my heart be sad.”
“This ain’t your fault, Jerome. You my good friend. I’m sad Roy sent them scalawag men after you. He done it for spite, like everything he does. He wanted to scare you and get back at me. I’m sorry for your hurt.”
I look back and forth from face to face for clues; I’m bout to pop with curiosity.
“It’s a good life I dragged to shore today. With Tattler’s help, you was resurrected.” She reaches over and pats the back of my hand.
I puff up for no particular reason.
Then Sadie says, “We best get going.”
“What? Wait!” I shout louder than I want. I got questions.
“How’d you know he was in the heartless rock, Miss Sadie?”
“He told me.”
“Nobody knows that secret place.”
“You know.”
“Well, yeah, but how’d you know he was here today?”
“He told me.”
She stands and pulls a shaky Jerome Biddle to his feet. He still holds on to that flat sack that’s not bloody no more cause the raging river washed it clean. He leans toward the riverside on his short leg.
“You okay?” she asks Jerome Biddle with a tender tone.
The man nods and stares somewhere over her shoulder into the night. The fire’s dying, and our forms are turning darker under the meager light of the moon.
“Where ya’ll going?”
“Home. Jerome will walk me part way.”
“I wanna go with you.”
“You go on home, Tattler. Dottie be fretting.”
I can’t help myself so I blurt out, “What bout the baby? The one what got killed? Was that your baby?”
“There won’t no live baby,” Sadie says as she works her way across the stony shore, heading back up the hill. “Just a pile of hope.”
“That what’s in that sack there? A pile of hope?”
“Not no more.”
They move on and get folded into the night.
“Well, tell me this,” I shout with a tinge of annoyance that I’m not proud of. “Is Jerome Biddle a baby killer or not?”
“Tattler Swann!” Sadie stops in her tracks, turns, and in the final glow of the fire, I see her put her hands on her hips. She’s more grown than I know her to be. It feels like Mama there scolding me, but Sadie is but a handful of years older than me.
“No baby got born today. No baby got killed today.”
“Well then, why’d those men hunt after Jerome Biddle and call him a baby killer? Tell me that,” I yell to her narrow back as she walks away.
“Roy was being spiteful. There won’t no baby to talk of,” she says, sad and tired. “It’ll grow clear when the sun comes up.”
The last thing she say is, “Don’t be spreading falsehoods, Tattler. You hear?”
Jerome Biddle and Miss Sadie get swallowed by the inky black. I kick at the coals and make the fire go out.
What started as a regular day of fishing turned into commotion that don’t usually live here. Usually things are pretty much like they supposed to be, cept today.
Today, a bloody sack, a posse of mean men, and a friend who almost drowned but come out alive made it different.
Today, I went to catch supper and hooked a mystery.
I head uphill. Gotta find my shoe.
Sadie Blue