“Shen? Earth to Shenny.” Bootie laughs.
“Yeah?”
Giving me what I’d consider to be a smile of invitation, he says, “I heard from my cousin in Winchester that the sideshow’s bringin’ a baby in a bottle this year.”
“No kiddin’? How’d they ever—” I’m dying to RSVP. To tell him, “I would love to go for a ride with you in the Tunnel of Love. After that, we could sit on the tent benches and watch the show. I’ll bury my head in your strong chest when the snake man charms the serpent out the basket because secretly, Bootie Young, you make me want to unbraid my hair and put on a frilly dress.” But I put on a disinterested voice and say, “Maybe we’ll run into you there,” because he’s not only distracting me, he’s distracting Woody, and the clock in Washington Square is chiming quarter past the hour.
“Please.” I yank on my sister again, but she’s not budging. Her eyes are locked down, her face a mural of yearning. She’s thinking about how good it would be to lay herself down on the bottom of the grave and have Bootie cover her missing-Mama heart in cooling dirt, I just know she is. “We’ve got to get back before . . .” I don’t want to, but I got to. I lean my head to Woody’s and whisper, “The root cellar,” and thank goodness, she picks up her pace.
Chapter Six
We’re standing at the edge of the creek on the Tittle side.
I’m arguing with E. J. He keeps fussing, insisting, “Let me walk back across the stones with you.”
I got my reasons for not wanting him to get involved in the Carmody family business more than he already is. “Quit bein’ more of a pain than you already are,” I say, piggybacking onto the first stepping stone behind my sister, who is still real agitated on account of me bringing up the root cellar over at the cemetery. I get a better grip on her. “I mean it, E. J. Make like a bunny and hop up that hill.”
“But I’m worried that—” He looks past me at Woody.
I warn him, “If you don’t get out of here on the count of three . . .” One of the other reasons E. J. is being extra-overbearing is that even though he’s never said anything to me, I’m pretty sure he’s heard my uncle and grandfather whooping and hollering through our woods in the wee hours. That’s when they like to play hide-’n’-seek. Woody and me hide—they seek. “One . . . two . . .” When E. J. doesn’t make a move to turn towards home, I pull out my heaviest artillery. “I won’t let you see you know who anymore if you don’t git,” and that settles that. Not sure that I’ve ever seen him move so fast. He doesn’t even say, “Catch ya on the flipside,” which he normally does as he scrambles off.
Woody, who appeared to be paying no mind to E. J.’s and my squabble, quick twists out of my grip and starts running across the stepping stones. Usually so sure-footed, she’s in such an all-fired hurry that she slips and falls into the creek when she’s almost onto our side. I want to holler out to E. J. to come back and help, but if I do, I’ll never hear the end of it, so I hustle across the remaining stones, jump in after her and the two of us go panting up onto the bank. We’re trying to catch our breaths. She’s flushed and frenzied. I take a piece of her hair out of her mouth and set it behind her ear. “Pea . . . you . . . you have got . . . to stop runnin’ off like—what?” Woody is sniffing the air. She can hear the wind change directions since she’s gone mute, and her nose—it’s keen. She’s almost locked onto something and then I hear him, too.
“Have you cleaned these stalls?” Papa. His voice is coming out of the barn, not more than fifty yards from us. I thought for sure he’d be occupied in his study already, but he’s come back from his ride much later than usual. “Did you throw down fresh shavings and clean the water buckets?”
Mr. Cole answers back soft-spoken so I can’t hear him.
I say urgently to Woody, “If he comes out, he’ll see us. Quick. Dive under the willow.”
Not a beat later, His Honor comes out of the barn. The handsomest man in all of Rockbridge County, the one who’s got midnight hair and eyes that are the same color as the whiskey and soda he drinks around that time looks even worse than he did last night. Taking unsteady steps our way, Papa shouts, “Girls? Is that you?”
The branches of the willow tree are wiggling and there’s no wind today. That’s what’s gotten his attention. I will them to be still.
“Twins?” he calls, coming closer.
“Scoot . . . scoot back,” I whisper frantically to Woody. We use our hands and heels to dig deeper into the branches. “And please, please, please, don’t start howling.”
“I see you,” Papa says, but I’m sure he can’t. He’s tripped down to the grass. He’s been worse the last few days because he gets extra soused whenever Grampa’s due to visit. I can’t really blame him. I have been forced to slug back a few when that old nincompoop shows up. I want to rush to his side and help him up, but I’ve fallen for that before, and Woody knows it. She holds me tight by the wrist until Papa struggles back up, first onto all fours, and then semiupright. He shakes his head like he’s forgotten what he was doing and turns back towards the barn.
Woody is fluttering. She wants to make a break for it, but I warn her, “Wait.” I inch forward until I can see Papa through the curtain of shimmering leaves. Maybe he really did see us. Sometimes he can fool us. Sometimes he can double back. I lean back to my sister and start counting slowly, “One Virginia, two Virginia,” and when I get up to “thirty Virginia,” I tell her, “All right. Get set, go!” On our dash to the house, I run backwards so I can keep an eye on the barn door. “Keep movin’,” I tell Woody when she looks at me bug-eyed.
Once we’re on the back porch of the house, I trap my twin between my arms, press her against the peeling white wood. “Don’t even swallow.” I squeeze her to make a big impression. “I mean it. Hold still.” I’m waving my hand and blowing on the bottoms of our shorts to dry them off the best I can. “We’re gonna sneak through the kitchen.”
I get Woody by the chin and raise her eyes up to mine so I’m sure she sees the seriousness daggering out of them. I’m leaving her out here until I can make sure the coast is clear. If Papa did double back and came in through the front door, we’ll run into him. He’ll do what he always does, inspect us like we’re pieces of fruit, looking to find the soft spots. I am especially gifted at fibbing so I could come up with a reason how our shorts got damp, but once His Honor goes after Woody, I’d be forced to tell him the truth and nothing but the truth about where we’ve been this morning.
I spit on the hinges so the screen door won’t squeak and stick my head into the kitchen.
There’s a pot top clattering on the stove and the transistor radio is playing a rhythm-and-blues song and the floor looks clean but tacky in places. That means Lou’s got to be close by. I’m praying that she’s not hiding in the broom closet, getting ready to pounce out at us screaming, “Gotcha!” the way she likes to do. She thinks that’s funny. I don’t think Woody could handle that right now. She’s already full-to-the-brim with scared.
“Shh.” I place my fingers to my sister’s lips until I remember how dumb that is. We begin creeping across the linoleum. “Get up on your ballerina toes,” I whisper, forgetting all about how loud that creak is in front of the stove.
“’Bout time,” Lou calls high and mighty out of the dining room.
Damnation.
“Get in here, you two.”
I lead Woody into the grandest room of our house. Red flocked wallpaper runs from the ceiling to the floor and a portrait of Woodrow Wilson in a gilt frame hangs above the sideboard. The twenty-eighth president of the United States was born in Staunton, a town up the road a piece. Papa admires him quite a bit. Enough to name his only children Jane Woodrow and Shenandoah Wilson. On the dining room walls, there’s also a couple of pictures of Carmodys that date back to the 1700s. Grampa’s got the most important of them up at his house, but we have Hiram Carmody, who rode with the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. They were a band of explorers who discovered the Shenand
oah Valley from a crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our gorgeous valley must’ve seemed like a mirage to them. I’m grateful Woody and me don’t take after those Founders. I think Grampa Gus inherited his sour disposition from these old codgers. Every one of them looks like he swallowed a bottle of cod liver oil and asked for seconds.
Lou’s up on a stepladder cleaning the crystal chandelier that hangs above the polished mahogany dining table that sits twelve. “You’re late,” she says, not even bothering to look down at us.
“I know . . . we got . . .” I so resent explaining myself to her.
“Ya just missed your pappy. He came askin’ for ya.”
I can feel my sister bunch up again beneath my fingertips. “What’d ya tell him?” I ask, gliding my hand up Woody’s neck. Stroking where her hair meets her skin keeps her calm.
“The truth, a course,” Lou says haughty. “That y’all wouldn’t mind me and went flittin’ to town, blabbin’ with anybody who’d bother talkin’ to you about your mama.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I say, rubbing Woody’s neck even harder.
“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t,” Lou says with a rise of her right eyebrow. “Ya just can’t know for sure, can ya.”
Oh, yeah I can.
I can barely stand breathing the same air Lou does these days, but I love her uncle, Mr. Cole Jackson, to bits. He’s the one who taught me how to play cards. Papa doesn’t give us any spending money so beating Lou and Mr. Cole at poker is how I can afford to buy Band-Aids and drawing supplies for Woody. That’s how I know that Lou raises up her right eyebrow when she’s got nothing but a pair of sixes but wants to trick you into believing she’s got a royal flush.
“You better tell Woody you’re lying right this minute, Louise, or . . . or I’ll make sure Papa knows you been sneakin’ out of your cabin to meet up with Blackie,” I say, pulling that ace out of my sleeve. (If those two get caught, you understand who’d get into trouble, don’t you? It wouldn’t be my uncle, that’s for sure. Lou would find herself back in the bayou so fast she wouldn’t even remember taking the trip.)
“If ya think I’m scared of your fath—” Lou smacks her jaw shut. She just remembered that unlike her—I never, ever bluff. “Go on and tell, see if I care,” she says with a toss of her head, but she’s as scared of breaking Papa’s rules as Woody and I are. She’s not supposed to get romantically involved, especially with his brother. She’s supposed to be cooking and cleaning and taking care of Woody and me and that’s it, so that’s why Lou’s backing down. On both counts.
When she gets eye to eyes with us, I tell her with clenched fists, “Woody needs an apology.”
Lou knows that when I get like this that I’m not messing around, so she steps right up to Woody and puts on one of her old-fashioned smiles. “Thought ya knew I was only kiddin’ ’bout tellin’ your pappy that you and your sis been runnin’ into town. Ya know how I like to fun.”
She didn’t used to.
Woody and I spent many an evening over at the Jacksons’ cottage back when Lou was still acting like an older sister. She told us all about her life before she came to Lilyfield and how it was her dream to work someday down at Filly’s beauty salon. Since that will never come true because she is the wrong color, Woody and I felt sorry for her and let her do our hair into pickaninny braids while she told us stories in a drawl so thick and fluid it would suck us right in. You’d think she’d swallowed some of that Louisiana swamp the way she wove those spine-tingling tales of zombies and haunted graveyards and potions made of cat bones that can make a person invisible or bring back a lost lover. Or how red pepper powder is the best thing to use if you want to drive your worst enemy away.
Our best and favorite tale, though, has got to be the legend of the grandest of all gators named Rex. Lou would lean in close and say spooky, “Yes, indeedy. That scaly boy would come sneakin’ out of the swamp, turn the knob to your shanty, and then you know what he’d do?” That’d be my cue to ask, “What? What would that gator do, Lou?” She’d say even spookier, lean even closer, “Why, he’d make hisself at home like he was payin’ the rent, and then those long nails of his would go click click click straight into your bedroom and then he’d . . .” We’d almost be out of our minds scared by now, waiting for her to say, “And then . . . and then . . . he’d eat you whole while ya was asleep, thas what he’d do!” Woody would throw her arms around me and I’d let loose with a scream, the both of us picturing that willful beast climbing not out of the bayou, but out of Last Chance Creek. That’s when Mr. Cole would come rushing to our rescue with a plate of hush puppies and cold ginger ale. He’d laugh and tell Lou to quit. I would always tell Woody after one of those hair-raising evenings, “I know for a fact that we don’t got gators around here, but I think we should sleep in the fort tonight no matter what, don’t you? Our luck hasn’t been so hot lately.”
Lou only started playing pranks on Woody and me the past few months. That’s the same way my uncle treats us and she is trying to impress Papa’s older brother, who fancies himself quite the wit. He was baptized Dwight Alfred Carmody, but nobody calls him that. They call him Blackie, because of his job. My uncle is a lady-killer, but also a blacksmith, and he’s very good at fooling you into thinking he’s somebody he’s not by laying on the charm, which I regrettably admit can be considerable when he wants something from you. Lou, like many of the other young women around town, has fallen head over heels for him even though I’ve tried to tell her time and time again, “Are you crazy? You better get ahold of yourself and be quick about it. He’s gonna break your heart so bad. I know you think he cares for you, but you are sadly mistaken. You’re just another in a long line of what Blackie calls his ‘Kleenex gals.’ When he’s done usin’ you, he’ll toss you into the trash like all the rest of them,” but she won’t listen. I feel sorry for her. Until she pulls something like this.
“The apology?” I say, wondering where Papa is right this moment. “We don’t have all day.” Is he coming up the front walk?
To my surprise, Lou has enough remaining good sense to turn to my sister and say, “I’s so, so sorry for playing a trick on ya, Jane Woodrow. Here. Let me make it up to ya.” She widens out her skinny arms, like she’s intending to give my twin a honey bear hug.
“Don’t be such a sucker.” I yank Woody back by her shirt collar. “Can’t you see it’s a trap?”
“No, it ain’t.” Lou is acting wounded with a pouty, dimpled look. In a hurt-little-girl voice, she says, “Why ya always gotta be so mean to me, Shenny?”
I laugh in her face and hope my breath smells bad. “That’s a real good impression, Lou. You should enter yourself into the Founders Weekend talent show. You’d win first prize, that’s how good that is.” I say to Woody, “Let’s get outta here before she breaks into ‘The Good Ship Lollipop.’” I take a couple of steps in the right direction, expecting my sister to follow, but she doesn’t. “What are you doin’?” My head whips back and forth between her and Lou. “Oh, for the love of Pete,” I say, figuring out why my music loving sister is acting like she’s nailed to the floor, “I didn’t mean that she’s actually gonna perform that song, Woody, I meant that she’s—”
“Oh my, you’re in for it now,” Lou butts in. “Ya hear that?”
Papa?
I hold my breath and listen for the sound of his high-heeled boots. The way his silver cleats click against the foyer’s cool marble floors. I check my sister’s face. She’s got on her usual you-can-knock-all-you-want-but-nobody’s-home look. That’s good. If Papa was close by, sensitive Woody would be squinching her eyes closed and throwing back her head, readying herself to make this sound that’s very theatrical. The only other time I’ve heard it was in that movie we took Beezy to see up at Hull’s Drive-In called The Hound of the Baskervilles.
“You better quit bothering us, Louise,” I say, setting my hands on my hips. “We don’t hear a thing, do we, Woody.”
“Maybe ya should try harder.” Lou c
ups a hand to her ear. “I believe . . . why yes, I’m sure that’s the toilets callin’ out your name. Sheeen . . . Shenandoah Carmooody. Ya better get right up here and scrub us ’fore the lovely Miss Louise runs and tells yer pappy what ya been up to.”
Technically, I’ve got aces over Louise’s kings. Woody and me leaving Lilyfield to search for our mother is bad, but maybe not as bad as Lou taking off her clothes for that joker, Uncle Blackie. But a fat lot of good that does me. I can’t tattle the dirt I got on her. Not right now. Lou knows how much I love my father and that the last thing I want to do is cause him more trouble than he’s already got, what with Mama’s recent birthday and the anniversary of her disappearance and a long visit with Grampa hanging on the horizon. I could rat her out to Mr. Cole, but being so kind and forgiving like he is, probably the worst he’d inflict upon her would be the recitation of a Mary Magdalene passage out of the Bible.
No. A good card player knows when to fold.
“Just so you know, Lou, Woody and I wish you were dead,” I spout as I huff out of the dining room, pulling my twin behind me.
“Cleanin’ bucket’s under His Honor’s sink.” Lou devilishly laughs. “Use the bleach and lift the seat.”
“That’s fine. Don’t worry,” I say, attempting to console my sister as we head up the front staircase. “This is just one hand in the game. The second I get a chance, you know what I think I’ll do?” Woody pauses and listens intently. She looks so cute that I cannot resist hugging her. When I do, a little sssss escapes out of her. I’m sure that’s her way of showing me that even though she can’t talk, we’re still on the same wavelength. “That’s exactly right, pea. I’m going to ask E. J. to do a little copperhead hunting for us. We’ll add it to the pot.”
Chapter Seven