“He ain’t my daddy,” I said.
“What?” Terry said.
“Ain’t my daddy’s boat, cause he ain’t my daddy,” I said.
“No,” Mama said. “No, he isn’t. And Don, he’s pretty much a quitter. Something doesn’t work out immediately for him, he’ll leave out. That’s been my experience in more ways than one.”
I tried not to mentally count the ways, but I said, “Why he fishes with poison, ’lectricity, and dynamite is because it takes the waiting and trouble out of things.”
“It doesn’t matter, we have to rest, and it’s better that we don’t wear ourselves thin right at first,” Terry said. “We’re most likely better off traveling by day than night, even if we can be seen. The moon will be less bright tomorrow night, and even less so as we go. We’re more probable to end up getting wedged up on something or turning the whole thing over when we can’t see. During the day, we can journey more rapidly, even if we can be observed more easily.”
None of us argued. We were tuckered out.
Terry had stuffed a couple of blankets in his bag, and Mama had thought to do the same, and so had Jinx. They were all thin blankets, but there wasn’t much need for them on a nice night like it was. The boards that had been nailed over the logs were nice and smooth from years of people walking on them, so it was easy to stretch out and cover ourselves and get comfortable. Mama chose the middle of the raft, and I ended up close to her. She was warm, and she put her arm around me. The crickets sawed and the frogs bleated and the wind blew and the mosquitoes took a night off; the water beneath the raft rocked lightly.
“He didn’t want to be the kind of man he is,” Mama said in my ear.
“What?”
She was talking soft, and though Jinx and Terry might could have heard her, I’m sure they couldn’t have understood her.
“Don. I think he got broken early on, like me, only he was broken more. He came from a family that inherited much and his father turned it into less. The beatings he got took a toll, and, like me, he never thought he was worth anything. My family sure didn’t know what to do with me. It wasn’t that we didn’t get along, it’s that they seemed to be somewhere else even when I was there. I never told you much about them, my mother and father.”
“You said they died of smallpox,” I said.
“Yes. They did. But before they died, they might as well have been dead. Me and Don was the same to you. We didn’t do you any good, that’s for sure, but you haven’t become like us, and I’m not sure why.”
“I reckon you did your best,” I said. “But you still get to choose how you want to act and go, don’t you?”
“You do. But not everyone chooses well.”
“That’s on them,” I said.
“I know. I wear my mistakes like a coat, only it’s heavier,” Mama said.
“You did what you could, I guess.”
“I did what I could do, but it wasn’t much. I want to do better now. Don isn’t just a man without hope anymore. He’s a man without heart. I can stand one, but I can’t stand the other. Between what went on between us, him hitting me, there were moments that were very nice. Then it would start over. I got so I lived for the in-betweens.”
“What you said about Daddy-I mean Don-being a quitter,” I said. “You believe that?”
“I do,” she said. “But I been wrong before. Maybe he has more juice in him than I suspect. I know this, though: Gene isn’t a quitter, and neither is his pal Cletus, and certainly not Constable Sy. Neither will quit when he thinks he can get something for free, or when he thinks he can manage some kind of bargain in his favor. Those two will work themselves to death to get a free thing, and do nothing for something they can have for honest work. They’ll chase this money till they get it, or there’s no way for them to have it. I’m certain of that. I have known them as long as I’ve known your daddy, and I know that much about them. Somewhere inside Don I used to think there was a good man pressed flat. I thought he might blow up to size again at some point, but he didn’t. He wasn’t always bad to me, honey. There were times when he was good.”
“You said that,” I said. “It doesn’t comfort much.”
“It’s just those times got farther and farther apart, and I think he’s been flat so long he’s going to stay that way. What makes me proud of you is that you didn’t let either of us mash you down. You spring right back, and you got hopes. I used to have hopes, and I’m trying to remember what that’s like, and I’m trying to make sure you keep yours.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “But he was always bad to me, and wanted to be as bad as he could.”
“I guess I knew that.”
“Why didn’t you do something?”
“Because I didn’t have the spirit.”
This wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but I knew it was the best I was going to get. I decided I had to start with her this very night, and call it a new beginning. She touched my hand, and then was quiet. I snuggled in close. I felt like a sad old dog that had finally been petted.
During the night, we all awoke to Mama on the edge of the raft. She was lying on her belly with her head hanging over, puking. When she got what was in her out in the river, I got her back to the center of the raft and covered her and hugged her close, but she trembled like she was cold, which didn’t make no sense, as it was a warm night.
“I’m needing the cure-all,” Mama said. “That’s what’s happening. I didn’t bring any of it with me. I should have cut it back, not quit cold turkey. I’m so sick. I thought I heard God calling to me, but it was a whip-poor-will. I dreamed about that black horse again, and I saw the white one, but it was running in front of me, too fast to catch.”
“You’ll catch it in time,” I said.
She trembled for a while, but finally got still, and me and her both slept.
We was all up with the sun. Mama felt considerably better, and with the light I felt happier about our possibilities.
Mama, like Terry, had come well prepared. She had some hot-water cornbread patties in a bucket in her bag, and she gave us all a couple of them, and we drank water from a canteen Terry brought. It seemed the best cornbread I had ever eaten and the sweetest water I had ever drunk. Mama, I noticed, drank a little water but ate nothing.
After untying, we poled back onto the river and started out again. It was good water and the river was straight. We went along right smart-like and didn’t have to do anything much until the raft started to drift to one side or the other, then we’d have to push off hard to get back to where the water was swift and straight again. But with the current like it was, and the raft well built, we stayed mostly in the middle and kept making good time. It was hard sometimes to even feel like we was moving. Might not have known that was the case if I hadn’t looked toward shore and seen trees and such go by.
About the time the cornbread began to wear off and the sun was starting to get high and turn hot, we heard singing. It was sweet and it was loud, and there was a choir full of it.
“It’s as if angels have come down from heaven,” Terry said.
“Yeah,” Jinx said. “Or a bunch of people singing.”
It was pretty, though, like the songs was dancing over the water. As we drifted on, the singing grew louder. We finally came in sight of where it was coming from. A bunch of white people gathered on the edge of the river. Many were near the bank, but the rest went up a little slope of grass that at the peak was yellow with sunlight. A lot of the people were dressed up-at least, they was as well dressed as they got in East Texas-and down by the water was a barefoot man wearing black pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was waving around a big black book. A man dressed about the same way was standing beside him with his head down, the way a dog will do when you’re scolding it.
But it wasn’t a scolding. I realized what it was when I figured it was Sunday. I had sort of lost count of the days, but now I knew what day it was because of what I was seeing. It was a bunch of Baptists and they was attending a baptism. I knew because I had seen it before. It had been done to me, but I was so young I didn’t really remember much about it.