Someone was about to get dunked in the river. Way the Baptists saw it, that dunk in the river made sure you was going to heaven, even if before or later you knew a cow in the biblical sense or set fire to a crib with the baby in it. Once you was dunked and a preacher said words over you, heaven was assured and Saint Peter was already brushing off your seat and stringing your harp. Since most everyone in these parts was a Baptist, the fields and the prisons being full of them, it seemed like a pretty good deal.
As we cruised by, we saw the singers lift their heads to look at us. The children waved. Some of them got smacked by their folks on account of it. The preacher, his light hair shiny as gold in the sun, dragged the man standing next to him out into the water. The tails of their shirts floated up.
Passing them, we looked back and seen the man holding his nose, falling back into the preacher’s arms, being lowered down.
Mama, who had turned around to watch it all, said, “He has been baptized.”
“Like us, he can pretty much commit any crime he likes and he’ll be redeemed,” I said.
“Hush,” she said. “It isn’t exactly like that.”
We sailed on past the church folk.
The water was brisk because of all the recent rain, and the river bent a lot, and sometimes when it bent and became narrow, the raft would turn so that the rear end became the front end, and there was no fighting it with our poles because it was so deep. We switched to paddles, but it was like trying to use ice cream sticks to get the job done.
Eventually, we come around a twist in the river and the raft started going around and around and finally it twirled down a little offshoot. All we could do was just keep our places and hope we didn’t tip. It turned shallow, though, and it got so we could use our poles again. In time we was able to push ourselves up against the shore. I jumped off and tied the raft to an oak.
Finished, I sat down on the ground. After I’d been on the water for that long, the earth felt funny underneath my butt, like I had been on a merry-go-round and had gone too fast and had been thrown off.
Everyone got off the boat and sat down. Mama dug around in her bag and came up with more cold cornbread and water. The cornbread was still good and the water still tasted sweet. Even Mama ate this time.
When we finished eating, none of us was eager to get back on the raft, though there wasn’t a discussion about it. We just sat there thinking to ourselves, and not saying anything. Terry took a clean white cloth sack from his goods and opened the box with May Lynn in it, poured the ashes into the bag, and tied it off.
Mama said, “Is that…her?”
“Yep,” I said.
Terry stored the bag and we all went back to sitting and not talking. Then as we sat, we was startled by a voice.
“What are you doing here?”
I leaped to my feet, along with everyone else but Mama, who once she got seated was slow to move.
It was a man standing on the rise above us. He had the sun at his back, so all we could make out was a dark human shape. It was like the light behind him was coming out of him, shooting into the sky.
“Did you build your raft?” the shape asked.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said did you build your raft?”
“We kind of borrowed it,” I said.
“It looks like that raft upriver,” the shape said. “The one tied out to a stump.”
“It does look a lot like it,” Terry said.
“They practically twins,” Jinx said.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the same raft,” the voice said, and the man moved down the slope toward us. As he did, with the hill at his back, and the sun hanging more above than behind him now, we got a chance to check him over good.
He was tall and thin with that kind of yellow hair that when it grays just looks more blond; the sunlight showed us that his hair had started to do just that, around the temples and at the front. There didn’t seem to be any oil in it, and it had most likely been slicked back wet with water and had sun dried. The wind moved it around on his head like old corn shucks.
He was wearing a white shirt and black pants muddy at the bottom, and some worn shoes that folded over on the sides. He was maybe in his forties and nice-looking. He smiled and showed us he had all his teeth. In my world, finding someone with all their teeth, both ears, and their nose on straight by the time they reached forty was as rare as finding a watermelon in a hen’s nest. Mama was an exception, and of course all three of us kids, but we still had a pretty good hike to go before we made forty, if we did, and Mama was still a few years off of it herself, though she treated her teeth well and was good about keeping herself washed and her few clothes clean.
As he came down the hill he kept smiling. He wasn’t a big fellow, and I figured after what I had seen Jinx do when she was mad, if he got to be a bother, we could just sic her on him with a boat paddle.
When he was down close, he turned his head and looked at Mama. It was like a fire lit up behind his eyes. I looked at her, too. She looked very pretty that morning. Like a goddess on a trip, recovering from an illness. Her long, dark hair was glossy in the sun, her face white as oats. Her head was turned up to look, and except for her sad eyes, she seemed much younger than her thirty-something years. I always knew she was pretty, but in that moment I realized she was beautiful, and I knew then why Don had wanted her, why my father had loved her. I wished I was as pretty as she was.
“We took the raft cause we had to,” Mama said.
“I’m not in the judging business,” the man said. “I think too many people are judged. Though I have to say, ‘Thou shall not steal.’”
“Ain’t nothing says ‘Thou shall not borrow,’’ Jinx said.
The man smiled, and all of a sudden I knew what I should have known right off when I seen what he was wearing and his muddy pants bottoms. He was the preacher that had done the baptism.
He came down closer, and when he did, I eased over close to a pretty good-sized rock that was by the water, measured in my head if I could throw it fast enough and hard enough to bean him a good one on the noggin, if things called for it. But he didn’t show any need for that. He came down smiling and stood by the water and put a hand to his chin and gave our raft a real good once-over.
“It’s hard to steer, isn’t it?” he said.
“A little,” Terry said.
“More than a little,” Jinx said. “It’s as ornery as a Shetland pony.”
“Oh, those Shetlands bite,” the preacher said. “I can tell you that.”
“It’s a raft,” Terry said. “Not a pony.”
“Yes,” the preacher said, “but the young girl and myself were speaking metaphorically.”
“Got that, Terry?” Jinx said. “That’s how we was speaking.”
“I understand that,” Terry said. “But I’m not speaking metaphorically.”
The man turned his smile on Mama. “Are all these but the little colored girl your family?”
“Only Sue Ellen,” she said, and nodded in my direction. “The others are friends of my daughter.”
“And friends of yours?” he asked.
“I suppose they are,” Mama said. “Yes. They’re friends of mine.”
“Well, now, I suppose if they are friends of a lady lovely as yourself, then they should be friends of mine. I’m Reverend Jack Joy. The last name is real. I didn’t make that up for religious reasons, though I certainly see myself as a man of joy, eager to raise a joyful noise in the name of the Lord.”
“I’m Helen Wilson,” Mama said, “and that’s my daughter, Sue Ellen, and the colored girl is Jinx and the young man is Terry.”
“No last names for you two?” he said, smiling at them, which is a thing he did plenty of.
“First names are fine,” Terry said.
I realized then that Mama might have been a little too eager to share, us being fugitives and all.