Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

Smally turned and followed his gaze. “Yep. Some of ’em go to bad folks all right, but Jacob, he’s safe now. He’ll make a good hand in a few years. He just does chores now. I wouldn’t put a little bitty like that in the field.”

“You say your daddy was the law?”

“He was. Dollar a day and all the trouble you’d want in a lifetime on Saturday night.”

Sam took a breath, and the air came in as heavy as mercury. “When I was a baby, as far as I can tell my whole family was killed by a clan from south Arkansas.”

Smally acted as though he’d heard such news every day. “Your family must of kilt one of them.”

“I guess.”

“All rode down there together and did everbody in, did they?”

“You ever hear of something like that?”

“More’n I like to. There’s no lack of wild clans in this or any other country. There’s even whole families that’ll give humans in general a sorry name. There’s the Kathells and the Blankbulls just to start with. It was Blankbulls killed my daddy.” He shook his head. “The Luthlows specialized in killin’ preachers. But about forty, fifty mile from here’s a bunch by the name of Cloat. They’re worse than worst.” He spat next to his boot. “My daddy used to tell me they thought ridin’ horseback two hundred miles to kill somebody was like goin’ to the state fair. They just lived to get angry. I hadn’t thought about ’em in years, but if you wanted to find a murderin’ bunch from around this part of the world, I’d start with them Cloats.”

“Do they live near a town?”

“Not hardly.”

“How do people find them?”

Smally gave him a long, baleful look. “People don’t.”

RIDING BACK to the boat, he spotted the railroad station, more of a raw pine booth with a semaphore bolted outside and telegraph wires running in through a gnawed hole. He sent a note to agent Morris Hightower at Greenville: THANKS FOR LEAD. CHILD WAS BOY. KEEP EARS OPEN. THANKS. SAM SIMONEAUX.

THE AMBASSADOR’S calliope started up as he was turning in the horse, and by the time he got to the landing Mr. Brandywine was hanging on the roaring whistle. Sam jumped aboard across five feet of muddy water, ran to his cabin for his uniform, and turned out for the one o’clock ride.

He met August coming forward, an alto sax under his arm and a grin on his face. “The captain said I could play this trip.” He had scrubbed the coal dust out of his hair, and Sam turned him around, wondering how he could get so clean.

“Hey, knock ’em dead, kid. The captain payin’ you?”

“I guess not. Experience is like money, he said.”

Sam bit his cheek. “Well, there might be something to that.”

“I’ll have to make up the time I missed in the boiler room, but that’s all right.”

“Captain tell you that too, did he?”

“Did you find out anything about Lily or Dad?”

He shook his head. “I heard about a kid, but it was a boy. You go on and join the band. Keep your ears open. If Mr. Gauge has been drinking, he’ll be slow an eighth beat or so. Don’t get ahead of him and he’ll be your friend for life.”

The boy’s feet were dancing when Sam waved him off, watching him run, trying to remember the last time he’d felt that excitement boiling in his own feet, so happy at fitting in and doing well that the future seemed to promise just one long, ecstatic performance. He went back into his cabin and found Charlie Duggs’s quart of Canadian whiskey, poured a shot into a tall glass and a couple slugs of warm pitcher water on top of that, and took it down like a purge, then had another, rinsed his mouth, and bit a nip of Sen-Sen.

He found the captain walking the restaurant with his hands behind his back, and he went up behind him. “Hi, Cap.”

“Lucky. Glad you made it back.”

“How’d we do last night?”

The captain leaned toward him. “Son, we made the money. It was rough going but those chuckleheads had silver in their overalls.”

“You make enough to give August a couple bucks for playing this trip?”

The captain pulled back, then studied the deck as though checking the quality of its varnish. “He ought to pay me. I’m training him.”

Sam took a breath. “To do what? Be a slave?”

Captain Stewart let a waiter breeze by. “I have to watch every nickel, you know that.” He hazarded a glance at Sam’s face to see what he thought of this statement, and after a moment threw up his hands. “Damn it, all right. You’re holding me up, but I’ll slip him something. Now check out the main-deck lounge.”

Sam gently pinched the captain’s left lapel between thumb and forefinger. “He’ll tell me what you gave him.”

“I said all right. You trying to make me feel like a crook?”

THEY TOOK on a flat of new coal better than the last, and after the sober church excursion the Ambassador escaped Bung City running on a full bell upriver toward Memphis. Plowing through the afternoon, the old boat followed the channel in Mrs. Benton’s brain, working hard through Sunflower Cutoff, then around Island Number Sixty-three, and fighting upbound for Miller’s Point. The riverside was all of it a grit-banked lowland of bleached sandbars and willow brakes too flood-prone even for wild animals, land passed over by early explorers and Indians alike, who knew it for the dangerous fen that it was. Meanwhile, the crew waxed the monstrous dance floor and hung new broad-striped material under the skylight roof. At dusk Mrs. Benton pulled the whistle ring, letting it slide out of her fingers. Sam heard the short whoop and intercepted the porter bringing up a cup of coffee. He found her in one of her thin, dark dresses, sending a half-speed bell to the engine room and squinting over the breast board to starboard.

“Gonna cross the channel?” he asked.

She didn’t turn around. “Captain demote you?”

“Elsie was just curious about when we’d get into Memphis.”

“Captain Stewart thinks this stretch can be run in jig time, but the water’s down a little. Can’t take a chance with this old chicken coop.”

He watched her read the water’s surface, saw her steer the boat away from lines of ripples. When, after five minutes, she turned to him, he handed her the mug of coffee.

“Y’all hear from Ted?”

“We’re hopin’ he’ll show up next stop.”

“And you didn’t hear anything about his little girl?”

He shook his head, and she turned back to the river. “Maybe Ted’s found out something,” he said, desperate for a cheerful statement.

Mrs. Benton squinted and pressed a hip against a steering lever. “It’s a terrible thing to lose one of your own. That way, especially.” She took a long swallow of coffee. “When they pass away from us, we believe they’ve gone somewhere good, don’t you know? But the way little Lily’s gone, you hate to think about it.”

He moved up beside her and studied the long shadows arrowing from the west bank. The deep water she was following was in her fingertips, for it all looked the same to him. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Are you?”

He met her glance. “I lost a boychild myself. I kind of know what people go through.”

“Sickness?”

“Yes.”

“I lost two to scarlet fever and one to diphtheria.”

“Good lord, I’m sorry…”

She gave him a sharp glance. “It’s not a contest, you know, to see who’s got it hardest. Everybody’s got it hard. If they don’t, they’re not alive.” She drained her cup and swung it out to him, hitting him in the chest.

“Were they young?”

“Old enough that every time I walk into a kitchen, they’re at the table.” She threw the levers over to cross the river and reached up to pull the whistle cord. “Dead or alive, they never go away. But if I had a living child out there I couldn’t get my hands on, it’d drive me crazy.”