Queenie kicks and knocks Gabion over, and he bangs his arm and howls high and long. Lark bolts inside the cabin to hide now that the midwife is clear of it. Queenie’s dying right here in my arms. She’s gotta be.
At the head of the gangplank, Camellia ain’t budging. The sneer on her face dog-dares the woman to try her again. Camellia would just as soon fight something as look at it. She’ll catch snakes barehanded and scrap with the boys in the river towns and not think twice about it.
“You leave my mama’s hat!” she yells over Gabion’s squalling. “And you don’t need no fish neither. Just git off our boat ’fore we go on and find the po-lice and tell them some colored woman done trieda kill our mama and steal us blind. They’ll hang you up a tree, they will.” She lets her head go slack and lolls her tongue, and my stomach turns heavy. Just two weeks ago Wednesday, we saw the man hung in the tree downriver. Big colored fella in overalls. There wasn’t a house round for miles, and he’d been there long enough the buzzards had got after him.
Only Camellia would use something like that to try to get her way. It makes me sick just thinking about it.
Maybe that’s why Queenie’s in a bad way now, a voice whispers in my head. Maybe it’s all because Briny didn’t stop and cut that man down and find his people so’s they could bury him proper. Maybe it’s him lookin’ on from the woods now.
Queenie begged Briny to go up to the shore and take care of the body, but Briny wouldn’t. We got the kids to think about, Queen, he said. No tellin’ who did that to him or who’s watchin’. We best get on down the river.
The midwife snatches Queenie’s red hat from her basket, throws it down, and walks over it, her weight rocking the deck as she wobbles down the gangplank, then grabs the lantern she left onshore. The last thing she does is take the stringer with the two catfish. Then she wanders off, cussing us all the way.
“And the devil can come get you too!” Camellia echoes back at her, hanging over the porch rail. “That’s what you get for thievin’!” She stops short of repeating the woman’s naughty words. Camellia’s eaten enough soap to clean up the inside of a whale in her ten years. She’s practically been raised on it. It’s a wonder bubbles don’t pour out her ears. “Someone’s comin’. Hush up, Gabion.” Grabbing Gabby and slapping a hand over his mouth, she listens into the night. I hear the sound of a motor too.
“Go look if it’s Briny,” I tell Fern, and she hops up to do it, but Camellia shoves Gabby at her instead.
“Keep him quiet.” Camellia crosses the porch and leans over the waterside rail, and for the first time, I hear relief in her voice. “Looks like he’s got Zede.”
Comfort wraps me like a quilt. If anyone can make things all right, it’s Old Zede. I didn’t even know he was here around Mud Island, but Briny probably did. They always keep track of each other on the river one way or another. Last I’d heard, Zede was inland, seeing after a sister who had to move to a sanatorium because she had the consumption.
“Zede’s here,” I whisper to Queenie, leaning close. She seems to hear, maybe settles a little. Zede will know what to do. He’ll calm Briny’s wildness, push the clouds from my daddy’s eyes, and get him to think. “Zede’s here, Queenie. It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine….” I repeat it over and over until they’re pitching the line to Camellia and climbing the gangplank.
Briny crosses the porch in two steps, falls to his knees beside Queenie, and scoops her up, bending his head low over hers. I feel her weight leave me, her warmth vanishing from my skin. The night dew closes in, and all of a sudden, I’m cold. I stand up and turn the lantern higher and wrap my arms tight around myself.
Zede squats down close, looks Queenie in the eyes, unwraps the sheet a little, and there’s blood everywhere. He lays a hand on her belly, where a watery red stain rises up her dress. “Miz Foss?” His voice is steady and clear. “Miz Foss? You hearin’ me now?”
She lets out what might be a yes, but the sound dies behind clenched teeth, and she buries her face in Briny’s chest.
Zede’s mouth turns grim inside his thick gray beard. His red-lined eyes hang loose in their sockets. His breath sucks in through wide, hairy nostrils, then pours out between tight lips. The smell of whiskey and tobacco hangs heavy, but it’s a comfort. It’s the one thing about this night that’s like always.
He locks eyes with Briny and shakes his head a little. “Queenie girl, we’re gonna git you offa the boat, ya hear me? Gotta carry you on down to the hospital in the Jenny. Be a rough trip, across-water. You be a brassy gal fer me now, ya hear?”
He helps Briny lift her from the floor, and her screams tear the night like the women shredding funeral veils down in New Orleans. She goes limp in Briny’s arms before they can even get her in the boat.
“Hold her now,” Zede tells Briny, and then he looks at me and points the crooked finger that was broke in the Spanish War. “You take the young’uns in the shantyhouse, and you git ’em all to bed, sis. Stay inside. I’ll hist on back ’ere, ’fore mornin’ if’n the storm holds off, but if’n it don’t, the Lizzy Mae’s tied up downwater just a bit. Yer skiff’s there. Got a boy on the Lizzy with me. He’s a rough looker just now—tried hoboin’ the train, and the railroad bulls got after ’im. He won’t hurt you none, though. Told ’im to row on up here come mornin’ if’n he didn’t hear elsewise from me.”
He cranks the Waterwitch motor, and it rumbles to life, and I stare at the sludge churning in the lantern’s glow. I don’t want to see Queenie’s eyes closed and her mouth hanging slack that way.
Camellia casts off the line, and it lands neatly in the jon boat’s bow.
Zede points a finger Camellia’s way. “You mind yer sister, li’l spitter. You don’t do nothin’ without askin’ Rill first. You savvy?”
Camellia’s nose scrunches up so tight the freckles on her cheeks run together.
“You savvy?” Zede asks again. He knows which one of us is most likely to wander off and roust up trouble.
“Mellia!” Briny’s clouds clear a minute.
“Yessir,” she agrees, but she ain’t happy about it.
Briny turns to me then, but it’s like he’s begging me, not telling me. “You watch over the babies, Rill. Keep care of everybody, till we get back—Queenie and me.”
“We’ll be good. I promise. I’ll look after everybody. We won’t go nowhere.”
Zede turns the tiller handle and cranks up the throttle, and the Waterwitch carries my mama away into the dark. All five of us hurry to the rail and stand there side by side, watching until the blackness swallows the Jenny whole. We listen while the hull slaps over whitecaps, rising and falling, the kicker roaring and quieting and roaring again. Its voice gets a little farther away each time. Off in the distance, the tugs blow their foghorns. A boatswain’s whistle sounds. A dog yaps.
The night turns quiet.
Fern wraps around my leg like a monkey, and Gabby wanders inside the cabin with Lark because she’s his favorite. Finally, there’s nothing more to do but go in the shanty and figure out how we’re gonna eat. All we’ve got is the one cornpone cake and some pears Briny traded for over in Wilson, Arkansas, where we stayed three months and went to school until it let out for summer. By then, Briny had the itchy feet again. He was ready to take to the water.
Any normal time, he’d never bring us to shore nearby a big city like Memphis, but Queenie’d been complaining of cramps since day before yesterday. Even though it was sooner than she figured it should be, after five babies, she knew we’d better tie up the boat and stay put.
Inside the Arcadia now, everyone’s whiny, and worried, and hot, and cranky. Camellia complains because I’ve shut the door instead of just the screen, and it’s sticky hot, even with the windows open.
“Hush up,” I hiss, and get the dinner ready, and we sit in a circle on the floor, all five of us, because it doesn’t seem right to be at the table with two spots empty at the end.