Chapter 16

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

The charter members of our club were daughters of women who never appeared alone on the street, and had never dreamed of any purely feminine moment—serious, or festive. Affairs for men-only were frequent, but women had to take their pleasure under the chaperonage or guidance of husbands, fathers, brothers, or what have you.

—Tabatha Milner, 1929. Texas Federation of Women's Clubs newsletter.

Talihina is rowdy as ten cats in a tow sack. Before Mrs. Grube and me drove in and set up our wagon camp yesterday, I was worried that folks might turn a narrow eye on a woman traveling in a farm wagon with a baby and a girl and no man. I stopped fretting soon as I saw how many folks had come to get ready for the speaking and dinner on the grounds. It's like a tent-show preaching and a livestock fair and one of Mrs. Lockridge's spring soirees all at once. Wagons are camped everywhere, and stores have tables out front, and peddlers roam the streets with carts.

And the noise of it all! Horses, voices, dogs, piano music, roosters, chickens, and women in their best dresses and big feathery hats. Kids of all sizes and sorts run around everyplace. So much racket went on during the night it was hard to sleep in our camp. But the ruckus is perfect for my plan, which I pride myself on while I help with the baby and the morning work.

When we're done, Mrs. Grube wraps a dozen corn dodgers and six pieces of smoked pork in a cloth and gives it to me. "Look for those poor little children, and if you can find them, give them this food." She straightens the pin-tuck-and-lace blouse and black skirt she ironed the fool out of at home. It's her big day, and she is gussied up for it. I even pinned her hair up pretty, which I know about from helping the Lockridge girls, who are fussy on such things.

"Children, ma'am?" I ask, like I have clean forgot finding four wandering kids on the road after our picnic at Prairie Creek yesterday. When we stopped to ask if they were okay, they talked in Choctaw, and I pretended to understand every bit of it. Then I told Mrs. Grube that they were trying to get to Talihina, and if they didn't get a ride on a wagon, they'd have to ford the river on foot and that'd be awful dangerous.

The plan went perfect. Tula and the little kids had made it cross-country just in time. Mrs. Grube couldn't say no with that terrible water ahead of us, and so onto the wagon they came. We carried them the rest of the way, and then they scampered over the tailgate and jumped off when we slowed down for Jack Crossing, just a few miles out of Talihina. From there, all they had to do was go under the railroad bridge and up the creek a piece to hole up at a good camp spot Daddy and me sometimes used when we'd come down the mountain for supplies.

"You know which children I'm referencing." Her big ol' frown this morning makes me worry that she thinks I was in on it, but I did a good job pretending I'd never seen those kids before in my life, and if Mrs. Grube recognized Tula with no blanket wrapped over her head, it sure didn't show.

Be still, Ollie,I tell myself when I start fussing with the sash on my blue dress, which is starchy and fresh, thanks to Mrs. Grube. She doesn't know anything. "Well, ma'am, I'm guessing those ones we carried to Talihina on the wagon yesterday? That was real charitable of you, but ain't you glad they jumped off at that crossing, so you don't have to trouble with them anymore?"

"I certainly didn't intend they just disappear." Her hands go to her hips while she looks up and down the field full of buckboards, hacks, farm rigs, and even a big ox wagon with timbermen who raised Cain all night. Mrs. Grube stares hard at their man camp. "This is no place for a gang of wayward children, especially the girls. It was my intention to feed those little ones and keep them safe, and before I depart for home, to see what could be done about them."

"Done, ma'am?" That's what I was afraid of and why the plan was for Tula and the others to hop off the wagon when they saw the railroad bridge at Jack Crossing. "Reckon those kids are used to doing for themselves, don't you?"

Mrs. Grube frowns so hard her gap teeth poke out. "That sounds rather uncharitable, considering the trouble that befell you on the road, and the assistance you've needed. You've been fed and boarded, your clothes washed, and your horse allowed to recover so that you might make your way safely back to your family. Where might you be if some nefarious men had come upon you instead? Haven't you even wondered?"

Blood boils up into my neck and cheeks. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I have. I wasn't meaning to say…"

"When we receive a blessing, we should endeavor to pass one along, don't you think?"

"Yes'm, but those kids didn't…"

"Most of them thin as rakes, especially the youngest one." Mrs. Grube's voice gets loud enough that Baby Beau stops banging spoons and tin cups on a quilt we've laid out. "Just like those who come to my farmhouse door. Wild creatures. But they are not creatures, Hazel, they are children. Children just like you. Heaven forbid they fall victim to the fates of the friendless child, carted off to work as burden beasts, or the girls lured into…"

She hushes, but I just stand there wanting to hear where girls might get took besides the mills and the factories. It'd be good for me to know.

Mrs. Grube doesn't say, though. "Scores of timbermen, miners, members of the Federation of Labor, the railroad brotherhoods, and the Farmers Union have come to hear Kate Barnard's speech, as she is quite popular among them. Those children, in their obviously wretched state, could wander into one of these man camps and be carted away to serve as laborers or camp hands or worse. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Bring them here to our fire, if you can spot them. Tell them we'll look after them while we are able. Mind yourself while you go about, though. Dressed as you are, you surely won't be mistaken for a waif, but if anyone should trouble you, tell the person you are being well watched after and are expected back at camp. I'd look for the children myself, but it's imperative that I gain Miss Kate's ear today."

"Yes, ma'am, but after the speeches this noon, you meant to go back home. Where'll you put those kids when you leave?"

"Just do as I've asked, Hazel." She squints at a spoke-wheeled red surrey carrying four ladies in clean white blouses and wide feathery, flowery hats. Sunday best. And there's no man with them. Just four ladies, out in a surrey alone, like they don't mind kicking up a scandal.

Not another word or a look comes my way from Mrs. Grube before she scoops up Baby Beau and follows that surrey toward town.

I watch till she's disappeared into the mess of folks, then I go over behind our wagon where I put Skedee out of sight from folks passing by. "Sore back or not," I tell him. "It's time we get Tula and Nessa and the little kids and start out for the Winding Stairs."

Someplace not far off, music strikes up. A whole band playing, like the parade my mama and me watched from our hotel room window in Fort Smith.

"They got a band for this and everything," I whisper to Skedee, and I can't help but start through the camp flats toward the sound.

That food poke weighs heavy in my hand as I wind past wagons and tents and horses and campfires. I know I oughtn't. Tula and Nessa and the little kids did their part of the plan perfect. My part was to make camp with Mrs. Grube overnight, get her to give me some food for my travels, then pretend my sick mama's medicine was ready at the pharmacy, say my goodbyes, and go to Daddy's old camp spot for the meetup. It's maybe three miles by the road, and a lot shorter through the pastures and trees. I could be there pretty quick. But that band sounds so fancy I just have to get a quick look.

Once I'm past the wagon camps, there's a church building in my way, so I start around it. Soon as I turn the corner, I see two raggedy boys leaning against the wall, one skinny kid with freckly skin and blond hair and one colored kid who's man-sized but still has a boy's face. They're eating turnips with the greens still dangling off the top. From the looks of it, I bet they stole those turnips out of somebody's garden.

We stand there for a minute, just staring at each other, till I notice that one of them's got a poke sack full of turnips in his hand…and it's my poke sack. Mine and Nessa's.

I walk closer, ask, "Where'd you get that sack?"

The yellow-haired boy looks me over, peels some turnip skin with his teeth. When he spits it out, I can see that one front tooth is broke-off, jagged. Somebody probably whopped him upside the head with a thieved turnip someplace. "Down in the holler, from some girls. Told them I knowed where we could fill it with turnips, but they didn't favor to come along. What's it to ya?"

"It's my sack, that's what. Mine and my sister's."

The boy studies on my dress and bonnet and good lace boots. "You a mixed blood? Because them was Choctaw kids." His squinty brown eyes narrow even more. "Amos here's a Choctaw freedman and speaks Choctaw, on account'a his grandpapa and grandmama was slaves on a Choctaw man's cotton plantation before the Yankees won the war. Amos and that Tula gal did a whole heap of conversatin' last night round the campfire." He frowns up at the big boy. "Did she say anythang 'bout this gunny sack belongin' to some high-nosed gal in town?"

"I don't think so, Dewey," Amos says. "We talked about lotta thangs, though."

"You talk about what happens if you're caught stealin' somebody's turnips?" I prop my hands on my hips. "Where'd you get those?"

Amos looks away, nervous. Dewey just smiles and takes a big bite and says with his mouth full, "Nubba yer bid-ned." His mud-brown eyes twitch toward the back of the church, where there's rows of root vegetables growing.

"You stole from the parson's garden?" I back up a step or two. "That'll get you struck by lightnin'."

"We gobba eat." Dewey goes to coughing, probably because he's got turnip down his throat.

Amos quits eating, but Dewey comes out of his coughing spell and weighs that half-eaten turnip in his hand. "We all stick together on it," he says, licking his lips, "we'll be fine. That's just what I telled them gals down to the crick—you wanna share our camp, well, all right, then. We can partner up. What you got to offer, though?"

"We ain't partnering up with you." That much I know. I don't want anything to do with these boys. These boys are trouble.

"You the one what told them kids to hop off that wagon and hide down the crick from Jack Crossin'?" Dewey asks. "Amos and me seen them do it, and that lady driver hollerin' for them to come back. The kids told us they's waitin' on somebody, and that somebody was to be bringin' food. Elsewise, we would'a never let them stay at our camp. That spot is our'n. Ain't that so, Amos?"

"That's right true, Dewey."

Dewey looks at the food bundle in my hand, leans over and gives it a sniff, then stands back with a big ol' slobbery grin. "You are the one bringin' us food, then. You was late with breakfast, but you can gimme it, now."

I hold the bundle away. "I ain't givin' you nothing."

"I reckon you might." His eyes sparkle, mean and sneaky. "Because I've come to wonderin'…does that lady wagon driver know you told them kids to jump off and hide and wait for you? 'Cause she sure was hollerin' after them yesterday, while you was acting like you didn't even see them go. Me and Amos might just find that lady and tell her all about it…unless you turn over them goods."

Of a sudden, I feel like I just swallowed one of those thieved turnips, myself. Mrs. Grube can't find out what I've done. Ever. It'd hurt her too much.

"Don't you dare!" I stare at Dewey level-on. He's so scrawny a stiff wind might knock him over, so surely I can. I ain't afraid. Mostly.

"D-Dewey…Dewey Mullins…" Amos's voice is deep as a man's, and he stands big as a man, too. I forgot about him. He could pound me flat as a fritter in two seconds, but he says, "We hadn't oughta, Dewey."

"Hush up, Amos." Dewey drops the turnip sack. "I's just fixin' to show her who's boss here. She don't got no—"

"Ohhh, Dewey…there…the garden…he…" Amos can't even get the words out before across the garden comes the parson in his fine black suit and hat, red-faced and sweatin'.

I feel Dewey's breath on my ear, and he whispers, "Them girls told us y'all was headed up the mountain from here. You let that preacher man think it was you that picked his turnips…or we'll tell that lady everything we know."

Then he snatches the food poke from my hand, and both boys take to running.