Chapter 28

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

The report shows that the department has intervened in the cases of 137 orphan children. Out of 232 Indian orphan children in state institutions, 137 were being robbed by the guardians.

—The Daily Ardmoreite article regarding Kate Barnard's annual report, January 10, 1911.

Tula and me whisper and giggle while we dash from Mrs. Paulson's screen porch to the washhouse out back. A misty rain falls, so we run with our bundles held close. If you drop anything in the mud, Mrs. Paulson will take it out of your pay…at least that's what the housemaid, Flannery, says. Mrs. Paulson seems more kindly than that, but we don't see her much since the doctor put her abed after the big women's-club luncheon. Mrs. Paulson is in a family way, and she's lost a baby once before.

"Quiet and quick, that'll keep ya hired on here" is what Flannery says. She's a round ol' Irish woman and talks in a Irish way. She's too gouty to do all this wash, and the washhouse is hot as a teakettle. "Y'aren't much use to me," she tells us. "Ragamuffins, that's what y'are."

Truth is, Tula and me together come cheaper than one full-grown washerwoman would, and Flannery knows it. Plus, we both look right respectable, me in my red pinny dress and Tula wearing Nessa's bonnet and the blue-ribbon sash dress I wrecked the day Amos got shot. Me and Tula took up the hem and mended the rips with a needle and thread I borrowed. Then we made a boiled walnut-bark dye to color it brown and hide the stains. It doesn't look half bad, except for being too big because Tula's so skinny and small from giving her food to Pinti and Koi.

Nessa would give to them, too, but I make her eat hers. "Nessie, you have to be grown and watch over the little kids. You need that food," I told her. Then I held her hands and reminded her she's the oldest girl in camp now that we voted for Tula and me to work in town and Dewey to go out with old Gable to hunt food and take the horse and mule afield to graze. That way, Dewey can make sure Gable and the mule and Skedee come back by dark. Not like the first time, when Gable was gone for three days with my pack pony, then came wandering home, singing a song that's been in my ear ever since.

I sing it now while we set down our bundles in the washhouse.

My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;

Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;

Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary

Over the path of the poor orphan child.

Why did they send me so far and so lonely,

Up where the moors spread and gray rocks are piled?

Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only

Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.

Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,

Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,

God, in his mercy, protection is showing,

Comfort and hope to the poor…

Tula nudges me with her bare foot. Shoes were the only thing we couldn't get her, but lots of kids don't have shoes in the summer.

"What're you kickin' me for?" I say while she rubs the bar of fancy store-bought Fels-Naptha across the grater, the muscles tight as ropes in her arms.

"Oh, where have ya been, Billy Boy-ee, Billy Boy-ee?" she sings, and she's got the tune just right. We been working on words and songs, Choctaw ones and English ones. Tula's learning fast, and I knew more Choctaw words from old Isom at the horse barn and the Choctaw kids at school than I thought. "Where have ya been…"

"Charmin' Billy-y-y," I chime in, figuring she wants a happier song, so we go on and sing "Billy Boy" together. "I have been to seek a wife. She's the joy of my life. But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother. Oh, where…"

Tula stomps her feet on the wet floor while we work and sing. One thing about Tula, she loves music. When she can't think of a word or two, she hums or whistles. We go all the way through "Billy Boy" three times and pour the boil kettle into the big washtub before we carry the steamy-hot copper back to the cistern to fill it again, so we can boil all the sheets and doilies and clothes and underclothes to whiten them best before they go in the wash water.

"She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes…" I start up while we stumble across the yard, lugging the full kettle betwixt us. I figure that's enough singing about Billy and courtin' and housewifin', since Tula and Amos are too sweet on each other already.

"Keyu," Tula complains as the kettle sways like a fat man after too much bootleg whiskey. "Pol-lee put the kettle on, Pol-lee put…"

I laugh so hard at her coming up with that song I almost drop my side of the copper. I'm about to throw my head back and join in when Flannery walks out the back door to toss the breakfast scraps to the birds.

"Paid for singin', are ya now?" She gives us a mean look. "Be gettin' the copper on the boil and quick. I need ya to fetch my marketin' in town while the rain's slackened. Missus is after a peach pie for supper."

Tula and me give each other the wide-eye. Peach pie means sticky-sweet tin cans in the rubbish. Me and Tula are gonna have us a treat from the burn bin after Flannery gets the twins down for their nap and makes that pie.

"Yes'm." I stretch my neck to see what breakfast leavings are headed over the fence, where climbing roses grow head high all the way around the house.

Looks like bread toast with jam, oat mash, and ham.

"And fetch the soiled linens from ol' Paulson while y'are out, as well," Flannery says on the way back. "Leave that one for tendin' the washhouse." She won't ever call Tula by name.

We've barely got the kettle in place when Flannery rings the bell on the back porch to tell me she's hung the market list on the black iron clip where the dairyman posts his bill for milk, cream, cheese, and eggs.

"I'll hurry," I promise before leaving Tula to tend to the boiling batch. "You know how to do it, right? Out of the copper, into the wash water, take the wash dolly and poke it in there and up, down, around, up, down, around. The dump water goes out that hatch in the back wall, so it'll run down the drain tile into Mrs. Paulson's roses."

Tula stops and puts a hand on her hip. We're already on our third week doing laundry here. You don't have to show Tula something more than once.

"I'll grab those breakfast leavings off the ground first. You watch out for me, all right? Whistle a bobwhite call if Flannery's comin'."

Nodding, she moves so she can see out the window screen to the house.

I hurry and get the market list, then duck through the overgrown rose arbor at the back gate and gather up the food scraps into a flour sack from my pocket.

In the honeysuckle bushes across the way, a field cat or stray dog or a nosy squirrel rustles around, wanting to get at the food. Tula's bird call warns me off before I'm done, and so I wrap up the poke sack, toss it over the climbing roses to the back of the washhouse, and leave the rest for the birds or whatever's in the bushes.

I keep my bonnet up as I run to the market, dodging men and horses, wagons, wandering chickens, and some Choctaw ladies set up to sell pashofa stew to folks off the train. Four of those rotten boys Dewey liked to go around with are squatted down in the shade nearby, probably waiting to steal something.

A thin-faced girl looks out the window of the tall red-rock laundry house as I pass by. She's dressed in just a white shimmy, her shoulders bare and her arms skinny. Her long red hair hangs in wet strings. It must be hot as blazes in there, worse than Mrs. Paulson's washhouse by a lot. The girl's eyes follow me, but when I turn my head, she doesn't smile. I wave, and she presses a hand to the glass. Her fingers are chapped and raw.

I hope Miss Kate comes for her soon, because even with the clubwomen doing their own laundry, that place won't close up. Talihina ain't the sleepy town it was when Daddy and I used to come down from the mountain. There's more trade in Indian-owned land every day, and more folks that've brought their wagons and their grubstakes, hoping on a good deal. There's ten buyers for every horse that can pull a wagon or carry a rider. By tomorrow, there'll be eleven, and the next day a dozen, and every man wants a wife. Marriage brokers have hung their shingles right alongside the land brokers, and some men will stop a girl right in the street if her hair's down, showing she's not married, and they'll ask her if she'd like to marry, even if she's too young yet.

All these new people make me itchy to be on the mountain, where we'll build our own town. I draw it in the old logbook from Daddy's rucksack, dreaming up plans. But buying tenpenny nails and twine and sacks of flour, sugar, and garden seed takes money. So me and Tula keep putting coins in Shelterwood Bank, which we hid in the knothole of a big tree along Sweetwater Creek. If we can work the rest of the summer, we might even buy a couple laying hens and a rooster.

That's worth hauling boiling kettles and taking the chance on going around town to fetch marketing and laundry, if I have to.

I'm out of breath before getting to the store where Mrs. Paulson trades. I hurry around back and ring the bell on the screen door, then hand the man my list and tell him who it's for, and, no, sir, I'd best wait outside.

Mrs. Tinsley comes in the front door not long after, and so I stay pressed to the wall out back. That woman will talk your ear off, and she is full of nosy questions. She'll also hire you for work, then come up with reasons not to pay you as much as she promised. I learned the hard way about Mrs. Tinsley.

It's a relief when the goods are ready and I can get out of there without her seeing me. While I walk down the alley to pick up the dirty clothes from Mrs. Paulson's father-in-law, I peek in the grocery box at the canned peaches. I can't hardly wait to pick a sassafras twig and swirl up whatever's left in the can once we get it out of the rubbish. Thinking about it makes my mouth water as I knock on old man Paulson's back door and holler that I'm here for the laundry.

He smiles and tells me, "Halito!" when he opens the door. Setting the bundle atop my box, all tied up in a bedsheet, he asks if I'm sure I can carry that much.

"Yes'ir, I can," I tell him, and he grins and leans on his cane. Then he reaches out to check my arm muscle and says he doesn't know if I'm that stout.

"Stout as a timberjack," I say. "I'd go to cuttin' trees instead of washin' clothes, but I don't want to put the men out of work."

He throws his head back and laughs. Then he takes a brown caramel candy from his shirt pocket and sets it on top of the laundry bundle and winks at me. He's a sweet old widower man who was high up in the Choctaw government in the Indian Territory days and also ran a traveler's hotel. He loves to tell stories of the people who came to stay there. I like to listen at his stories, but rain's on the way, so I tell him "Yakoke" for giving me the candy. I try to say I better get on before the rain comes in Choctaw, which makes him chuckle. He pats me on the head and tells me to keep at it, then sends me on my way.

I'm in such a rush going back through the alley, I almost don't notice when somebody steps right in front of me. I look up, from two bare feet in the mud, past a plain brown skirt, to a pair of arms wrapped round a basketful of folded clothes, and right into the face of one of those laundry girls. Both of us catch a breath, each surprised by the other. This girl is blond headed with skin as white as a china cup, but she's sad and sickly looking, just like the one in the window.

"You all right?" I ask, even though I know all we did was scare each other.

"Be about your work, Evelyn." The laundryman's voice is so close I stumble back a step. I turn my head to see past my bonnet bill, and there he is on the back stairs not five foot away. He's a tall, skinny man with rolled-up sleeves and long hands. I don't dare look into his face.

"Evelyn." He says it sharper and steps off the stoop into the wet. "Deliver the man's laundry. I'm certain he's eager to see you. And take care not to track up the carpets while you change the linens. He's a good customer." The girl hurries on her way. I hear her feet squishing in the mud and my own heart beating, and then the man says to me, "And who have we here?"

Taking a better grip on my box, I move back a step, keep my head tucked.

"Oh, now, don't be shy." He's got a soft, friendly laugh. "Evelyn didn't mean to startle you."

His boots take long steps toward me. One, two, three, four. They stop right in Evelyn's tracks.

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

"There now, you're unharmed." Coins jingle in his pocket as he squats down to see under my bonnet. "But we have given you a fright, haven't we?"

I shake my head, turn and look down the alley toward old Mr. Paulson's back door, wish he'd still be there on the step. But he's not.

The laundryman's fingers land on my arm, light as a bird, then close in a tight circle above my elbow. "Steady there. Come, sit until you regain yourself. It's dry inside."

I suck in a breath, tell him, "M-my mama n-needs me home," but it comes out as no more than a whisper.

"Of course," he answers. "However, I can't let you go like this." He tugs my arm. I lean against the pull. His eyes grab on to mine. They're pale blue-gray, icy like a winter sky. "I know you," he says. "I never forget a pretty face."

The grocery box tips. I clamp my chin over the laundry bundle, shake my head, say, "No, sir."

"It will come to me." He leans so close there's not a foot of space between him and me. His fingers snap, one, two, three. On the third time, a silver half-dollar pops up between his thumb and first finger, like magic.

I catch a breath, think, I saw somebody do that once. But where?

"Perhaps I'm mistaken?" The coin disappears, then it's back, then it disappears again.

I stare, trying not to blink. How can he do that?

Finally, the coin's in his other hand, and I realize he's turned loose of my arm to work the trick. Go, I tell myself. Run. But I just stand there with my eyes crossed, looking at that silver half dollar.

Then that half dollar is double, one in each hand.

"I need a girl of exactly your size," he tells me. "I've some dresses to alter. The pay is fifty cents, and all you must do is wear the dress and stand very still while I work. Can you manage that for me? We'll begin tomorrow…shall we say, three o'clock? And if you're suitable, we'll continue with the next dress."

I swallow hard, stare at coins that could buy everything we need. Easy. No more boiling wash in the heat. "How many?"

"Dresses?"

"Yes, sir." I hitch up the market box. My arms ache.

"A dozen, at least. Perhaps more."

Six dollars!

"Fine silk party frocks," the man says. "Oh, and we wouldn't have to tell your mother. We'll keep the arrangement…just between the two of us."

You'd finally get to see what a silk dress feels like, Ollie,I tell myself. And six dollars!

"The dresses are for a soiree." His mouth smiles, but his eyes don't. "Have you ever been to one?"

My mind snaps back, hard and quick. I take a big step sideways, pretend it's because I almost lost hold of the grocery box. "Mama promised me to a widow lady for the next two weeks."

"Is that so?" Thunder rumbles overhead, and a raindrop comes out of nowhere, lands smack on my bonnet bill, then drips off.

"Yes, sir, and I'm sorry for it. I'd best get…get h-home before the storm." I back up too far for him to reach, turn away with my heart pounding.

"Olive."

The word snaps me around so fast I can't stop from it. My caramel candy slides off and lands in the mud. I don't dare try to pick it up.

The laundryman smiles wide. "The first dress…" He stares into my face, nods like he's answered a question for himself. "The color is olive green. Just right for you. I'll see you in two weeks, won't I?"

I swallow hard, say, "Yes, sir."

A cold wind kicks up, and hailstones hit tin roofs, ping, ping, ping. Clamping my chin over the laundry bundle, I go to running and don't slow down till I'm through Mrs. Paulson's gate.

Flannery stops stringing laundry lines on the porch and looks at me when I run up the steps. "Got the devil on yer tail, gal?" she asks.

Tears push into my eyes, but I know she means the weather. I set the market goods on the bench by the door, then take up old man Paulson's bundle and hurry back to the washhouse without a word. Inside, I press my back against the wall and look up at the rafters and gulp air. Olive…The color is olive green. Just right for you.

I know you.

Does he?

I never forget a pretty face.

Where did I see somebody do that money trick before?

Laying a hand on my shoulder, Tula asks if I'm okay. I don't even know afterward if she asked in Choctaw or English. I just nod. I can't tell her about the laundryman. I can't tell anybody.

A noise from under the worktable in the corner pushes through the clatter in my head. It's the laundryman. He's come after me. But I know that's foolish. He didn't see where I went. He can't find me here.

The noise comes again. I'm across the washhouse in two big steps, yanking up the cloth that covers the table. A face with big blue-gray eyes looks out at me from under a mop of dark hair that's curly but so matted it sticks out in all directions. Then I see there ain't one kid back there, but two. The smaller one has straight hair and might be Choctaw. The bigger one, I ain't sure, but I think it's a girl even though it's wearing boy overalls that're tore off at the knees.

Tula starts babbling English and Choctaw all mixed together—something about rain and the food poke and Mrs. Paulson's roses.

That must be what I heard in the bushes a while ago. Not squirrels or cats. Two kids. "Tula, what are you doing? Why'd you let them in here?"

"Omba chito." She points out the window while the wind whips tree branches in circles and lightning cuts the sky.

"If Flannery sees them, she'll run us all off and give us a bad name." The laundryman will find out, and I'll have to go to work for him. "You tell them to crawl out the dump hatch, there at the end of the table. They can't stay."

"Jus' a lil' while," the bigger girl whispers. So she does talk.

A hammer beats inside my ears. I want to waken from this day and have it be just a worrisome dream.

"We be real quieten," the girl whispers, and reaches for the cloth to pull it back down. For a minute, we're like two yard dogs in a tug-of-war.

"Let go," I tell her.

"Ssshhh," she whispers.

"You can't…" The sky breaks and dumps buckets of rain, and that's that. We'll have to wait till the storm stops, or the day's work is done.

I let the cloth fall back down and try to pretend those girls aren't there, but all afternoon long, while we wash, wring, and hang laundry on the porch, I'm too scared to think. When I finally stand at the back door getting our pay, Flannery fists her hands on her hips. "Y'are a right chance taker today, eh? I've a mind to clean the washhouse, but I'm thinkin' I'd not like the filth in there, are ya hearin' me now, gal?"

I nod and grab the coins, then stumble down the steps on wobbly legs. No telling how much Flannery saw, but I've got to keep those kids away from here for good.

That's how Shelterwood Camp gets Cora and Effie, who're Choctaw freedmen like Amos. A lawyer came and told their auntie and uncle they couldn't be guardian over the girls after the parents had died, and the court had picked a guardian to protect the girls from being robbed of their land and timber money by their own relatives. Next thing Cora and Effie knew, they wound up in an orphan asylum. They climbed out a window and down a drainpipe to get away. Now they don't know where their family is, or if they still have a family, or where home is and how to get there.

That makes ten of us in all, counting old Gable, or nine when he's out wandering with Milk the mule. Cora is smart at setting deadfall traps and snares to catch wild game, so she ain't bad to have around, except she's bossy and hardheaded and cusses if she feels like it. She hasn't got good enough clothes to work in town, but with a mouth like that, it don't seem likely anyhow.

Dewey ain't happy because there's two more girls for voting, and not even a week passes before he leaves Gable in the woods one day and goes to town on my horse. Full dark is almost on us when Dewey comes back with a fat lip and a black eye, peppermint sticks in his pocket, and a handful of coins he won gambling at tinks and cards. Trailing behind Skedee come two boys who saved Dewey's hide when some town kids decided to give him a thrashing. I don't like the look of Finnis and Fergus one bit. They're older and bigger than anybody except Amos, and they're runaways from a farmer who rented them out of a poorhouse in Arkansas. I feel sure the law looks for runaways, especially rented-out ones.

But the worst thing is that when Dewey went off to town, he left Gable under a tree napping while the mule grazed. Even way into the night, there's no sign of Gable. The mule comes back alone by morning, but we look everywhere for Gable, and all we find is the leather pouch he carried over his shoulder. Inside there's a tiny fife flute with brass tips, a faded black ribbon with a baby's silver ring on it, a fold-up candle lamp, and a little book that's been read so many times the pages crumble when you touch them. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. On the first page, handwritten words are almost too faded to make out,

To my Love,

Read this tale again

and think of us.

No journey is impossible

for the heart.

Below that, the paper is rubbed clean through, so we never know who signed it.

That's all we have left of Gable.

Dewey says the mule must've got loose, and Gable caught a ride on a road wagon to someplace. But I hope Gable finally found that spring pool he talked about sometimes…the magic one where you'd look into it and see your true love. I hope he laid his old body down for good, and he's with Angeline.

After that, Tula and me take to riding Skedee and Milk to town. Behind every rock and tree, I see the laundryman. I feel safer on a horse's back, but I know it's risky to be riding the road at all. July Joyner and his gang have laid up somewhere to hide, with $4,000 bounty on their heads. Some folks say they went north into the old Cherokee Nation. Some say they're in the Winding Stair. Travelers still move in groups, and the library wagon has stopped its routes. I hope that gang is caught soon.

My two weeks till I meet the laundryman are running short, and I tell myself he probably found some other girl my size by now, and he doesn't really know my name at all, that the first dress really is olive green. But at night in my dreams, he's after me, or Tesco Peele is, and I try to run, but I can't. I wake up on my pallet in the dugout, sweating and gulping air. I curl close to Nessa and think, We've got to go up the mountain. We've got to go soon.

Trouble is, we're eleven mouths to feed now, and the coins you can get for woman work add up slow, just like Miss Kate said in her speech. Every morning, I feel more desperate. A shadow hangs over me and I worry, This will be the day something bad happens.

Of a sudden one afternoon, the front door of the laundry house hangs open as I hurry up the other side of the street. All the windows are raised, and the place is quiet as the grave. A loose dog trots out while I stand and watch.

I duck into Mr. Brotherton's newspaper office, and he tells me the laundryman slipped away in the middle of the night and took the girls with him. At the Paulsons' house the next day, Flannery says the townsfolk and some of the old Choctaw Lighthorse got the laundryman, after he tried to take two little girls into his road wagon when he thought no one was looking. Flannery squeezes a hand over her neck, making the motion of a hanging while she lolls out her tongue. Then she smiles and marks a cross over her chest and says, "Dark justice for the doin' of the devil's deeds. 'Tis fittin' his soul have no rest." She tells Tula and me she won't need us anymore, once a respectable laundry starts up in town.

But Mrs. Paulson keeps us on the next week, and the next. She says she likes having the laundry done at home, and besides that, there's window washing and the yard to care for, and other chores that're still too much for Flannery.

By middle of July, there're notices in the newspaper wanting men and strong boys to harvest crops and hay, and cut, split, and stack firewood by the cord. When I count up the money in Shelterwood Bank, it's plain that to buy all our traveling supplies before fall, the boys need to leave off hunting, fishing, and looking all over the mountains for the July Joyner gang, hoping to strike it rich on the bounty money.

On a Saturday after Tula and me have finished cleaning up from a clubwomen's tea, we sit on the back steps of the church, waiting for the parson and nosy Mrs. Tinsley to clear out so we can pick through the trash. I pass the time by reading work notices from the newspaper one of the ladies wrapped around her tea cakes.

"The Good Woman?" Tula wants to know if Mrs. Grube has an article in the paper. We been reading them pretty regular at our night fire. After the newspaper readings, Tula tells old Choctaw stories, and Dewey tells coal miner tales, and Finnis and Fergus talk about the work farm, and Cora and Effie cuss about the orphan asylum. I share Daddy's stories of lost gold mines and the big stone head we saw on a treasure hunt. Daddy said it was one of the forest giants that fell in a hole and never could climb out.

"We'll see about Mrs. Grube's writing later," I tell Tula. "But listen at this…" I read the work notices out loud, then point. "Men and strong boys, that's what it says."

I don't even have to look at Tula to see her mouth puckering up. She knows what I'm getting at.

"Keyu!" She shakes her head so hard her bonnet slides off. "Just you 'n' me go town-workin'."

"Listen at me a minute. The money ain't—"

"Ffff!" She throws the back of her hand at me. Her knuckles are so red and raw she looks like one of those laundry girls. "Listen at me. Us only." Then she says she's president, so it's her choice. The real problem is, Amos is healed enough to work now, and Tula's afraid if he goes to town, he'll get shot or put in jail.

I stomp a boot to hush her up, but I'm sorry right off because my feet grew so much this summer, my toes are curled over and blistered. "Well, I am here to tell you, we've got eleven of us to take up the mountain. Eleven. It can't be just two of us working for money." I rub my toes through the boot leather. "And these shoes are too tight, and only half of us even have shoes, and we can't winter on the mountain without shoes."

I feel Tula's mind turning, so I just keep on talking before she can argue. "More have to work. And any girl without proper clothes can't, so that lets out Cora. Nessa, Pinti, Koi, and Effie are too young. Boys don't need good clothes to work in the hayfields, or shoes, either. Lots of farm boys don't have shoes."

I've got her thinking, so I let her be. After the parson and Mrs. Tinsley go out the front door, I scoot over and check the rubbish barrel. There're some half-eaten tea cakes, a couple tin cans, a hank of jute twine, two mostly burnt candles, some cheesecloth, and two glass jars with chips on the rim. Those are the best prize of all because I know just how to use them. When you want a vote to go your way, you need to grease the wheels ahead of time. I learned that from reading Mrs. Grube's news reports about Kate Barnard's big deeds in the statehouse.

That night, instead of telling stories, I get all the kids to catch lightning bugs, and we gather them in the two tin cans with the cheesecloth over the top. Once we've got enough, I slip off the cheesecloth, pop the jar mouths into the cans, and up come those lightning bugs, under the glass.

"Magic lanterns," I say, and tie the twine round the whole thing like Christmas ribbon, with a double-knot bow at the top for a handle.

"Well, I'll be." Finnis puts his nose right up to the jar. "I ain't ever seen nothin' like it."

"It's purdy." Cora twists her head, her hair going every which way, and her gray eyes crossing. "Let me hold it."

We pass the lantern jars hand to hand in our circle, lighting up one face after another. The air fills with laughs and giggles, and I tell the story of the Lightning Bug Gang and their daring train robbery, which I stitch together like a quilt from tales Daddy told me. I don't think he'd mind.

On Sunday morning, Tula calls all of us to a council. Once she sits down, she points at me and tells everybody that Ollie's got something to say.

All the heads turn my way.

"Why's she get to talk?" Dewey gets tetchy right off, trying to scare me quiet, but I stand up and speak my piece about the work notices and the boys. Dewey and his gang don't like it. Finnis and Fergus ran off from a farmer who hit them with a buggy whip and a hoe handle. And Dewey only wants to run in the woods, looking to find the treasure caves he's sure old Gable came here for.

"I'd work," Finnis says finally. "But not for somebody that whips ner does other bad thangs." Beside him, Fergus's eyes rim with tears, and his hands tremble, even though he's twelve years old and a big boy. He's been jumpy here lately. Amos says Dewey, Finnis, and Fergus came upon something bad when they were out hunting treasure caves. It gave Fergus nightmares, but they won't tell what it was.

"We'd only take work from good people." Amos pats Fergus on the shoulder. "Folks that don't whack on nobody, ner shoot nobody."

"Me and Tula can ask around town, see who's good to work for," I say, because I can feel things moving my way. "With six of us drawing pay, we'll get the money for a grubstake and some chickens and a rooster. Then we'll head up the mountain and build Shelterwood Town." That's the first time I've said the words out loud, and it feels like speaking a piece of a dream into the big, wide world. "That's the name I picked for it."

"It's purdy, Ollie," Amos says. "Shelterwood Town."

I show them my drawings in Daddy's book, and everybody smiles except Dewey.

"We boys'd need the mule to do farm work in Talihina." He hooks eyes on me.

"You ain't getting the mule."

"We hire out with the mule, we'll make more money."

"You don't know beans about farming with any mule, Dewey. And the mule is too old, besides."

"You ain't the boss of—"

Tula bangs the hollow log and says that's enough talking and we should vote.

Before she calls for a show of hands, I slip in one more thing. "Also, I think we should give the mule a new name besides just Milk. I think we ought to name him Lightning Bug, after those magic lantern jars I made for y'all. Can we vote on that first?"

Tula says we can, and I look over at Dewey and smile and think, That's how Miss Kate would've greased the wheels.