Читать книгу Minnow - James E. McTeer II - Страница 6

Minnow watched Varn's scarred lips move as he finished his tale. Minnow had known his friend since before memory, but still winced at the puckered scars on his lips and cheeks.

They took turns telling stories around a small fire in their hideout. The slanting scrap-metal roof was rusted with enough holes to chimney the smoke, but the inside still swirled with a dim haze. Curtains of gray Spanish moss hung down across each open end, keeping out the early morning light.

Minnow had found the place long ago on the edge of a marsh not far from Bay Street. He took the gang there, and they built the hideout together. It was hidden amidst low palmetto fronds and cooled by fresh salty air drifting in from the river.

Martin stole a box of matches so they could have real fires, and they stocked the hideout with treasures: driftwood pieces, rusty scraps pulled from the pluff mud, raccoon skulls uncovered on the bluff. Everett found an old twisted rag that he said was a hoodoo doll, but they buried it away from their territory. Sometimes they brought food and made a picnic, like they were camping in the wild jungle out on the far islands.

Shadows lapped across Varn's scarred face. He had been a baby when he took a tin of boiling grease and tried to drink it like a cup of milk. His top lip was bubbled and shiny, and a raised scar spread from cheek to cheek. Minnow didn't like looking at the scars, so he watched the fire instead. Varn told a story about the Yemassee Indians running settlers out of Newfort long ago and murdering anyone left behind.

"The women and girls who got on the boats had to look back and watch as they sailed away. Their houses and fields were burning. Even some of their babies were burning. They had to watch as their men and boys ran to the water's edge and got caught by the Indians. The Indians skinned them alive, and the women and girls could hear it as they sailed off. They could hear their menfolk screaming for help and could smell their skin crackling like bacon."

Varn took something out of his pocket and licked his scars.

"You know what this is?"

He opened his hand and showed a big arrowhead in his palm. It was as long as Minnow's index finger. Gray. Sharp.

"This is from a Yemassee arrow. It lodged in someone's skull. Probably one of those men who was screaming so loud."

Minnow gazed at the arrowhead and then looked up at Varn. Minnow had found arrowheads before. They looked a lot like Varn's. None of them had come from a skull. He wondered if Varn's really had.

"Is that true?" Martin asked. He was the youngest of them, just six, and he'd scooted away from the fire when Varn got to the scalping.

"It's true the Yemassee ran everyone off," Minnow said.

Varn scowled and sliced the arrowhead through the air like a knife.

"You're scared, too."

"It was a good story," Minnow said.

Varn crossed his arms and smiled. He was the biggest and the oldest, almost twelve years old.

"Did an Indian really scalp someone with it?" Martin asked.

"Of course not, stupid. Who knows? It was probably from a deer hunt. Here."

He tossed it at Martin, but the boy recoiled and it landed in the dirt by the fire.

"I don't want it," Martin said, looking down at the point.

"Leave it in the box," Everett said, but Minnow held his hand out.

"I'd like it, for a while."

Varn nodded.

"Fine. Maybe you'll run into an Indian on your way home. But bring it back."

Minnow took the arrowhead. It was flint, with a wicked flare, but the butt of it was thick and sturdy in his grip.

"I gotta go," Martin said, pulling back the nearest curtain of moss to let in a few bars of sunshine. "I told Ma I'd be back by noon."

Minnow squinted at the light. The sun was well up. Martin was in trouble, because noon was close. They'd come early that morning, before sunrise and the heat of the day. Martin left, and Everett followed him.

"That was a good story," Minnow told Varn.

Varn looked at the fire. "I'll stay and watch it burn out. You go. I know you have to."

"Thanks."

Minnow went around him and stopped at the moss curtain.

"It's a nice arrowhead," he said.

"Yeah. I hope your papa's all right."

Minnow nodded and went out into the bright world.

His father's body lay on a bed. Almost no life remained under the second skin of white sheet. Minnow stood in front of the only window in the room, watching his father take shallow breaths. Waxy glass let in diffuse light from the blue summer sky, but the room shook with shadows cast by tapers wasting away under hot little fires. Darkness drew across a faded portrait of Minnow's grandfather in a gray uniform.

He shared the air with his father. The dust. Maybe that sick taste from his father lying there a month, being washed as much as possible, but not nearly enough. The room was almost dead, with just small pieces of life left inside.

He moved so he wouldn't freeze there forever. He moved only as close as he would have gotten if the man had been awake. His father slept, eyes closed, lips pursed as if whistling, cracked and dry. The skeleton beneath the blanket wasn't really his father but a wraith left behind. That thing couldn't work. That thing couldn't sing, or dance, or tell a story.

"It's Minnow."

He reached his hand out with two fingers extended, but then stopped. His mother walked in, and he withdrew his hand.

She crossed the room and put a bowl of something next to the bed. She perched on the edge and looked down at Minnow's father but didn't say a word. She was wearing her favorite white dress. The one with blue flowers.

"Just because he can't talk doesn't mean you shouldn't," Minnow said.

"He never liked talking much anyway," she said.

"But you'd like talking to him."

She nodded and put a hand on his stubbly cheek.

"You hear your son? Taking care of me?"

Minnow stepped back, glanced at the door.

"Stay."

He stayed.

"It isn't working," she said.

The boy looked at his father.

"I know."

"The doctor knows something that might help. For his lungs. His breathing."

"Did you get it?"

"Not yet."

"Let me go."

She shook her head. "It's right in town. I'll go. It's not yours to do."

"I can't do anything but watch. Let me go," Minnow said.

She gave him one of his father's old leather billfolds, just a scrap of hide, and put a dollar in it with a piece of paper. She folded it for him. He put it in his pocket and pressed it down. More money than he'd ever had at once.

"You got to go to Ander's for it."

"On Bay Street."

"Right on Bay Street. You get it, get yourself a soda if you can, and come home."

She pressed down his hair with the same hand she'd touched his father with. The shaggy hair, sandy-colored like his father's once was, covered his eyes. She smiled.

"Talk to him," Minnow said. "Tell him what you did today. Maybe what you dreamed last night. I'll tell him about my trip when I get back, and he'll feel strong hearing our voices."

She looked away and then looked back. She straightened the loose collar on Minnow's summer shirt and leaned down to brush nothing off his chest and stomach.

"You didn't learn to talk like that around here," his mother said. "Where did you come from, boy?"

"From you."

He left them in the quiet room.