As quick as they appeared, the feechies disappeared again—we disappeared again. Because that’s what I’d turned out to be: a genuine he-feechie alive and in the flesh!
Feechie Man clambered up the front post of a general store, and I follered right behind him. As we hurried over the roof ridge, he looked back to make sure I was still there. “I’m Tebo!” he hollered. “Tebo Vinesturgeon!”
“I’m Grady,” I hollered back, jumping across to the next roof. “Just Grady.”
We scampered roof-to-roof to the eastern edge of the city. The younguns in the streets quit their games and the wagoners reined up their oxen and the launderers grabbed onto their clotheslines to keep from falling over with amazement at the sight of seventy-six feechies tearing across the rooflines of the city in broad daylight.
Some pointed and gaped and hollered, and I don’t reckon I ever felt so full of fun. I waved at the Tambluffers and hawweee-ed and ooolie-ooolie-ed and ooga-booga-ed, and some of the folkses looks of horror melted into smiles. The younguns waved and hawweee-ed back, and the other feechies laughed to see it.
When the buildings run out, we streamed down and pelted across a little field to the edge of the Tamside Forest. With one short look back at the city, I left civilization behind.
In spite of all, it made me sad not to tell Floyd goodbye. I never knew a more full-bloomed scoundrel, but he was my scoundrel, and I was going to miss him. He never told me who I was or where I come from, and that was one of the greatest meannesses he ever did me. He left me trapped inside a cramped and tiny little self: I was Floyd’s boy.
The charlatan’s boy.
It was true that I was the charlatan’s boy, but there was things about me that was a whole lot truer.
Still there was some lonesomeness in leaving that old self behind. The joy of the new life spreading out in front of me didn’t clear out all the sadness of the old life. Not yet anyway.
When we hit the forest, the other feechies went to climbing the trees quick as cats or monkeys. I follered Tebo up a big swell-bottom gum tree, and then I follered him out along the lowest branch. When he got close to the end, he made a flying leap and caught a branch of the next tree. I jumped where he jumped, and we scampered along that limb and out another one to the next tree, and to the tree after that. All around us, the other feechies was doing the same.
That’s how feechies make time across a swamp or bottomland—flying through the treetops like fox squirrels, above the vines and briars and bushes that slow down a feller on the ground. And never leaving a track for the civilizers to find.
When I was a little feller, I had a suspicion that I could fly. I knew I hadn’t figured out how to do it yet, but I still thought maybe I had it in me. Sailing limb to limb through the forest canopy, with the muddy bottomlands falling away beneath me, I knew I had been right. I don’t reckon there’s anything more exhilarating.
The other feechies scattered, and I didn’t see them the rest of the trip. They was a heap faster at tree walking than I was; Tebo waited for me, though, and escorted me south along the river Tam. He was a sight to behold, flying through the treetops with his long hair trailing off the nape of his neck. He didn’t have much to say—nothing except, “Foller me, feller. We got business to tend to.”
We traveled south along the river for a couple of hours before turning west into Bayberry Swamp. We paused at the main channel of Bayberry Creek, and Tebo shared a flat piece of pressed duckweed with me before we waded across.
Tebo was as friendly as a feller can be without talking. I could tell he was doubtful about something. Doubtful, maybe, that it was right to bring me so deep into the world of the feechiefolks without getting anybody’s say-so.
We went deep, deep into Bayberry—a heap deeper than any civilizer goes, deeper than I even knew it went—until we got to a patch of high ground. It was a island, really, dotted with animal-skin tents and tree houses. They was either empty, or the folks inside was hiding. In any case, nobody come out to howdy us. We passed by a dozen or so of them kind of houses before we come to a huge, hollow sweet-gum log so big around that, laying on its side, it was higher than my head.
Tebo picked up a chunk of firewood and knocked on the side of the log. “Auntie Darlu?” he said. “Uncle Harvo?”
A whisker-chinned she-feechie come to the open end of the log. Her hair was wild and tangly, half brown and half gray, and her eyes was creased at the corners. They wasn’t merry eyes, but they had plenty of life in them, and it looked to me like maybe they could be merry. When she come out of the log and straightened herself, she turned out to be almost as high as me.
“Hello, Tebo,” she said. “What do you want?” She was a little sour, if you want to know the truth. She nodded toward me. “Who’s that supposed to be?”
Tebo didn’t say anything but just looked down and dug a trench in the sand with his toe.
“Well then?” She was pretty snappish. “What do you want?”
Tebo seemed mighty bashful. I didn’t know what this was supposed to be about.
The woman turned to me. “Well then, who are you?”
“Uh, well, ma’am, I’m …”
Just then a older he-feechie run to the log opening, his long salt-and-pepper hair streaming down his neck. “Cato!” he hollered, and it wasn’t a question either. It was a statement. “Cato!”
The woman give me a good squint for the first time—looked straight in my eyes—and her squint become a look of wide-eyed wonder. She grabbed my jaws in both her hands and pulled me close and studied me. “Cato!” she hollered. “Missing Cato!”
Her husband, meanwhile, was saying over and over, “Cato! Cato! Cato!” a little louder each time, and I didn’t know if “Cato” was some kind of feechie greeting or what.
The she-feechie run around behind me and grabbed holt of my right knee, which seemed a strange kind of greeting even for feechiefolks, and then she touched me on the ticklish spot behind the knee, which made me yowl and jump, and she said, “Harvo, Harvo, it’s him! It’s our Cato!”
“Oh no, ma’am,” I said. “You got me mixed up. I’m Grady.”
The she-feechie wrapped me up in a hug so tight I couldn’t breathe or talk.
“Wait a minute,” I groaned. “I don’t know any Cato. I’m Grady.”
“Oh no, son. You aint Grady.”
“Son?” I asked. “I aint anybody’s son. I’m just Grady.”
The she-feechie held me at arm’s length, where she could look at me. “Oh no, you aint just Grady,” she said. “Somebody might have called you Grady, but you aint Grady. You’re Cato, our only child, gone these many years and now brought back to us!” She fell on my neck crying like all nation, and the hefeechie was crying too, and even Tebo was crying as he crawfished away.
“Now just a minute,” I said.
“I’d know you anywhere, boy,” the he-feechie said. “One blue eye, one green.”
“And a birthmark behind your knee!” said Darlu. Then she went back to crying on my neck, and between her tears and her nose running, my whole shoulder was soaking wet. “We’re so sorry,” she choked out. “We’re so, so sorry!”
I stood there bewildered.
“We only left you for a little bit,” Harvo blubbered. “Right there under a palmetto bush, while we went to gather mayhaws.” Under a palmetto bush. Just like Floyd had told me. “We couldn’t take a two-year-old to gather mayhaws,” Darlu said.
I just blinked at them, looking from the old he-feechie to the old she-feechie. They couldn’t be saying what I thought they was saying.
“When we come back, you was gone.”
“And we never knew where you went.”
“We looked for you a long time,” said Harvo. “A long, long time.”
“But we never found you. And we been lonesome for you ever since.”
“And we’ve prayed for you every morning and talked about you every night and wondered what you was doing—or if you was doing.”
It was like standing underneath a waterfall and trying to drink it. I couldn’t hardly let myself believe it. A mama. A pap. And a name. Cato. It sounded like it might be true … like it might be my name after all.
“Cato,” I said. “Cato.” I let it roll around in my mouth like a piece of sugar candy.
Harvo and Darlu—my pap and my mama—smiled at that. “Cato Turtlebane,” Harvo said.
“Pardon?” I said.
“You’re Cato Turtlebane. First name Cato, last name Turtlebane.”
“A last name? I got a last name too?” How’s a feller supposed to take that much in? To lose one life and get a new one, to get the meanest betrayal and the sweetest loyalty, all in one day? I was the one crying like all nation now. “A last name. I got a last name.”
“That’s right, boy,” said my pap. “And a proud one too. The Turtlebanes is the fiercest turtle hunters in this swamp or Feechiefen either.”
“Turtlebane,” I said, still blubbering like a little baby. “Who’d have thought it?”
That night they had a feechiefeast to celebrate my coming home. All them folks that hid in their houses when Tebo brought me into the settlement come out now to say hello and to be my people. They brung their best food to welcome me home: crawfish and perch, dried mayhaws and arrowroot, and lizard eggs that had been buried six months and more to ripen.
After the eating was the games—rassling and fire jumping and feats of strength, all in my honor. And when the games was finished, my mama stood up on a little stage they called a sing-stump, and she sung a song in the lonesomest keening voice you ever heard. She had sung this same song at every feechiesing since the day I was lost, so folks wouldn’t forget about me:
Your people are longing for you, Missing Cato.
Your Mama is pining away.
Our hearts aint so strong without you, Missing Cato.
Your Pap dies a little each day.
Oh, Cato, oh, Missing Cato,
Without you here everything’s wrong.
We laid you down under a bush, little Cato,
And when we come back, you was gone.
We’ll never forget your sweet eyes, Missing Cato—
One green, the other one blue,
A little close-set; otherwise, Missing Cato,
A perfectly formed set of two.
Oh, Cato, oh, Missing Cato,
Without you here everything’s wrong.
We laid you down under a bush, little Cato,
And when we come back, you was gone.
It was that song that saved me, you know. When Tebo was staring at me in the bamboo cage, it was because he remembered the song about Missing Cato’s eyes: “One green, the other one blue.” He knew who I was because my mama never let anybody forget.
Don’t that beat all? I had quit hoping that feechiefolks even existed. But not only did they exist, I was one of them! To think I spent all that time pretending to be something I had been all along. It made my head swim to think about it.
I spent I don’t know how many years believing I was just a ugly orphan that nobody loved. Turns out I’m covered up with people who love me—been loving me all my life. My whole life I thought I was the lonesomest boy in the world. But every day folks was lonesome for me—praying for me, talking about me. They even sung songs about me so nobody would forget who I was.
The singing finished. The council fire roared and lit every face with its glow. I looked around at my people and realized, Every one of these folks is as ugly as me.
