For such a small town Celeste, Kentucky, was prouder than you might think it had a right to be. Still, it had been home to General Flavius McCarver, Revolutionary War hero, who walked along these sidewalks as a boy, back when they were made out of wooden boards. Everyone in Celeste knew about General McCarver. Any day of the week you could see him in the intersection of Main and River Streets, sitting upright upon his stone horse, one arm pointed straight ahead, like he’d been sent by God to direct traffic.
Celeste, Kentucky, was proud of all sorts of things. It was proud of its brand-new school, Thomas Edison Elementary, on Green Street, and of its high school’s outstanding marching band, the Fighting Bear Cats, which had placed third in the North Central Kentucky Regional Finals two years in a row, and it was very, very proud of Marjorie Holder, the Fighting Bear Cats’ drum majorette, who was arguably the most beautiful majorette in all of Kentucky, or at least in the tricounty area.
But Celeste, like any small town, had its secrets. For instance, only a few of the townspeople knew that the business offices of Felts Paper Products had been built on the remains of an Indian mound. The mound was discovered by the site foreman fifteen minutes after the ground had been broken to begin building. Work was stopped, the mayor was notified, a rushed committee meeting was held. All in attendance agreed the public did not need to be informed, despite the fact that the local paper, the Celeste Gazette and Informer, had recently run a well-received editorial saying that the mounds in their area should be respected and preserved.
Celeste had even bigger secrets than that. The runaway slaves who’d made their way soundlessly through the woods to the riverbank at night were such a secret that hardly anyone in the white part of town knew about them or would ever know about them. When you crossed over to the colored part of town, which was generally considered to begin east of the intersection of South Central and Lexington and ran all the way down Marigold Lane before it stopped abruptly at the woods near the river, the secret was common currency. You might have been in the kitchen helping your grandmother make biscuits when she told you about her own grandmother rocking slowly on the porch in her old age—the age of remembering—and whistling whippoorwill, whippoorwill under her breath and then whispering, “Friend of a friend, friend of a friend.”
Callie Robinson’s grandmother, Mama Lou, was one who remembered the stories her grandmother had told about the refugees on their way north under the dark of night, and she’d passed them on to her granddaughter. Now, as Callie followed the boy with the red dog up the path from the river, trying to avoid the tendrils of poison ivy climbing every tree she passed, she wondered if she was walking over the same ground the escaped slaves had walked over. Wouldn’t that be something?
She wanted to tap the boy on the shoulder and ask if he knew the stories about the slaves coming through Celeste on their way to getting free, but she didn’t think she ought to talk to white folks about that kind of thing. It was too good a story just to hand over to any old body, especially some boy whose name she didn’t even know. Who knew what he might do with it—make fun, say it never happened, tell that old lie that some white folks liked, about how happy slaves had been.
So instead she asked him about the yellow dog. “You got any guesses where he come from? That dog, I mean? Somebody around here must have owned him sometime. Otherwise, why would he be here?”
“I’ve been thinking on that,” the boy said, holding up a branch of a bush for her to duck under before letting it whip back, which made Callie all the more sure he wasn’t planning on beating her with a stick. “I reckon he’s on the prowl for something or somebody. But I don’t know anybody who knows him.”
“He’s a pretty old dog,” Callie said. “Maybe somebody owned him back in the day. Maybe his folks lived upriver. Could be they all died of a fever and he’s been on his own ever since.”
“But why would he come down here if his folks lived upriver?”
“Could’ve got lonely,” Callie guessed. “Or confused.”
“Maybe,” Wendell said. “Maybe he’s like one of them dogs you read about sometimes that get lost on a camping trip and find their way back home.”
“Pretty old dog to take camping.”
“Maybe the folks who took him camping were old too,” Wendell said, and then he stopped and pointed to a broken-off stump of a tree and stopped walking. “That dog was right around here. You smell him, King?”
As if to answer, King gave a sharp bark and trotted to where the path branched right. The boy followed him, and Callie followed the boy. King barked again, and this time an answering bark came from close by. “Come on out, pup,” the boy called. “Come on an’ see us now.”
And sure enough, didn’t that old yellow dog show up right in front of them, wagging his tail and sniffing at King? Callie kneeled down beside him and scratched him behind his ears. “Where you gone off to, boy? I been needing you to tell me a thing or two.” She looked up. “How old you reckon he is?”
The boy considered this. “Pretty old, I guess. Look at that white fur around his eyes. That’s a sign of age.”
Callie stood and brushed the dirt off her knees. “What’s your name, anyway? I been meaning to ask you that for about a hundred years now.”
“Wendell Crow,” the boy said, grinning at the “hundred years” remark. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Callie Robinson.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
Wendell looked at her hand like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it, but after a moment’s hesitation he shook. “I’ve got some cousins named Robinson, but I don’t reckon you all are related to one another.”
“No,” agreed Callie. “I don’t reckon so.”
They stood there for a moment, considering each other, and then Wendell said, “You don’t know anything about a cabin out here, do you? I mean, here in the woods? My dad says he remembers one.”
Callie shrugged. “I might have heard tell of one,” she replied, trying to sound casual about it. Oh, she’d heard tell of one, all right, but that didn’t mean she had to pass on the information.
At least not yet.
“Well, you wanna help me look for it?”
“You think it’s gonna help me find something out about this dog?”
“Might could,” Wendell said. “You don’t know till you find out, I guess.”
True enough. “Come on,” she said to the yellow dog, who obediently followed her as she started off again up the path. “Let’s go find us a cabin.”