Wendell wondered how long it would take to find the cabin. What if his dad was wrong, and it wasn’t anywhere near the Jerichos’ farm? His dad had plenty of stories about how far he and his brothers had roamed when they were boys. He claimed that one day they’d followed the river all the way to Covington, fifteen miles north, taken a quick look around town, then walked all the way back and gotten home before nightfall.
That made Wendell think. If they didn’t find the cabin today, maybe he could ride his bike over to Uncle James’s house after dinner. Uncle James was the oldest of his dad’s brothers, and the one whose head rested most squarely upon his shoulders. His other uncles, Phillip and Edsel, couldn’t tell a story straight if you paid them to, and his dad could be the same way, stretching out a fact to make it just a little more colorful than it needed to be. Uncle James might thump his Bible a little harder than Wendell cared for, but he could be trusted to tell the truth.
Wouldn’t it be something when Wendell went home and told his dad he’d found the cabin? He could just about see his dad’s face, all proud and excited. That tired look would fall away from his eyes, and he’d grab his hat from the peg near the door. Come on, son, he’d say. Show me where it is.
“If I come home covered with poison ivy, my mama’s gonna wonder what I been up to,” the girl, Callie, said from behind him. “She’ll fuss and fuss.”
Then Wendell had a funny thought. Did colored folks use calamine lotion when they got a rash? And if they did, did it look funny, all that pink against their dark skin? Well, the pink looked pretty strange against his white skin, that was the truth.
“My mother makes me take a bath in oatmeal when I get poison ivy,” Wendell said. “Yours ever do that? It helps, but I still can’t sleep at night from all the itching.”
“The first thing Mama does is rub you all over with alcohol, to cool your skin down. And then she makes this nasty paste out of baking soda that she plasters all over you, and you just have to sit there and let it dry. Makes you feel like a mummy or something.”
“Yeah, my mom does that if we get a mosquito bite. Only she just puts it on the bite. It sort of helps.”
The problem with talking about itching, Wendell realized, was that it made you feel itchy whether you had any cause to or not. He scratched at his neck and then his left arm. Poison ivy was practically dripping from the trees around him, and he was doing his best not to rub up against it, but maybe his mother was right. Maybe Wendell could get a rash by just standing next to some poison ivy. He didn’t even need to touch it.
They reached a fork in the path. King and the old yellow dog sniffed the air, first to the left and then to the right. The part of the path that veered left was worn and well traveled; to the right you could barely see any path at all, but it was there, hidden under the leaves. King looked back at Wendell, waiting for a command. Wendell turned to Callie. “I reckon we ought to go toward the right. It looks like it’ll take us deeper into the woods. I’m pretty sure if we go left, we’re going to be heading up to the Jerichos’ farm.”
Callie looked worried. “We gonna be able to get back out of these woods? Maybe we ought to mark our way.”
“King will get us out,” Wendell said, feeling proud about it. “He always knows the way back.”
So they followed the path deeper into the woods, Wendell doing his best to avoid the ivy vines, even as the trees closed more tightly around them. He wished he were a bird flying overhead so he could see exactly where they were. He could still smell the river air, the muddy stink of it.
But there were other smells here too, the darker, damper smells of rotting leaves, moss-covered trees, and animal scat. The woods were quieter than the river, which was funny if you thought about it, since all sorts of wild things lived here, not to mention insects. Of course, if you wanted to hear the woods get noisy, you had to come at night. Once or twice in the summer Wendell and his dad came down this way to fish at night, and critters made so much racket you wanted to cover your ears.
King gave a sharp bark, as if he were making an announcement, and Wendell thought that maybe they’d found the cabin, and then he started to worry. What if Callie made a claim on the cabin, said that it was half hers? It might be she’d want to hold tea parties in it, and that would spoil the whole feel of the cabin for Wendell, even if he wasn’t there when the parties took place. He remembered now why he did his best to keep away from girls. The ideas they came up with could ruin your whole day. Like the time Rosemary went on a decorating kick. When Wendell got home from his baseball game and went up to his room to change, he found half of his baseball card collection pasted to the walls. His Ted Kluszewski, his Gus Bell, his Walker Cooper, all ruined, and nobody even made Rosemary pay him back. “She was just trying to be nice,” his mother said, like good intentions made up for the destruction of personal property. That was female logic for you right there.
The path just kept rambling on, not leading toward any place in particular, it seemed to Wendell. He’d thought heading away from the Jerichos’ farm was the right idea, but the fact was he didn’t know this part of the woods at all.
“I’m starting to think we ain’t on the right path,” Callie said, like she’d been reading Wendell’s mind. Well, maybe they should call this whole thing off, he thought. Maybe Callie and the old dog weren’t part of the plan after all. Could be he didn’t need them to find the cabin, that they didn’t have a thing to do with it.
In fact, he was starting to doubt the wisdom of including the girl on this hunt through the woods in the first place. What if they found the cabin, and the next time around, when Wendell brought his dad or George to see the place, this skinny, knobby-kneed colored girl was sitting smack in the middle of it, maybe with a few of her colored friends? “Well, hey there, Wendell,” she might call out, and then he’d have to explain how he knew her. Word would get around town pretty fast if folks thought Wendell was mixing with colored kids.
Now, ain’t you in a pickle? he could hear his sister Rosemary ask, and Wendell reckoned he was. He needed to do something now, and he needed to do it quick.
“I think you’re right,” Wendell told Callie, turning around to face her. “I don’t think this is the way at all. I guess we best go back.”
“Then let’s try another path,” Callie suggested. “Wouldn’t take long to retrace our steps, take the other fork in the road.”
“I—I need to get going home,” Wendell stammered. “Got chores to do.”
Callie gave him a long look. “You had all the time in the world before. How’d you get so busy all of a sudden?”
Wendell was opening his mouth to reply when something thudded on the ground behind him.
“Don’t move.” Callie held out a hand and took a few steps toward him. King let out a low growl, and the old yellow dog whimpered. “There’s a snake behind you. It just fell out of a tree, like it meant to block your path. I ain’t never seen anything like it.”
“What kind of snake?” Wendell asked, his whole body going cold. He could tolerate a lot of things, but a snake wasn’t one of them.
“Reckon it’s a black snake,” Callie said, peering over Wendell’s shoulder. “It ain’t moving. Must have gotten stunned by the fall. You don’t reckon it jumped, do you?”
Wendell darted over to King and turned around. A thick black snake lay two feet behind where he’d been standing. Callie was right, though. It wasn’t moving or acting like it was all that alive.
Callie inched closer to the creature. “I’d say that was a black snake, all right. Every once in a while one slips into our basement, and I’m the only one who don’t mind to carry it out. Black snakes won’t hurt you. You want to touch it?”
To Wendell’s amazement, Callie leaned down and grabbed the snake by its middle. It wriggled in her hand, tongue flickering, its head shifting this way and that, like it was considering who it should kill first. She held it out to him, and Wendell automatically took three steps back.
“Snakes give you the willies?” Callie asked. “I don’t know what the fuss is, myself. Now, if it was a copperhead, I’d be a mile gone already. But this here fella wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“That snake’s a sign,” Wendell said, gathering his wits. He needed to use this situation to his advantage. “I think I’ve read it in a book somewhere. Snake falls in your path, go the other way. In fact, you probably should just give up and go home.”
“You sure are superstitious, Wendell Crow.” Callie shook her head and dropped the snake to the ground, where it slithered back into the underbrush. “Well, I reckon we’ll just have to start our journey back up in the morning, what with snakes falling from trees and you having chores to do.”
Wendell tried to think fast. “You know, I’m starting to think there might not even be a cabin. We’re probably wasting our time.”
“Oh, there’s a cabin, all right,” Callie said. “Sure as you and me are standing here, there’s a cabin. I aim to find it too. Maybe that’s where this old dog stays. But you can give up looking if you want to. Nobody’d blame you a bit, what with all the snakes and poison ivy around here.”
“I ain’t giving up.” Wendell turned to King and snapped his fingers. “Come on, boy, let’s head home.”
“Tell you what,” Callie said from behind him as they started walking. “You don’t have to even come looking tomorrow. I’m happy to be the lone explorer out here. I’ll let you know if I find anything, you have my word.”
“I’ll meet you at the river, nine o’clock sharp,” Wendell said. He shook his head. What a mess. What in the world had he been thinking about, getting involved with this girl? Well, it was too late to do anything about it now. He’d just focus on the main point. He’d just think about how happy his dad would be if Wendell found the cabin, no matter how many knobby-kneed colored girls were trying to lay claim to it.
After ten minutes of walking Wendell could see a widening up ahead and reckoned they were almost back at the big path leading up from the river. Maybe if he and Callie found the cabin tomorrow, he could bring his dad on Sunday. His dad might tell him some more stories about his growing-up days. The best days of his life, he called them. Wendell loved hearing those stories, but he always wished that right now was his dad’s best time. Once, he’d heard his mother say, “I can hardly remember life before the children were born.” His dad never said anything like that.