Lord, Thomas thought he wasn’t ever gonna get Jim across that water. Him and Buddy doing everything to get Jim to put a foot in, Thomas yelling, Come on! You ain’t gonna drown. Water ain’t got a claim on you no more. But Jim, he didn’t want to have nothing to do with that old river, you could tell.
That dog Buddy, he barking at Jim’s feet, pushing into him with his nose. Thomas never seen nothing like it, especially since before today Buddy’d kept his distance. But it was like he know what Thomas knowed all along, that none of ’em was gonna be free till they got to the other side.
All sorts of surprises that day—Buddy acting like Jim a real boy again, and Thomas being the one to say, Let’s get across, let’s go. Here he’d been waiting for someone to come and fetch him to freedom, and turned out he was the fetcher. Him and that old dog. Made him laugh to think he the one leading folks across the river like some Moses.
In the end Thomas quit calling out Jim’s name and started calling out Buddy’s. Buddy come right to the middle of the river and waited, the water wild around him. Anybody looking could see he didn’t have the strength to stand there too long before the water washed him away. Jim didn’t have no choice then. He put one foot in the water, then the other, and you could tell he be feeling kinda sick, but he also starting to realize that the water couldn’t do nothing to him anymore.
All three of ’em crossed over together, and that felt right to Thomas. That first step onto the other side? Thomas could feel it. He could feel a little bit of weight come back into him. Looking over, he could see Jim felt the same way. First thing Jim done was lean over and pick up a rock. Picked it up! Threw it into the water! Well, Thomas just had to do the same, now didn’t he?
They musta throwed a hundred rocks, just ’cause they could. But they didn’t dare step a foot back into the water, in case their hands turn back into air.
Jim was scooping up another rock when he seen the old dog curled up that way on the ground. Thomas knowed it right away that Buddy was dead, and Jim knowed it too. He put a hand on his dog’s head and left it there a long time, like he couldn’t decide whether to be sad that his dog dead or happy that he could feel how hard Buddy’s skull was, how his fur was soft as velvet.
“We best get going,” Thomas said. “I don’t think this is where we supposed to stop, do you? I think there’s something more we got to find.”
Jim nodded, all sad, and stood up. He picked off some grit from his pants and rubbed it between two fingers. Then he looked up and pointed at a tree.
“I see something, stuck in the branches,” he said, and run off to grab it, just ’cause he could, Thomas reckoned.
Not even a minute later he come back with a hat on his head, and he was looking like he didn’t know whether he laughing or crying.
“It’s my hat,” Jim said, pulling on the brim. “See that C on it?”
“I don’t rightly know what a C is,” Thomas said. “You mean that wishbone-looking thing?”
Jim nodded. “C for Cincinnati,” he said, tracing his finger along the mark. “My name’s still on the inside.”
And then he laugh and laugh, like laughter this new invention he just discover.
Seem like soon as they step up into the woods, the woods change over and they in a field, a big green field with a big blue sky. Birds everywhere and flowers, and Jim gone all crazy ’cause he be making a shadow.
They spent a couple more minutes or maybe a couple more hours throwing their shadows against the green grass until a thought started pulling at Thomas, like it might be time to take a few steps forward.
“You want to see what’s over that way?” he asked Jim, and Jim said he did, said it in the same unworried way that Thomas was feeling, like nothing but good things gonna cross their path from now on. That’s when the old yellow dog run up behind them barking. Thomas, he didn’t even flinch! Him and Jim start laughing some more, like they know they finally where they supposed to be.
And Thomas, he knowed that was truer than true when a voice called his name and there come a woman walking across that green field under that blue sky, saying, “Hey, baby! We been waiting for you!”
And Thomas, he started running, he was calling out to his mama, “I been wanting to see you for the longest time!”