2

THE SKY BE GROWING DARK BY THE TIME WE get back. Around us, camp be swarming like a beehive with folks making last-minute preparations for the powwow. They funnel the smoke from the cook fires so you can’t smell it so easy beyond the encampment, but up close my mouth be watering. They be fixing a feast for the O-Negs to show how good we OPs be living, how they could be living, too. My people risked they lives catching the wild boar they roasting, but it sure be worth a bite or two of that meat.

We pass by our storyteller, Cinnamon Jones, practicing his poems and songs on the edge of camp. He wave at me and smile wide at Lydia, then go back to walking his way through a pantomime.

Our camp be arranged in a circle, with cook fires in the center and houses on the outside. We ain’t living in buildings like them ABs by the Market; we camouflaged. First glance, you see nothing but a bunch of fallen trees. Look closer and you see there be a few small huts and bigger hogans, cozy as fallen logs covered in vines. We use tent poles or young trees bent into arcs and hoops for frames, and cover them with green saw palmettos that ain’t sharp enough yet to cut you with they serrated leaves. The hogans be like low tunnels, tall enough to stand in the middle, with sleeping mats on the sides. On cold nights, most everybody sleep in the hogans. On a night like tonight, when it still a bit warm, most folks stay in simple tents and lean-tos instead, and the hogans only shelter them that needs protecting, like pregnant women and the injured. Hogans take time to build and, being OP, we ain’t always able to stay in one place that long. With the blood hunters other tribes be sending out, a body got to keep on the move fairly regular or risk being trapped in they own home.

“Eh la bas!” my friend Caroline calls to me from across the way. She and her husband, Theo, got a big house, long as a shrimp boat and then some, to house all they kids. She mother to five of her own and two of Theo’s. Little Selene be sleeping in her mama’s arms. She ain’t got the O positive blood, so she’ll be moving on to her new tribe when she a bit older. But for now, Caroline rock her youngest and smile at me. Lydia stop to play with the baby and I wait. We at camp now and I ain’t got to be on guard duty, but I ain’t gonna relax ’til the powwow be done.

“Big night tonight,” Lydia tell Caroline, passing Selene back to her mama. “Maybe we’ll have time to play with both our little ones when there’s a lasting peace.”

Caroline smile and say she hope so, and I walk Lydia all the way to her hogan, checking to see it be clear before I leave her safe inside.

My hut be right next to Lydia’s like it been at every camp since I joined her four years ago. Used to be we shared a hogan. Well, Lydia got tired of me sleeping in the dirt outside her door and made me come inside. I been like a dog then in more ways than one. I been wild, for sure. It took a kind hand and lots of patience to bring me back again. Now I got my own place, not so big or well-made as some, but quick to put up, easy to leave behind. I don’t use tent poles like others do—can’t rely on always finding a full set of aluminum that ain’t rusted through, and I ain’t gonna be risking my life to save them if we got to move real quick.

The ground between our huts be starting to wear clear of grass, like the floors inside the houses. It slap loud beneath my boots. We been getting too comfortable here. Soon it gonna be time to move on.

I duck into my hut, drop my pack, and look around to check it ain’t been messed with while I been gone. I scan my low bed on the right, made of sacks stuffed with cotton and straw, next to a crate I found at the edge of the swamp one day and turned into a cubby for my books. The books be all wrapped in plastic to keep them dry when it rain. I keep a kerosene lamp to read by at night, covered on three sides so the light don’t give the camp away. I squat down and look at the cubby. I got too much crammed inside it to be hiding Lydia’s gifts there, too.

I stand up again and stretch long and hard. My bed be looking real good to me now, especially with that smell of rain on the way, but I got things to do. No matter how early the sun set in October, there still be business to take care of. I look at my backpack on the floor. I got two packs: One I keep ready in case of emergency; it got food, a blanket, a knife, and a change of clothes inside. The other I used today be my everyday pack. It a good pack, waterproof canvas with easy straps. I tie it up tight and step outside to find a place to hide it. I’ll get it tomorrow, give Lydia her presents after the powwow. Like a celebration, if things go well. If not, maybe they make her smile anyway.

Just west of camp, I find a good tree. Easy to climb, but not so easy that every nosy kid in camp be shinnying up in the branches. Trees be where you keep things you don’t want animals to get at. Sure, in camp we got places to store food and all. But how you gonna keep something secret if you put it in the storehouse with everything else? So I climb my tree with a bit of rope and tie my pack high enough so I can see it, but nobody else will unless they know where to look. Then I go get Lydia ready for the powwow.

• • • 

“There she is,” Lydia say when I come through the door. She sound like she be laughing at me, but I be the one laughing, looking at her on the ground, belly all big and round as a kettle, trying to reach something under the bed.

“Just in time to help me,” she say. “You always know when I need you.” Lydia rise up and smile all the more. She ain’t got but an inch or so on me height wise, but she clever with her braids, keep them on top her head to make her taller. It work, too, with those high cheeks and slanted eyes, she be looking regal, like a real leader. Maybe one day I’ll tell Lydia our tribe too big to carry on like this and she make me a leader like her. We’ll have two tribes together, side by side, and help each other like she always going on about, ’cause we a big family, but we be safer if we split up. Smaller tribes be easier to move, easier to run.

“What you doing down there?” I ask, shaking my head.

“I think my brush rolled under there. Just trying to reach for it.”

Lydia and her hairbrushes. You’d think they be made of gold, the way she treat them, but they been her mama’s at one point, I guess, so they mean something to her.

“Back away from there,” I say, and when she move, I pick up her bed and slide it out. It ain’t nothing but a frame of bamboo and a woven mattress, but it nicer than mine, with wild cotton stuffing on top of straw to keep it soft and firm at the same time. The brush be as far away as it could get, back against the wall. I dust it off for her. Nothing but a plastic hairbrush made to look like wood faded brown with a swirl at the end that say Goody. A family name, maybe. I seen it before. She even pulled it through my own rough hair once or twice. Lydia be happy when I hand it back to her.

“Now, enough of this foolishness.” She tuck the brush away in a box on her table. I can see she keep all her precious things inside—ballpoint pens and inkwells, clean paper. Lydia be a scholar, more than most folks here. I ain’t seen supplies like that outside the Professors’ and the Ursuline Sisters’ places. But that what I like about Lydia. She do the improbable and she make it special.

“I’m ready,” she say at last. She straighten her dress and touch her hair one last time. She look every bit the chieftain. Outside, I hear a commotion in the camp. The O-Negs be arriving.