MOSE DIDN’T COME back the next day. Albert and Emmy and I were worried, but Forrest assured us he was all right. I wasn’t so certain. Even if he wasn’t in any danger, I’d never seen him in such a dark place. In the late morning, I returned to the Schofields’ camp, looking for Maybeth. She wasn’t there, her mother told me as she hung wet laundry, but would be along shortly. The twins were playing down by the big river, and Mr. Schofield was nowhere to be seen, but I could guess where he’d gone. Mother Beal invited me to sit with her while she smoked her corncob pipe.
“You look a little down in the mouth, Buck,” she observed. “Not usually the way a young man looks when he’s in love.”
“I’m not in love.”
She smiled around the stem of her pipe. “If you say. So, what’s the burr under your saddle?”
I told her about Mose, though I didn’t tell our whole, sordid history.
“I lived a long time among the Sioux,” Mother Beal said. “A people beset by all kinds of travail, but I found them to be good and kind and strong. That was especially true when they held to the practice of their old ways.”
She drew on her pipe and thought a bit.
“In the old days,” she continued, “when a Sioux boy was eleven or twelve, he would go out alone to seek a vision. They called it hanblecheyapi, which means, I believe, crying for a dream. It was a way of connecting with the spirit of the Creator, which they call Wakan Tanka. When I was a girl and the prairie grass was higher than a man’s head, I used to go way out and sit with it all around me so that I couldn’t see anything but the blue sky above, and I’d close my eyes and try to feel Wakan Tanka and wait for a dream to come.”
“Did it?”
“I often felt a deep peace. Maybe that’s what God is, and Wakan Tanka, in the end, and maybe that’s what the search for a vision is all about. It seems to me, Buck, that if you can find peace in your heart, God’s not far away. This friend of yours, it sounds like his life hasn’t been an easy one. It’s possible what he’s looking for is peace in his heart, and maybe he needs to be alone to find it.”
Maybeth came into camp from the direction of the river. She wore a different shirt than I’d seen her wear before and different pants, not so patched up. Her hair was brushed, her face clean and tanned and smiling. And most notable, she didn’t smell of woodsmoke. In Hopersville, where everyone cooked over a campfire, clothing always gave off the heavy scent of burned wood and char. Because of our fires as we traveled the river, Albert and Mose and Emmy and I smelled the same way. Whenever the scent was all around you, you didn’t notice. But Maybeth smelled of Ivory soap, and it was like perfume.
“Hello, Buck,” she said, as if finding me there was a complete but delightful surprise.
“Buck’s lost a friend,” Mother Beal said. “I believe he could use some comfort.”
“Walk with me,” Maybeth offered.
We strolled through Hopersville, where folks were still putting things back together from the destruction of the day before, and although there was all kind of chaos around us, I barely noticed. We climbed a trail up the wooded hill above the shanty town and found a flat rock in the cooling shade of a tree with a view of the beautiful Minnesota River valley, and Maybeth held my hand, and we kissed.
Romeo never felt a deeper love for Juliet than the one I felt for Maybeth Schofield. On that summer day in 1932, with the police across southern Minnesota still beating the bushes for Emmy and those of us who’d snatched her, and with the Schofields stranded far short of the new life they’d hoped for themselves in Chicago, and all around us the desperation brought on by a great Depression, I saw only Maybeth and she saw only me.
When we finally strolled back into the Schofields’ camp, Maybeth’s father had returned, unsteady on his feet, but with his head beneath the hood of the old pickup. He was mumbling, swearing under his breath, while Mother Beal looked on with impatience, and Mrs. Schofield offered periodic encouragement.
“Can you give him a hand, Buck?” she pleaded. “I’m afraid he might hurt himself.”
“I’m not sure I can help, ma’am. But I know someone who works miracles with engines.”
“Do you? Can you bring him here?”
“I’ll ask, but it’ll be up to him.”
“Oh do, Buck. Please.”
“I’ll try to be back this afternoon,” I said.
I left Maybeth with her family and returned to our camp. Forrest was gone, but Albert and Emmy were playing Go Fish with an old deck of cards, one of the things Albert had thrown into the pillowcase along with everything from the Brickmans’ safe. I explained the Schofields’ situation and asked for his help. But I could tell immediately from the stone look he gave me that it was going to be an uphill battle.
“Too risky,” he said, putting down the cards he held.
“We can’t go on afraid forever,” I said.
“It’s not forever. It’s just until we get to Saint Louis.”
“If we ever do.”
“You think it’s a mistake, trying to find Aunt Julia?”
That wasn’t the mistake. The mistake had been falling in love with Maybeth Schofield, which had changed everything.
“I just think we can’t hide forever. And I think these people really need our help. Your help.”
Emmy began to gather up the cards. “You have to help them, Albert,” she said, as if she were the adult and he the child.
“Why?”
“Because you know it’s the right thing to do.”
Albert looked to heaven and rolled his eyes. He shook his head, as if it were hopeless, then he finally gave a nod. “Okay, but just me. You two stay here. Less chance we’ll be spotted.”
“Thank you, Albert,” I said, thinking that my brother wasn’t such a bad egg, and thinking that Emmy was wise beyond her years, and thinking how grateful Maybeth would be. Thinking that most of all.
Albert limped off, his leg still paining him, and was gone all afternoon. So was Forrest. And God only knew where Mose had disappeared to. I began to worry. What if none of them came back? What if Emmy and I were alone? And that’s when I remembered the words Mose had signed again and again into Emmy’s palm when trying to comfort her near the outset of our journey: Not alone.
He was right. We weren’t alone. We had each other, Emmy and me, and now we had the Schofields. Maybe Chicago would be a better place than Saint Louis. Better mostly because Maybeth and I would be together. And I thought that might be just fine with me.
“I miss Mose,” Emmy said.
I did, too. Not the Mose who was dark and moody, but the Mose who’d always had a ready smile and, although he couldn’t really sing, had always seemed as if there’d been a song in his heart. Then we’d found the skeleton of the dead Indian kid and everything had changed.
Emmy began building a little house of twigs, and I asked her, “Do you remember saying to me that they’re all dead?”
“Who?”
“When you had your last fit, you said, ‘They’re dead. They’re all dead.’ Do you remember that?”
“Unh-uh. It’s always like a fog.” She knocked down the twig house and, sounding bored, said, “Tell me a story, Odie.”
The sun was well to the west, the shadows among the poplars growing long, birds settling in the branches as if preparing for the night.
“It begins this way,” I said.
The four Vagabonds had traveled far since their battle with the witch’s snake army, and they were tired and decided to make camp beside a river. In the distance rose the towers of a castle.
“The castle of the witch?” Emmy asked. “Where the children are trapped in the dungeon?”
“No, this a different castle. Just listen.”
The Vagabonds weren’t sure about the castle, and with good reason. The whole land was under the shadow of the Black Witch, and the Vagabonds knew it was dangerous to trust anyone. They drew straws to see who would approach the castle to take its measure. The imp drew the short straw. He bid goodbye to his companions and made his way alone up the river, where the castle rose on the far side. He came to a bridge long ago abandoned and overgrown with vines. When he crossed, he found the road on the other side in bad shape. The land all around was a jungle that grew right up against the walls of the castle. The castle gate was wide open and there weren’t any guards, and the imp cautiously entered.
Inside, he found people walking like the dead, no life in their eyes, their bodies thin as Popsicle sticks. They were starving, but there was more to their horrible situation than hunger. The Black Witch had stolen their souls. They were living but they had no life. The imp tried to speak to them, but it was like talking to the stone of the castle walls. They didn’t have the will, or maybe even the strength, to speak. They walked in a terrible silence, and because they didn’t have the gumption to leave the castle, they went round and round in useless circles.
The imp had a magic harmonica, given him long ago by the great imp who was his father.
“Just like your harmonica,” Emmy said.
“Not like mine,” I said. “A magic harmonica.”
“It’s like magic when you play, Odie.”
“Hush,” I said. “Let me finish the story.”
He drew out his harmonica, wanting to bring a song of hope to that dreary place. As he played, a beautiful voice joined him, singing from the tallest castle tower. It seemed magic, in the same way his harmonica was. He followed the sound up a long, winding staircase and came at last to a room, where he found the loveliest princess imaginable.
“What was her name?”
“Maybeth,” I said. “Maybeth Schofield.”
“Maybeth Schofield? That’s not a princess’s name. It should be something like—like Esmeralda. That’s a princess’s name.”
“Who’s telling this story?”
“All right. Maybeth Schofield.” But she made a face as if she’d just tasted liver.
He asked the princess what had happened, and she told him about the spell the Black Witch had cast over the people. In the same way she ate children’s hearts, the Black Witch had taken the souls from all those in the castle to feed on them.
“But not yours?” he said.
“She left mine in order to torture me. Watching my people grow thin and weak and hopeless hurts me,” she told the imp. “But when I heard the music from your harmonica, it made me want to sing. When I looked out the window, I saw a change in my people. I saw life returning to their faces. I saw fire in their eyes again. I think if you keep playing and I keep singing, we might save them.”
And that’s what they did. He played his magic harmonica and she sang in her beautiful voice, which came from her deep love for her people, and slowly everyone in the castle, everyone who’d lost their souls, woke up, and new souls grew in them and they were whole and happy again.
“Did the imp marry the princess? And did they live happily ever after? And what about the other Vagabonds?”
Before I could answer her questions, Albert came into camp, his hands black with oil and grease.
“Did you fix the truck?” I asked.
“Yeah, but what good is a truck with an empty gas tank? They’re still going nowhere.”
He took a soap bar from the pillowcase and headed down to the river to wash up. While he was there, Forrest returned, but without Mose.
“Where is he?” Emmy asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the Indian said with a careless shrug.
“You don’t know?”
“If a man needs to be alone, he finds the best place for that by himself. I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“You don’t care,” I said.
“I don’t worry,” he replied. Then he smiled a little. “You were gone awhile, too, Buck. But here you are. Have faith in your friend.”
We had a cold evening meal and settled down without a fire. It was early July, and the night was hot. I lay on my blanket, unable to sleep, thinking about Mose, who seemed lost to us in more ways than one. And thinking about Maybeth and the plight of her family. And wondering how the story of the princess and the imp might end.
In the night, I got up, took the flashlight and the last of the money Sister Eve had given us, and left camp while the others slept.