“HEY, BUCK JONES!” John Kelly jogged toward me in the dark. “Gonna help me deliver papers?” He clapped me on the back in greeting, then saw my face. “You okay?”
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Going where?”
“Saint Louis.”
“What about the others?”
I thought about my brother and Mose and Emmy. They believed they’d found their home. They were happy. If they came with me, I knew I would somehow destroy that happiness.
“I’m going alone.”
“How’re you gonna get there?”
I considered the canoe stored at the boatworks. It was a familiar vessel, a friend in a way, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle it alone on a river as big and as unknown to me as the Mississippi.
“You said trains go to Saint Louis from the rail yard.”
“Sure,” John Kelly said, warming to the idea. “You can hop a freight.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Naw, but I bet if we ask around the yard, someone’ll be able to point us right.”
“We? You’re not coming.”
“No, but I ain’t gonna desert you till I know you’re off safe. We’re pals.”
“Thanks,” I said, truly grateful. “I’ve got to grab something from Gertie’s, okay?”
I slipped into the shed and went to the bunk on which Emmy slept, slid my hand under the thin mattress, where for safekeeping, I’d put both my harmonica and the envelope containing the letter I’d written to Maybeth. I put these precious items into my pants pocket. I stood above Emmy, who’d had always been as cute as a fairy princess. In our long odyssey, she’d become far more than the orphaned daughter of Cora Frost. She’d become my sister. My sweet, little sister. I was tempted to lean down and plant a kiss on her forehead but was afraid of waking her. I turned and stared where Mose shared a bunk with Albert. His face was peaceful in the way that reminded me of the old Mose, the big Indian kid with a ready grin and a huge, simple heart. All that he’d learned about himself and all that he’d come to understand about the world he was born into had made his grin less frequent, but it was still there sometimes, and his heart would always be huge, I was certain, though never again quite so simple.
And then I considered my brother. There had been only one constant in my whole life, and that was Albert. He was at the beginning of all my memories, beside me on every road I’d traveled, had saved me from a thousand perils, knew my heart better than any other human being. Sister Eve had told me that what my brother wanted, his deepest wish, was to keep me safe. That had been his life, a long sacrifice for me. And I loved him for it. I loved him with every atom of my being, with a love so fierce it threatened my resolve. I wanted to lay my head on his shoulder, as I’d done a million times, and have him put his arm around me and tell me everything was all right and I was safe and we would always stay together, because that’s what brothers did. Leaving Albert was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I kissed my fingertips and touched them lightly to his chest over his heart, wiped away my tears, and stepped outside, where John Kelly was waiting.
“SOUTH,” ONE OF the men gathered around the small fire in the rail yard told us. “Any train goin’ that way will head you toward Saint Louie.” He pointed to where the rails and the river tunneled side by side into the night. “Make sure if the train turns east or west you hop off and catch another ’un. Stay south, son. Just stay south.”
We stood together, John Kelly and me, waiting for a train to rumble through, and it wasn’t long before one came slowly over the bridge from the direction of the Flats, heading the way the guy at the fire had pointed. John Kelly shook my hand, a man-to-man kind of parting.
“Good luck to you, Buck Jones,” he said.
“Thanks, John Kelly. But promise me something. My brother and the others, they’re going to ask you about me. I’d appreciate it if you kept your mouth shut.”
“You got it, partner. This is just between us.” He looked past me. “Open car coming. Better get ready.”
As the boxcar rolled past, I swung myself up through the open door, and when I was settled, poked my head out and signaled John Kelly that I was all right. He was a small silver statue in the moonlight, his hand lifted in a frozen goodbye.
I leaned back against the wall and stared through the broad, open door toward the Flats across the river, where all was dark. There were no streetlights yet, but there would be one day, and one day the roads would all be paved, and better houses with indoor plumbing would replace the ramshackle structures. The devastating spring floods would remain a constant, however, and in thirty years, the city of Saint Paul would decide, in the best interests of all its citizenry, to raze every building, while those whose lives had been shaped by the Flats could do nothing but stand by and weep as almost every remnant of their history vanished.
But I knew none of this in the summer of 1932, just shy of my thirteenth birthday, watching everything I loved move steadily away from me into the past. The train rolled slowly out of Saint Paul, gradually picking up speed, and as the engine thundered into the night, I knew that, more swiftly than was possible with any canoe, it was taking me to the place Sister Eve had told me was always in my heart, where all my questions would be answered and all my wandering would cease.