smirking.
He disappeared between the trees and came back carrying an armload of dry
kindling. “This …” He raised it a bit higher, “gonna be your job from now on,”
he said amiably and tossed it to the ground. Olivia used their new hoe to clear a
patch of dirt in the middle of the road, arranged the kindling, and struck one of
their precious matches.
Mourning watched her and said, “Once we settled, we ain’t gonna use up our
lucifers like that. I show you how to find some good punk wood and use a flint.”
She nodded and stood up. “I’ll go look for some thicker branches,” she said,
but hesitated at the tree line.
Mourning strode over to her and touched her elbow. “You go pick some a that
lemon grass I seen growing back there by the sign, make us some tea. I get the
wood. Them bogeymen in there be ascared of colored boys. Can’t see us in the
dark. Gonna think I be a ghost.” He made a low wooooing sound as he went into
the woods.
Olivia smiled after him and retrieved their bag of food from the wagon. By
the time Mourning returned with the wood she had broken some green branches
from a tree and peeled enough bark away to make a clean fork to toast bread on.
“Cheese, jerky, or jam?” she asked.
“That blackberry jam sit good with me.”
“Would you care for some sugar in your tea, Sir?” she asked. “We happen to
have a fresh loaf, and I’d be happy to nip some off for you.”
The food and tea tasted delicious and she was pleased to find herself
comfortable with Mourning, no need to talk all the time. He had lowered himself
to the ground and rested his back against one of the wagon wheels. Olivia
perched on an overturned bucket. She kept her eyes on the ground as she ate, feeling him study her face in the firelight. She didn’t mind, but would have loved
to know what he was thinking. She hoped it was something like: “This white girl
ain’t so bad to be with.” She stood, brushed the crumbs from her hands, and announced that she was ready to go to sleep. She climbed into the back of the wagon and stretched out on her lopsided mattress.
“I hear Michigan snakes win all the wagon climbin’ contests.” Mourning
made slithering motions with his hands.
“Hush.”
“They weave their way through them spokes, slither right up the side. Lookin’
for something soft to curl up on.”
“Be quiet, Mourning. Are you going to put the fire out?”
“Nah,” he said as he tossed his mattress to the ground next to the wagon.
“Ain’t no wind and you been smart, puttin’ it smack in the middle of the road so
we ain’t gonna start no forest fire.”
She lay in the dark and cursed herself for not having gone to answer nature’s
call before climbing up there. She dreaded the thought of putting her feet over the side of the wagon to get down in the dark. When Olivia was a little girl Avis
had tormented her with tales of the scaly old man who lived under her bed and,
