Boy's Journey

Pushing aside the cabin entry’s burlap flap, the boy waved away a spider’s web, stepped down onto the stone, and set off.

Not until he was over the rise, did he turnabout and see the dog — following after him. “Git,” said the boy — and after a time, the dog did.

By twilight, a pig trail had brought him to the big creek, where he fell asleep against a large cottonwood he had met once before — and in his dreams, he heard, clear as the day, his sister Lou, singing him to bed.

When he awoke, the dog was there, against his leg.

Emerging from the woods that afternoon, a plowman, missing a hand, told him with a jerk of his head, the way to the river.

That night, in a dry ditch near a settlement, the boy, with the dog, lay awake, looking at stars — and thinking of how, of a morn, Lou would stand at the end of the bed, tickling his feet, laughing, and saying that breakfast was on the table.

When finally he reached the Arkansas, two days later, the boy sat down, and cried — never imagining that rivers were so wide.

Nearby, he met a colored man with three lines in the water, who said the best way to California was to take to the river, down to the Mississippi, and then on to New Orleans — where he could probably get a job on ship.

Lying in the grass, the boy slept — and when he awoke, the colored man was gone. On a line dangling from a tree, wrapped in green leaves, he found five cooked fish, which he shared with the dog.

The next day, the river path led him to a small community, with a short dock — from which three boys were jumping and swimming.

“How come you don’t got no shoes?” asked one — and he answered: “Just don’t, I guess.”

They told the boy there was a barge coming that day for some spring wheat, and if he wanted, he could ride it down to Little Rock — which brought to the boy’s mind one of Lou’s stories, about how their ma and pa had married up in Little Rock.

On the barge, the men sang about a banjo and a girl named Susanna. One sat by the boy and asked him if it was gold he was “aftering to get” in California — and the boy said he didn’t know.

At Little Rock, the man sat the boy down against a wagon’s wheel, while he and the others loaded up the spring wheat from the boat — after which, the man told the boy there was someone he “especially” wanted him to meet.

“Every Wednesday, the governor spends the afternoon on the square, ‘alistenin’ to the gripes and concerns of the people. It’s his tradition,” explained the man, as he walked the boy, and the dog (on a rope), through town.

Under a big tree, on a long wooden bench, wearing clean clothes and a big white hat, the governor smiled at the boy and said, “Come sit over here, son, and tell me your story.”

Five years later, when he was fifteen — as so they reckoned — the former governor and his adopted son, with the dog, traveled up into the mountains — where it took them a day and a half to find Lou’s grave, beside that of her ma’s and pa’s.