When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan Read Free Book Online Page A

us a map and put down all that we know. The setting sun is blinking off the tops of the shiny magnolia leaves and the air is cool and crisp.
    After a while, me and Little Bit, we turn off and walk the Choctaw trail that I know to be the Three-Chopped Wat Trail. We breathe in the smell of rotten leaves and squashed persimmons. We find juniper berries and paint our faces with the juices. We play hide-the-switch and Bugger Bear, but as the light fades our make-believe games get too scary for the both of us.
    This road here is a trail not many know about. My pappy shown me. He would take this instead of the one main road out of town to catch the train out of Mize to New Orleans—that is the one most traveled. I think of Mr. Frank's talk of going to New Orleans for provisions for his general store.
Bandits and thieves still prowl up and down the main road. Everyone, like Mr. Tempy, is still telling tales about the Natchez Trace and all the famous ruffians who preyed on travelers, thieving and killing, laughing all the while.

    I look around now. This little trail is cleared almost to the width of a carriage road by horses' hoofs and people's feet. More people than I thought must know of it. On either side of us, thick, uncut longleaf pines come right up to the road, and with all that thick, tangled underbrush and dense canebrakes, there's no telling what all or who all is in there, hiding. I hear tell of wildcats in canebrakes.
    If I was the type of person to get spooked, I would be spooked, but I am not that type of a person.
    "How you be, Little Bit?"
    "I'm just fine, Addy." Her teeth glow whiter against her red, berry-stained skin.
    The wind blows through the dried cane and makes a mournful sound. I am glad there is still light out, but it is fading.
    "If you get scared, just sing, OK?"
    "Don't worry about me. I like to be scared. Ever wonder why us children like to get scared?"
    "What should we sing?" I say. "How 'bout we could make something up?"
    "All right then," Little Bit says. She sings a funny tune about a kitten, and if there's a key, neither one of us can find it. Little Bit can't carry a tune in a bucket.

    While she sings, she takes the folded paper from her dress pocket. She unfolds the paper and starts to draw the map while I keep an eye out for chestnuts and treasure. Momma says food and money are the only two things on an O'Donnell mind. Good thing my mission keeps me from getting spooked.
    Already, Little Bit has drawn our winding road with a line that looks to be a snake. She is marking it with the trees we see, even putting in some squirrels and birds.
    We stop at the cemetery for the black folk so Little Bit can stand there and draw that in too. Most all the markers or stones are gone and there are just places where there are graves that are sunken in.
    "Did you know Miss Tiller?" Little Bit says.
    "No," I say. "I don't know many of the black folk in Smith."
    Little Bit walks up and down the graveyard telling the stories of everybody she knows. I think,
How does she know all these people?
I think,
I only know white O'Donnells.
I don't know any of the people in this here graveyard.
    I think of Mr. Frank's map up at the schoolhouse. What Momma and Pappy had between them—that fierce love—was
not on that map. All the jokes I played on Mr. Frank were not on that map. The war was not on that map, and neither was the surrender. What is on a map, what does get recorded, and the way things look don't have much to do with what's going on with people. That makes me happy and sad—happy because I know the streams will keep streaming and the skies will keep clouding and clearing, even as we people fight and tear and claw at each other. But the big world going about its business no matter what we do makes me sad too because what difference do we make? Looking around me, at all the graves and leftover destruction—seems we just keep on messing up a darned good thing.

    Little Bit gives me the pencil