My Father Like a River Read Online Free PDF Page A

shirt.
    When she was close, Lucy got on her knees and
rubbed the shirt cloth over the ground, all the way to his feet. Smart of her,
Sinkler had to admit, though it was an apple-knocker kind of smart.
    â€œWalk over to the other side of the barn,” she told
him, scrubbing the ground as she followed.
    She motioned him to stay put and retrieved the
bedsheet.
    â€œThis way,” she said, and led him down the slanted
ground and into the woods.
    â€œYou expect me to wear these all the way to
Asheville?” Sinkler said after the flapping leather almost tripped him.
    â€œNo, just up to the ridge.”
    They stayed in the woods and along the field’s far
edge and then climbed the ridge. At the top Sinkler took off the brogans and
looked back through the trees and saw the square of plowed soil, now no bigger
than a barn door. The farmer was still there.
    Lucy untied the bedsheet and handed him the pants
and shirt. He took off his stripes and hid them behind a tree. Briefly, Sinkler
thought about taking a little longer before he dressed, suggesting to Lucy that
the bedsheet might have another use. Just a few more hours, he reminded himself,
you’ll be safe for sure and rolling with her in a big soft bed. The chambray
shirt wasn’t a bad fit, but the denim pants hung loose on his hips. Every few
steps, Sinkler had to hitch them back up. The bedsheet held nothing more and
Lucy stuffed it in a rock crevice.
    â€œYou bring that money?” he asked.
    â€œYou claimed us not to need it,” Lucy said, a
harshness in her voice he’d not heard before. “You weren’t trifling with me
about having money for the train tickets, were you?”
    â€œNo, darling, and plenty enough to buy you that
bracelet and a real dress instead of that flour sack you got on. Stick with me
and you’ll ride the cushions.”
    They moved down the ridge through a thicket of
rhododendron, the ground so aslant that in a couple of places he’d have tumbled
if he hadn’t watched how Lucy did it, front foot sideways and leaning backward.
At the bottom, the trail forked. Lucy nodded to the left. The land continued
downhill, then curved and leveled out. After a while, the path snaked into the
undergrowth and Sinkler knew that without Lucy he’d be completely lost. You’re
doing as much for her as she for you, he reminded himself, and thought again
about what another convict might do, what he’d known all along he couldn’t do.
When others had brought a derringer or Arkansas toothpick to card games, Sinkler
arrived empty-handed, because either one could take its owner straight to the
morgue or to prison. He’d always made a show of slapping his pockets and opening
his coat at such gatherings. “I’ll not hurt anything but a fellow’s wallet,”
he’d say. Men had been killed twice in his presence, but he’d never had a weapon
aimed in his direction.
    Near another ridge, they crossed a creek that was
little more than a spring seep. They followed the ridge awhile and then the
trail widened and they moved back downhill and up again. Each rise and fall of
the land looked like what had come before. The mountain air was thin and if
Sinkler hadn’t been hauling water such distances he wouldn’t have had the spunk
to keep going. They went on, the trees shading them from the sun, but even so he
grew thirsty and kept hoping they’d come to a stream he could drink from.
Finally, they came to another spring seep.
    â€œI’ve got to have some water,” he said.
    Sinkler kneeled beside the creek. The water was so
shallow that he had to lean over and steady himself with one hand, cupping the
other to get a dozen leaky palmfuls in his mouth. He stood and brushed the damp
sand off his hand and his knees. The woods were completely silent, no murmur of
wind, not a bird singing.
    â€œYou want any?” he asked, but Lucy shook her
head.
    The trees shut out much of the