Those Across the River Read Online Free PDF

now, seein as yer the only Savvy-yard. You play baseball?”
    “Not lately.”
    “Shame. I know you’re an older fella, but you still look fit’s why I asked. Hell, my pop plays sometimes, an he’s older’n God’s baby shoes. We got games in the lot on Saturdays, dependin on the crops. If I shake my tail I can still make it back. You sure you don’t wanna come?”
    “What do you mean mean ?”
    “Pardon?”
    “When you say the woods are mean?”
    “Just stories poppas tell to scare their kids. Haint stories.”
    “Would you come with me if you didn’t have a game?”
    “No sir, not today.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    “No sir, not tomorrow neither.”
     
     
     
    I DID GO back to town with Lester, and I did play baseball.
    I took a long look at the woods before I caught up with Lester’s retreating form, and for a moment I thought I might cross the river. It was funny how much thicker and darker the woods were just across that lazy body of water, as if a march by dogwoods and maples and live oak had been halted just at the banks and now the river was a frontier between them and their smaller, less robust cousins. But I’m skirting the real reason I didn’t cross the river. I didn’t go because the woods didn’t want me in them. And I didn’t want to go alone.
    The baseball game was good. Lester invited me to play on the same team with his little brother, Saul, and their father, whom everybody just called Old Man. The brothers were impressive together, both with the same corn-silk hair and easy, fluid athleticism. Normans, I thought, still spreading their strong seed west. I recognized their dad as one of the old birds bent over the checkerboard at the general store that first night. He was checking me out good. Whomever the mayor was, this was Old Man Gordeau’s town.
    Turns out he was the mayor.
    The captain of the other team was a carpenter named Charley Wade, and his best hitter was a curly, unattractive redhead named Pete. Those were all the names that stuck that first Saturday. Most of the rest were high school age, but I daresay most were not in school. Farm kids drop out.
    I tipped one ball up so the catcher should have had it, and I even slowed to a jog when I saw how well-planted he was. Incredibly, he dropped it, and I hustled to first base, which was an old flour sack half-full of sand. I scored the first run when Lester plastered one out of the lot; it crested over the sparse trees between the lot and the town square, and thumped against the side of the hardware store. The man who owned it was the sheriff. He came out and threw it back. Good arm on him despite his potbelly.
    I walked home happy with dust and clay on my shoes and my hand still reeking of the mitt I borrowed.
    I would try the woods another day.
    That evening I chopped wood in the backyard while Dora cooked. I still had to wear gloves, but my city-boy hands were getting a little tougher. Every third or fourth heft I had to swab my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes, but I soon incorporated that into the rhythm. If I had known a good sea shanty I might have sung one.
    My mind drifted to the Savoyard side of my family.
    Had I really come from them?
    It was as if they got weaker and more deranged with every generation. The one who fought with Napoleon sired the one who got rich in New Orleans. Who sired Lucien, my great-grandfather.
    Heft, chop.
    Heft, chop.
    When his father died, Lucien came back from school overseas—though I have been unable to find out where—to inherit. No love lost. He didn’t even come to New Orleans, just handled everything through an intermediary and bought the land in Georgia to ride the cotton boom. And speculate in slaves.
    Then he fought for the Confederacy.
    Just after the war, he wouldn’t turn his slaves loose. The Federals tried to make him, but he got men from Whitbrow and Morgan to help him drive them off. The slaves revolted and murdered him, as well as his wife and overseers. And the dogs they