Chapter 21

Hotel

Grandpa and David pitch the Sears, Roebuck tent near a churchyard cemetery. Johnny stakes Stonewall to graze, while I gather kindling for a fire and fetch water from the church pump.

The smell of frying fish makes my stomach rumble right out loud. Spatters from the pan fly into the fire and sizzle. My mind thinks on eating. But Grandpa turns the fish and goes back to whittling on that block of oak he toted all the way from home. His eyes never leave the wood, but his mind seems otherwhere.

I head toward the cemetery, where Johnny and David play among the stones, but Grandpa calls me back.

“This is a town,” he says. “Ya need ta behave like a lady.”

“I just want to look at the stones.”

He nods permission.

The graveyard is right different from our cemetery back home. Some tombstones stand taller than my head, with crosses even taller. Some have stone lambs beside them or angels hovering over them. Most have names and dates etched right into the stone. If our cemetery had names, Grandpa wouldn’t need to teach me who is buried where, and I wouldn’t have to remember them all.

Dusk cloaks the tombstones with shadows while we eat. I wolf down that fish so fast I scarcely have time to taste it. When no one is looking, I lick the last taste from my tin plate.

After supper, Grandpa takes up his whittling again. Back home, he whittles figures of squirrels and birds, but he whittles this block down to a triangle, holds it out, squints at it, and whittles some more.

I wash and dry the frying pan, tin plates, and forks, and put them back in Grandpa’s pack. David adds wood to the fire, and Johnny crawls into the tent and falls asleep. The only sounds are the fire’s crackle and the snick-snick of Grandpa’s knife.

As I carry the dishpan to the edge of the cemetery to dump it, I hear another sound. A rustle of grass and what? Spitting? I hold my breath to listen, and my eye catches that boy, Rawley, crouching behind a tombstone.

I hurry back to the tent, checking over my shoulder every step. “Grandpa,” I whisper.

“I sees him. He’s been spyin’ on us since supper.” He flicks away a sliver from his triangle and runs his thumb down the long slope of it. He picks up the leather suitcase, tells David to keep an eye out. “Come with me, Ginnie Lee.”

I walk beside him down the darkening street. Lighted windows watch us. I’d ask where we’re going, but buildings are so close I feel they’re listening.

We climb the hotel steps and go inside. Grandpa talks to a lady and hands her money. She gives him a key with a tag tied to it. A number 3 is written on the tag.

He carries my suitcase up the stairs past a door whose sign says Wash Room, and sets it inside a room with a brass number 3 nailed to its door.

“Ya’s goin’ sleep here,” he says.

“By myself?”

He nods. “And keep this with ya.” He peels a few bills from that wad of pelt money, tucks them in his pocket, and plunks the rest in my hand. “Tuck it right under the covers with ya.” He squeezes the room key into my other palm. “And don’t let nobody inside this room.”

He sets that triangle he whittled on my suitcase and tells me to wedge it under the door after he leaves, so nobody can force it open.

And here I sit, all alone with a wad of money bigger than my fist, locked in a stuffy hotel room with a wedge of oak jammed under the door. The bedspread smells of mothballs, but I dare not open the window.

If Mama knew about this, she’d pitch a conniption worse than when I spilled honey on Nellie Finch at a quilting bee.