Pookie's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The last trader of the morning waved Pookie off the porch beam without looking up. She dropped barefoot onto the planks of the trading post and landed in front of his crates. "I can haul twice what your boy hauls," she said. "Name a run." "Name a boat," the trader said. He hefted a sack past her and walked down to the water. Pookie watched him go. Six traders had come through since dawn. Six had asked the same question. She had no boat. Without a boat she could not enter the season's race, and without the race she could not win the trader's prize — the one thing in this river town measured by cargo weight and not by written tally. She had never learned a letter in her life. The prize did not care. She cupped her hands and threw a bull-frog call down the bank. Two traders turned. It was a good trick. It was not a boat. Inside the post, the old river guide sat under his hand-drawn map, scraping mud off his boots with a knife. His jaw scar caught the lamp light. Pookie stepped over a coil of dark thorned vine someone had dumped by the door for trade and stopped in front of him. "Davan. I need your skiff for the season." He did not look up. "My skiff drinks water like a drunk uncle." "I'll patch her." "You'll sink her." "Then loan me the little one. The pole boat." Now he looked. His eyes were tired and sharp at once. "What do I get?" "Whatever you name." He set the knife down. He tapped the map behind him, near a bend marked with a small ink tooth. "Upriver. Second bend. A snapper the size of a grain cart has been breaking my trap lines. I want the shell. I want it before the traders start their runs." Pookie knew the second bend. Everyone knew the second bend. Davan warned every group to turn back there. He had warned her, twice, when she was smaller. "You're sending me past your own warning post," she said. "I'm loaning you a boat past my own warning post." He picked the knife back up. "Bring the shell. Boat's yours till first frost." She thought of the crocodile skull nailed to the post at that bend, the paint on it faded to rust. She thought of six traders' backs walking away. "Done," she said. Davan pulled a driftwood torch pole from behind the counter and pushed it across to her. The rope wrap was fresh. He had readied it before she asked. "You knew I'd come," she said. "I knew somebody would." He nodded at the door. "Push off before the tide turns. And girl — the snapper hears everything. Even your frog trick." Pookie took the torch pole and went out barefoot into the sun.