The Rambling

1

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT ON my eleventh birthday when I snuck out of Mom’s house and hit the road on the search for my daddy. I packed me a knapsack with some bread and cheese and an apple. I left Mom a note saying, Sorry, the fire was an accident like I told you it was, I’ve gone to live with Pop, love you, and may our paths cross again someday soon if the Fates should wish it, which I thought was a pretty nice touch.

I waited till the darkest, blackest time of night, when ugly gray clouds drowned all the moonlight. I snuck right out through my window, didn’t wake a soul, dropped down to the earth, and got to moving. I was headed right out of Collardsville, I was, right out of the dirty dull town, taking that muddy moonless road down south.

I hadn’t seen Pop in five years, but last I heard he was bunking somewhere down river, near the swamp where I was born and raised, back when he and Mom were still together, back when we were a family. I was going to live with him, same as I always dreamed of doing since we first moved away from him, away from the waters and the swamp, up into town. No more being the town flunky, no more being the shame of my mom. I was on to new things now, to take my place right alongside Pop, who was my hero, one hundred percent, not a doubt in my mind. I was so excited I figured my heart would burst right out of my chest and go running ahead of me.

Pop was something else, I’m telling you. A true wild man, the likes of which were disappearing off the face of this world just as fast as every unmapped forest. Pop was a master of a million arts—a poet, a carpenter, a pugilist of the highest order, and (I had been told) the handsomest man in twelve counties. So what if he was always too busy to come visit me? Why would he, with us living in the town like this, the dirty cluttered cobblestoned roads, boring and respectable, full of fences and gates and doors with locks on them, where a wild soul like Pop couldn’t find any freedom or peace?

I loved Mom, quiet and strong as she was, even if she was always harsh on me, even if I couldn’t hardly make it through one day without getting punished for something dumb, something bad I didn’t even mean to do, it was only my old foul luck getting me in trouble all the time. Mom smelled like eggs and yeast and flour, and every time she hugged you, your clothes got dusted white. But Mom wanted me to become a baker like her. No way in Heaven or Hell was I going to sit in some hot room all day rolling dough. No sir, I knew it in the deep downs of my heart. It was the open road for me, the dusty trail, and best of all the long snaky sneaking river that slithered its way down to the Swamplands, the place Pop most loved, whose waters I’d been born and raised on until I was six and that Pop still wrote me about whenever he was able to write. It was the swamp I missed most of all.

Besides, I couldn’t stay in town. Not after what I’d done.

Or at least, what Mom thought I’d done.

It was a long journey I was headed on, let me tell you. Tough too. Wished I could have taken a dirigible like I’d seen float over us once at the county fair. Rides on it cost more than Mom makes in a whole year. Another reason to leave this dopey town.

Nope, instead I walked.

I walked and I walked and I walked.

All night I walked, and come morning I took to hitchhiking. I rode a blind donkey and a bald horse (the owner said he lost his mane in a fight). I rode in a fancy lady’s carriage (Oh you poor thing! she said) until she got a whiff of how I smelled and made me ride up top with the driver, which was fine with me.

Never had I seen so much of the country, even if it was mostly ugly old farmers wandering through their corn. It took days and days of dreary walking, constant traveling, bumming rides, and sleeping under trees on the side of roads. I kept hoping something wild would happen, something exciting, like maybe I would get robbed or see a ghost or get attacked by wolves. But naw, it was just a long bumpy journey, same as always. I slept under wagons and up in trees and in the tops of barns, always with my eyes open, always looking, looking, looking.

The fields became woods and the ground got murkier, and it was hard, hard to get a ride.

I took up with a fearful old codger on a mule. He slouched and had a beard that grazed his belly. His eyes were bright gold behind his spectacles and he rode all night, barely faster than I could walk.

What are you so worried about? I said.

The Creepy, he said, lives in the swamp, he does. Eats babies right out of their moms’ cribs. Likes to gnaw on dead bones.

We ain’t even in the swamp yet, I said. We’re miles and miles from any notion of a swamp.

Try telling that to the Creepy.

That night we slept tired and mosquito-bit on the side of the road, and when I woke up my shoes were gone. The old man sat there, chewing on some bread.

What happened to my shoes? I said.

The Creepy, he said, and spat.

Truth was, I was happy to be on the journey, no matter how bad it was. I’d already run away a dozen times, but I always came back because I knew me leaving would break Mom’s heart. Besides, she needed help in the bakery. I only ever left for a day or so at a time. So now that I’d gone and wrecked everything, I figured Mom was lucky to be quit of me. I was happy I wouldn’t be a nuisance to her anymore. Because let’s face it, I was no good as a baker. In fact, I wasn’t much good at anything. If you accused me of being a bad kid and a no-good son, well, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

I will not lie, I was a rambunctious child. I’d ruined pastries, burned tarts, sold moldy rolls to old ladies. I’d stolen a new rabbit coat just to get caught with it. I’d skipped chapel and chipped my tooth on the holy cup. I’d joyridden on neighbors’ stallions and climbed to the top of the schoolhouse with an old pirate’s spyglass just to see what I could see. I back-talked, spat in public streets. I left the house at all hours and spent my nights with the cows in the pasture up under the big bright moon. Harmless stuff, really, if you want to know the truth about it.

But I had another thing working against me too, and that was my durn horrible luck. For instance, I’d been thrown off no less than six horses, even broke my arm once. I’d contracted whooping cough and pleurisy and hay fever and summer chills and winter fever. I got myself thrown out of school for pushing my teacher down the stairs, but I swear to you it was an accident. I tripped, I did, stumbled right over my own two feet and there was Miss Halloran right in front of me, and I reached out to get a hold of something and down she went. She didn’t hardly turn her ankle—it was only three steps down to the grass—but it was enough to get me tossed. Then there was the time Mr. Disley the Potter’s wagon tipped and all his oxen got free and his entire stock got smashed and shattered, not a single pot left intact. You don’t even want to hear about that one. Rest assured I was innocent entirely. Rest assured not a single person in the village—even my own mom—believed me.

It’s embarrassing, all that bad fortune, when your daddy is a famous Parsnit player, renowned for his lucky blood. Why didn’t I get that lucky blood, huh? If I had Pop’s heart like Mom was always telling me (that’s what she said when I did something wrong or got in trouble: I hoped you’d have my heart at the bottom of it all, Buddy. But nope, you got your daddy’s heart. You’re your pop’s child, through and through), why didn’t I get his lucky blood too? Everything I put my hand to wound up a disaster. So you can understand why perhaps I didn’t see much benefit in being good, since it got fouled up every time anyway.

But set the bakery on fire?

That I did not do, I swear to you on a stack of holy books, cross my heart. I did not. It just happened.

See, it was early morning and I couldn’t sleep.

Mom should have been up already, tending the oven, getting the fires going so they’d be good and hot for the bread. But when I tiptoed into Mom’s bedroom, she looked so calm, so peaceful, like she was relaxed for once, not mad or sad or worried about anything. It was like she was smiling almost, and it had been ages since I’d seen her smile. I had seen her up late nights, near to dawn light, cooking up something in the bakery. Whenever I asked her about it, she just said, Working on a new recipe. Something that will really change stuff for you and me, Buddy. And then she’d put her head down and get back to work. I knew Mom was tired, wore out to the bone. I figured maybe I could get the fires going for her, let her sleep a little bit longer. Everybody knows half an hour’s extra shut-eye in the morning is about the best thing there is, especially for a person who works as hard as Mom.

So I went out back to the kitchen, where we kept the two big brick ovens that Mom did all her baking in. It was connected to a storefront where we sold everything.

I pulled up the wood and I lit the kindling and I got the fire going pretty good. I was poking around with a stick, shoving the coals, making sure the air could get to all the logs, when I happened to glance out the window.

That’s when I saw the toad. It was huge, like longer than my forearm, even hunched over, sitting like that. It was the biggest toad I’d ever seen in my whole life. I bet its legs were three foot long each, fully extended.

I know, right? What was a foot-long toad doing in town? What was it doing dry and miles off from any water, croaking away on my windowsill?

It blinked at me.

I realized it only had one big baby-blue eye staring at me, right in the center of its forehead. Must have been hexed. I crossed myself six times and spit like you’re supposed to.

That toad stared and stared.

I felt dizzy, strange, like I needed a glass of water, like I’d better sit down.

I’m not sure what happened after that. I guess I blacked out. Because when I came to, the stick I was poking the fire with had caught, and it was leaning against a pile of old empty flour sacks Mom had left lying around.

I don’t need to tell you the whole thing was already blazing.

I tried to put it out. I did. But before I could make much of a dent in it, Mom came running in, screaming.

Put it out, Buddy! she hollered. Oh Lord God in Heaven help us, you lit the bakery on fire!

Mom came back with a bucket of water and a big old blanket. The fire wasn’t huge, and the bakery was built pretty sturdy with brick. A couple of the neighbors had run in to help (you know how that word fire! can spread faster than the flames themselves). Only half the bakery burned down. It didn’t even reach the upstairs, where we lived, where Mom had been sleeping. I counted that a blessing, I did.

’Course I couldn’t find the toad that had mesmerized me with his one jeweled eye, and when I tried to tell Mom about it, all she did was mutter to herself, like I wasn’t even there.

I have had all I can stomach, whispered Mom, tears rolling down her cheeks. That was a big deal, and it scared me a little. Never before had I seen my mom cry. She was tough, she was, and quiet. The most you’d ever get out of her was a little chuckle here and there, or a straight-line kind of frown. I try and I try and I try, and nothing works. I can’t even sleep in an hour without it all coming to ruin.

But Mom, I said. There was this toad . . .

Mom shushed me.

It ain’t worth arguing about, Buddy, she said. Not now. But rest assured, you and me are going to have us a talk tomorrow, and I’m afraid you won’t like what you’re going to hear.

I’d be a liar if I said that didn’t hurt. In fact, it hurt so bad I knew there was no way I could stay at home any longer, not the way I always wrecked things, not how hard I made Mom’s life. It hurt me to leave, especially on my birthday, but I also knew I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

And so what? Life was one big stretch of hurts until your luck turned, until that long golden flip of the coin landed heads up for once. Now, my journey was nearly over. After a whole week of plugging along on that dusty old trail, I was getting close. I had passed through the woods, come into open land. I was in the Riverlands now, where last I heard Pop was living. The hills got hillier and the valleys grew steeper. The road was less crowded, and strange-looking men wandered about, gruff and unshaven. Everything started to smell like fish.

I was headed to Pop’s house, and maybe I was the happiest kid in the whole world.

2

IT TOOK A FULL DAY of wandering around and asking, since I didn’t exactly know where Pop lived anymore. Every time I’d come across a person I’d ask them if they knew the current residence of David Josiah Pennington, and I rarely got much of a satisfactory response. Either they’d mutter that they’d never heard of the man, or else they’d look scared and hightail it away from me. One plump lady with a toddler crossed herself three times and walked over to the other side of the road as soon as I said his name. Eventually I found a seedy-looking old man tottering around his front yard, his door left wide open.

Can I help you, sir? I asked.

Sure, sure, said the man, swaying a little. How’s about you draw an old man a cup of water from that well over yonder, how’s about it?

The well was a regular-looking brick thing dug into the man’s front yard. That seemed easy enough. When I handed the man the water cup he slurped it all up and motioned for another. It took three before he was satisfied.

He let out a big burp and made to shake my hand.

Rodney Cleaver, he said. And who the heck are you?

I’m Buddy Pennington, I said. David Josiah Pennington’s son.

The old man squinted and cast a crooked smile at me. Davey Boy’s boy, you say? I nodded. Didn’t know he had one. Well, that figures, don’t it? The man gestured down the road. He lives down yonder, about a mile, steady as she goes. Once you get to that big oak tree that looks like it’s about to keel over and die, take the trail on your left. Can’t miss it.

Thanks, sir, I said.

The old man just laughed.

Sooner or later I found it.

Turns out Pop was living in an old stilt house hanging over a tiny slough just a short ways off from where it met the river. Pop’s house wasn’t much, hardly a shack, but right then it seemed the most perfect place in all the world.

Just as the sun set over the cypresses and glinted white and blinding over the water, I saw him. He sat on a stump outside, his beard scragglier than I remembered it, his clothes a little rattier, sucking on a pipe, black smoke billowing up around him, like he was deep in some sad thought, like he was lost far off in the woods of his brain. He didn’t even see me walking up. Never had I thought the day would come when I could sneak up on my daddy.

Pop? I said.

He gave a little jump he was so surprised, the pipe snatched back from his lips. For just one second he looked like an animal about to bolt off into the woods and be gone.

But then he grinned, that sly, gold-toothed grin that he said was the key to everything and all of life, the magic to getting whatever you wanted, and his eyes lit up like the bonfires on the levee, and he leapt to his feet and gathered me up and swung me around laughing.

My boy! he hollered. My Buddy boy come all the way down here to see me!

He set me on the ground and out came the questions, dozens of them, that quick way he has of making you feel like every story you tell is gold, like you’re the most important person in the whole world. I told him all about my travels, about the horse with no mane, about the lady kicking me out of her carriage. He about lost his mind laughing over that. He kept calling me my boy, my boy, and I don’t even have to tell you how much that meant to me.

It was just how I’d always dreamed it, just how I’d always wanted it to be.

So what brings you to my neck of the river? said Pop, once we sat down in the house, sweet tea for me and a sip out of his jug for him.

Well, I kinda sorta had to leave Mom’s house, I said, on account of how I lit the oven on fire. But it was an accident, I swear to you. I almost told him about the one-eyed toad, but I didn’t much feel like making my dad think I was crazy on our first night back together. So I lied. I fell asleep, I guess.

Out all night, causing trouble I bet, he said. That’s my boy. We weren’t made for early rising, no sirree. Folks such as you and I, we make our living by night, and the sunrise is just God’s way of telling us it’s bedtime. You don’t learn nothing from a morning anyhow.

That’s right, I said, nodding. I tried to tell Mom that about a hundred times.

No doubt you did, said Pop. His face got stern a moment. You ain’t planning to set this place on fire, are you?

Nope, I said. Wouldn’t dream on it.

That’s my boy, he said. Now how about we get us some grub?

Pop gave me an old pair of his boots, a little too big on me, but they did the job. Then he took me down to a creek where he’d set up some mudbug traps, baited with fish guts and old chicken feet. The traps were full, a massive catch, probably twenty crawling red mudbugs in each. He tossed them still alive in a big black pot and chucked in spices and taters and corn, and when they were good and ready we dumped them out on the table and went to town, cracking the backs and slurping out all the meat and spices, the cuts on my fingers stinging, my tongue like it was about to burn off, all that