Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 12

ELL, Driftwood!" Jepson Veraine remarked to his charge, "seems to me we’re a pretty happy family. What do you think about it?"

Driftwood opened wide his blue eyes and smiled a reflection of the bright face of his companion and care-taker. Raising both his hands, he rocked and bounced about, and Jep picked him up.

"Now, let’s see," Jepson considered: "these little chaps have got to have fussin’ and fixin’. I’d better wrap somethin’ around him, and I’d better put somethin’ on his head. That’ll fix him right!"

He slipped Driftwood feet first into a cotton meal-bag and tied the string about the baby’s waist. Then over the little fellow’s ears he pulled the knitted woolen cap he had worn the day the boys found him.

"There!" Jep remarked. "He won’t take cold now." Jep drew on a pair of long-legged rubber boots belonging to Mr. Carruth; then, with Driftwood in his arms, he went over the bow of the shanty-boat, and waded up the street toward the shops, to make some purchases. He needed provisions, extra clothes for Driftwood, and some one to tell him the news. Jep had waited patiently, expecting Sibley and Jimmy to return in a day or two at the latest. But neither appeared, and the next he knew they were reported by river gossip to have gone down across Slough Neck, and to be working for Mr. Kalas of the River Commission.

"We’re plumb orphaned!" Jep declared. "I don’t care; do you, kid?" The kid laughed aloud. Perhaps he had never before had a big, jolly person of his own sex, and only two or three times his own size, to play with. Jep seemed to know all about drift babies and what they needed in the way of amusement, care, and food. Other shanty-boaters along that bayou mooring remarked that Jepson Veraine sure took to it naturally.

River women came over and offered their services, and Jep was very glad of all the advice they gave him, and their warnings about what babies should and shouldn’t eat. Some said one thing, and some another, and Jep, taking his own counsel, and remembering his mother’s ideas regarding her babies, struck an average. And as the women exclaimed, "How well he looks!" Jep felt pretty safe, though he didn’t try any experiments to speak of.

As he waded around into the main street, two city women passed him in a skiff driven by an out-board motor. They stared when they saw Driftwood and one of them exclaimed:

"Why, what a lovely baby!"

They steered their boat around, and asked Jep to show them the baby. Jep was proud of Driftwood, and didn’t mind having the ladies smile at him. He had the feeling, too, that probably Driftwood needed more or less of the company of ladies, anyhow, to keep him from growing up too rough and independent.

"Mercy!" one of the ladies exclaimed. "What in the world have you got on this child?"

"Just a meal-bag," Jep replied. "He didn’t have enough o’ his own things, and it’s chillin’ a bit, to-day, so I bagged ’im."

"I should say you did! Is he your brother?"

"No." Jep shook his head. "We found him, Sib, Jimmy, and me did, trippin’ down the Mississippi in his own ark. It was a wooden baby-buggy. So, ’course, we took him in with us."

"Just boys," the woman gasped, "taking care of this beautiful baby!"

"He ain’t the first one I’ve took care of," Jep replied, tartly. "I’ve helped raise lots of kids."

"Do you live in New Madrid?"

"No; I’m from Meramec River."

"Oh, a shanty-boater!"

"No, ma’am," Jep replied blandly: "We live in a cabin-boat."

"Oh!" the two women exclaimed, looking at each other, and exchanging glances full of meaning.

"This child ought to have the best of care!" one said.

"He’s gettin’ it," Jep declared stoutly.

"Do you give the baby paregoric, or any other opiatical compound?" the other woman asked keenly.

"I take such good care of him I don’t have to have any dope for him," Jep replied, feeling that a net was being spread for him.

"Just you boys alone taking care of him?" the first woman asked.

"Oh, my, no!" Jep shook his head. "We’ve—we’ve four ladies visits him every day, mornin’ an’ afternoon—reg’1ar,—besides two—two that’s grandmothers."

"But he isn’t yours."

"I’m just keepin’ him for his folks," Jep replied. "I’m goin’ up-town now, to buy some milk and things for him. Is there any good milk place here?"

"Why—I believe he does know!" one looked at the other.

"It’s awful!" Jep remarked. "You know what changing a baby’s milk does to him. It’s pretty near time to feed him again. I use condensed milk just now, as it’s more reg’lar. But if I could find some good real milk, I’d try him on that. But I reckon milk’s tol’able scarce, now, in the overflow. Well, good-day ladies!"

"You live in that shanty-boat down there at the end of this street?"

"Yes," Jep answered, and waded away with Driftwood.

For a little while the two women held their boat to a hitching-rail, talking with significant earnestness, and Jep, having bought a few sup plies, slipped down a side street, and cut across to his shanty-boat. Those two women didn’t seem to think much of boys, as a general proposition, for taking care of babies.

"Sibley and Jim’d never let up on me, if I let any o’ these Up-the-Bankers grab Driftwood!" Jep thought to himself. "I bet those women’d like to git him themselves. I guess I’d better do some thinkin’ on my own hook. Take a woman, and she sees anybody with an awful nice baby, and she don’t think much of who’s got it, and you can’t tell what she’ll do about it. I’ll take a little trip, and find out."

He cast off the lines of his shanty-boat and drifted out clear of the mooring-place, and then rowed with the long sweeps toward the main Mississippi. Often, when a shanty-boater gets tired of having to watch the big river, he’ll go away back somewhere, but when it begins to look a bit dubious around, a river-man heads right for the main Mississippi channel, just as Jepson Veraine was doing.

It was growing dark, and if any one noticed what he was up to, nothing was said to him. River people mind their own business. Having found another mooring, he made a one-line hitch. Driftwood was sound asleep, his little stomach comfortably full, and Jep, looking the stove over to make sure that the boat was safe, slipped up-town.

Sure enough! Passing the city judge’s house, he saw the town marshal’s launch tied to the front porch, and heard two women talking, inside, in earnest voices.

"Now be sure, Marshal!" one urged. "You must rescue that baby! Why, the little darling has the sweetest face I’ve ever seen! He’s just a baby of the overflow, and probably his people aren’t anybody in particular, but he’s beautiful! And I want him. I must have him!"

"Indeed! The idea of a river-rat having a baby like that to look after! Just a little boy, too, and he talked as he’d heard women talk, about milk for babies, and that sort of thing. Why, being brought up in those surroundings would—Why, you couldn’t tell what it would do to a baby like that!"

"You say he’s around on the bayou—"

"Yes, in a shanty-boat, right there at the foot of Cypress Log Street."

"What color boat?"

"Lemon yellow."

"I’ll sure bring that baby right away!" the marshal declared stoutly, and started for his boat.

Jepson could not run in the water, and he knew better than to try. Instead, whistling cheerfully, he strolled nonchalantly along the sidewalk deeply overflowed. He heard the marshal’s motor start, and, glancing back, saw the dark bulk of the launch approaching.

"Have a ride, boy?" the marshal asked kindly.

"I’m only goin’ down three squares," Jep said.

"I’m turning down the second corner," the man said. "Jump in!" Jep jumped in, rode to the corner, and then jumped out. For a moment he watched the launch as it started away, and then, plowing along as fast as he could, he went to his own shanty-boat and cast off the line.

"There ain’t much hurry," he said to himself gravely. "I’m glad those women thought the yellow boat was mine. I bet Mrs. Torkly and her man’ll sit up a-rearin’ when the marshal comes in with a baby requisition, and starts to take theirn! He didn’t know what those women was drivin’ at. Ho law! I bet Mr. Torkly’ll come pretty near shootin’ the marshal. That Torkly kid’s got black eyes, yellow cheeks, and a yell like a parrot. Driftwood’s worth two-three o’ that kind."

He eased his shanty-boat out into the current. The wind had blown the flotsam off the channel, and there was hardly any drift in midstream. Standing at his sweeps, Jep looked into the darkness down the river. He glanced up at the reflection of New Madrid’s lights on the sky. Then he laughed aloud.

"When them women see the baby the marshal requisitioned! I wish I could be there to hear ’em! Laws! lawsy! If I can find Sib and Jimmy, they’ll sure holler. Hey, Driftwood!"

Driftwood had awakened. He had sat up and looked around, and then rolled off the folding cot to the floor. When Jep saw him, the baby was just coming through the doorway onto the bow deck, on his hands and knees.

"Hold on, you!" Jep shouted, catching up the boy, who laughed with glee. "You’d be all wet if you fell overboard! Besides," he added gravely, "if you was to fall into Old Mississip prob’bly you’d crowd the water all over the levee-tops, and onto the bottoms, too! You’re an awful size, the way you fill up the wash-tub!"

Fetching a woolen blanket, Jep wrapped Driftwood in it and seated himself on the bow deck in the dark with the baby in his arms. The shanty-boat was now miles below New Madrid, but he didn’t want to take any chances on the sheriff or any one else pursuing him and Driftwood down the flood tide. He heard the water roaring through the levee gap above Point Pleasant, and then listened to the low murmuring and hissing of the over-bank current among the trees of longshore timber.

"No, sir!" Jep declared grimly; "no women is goin’ to take this Driftwood away from me! ’Course, if I couldn’t handle him and lick the stuffin’ out of him if he didn’t behave, and if I humored him about his eatin’s, not knowin’ any better, it’d be best for some female to have him. But seein’ as I know how to manage one o’ these little chaps myself, I just reckon I’ll hang onto him. ’Course, they meant all right by him, but, rightly, it takes a man to bring up a big fellow like this; hey, Driftwood?"

"Ya-goo!" Driftwood exclaimed, dancing by wriggling his back and raising his elbows.

"How does the panther kill the porcupine?" Jep demanded, as a matter of natural history information, and then answered: "Why, he bites him in the—" and Jep buried his face in the youngster, at the waist line, growling and shaking his head, and Driftwood chuckled and shouted with laughter.

Jepson looked about in the dark, shimmering night. The wind of the day had died into puffs of breeze, and no stars were in sight, although the surface of the river was luminous enough for masses of woods to be reflected, and occasional patches of drift to be revealed. From Jep’s shoulder, his arms around Jep’s neck, Driftwood looked about, too. The dark, the flood, the loneliness had no terrors for the baby who had floated down the river in the drift. Jep wondered who Driftwood was, and what had become of his parents. Sometimes, hugging Jep close, the baby looked around as though he wished some one else were there. At night, he would start up suddenly from his dreams wide awake, and cry for a little while, but when Jep talked to him he would quiet down and go back to sleep.

Jep wouldn’t give him up to strangers; he was running away from any such suggestion as that! But he could not help wishing the little fellow’s mother knew that her baby was safe, and that somehow they would be brought together again. Jep knew that if he should have to give up Driftwood, even to the mother, he would miss the brave and happy youngster.

They passed Point Pleasant. The last time Jep had been there he had seen a man tearing down a house and barn from before the wear of the caving bank. At the foot of the crossing, Tiptonville lights shone across the water from the streets and buildings. Pale yellow glows showed where tents had been erected in a regular town, and hundreds of refugees cared for. He could hear music, and so could Driftwood.

"Ay-ay-ay-ay!" Driftwood cried out, reaching toward the shore. "Da-da-da!"

It was a victrola, and Jep’s breath caught as he realized the significance of the baby’s desire to get ashore. He thought of running in there, but he knew that New Madrid would send word there to intercept him and capture the baby.

"If they was only his own folks!" Jep exclaimed. "But he ain’t from there! He’s from up in Illinois somewhere. Those buggy wheels were run on stone pavements, the way they’re worn. Dirt roads and wood walks don’t wear a buggy the way stone does."

Driftwood could not understand. When he saw the village lights disappearing, and heard the music growing fainter, he began to cry, and he clung to Jep’s neck, and Jep felt a lump in his own throat. He tried to tell the baby all about it, and Driftwood tried to understand, but tears were in his brave eyes, and he kept saying emphatically:

"Dada-da-da! Ma-ma-ma! Da-da!"

He threw his arms up, swelled out his chest, threw out his hands, and tipped back his head to speak those big syllables. Jep understood perfectly, and by the light he had lit on the table in the cabin he explained to Driftwood that they must find Jimmy and Sibley, and then go to Jep’s own father and to the father and mother of Sibley, away back up the river, and then tell everybody, all over Illinois, and Indiana, and Missouri, and everywhere that a great big chap known as Driftwood wanted his father and his mother, and wouldn’t they please come, and hurry up? for it was hard for so small a boy to have such a great, big, lonesome hollow inside him!

"I bet your mother and daddy are fine people!" Jep said to Driftwood. "It takes good, nice folks to have babies like you! Take a mother that’s kind and a reg’lar understander, and she’s sure to have a baby like Driftwood, who is brave and a game little sport! And that kind of a mother, that’s pretty and all smilin’, just naturally has married a man that’s strong and brave and behaves himself. I reckon you are quality folks, kid!"

The baby laughed and jumped as Jep expressed these sentiments, and it was so amusing that Jep nearly forgot his own supper. After supper, when Driftwood was once more asleep, Jep went out to look at the river. The water pouring out of the woods to the left was carrying the shanty-boat swiftly down mid-river—it was the overflow from Reelfoot crevasse—and they were far away from the woods on the right. They were booming down the middle of the Mississippi tide, in the gray night, and Jep’s heart was heavy as he pondered.

"I sure hope I get to find those pals o’ mine!" Jep thought. "I’ll run in, somewhere, and ask along. Somebody’s surely heard of Sib and Jimmy down here!"

He looked in the night for a light, or a sign of people. There was no glimmer of a lighted window or a lantern in any direction, up or down. It was as if the whole world had been covered by the flood, and Jep, with little shivers along his back, went inside.