My Father Like a River Read Free Page A

It’d be easy enough to
find another bucket, maybe one that could hold an extra gallon. Sinkler shrugged
and lifted himself into the cage truck, found a place on the metal bench among
the sweating convicts. He’d won over the other guards with cigarettes and small
loans, that and his mush talk, but not Vickery, who’d argued that making Sinkler
a trusty would only give him a head start when he tried to escape.
    The bull guard was right about that. Sinkler had
more than fifty dollars in poker winnings now, plenty enough cash to get him
across the Mississippi and finally shed himself of the whole damn region. He’d
grown up in Montgomery, but when the law got too interested in his comings and
goings he’d gone north to Knoxville and then west to Memphis before recrossing
Tennessee on his way to Raleigh. Sinkler’s talents had led him to establishments
where his sleight of hand needed no deck of cards. With a decent suit, clean
fingernails, and buffed shoes, he’d walk into a business and be greeted as a
solid citizen. Tell a story about being in town because of an ailing mother and
you were the cat’s pajamas. They’d take the Help Wanted sign out of the window
and pretty much replace it with Help Yourself. Sinkler remembered the afternoon
in Memphis when he had stood by the river after grifting a clothing store of
forty dollars in two months. Keep heading west or turn back east—that was the
choice. He’d flipped a silver dollar to decide, a rare moment when he’d trusted
his life purely to luck.
    This time he’d cross the river, start in Kansas
City or St. Louis. He’d work the stores and cafés and newsstands and anywhere
else with a till or a cash register. Except for a bank. Crooked as bankers were,
Sinkler should have realized how quickly they’d recognize him as one of their
own. No, he’d not make that mistake again.
    That night, when the stockade lights were snuffed,
he lay in his bunk and thought about Lucy Sorrels. A year and a half had passed
since he’d been with a woman. After that long, almost any female would make the
sap rise. There was nothing about her face to hold a man’s attention, but curves
tightened the right parts of her dress. Nice legs too. Each trip to the well
that day, he had tried to make small talk. She had given him the icy mitts, but
he had weeks yet to warm her up. It was only on the last haul that the husband
had come in from his field. He’d barely responded to Sinkler’s “how do you do’s”
and “much obliged’s.” He looked to be around forty and Sinkler suspected that
part of his terseness was due to a younger man being around his wife. After a
few moments, the farmer had nodded at the pail in Sinkler’s left hand. “You’ll
be leaving that, right?” When Sinkler said yes, the husband told Lucy to switch
it with the leaky well bucket, then walked into the barn.
    Two days passed before Lucy asked if he’d ever
thought of trying to escape.
    â€œOf course,” Sinkler answered. “Have you?”
    She looked at him in a way that he could not
read.
    â€œHow come you ain’t done it, then? They let you
roam near anywhere you want, and you ain’t got shackles.”
    â€œMaybe I enjoy the free room and board,” Sinkler
answered. He turned a thumb toward his stripes. “Nice duds too. They even let
you change them out every Sunday.”
    â€œI don’t think I could stand it,” Lucy said. “Being
locked up so long and knowing I still had nigh on four years.”
    He checked her lips for the slightest upward curve
of a smile, but it wasn’t there.
    â€œYeah,” Sinkler said, taking a step closer. “You
don’t seem the sort to stand being locked up. I’d think a young gal pretty as
you would want to see more of the world.”
    â€œHow come you ain’t done it?” she asked again, and
brushed some loose