River Runs Deep by Jennifer Bradbury Page A

couldn’t see them there this time. “I mean, I’m done with you. Not gonna chase you or talk to you or think on you no more.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œâ€Šâ€™Cause you got me in trouble with Stephen is why. I don’t know who you are, or how you go round the cave like that, but he didn’t believe me I was following anybody. And they took me out not long ago and I aim to get a chance to go out again, but something tells me you’ll muck that up if I let you. So, whoever you are, if I don’t pay you any mind, you’ll leave me alone.”
    Just when it was quiet enough for Elias to wonder if the voice were gone, came this: “I brought you something.” A hand emerged from the darkness. Elias saw it for only a second as it dropped something through the window. But he saw enough to tell that whoever was on the other side was a Negro.
    In spite of his promise to ignore the voice, Elias abandoned his letter and picked up the dropped something. Bedivere hopped over to inspect the offering.
    Elias unwrapped a scrap of blue cloth to find a cube of salt pork, about two inches square. It was already cooked, the grease of it spotting the fabric, the edges crisped brown. Elias’s mouth watered just at the sight of it. He lifted it to his nose, smelled the salty, fatty deliciousness of it, and his stomach flipped itself over in expectation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly felt hungry, truly wanted to eat something. Maybe it was because it wasn’t what he’d been forcing himself to eat for weeks. Or maybe the hint of his appetite returning meant he was getting better.
    â€œThought you might be liking something besides eggs and tea,” the voice said.
    Elias would have liked nothing better, but he forced himself to wrap the food back up and place it on the windowsill. “Can’t eat it,” Elias said firmly, returning to his letter. “Doctor’s orders.” Oh, how he wanted to gulp it down. In truth, it was only half out of fidelity to the doctor’s remedy that he didn’t. The other half couldn’t let this voice, this pest, make amends just by giving Elias a treat and making him forget how he’d led him off in the dark and made him look a fool.
    The gift disappeared back into the darkness. “How come you ain’t tell the doctor about me?”
    â€œWho says I didn’t?” Elias scribbled in the margin of the letter.
    â€œâ€Šâ€™Cause you didn’t.”
    Elias wondered how often this person was listening at his window. “Look, if you want to sneak about and get yourself whipped for bothering me and snitching food, that’s your hide. But I don’t fink on nobody, no matter who they are.”
    â€œThat’s big of you.”
    Elias didn’t care if it was or not. He concentrated on his letter. I am stronger, the doctor thinks, he wrote. Maybe in a few more weeks I can—
    â€œWho you writin’ at?”
    Elias fumed but answered anyway. “My family.”
    â€œThey near?”
    â€œVirginia,” Elias said. “Clear to the coast.”
    The voice whistled softly. “Your folk sent you all the way over here? Just to eat some eggs and lie round and get some doctoring?”
    â€œIt weren’t like that!” Elias hissed, but he was having a harder and harder time convincing himself that it wasn’t. He pretended to be keen to come, keen to see some of the wilds of Kentucky, to see a cave so big and ancient it was named after the mammoths that died out long ago.
    But it had been Granny’s notion. All their attempts to save Daddy had failed. When Elias fell sick, Granny learned about Dr. Croghan and his grand experiment. I’d cotton he’s onto something, she’d said.
    His mother had seized on the hope of a cure. Elias went along with it to make her happy, but he missed his family more than he ever thought he would. Many times