Gulf Hammock
One small, skinny shadow flits past the porches and barns of Sumner as she goes on her way, sliding up to take the offerings left out by the women of town to help the hunted. She finds a loaf of bread, wrapped in a cloth. A pair of shoes with socks tucked inside. A coat folded small and tucked into the corner of a stair. She places them in the laundry basket she carries. In it, underneath the camouflage of folded sheets, there are packs of food and clothing for those in need, wrapped up by Mrs. Pillsbury and the neighbor ladies of Sumner, some of whom had women and children hiding in their barns and their attics, despite their husbands rampaging through the county.
Scrappy moves from tree to tree, almost invisible. As she moves into the woods, away from the town, she can see where people have passed and can see where people are hidden, because she knows where to look. She leaves small gifts for some of the invisible, biscuits and ham, a pair of socks, and whispers that there’s safety in Mrs. Pillsbury’s barn, if any want to risk the walk to Sumner.
Scrappy moves quickly once she is out of the range of sight from the road. She hurries along through the scrub oak woods until she reaches a dark, slow stream, and follows the stream for several miles. She doesn’t see the shack until she’s almost in front of it. Set back in a copse of cypress, the roof covered in vines, it looks like a big patch of scrub next to a bank cut out over the water. Only when she steps in front of the porch can she make out the shape of a small building covered in shingles, shutters pegged closed over the two windows.
Scrappy pulls on the front door, shaking her head at the scraping sound as it rubs against the porch floor. She knows, from the stiff resistance of the door and the stale, cold smell inside, that none of the others have made it to this fish camp her cousin Sylvester built years ago, deep in the swamps of the Gulf Hammock.
Placing her basket of food and clothing on the empty bed frame, she looks around for pencil and paper. She searches through the old lard cans on one shelf. In one of the metal tins there’s hard candies, and she smiles at her cousin Sylvester’s legendary sweet tooth, but then begins to cry and closes the tin up, sliding it back in place.
When she finds what she needs she writes:
Gone ahead, come to us if you need. Plenty of room. Scrappy.
Scrappy puts the note on top of the basket and sighs as she looks once more around the shack. She goes out, pushing the screeching door closed, and disappears into the deepening dusk as she moves back into the shadows under the trees along the stream.