The Rambling
Contents (26)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Jimmy Cajoleas
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Copyright
About the Publisher
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.