“Howdy, ma’am!” I yelled. “Little help down here!”

Her eye popped open and she took a gander at me, floating down in the water by the pier.

“You can’t dock here, son,” she snarled.

“I ain’t got any raft,” I said. “Just this here plank, and I’m about worn-out from holding on to it.”

“How far did you come on that hunk of driftwood?” she said.

“A good night’s worth of travel,” I said.

“Good gracious,” she said, hobbling up out of her chair. “What kind of world is it where children come floating down the river like so much flotsam and jetsam. Durn shame it is, this world. Hateful all around.”

The woman leaned herself over the pier and I caught hold of her hand. She pulled me up all on her own, she did. This woman was awful strong.

“Need a place to sleep?”

I was so tired I nearly keeled over right then, but then I righted myself and shook my head.

“No ma’am,” I said.

“I know a rogue when I see one,” she said. “Snuck away from my daddy once too, when I was just a kid. He wasn’t too nice, not to me or my mom, if you know what I mean. Looking at you, I figure you do.”

I was about to correct her but then my stomach growled so big the old lady grimaced.

“Come on then,” she said. She led me to a stinking hut with one seaward window just a bit off from the rotted pier.

“My husband built this shack.”

“Where’s he?” I said.

“Long dead now.” She sighed real deep. “Years and years and years.”

“So who were you waiting for out there on that pier?”

“Just waiting for my ship to come in, I suppose.”

She smiled a little. It was broke-toothed and crooked, and it made me sad. She gave me some bread and cheese and I gobbled them down. My head started nodding a little and I guess she could tell how tired I was, because the old lady pointed to a musty old quilt in the corner of the room. It looked like where a dog might sleep. But that was okay, the way I looked and felt, I’m sure I wasn’t much better off than a dog.

I fell right asleep, my daddy’s knapsack held tight in my arms.

I woke up, maybe around noonish, because the light shining through the cracks in the ceiling was bright as fire and spears of sunlight glistened all over the floor. The old lady was just sitting there, smiling at me.

“I could’ve had a boy,” she said. “I could’ve had a son just as you are, if only things had gone different for me.”

She was cleaning her fingernails with a knife.

It made me hurt for that lady, and I knew I needed to rise and go find Pop but I was just so tired, so worn-out from floating all night that I could barely keep my head up, I barely could keep awake.