Red Jack snorts. “Off to a good start, boy,” he says, motioning me toward the middle of the roof where I can’t make any trouble.

The captain regards me with a cool eye.

“I’m really sorry, sir,” I say.

“I’d take it out of your pay,” he says. “Only I’m not paying you. So go ashore when we tie up for the night and cut a new one.”

“Make sure it’s one you can handle,” Red Jack says. I don’t hear any meanness in his voice, only practicality.

I have no idea how to cut a long, sturdy pole from the twisting trees that hug the riverbank. “Yes, sir.”

We drift downriver until it’s past dark, so he doesn’t send me ashore tonight. Aunt Tildy lets Joe cook dinner one last time. She vows to take over the boat’s kitchen tomorrow, and no one argues. After the plates are cleaned up, Joe gets out his fiddle and Red Jack fetches his guitar. They sit on the roof and play while the captain sings in a startlingly beautiful tenor. Joe dances while he fiddles, slapping his boots on the thick planks of the roof. Mrs. Joyner holds tight to her children, refusing to clap along or even smile, but when Aunt Tildy and the little ones start clapping, she doesn’t protest.

It’s not the best music I’ve heard, but it fills the cold night sky with energy and warmth. I gaze up at the stars and find the bright cluster of the Pleiades. My throat tightens with the memory: Jefferson and me lying on our backs in the hayloft last winter, straw poking out of our mouths, the loft shutter propped open to the sparkling crystal sky. The Cherokee don’t call it the Pleiades, he told me, but the Ani’tsutsa, which means “the Seven Boys.” His mother told him the story, how eight boys got so mad at their mama they decided to run away, but as they leaped into the sky, she grabbed the eighth boy by the heel and dragged him back to earth, leaving his seven brothers to shine in the night.

Jefferson liked to imagine he was the eighth boy, the one who stayed. Staying is important, he said. And he liked the idea that he had brothers somewhere, maybe looking after him. Jeff was embarrassed afterward, and he made me swear never to tell that he had such fanciful notions. I swallowed the lump in my throat and said that having a brother would be the very best thing.