“I don’t suppose...” He raised his head and looked her in the eye, then shook his head. “Nah...”
After a few minutes he began to whistle and tap out another tune on the boat rim. He sighed and glanced around him. “This is the life. Fresh air. Sunshine...”
Annabelle hit her in the face with a handful of sticky soda crackers, then giggled. Margaret blinked, then brushed the crumbs off her face and took the cracker tin away from her. Annabelle let loose with a howl that raked down her spine, then the baby began to squirm and twist.
Fifteen torturous minutes later Hank glowered at her for the hundredth time. “Can’t you shut that kid up?”
“I’m trying...” she gritted, frustrated and edgy and feeling completely disarmed by one little baby, who was howling like a banshee, trying to squirm off her lap and succeeding. Margaret tried to give her back the cracker tin, but she batted it away and screamed louder.
Margaret blew a hank of limp hair out of her face. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Christ! Do something.”
Lydia looked up from beneath the shadow of the tarp and said quietly, “My mama used to rock her.”
“Yeah, Smitty. Listen to the girl. Go on.” Hank waved his hand and acted as if it were his idea. “Rock her.”
She counted slowly to ten.
“What are you waiting for? Rock the kid!”
She shifted, holding Annabelle who screamed and squirmed and kicked.
Margaret leaned forward. She plopped the crying baby in his lap. “You rock her.”
“Like hell!” he bellowed and froze. “Get her off me!” He sat there, his arms spread out as if little Annabelle were something untouchable.
An instant later, Annabelle stopped crying so suddenly that everyone stared at her. She sobbed once, then hiccupped She tilted her small, wet face up and stared at Hank.
He was eyeing the baby the way some of the opposing attorneys—the men—eyed Margaret.
The baby hiccupped once more, then stuck two fingers in her mouth and curled her small, pudgy body closer to his big, tanned one. She sighed and snuggled her head against his dark chest.
A moment later she was sound asleep.
* * *
The mournful soundsof an old freedom song rode slowly on the thick, stagnant air. The notes sounded sadder than Hank remembered. He stopped playing and tucked the harmonica away, watching Smitty stare out at the water. The children had fallen asleep, and the goat was eating the hem of her skirt.
It was suddenly quiet, the only sound that of the water lapping at the sides of the boat. After a few minutes she turned back and looked at him.
“We’re lost,” she said abysmally.
“We are not lost.”
“Do you know where we are?”
He looked left, then right, then skyward. “We’re floating in the middle of the Pacific.”
“Funny,” she said under her breath. “Very funny.” She dipped a handkerchief in the water and swabbed her neck and cheeks. “I know we’re lost.” She slicked her hair back from her face with the damp cloth.
“You women are always worrying about something. Everything’s a big deal to you.”
“Oh, I see. Men are calm and rational and understanding.”
“We don’t get our knickers twisted over stupid things like women do.”
“Stupid things?” She wrung out the handkerchief with a firm twist.
