Maud's Line

by Margaret Verble

  She saw Lovely alone on the front porch, and she figured Mustard was inside asleep. This time, however, Lovely was propped against a post reading by the light of a lamp, and as Maud walked the lane looking at the lamp’s glow, she recognized that as contrary to his habits, and she thought it meant he was deeply hooked into the Bible. She said so when she got to the porch, and Lovely said the book had a lot of rules in it, but it had a lot of action, too. He had gotten as far as the flood and was enjoying it. They settled away from the windows on the steps so they wouldn’t wake their father, and they spent the rest of the evening whispering about the likelihood that somebody could build a boat big enough to get two of each animal into it, and if somebody had, what it was like living with all that livestock. They agreed that two days in the barn with the chickens had been bad enough, and Maud said that she thought Noah’s ark was a story handed down through generations and had lost some of its realistic details.

  The next morning, Mustard left, eager to pick out his dog, and took biscuits with him to stave off his hunger on his drive home. Maud thought Lovely had left with her father, but when she went to the front porch, she found him there, staring toward the river with neither of his boots on his feet. “Lovely, you’re getting lazy,” she said.

  He turned toward her with a puzzled looked on his face. “Why do you say that?”

  “You haven’t even put on your boots.”

  “I’m not wearing them today.”

  “You have to wear your boots. Put ’em on.”

  Lovely picked up his right boot and slipped it over his sock and then slipped on the other one. He seemed so far away that Maud was tempted to blame the Bible reading. But she put that down to prejudice on her part, and she went to the garden without giving Lovely another thought.

  That night, she walked the lane as she had the two before, but this time she waved Booker to her and held the first cattle guard open as he rode through it. He dismounted, led his horse, and they walked holding hands. After they’d secured the wire of the second guard, they stopped in the lane and faced the river. The water couldn’t be seen from where they stood, but the tangled brush, cane, and reeds that rolled out in front of them didn’t seem to meet up with the hill on the horizon. Maud told Booker that broken joint was where the river ran.

  Shortly, they turned and walked to the house. Lovely, by agreement, and after a little kidding, had stayed inside until Maud called, “We’re here,” and then he came out to the porch for a proper introduction. Lovely was taller than Booker by a few inches, but Booker was the thicker of the two, and Maud, as she stood between them, looked from face to face as closely as though she were reading coffee grounds to divine their futures.

  Booker and Lovely talked at some length about the flood they’d all lived through, but after that, Lovely said he needed to tend to something in the barn and left Maud and Booker alone on the porch. Maud wasn’t given to shame. But she was well aware there was a whole other way to live that included heat in winter, light inside, indoor plumbing, and enough chairs for everybody to have one. So she wasn’t ready to let Booker see the inside of the house. Cardboard was nailed to the walls in there. A sheet was hung on a wire; behind it, their clothing was in crates. The only furniture in the main room was a chest of drawers, Mustard’s iron bed and feather mattress, two cots, and two rocking chairs. In the kitchen was a table and straight chairs, a bench, a counter and sink, a little icebox, a dipping pan, and a wood stove.

  To keep Booker from seeing any of that, Maud said, “I have a surprise. Wait here.” She disappeared into the house and came out with a dish filled with cookies. She handed the dish to Booker, went back in, and came out with a pitcher of milk and two glasses. And she and Booker were sitting on the top step, enjoying the cookies and milk, and also enjoying watching each other chew, when they were startled by a howl from the barn. They jumped up and ran.

  Lovely was on his back in the dirt in front of the shelf against the far wall. He was holding his head in both hands. His fingers were bloody. A scythe was on the ground beside him. Maud said, “Goodness, what’s happened?” She knelt and moved Lovely’s hands away from his forehead. She found a large gash. Lovely said, “He attacked me.”

  Maud immediately thought of the Mounts. She leaped to her feet and wildly turned her head. To Booker, she said, “Check the loft. No, wait.” She pulled a hammer off the wall. “Hold this. I’ll get a gun.”

  Booker took the hammer. And Maud didn’t see his startled look because she was already running to the house. When she came back with her mother’s pistol, Booker was still holding the hammer, but Lovely had risen to a seated position. He was still holding his head in his hands.

  Booker said, “Who are we planning to kill?”

  Maud knew better than to name anybody in particular. She didn’t want Booker hearing about the feud with the Mounts. She looked to Lovely to warn him to keep quiet. But he seemed not to have heard. She said, “Just protecting us against whoever’s attacked Lovely.”

  “I see,” Booker replied. “Do you want me to go up into the loft?” He held out his hand for the pistol.

  Maud licked her lower lip. She didn’t want to get Booker shot or banged in the head. But she couldn’t say, “I’ll do it,” and unman him. She addressed Lovely. “Do you think he’s still here?”

  Blood was draining through his fingers and dropping into the dirt. “Don’t know. Couldn’t see him. He was yelling.”

  Maud looked to Booker. She hadn’t heard any yell except the lone howl. Booker shrugged his shoulders. She said, “Did he hit you with the scythe?”

  Lovely shook his head. Maud glanced to Booker again. “He must have escaped. Did you hear anybody in the loft while I was away?”

  Booker shook his head.

  Maud decided then that there wasn’t anybody in the loft and that it would be safe to send Booker up there. She held out the pistol. “Would you check, just to be sure?” To Lovely she said, “We need to clean your cut. Take your shirt off.”

  Booker took the gun and headed toward the ladder to the loft. Lovely lowered his hands from his head one at a time. They struggled getting his arms out of his sleeves. When the shirt was finally clear of his body, Maud pressed it to Lovely’s forehead and held it. Booker came back, reported that nobody was above them, and then sat down on a barrel, still holding the gun. The dust motes danced in the fading rays of sun. A horse fly buzzed. Lovely’s chest rose and fell with the sound of breathing. Nobody spoke until Lovely finally said, “I was swinging the scythe. I couldn’t see him, but he was here, yelling. I must’ve swung too hard. I think I hit my head on the shelf.”

  Maud looked up. On the edge of the shelf was a dark spot she recognized as blood. She wished she’d seen that before she went for the gun. The whole story sounded strange, and she was still afraid Lovely would say something about the Mounts in front of Booker. “Whatever happened, we need to get this cut cleaned out.” She tapped Lovely’s shoulder.

  Booker leaned the scythe against a stall and gave Lovely a hand to get up. His face was streaked with blood and dirt that looked like war paint drawn on by a child. His chest, which was bare except for a small tree of hair, was spotted with red. Booker said, “It probably looks worse than it is. The forehead is filled with vessels. Any head cut will stream blood.”

  Maud said, “Let’s get to the pump and survey the damage.”

  Lovely put his head under the pump and Booker worked the handle. Maud went to the house and came back with a flour sack, a pair of scissors, and the bottle of Mercurochrome. She laid the cloth on the platform, cut it into strips, and dabbed Lovely’s wound with one of them. She made him hold his face to the sky as she applied the medicine. Then she tied two others strips together, and she wrapped them around Lovely’s head in a band. When she finished, she stepped back and said, “You look just like a wild Indian.” She smiled.

  They left Lovely’s shirt soaking in a tub and went back to the porch. The cookies had attracted flies, but Maud
went back inside and brought out more, and when Mustard’s car lights shone on the lane, the three of them were enjoying the lingering sweet of sugar cookies and watching fireflies. Lovely went inside before his daddy got to the porch, but Maud and Booker stayed where they were.

  Mustard turned his head toward the horse at the hitching rail on his way from the car. When he got to the porch, he said, “Ryde said we probably had company.” Booker stood up, walked down the steps, and offered his hand. Mustard ignored the hand and scraped his boot on the bottom step. Booker dropped his hand and turned to Maud with a startled look on his face. Maud couldn’t tell him right then that Indians didn’t shake hands unless they were trying to act white. She smiled instead. “Daddy, this is Booker Wakefield. He’s a schoolteacher.”

  Mustard scraped the sole of his other boot. “Whatchya teach?”

  Booker stuck both hands in his back pockets. “Oh, just a little of everything.”

  Mustard looked off toward the barn. “I see. Well, we need teachers. I’ve had a long day. Nice to meetchya.” He didn’t move.

  Booker glanced at Maud and took his hands out of his pockets. He rubbed his palms over his suspenders. “Nice to meet you, too, sir. I’d better go.” He made a slight nod toward his horse.

  Maud said, “I’ll walk you to the rail,” and on the way there, Booker whispered, “He didn’t take to me, did he?”

  Maud couldn’t explain her father’s Indian ways within earshot. She was trying to come up with an answer when Mustard called out, “Watch fer the snakes!” Maud smiled. “I believe he did take to you.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t want me to die in his front yard.”

  Maud poked him with an elbow. “You’d be good for the garden. Don’t worry. That’s just his way.”

  She and Booker said a hasty good-bye. Then Maud walked back to the porch where Mustard had settled in his rocker. “I sorta had you figured for Billy Walkingstick,” he said.

  Maud felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She was glad for the dark. And she didn’t want to talk about Billy or even think about him. She sat down against a post facing away from her daddy. To distract him, she said, “Tell me about your dog.”

  “I picked out a bitch. The only girl left in the litter. She’s got the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen on a dog.” Mustard straightened a leg, reached into his front pocket, and pulled out his money. “I want ya to do something fer me, Maud.” He licked his thumb and separated three bills from the rest. “I want ya to take this, and no matter how bad I beg, I want ya to hide it from me ’til I go after that dog.” He held the bills out.

  Maud felt embarrassed for her father. But she felt a surge of love, too. Not only did he not make a fuss over Booker, he was trying to control himself. She reached inside the collar of her dress, unpinned a cloth purse from her slip, and held her hand out. Mustard handed her the bills and said, “You better not put it in such a public place.”

  Maud yelled, “Daddy!” got up from the porch, and let the door rattle shut behind her. As she drew her dress over her head behind the sheet, she heard Mustard chuckling.

  Mustard saw Lovely’s forehead at breakfast the next morning. He started questioning, and when he got vague answers, his tongue sharpened. To blunt it, Maud asked again about the dog. And she led her father so far with dog questions that the subject of Lovely’s wound was completely forgotten. But when Mustard’s car was safely stopped at the first cattle guard, Maud said, “Now, tell me the truth. What happened?”

  Lovely touched his headband. “Don’t know. Do you ever hear people around here?”

  “People other than us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  Lovely bit his lip. “It must be my imagination. I thought I heard someone yelling at me. So I grabbed the scythe. Then I got to swinging ’cause he wouldn’t show his self.”

  “Was it one of the Mounts, do you think?”

  Lovely shook his head. “Maybe I read too much.”

  Maud didn’t know what to say. So she said, “Let’s see how that cut is. We better do it at the pump.”

  They were at the pump, and Maud was enjoying the relative cool of the morning and wrapping Lovely’s head with the rest of the strips, when he said, “I’m gonna lay ’round here today. I feel a little light-headed.”

  Maud stood back from her work. He did look hollow eyed. “I’m not surprised. That was a blow.”

  “Will you put the mule to pasture?”

  “Sure. You think you’re getting sick?”

  “Might be.”

  She felt his earlobe for fever. “You may be a little hot. It’s hard to tell this early in the day. Should we bring out your cot?”

  They set the cot and its pillow on the west porch, the coolest place in the mornings. Lovely settled in with the Bible and Maud went about her chores with her mind turned to Booker and herself. She was sweeping the front yard, thinking about how her mother would take to her pick, how she would be proud of her and like Booker, and how he would like her, when she heard Lovely call. She went to the west side of the yard to find that he had pitched up his breakfast over the side of the porch. Chickens were pecking in it.

  Maud’s first thought was to protect her own health. She didn’t want to get sick so early into courting. Rather than bring the dipping pan and dipper out, she drew water in a bucket and brought Lovely a cup. She put the bucket and cup down beside him, and, as she backed away, told him that she would bring him more food. Lovely washed his mouth out, spat at the chickens, and lay back down on his cot. He turned his face toward the wall of the house.

  When the sun hit the cot midday, they moved it beneath the branches of the live oak tree. In the late afternoon, Blue brought in a mess of fish, and Maud cleaned them by the pump. She, Blue, and Mustard ate fish, and gave Lovely the only food he wanted, a hushpuppy. By the time Booker rode up, Maud was convinced Lovely had the influenza, and she used his illness as a reason for them not to linger. She left her father and Blue discussing politics on the front porch and Lovely still on his cot under the tree and rode off behind Booker on his horse.

  They went again to the cemetery. They took the horse into the shade with them to scare away any snakes, tied her to a branch, and settled on a stone that marked the grave of a great-great-uncle. They moved from necking to petting and, in between bouts, began telling each other every significant event that had happened in their lives and many of the insignificant ones, too. Booker was thirty years old. He’d been married. His wife had died in childbirth, and so had the daughter she’d carried. After that, he took to peddling to remove himself from daily reminders of loss and distract himself with new horizons. He was not interested in any woman back home and hadn’t found, until now, anybody who interested him. He’d often thought he’d never find anybody again. The reawakening of feeling wasn’t as frightening to him as he had imagined, but it was surprising. He’d thought romantic life would pass him by, that he would be a witness to it, but only a sad one.

  Booker’s tragedy made him all the more attractive to Maud and also made him seem more reliable. Maud wanted someone as stable as her daddy was shaky. Someone who would talk to her about books and ideas, who would take her to exciting places, who thought indoor plumbing and electricity were basics of life. Booker seemed to fill that ticket, and it didn’t hurt that he was also handsome, sexy, and sweet smelling. She rode home holding on to his waist with her face against the back of his shirt, listening to the slow clip-clop of his horse and thinking that she’d never dreamed this kind of happiness would find her. Her contentment lasted until Saturday night.

  3

  Maud was standing at the stove on Saturday morning when she heard a groan from the other room. Mustard was outside doing his business. It had to be Lovely. Through the door frame, she saw him holding a hand to his head. Between his other forefinger and thumb was the band of cloth he’d worn to bed. It dropped to the floor. Maud went to the main room. Lovely’s scab had come off with the band. She returned to
the kitchen and moved the skillet off the burner. She took Lovely to the porch, settled him in the chair, and went back in to get from the chest a patch of cloth she’d set aside for a quilt. She wet it in the dipping pan and gave it to Lovely to hold to his wound. He didn’t want anything to eat. So after she finished cooking for Mustard, she took Lovely to the pump, doctored his head with Mercurochrome, and bandaged it again.

  She ate and went about her chores. Mustard went about his. Lovely stayed on his cot. When the sun reached its peak, Maud helped Lovely move his cot back outside under the live oak tree and fed her father and herself. In midafternoon, Mustard was in the barn and Lovely still under the tree. Maud bathed behind the privacy fence at the pump and went back to the house to finish dressing. The window curtains were closed against the sun and the room was dim when she opened her drawer in the chest. But she instantly saw that her good clothes had shifted since she’d picked up her Woodbury soap. Not much, but into some disorder. She opened the little box that held her mother’s cameo. It was there. She counted her handkerchiefs. All three were present. So were her two good scarves, her good gloves, her good handbag, and her visiting hat. She checked under her cot. The edges of her books were uneven. That confirmed her suspicion: Her father had looked for his money while she was behind the fence. He wanted it for Saturday night. She chuckled. He could look all he wanted. She’d hidden it in a jar behind a row of canned beans in the cellar. He wouldn’t go to the cellar unless a tornado was climbing his tail.

  Maud made cornbread and left it along with onions, beans, fatback, and gravy for her men to eat. Then she walked to Nan’s. She found Sanders crying out on the porch and heard Ryde shouting before she went in the door. Renee and Morgan had been frightened into silence. Andy was on the floor happily playing with naked thread spools. Ryde went out the back door cussing. Nan handed Maud a hot iron.