“No. But I also understand John Mount left a dog on your table. That’s why your brother’s in there taking a shot in his stomach. It may be why he’s gone off in his head.”
“He’s gone off in his head because he’s been poorly. He’s been drinking water.”
“Have you seen him drink water?”
Maud paused. “No, not really. But he walked out in the rain last night. Nobody with rabies would do that.”
The sheriff made a note. “Where’d he go?”
Maud felt like she’d made a misstep. The sheriff didn’t know when the Mounts had died. He might think it had been in the middle of the night. But she couldn’t take her words back. “Told me he went to Aunt Nan’s. I stayed here.”
“What time did he go?”
“Sheriff, you know people don’t tell time in the middle of the night. It was raining. We’d been in bed a while.”
“And he walked right out into the rain?” The sheriff had a blank look on his face.
“I wouldn’t say that. I thought he’d gone to take a leak. He could’ve been on the porch until the rain slacked for all I know.”
“You didn’t get up to check where he was?”
Maud wanted to cover for Lovely, but she didn’t want to give away how long the Mounts had been dead. She was trying to figure out what her brother and Aunt Viola would say when they were questioned. She said slowly, “I did. Eventually. By that time, he’d gone. But I couldn’t say when it was. Wouldn’t want to. I might be wrong.”
“So you went back to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Who else was here?”
“My aunt Viola.”
“She’s living with your grandpa, I believe.”
“For now.”
“They’re right up the road?”
“Yes, north of this house beyond the swale.”
“Was her husband with her?”
“No.”
“Did they have a fight?”
“No fight. She came to doctor Lovely.”
“And how did that go?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what was her diagnosis?”
“She didn’t diagnose him. She just sat and talked.”
“I thought she came to doctor?”
“She did.”
“Well?” The sheriff looked up from his scribbling.
“Look, Sheriff, you surely don’t believe my elderly aunt has anything to do with the Mounts and what may have, or may not have, happened to them. What’s the point you’re trying to make?”
“Miss Nail, I’m just trying to figure out where everybody was between the time the doctor last saw John Mount in town on Saturday afternoon and the time he and I found the . . . what we found.”
Maud had decided it’d be best to hear what he’d found to cover anything she might reveal without having a source to attribute it to. “And what was that?”
“It’s not fit for a woman to hear.”
“That may be. But I’d like to know what my menfolk are being accused of.”
“I haven’t accused anybody yet.”
Maud didn’t know what to say next. She looked over at a toad by the trough. The sheriff looked off toward the river. “Do you happen to know where your grandpa and uncle were last night?”
“Not with me. Aunt Viola and I went visiting our other kin. And then we came down here. She would’ve walked back, except the rain came up.”
“She would have walked in the dark?”
“She’s a fullblood.”
“I see.” The sheriff paused. He put his pencil point to his pad and stuck his tongue out between his teeth. He eventually spoke. “So, you and your aunt were here asleep, sort of. Your brother was out walking around in the night. Your pa is . . . we don’t know where. And your grandpa and . . . his brother . . . were at your grandpa’s house?”
“I can’t really speak for them. You’ll have to ask them,” Maud said quickly.
“And did your brother take a gun when he went for his midnight walk?”
“He took a pistol.”
“So he left out knowing he was going somewhere he’d need a pistol?”
“You need a pistol to go to the outhouse around here.”
“And that would be why?”
“Because of the cottonmouths.”
“They’re that thick?”
“They crawl back and forth between the river and the lakes all the time. Is there anything else you want to know? The Mounts weren’t snakebit to death, were they?”
“Hard to say. But if I had to guess, I’d say they were shot.”
“You couldn’t tell if they were shot or not?”
“No. There wasn’t anything much left. Except pieces of head.”
“So how do you know it was them?”
“Bones are in their hog lot. They’re not around.”
“I see.” Maud put her arm around the pump.
The sheriff questioned Lovely, too. When that was finished, he and Dr. Ragsdale left. Lovely came out on the porch and reported to Maud how he’d answered: He’d thought he’d heard a woman calling him. He went out to find her, but nobody was on the porch. He came back in and got his pistol because he was scared. Then he heard the woman again. He thought maybe it was somebody he knew. Maud interrupted. “Who?”
“Grandma, actually. But I didn’t tell the sheriff that. He probably knows she’s dead.”
“Whatchya do after that?”
“Walked farther up the line. Took shelter with Nan and Ryde, just like I told you. Ate breakfast there. Then walked over to Blue’s allotment and home.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Yep. And I told him I slept all night here the night before.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is.”
“You were gone when I got up.”
“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t asleep in the night.”
Maud was disturbed by Lovely’s story and she didn’t know what the sheriff would make of it. But she didn’t really think her father took Lovely with him to kill the Mounts. Lovely wouldn’t have been much help. If he’d taken anybody, it would’ve been Ryde. She still didn’t know about that. She looked to the sun. It was a crimson ball of fire in the west.
4
Maud wasn’t ready to see Booker. She was afraid of lying to him and being found out. For two days, she tended the animals, swept the yard, chopped weeds, canned until she ran out of lids, and scrubbed clothes on a board until her knuckles looked like strawberries. When she finally let up, she bathed standing in the tub by the pump, looking out over the wild toward the river. Her mind spun away from her labors and the killings, and tilted toward Booker. A tingle arose. Then a physical sensation gripped her so hard, she ran a hand down to the patch beneath her stomach before she recognized what she was doing. At the first shudder of relief, her mind came to her. She realized she was butt naked in broad daylight and her own brother was on the far side of the wood fence reading a book on the porch. He could see her head if he looked. She flushed, felt the sky and the wild watching like parents, and quickly stepped out of the tub onto a board. She drew her slip from the fence and pulled it over her head and shoulders. She waited until she felt like her face wouldn’t give her away, then tilted the water out of the tub. By the time it had made the dirt look like rolled dough, she’d made up her mind to ride Booker’s horse to the potato barn the next morning.
At the schoolhouse ruins, she saw Booker in the distance talking to a man. A sack of potatoes sat on the ground between them. Close by, a woman sat in a buckboard and a child was standing in its bed behind her. Maud used the family of strangers to settle the feeling in the part of her body that sat in the saddle, and by the time she reached the buckboard, she thought her face was no more flushed than it normally would be from riding. She talked with the woman until the man picked up his sack and turned toward them.
She and Booker didn’t speak until the buckboard pulled out
. Then he said, “I want to show you something.” He took Maud’s hand and led her to the side of the barn facing the fields. In its shade, he kissed her full on the mouth, pulling her hips to his. When they finally let up, he said, “I have to be with you.” He kissed her again.
Maud had imagined the women in East and West Egg taking pleasure in men like men took pleasure in them. Those images confirmed her inborn inclinations. Only ambition hemmed her in. But against Booker, giving into the pull of love was as easy as limbs swaying in the breeze, as fish swimming downstream, as puppies tumbling in play. She pulled her dress up and he slipped in, their only witness a cow that, before they’d finished, had turned away.
Once that dam broke, Maud and Booker embarked on easy ways in the heat of summer days. At every opportunity, they took pleasure in each other’s curves and angles, smells and juices. Maud wanted Booker before sex, during, and also after, when he was soft and tender, and she was melted into a puddle of love. She wanted him when they were together and apart, for those days and for days far away. And Booker, too, seemed as aroused by love as by sex. He talked with eagerness about how she had awakened him from a life half lived and about a future together that included books, indoor plumbing, electricity, and children. He also confessed how he’d felt hemmed in—not by his wife—but by his job, the community’s expectations for a teacher, and by his parents, who had turned to Bible-thumping and teetotaling as they’d aged. He liked having an Indian maiden. Inside, he had an untamed streak himself.
Maud thought Booker hadn’t yet figured out that Indian maidens weren’t exactly the lovely wildflowers they were made out to be in books. But she didn’t mind pretending. She felt that was best. She told Booker her father had gone to look for work in the Seminole oil fields. And she avoided the subject of the Mounts. And so did Booker, except for one conversation when he admitted he’d been shocked by the sheriff’s suspicions until he’d realized that he had more reason than anyone to know that the sheriff jumped to conclusions. He apologized to Maud, and she accepted his apology, remarking, “Uncle Ryde’s right. Sheriff Talley’s not bright.”
They used Mustard’s bed whenever Lovely was off sparking Gilda, even sometimes when he was around and out in the barn. Once, they didn’t hear his footsteps until he hit the planks of the porch, and they had to jump up and hide behind the sheet. After Lovely found them there, whenever Booker was visiting, he started whistling whenever he came back to the house from the barn.
Several days into their bliss, Maud, Booker, and Lovely were sitting on the porch, all three in rockers, because, by then, the heat of the summer even in early evening made chairs useless inside. They each had a feed-store fan in hand. Lovely had Gilda’s Bible on his lap. As Booker was telling a story about the Fayetteville superintendent of schools personally holding the Bible for every teacher to make an abstinence vow, they heard a rumble on the road. They turned their heads to see who was coming.
Both cattle guards were closed. The sheriff got out and fumbled with the gates. While he did that, the three on the porch agreed to let Booker do most of the talking. Lovely had grown quieter in the past week, didn’t always make sense, and wasn’t talking to anybody he didn’t have to. Maud was on guard about what she’d seen at the Mounts’ and didn’t want any of it slipping out under questioning. She’d discussed it with Lovely only enough to be convinced that he hadn’t had any part in it and to caution him again about keeping his mouth shut.
Booker was standing by the time the sheriff unfolded from his car and put on his hat. “Sheriff Talley, come on up. Take my chair.”
Maud offered the sheriff a dipper of water. He drained it and handed it back. She hung the dipper on a nail on a post and took her seat. The sheriff looked to Maud and Lovely. “I’m a little short of time, so I’ll cut to the chase. I’ve come out here to ask if you’ve seen yer dad. Laswell, over at the feed store, says he hasn’t showed to work in a while.”
Booker said, “He’s gone to look for work in the Seminole oil fields.”
The sheriff looked to Maud. “Which ones?”
“Near Bowlegs.”
“Bowlegs. Now that would be . . . ?”
“Close to Wewoka. He’s from there.”
“Have ya heard from him since he went?”
“He’s not high on writing,” Maud said.
“Do ya know when he’s coming back?”
“If he got work, he’ll be staying.”
“Do ya know where he’s living?”
“He’s got a sister over there. He was gonna park himself with her.”
“Her name would be?” Talley took a pencil and pad out of his shirt pocket.
“Aunt Matilda.”
“Aunt Matilda what?”
“I don’t know what she goes by. Her maiden name was Nail. But she’s been married a couple of times and may be married again, for all I know. We aren’t close to Daddy’s people. They’re Seminoles.”
Booker interjected, “Is there a particular reason you’re looking for Mr. Nail?”
The sheriff tilted back in his rocker and rubbed his eyebrow with his eraser. “He ain’t been seen since the business down at the Mounts’. First, he’s in Wagoner trying to buy a dog. Or that’s the story. Then he’s sparking. And now he’s over in Bowlegs working in the oil fields and visiting his sister.”
Maud said, “It’s normal for Daddy to lay out and around.”
The sheriff looked out toward the wild of the river. “That so? He’s visited my jail so many times that I’ve often wished Mustard would go off somewhere else.”
Maud’s temper rose. She wanted to kick the sheriff for running his mouth in front of Booker. She tapped her foot but held her tongue.
The sheriff turned to Lovely. “How’re yer shots going?”
“Got my last one today. I’m sore in the belly but don’t have the sickness.”
The sheriff took in a deep breath. “Is yer daddy sending home any money?”
“Not yet,” Maud said.
“When he does, I’d like to know. Particularly if there’s a return address. I told Western Union to call me if Mustard wires anything. I want to talk to him.”
“That would be about the Mounts?” Booker said.
“Yes, it would.”
“Have you come to any conclusion on that?”
“I’ve narrowed some things down. We’re positive it’s them. Neither has showed his face anywhere since. Can’t figure out the quilt, though. Don’t make sense that somebody would kill them and then burn a quilt.”
Maud looked at her hand resting on the arm of her rocker. She made an effort to keep her fingers stretched out. “You think Daddy had something to do with it?”
“He has the motive. And yer uncle Ryde seems particularly jumpy. But I don’t want to leap to conclusions.” He looked at Booker. “I’m capable of learning.”
They watched the sheriff leave through the cattle guards. Then Booker said, “Maybe he’s smarter than we thought.” Lovely said, “I’d like to find Dad myself. We need to pay Doc for my shots.”
Money from Blue’s renting their fields wouldn’t come in until the crops did. The only money they had was Lovely’s wages, and he hadn’t been able to work full days. They were more broke than usual. But Maud hadn’t mentioned that to Booker. And she didn’t want Lovely dwelling on it in front of him. She said, “Show Booker your belly.”
Lovely lifted his shirt. His stomach was bruised and covered in welts. “If I had known how bad these shots were, I would’ve killed the Mounts myself.”
Booker said, “I don’t know your father well. Do you think it’s possible he could have . . . ?”
Maud answered before Lovely could say anything. “Daddy’s more of a fighter than a killer. I think probably somebody unknown got mad over liquor and killed them. They mostly sold poison.”
“What about the quilt?” Booker said.
Maud regretted the quilts. And she should’ve realized that the hogs would finish off the bodies—if
she’d just taken the time to locate the pen. She felt dumb over that. “For all we know, they could have burnt the quilt themselves. There wasn’t a woman in their house that I know of. And it’s not winter. Maybe one of them got sick all over it, and rather than try to wash it, they burnt it. Stranger things have happened. Why don’t you come help me close up the chickens?”
Booker wasn’t staying at the house overnight. After he took his leave, Maud drew water from the pump and went to the kitchen to wash up the dishes. While she waited for the water to warm, she mulled her predicament. She didn’t want Booker knowing any more about the Mounts than he already did. She sure didn’t want him knowing she’d found their bodies and thrown the quilts over them. She kicked herself for the quilts once again and felt a tenderness rise in her throat for her grandfather and great-uncle. Neither had spoken a word to her about the situation. They’d done their duty, but she felt certain they’d taken no pleasure in it. Her mind turned to her father. He had, in his own manner, been protecting Lovely by killing the Mounts. It was like him to mess up whatever he did, but it was exceptional for him to take up for Lovely. She could hug him for doing that, but she was glad he was gone and hoped he would stay away. She moved the pan from the burner to the sink, slid the dishes in it, and turned her mind to the future.
She and Booker had a heap of hope. People in Oklahoma were growing rich in ways not possible in Arkansas or most other places in the country. Booker’s mouth watered for something bigger than teaching school and peddling, something more exciting than high school ballgames, showing up to church, and Sunday afternoon drives. They agreed they would marry and return to Fayetteville only until the school could get a replacement and they could lay firm plans. Maud was more pleased with that vision than she’d been with anything in her life, and she resolved to write each of her sisters the next morning and tell them about her wedding plans. She’d like her sisters to see her get married, but she also thought there was an outside chance that her father was with Peggy, her sister in Sapulpa. In her mind, she worded Peggy’s letter to warn him to stay away.
Her thoughts turned to selling eggs to bring in money. Booker could display them on his wagon and see her as a wife who’d help make a living. But when she glanced over to her egg basket, she recalled she’d collected only eight that evening and twelve the evening before. The heat was affecting the laying, and it would until it broke. As she dried her last dish, she tried to think of another way to get a few dollars. The thought of river rocks popped into her head. Nan had some pretty ones sitting on a windowsill; so did Lucy, in a pot next to her bed. The Arkansas polished stones to all shapes and colors; many were beautiful; some even had holes through them and could be strung. They were there for the picking up. Maud had settled on that course by the time she threw the dish water onto a clump of grass she was trying to nourish in the yard.
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