“We laid out at a distance and saw John going into his outhouse. When he come out, yer daddy showed hisself. He told John he waz gonna kill him fer giving Lovely the rabies, and held his gun up. When he did, a shot rang out, and John jist stood there wide eyed. A red patch appeared on his shirt, jist like somebody had throwed a ripe tomato at him. He waz completely stunned. So waz we. We jumped back in the trees. I stayed there shouting insults to distract the shooter, and yer daddy took off ’round about. John waz still standing, and he started walking. To tell ya the truth, I thought about shooting him again. But I got all these kids, and, anyway, he waz leaning and sorta crisscrossing. I could tell he waz gonna sink to his knees. Meanwhile, Mustard cut up the rise, went back down again, and took Claude by surprise. Mustard said he waz jist standing at the corner of the house looking toward John, still as a tree, strickenlike.
“After they both waz down, Mustard put another bullet in each one of ’em so they wouldn’t suffer, and we moved ’em together, tried to cover our tracks, and got out of there. If we’d been smart, we would’ve let the hogs out on ’em ourselves. But by the time we got to thinking straight, we couldn’t risk going back.”
Maud was a little stunned by the story, but it wasn’t far off from what she’d imagined, and she felt thankful it wasn’t any worse. She didn’t want her cousins going hungry because their daddy was in jail, and she was glad to hear that her uncle had some thought for his family. As for her father, well, maybe he was off in the oil fields or in No Man’s Land getting rich. She hoped so. She was only worried that she’d said too much to the sheriff. She should have sent him in another direction. “Do you know where Daddy is now?”
“Said he waz headed toward his sister’s. But the sheriff didn’t find him, so I told him he went to the Osage Hills.” Ryde chuckled and coughed at the same time. “Talley don’t know how much Mustard hates them particular Indians.”
5
By the time Maud and Lovely rode home, stars blanketed the sky. Maud, swaying on the mule, felt dozy. When they stopped at the cattle guard, she jerked full awake and grabbed Lovely’s arm to slide off. She opened and closed the gate and walked in front of the mule to the next one. But even had she been alert, her thoughts were too tumbled to sort. When she got to the house, she fell straight to bed.
She woke the next morning feeling sick. And three days in a row were too unusual not to arouse her suspicion. She told Lovely to cook and went to the garden to avoid the smells of breakfast. She felt both happy and panicked while plucking weeds. She filled almost half of a bushel basket. Then she moved to picking cherry tomatoes. She was tempted to eat one but was afraid it would make her sick. She picked a passel of them and set them on top of the weeds.
After Lovely rode off, Maud quit working and looked toward the house. It hadn’t felt empty to her with her father gone, and staring at its gray boards and tin roof, she realized that was because Booker had taken his place. She placed a hand on the front of her dress. Under it and her slip could be a little seed that held her and Booker together. The breeze whipped her skirt against her legs. She wished the wind would lift her off her feet and carry her high enough to see the entire bottoms and the Arkansas River, to see the water cut beneath the foothills, coil to the Mississippi, and flow to the sea. Maud stood, her hand on her stomach, held by her vision. She walked toward the house, her basket on her hip, feeling eternity inside her.
In the kitchen, she discovered that Lovely hadn’t washed the dishes. Every bowl they had was dirty. She smelled coffee. It nauseated her. She went back out to the porch, plucked the tomatoes out of the basket, and set them in rows against the wall. Then she walked to the chicken house and dumped the weeds behind it. She came back, went in the main room door, and set the basket on the floor. She opened her drawer in the chest, pulled out her little handbag, unsnapped the clasp, and drew out Booker’s letter. Before she closed the drawer, she took out a handkerchief, too.
She chose the rocker that always stayed on the porch. But as soon as she sat, she felt the wind getting gustier. It hadn’t rained in a while, and the gusts picked up the dust into brown swivels that danced like dirty little ghosts in the yard. Grit hit her face; dust hit her eye. She squinted and realized the wind was rolling the little tomatoes across the porch like they were being pushed from behind. She set her handkerchief and envelope down by her chair and put her handbag on top of them. She went inside for the basket.
She came back out and began scooping up the tomatoes. They’d scattered in such a disorganized fashion that she recalled the baby toads that lived under the house and around the troughs. One tomato rolled over the side of the porch, bounced on the ground, and burst open. A chicken ran and made a grab at it. Maud said, “Take it.” She picked up a tomato with a little brown spot and tossed it to the hen. The wind lifted her dress. Her skirt hit her in the face. She batted it down and sniffed. The wind was carrying more than dust. She looked to the sky. Dark clouds were rolling over. She felt thankful for them and scooped up more tomatoes that were rolling toward the edge of the porch. She turned to pick up her letter, but her handbag had fallen over. The handkerchief was lodged against a rocker. The letter wasn’t there.
Little red tomatoes rolled in all directions. Maud paid no attention to them. Her eyes searched the yard and the air. The wind was blowing toward the garden. She looked to it. A white rectangle was caught against the fence. She scrambled down the steps. She tripped. She flew over the bottom step, hit the dirt with the heels of her palms. She sprung up and ran.
She was within ten paces of the fence when a strong gust of wind shot the envelope straight up. It whirled and dipped over her head. She reached for it, even though it was twice as high as her open hand. It glided like it had wings. It soared straight up again and turned high in a twist. It rode on a current of air toward the lane and dipped again. It hit a bramble and stuck. Maud felt grateful for thorns. She said, “Stay right there,” and ran toward the bush. But as she did, she was pelted with drops of rain the size of quarters. They stung in their falling, but she didn’t care. Her eyes were glued to the letter. It stayed stuck on the bush. She jumped the hump of the lane. She grabbed the envelope.
The first thing she saw was her name, written in bold blue ink, streaking into rivulets that looked like blue icicles hanging off a roof on a bitter day. Maud tore open the envelope at its end. She drew a single page out. It was thin paper. Rain drops pelted it. She started reading at the top, “Dear Maud.” In the first line, “I want to” was clear; after that, a circle of melted ink. Another clear word stood out here and there. One was “later,” another “maybe.” A word that could be “would” or “should” melted down the page into another word that she took for “horse,” but could’ve been “house.” She clutched the letter and envelope to her breast, sunk down on her knees in the dirt, and fumbled to get her safety pin unfastened. Her fingers crumpled the paper as they worked. The pin drew blood. She stuck it through the paper. It tore. She snapped the pin closed. She put her hand over her breast to protect the letter and raised her face to the sky. She yelled, “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” A clap of thunder shook her so hard that it seemed like the ground was quaking in dance.
By the time she got to the house, she was soaked. She tore the letter again trying to get it unpinned. Her fingers trembled as she smoothed it out on the table. Her palm was wet. It smeared the writing even more. Drops fell from her hair and her dress. Every sentence was smeared. She tried to read what she could. But the more she hovered over the letter, the wetter it got. Her tears mixed with the raindrops. She crumbled the envelope in her fist.
Maud was in the barn sitting under the scythe when Lovely came in on the mule. Her knees were drawn up, her head cradled in her arms, her face hidden. She didn’t look up. He led the mule into a stall, came out, and said, “It’s rained so hard the swale’s crossing the road.” Maud didn’t answer. “Did you hear me?”
Maud had heard Lovely come into the barn and had heard him sp
eaking. But his voice sounded like it was coming from a long, long way away, maybe as far as the other side of the river. And his words didn’t sound connected to one another. She couldn’t raise her head. Lovely laid his hand on her arm. It felt cold and rough.
She woke up in the big bed. The coal-oil lamp on top of the chest was lit. It cast a yellow light and long shadows. Lovely was sitting on the edge of his cot. A form was huddled in a rocker by the door. At first Maud thought the form was Booker. She called his name. But when the form stood up, it didn’t stand tall, and it had on a dress and an apron. Viola said, “Snakes swimming the section line. No good out there tonight.” She put her hand on Maud’s forehead.
Maud turned her face to her pillow. Viola said, “Lovely, go out on the porch. I’m gonna undress her now.”
Maud woke again in daylight. Sounds were coming from the kitchen, but so were smells, and when the smell of coffee hit her stomach, she bolted up in bed like she’d been sharing it with a rattler. She hit the door with the palm of her hand. She didn’t have anything to throw up, but she retched anyway, and when she finished, she headed to the pump. Her feet were muddy when she got there, but she didn’t care. She took a bucket off the pump, drew water without having to prime it, and took the pail behind the fence. She washed her mouth out and stripped off her slip. She threw the slip over the railing, picked up a sponge and a bar of lye soap, and dipped them into the pail. She scrubbed herself so hard that the tops of her thighs turned red. Then she scrubbed under her arms and in the crevice between her legs. When she finished, she threw the water past a sandstone that sat between the pump and the one she was standing on, took her slip off the fence, and drew it down over her head. She pumped more water and walked back to the house, carrying the bucket and avoiding the slickest sandstones by veering off onto clumps of muddy weeds. She washed her feet again on the steps of the porch.
She got a whiff of fried pork. She sniffed some more. She thought maybe she could tolerate the smell. She went in the kitchen door, slid into a chair, folded her arms on the table, and rested her forehead on them. Viola sat a plate with two eggs and a biscuit in front of her and turned back to the stove. Lovely said, “We can’t both go crazy, Maud.”
Maud raised her head. “I had a letter. Do you know what happened to it?”
Lovely blinked hard. “Don’t know about a letter. There was a wad of paper on the floor. And a piece on the table this morning. Nothing you could read.”
“Where are they?”
Lovely nodded toward the stove. “Used them to get the kindling going.”
Maud was stunned. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Were they important? I couldn’t make out any words.”
Maud put her arms on the table again and rested her forehead on them. She couldn’t look at anybody and didn’t have the strength to run. She bit her lip to keep from sobbing. She stayed that way for a long time. Eventually, Lovely said, “Can I have another biscuit?”
Viola started talking. She said something about their grandmother. Something about making biscuits. Something about Mr. Singer’s mother. None of it made sense to Maud. She wished Viola would stop talking. She lifted her head to tell her to shut up.
Lovely said, “I guess I did the wrong thing. But I swear there wasn’t anything to read.”
Maud bit her bottom lip so hard she drew blood. She knew the letter was unreadable. She’d tried and tried to make the words out. She ran a hand through her hair and pulled it forward over the side of her face. She rested her forehead on the heel of her palm.
Viola set a cup down next to her elbow and poured coffee into it. Maud shoved it away. Viola handed the cup to Lovely and poured herself one. She sat down next to Maud and tilted her coffee into her saucer. She said, “Check Singer never did cook much on her own. Always had help. But Pappy said she could cook if she wanted to. I ’spect that was true. A woman who can’t cook is like a bull without balls.”
Maud felt as hot as if somebody had dumped grease over her. Viola’s talking didn’t make any more sense than chicken squawking. She picked up a biscuit and bit into it to keep from screaming. Lovely said something about a skunk under the floor of the Singers’ summer kitchen, about Mr. Singer’s last wife tossing mothballs under there.
Mention of Mr. Singer focused Maud’s mind. He probably knew what Booker was up to. What was the best way to get it out of him? Just ask outright. He’d always been nice. And he surely knew she and Booker were courting. He couldn’t help not. He’d given her the letter. She just needed to work up the courage and the words. That’s what she’d do.
She grew restless for Viola to go. She decided the best way to hurry that was to eat something. But she didn’t know if she could. She nibbled more on her biscuit. It wasn’t bad. But the thought of coffee seemed like poison, and she didn’t think fried meat would do her any good. She said they needed to make the meat last. They weren’t raising pigs and she didn’t know when they could afford to again. Viola and Lovely took over the talk from there. Maud nibbled the biscuit down to crumbs and worked up enough appetite to put butter and plum jelly on the next one. She needed to pump up her blood to walk to Mr. Singer’s.
After Lovely left for the field, Maud said she needed to go into town to make another payment to the doctor. She offered to walk Viola home, and she set out, twitchy on their walk. They talked about the damage the storm had done to the trees, avoided the puddles in their path, and complained about how heavy the air was. Maud felt thankful Viola was a fullblood and wouldn’t ask questions other people might. Still, as they got closer to Viola’s turnoff, Maud felt she needed to thank her for coming. Lovely had gotten her sometime in the night. And getting there probably hadn’t been easy. But a “thank you” might tilt over a bucket of minnows she didn’t want swimming out. So in a way that she knew didn’t sound natural, she chattered about the barn cat having a litter of kittens, about her irritation with three hens she thought weren’t laying at all, about a book she was reading that was set down in Texas. Maud avoided asking Viola anything. What she wanted to know—did she have any secrets for the morning sickness and how was Lucy feeling with only weeks to go—were subjects she didn’t want mentioned.
After she parted ways with Viola, Maud walked straight toward Mr. Singer’s. She felt guilty to be thankful to be rid of her great-aunt, and she resolved to be nicer the next time she saw her. Then she turned her mind to practicing what she’d say to her neighbor. When she got to the highway, she kept walking west toward the bridge. She was avoiding the potato barn and the bare patch of dirt in front of it, where Booker’s wagon had been.
Under the tree where she’d pinned the letter to her slip, she stood on a large root, took her shoes off, and used a leaf to wipe them clean of mud. She cursed the rain and wind as she wiped. That cursing felt bold and boosted her confidence. She put her shoes back on, set her shoulders straight, and walked in long strides on the least muddy path toward Mr. Singer’s yard. When she got there, she almost kept walking to the back of the house. But she didn’t want to do anything that might dampen her courage, so she strode right up the front steps to the porch and used the knocker. She banged it three times and took a step back.
The same Negro woman who’d answered the door before answered it again. Maud asked for Mr. Singer. The woman disappeared down the hall without closing the door or inviting her to take a rocker. So Maud stood, looking out over the yard at the trees around the house and at the incline of dirt that had been piled when the bridge was built. She recalled her mother leading her and Lovely by the hand to watch the construction, and a lump came up in her throat. It was threatening to overtake her when she heard steps. The screen door opened. Mr. Singer came out on the porch, and said, “Hello, Maud.”
“I hate to bother you again.”
“No bother.”
Maud had decided to dump the small talk. “That letter you gave to me the other day, it got destroyed in the storm before I could read what it said.”
M
r. Singer’s eyebrows rose over the rim of his glasses. His goatee and moustache twitched. He looked out toward the trees. Finally, he said, “You seem to have an unusual amount of patience. I know it’s not a lack of curiosity.”
“Lovely’s been sick, as you know. I got behind in my chores. I try to put business before pleasure.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Singer smiled with his eyes.
Maud felt she was blushing all the way down to her toes. She cleared her throat. Her voice came out higher than usual. “The truth is, Booker and I’ve been courting. I hurt his feelings and now he’s gone. I don’t know where he is. I need to find out.”
Mr. Singer winced. “So that’s what happened. I figured it was something along that line.” He scratched his cheek.
“I reckon he told me where he was going in that letter, but I foolishly didn’t read it immediately. I don’t know why. Afraid of what was in it, I suppose. You know how up and down sparking is.” She regretted that as soon as she said it. Mr. Singer’s sparking had probably always gone his way. She mumbled, “Your mind sort of leaves you sometimes. At least a woman’s does.”
“So I hear.” Mr. Singer clasped his hands behind his back. He was quiet.
Maud felt comfortable with people taking their time to respond. And she knew that for all his light skin Mr. Singer was a Cherokee, too. She looked at a tree that had a wide split in it.
Mr. Singer finally said, “I don’t know that I can be much help. He was agitated. Said he had to leave. I asked him if he was going home; I didn’t think it was time for him to go back to school. But he said he didn’t know where exactly he was going. He needed time to think.”
“Did he say if he was coming back?”
“I’m afraid he didn’t say anything about that.” Mr. Singer looked down at the planks of the porch and winced again. Then he added, “But he didn’t say he wouldn’t.”
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