Maud's Line (18 page)

In the middle of the night, Maud awoke with a start. Lovely was yelling. She looked to his cot. His head was on his pillow, but his arms were swinging. She shouted, “Lovely, wake up.” She swung her feet to the side of the bed. She'd been sleeping in her father's since he'd gone, and she held on to a post at its foot and shouted at Lovely again. The second shout brought him to a seated position. He shut up. Maud crossed the floor but stopped short of being close enough to be hit if he started swinging again. “You were fighting in your dreams.”

Lovely gasped for breath. He swung his feet to the side of his cot and grasped its frame with both hands. “I was drowning, Maud.”

“In the river?”

“In the snake lake. Cottonmouths were swimming all over me.”

Maud stepped closer. Everybody in the bottoms was afraid of the snakes. But since their mother had died, Lovely and she had been haunted by them. His nightmare was similar to others that plagued them both from time to time. She said, “I'll get you a dipper of water and we'll go back to bed.”

“It was the drowning that was so bad.”

“Worse than the snakes?”

Lovely rubbed his face with his hands. “The snakes were bad, too, I guess.” He shook his shoulders. “But I swear, Maud, I think sometimes I'm losing my mind. Just drowning.”

Maud thought he was losing his mind, too. But she didn't know what was causing it or if it would stay lost or come back. She didn't want to frighten him more. She touched his shoulder. “It was only a bad dream, Lovely.” She walked to the kitchen and came back with a dipper of water. She held it out to him and sat down on his cot. She described a reoccurring dream she had about them drowning in the flood. When she got back in bed, to get all the drowning out of her head, she focused her mind on the material in Taylor's General Store that she'd picked for her wedding dress.

The next day, she wrote letters to her sisters and then walked the ruts by Gourd's into the wild. She searched the dirt for new prints, the weeds for signs of passing. But when she got to the Mounts' cow path, she looked the other way and listened to insects and the far-off hum of the river. When the brush along the ruts eventually came to an end, pure sand took over and, at the river's edge, turned in spots to pebbles and rocks. The water was rapid and wild, the sandbar deserted except for an occasional bird. The tracks were those of animals that came in the night. Apparently, a pack of wolves had been there recently, a lone deer and a fawn, a cat larger than a barn one. Maud walked several hours near the river under hot sun. Her skin turned browner and redder.

Within a week, she looked like a fullblood. But she'd picked up stones that would sell. All were rounded by water into ovals or balls; many were multicolored red, brown, and gold; and a few had holes in them. The holey stones would bring the most money, and to make them even more appealing, Maud threaded strips of leather through them. Booker displayed them as necklaces. The project brought in a little money for payments on the shots and necessities, and Maud enjoyed the scavenging. She always took her gun against the snakes and the wolves, but, with the Mounts gone and the allotments closest to the banks belonging to her relatives, there were never any strangers on the sandbar or, really, any people at all. The river was deadly; and the sand, in spots, could suck; but she'd been taught to respect their ways. She often took a fishing pole and returned to the house loaded with dinner as well as with rocks. Booker came every evening, sometimes bringing a paper, and Lovely seemed more like himself. After supper, he cleared out to spark Gilda or visit kin and gave Maud and Booker some space.

Then one evening when she and Booker were lying on Mustard's bed talking about asking Mr. Singer if they could marry on his front porch, they heard a car rumbling down the section line. Booker rolled out of bed and fetched his pants from the floor. Maud rolled out on the other side. Her clothes were at the foot of the bed. She pulled on her drawers and threw her slip and dress over her head. They heard the car idling. Booker walked to the window. “It's Talley again.”

Maud slipped behind the sheet, picked up her hairbrush, and looked in the little mirror hanging by a wire on the wall. “Maybe he's found Daddy.” She'd heard back from her sister in Sapulpa. If he was there, Peggy hadn't mentioned it.

“Would that be a good thing?” Booker was putting on his shoes.

Maud laid her hairbrush on the top of a crate holding clothes. They hadn't returned to the question of who killed the Mounts since the sheriff's last visit. And she'd convinced herself Booker knew the answer and didn't care. She opened a bottle of lotion he'd given her, poured a dab into her palm, and rubbed her hands together. She said, “We're getting ready to find out.”

They were on the porch by the time the sheriff closed the second cattle guard. They offered him a seat and a dipper of water. They talked about the weather, about Amelia Earhart's speaking tour, and about Will Rogers' mock campaign for president. Rogers was a distant cousin of Maud's, and she puffed up a little during that conversation. While she was in that afterglow, Talley slipped in, “I took a little run over to Wewoka and Bowlegs.”

Maud looked to Booker to see if he would speak. He looked to her. She blushed. “Did you find Daddy?”

“Nope. Found your aunt. She said she hadn't seen Mustard since '24.” He leaned back in his rocker and ran his thumb and fingers over his moustache. He rested his boot on his knee.

Maud was used to silences in conversation and knew she could wait out any white person. She looked out toward the river. A couple of straggling chickens that hadn't gone to roost were scratching in the dirt close to the front bumper of the sheriff's car. They squabbled over something too far away to be seen from the porch.

Booker said, “He hasn't been back here, has he, Maud?”

She looked at the sheriff. “No. I thought he found work.”

“You haven't seen him at all?”

“Nope.”

“He's not in the house?”

“No. You can look if you want to.”

“He's not in the cellar?”

“He only goes to the cellar if a tornado's on him.”

“How about the barn or smokehouse?”

“Look, Talley,” Booker interrupted. “Make yourself at home. Check the hen house if you want. You can see for yourself there're no recent tracks around here. Yours is the only car that's pulled in since the last rain. That was a week ago. We wish we knew where Mr. Nail is. He's left Maud and Lovely without much money coming in.”

Talley looked down at his boot. “Ryde Foxworth says that if Mustard did kill the Mounts, it wouldn't be any of the law's business. That the Mounts needed killing by someone. I'm betting that with the help of some liquor yer uncle might get to flapping his tongue.”

Maud's brow wrinkled. “Does the law usually warn the family that they're arresting someone?”

“Oh, I can have Ryde arrested before you can get up the road to tell it. I'm just trying not to waste good liquor on him. It's hard to come by.”

“It's illegal, for one thing,” Booker said.

“I've heard that,” the sheriff replied. “I'm totally against it myself. But I recognize its medicinal properties. I was hoping to get some information down here that would make things a little easier for yer girl's aunt and cousins.”

Maud's breathing got shallow with dread. She'd not asked her uncle Ryde about the business at the Mounts' and he hadn't volunteered any information. She said, “Well, that's mighty nice. But we can't help you. I haven't seen Daddy in some time. Lovely hasn't seen him, either. We thought he went to Wewoka because he'd been talking about it and because his sister's allotment's near there. If he's not there, I don't know where he is. And I'd be surprised if Uncle Ryde does.”

The sheriff leaned over and picked his hat up off the boards of the porch. He stood and put it on. “Well, that remains to be seen. Nice talking with you all. If Mustard shows, ask him to come see me.”

Maud and Booker stayed seated and silent until the sheriff closed the first guard. Then Booker looked at his hands. “Maud, is there anything you'd like to tell me?”

Maud had thought she'd dodged that question. But she had a ready answer. “I don't know if Daddy killed the Mounts. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. It's not the sort of thing he'd tell me about. I know this, though: If Talley puts Uncle Ryde in jail, Aunt Nan and my cousins will starve to death. Morgan's only twelve. He can't earn a decent wage.”

“Do we need to go up there?”

“I'll go alone in the morning. Aunt Nan's too Indian to talk in front of you.”

Booker raised his eyebrows. Maud added, “She likes you. She just doesn't talk to white people.”

“She talked to me when she bought that bolt of cloth.”

“Did she? Or did she use one of the kids?”

Booker looked off toward the river and scratched his cheek. After a moment, he said, “Come to think of it, your female relatives don't have much to say. Why won't they talk?”

“I can't explain Indian ways. Just be glad I'm some white. You'd have a hard time if I wasn't.”

“Oh, I would, would I?”

“Yes, Cherokee women have high standards. We only marry into whites to keep y'all from killing us off.”

“Well, as it so happens, I was just now thinking about doing terrible things to you.”

“Really? Don't forget I carry a gun.”

“I'm not afraid.” He got up and leaned over Maud with his hands on her rocker's arms. “I'm thinking I need to do some more to take your mind off your worries.” He kissed her long and tenderly, and she kissed him back.

The next morning, she awoke to find Lovely hadn't returned in the middle of the night. He'd been so regular for several days that it concerned her. She hoped he'd stayed at the Starrs' and then gone on to work. She could see if he was in the field after she walked to Nan's. She hurried through her morning chores, figuring out how to get far enough away from her cousins for the conversation she planned, and, deciding Renee would be more of a problem than the boys, she carried with her a copy of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
.

Renee said her mother was burning trash. And Maud walked around the house to find Nan standing in a field beside a metal barrel with the smoke curling from it like a snake raising its head. She could tell from a distance that her aunt was pensive, and rather than call out as she normally would, she walked through the grass and weeds, listening to them rustle. Maud thought Nan heard her, but she didn't turn. She got right up on the barrel before Nan said, “Did the idjit tell ya he was arresting Ryde?”

“Yeah. How long's he holding him?”

“I hope he lets him go today. We've gotta start picking corn.” Nan threw a rag into the fire.

Maud looked at the corn. The stalks were loaded with ears. “What do you think Uncle Ryde's telling Talley?”

“Ryde makes things up as he goes.”

“You think they both killed the Mounts?”

Nan picked up a long stick and stirred the fire. “I think Ryde might've been with Mustard. I doubt he pulled a trigger. Ryde can't shoot worth a damn. I have to shoot ever' damn thing 'round here.”

“You don't think Uncle Ryde'll tell the sheriff that?”

“He wouldn't turn the bucket over on Mustard. Too partial to him and that would get hisself in trouble.” Nan bent down and picked up a pail of dirt. She reached into it, drew out a handful of soil, and threw it on the fire. She threw a second one.

“Have you talked to Grandpa?”

“Ever'day.”

“He told you about going down there, I guess.”

“He feels bad 'bout them quilts. Feels like he didn't plow that field deep enough.”

“He couldn't predict the rain.”

“Can most of the time. Smells it.”

“Well, I created that problem. Not him.”

“We ain't raising you kids fer killing. We're raising ya fer book learning. How's that feller of yers?”

Maud felt relieved by the turn in the conversation. She told Nan that Booker and she were planning on marrying on August 18. And they chewed on the wedding by the fire barrel until Sanders interrupted them, complaining about the way Morgan was treating him.

Maud ate the noon meal with Nan, and while they cleaned up, they talked about Lovely. After that, Maud walked on up the line. Lovely and his mule weren't in the trees by the swale. She went on, and by the time she neared the potato barn, her dress was patched with sweat and she was feeling foolish for walking in the heat of the day.

Booker was sitting on a crate reading a book in the shade of his wagon. When he looked up, she said, “Whatchya reading?”

He looked at the cover like he was discovering the title. “
Leaves of Grass
.”

“You've got good taste in poetry, even if you don't have any manners. Are you gonna offer your lady a seat or are you just gonna sit there?”

“I was thinking maybe a crate wasn't worthy of a certain person's bottom.”

Maud looked around. “Don't say
bottom
out loud. Somebody might hear you.”

Booker stood up. “And who might that be? That oriole up in the tree?” He pointed to branches not far away.

“Could be. I've got an uncle who thinks birds are his enemies come to spy on him.”

“And which uncle might that be?”

“Uncle Gourd.”

“Oh, yes, the mysterious one nobody ever sees.”

“People see him. He's just laying out with Mrs. Adams. She's got a nicer house. And speaking of laying out, is Lovely's mule in the barn?”

“Didn't he show last night?”

Maud shook her head.

“I should've stayed. I don't like him leaving you down there by yourself.” Booker's brow furrowed.