Maud's Line (28 page)

She and Billy spent that evening like the one before, only Maud got on top one time, just like she'd imagined under the tree. Billy let out a little laugh, but then he settled right into a rhythm, and she hung on to the iron rods of the bed over his head. They got up afterward and ate their supper, and then they went out on the porch to enjoy the breeze off the river. They took a quilt with them so they wouldn't get splinters.

The next morning, Maud gave Billy her aunt's letter to mail. She told him to put it in Nan's box, the second in the line, to avoid getting stung. As soon as he rode off, she grabbed her rifle and bullets, a flour sack, and three biscuits. She took an old cow path west toward Blue's allotment. The air was abuzz with insects and the sun was warming her back. Fairly soon, she was sweating, and she looked forward to the shade of the trees where she thought she remembered squaw root growing. She worked on keeping images of sex away by thinking about Sherlock Holmes. She was doing a fairly good job of that until the barrel of her rifle reminded her of a penis and she got to carrying it with a rhythm that recalled the one she and Billy used in bed. She got a funny feeling in her arm that made her want to thrust her gun in a jabbing sort of way. She shook her head. She was thinking unnatural thoughts. She cradled her gun in both arms and tucked her flour sack in her armpit, careful to keep the biscuits away from her sweat.

She walked on like that, trying to remember lines from
The Hound of the Baskervilles
until she got to the stand of trees she thought she recalled. She forgot about Sherlock Holmes and sex, and began searching the ground. She was looking for the specific plant and watching for snakes, which would, at that time of day, be likely to be curled in the shade. She was startled by a black racer that was longer than any she'd seen in a while. It escaped into the grass and was gone before she even thought about shooting it. She walked on and on, mostly crisscrossing, and was about to give up when she remembered the circle of trees Lovely had recently visited. She'd last been there when she was too young to know about squaw root, let alone identify it. But the circle was cool and had been a comfort to her as a child. She recalled Blue saying his grandfather had shown it to him, and he'd told her and Lovely stories about the old man living off the land on his long walks. Maud was thinking about her great-grandfather walking day after day all the way from Georgia when she caught a glimpse of bluish-green leaves. She forgot about her ancestor's walks. She used the barrel of her rifle to clear her way toward the plant.

It was a single stalk more than two feet tall sprouting clusters of flowers and pods. She was fairly certain it was squaw root. She didn't know what part of the plant she needed. She felt stupid for not bringing a knife. She needed to cut the whole thing down. But the stalk was fairly thick. She looked around for smaller ones but didn't see any. So she tore off branches with leaves, flowers, and pods. She stuffed those into her sack. She sighed hard. She was relieved. And suddenly hungry. Hungry so strong that it had to be the baby's fault. She said, “Quit gnawing at me. I'm gonna eat.” She looked around. She thought the circle of trees wasn't far. She walked on, cogitating on what part of the squaw root she needed to take and in what dosage and how. She didn't want to poison herself. She just wanted to get sick enough to get rid of the baby.

She started figuring on how to ask Viola how much to take and how to fix it up. She didn't have any idea what her great-aunt thought about getting rid of a baby. She didn't mind delivering them, she knew that. And certainly birthing was bad. Maud shivered, recalling Lucy's screaming. Everybody had said it had been an easy birth. If that was easy, she didn't want to know what hard was. The only reassurance she felt from the whole mess was that Viola didn't shrink from anything.

At the same time she saw the circle of trees she'd been hunting, she heard a rustle in the woods. It was loud enough to be a large animal, and her mind went to wolves, panthers, and bears. Wolves ran mostly in packs at night. Bears and panthers left tracks on the sandbar. But they were shy animals and fairly rare. She recalled the wild hogs that had roamed the land in the past. They would charge a person, startle a horse into throwing a rider, run through a house. But were any of them left? People ate wild hog. They were probably all eaten to death. She wedged her sack under her arm and lifted her rifle to her waist. Humans were the most likely and most dangerous animals around. She listened. There was another sound farther away. She listened harder. She heard a racket in the limbs over her head. A squirrel. She heard a blue jay. She heard insects. They buzzed steady like always. She decided she'd scared away whatever had been prowling, and she walked on toward the circle, her gun back down and her sack in her hand. She was trying to recall if anybody she knew had ever tasted bear when she stepped into the circle of trees and saw a piece of blue cloth on the ground. Lovely's shirt.

She dropped her sack. She couldn't run. She couldn't bend. Scattered on the ground were pieces of clothes and chawed bones, Lovely's rifle and boots, Gilda's Bible. She dropped her gun. When she moved, she ran toward the river. Beyond the trees, she burst into the sun and sand. She ran to the water's edge. She kept on running until she saw a still pool cut off from the torrent by a low bank of sand. She ran into the pool and sunk to her knees until she was submerged to her shoulders. She wailed so loudly that she could hear herself screaming over the noise of the river.

She screamed and screamed. When she was so exhausted she could only gasp, she laid her shoulders against hard, wet sand. Her legs floated in the water. She looked up into the bright sky until the sun burnt her eyes. She panted. She looked down into the water. The sun glistened and sparkled there. She had to squint even looking down. Her dress was curved around her thighs. She saw her reflection. Its wavering took her out of time. She looked up again and again to the channel of the river. The water was furiously rushing, green, blue, and gray. The sound was like a train's.

She thought she could break through the wall of sand that protected the pool and join the river. It wouldn't take much; or even if she did nothing, the water would dissolve the bank, grab her, and take her away. She would float to Fort Smith, to New Orleans, to the sea. She would cease to exist or exist everywhere all the time in the air, in the sun. She slid farther down into the pool. It was lovely and cool. It protected her skin from the baking heat. She could lie there. The river would come.

A part of the sandbank broke away. New water came in. A school of minnows followed it. They moved in a silver sheet; the sun caught their backs. They swam up beside her leg, to her arm and her chest. One nibbled her. Two others joined in. Soon Maud felt her left arm being tickled. She shook it. The minnows darted away as quickly as a snake. But they left her feeling something. Feeling she was going to live. She slowly rolled over and started crawling. The sand was gritty and rough. It scratched her forearms. She stood up. She looked around for her shoes. She saw one stuck in sand. The other one she didn't see anywhere. She couldn't walk back through the woods barefooted. She would walk the sandbar. She could either go northwest around the bend of the river and find a cow path from there or she could take the ruts through the wild up next to Gourd's. The path to Gourd's was shorter. She looked around for a snake stick.

Her only walking thoughts were about where she was stepping. She stayed on the wet sand close to the river for as long as she could. Walking on dry sand felt like dancing on fire. When she finally got out of the worst of it to the ruts, she chose the left one and walked it until she got to patches of stones and pebbles. Then she switched to the right rut until she met the same thing. She kept her mind on her feet and pushed away thoughts as though they were wild animals. When she came close to the Mounts' path, she wanted to turn her face away from it, look up toward the western sky, and run. But the ground was rocky; her eyes had to go back to her feet. She got beyond the turn without conjuring up any vivid recollections and continued on, moving her eyes up and down on the ground and straight ahead, watching for rocks and looking for the roof of Gourd's house. When she finally saw a stovepipe, she started crying. She cried all the way up the rise.

Early wasn't home yet. She knew by the sun that he wouldn't show for a few more hours and neither would Billy. She walked her lane and washed her feet at the pump. They were bleeding from the sides and soles. She unbuttoned her dress and let it drop to the ground. She did the same with her slip; she stepped out of her drawers. She gathered her clothes up and walked to the porch. She left the garments in a pile, went inside, and dressed behind the sheet, putting socks on first. Spots of blood appeared in the cotton. She ignored those and lifted her overalls off a hook. She stepped into them and then into her boots. By the time she was dressed, she felt calmer than she'd felt in days. But she also felt disconnected. The sheet looked like millions and millions of little square boxes of thread, the crates of clothes like stacks of holes. Maud realized she was looking at each particular thing like it wasn't part of anything else, like it had no usefulness. She wondered if that was how Lovely had gotten to seeing the world. Things by themselves were frightening. She felt her heart thumping. She heard it. She brushed the sheet out of her way, picked out her mother's rifle from the corner and a few bullets from the tray in the top drawer of the chest. She walked out on the porch, looked toward the river, up at the sun, over to the live oak tree.

To avoid Nan's children, she walked to her grandfather's house by the back way. She cut across the bull's pasture, watching him out of the sides of her eyes. She slipped through that gate without undoing its latch. The house looked empty in the distance; the side yard the same. She figured the men were still in the fields; Viola and Lucy were probably in the kitchen. But then she noticed that her uncle Ame's car wasn't next to the barn. The thought crossed her mind that they'd all up and driven off, that she'd never see them again. The dog barked. The bark sounded sharp. Poker was treating her like a stranger. But when she called his name, he came, tail wagging. His friendliness pulled tears from her eyes. Her knees folded; she laid her gun on the ground, put her arms around the dog, and let him lick her face. She was wailing and Poker was whining when Viola came out the front door.

Viola took her to the kitchen, sat her in a chair, and handed her the dipper. She sat down next to Maud and looked out the window. She picked up a fan and fanned Maud's face.

They'd been sitting like that for some time when Maud said, “I found Lovely's body.”

Viola stopped fanning. Her eyes didn't blink. “Where?”

“Circle of trees. Uncle Blue's allotment.”

Viola laid the fan on the table facedown. “The men'll go get him when they come in.”

Maud realized then that the house was quiet. “Where is everybody?”

“Lucy and Cole took the baby to town. She's sick.”

The mention of the baby brought Maud's mind off of Lovely. She had Viola alone. She didn't know when that would happen again. “I went to the woods to find squaw root,” she said.

Viola closed her eyes.

Maud waited for them to open. When they didn't, she went on. “I don't know how to use it.”

Viola's hair was pulled back in a bun. She scratched her neck beneath it. “It's tricky.”

“I figured you could teach me.”

Viola sighed deeply. She licked the corner of her mouth. “You reckon Lovely took his own life?”

Maud felt guilt pierce her heart like an arrow. Lovely, her brother and closest friend, was dead on the ground. Eaten, probably by wolves. She was at a table, thinking about her own life. She blushed all the way to her navel. “I'm sorry. I'm, I'm, I'm crazy with shock and out of heart. I don't know what I'm saying.”

“You might wanta rest.” Viola placed her palms on the table and pushed herself up. She carried the dipper to the pan and took a long drink. She offered the dipper to Maud. Maud shook her head. Viola looked out the window. “Nancy got the throw ups. Scared Lucy. Scared me after a while. I thought going to the doctor was best. When the men came in fer dinner, Cole took Ame's car. Don't know when they'll be back. Them doctors get backed up something awful. You can lie down if yer of a mind.”

But Maud couldn't rest. They talked about Lucy's recovery, about a hen that had taken it into her head to roost in a tree during the day, about moles digging tunnels in the yard. Viola did most of the talking until they heard a horse. They looked out the window and saw Blue leading his into the lot. He came back to the pump. He was washing his forearms when Viola went out. Maud watched them from the door. Blue turned over a bucket and sat down on it. Viola put her hand on his shoulder. He put his face in his hands. Poker sat on his haunches. Viola seemed to be looking at the northeast sky. They stayed that way. Then Blue got up and walked to the barn. Viola came inside. She said, “Blue'll git Ame and Bert. He knows the place where Lovely's at. We'll start to cooking.”

Early showed up after Blue left. Viola sent him to tell Nan and to put Maud's animals up and to bring her a dress. Lucy and Cole arrived shortly after that with their little boy and with a baby who was, mercifully, sleeping. When Blue finally pulled the wagon in, Viola went out to check the bed and talk to the men. She waved her arm, and Lucy led Maud out the door by the hand. Cole followed them. Lovely, or what was left of him, was wrapped head to toe in a couple of quilts. They all stared at the quilts until Bert said, “We'll take turns sitting up. But we're gonna haveta do it in the barn. It won't do to move him outta the wagon. You younguns”—he pointed to Blue, Early, and Cole—“take the early shift. Git some sleep and then go dig the grave when it's light. Maud, ya want him close to yer mama?” His voice cracked.