Touched (10 page)

Floyd lifted up first one gun, then the other and blew into the barrels as if he were clearing smoke. Eyes still squinted in concentration, he put them back in the holster and came over to me, ignoring Clyde Odom as if he truly were dead.

“I have to go to work. Mr. Axim has some new leather for me to tool. It’s beautiful. I’m going to make the finest pair of boots in the world.”

“I’m sure you will.” I moved away from both of them. I wasn’t certain who was crazier, but Clyde Odom was certainly more dangerous.

“Give Elikah my regards,” Clyde said, standing away from the wall and dropping a bow at me. “He has fine taste in women.”

I turned and fled, not caring that I wasn’t supposed to run in town. But I wasn’t quick enough to avoid hearing Floyd’s gentle reprimand.

“You made her scared, Clyde. You shouldna done that.”

I ran the two blocks to Mara’s and fled into the warm, womanly smell of fresh bread baking.

Eight

T
HE car trip to Mobile was hot, hard, and boring. Only the ferry across Bad Creek roused me out of a lethargy that was part heat and part the fast growing concern about my condition. The morning nausea had gone away until the Friday we were to leave for Mobile. It returned with a fury that had left me spent and terrified.

In the hotel I washed my face in cool water and ate some of the icy watermelon that Elikah had gone to fetch me from the docks. The cool, sweet melon and the kindness from Elikah were the perfect cure. By early afternoon I was eager to see the city that had grown up beside the big Mobile River.

At first we wandered around docks and watched the men called stevedores unloading enormous boxes of cargo. Elikah was drawn to the bustle, to the undercurrent of men involved in men’s work and the big ships groaning against the moorings. It was finally the sun that drove us back from the waterfront. Elikah let me pick a direction, and we wandered past the business district inland toward the residences.

Much older than Jexville, Mobile was sheltered by huge oaks dangling with moss. The branches laced together over the downtown streets giving some protection from the August sun. Walking along the shaded streets I peeked into the beautiful homes with their wide, beveled glass doors. It was like opening a book to see the polished wood floors, curio cabinets filled with painted plates and cups and saucers, and banisters that led to the second floor of a home where people lived in wealth and graciousness. Surely these people never committed an act of cruelty or meanness. They had everything. There was no need to hurt others. I thought of JoHanna. And Duncan. Their home was not this big, but it had the same air about it. People surrounded by color and comfort. And love.

Elikah waited for me as I sneaked up on the wide front porches to look in. My curiosity amused him, but at last he could stand it no longer and he pulled me down the street saying the people who lived in the houses would think we were beggars or thieves if I didn’t quit staring.

I didn’t care. I wanted to drink in the colors, the reds and blues and yellows that made such exotic pictures on something so common as a plate.

Janelle and Vernell had gone their separate ways, and we didn’t see them again that day. Elikah said they’d gone to visit one of Janelle’s cousins, but there was something in his tone that made me wonder if he was lying. I didn’t care where they’d gone. Janelle made me feel young and stupid and I was glad to be rid of her even if it meant that I was alone with Elikah. Beneath the shelter of the oaks, among the bustle of the busy streets that ran between two-story homes or the brick business buildings all crowded together, tall and indestructible, Elikah was different. On the downtown streets I noticed how the women looked at him, eyes cast down but moving up quickly for another taste of him. For the first time in my marriage, I valued my place at his side. He held my hand as if I truly belonged to him.

That night, in a strange bed in a hotel so fancy it had an elevator, I thought I’d never rest. But as soon as I pulled the crisp clean sheet over me, I was asleep. I didn’t wake up until Elikah touched my hip, murmuring that it was morning.

The nausea was gone again, and I was starving. Elikah said they would bring food up to the room for us, but I wanted to eat in the dining room with the patterned carpet of frosty white leaf designs on dark green and the two chandeliers that looked as if the lights were alive.

Electricity. I’d never stayed in a place where lights burned day and night just because they were pretty. I’d heard the lines were going to be run to Jexville. Janelle had said so, in fact, but I’d never bothered to consider that Elikah might have it come to the house. To flip a switch and have light in my home. Elikah’s look said it was possible. As soon as breakfast was done, we left the dirty dishes on the table, got our things, and went to the station.

All thoughts of Mobile were left behind as we boarded the train. Almost as soon as we were seated, it began to rock and lurch us to New Orleans with a speed that was too fast through the stretches of Mississippi beach towns and too slow through the monotony of the pine forests.

Janelle sat across from me, a secret trapped in her blue eyes. To avoid her, I feigned sleep. I watched her through slitted lids with a growing despair. She waited for me to awaken. When Elikah and Vernell got up together and walked out of the car, she could wait no longer.

“We’re going to the Quarter,” she said, her lips so close to mine I could feel her shape the air.

“The Quarter?” Curiosity won out over dislike.

“The old part of town where they gamble and drink.”

“They do that in Jexville.” It was forbidden for the women to say a word about such things, and I was pleased to feel Janelle draw back in her seat and give me a prissy look. We weren’t supposed to acknowledge those things, not even among ourselves.

“They do it in public. There are street women and music and dancing.” She leaned down again. “Vernell said he would take me dancing if I swore not to tell anyone!”

I sat up. “Dancing?” The image of Duncan came to me, shiny shoes flying in the dust, dark eyes blazing with mischief and delight. “You think he really will?”

“I’m sure. Elikah is a wonderful dancer.”

I leaned back against the seat. “Elikah won’t even listen to a gramophone.”

“This is New Orleans! We’re not in Jexville. No one will know
what
we do.”

I looked up to find Elikah standing behind Janelle’s seat staring into my eyes. A half-smile quirked his lips up on the right, making him more handsome than ever.

“Ready for the city, girl?” he asked.

I couldn’t answer. The way he was looking at me was both terrifying and exciting, as if the light of Louisiana pouring through the train window had given me some new worth.

“Of course she is, Elikah. Don’t be silly. We’re so ready we’re about to pop.” Janelle laughed, a feminine sound that seemed to cling to a man and wind around him.

“We’ll be there in less than ten minutes. That big water we went over was Lake Ponchartrain. It won’t be long now.” He went back to find Vernell.

It had never occurred to me that Elikah had been to New Orleans before. He’d made it sound almost as if this were his first trip, too. But then he hadn’t said that either. It was just a curiosity I pondered while I gathered our picnic basket and things and concentrated on not meeting Janelle’s looks.

Dancing. I’d never even considered such a thing where Elikah was involved. I hated the idea that Janelle knew more about my husband than I did, but I also had to keep in mind that Janelle said things she didn’t know for a fact. If Elikah wanted to dance, he would certainly let me know.

The train stopped and we got off, caught in a swirl of movement and bustle that swept us along the boarded platform of the station and out into the cobbled street. It was like walking into the page of a book. Men in suits, and women in the dark clothes of the office, swept by on urgent errands while cars honked and the harnesses of horses and mules mingled with a hundred other sounds. The buildings themselves were brick or plaster painted in muted colors ripened by age. Before I could catch my breath, Elikah took my arm and swept me toward a large wagonlike car with a lot of seats.

“It’s a streetcar, Mattie. You’ll love it,” he whispered, giving my arm a little reassuring squeeze. And I did. I knelt on the seat and looked out the window as we lumbered and clanged our way on tracks in the middle of the street all through the heart of the towering city.

Janelle had not lied. Elikah and Vernell had booked us rooms in one of the oldest hotels in New Orleans, on Dumaine Street, a place filled with golden light and furniture that seemed to hold the glow of the afternoon sun half an inch deep in the wood. Even the bedspread shimmered with its own internal light. I had never been in such a beautiful place. Outside the open window, the sounds of the city beckoned, strange exotic languages, the cries of vendors and music that was happy and free.

The four of us walked the streets, watching artists ply their wares while music and laughter came out of places where men drank. I was numbed by the sights and sounds. We ate bowls of spicy food with shrimp and crab and turtle, a mixture that sounded awful but tasted better than anything I’d ever put in my mouth. We went in shops where jewelry as old as England and France could be bought, or merely picked up and examined. At Elikah’s insistence, we went into a dress shop and I bought a new dress. He sat in a chair while I went into a dressing room, this one complete with a stool to sit on and a mirror, and tried on the red dress Elikah had selected. It was stylish, with short, filmy sleeves and a waist that dropped to my hip bones. Struck dumb by his selection, I put it on and went out. Elikah nodded. The dress was mine.

And finally it was night.

Janelle and Vernell had once again disappeared, leaving Elikah and me alone in the damp heat of August. Our room had a balcony where we could sit and look over the street. It was as if the people of the Quarter had all gone home and slipped into new skins. They moved with a different rhythm, more of a glide. On several street corners women dressed in flashy clothes stood, waiting for a cab while live music drifted around them from the open doors of what Elikah called “joints.” Janelle said they were clubs, like the one Tommy Ladnier ran in Biloxi.

“Why don’t you put on that red dress?” Elikah said. He was sitting on one of the little ornate iron chairs that matched the balcony railing where his feet were propped. He was smoking a cigarette from a pack he’d bought at a corner store that was filled with the strong smells of cheeses and the ripe green olives that I’d never seen before.

“Okay.” I was shy. The dress made me look older, like a woman. Sexy. It would look wonderful on the dance floor, the skirt floating around my thighs, shorter than anything I owned. Frisky. As if I had suddenly become part of the strange, exotic night.

The material slid over my arms and head and torso, and I remembered the night after the Fourth of July barbecue when I’d poured the cold water over my head and felt as if I’d left behind more than the heat and dirt of the day. The red dress was the same. I put on the stockings he’d bought with the dress, and the strange red shoes that were so dainty and a little hard to walk in. I twisted up my long hair. I’d gotten better by examining the way JoHanna did hers. The woman who looked back at me in the lighted bathroom mirror was not Mattie Mills. This was another creature, one who looked almost pretty. If only I’d had the nerve to ask for a tube of lipstick. But Elikah had once seemed so disapproving of such things. I bit my lips to make them redder and then opened the bathroom door and walked out.

Elikah hung over the iron railing around the balcony and stared down at the street, his body tensed with desire to be down there, to be part of the night in a place where no one from Jexville could see. He turned slowly, tossing the butt of his cigarette into the street below.

“Well, Mattie,” he said, his eyes moving over me as if he assessed each point. “My little bride has been hiding some kind of woman.”

“Is it okay?” I wanted to rush toward him, to get so close he couldn’t stare at me in that way that made me feel naked and vulnerable. The way he looked at me was so much more intimate than a touch.

“Red is your color.” He motioned me out to the balcony and then handed me the glass of whiskey he was drinking. “Now take a sip. If you’re going to look like a full-grown city woman, you’d better taste the pleasures of such a life.”

The whiskey smelled terrible and tasted worse, and it burned. But I swallowed it and nodded, handing the glass back to Elikah. Maybe things would be different now that he could see me as more than a child. Maybe if I acted grown-up, he’d treat me like a woman, like a wife.

“That’s some of the best whiskey money can buy. Tommy Ladnier delivers over here in New Orleans. I hear he’s making a handsome profit, if some of the New Orleans gangsters don’t have him killed off.” Elikah laughed and handed me the glass.

I swallowed again, barely able to stop the urge to spit the stuff out.