Touched (31 page)

They exchanged a glance, as if trying to decide whether to tell me or not.

“We should all leave for Fitler as soon as we can.” JoHanna’s gaze dropped to Duncan’s hands on the table. “It would be best.”

They were all afraid, or if not afraid, at least apprehensive. “Why?”

“Mattie, do you remember Red’s funeral?”

The scene came back to me with blistering shame. I hadn’t forgotten it. I’d simply buried it away. I felt the flush rise up my cheeks as Floyd turned to gaze at me. He’d touched me. Not in any suggestive way, but a simple restraint. That was why Elikah had beaten me. Oh, I remembered.

“I see you do remember.” JoHanna hesitated. “I made reference to a natural disaster, a plight brought down by God. Well, here it is.” She held her palm out, fingers pointed toward the window. “This is going to be the final straw. They’ll think Duncan and I called this down on their heads. They won’t call it witchcraft, but that’s what they’ll believe. In their hearts.”

“They don’t have hearts.” I spoke with great bitterness. “And who cares what they think?”

“I do. I’ve lived here most of my adult life not caring what they thought. I’ve always irritated the people here, but I’ve never been afraid of them. But this storm … the helplessness against it. They could turn on us. On Duncan.”

And they would. She didn’t have to say it. They would. The fury of the storm was nothing compared to what they would do. They were frightened, and threatened. A helpless child was the perfect target.

“I left Tommy Ladnier’s boots out on the counter.” Floyd got up and paced the room. “I should go put them away.”

“They’ll be fine,” JoHanna and John said in unison. As an afterthought, JoHanna went to the phone on the kitchen wall. “Maybe we can ring through.” She tried, but the phone was dead.

“Trees on the line,” John said. “It would have been a miracle if it worked.”

“Mr. Ladnier will be very upset if something happens to them.” Floyd turned at the stove and came back toward the table.

“You can’t help a hurricane, Floyd.” John pushed back his chair. “I’m going to light the stove and make some coffee. It’s chilly now, but once the storm passes it’ll get hotter than blue blazes.”

“Summer’s over.” I ventured the assessment.

“Not by a long shot. Watch and see. After the storm it’ll get as hot as August. Sticky hot. I’ll have my coffee now and be hot later.” He went to the stove and readied everything as if he’d spent the better part of his life in JoHanna’s kitchen.

I started to comment, but it was pointless. And coffee sounded good. Coffee and maybe some toast. I was starving again.

Worried about Tommy Ladnier’s boots, Floyd suffered more than anyone else through the long hours of the storm. We drank coffee and talked. John had lived all along the coastal rim, and he knew about storms from Key West to Galveston. With amusing stories he kept our spirits up. He believed that we’d caught the western side of the storm, the weaker side. It was the eastern edge, and whether the tides were low or high, that determined the power of destruction, he told us.

Through the long hours of wind and rain, the crack of tree limbs, and the sudden assault of some windblown object against the house, we passed the time as best we could. JoHanna and Duncan taught us to play gin, a game that Floyd did not care much about. To John’s delight, I discovered that I had a talent for cards. When JoHanna and Duncan tired of gin, he taught me to play poker. It occurred to me that Elikah would be scandalized, and it gave me a stab of pleasure. I spent what few moments I spared Elikah visualizing him beneath the weight of the biggest tree in existence.

We made more coffee and ate more toast when the clock indicated it was past noon. I thought there was a slackening in the force of the wind when I went to the kitchen window to look out.

John Doggett came up beside me, his hand lightly touching my back. “We were lucky. The worst is over for now.”

“Do you think it did much damage?” I saw a big tree, the tip of Elikah’s boot showing from beneath it, and I hoped.

“Not the hurricane. Some trees, a few barns and houses. The real danger for us, this far inland, is the tornadoes that come with a hurricane. There are sure to be some, and those are the real forces of destruction.”

Perhaps Elikah had been picked up by a twister and carried off, never to be found again. I liked that even better than the idea of the tree. I wouldn’t have to pretend to mourn his death. I could simply say that he was gone. Just gone.

It was after two o’clock before the winds died and the rain stopped. Just as John predicted, the sun returned with a vengeance. John and Floyd got hammers and crowbars and began pulling the boards from the windows. No glass had broken, and as the boards came down we were better able to see the yard.

Small limbs and leaves were scattered about in the side yards. The chinaberry tree was undamaged, and John had moved Will’s Auburn out into the more open field where green and brown leaves had been plastered to the bright red paint, but otherwise it was undamaged. We slipped out the back door and made our way, JoHanna holding Duncan in her arms, to the front.

The big oaks that bordered the road had survived with the loss of only a few big limbs. With some cleaning up, they would not show the ravages of the storm by next spring. But the cedar had not been so lucky.

The trunk had snapped about fifteen feet from the ground, and the entire tree had fallen over, the green boughs taking up half the side yard.

“Oh.” JoHanna set Duncan on her feet and ran to the tree. She stopped at the trunk and put both hands on it, her palms sliding over the red bark much the same way she’d felt my body for broken bones.

“If we cut it below the break, it may live.” John walked beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jo.”

“I spent many an afternoon under these branches.” JoHanna sighed. “Get the bow saw out of the shed. Maybe you and Floyd can take care of it before we go to town.” She started walking back to us, stopping at Duncan to brush her head. “The fronds were too dense. The wind …” She shook her head.

Floyd got the saw from the shed, which had lost its door. JoHanna went in the house, but Duncan and I shook the leaves out of the hammock and sat in the shade to watch. I was acutely aware of John as he worked. He was slighter across the shoulders than Floyd, but when he took his shirt off, the bumps and ridges of his muscles were hard and lean. He was a man who worked for a living, and not just with a pen. He pulled a string from his pocket and tied back his long dark hair as he bent to the saw, working in complete rhythm with Floyd. They were perfect contrasts, one dark, one light. Although Floyd was as hot, he worked with his shirt on. He was eager to get to town to check on his boots.

Duncan grew weary of the heat and wanted to go back in the house. I held her arm as she made the walk with slow, deliberate steps, awed by the grim determination that forced one foot in front of the other again and again and again. She was stronger. Much stronger.

I helped stack the smaller pieces of wood, wondering if JoHanna would actually burn her tree in the fireplace this winter. Floyd assured me that she would. JoHanna loved the tree, but letting it rot in the yard would not bring it back. And JoHanna had her hope that the trunk would survive.

An hour and a half later we were done. Twelve feet of red trunk remained intact. The rest of the tree had been sawed and split into stacks. The sun burned down with a fury that had begun to condense the puddles of water, giving the air a soupy humidity that made me long for a cold swim.

Instead, Floyd, John, and I took turns pumping water over our heads, gasping at the cold. JoHanna and Duncan appeared at the back door with towels, a picnic basket, and the keys to the car. We were going to drive Floyd to the boot shop to rescue his work. Then we would take a tour of the countryside and finally go to Fitler to make sure Aunt Sadie was okay. John warned us as we got in the car, me and Duncan and Floyd and Pecos in the back, that the roads might not be passable. JoHanna’s cedar would not be the only casualty of the wind, and chances were, plenty of trees had fallen across the road. The bow saw was packed in the trunk, along with gloves and jugs of water.

An hour and two trees later, JoHanna conceded that it would be faster for Floyd to walk into town. Peterson Lane dead-ended not far past the McVay house, and there was little traffic on it. The busier roads would be cleared, but for the next day or two, JoHanna would not be able to drive anywhere.

JoHanna put sandwiches in Floyd’s pockets, and then looked up when John selected several for himself.

“I thought I’d go with Floyd, take a look at the town while he’s gathering up his stuff. See how much damage there was.” An undercurrent cut through his words.

“Yes, that’s a good idea.” JoHanna looked down the road as if she expected to see General Sherman headed our way, torches in hand. “Thank you, John. You’re a good friend to us.”

“I’ll see about Mattie’s husband, too.” A muscle jumped in John’s cheek, his eyes flattened with fury. In that instant he was transformed. Barbarian. The word suited him. I almost hoped he would meet up with Elikah. My husband found it easy to beat a woman. John Doggett would give far better than he got.

“Don’t start anything, John. There are innocents …” Her gaze drifted to Floyd, who stood in the middle of the road, legs slightly parted, as he patiently waited for John.

John’s muscle twitched again.

JoHanna’s voice took on an urgency. “You can leave, John. I can, if it comes to that. And Mattie can come with us. But Floyd won’t. Not even with me. This is his home. The only one he wants.”

The dark head nodded once, swiftly. He shifted the sandwiches to his other hand and then brushed a kiss on JoHanna’s cheek. The action startled me, though it was done without the passion of a lover. I looked away, at Duncan and Pecos, to give JoHanna and John the privacy they needed.

JoHanna spoke again, and her words pulled my head up to look at her as she gave her instructions to John.

“Would you stop by the telegraph office and have them send a message to Will at the Waldorf that we’re fine here? I don’t want him to worry.”

John nodded, then stepped back and joined Floyd at the road. “We’ll be back later. If they need help in town, we’ll give them a hand. You girls will be okay, won’t you?”

“I want to see.” Duncan had climbed up to sit beside Pecos. “I want to see if it was like my dream. I’ll know it if I see it.”

JoHanna ignored her daughter. “Test the waters, John.”

“Will do.” He strode off, matched step for step by Floyd.

John came back alone, filthy and concerned. Floyd had decided to stay and help Axim Moses reorder the shop. Elikah’s barber pole, although once securely anchored, had been pulled loose and hurled through the front window of the boot shop. Heavy rains had flooded the shop. Tommy Ladnier’s high-dollar boots, sitting on top of the counter, were undamaged, but the rest of the shop was a mess. Relieved, Floyd had felt a desire to help Axim put things in working order.

Jexville had escaped with minor damage, a few broken windows, trees down on phone lines, sheds and outbuildings destroyed. With one exception.

Chas Leatherwood had been killed. The high winds had ripped the roof from the large hay barn beside the feed store, and a wall of hay, soaked with rain, had fallen on him as he was trying to set a new brace.

JoHanna heated water on the stove for John’s bath as he sat at the kitchen table, hay stuck in his hair and clothes, dirt and mud grimed up to his ears, and gave her the temperament of the town. I took a seat across from him. Duncan, exhausted by her efforts at walking and her frustration at not getting to see the storm damage, napped in her bed with Pecos as guard.

John ran through the scene at the feed store where Chas was killed. Agnes Leatherwood had been hysterical. Annabelle Lee had been sent to Rachel Carpenter’s while Doc Westfall had calmed Agnes with a dose of laudanum.

“Did Agnes mention me or Duncan?” JoHanna tried not to sound worried, but I could tell she was. Really worried.

John sipped the sweet tea she’d given him and looked at me. “She did.”

JoHanna’s hand dropped to his shoulder as she stood behind him. “How bad was it?”

“I think you and Duncan should leave. Maybe take Floyd with you.” He pushed some strands of hair out of his face. “There was talk of retribution. Of coming here to confront you.”

“And Mattie?”

“Seems to be the thought of the day that Elikah has brought Mattie under control.”

His words were bitter, and his grip on the tea glass whitened his knuckles. “The prevailing attitude is that Mattie was led astray by your wild and dangerous ways, but that Elikah managed to beat some sense into her. I guess they aren’t aware yet that you have her back in your clutches.”

“Agnes is upset. Chas was her entire world.” JoHanna fumbled over the words. “They’ll get over—”

“It wasn’t just Agnes. The others, the men, they were talking crazy, JoHanna. As soon as they got the body out, I came on back. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

“And Floyd?” JoHanna looked toward the back door as if she expected to hear his step.

“He’s okay. He’s with Mr. Moses, and they’re down at the other end of town. He said he was going to stay with them tonight.”

JoHanna paced to the door. “I’d feel better if he was here with us.”

“We’re not exactly in the best position. We can’t get away, remember.”

JoHanna nodded, but she kept her gaze out the window. “And they can’t get here. At least not by car or wagon.”

“It’s just talk, JoHanna.” I tried to sound like I believed it. I’d heard angry talk about JoHanna before, talk of their dislike for her. What type of retribution did they have in mind? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t really want to know.

“We need to get to Fitler.” John started to get up, but he glanced at me and didn’t. “I sent Will a telegram. The lines are down, but they’ll be back up.” John lifted his chin a degree. “I told him to come home as fast as he could.”

JoHanna turned at the door. Her hand moved up between her breasts and rested there. “I suppose that was smart.”