Touched (34 page)

“Do you suppose the rest of the main roads are cleared?” JoHanna asked, puzzled by the fact that a dead-end road had received such attention.

“Could be.” John stared down the hot, red-dirt lane. His face had a closed look, as if whatever thoughts he had were too private to share.

JoHanna read him easily. “You think they were headed out to the house, don’t you?” she asked.

“It did cross my mind.” He stood and took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. The egg salad sandwich JoHanna had made was half eaten on the pale yellow linen napkin beside him.

“Why did they stop?”

“Maybe the work of removing the trees burned out their anger.” He shifted his position against a sycamore tree that had been stripped of every leaf. “Maybe all of the roads have been cleared and they were working on this one when dark fell.” He drew one knee up to assume a posture of comfort, but his eyes belied his casual pose.

Staring at his face I felt a chill touch me. He had not told us everything about his adventures in town the day before. His caution had been deliberately understated so as not to antagonize JoHanna further. But he was worried. And as he leaned forward to pick up his sandwich, his pants shifted up above his boot. Tucked in the top was a pistol.

He must have felt my gaze upon it because he looked at me and waited until he caught my eye. He didn’t have to speak to tell me to keep my mouth shut. In that strange way he had, he communicated clearly with me. The gun was to protect JoHanna and Duncan, and me, if it came to that. But it was not necessary to call attention to it. It would be better for JoHanna if she did not know.

I heard him clearly, and I got up and walked the short distance to the car to pour us all some more tea. Behind me I heard his soft tread in the green pine needles that had been stripped from the trees and scattered to carpet the ground.

“Can you use a gun, Mattie?” he asked softly.

I concentrated on filling my glass with tea. Once, when Jojo was drunk, he’d forced me to fire his gun. I could remember the feel of the gun in my hand, the cold metal and the kick when the trigger was pulled. Jojo had found it amusing because he put the gun in my hands, stood behind me, and held my hands on it as he pointed and aimed it at Callie as she ran around the yard. His finger had made my finger pull the trigger while Callie screamed and ran and I fought to stop Jojo from killing her. The smell of his rot-gut whiskeyed breath made me nauseous, but I couldn’t faint because I couldn’t allow him to kill Callie. I had to wrench the gun down when I felt his finger beginning to squeeze the trigger. Jerking the gun, I watched the dirt kick up at my feet as Callie screamed and ran to hide behind another tree or an old barrel.

John’s hands caught me on the shoulders. “Mattie?”

I took a deep breath of the clean, sweet air. There was no smell of whiskey, no smell of gunpowder and fear. I looked up at him as he lightened his grip on me. “I’m okay.”

“Can you use a gun?” Urgency rippled through him.

“If I have to.” Had I been able to wrench the gun from Jojo’s hand, I could have shot him. To save Callie, I could have killed him. And I could do it again for JoHanna and Duncan.

John reached into his pocket and brought out a tiny silver derringer. “This is accurate only close up. There’s two shots in it, so make them count. Go for the heart. The chest is a bigger target and easier to hit. Also less traumatic afterward. And Mattie,” he said as he closed my fingers over the beautifully carved bone handle. “Use it if you have to. Don’t let them get Duncan, if they try. They’ll kill her. They may regret it later, but that wouldn’t bring her back.”

“Does JoHanna have a gun?”

He stared into my eyes. “No. I honestly think you’re more capable than she is. I’ve put my faith in you.”

He started to turn away, but my fingers closed on his white shirt and held him. He turned back to face me, his features settling into a calm mask.

“Why don’t we go back to the farm? We don’t have to go to town. Maybe if we wait a bit this will blow over. Why are we going in there to provoke them into hurting us?”

“Because I’m afraid if we don’t go there, they’ll come out to us. If they surround the farm, take us by surprise, Duncan and JoHanna won’t have a chance. At least this way the main roads are cleared. She’s got the car, and there’s not another in Jexville that can come close to the speed of the Auburn. I can block off one end of town and hold them until she can drive away.”

“And what will happen to you?”

His grin was daring, another of his masks, the Errol Flynn derring-do man. “I’m tired of trying to write my book anyway. Once they calm down, they won’t take it out on a man.” He shrugged free of my fingers and went back to the area in the woods where JoHanna was gathering up the picnic supplies with quick, determined movements.

As I watched the two of them I knew JoHanna was as aware of the dangers as John. She’d tried to hide them from me, and from Duncan. Now the pretenses were down. We were driving into a place where anything could happen. People I’d come to know, people she’d known most of her life, were capable of any betrayal. Even an attack on her child.

When we got back in the car, JoHanna got behind the wheel, John in the passenger seat. At JoHanna’s instruction, Duncan held the rooster down beside her on the seat. In retribution, Pecos pecked me on the hip, causing me to scootch as far away as possible.

Just at the railroad tracks on the west side of town, John got out of the car and I climbed into the front seat. “Let them see you. Drive slowly, but not too slowly. Don’t stop. No matter what they do.”

JoHanna nodded, her hands gripping the wheel. “I’ll head down toward Mobile and then turn around and come back and pick you up on the back road. Forty minutes.”

John nodded. “Your list.”

JoHanna pulled the piece of paper from the pocket of Will’s shirt. I saw it had only three items on it as I handed it over to John. Milk, sweet rolls, and cornmeal. All requested by Duncan.

“There’s nothing on it I really need.” JoHanna reached after the list even as I handed it to John.

“If there’s a problem, I won’t waste my time trying to find sweet milk for you.” He grinned, then stepped back from the car. “It’s up to you, Mattie,” he said softly.

We drove away and left him watching us on the side of the road.

Just on the west side of the tracks, JoHanna turned onto Redemption Road and headed toward town. We bumped over the tracks and slowed. The destruction at the feed store was awful. The store itself was mainly undamaged, but the big hay barn that had once stood behind it had completely collapsed. I couldn’t tell for certain, but it seemed that maybe the storm had blown a section of roof away, which in turn had allowed the rain to soak the huge stack of hay. Once the hay was wet, it must have started sliding into the support timbers. That was when Chas Leatherwood had gone out to try to shore up the support and keep the entire roof from caving in. But the hay, sodden with rain, was already beginning to slide. As we drove slowly by, we could see the pile of hay, dark and heavy. There was the musty smell of mold even though the sun was bright. John had said they’d gotten Chas’s body out from beneath the hayslide. He had suffocated, the weight of the hay and the lack of oxygen beneath it, combining to kill him. It would have been a horrible, frightening death.

There were at least a dozen men working in the yard beside the barn, and as JoHanna drove slowly by, they eased their saws and ropes to a halt to stare at us. We didn’t wave, and we didn’t turn away. We drove on as if we were running an errand in town.

I saw JoHanna’s gaze flash to the side mirror and remain several seconds. Trying not to draw Duncan’s interest, I turned slowly to look behind us. The men remained clustered in the woodyard, pitchforks and saws hanging at their sides in grips that had gone loose and limp. They were knotted tighter, a smaller group, as if they huddled to speak. To plan. Even as I watched, a teenage boy broke from the group and started to run, his thin legs pumping hard. He was headed toward the center of town, cutting through the back lots and back yards. I felt the power of the men’s gazes as they turned their attention from the boy back to us and watched as the Leatherwood house blocked us from their view. My hand slid into my pocket and felt the gun. It didn’t make me feel safe, but it made me feel better.

The Leatherwood house was separated from the feed store by a three-acre field that was now the parking place for two older vehicles and three wagons, one belonging to Doc Westfall. The curtains were closed on all the windows in the house, and JoHanna took a left on Paradise and then another left on Canaan to stop at my front door. Even as the wheels ceased to move, my panic grew. There was safety in movement. Flight. But one glance at JoHanna’s throat told me she knew the danger, and she had a plan of her own.

I looked at the house I had come to as a new bride. The front porch swing was still hanging but two shutters were missing. The barn in the back looked to be fine, and Mable was standing at the gate chewing a mouthful of grass as if she’d weathered the storm without trouble. We’d gone past Jeb Fairley’s house, and I was relieved to see that his magnolia grandifola had made it through the hurricane. I was afraid the big tree had been knocked down.

JoHanna put her hand on the key but she didn’t stop the engine. “Run on inside and get some more clothes,” she said. “I’ll wait here with Duncan. I’m counting on the fact that Elikah is too cheap to miss opening his shop today.” She didn’t say it, but I knew this was my last chance to claim whatever I wanted from Elikah’s house. In JoHanna’s mind I was not coming back here. Not for any reason.

“I don’t want any of my clothes.” Looking at that house gave me the creeps. Even the front porch, once my haven, had been despoiled by Elikah’s touch. I didn’t want anything to remind me of my life with Elikah Mills. What I wanted was a fresh start someplace else.

“Are you sure?”

Was there anything in that house I’d miss? Anything I considered mine? I nodded my head. “I’m sure. We can go.”

JoHanna eased off the clutch and we turned around and headed down Canaan to Mercy. We took a right and slowed as we went by the grocery where John would buy our food.

Something had broken the store window and several men were busy inside mopping and cleaning. At the sight of the red touring car, all of them stopped work and stared out at us as we drove by. As if magically drawn, they dropped their mops and brooms and stepped through the broken glass window and out onto the street.

They followed us. They did not hurry, but they followed, and I felt the skin along my spine prickle and dance.

We took a right at Redemption, headed east again, and I braced myself. The stores along the main road were not badly damaged, some of them not at all. But we would go by the barbershop, and there was a chance I would see Elikah. And that he would see me. My fingers sought the carved handle of the derringer in my pocket. I wondered if JoHanna knew John had given it to me. Probably not, or she would have demanded it herself.

Elikah’s shop was on one side of the street and the boot shop on the other. All three of us looked to the boot shop. The window was clearly broken, and the shop was dark inside. Perhaps Floyd and Mr. Moses were in the back, or maybe they’d gone to his house over on Liberty Street for more supplies. I studiously avoided looking to the left, to the barbershop. JoHanna slowed, but she didn’t stop.

“Should I stop and look for Floyd?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” I looked to the end of town. There were wagons and trucks parked along the street but it was clear that business was much slower than usual. The sun beat down on the red dirt road without mercy, and I wiped the sweat from my forehead before it could sting my eyes. “We ought to keep moving.”

JoHanna reluctantly pressed the gas, her gaze lingering on the boot shop. “If there’s anything up with Floyd, John will find out.”

In the backseat, Duncan was unusually quiet. She cuddled Pecos to her side and stroked his head as she stared into the boot shop. “I wish we could talk to him,” she said softly.

My attention was focused on Duncan when JoHanna slammed on the brakes, tossing me into the dash, and Duncan and the rooster against the backseat. Scrabbling to right myself, I looked out the front window to see five men blocking the road, Sheriff Grissham in the center. My first thought was of Floyd. He would slink into his gunfighter’s crouch and draw down on these men, standing as if this were a shootout in the Wild West. Grissham’s right hand even hovered in the air, and I wondered if he wore a six-shooter beneath his coat.

JoHanna stopped the car, but she had no intention of killing the motor. She put her arm out the driver’s window, leaned over slightly and called out, “Afternoon, Sheriff.”

For a long time no one moved. The men stood there, blocking the road but undecided what to do next. JoHanna leaned on the door, as casual as a cat in the sun. Behind us, the men from the grocery and the feed store were coming. Had Elikah joined them as they passed his barbershop? I could not stop the lurch of fear that came with that thought.

“Have you come to see your handiwork?” Grissham’s voice was strained. His fingers flexed over his right hip and I knew he had a gun.

“I came to see how the town had fared. I noticed someone was trying to get out to check on us. The road was mostly cleared. That was a nice thought since Will is out of town.” JoHanna’s foot eased on the gas pedal, making sure the car would respond if she let off the clutch. “I was sorry to hear about Chas Leatherwood.”

“I’ll just bet you were,” one of the men sneered at JoHanna. He took a step closer to my side of the car, and even from a distance I could smell the liquor on his breath.

“I am sorry.” JoHanna saw the man’s eyes dart back to Duncan, who sat very still in the middle of the backseat with Pecos in her lap. “I’m not so sorry that I wouldn’t run over you like a bug, Boley Odom, if you make a move toward my daughter.”

She spoke in the same soft voice she’d used before, conversational. It took a few seconds for the words to register on the man. When they did, he stepped back a few paces before he caught the sheriff’s eye and stopped.