Maud's Line (12 page)

Eventually, Maud asked Booker to take her home. They left the shadows of his bunk in the moonlight and rode south down the section line. The piles of the school's remains looked like giant watermelons looming up from their vines. The Beechers' house, under the trees, was dark. Lamplight in Nan and Ryde's front room spilled out onto their porch. At the end of the line, Gourd's house looked like it'd been abandoned for years. Booker said, “I think the guard's down.”

Maud was on the back of the horse. She leaned so she could see. “Maybe Doc Ragsdale came and didn't put it back up.”

She slipped off the horse and walked not far in front of it because she didn't have a snake stick. She closed that guard and the next one. Mustard's car wasn't in the lean-to or anywhere in the yard. Neither was any other. Booker dismounted at the hitching rail.

Lovely was in the chair on the east end of the porch. He didn't move. Maud called his name. He turned and looked at them. The moon lit his features.

Maud said, “How're you doing?”

“Had the shakes. They're better now.”

“Maybe your fever's lifting.”

“Maybe.”

“Did the doctor come by to see you?”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't know?”

“I've been sleeping off and on.”

Maud was close enough to Lovely to see him well. He didn't look completely himself. But she thought maybe her guilt and worry made him seem odd. She put her hand on a post. “Are you gonna sleep outside?”

“My cot's under the tree.”

“Is there anything I can get you? Some water, maybe?”

“No. I'm fine. Howdy, Booker.”

Booker returned the greeting. Then he asked Maud to walk him to his horse. He asked if she was planning to tell Lovely what they'd learned in town. She didn't have a ready answer, and with moonlight on their shoulders, they whispered about the wisest course of action. Maud enjoyed their sharing something, even a problem, and neither of them stuck to a firm position, and not just because they were trying to please each other. They both thought Lovely had a right to know, but they also agreed that telling him could cause unnecessary fear. In the end, they decided to let the subject rest until the doctor could explain it with some authority and reassurance.

After that, they talked about whether Booker would stay the night. He said he'd sleep on the porch using his saddle for a pillow. And in making his case, he used kisses to be persuasive. Maud didn't want to send Booker away; his body turned hers like the sun turns the face of a sunflower. And she was also afraid of being alone with Lovely's strangeness. But she didn't entirely trust Booker not to slip inside to her bed or trust herself if he did. And she didn't want him there, or anywhere near, if her daddy showed up drunk. She knew full well how drunkenness looked to most white people. So in the end, she sent Booker off down the lane.

The next morning, Maud looked first to Mustard's bed. It was empty and untouched. Then she looked to the pile of books that Lovely's cot usually hid. The piles were coated with a sheen of dust. She rolled onto her back and looked to the ceiling. There was a crack in the cardboard up there that she sometimes imagined as a river, sometimes as a fissure in the earth, sometimes as a scar on a face. But she felt too worried for the crack to suck her in. She hoped Dr. Ragsdale would show up as soon as the sun got higher. She thought again about the possibility of rabies. The more she thought about that, the tighter her stomach grew. She began to feel like she was going to throw up. She decided that would be a good thing. Lovely had a bug. She caught it. She swung her feet over the side of her cot. She didn't hear Lovely outside on the porch, and the sun was too high for him to be sleeping unless he was even more poorly. She got up and peeked out the door. Lovely wasn't on the porch. She stepped outside. He wasn't anywhere to be seen. She walked to the outhouse and called his name. She went to the live oak tree, parted its leaves, and found his empty cot in the shade. She went back in, dressed behind the sheet, and began to feel hungry.

Lovely didn't turn up for breakfast. He didn't return while Maud was feeding the chickens, milking the cow, or sweeping the dirt in front of the house. He didn't come back to help her hoe. And neither did Mustard or the doctor show. She didn't expect Booker; Mr. Singer was taking him to church to sit in his pew to be seen. So she was left to her own cogitations. And, slowly, as she chopped weeds and grass that seemed more attracted to garden dirt than to the yard, she decided that if she wanted something done she was going to have to do it. She'd visit the Mounts and see if John Mount had gone mad or was just his usual mean self. She didn't intend to get right up on them or have an actual conversation. She didn't even intend to get within running distance. She knew a place down in the wild where she could climb a little rise, peek over, and see their house. At that time of day, they both should be outside. It was too hot to stay in.

So Maud changed into a shirt and a pair of overalls that she'd inherited from Lovely, slipped her mother's pistol into her pocket, and picked out her Winchester from the cluster in the corner. She walked the lane, turned at her uncle Gourd's house, and took the ruts to the river. Not far under the ridge, she veered off east onto a cow path. The vegetation on either side was tall. It rustled with the breeze, buzzed with insects, and was full of nettles. She knew the cottonmouths were thick, and she kept her eyes on her boots and repeatedly used the barrel of her rifle as a snake stick. She wondered how on the face of the Earth the Mounts, or anybody, could stand to live in such a forsaken place. The sun was high in the sky. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, her crown, and the back of her neck. Patches appeared under her arms.

At some distance into the wild, Maud found the spot she'd come looking for. It was a hill of sandy soil, not high, but higher than anything else around except the other little rise that the Mounts' house sat on. While climbing the mound, Maud realized that she didn't really know if the Mounts' house was still there. It was so close to the river that it could've easily been swept away in the flood. The thought made her heart sink. She'd come out far into a place she'd always avoided, a place so wild with poisonous creatures and wolves and occasionally even bears and wildcats that her mother had used it to scare her into good behavior. Maud shifted her rifle to her left hand and freed her right one to grasp a root to lift herself to the rim of the rise.

In the distance, she saw what remained of the Mounts' house. The porch was gone. The single front window and the door were so high above the ground that they looked like they were part of a second floor. Wooden steps to the door were of a different color than the wood of the house. Maud figured they'd been laid after the flood had taken the porch. Next to the house stood a willow. The movement of its limbs was the only movement around. Maud had been worried about the Mounts' dogs smelling her and barking, but she didn't hear a sound beyond the low rush of the river. She looked south and saw a ribbon of water. She turned back to the house. She looked for dogs. She decided the Mounts had put theirs down, fearing the spread of rabies.

She was squatting below the crest of the hill, watching the house for movement and listening to insects, when the ripple of a shadow glided across the tangles in front of her. She looked to the sky. A buzzard had flown over. It circled out toward the river and circled back in. Another buzzard came in from the southeast. It was higher and circled in a clockwise direction. The first buzzard landed next to the Mounts' stovepipe. The second buzzard disappeared behind treetops. The buzzard near the stovepipe dropped off the house out of sight. The other buzzard flew back in and landed on the roof. It flapped its wings. Then it, too, slipped below Maud's line of vision. A third buzzard flew in.

When the third buzzard landed on the roof, Maud's fear of the Mounts disappeared and was replaced by a fear so great it propelled her to stand. She made her way quickly down the hill and then ran the cow path toward the Mounts', past their cow lot to their front yard. She heard whooshing noises, flaps, and hisses. She climbed the steps to the door, entered the house, held her breath against its filth, and walked to the only window in the back wall. That window was open. Beyond it, on the ground below, were twenty to thirty black buzzards and turkey buzzards. They were in two groups, stabbing, tearing, raising their heads to swallow, flapping their wings, and jabbing at each other.

Maud's breathing grew more and more shallow until she felt faint. She steadied herself with the butt of her rifle against the floor and a hand on the window frame. She turned toward the room. There was a cast-iron stove in the corner, two chairs and a table in the middle, a dipping pan on a table, and two beds against opposite walls. Maud used her gun to steady herself, walked to the table, and sat down. In front of her was a bowl crawling with green flies, a saltshaker, a tin cup, and a box of matches. The birds made a loud racket.

Maud pushed the bowl to the far side of the table. The flies hardly stirred. She studied the saltshaker. It was glass, smudged with dirt, and half full. The salt in it rose higher on one side than on the other. Her eyes were still clamped to the shaker when she heard the flapping of wings nearby. She looked to the window. A turkey buzzard was sitting on the sill, its red, wrinkly head cocked at her. Her hand went to the bowl. She threw it and hit the bird. The buzzard rocked backward, hissed, and disappeared. The bowl fell out of the window. The swarm of flies filled the air. Their buzz was shrill.

Maud's mind focused. She walked to the window, swatting flies. The birds were still tearing away. She took her mother's pistol out of her pocket and fired at the ground. Wings flapped in every direction. Some birds landed in trees close by, some on other spots on the ground. They looked at Maud like she looked at them. She steadied herself in the frame but then recalled that the buzzard had stood in that place. She stepped back, stumbled over to the dipping pan, cupped up a handful of water, and wiped it over the back of her neck. She sat down at the table again and tried to think.

The Mounts were dead. Past dead. Being eaten. She didn't know how they'd died. She wouldn't put it past them to have shot each other. Or maybe John Mount had gone mad with rabies and killed Claude and himself, too. She was sure it was them, not because she had seen the remains well enough to tell, but because they weren't around. They ran a still. One of them stayed near it most of the time. Her mind went from the bodies to the birds. She didn't know if buzzards could carry rabies. But if they did, they could infect all of the wildlife and then the domesticated animals all over the area.

Maud racked her head for everything she'd ever heard about the disease. She eventually recognized that her thoughts were jumping like fleas. She felt certain of only two things: aside from dogs and cats, skunks and bats carried rabies. She didn't think skunks ate carrion, but she thought bats might, and she knew they ate insects. By night, the remains would be crawling with those. She needed to alert somebody so the bodies could be removed before dusk when the bats were flying. It was well past noon already.

Maud eased up from the table with her rifle. There were four birds outside, still pecking the heads. Maud raised her gun to her shoulder and fired. One bird hissed and toppled over. The other three flapped their wings and flew. Maud lowered her gun. She turned from the window and scanned the room. She stepped over to the nearest bed, took a quilt from the foot, and threw it over her shoulder. She picked up another quilt from the foot of the other bed. The thought of lice crossed her mind. She shook that away, went over the threshold, and carefully descended the new steps.

At the back of the house, she found the buzzard she'd shot clawing the ground with a wing and making a grunting noise. The sound was so peculiar for a bird that Maud looked around. There was no other movement except the wind stirring the branches of trees. The buzzard's body made a thumping noise against the ground. Maud threw the quilts off her shoulders and shot the bird again. Then she picked up the quilts, and as she moved closer, she tilted her head so that she saw the human bodies only out of the sides of her eyes. About ten feet away from them, she threw the top quilt to the ground, laid her rifle beside it, and took the second quilt in both hands. She flapped it open, and with her head turned, spread it over the remains of one of the bodies. Then she picked up the other quilt and flapped it open. She held it in front of her so that it hid the sight of the second body until she saw the sole of a boot. Next to the heel was her father's lighter. Maud dropped the quilt and ran.

She sped down the cow path and around the hill and was almost to the ruts of the road when she lost all breath, bent over, and placed her hands on her thighs. She stayed bent over with a pain in her side until she dropped to her knees. She panted. The sun was in front of her, its heat on her forehead. She swiped away the sweat rolling into her eyes. She wiped her mouth. She began hearing insects. Her breath came back in an even rhythm. She squatted, sat on her rear in the dirt, and embraced her knees. She needed to go back to retrieve her father's Banjo and her rifle. She had to do that right away. She got up, turned, and walked long strides. When she got to the house, she stopped before rounding the back corner and listened. She heard movement; she thought it was buzzards again. She was right. She put her hand in her pocket and felt her mother's pistol. But instead of shooting, she yelled, “Go away,” and the birds did. She grabbed the lighter and tucked it into a pocket of her bib and spread the second quilt over the carcass. She picked up her rifle and quickly walked away.

On the path out of the wild, Maud murmured, “Lovely, please be back. Please, please.” But after a while, she felt calm enough to realize that Lovely might not be able to help her. He'd helped move the dog, but he couldn't shoot Betty. And he was already sick. Could he stomach human bodies picked to pieces? Could he move them to the river? Or roll them into graves? Graves would arouse less suspicion. Bodies in the river, even weighted with rocks, had been known to wash ashore. The only people who visited the Mounts were looking for rotgut. They would take what they found and not look around. The Mounts' family in town didn't associate with them. If they came sniffing and found graves, they'd figure somebody had been kind enough to bury them.