Maud's Line (25 page)

Billy went up to the porch and peered in the screen door. He went inside. He came back out and sat in a rocker. There he stayed. Maud settled into the limb. She thanked her elders for teaching her stillness with hunting and fishing. She didn't even feel particularly unsettled. Eventually, Billy walked to the pump, splashed some water out, drank, and rubbed some on the back of his neck. After that, he walked his horse to the first guard, which he'd left open in the lane, secured it again, and did the same with the far one. Maud waited on the limb until the sound of hooves died away.

She spent the rest of the evening reading and fanning herself. Occasionally, she lifted her eyes and wondered where Lovely had disappeared to, wondered if she really was carrying, wondered what she could do if she was. In all that mulling, she decided her top tick-off was to find where Booker was and get to him. She thought that if she could make her way to Fayetteville, she might find him there, or find people who would know where he was. She went to bed with that plan planted in her mind.

The next day, she copied out on a little lined pad the formulas Mooney had recorded in both Cherokee and English for making children jump down and for destroying life. The formulas for destroying life relied on the wild parsnip, a plant she'd never seen. But she routinely substituted ingredients while cooking and she thought a parsnip was a cousin to a carrot. She had some of those left in the garden. She spent most of her spare time during the day pulling from the book other secrets she thought might come in handy. Then she ate an early supper and walked to her uncle Gourd's, carrying his bowls, Mooney's book, and her notepad.

The house was hot from being closed up, but there was enough light inside to read. She sat at Gourd's table, poured over the book, and made notes until she heard the beat of hooves. She slipped to the floor below the window. She kept reading until the light was too dim and the hooves beat away up the line.

Maud was too busy with her worries about Booker and the little bean that might be lodged in her belly to give much mind to Billy. She appreciated his attentions when she wanted them, and she'd always found him handsome, even exciting. He could be worked like dough, which had both its good points and bad. But her mind and her heart were given over to Booker. And with that in mind, the next day, she walked the line toward Mr. Singer's with his books and handkerchief in a flour sack. She looked toward the swale and didn't see Lovely there. At the section lines' cross, she opened her mailbox flap, hoping her sister Rebecca had finally answered her letter. A dirt dobber flew out into her face. Maud ducked and said, “Dammit, get out of here!” Then she took a step back and peered into the hole. There were three mud nests in there, but no more dobbers and no letters. She looked under the box for a hole the wasps could be using to get in. She didn't find one and decided she'd left the flap a little open the last time she'd checked the mail. She pushed it closed and then pushed it harder with the butt of her gun. She walked on, feeling irritated with Rebecca until she recalled that her sister had three children under the age of five.

On up the line, two big machines for moving dirt were across from the burnt school. As she got closer, she saw several men. She decided to avoid the men even though she had her rifle. She cut west across the potato fields on paths that had been laid before she was born and then took the river path. When she got to Mr. Singer's, she went to the front door. It was open except for the screen. The same Negro woman came to it. She said, “Mr. Singer ain't in.”

Maud felt irritated with herself for not checking to see if the Packard was in the garage before she knocked on the door. If she'd come by her usual route, she would've seen that. “Is he expected back soon?”

“Can't say.” The woman had on glasses. She lowered her chin and looked at Maud over the top of them.

Maud didn't like that look. But she didn't want to get on the wrong side of the woman guarding the door. So she smiled and said, “I don't believe I know your name.”

“Miz Lizzie.”

“Well, Miz Lizzie, Mr. Singer loaned me these books.” Maud held up the sack. “He generally likes to quiz me on what I've read. So if you'll tell me when I can catch him, I'll come back.”

“Gone into town. Don't tell me his intentions.”

“Well, then.” Maud pulled the sack to her breast. “Tell him Maud Nail dropped by and will come again.”

“I'll tell him. Youse Jenny's granddaughter?”

Maud stepped back. She hadn't heard her grandmother's given name in a long time. “Yes, I am. You knew her?”

“Knew her well.”

Maud took a deep look at the woman on the other side of the screen. She was short and wide. She was well fed, which wasn't usually true of Negros, and she had on those glasses, which was unusual in the same way. Maud couldn't tell how old she was by looking at her. If she'd known her grandmother well, it would've been as children. Adult Negroes and other people didn't mingle. Maud was trying to calculate how old her grandmother would've been had she been living when Lizzie said, “Sit there in that chair. I'll bring ya some lemonade.” She turned from the door.

Maud was surprised by the hospitality and thankful to sit a spell. She was hot, and the books and gun had weighed her down. She didn't feel the energy she usually had, and her tired blood confirmed her suspicions. She was brooding on those when the screen door opened and Lizzie brought lemonade out on a little tray. Maud gulped it without stopping, put the glass back on the tray, and wiped her mouth with her fingers. “That was delicious.”

“I 'spect yer looking fer yer man.”

Maud leaned sideways, her eyes up at Lizzie, wide as saucers. “Yes, yes, I am. Do you know where he is?”

Lizzie looked toward the incline that held the road. “Can't say. But he went thaterway.” She pointed to the bridge.

Maud was astonished. She'd gotten more information out of this stranger than she'd gotten from anyone. She asked if she knew any more. Lizzie didn't, but she asked Maud about Lovely. She said he'd done her a favor a few weeks back and she knew he'd been poorly. Maud said he hadn't entirely recovered from his shots, and both to change the subject and to satisfy her curiosity, she blurted out, “What kind of favor?” As soon as she said it, she realized she shouldn't have, and she feared she'd given offense to someone whose help she needed. But Lizzie seemed unfazed. “Moved a rock fer me. From the swale where he's working up here to the house. I'd taken a shine to that rock as a girl. It waz gonna get lost in the plowing.”

Maud left shortly after that, taking the flour sack of books with her as an excuse to come back. But she walked away feeling like she'd made an unexpected ally. She climbed the rise and sat for a while beneath the same tree by the highway close to the bridge that she'd sat under before. Then she walked the old path by the river to avoid the men and machines, and because she could just as easily go that way to get to her grandpa's.

Of the adults living at her grandpa's, she found only Viola and Lucy. Lucy's little boy was napping on a pallet in a little red wagon under the trees, and the three women went to the kitchen to keep from waking him. That kitchen was bigger than Maud's and there was a round table in the middle. They strung beans while they talked. Maud, both to avoid the subject niggling at her mind and because she was worried, told her aunts Lovely was gone again. The talk centered on him. Everybody in the family was worried. Nobody thought he'd acted himself on Sunday. Lucy had talked to Sarah about his behavior a couple of weeks in the past. It was much like Able's, only milder. But then Lovely had a mild disposition. The three agreed that his disappearances were beyond the usual laying out, and Viola said she'd send the men looking for him if he didn't return by Saturday.

The subject of laying out brought up Mustard's whereabouts. The women speculated on where he could be and if he'd slip back after a spell. Lucy thought that was likely; the sheriff didn't have any evidence to pin him to the crime and the Mounts needed getting rid of. Viola thought Mustard's returning was less sure. People were getting rich in the oil fields. Mustard liked money as well as anybody else. Then Viola said, “That's probably where yer fella is, too.”

By then, Maud was glad to have the subject turned to Booker. She told her aunts what she'd learned from Lizzie, that he'd headed west. They both thought Booker was most likely working in the oil fields outside of Oklahoma City. But Maud felt certain oil work wouldn't be an attraction for him. It was too rough; her father would fit right in; but Booker was a little on the dandy side. Maud couldn't picture him working on a rig or even peddling to men with black hands, sweat-stained shirts, and headbands. Maybe to their wives, but not to the men.

However, she really didn't know. And the speculation about Booker eventually deflated her. She turned the conversation to Lizzie, who she was, and how she'd known her grandmother. Lucy, who was one of Maud's grandmother's younger children, had never heard anything about Lizzie beyond her being Mr. Singer's cook and housekeeper. But Viola said, “Pappy told that tale. If I rightly remember, she waz with yer grandma the day she waz lost to the wolves.”

Maud didn't think her grandmother had really been lost to wolves. Nobody would survive that. Viola was using some old-fogy phrase, and Maud didn't want to know any more about those ways. She said, “So she knew her well?”

“Don't know 'bout that. I was about Lee's age.” Viola nodded toward the side of the house where Lucy's baby was asleep under the trees.

“She's a good bit older than you are?”

“I guess. Hard to tell with them folks.”

“Hard to tell age on anyone,” Lucy contributed. “White people look like they's a hundred and one when they's only about forty-six.”

After that, the talk dribbled into observations on the weather and the habits of their animals. Maud began to feel the comfort that familiarity and family bring, a comfort she sorely needed. She took supper at her grandpa's and waited to walk home when the moon was up and it was too late for visitors.

The next morning, Maud ate breakfast with the
calendar by her plate. August 18, the date she and Booker had set for their wedding,
was sixteen days away. If Booker came back, it'd be before then. The eighteenth grew larger in Maud's eyes than the other dates, and scribbles about the numbers of eggs gathered and checkmarks she'd made figuring her monthly cycle disappeared off the page. When the one and the eight began looking like a skinny man with a shapely wife, Maud realized she'd lost track of her day.

She hurried through her chores. By midday, the heat was too high for walking the section line or the ruts to the sandbar, and the air too thick for any activity except sitting under the live oak tree and reading. Through the screen of low-hanging branches, the house and the yard seemed like they belonged to somebody else, to folks she didn't know or want to know. The sounds of insects and birds sawed on her nerves. Her whole existence seemed hopeless. The thought that other people in other places were doing things that she'd never do made her angry. She wanted off that pitiful patch of Indian land. She stood up, determined to do something other than wait for the next two weeks. She brushed the limbs aside and stepped into the heat of the afternoon sun. A cow mooed. The rooster scratched in the dirt close to the front steps. A hawk drifted toward the river on currents that didn't touch the tops of the trees. She felt completely alone.

Maud wished Lovely would get his butt home. She'd intended to walk into town and talk to Gilda the day before, but the conversation with Lizzie had distracted her. It was too hot and too late in the day to start that walk now. And she was at the far end of ruts at the end of a section line in the middle of nowhere. She walked to the pump, disturbed a cluster of toads, and jacked the handle up and down. Cool water running over her hand and arm made her feel better. She sat down on the wooden platform and looked out over the wild. She missed Booker. She missed Lovely. She missed her daddy. Evening would come and the only company she'd have would be cows and chickens, and if she went to the barn, the mean cat and her kittens. She thought about taming one of the kittens for company. But if she and Booker went to Fayetteville, that wouldn't be fair. Maud picked up a pebble and threw it. She looked down toward her feet for another. That was when she began to wish Billy would show.

And he did. He didn't ask any questions about where she'd been. But he came in a clean shirt, and with a half a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. They ate and smoked on the porch, and then Billy stood up and leaned over Maud's rocker. He placed his hands on each arm, pushed down, and tilted her forward. He kissed her tenderly, little pecks around her lips and then square on them. He kissed her neck. He was kissing her collarbone when Maud said, “We'll be more comfortable on the bed.”

They fumbled at first, then hurried like a couple of animals. After a while, they made love a second time in a way that was gentler but more satisfying to Maud. She let out a moan that could've been heard on the river, and then she gasped until she got her breath. She kissed Billy all over his head. He kissed her all over her breasts. And then they both curled up and slept.

When the cock crowed, Maud woke with a start. The crack on the ceiling seemed to have grown in the middle of the night. She looked over at Billy. He was asleep on his stomach. She put her hand on her belly. It seemed almost as flat as usual, but when she touched her breasts, they were a handful. If she wasn't pregnant already, she soon would be. Maud sighed. Billy shifted his leg. She breathed more shallowly. She didn't want to wake him and face whatever he was going to say.

Maud slowly shifted her weight and slipped out of the bed. She was completely naked. She pulled back the sheet on the wire, stepped behind it, cleaned herself with a rag, and drew one of Lovely's shirts over her shoulders. It hung down to the middle of her thighs. After that, she put on clean drawers, went outside, did her business, came back in, and started a fire. She had biscuits in the oven, coffee on the stove, and fatback frying when she heard the front door. She peeked out. Billy was relieving himself off the side of the porch. Her mother had trained her father and brother not to do that during daylight.