Maud's Line (9 page)

“Fortunately, I made a better impression on him than I did on that woman. He doesn't much like her, and he figures I can sell, and I can. So he has me selling potatoes and is letting me sell my own wares to anybody who stops. You were right. He's a nice man.”

That remark caused Maud to recall that she'd tried to make Booker think that Mr. Singer was a suitor. She felt heat rise up her neck. She placed her hand on the top of her hat and shifted it so that it covered her face a little more than it had. Before she could think of what to say next, Booker added, “I guess I'll be around these parts for a while. That might not be all bad.” He took a deep breath.

Maud looked past Booker at the potato barn and then down at her shoes. “No, it might not. You could get to liking it.”

“I already like it. But I have a real job back in Arkansas.”

Maud looked up. “What might that be?”

“I'm a schoolteacher.”

“A schoolteacher? What do you teach?”

“All sorts of things. English, geography, math.”

Maud felt like she was being pulled along by a strong river current. “A schoolteacher,” she said, like she might have said
a pharaoh
or
a president
.

Booker smiled. The smile went all the way up to the gold flecks in his eyes. He said, “Do you mind if I come calling?”

Maud ducked her head. “No, I don't mind at all. I can try to make up for the sheriff's lack of hospitality.”

“I'd sure appreciate that. A little kindness goes a long way.”

At that moment, a horn honked. A car neither one of them had noticed had pulled in off the highway. The man behind the wheel was someone Maud had never seen. He yelled, “Do you know how to get to Tahlequah?”

Maud pointed and said, “Take the highway in that direction. It's twenty miles.”

The man said, “What's in that rig over there?”

Booker said, “Wares. I can show them to you.”

The man said, “Don't mind if I do. I need to stretch my legs.” He opened the door and unfolded out of the car.

Booker turned to Maud. “When and where?”

Maud wasn't ready to have Booker meet her father. She didn't really want to share him with anybody at all. And there wasn't anything in the bottoms except farms and a couple of snaky lakes, the burnt school building, and two cemeteries. One of those was so close to the snake lakes they couldn't visit it without guns. But the other one was farther away from the cottonmouths. She said, “Tonight. See that stand of trees over there. That's our family's old cemetery. I'll meet you there.”

“You're not superstitious?”

“I am that. But I'm not afraid of my family. Not of the dead ones, at least. After eating but before the sun sets. It's snaky on down closer to the river after that.”

The man said, “How much for these suspenders?” and Booker turned around. Then he turned back. “About six,” he said.

Maud left her father and her brother whittling and reading on the front porch, and walked, with a newspaper in one hand and a snake stick in the other, down the lane and up the section line. She left the paper with Nan according to a plan she'd made with her aunt after seeing Booker that morning. Beyond Nan's house, where the section lines crossed, she headed through the potato fields on a path that gave her a good view of where she was walking because, although the cottonmouths weren't as thick beyond the snake lakes as they were below them, the largest lake wasn't far from her. She watched the dirt in front of her and to her sides, and couldn't help but think about her mother's death. That particular snake had been hiding from the sun under a rosebush. Her uncle Gourd, newly home from the Great War, had been sitting on his front porch when he heard her scream. He saw her run in a circle and fall. When he got to her, he cut her ankle, sucked the blood, and spit it out again and again. But her mother went rigid and died before Gourd got her into the house. Maud hadn't seen the death herself. She'd been in school. Her aunt Lucy had come to her classroom door along with her principal. She had gotten up from her desk and slowly walked toward the door frame, knowing from Lucy's face, and mostly from her presence at all, that something terrible had happened, something that was going to change everything forever. And so it had. Once her mother was buried, her father chopped down the bush with a hatchet and went on a bender with Gourd that lasted so long it seemed like it was going to be permanent. Only when he eventually sobered up and stayed that way for three weeks did her aunt Lucy and her grandfather move back to their house on the other side of the swale.

That was nearly half of Maud's lifetime in the past, but she still carried that sadness and didn't want it on her date with Booker. She regretted suggesting the cemetery even though it wasn't the one her mother was buried in. So she tried to shake all of that out of her head and simply watch the ground for snakes. When she did finally raise her eyes, she saw Booker riding to her on the back of one of his horses. She veered out of the potatoes to the section line and stopped to let him come to her. He pulled up about fifteen feet away, took his bowler off in a flourish, and said, “Would madam like a ride?”

“Madam would. Where'd you get the saddle?”

“Brought it with me. Keep it between my shelves. I sleep in there, too, when the weather's bad.” He dismounted.

“You're teasing me.”

“No, I'm not. There's a little house in there. Right between the shelves.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Well, I'm telling the truth. Do you know how to get up on a horse or do you need some help?”

“I'm mostly Indian. What do you think? Look the other way.” Maud handed Booker her snake stick, grabbed the horn, and put a foot in the stirrup.

When she was astride, he said, “Do you want to keep this stick?”

“I sure do. It's my snake stick.”

“You carry a stick around to beat snakes to death?”

“No, silly. I carry a stick around to rustle snakes up and scare them away. Are you going to get up here with me or are you just going to walk around not even knowing how to protect yourself?”

“I need protection from two-footed creatures.” He smiled. “We better find a stump. I don't want to pull you off.” He put a hand on the harness and began to walk.

And while Maud swayed on the horse's back and looked down at Booker holding his bowler and her snake stick in his other hand; while they were out there surrounded by potatoes and a little corn; while the sun was still above the tree line in the west and the air cooler than it'd been all day; while the sky filled up with wisps of clouds and bobwhites called to each other and the smell in the air was of horse, dirt, and just a little moisture; right then, Maud made up her mind about what she intended to do with the rest of her life.

She didn't get back toward home until nearly dark. Booker stopped the horse beneath trees hanging over the section line, slid off its rear, and held out his arms. When Maud's feet touched the ground, he embraced her, and without asking, kissed her long on the lips. He stepped back and looked at her with a gaze that took in her face, her whole head, her hair, and her shoulders. He said, “Tomorrow?”

She nodded.

“I'll come down here.”

“Not to the house. Let me prepare Daddy.”

“Where?”

“Come this far. I'll figure it out. He's not against courting. But he's combustible.”

“Combustible?”

“High tempered.”

“Should I be afraid?”

She shook her head. “I'm just cautious. You're already on the bad side of the sheriff.”

He kissed her again.

That went on for as long as Maud thought proper or, really, longer, because, in spite of what she'd just said, she'd given in back there on the horse. Now she was hoping she was what Booker wanted and that she could keep him wanting. That was her plan. It didn't have details. It existed more as a primal urge, a force that was like a river sweeping everything downstream.

As Maud walked the lane, she saw Lovely in the porch rocker reading in the last of the light. When she got nearer, he closed the book and looked in her direction. His face was in a shadow, but it seemed to Maud that the tilt of his head was odd, and she wondered if he was thinking about where she'd been. She next looked to the lean-to. Her father's car was there. She wondered why he wasn't on the porch. She moved from one possibility to another until she got to the steps. She whispered, “Where's Daddy?”

“In bed,” Lovely whispered back.

“It's early for that.”

“He was whipped.”

“What're you reading?”

“Gilda's Bible.”

“How is it?”

“Sorta snaky. Not too bad, though.”

Neither of them was totally ignorant of Christianity. They'd been taught to say they were Christians when asked, to bow their heads during prayers at school, and to imitate whatever Christians took in their minds to do. They hadn't been old enough to question their mother about that before she died, but Maud had since figured out on her own that the safest route was to go along. However, some of her friends were tormented by questions like “If God is good and loves us, why did He send all this rain to drown our crops and stock and ruin our houses?” Maud thought those kinds of questions were worth asking, but she never came to the same conclusions her friends did. She thought God, if there was one, didn't give a shiny penny for what they were doing or what happened to them. And he seemed particularly unpartial toward Indians.

Lovely said, “Where've you been?”

“Aunt Nan's.”

“You changed your dress to visit Aunt Nan?”

“
Shuuu
. Did Daddy ask where I was?”

Lovely leaned toward Maud and lowered his voice again. “Naw. He's too interested in getting a puppy to think of much else. Says he's going up toward Wagoner to look at a litter on Wednesday. They aren't ready to leave their mama, but he wants to pick his out and make a down payment.”

Their daddy burnt through money like fire through wheat stubble. They had a car only because he'd sold some of his Seminole allotment. Maud knew that the offer of a down payment was his way of trying to make sure he didn't blow all his dough before he got his dog. There really wasn't much to say about that and she wasn't ready to talk about Booker, so she left Lovely out on the porch and went to bed.

She was too excited to sleep, and she lay on her cot reliving every look, word, and feeling until she realized that her brother still hadn't come in. She figured she'd been lying there for a while, and her father was breathing a deep rhythm, so she quietly got up, opened the screen, and went out on the porch. She was expecting to find Lovely asleep in the chair or laid out on the planks with his head on the Bible. But he wasn't there. She looked to the yard. She saw him by the pump, facing the river, his back to her. He was standing straight and still. As far as Maud could tell, he was fully clothed and his legs weren't spread, so he wasn't taking a leak. She watched him for more than a minute. He didn't turn, didn't move. She quietly slipped back inside, and this time, soon after she laid her head on her pillow, she drifted to sleep.

The next morning, Mustard left out as usual. But Lovely was quiet even after he went, and he didn't seem in a rush to get to the field before the sun rose higher and made his work hotter. When Maud went out to dump her dishwater, she found Lovely in Mustard's chair on the porch, one boot on, his other foot covered by a sock, its boot in his lap. He was staring down at that boot like it was an object he didn't entirely trust.

She said, “Lovely, you okay?”

He looked up. “Yeah. Thinking.”

“You going to work?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head like he felt a shiver and looked again at the boot in his lap. “I'm putting on my boots.”

“I can see that.”

Lovely moved the boot off his lap, brought his knee up, and put his foot in. Shortly afterward, he rode the mule down the lane.

Maud worked like a dust devil all that day. That was the fastest way to make time pass, and by midafternoon she'd done everything she usually did on Tuesdays and had done the wash, too. By the time Lovely got in from the field and Mustard from work, a pot of Tom Fuller had brewed. The three of them ate it, accompanied by cornbread and dog talk.

After that, Maud again left her menfolk on the porch and walked down the lane with a day-old paper in her hand. Her daddy hadn't seemed suspicious and her brother had his nose so deeply in the Bible that he hadn't bothered to tease her. As soon as she got out to the section line, she saw Booker on his horse ahead under the shade. She looked toward her house and saw her father still facing in the other direction. She waved to Booker with the paper.

They couldn't go toward the river without being seen from the house. They rode back up the section line, and this time, as Maud knew would happen sooner rather than later, her uncle Ryde was on his porch and her cousins were in the front yard around a tree with a tire swing on it. Ryde grinned in her direction. The children yelled and waved.

“That's my family. We have to stop.”

“I sold the woman there some cloth.”

“I hope it didn't have a flaw. Uncle Ryde is bad with his fists.”

The whole bunch of them got introduced. Maud handed Ryde the paper, and Booker and Ryde discussed how bad the flood had been up in Booker's direction. Maud talked to Nan and played with the kids. After what she considered a respectable time, she said, “We were after fresh air.”

As soon as they got away from the house, Maud, who this time was seated in the back, turned her head and looked over her shoulder. Nan was at the edge of the porch with a pan and a rag washing Sanders' face. Ryde was holding the paper but looking in their direction. Maud waved and turned back around. “I guess the cat's out of the bag.”