Touched (19 page)

Instead of getting angry, he laughed at her. For one crazy instant I thought of Will.

“Part of the gossip I find so delicious is your understanding of the river.” By the end of the sentence he was no longer teasing. “You know the power that it has.”

JoHanna was caught in a draft of erratic wind. She seemed to be blown back from him, then toward him, yet her body never moved a fraction of an inch. “I have respect for the river. For all of nature.”

The strange man nodded, his dark gaze sculpting her face. He was without age. Or I should say indeterminate. He could have been twenty-five, or he could have been forty-five. His skin, an autumn bronze, seemed more natural than sun-kissed, and his dark hair, I finally noticed, was pulled into a thong at the nape of his neck. There was no gray, but a shift in his facial features would age him, then the hint of a smile would hurtle him back to a younger age. Somehow, I had the craziest notion that he was actually from the past.

“My people once lived beside the river.”

The words he said weren’t strange, but the effect on JoHanna was profound. She was unable to stop looking at him.

“Are you from around these parts?” Floyd had moved beside Duncan, where he’d put his big, gentle hand on Pecos’s head, stroking the bird’s ruffled feathers.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t really an answer, and it wasn’t designed to be one.

“Do you live here in Fitler?” I asked. He made me uneasy. Not that I was afraid of him. Not in the least. But he commanded all of our attention in a way that concerned me. He was a presence, and I knew then that I could not blink him away.

“Sometimes.” He smiled at me and I felt safer, and more annoyed.

“You’re Chickasaw, aren’t you?” JoHanna stepped toward him, examining his features as if he were a statue, something that could be walked around and studied without giving offense. She lifted her hand, as if to touch him, then dropped it back to her side.

“Pascagoula, Chickasaw, Mingo, Scot, Irish, Welsh,” he compressed his lips and raised his eyebrows, “barbarian.”

JoHanna laughed out loud, and Floyd and Duncan joined her. I sat in the wagon, the sun beating down on my head, and wondered if this was a sun-induced fantasy. I took in John Doggett’s clothes. He wore a collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, gray pants that were well worn along the contours of a body fit and lean. Scuffed boots that had once been expensive. There was nothing unusual in his dress, except that his clothes seemed an afterthought. Barbarian. It fit him well, except I could find no hunger for blood in his eyes. There was something there, but not cruelty.

“What are you doing in Fitler, Mr. Doggett?” JoHanna picked up the handle of the wagon.

“I’ve come to learn from a harsh mistress.”

JoHanna laughed at his teasing. “The river, I presume.”

“The river is part of her domain.” The teasing was gone. He was serious, even though he spoke in riddles. “It’s nature. I’ve come to try and figure out where I fit in with her.”

JoHanna cast him a sideways glance, but she didn’t say anything.

“And where is this wagon train headed? Since we’ve determined that I’m barbarian, mostly Indian, and you have a worthy cowboy to protect you, perhaps we could stage a battle.”

JoHanna shook her head. “No more gunfights today. We’re headed home. Duncan and Mattie both have had enough sun.” She started walking, and Floyd followed suit, pulling me behind.

John Doggett dropped in alongside us, walking a step or two behind JoHanna and to her left. He didn’t offer to pull the wagon for her, as if he knew intuitively that she would not allow him any control of her daughter. He didn’t seem to notice that Floyd and Duncan and I were right there with them; he talked only to JoHanna.

“The old town interests me. I like the area. I was thinking of buying some property and building a home.”

“Hard to make a living in a ghost town.” JoHanna’s voice wasn’t critical, just stating fact.

“I write. It’s hard to make a living at that anywhere.”

JoHanna looked back at him. “What kind of writer are you?”

“I write about the truth.”

The man was chockful of answers that didn’t say a thing, but if JoHanna noticed, she didn’t seem bothered. Her attention was drawn to the river, where a group of six men were standing in a cluster while three others were out on the logs, organizing them into a raft that could be floated. The upstate rains had raised the river to an unexpected high for September, and the men were eager to move the logs while the high water held.

“Do you write books, Mr. Doggett?” I asked.

“I write about the past. About the way life once was.”

“A historian,” JoHanna pronounced.

“Amateur. And to be truthful, I take whatever work I can find to see me through. I’ve traveled a great deal.”

“A drifter.” It was a harsh assessment, and I don’t know why I said it. He’d done nothing to harm me.

He turned back and gave me a half-smile. “Some would call me a drifter, but I’ve been called worse.” His smile widened. “Some have called me a lot nicer things, too.”

JoHanna’s laughter made me flush.

“Why are the two young ladies riding in wagons?” he asked.

Duncan had been left out of the conversation too long, and she answered promptly. “I was struck by lightning and my legs don’t work. Yet. And Mattie was bleeding last night.”

Crimson washed over my closed eyelids, a red tide of burning shame. When I opened my eyes, no one was looking at me.

“Struck by lightning?” John Doggett was staring at Duncan with renewed interest.

“A direct hit.” Duncan took off the straw hat JoHanna had spruced up for her with red ribbons. “My hair was burned to a crisp. And Mama cuts hers off, too. I think she lost her mind, but we both like our hair this short. We might not let it grow back until Christmas.” She rumpled the downy fuzz, showing the white of her scalp as the hair slipped beneath her palm.

“What about your legs?” John Doggett dropped back so he could stare into the wagon at Duncan’s pale white legs.

“Mama says the river is going to make me well.” Duncan had taken a shine to the stranger.

“May I?” he asked as he leaned over and made as if to pick one up.

JoHanna had been watching over her shoulder, and she stopped the wagon. We’d left main street Fitler behind, and Aunt Sadie’s house was just around the next two bends. We were almost home, and I was tempted to tell Floyd to take me on. But I didn’t. I sat silent as a stone as John Doggett knelt down beside the wagon and picked up Duncan’s left leg. He placed one hand under the knee and held her ankle with the other, working the leg as if it belonged to a puppet. I looked the other way at the men on the water. They were laughing and joshing the men on the logs, daring them to roll the big timbers. The day was warm and the water not unpleasant. Two of the men were setting up to compete. They were both standing on a single enormous pine trunk. While one would start it spinning in one direction, the other would try to balance and turn the spin. It was a contest I’d seen before on the Pearl up near Meridian. I focused my attention on the river, trying as hard as I could to tune out John Doggett and whatever foolishness he was going to start with Duncan. It made me angry that JoHanna would allow this. The man would get Duncan’s hopes up with some silly predictions, and then she’d be upset for weeks if her recovery wasn’t as fast as he’d promised.

“The muscles are there, just weak,” he said, his fingers probing along her calf and thigh. “Can you stand?”

“No.” Duncan sounded uncertain at last.

John Doggett lifted her from the wagon. I opened my mouth to protest, then turned back to the river. JoHanna was standing right there. I couldn’t understand why she stood, planted like a pine, with the wagon handle in her hand and nothing coming out of her mouth.

With great care, John Doggett lowered Duncan to the ground. He braced her as he encouraged her to take a step. With such effort that it strained her face, Duncan managed to lift one leg and move it forward several inches. John Doggett’s hands balanced her, his voice encouraged her, “Do it, Duncan. You can. I’ve got you. Take a step.”

JoHanna breathed her daughter’s name on a sigh of hope, “Duncan.”

The men on the log had stopped. They both stood motionless, a feat in itself on a floating log. But something in their stance made me look slightly to the north. It was a man I hadn’t seen before, a man with ropes and pegs and a hammer. He rose to stand fully erect, and I saw him falter.

From the distance of three hundred yards, where we stood in the road, it seemed as if he had merely lost his balance. There was the snick of trees colliding in the cushion of water, a crash muted by the river that washed them apart and then pushed them back together again.

I looked to the river but heard Duncan’s sharp intake of breath. I swung back to her, saw the knowing on her face as she lifted her hands in front of her and began to scream.

“Red! Red! Red!” She ran a step with each cry.

As she fell, I heard the scream of a man in agony. I looked up to see the tall man with the hammer sink down on the raft. He went down slowly, as if he’d been brought to his knees to pray for forgiveness for some terrible sin. The log rollers began to run toward him, as if they intended to spring across the top of the river without falling in. But they were too slow; the river too fast. The logs pushed apart, and Red Lassiter disappeared beneath the raft.

Eighteen

T
HERE was no Doc Westfall to call for Duncan, and no need to call one for Red Lassiter. He was gone, taken by the river. They found Red’s boot caught in the logs, but he had slipped from it. Vanished.

John Doggett carried Duncan in his arms to Aunt Sadie’s house, JoHanna running at his heels while Floyd was left to wallow through the sand with me and the wagon. I would have gladly walked, but JoHanna made me promise, and to be truthful, I didn’t know if I could support my own weight. Since the abortion, I had been beset by strange sensations and thoughts. At times my mind was filled with tortured images, and I wasn’t certain this moment was real. I could have dreamed it. I wanted to believe that I would awaken to find no one had drowned before my eyes. Though I’d never met Red Lassiter, I had liked his voice, his manner of speaking.

At the front porch I insisted on walking in and found JoHanna and Aunt Sadie ministering to Duncan. The child had been laid on Sadie’s brocade sofa. Against the colorful cloth, she was too white, her eyes shut as if in death, one hand dangling as if never more to lift. Only her too rapid breathing proved she was alive. I could see she had slipped back into the place where she neither walked nor talked, a safe place guarded by the thin skin of her eyelids and the deep recesses of her mind.

“She walked,” JoHanna whispered as she hovered. “She actually walked, Sadie.”

“She ran,” Floyd corrected as he stepped to stand beside JoHanna. “She wanted to save that drowning man.”

I lingered in the door, wondering what to do. John Doggett was nowhere in sight, and I was not surprised. I’d half expected him to disappear before my eyes on the road. Now I was glad for his absence. He disturbed me in a way I couldn’t define.

“Duncan?” JoHanna touched her daughter’s cheek. “Duncan?”

There was fear in her voice.

“Do you suppose Red told anyone about Duncan’s prediction?” Sadie’s question was as blunt as ever, her implications crystal clear to me.

“I don’t know.” JoHanna wasn’t thinking. “Why?”

“If word gets around that she’s predicted another drowning, it’s going to be harder than ever.” Sadie went to the window and lowered the shade to block the sun from Duncan’s face. “Let her sleep. I want you all to come in the kitchen with me.” She took JoHanna’s arm with an iron grip and led her to the kitchen table where she pushed her gently into a chair.

Since I was doing nothing but standing in the doorway, I was glad of some direction. I followed Sadie immediately, and at her signal began to put coffee on. With my hands busy, I found it easier to breathe. I had been holding my breath until my ribs ached.

“Is Duncan going to wake up?” Floyd clearly didn’t want to leave her alone even though she was in the next room on the sofa. He touched JoHanna’s elbow. “What if she wakes up and no one is there? Maybe I should go sit beside her.”

JoHanna stilled herself long enough to look at Floyd. She brushed his thick honey-blond hair back from his forehead with a gesture of kindness. “Will you sit beside her, Floyd? Maybe you could tell her one of her favorite stories. I know she’s asleep, but I think she can hear you. The story will be like one of our marked trails in the woods. She can listen to it and follow it back to us, here.” Her voice clouded with emotion, but she smiled, blinking back her tears. “Could you do that, Floyd?”

He stood up, a man in stature but a child at heart. “I’ll lead her back,” he said, brushing JoHanna’s tears from her cheeks. He turned and went into the other room.

In the silence of the kitchen, before the kettle boiled for coffee, his voice came to us clearly.

“I think your favorite story is the one about the ghost of Miss Kretzler at Courtin’ Bridge. That’s the one I told you the most, so I’m gonna start with that. But you have to remember it was a long time ago, during the Great War …”

“God bless him,” Sadie said. It was one of the softest things I ever heard her say. “Sit right there, JoHanna, before you drop. That’s all we need is another bed filled with tragedy.”

She must have caught the sudden shame that flared in my cheeks because she turned squarely to me. “That wasn’t meant to hurt you, Mattie. I just don’t want JoHanna to keel over. I’ve got to go down to the river and find out what Red Lassiter told those men. Red was a good man, but he liked to talk as much as the next one.” She shook her head. “The sooner we know what the talk is, the better we can prepare.” She reached behind her and untied the apron she wore. She handed it to me. “Make JoHanna drink a cup of good, strong coffee. Make her sit still while she drinks it. You drink one, too, but put plenty of cream and sugar in yours. Just sit at the table, the two of you, until I get back. Draw a good breath, because when I come back we’re going to have to start preparing.”

She turned and walked out the back door, letting the screen slam hard behind her. I walked to the kitchen window and watched her going down the road, her small feet leaving shallow prints in the sand as she went toward the place where Red Lassiter had drowned.

“This is too much.” JoHanna sat with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. “Duncan said it was a fall day. She said the day was cool. This is September. It’s practically summer.”

The kettle began to boil and I poured the hot water down in the well of the dripolater and busied myself getting out the cups and saucers, the spoons and cream and sugar. The day was really too hot for coffee, but I needed it.

Floyd’s voice continued on from the living room, rising and falling as he told the story that Duncan loved. Suddenly I was blinking back tears, and just as quickly irritated by my own maudlin weakness. JoHanna had been strong for me. She’d held a towel to my mouth to muffle my screams while terrible things were done to me. Floyd was reaching out to Duncan, a lifeline of words that she loved. And I couldn’t make coffee without falling to pieces.

I poured two cups and pushed one to JoHanna. “Drink it,” I said.

JoHanna looked up at me, then lifted the cup to her lips.

“When does Will come home?” I was wondering if the ancient telegraph office could possibly get word all the way to New York.

“Two weeks. I won’t call him unless Duncan gets much worse.”

“JoHanna.” The word was total disbelief.

Her bosom lifted with a deep breath. “This trip is important, Mattie. It’s our livelihood. If I call Will home, he’ll come. If I don’t have to have him, it’s wrong to worry him. He’s a thousand miles away by now. Think how he’d feel if he knew what had happened. He’d be sick with worry, and even if he was here, there’s nothing he can do now. Nothing.”

What she said was true. I walked to the door of the living room and looked in at Floyd. He’d pulled a chair right beside the sofa and sat, holding Duncan’s limp hand and talking as if she were wide awake and hanging on each word. Instead, Duncan had chosen to return to a deep sleep. To wake her suddenly might do more damage than to let her surface on her own. Will could only stand and watch her, as I was doing. I turned back to the kitchen and walked to the table.

JoHanna was putting herself back together. I could see it happening, like ants rebuilding after a storm.

“What if there’s trouble in Jexville? Will you send for Will?”
If
word of Duncan’s prediction got back to Jexville, there would be trouble.

“They won’t burn her as a witch.” JoHanna’s smile was wan, but it was there.

“You should stay here, in Fitler.” I put the heavy cream in my coffee with a liberal hand, then added three spoons of sugar. I normally drank it black, but I craved the richness of the cream, the jolt of the sugar. “Floyd and I should go back. We can try to stop what’s happening.”

JoHanna lifted her coffee, but she didn’t drink. “And Elikah?”

His name was a shadow in Sadie’s bright kitchen. What of Elikah? “I don’t know.”

“You aren’t afraid?”

With the focus on me, JoHanna was almost completely repaired. Her back had straightened, her head lifted, the blue returned to her eyes. “Maybe I’m afraid, but I have to go back. Or I have to leave.” I drank the coffee, licking the sweetness from my lips. “I’m not ready to leave yet. I don’t know where to go,” I added. “I’m not ready to think about where to go.” That was closer to the truth.

The screen door creaked open and Sadie came along the porch and into the kitchen. She went straight to the stove and poured herself a cup of coffee before coming to sit at the table. She looked at me, then at JoHanna. “He told the men.”

JoHanna didn’t move a muscle. I knew then that she’d expected this. She’d known.

“What are they saying?”

“That Duncan is a prophet. That she can see the future.” Sadie unbuttoned the top two buttons of her dress, and I realized then that she was perspiring heavily. She’d walked too fast in the heat of the sun. I went to the pitcher of water she’d drawn and got her a glass. She took it with a nod of thanks.

“How bad is it?” JoHanna asked.

“Hard to tell. They don’t really believe it, but they believe it enough to be curious.”

“Curiosity isn’t so bad.” JoHanna spoke the words tentatively, as if she didn’t believe them either.

“The folks here won’t amount to much. It’s Jexville. They’re not going to take it lightly that Duncan has the ability to foretell death.” Sadie’s gaze connected with JoHanna. “They’re already afraid of you, JoHanna. They may decide to take it out on Duncan.”

JoHanna nodded, but she kept her head up. “They already take it out on Duncan.” A spark lit her eyes. “Fear may be our biggest ally.”

Sadie shook her head. “Don’t do anything to egg this on. I know you, Jo. I know you to the bone. You can flaunt your ideas and fancies at them and manage to skin by. Not this time. This is the hand of God they’re seeing. Or the work of the devil is more likely the way they’ll interpret it. For Duncan’s sake, don’t provoke them. Let this die down and pass off.”

Her words chilled me. JoHanna lived with Will and Duncan and Pecos in a sunny house outside the narrow boundaries of the town. She read her books and listened to her music and waited for Will to come home and tease and love her. She didn’t hear the whispers of the men downtown or watch the other women tilting toward each other behind their hymnals, their whispers like angry wasps. JoHanna wasn’t naive. She knew the women talked about her. But she couldn’t know how hard the feelings were against her. It was still a puzzle to me how Will was so well-liked and JoHanna so despised. And Duncan would inherit her mother’s mantle. Had she been a boy, she would have been pitied as the child of JoHanna McVay. As a female, though, she was a miniature JoHanna. This prophetic ability would bring only sorrow.

“What do you suggest that I do?” JoHanna’s voice was cool, and I knew she’d been badly wounded by Aunt Sadie’s words.

“Stay here with me. At least until Will comes home. Maybe longer if that’s what it takes.”

“What about school?”

Sadie snorted. “As if that ever mattered a whit to you. Duncan doesn’t go half the time. What she knows she learned from you. The child can read and write and do her numbers. You think that pinheaded teacher can tell Duncan more about the world than you? I wouldn’t doubt Cornelia still believes the earth is flat.”

I got up and refilled all of our cups to hide my smile. The situation wasn’t amusing. Not in the least. But Aunt Sadie’s assessment of Cornelia Tucker was perfect. Heavy bosomed and heavy hipped, Cornelia Tucker directed the Methodist choir and the public school in Jexville. She taught, wrote policy, chose curriculum, and said the morning prayer. To make sure no one challenged her right to do all of the above, she even provided the school building.

“Duncan should have a right to go to school.” JoHanna was angry. “Will pays taxes. Duncan should be able to attend without being ridiculed and punished.”

“If you want Duncan in the school, then you should let your hair grow out, buy some foundation garments and bake some cookies.” Aunt Sadie slammed her coffee cup into the saucer, cracking both. “Dog in the manger. That’s how you’re behaving, JoHanna. Talk about rights. Talk about wanting Duncan to go to school. Well, powder my ass with talcum, ‘cause all this pretending is chappin’ me raw.”