Touched (3 page)

She looked up but said nothing.

I heard the screen door close behind me and I turned to find nine-year-old Mary Lincoln and Annabelle Lee coming toward me. They stopped.

“Is she dead?” Mary asked. “I’ve never seen a dead person.”

“I have.” Annabelle Lee looked at the ground. “Lots of times.”

“Go back inside.” I tried not to snap at them but couldn’t help myself. “Git! Right now.”

Mary darted around me and ran up to the tree. At the sight of Duncan she froze.

I wanted to scalp her on the spot, and I was just reaching out to do that when Duncan’s eyes opened. She stared directly at Mary.

“Don’t sing with your mouth open, Mary, or you’ll drown,” she said.

Two

J
OHANNA closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. That was the only movement, until Mary went squalling back into the house with Annabelle Lee on her heels. They acted as if they’d seen Satan. Duncan
was
a frightful sight. She looked like Job after the Lord had sent down His plagues, only worse. The smell of her burned flesh was indescribable, but she was alive.

She stared after Mary and Annabelle, but she didn’t move. It was JoHanna who finally straightened her back and eased Duncan into a sitting position.

“We have to clean those burns,” JoHanna said as she lifted Duncan’s leg and looked at a spot as big as my hand that was real bad. “Is Dr. Westfall still in the house?”

She was talking to me, but I could only swallow. I still didn’t believe Duncan was alive, but she was looking at me. Only by now there were great dark circles beneath her eyes. The rain had mostly put out all the little smoldering fires in her clothes and hair. Great clumps were missing, and she looked just awful. It occurred to me that I was caught in a nightmare. No one could survive lightning. Duncan was dead. I was in shock.

“Mattie, could you get the doctor out here?” JoHanna cradled Duncan against her chest. Her eyes, edged with white, darted in the direction of the house.

I didn’t have time to budge from the spot. Dr. Westfall and his black bag came flying out of the house, sent no doubt by Mary and Annabelle Lee. Agnes was in the doorway, along with the remnants of the party. They were as awed as I was—and about as useful.

Dr. Westfall stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Duncan, but then he came on over and began to look at her arms and legs. He knelt in the wet grass, ignoring the damage to his suit pants. The discoloration in Duncan’s face was bad, but there were no burns there. Her scalp was singed, but the damage wasn’t that bad. Dr. Westfall went for the more serious wounds on her legs.

“Second degree here, JoHanna.” He talked as he worked, but he kept lifting a furtive glance at Duncan. Even as he touched her, felt the warmth of her flesh, he didn’t believe she was alive.

No one did. Except JoHanna, who’d refused to believe that she was dead.

“Let’s move her in the house.” Dr. Westfall rose to one knee.

“No.” JoHanna’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“I need water, disinfectant, a place to work. The burns are serious.” He held his anger barely in check.

“No. We’re not going in that house. We’re going home.”

“JoHanna …”

“Do it here, Doc. It’s her legs and her back. I can feel the heat.”

“It’s a matter of sterile …”

“Duncan is not going in that house.” JoHanna looked up at the building not thirty yards away. There wasn’t anger or hatred or fear in her gaze. It was like a person who sees a snake in the road ahead and decides to take a detour.

“Go get some water and some rags.” The doctor addressed me even though he didn’t look my way. “Be quick about it.”

I took off like a scalded cat and was back with Agnes’s best crockery bowl filled with hot water and a stack of her white dishcloths.

Shaking his head at JoHanna’s stubbornness, Dr. Westfall bandaged the worst of Duncan’s burns, brusquely warning JoHanna about the ones on her back and how they were to be washed and dressed and what would happen if infection set in. He worked with great efficiency and without ever speaking directly to Duncan. For her part, she never cried out though her eyes were clouded with pain. She stared into JoHanna’s eyes, taking her comfort there.

With the bloody washbowl and empty bottles of disinfectant at his feet, the doctor finally looked Duncan directly in the eyes.

“Do you know who you are?” he asked. He was puzzled by her silence. She was a child, and the wounds had to be hideously painful. Why hadn’t she cried out?

Duncan looked at him, comprehension plain on her face, but she didn’t answer.

“Duncan, can you hear me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Do you hurt anywhere?”

She shook her head.

“Can she talk?” he asked JoHanna.

“She did. To Mary.” JoHanna placed her fingers on Duncan’s throat. “Talk to me,” she said softly.

Duncan swallowed but said nothing.

“It could be shock. It could be something that’ll wear off in a day or two.” Dr. Westfall didn’t look at all certain. His fingers raked through his nimbus of white hair. “Bring her to see me tomorrow, JoHanna. I’ve done all I can for now. Tomorrow we’ll be able to tell more.”

“I will. Thank you, Doc. You’ve been good to us.”

He grunted and stood, snapping his case shut and shaking his legs so that the wet knees of his britches didn’t stick to his skin.

JoHanna continued to hold Duncan on her lap until Dr. Westfall was gone. I noticed that he went around the house and down the street, obviously unwilling to answer the questions that the women inside the house would bombard him with.

“Let’s go, Duncan,” JoHanna pushed herself up and then turned to give Duncan her hand. The child took it but didn’t stand.

Without being asked I went behind her and caught her under the arms, taking care not to touch her back. She was tall but thin. I’d lifted plenty of sacks of feed and watermelons. Duncan weighed about the same as two big Shouting Methodists. She was just lankier. When I finally got her feet under her, I eased her weight back down.

I’m not certain if her legs shifted or her knees buckled, but she wouldn’t take the weight. JoHanna came to help me, but after a few tries it became clear that Duncan either couldn’t or wouldn’t stand.

JoHanna knelt down and straightened Duncan’s legs, pressing the tops of her feet and her ankles. “Can you feel that?” she asked, looking up.

I was standing behind Duncan, holding her up. For the first time that day I saw fear in JoHanna’s eyes. She’d known all along that Duncan was alive. But she couldn’t guarantee that the child would be normal.

Duncan shook her head no.

JoHanna pressed her knees. “How about here?”

The quick shake.

JoHanna’s hands moved higher, to her thighs. “Here?”

Duncan began to understand. She reached down with her own hands to capture her mother’s, pressing the fingers deep into her legs in a moment of panic. She shook her head, fast, then more wildly as she began to look first at JoHanna and then at me. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

“Let’s put her in the wagon,” JoHanna said, indicating the red wagon that was parked behind the magnolia tree. We lifted her, JoHanna with the legs and me with the shoulders, and carried her to the wagon. As soon as she was settled, JoHanna took the handle and turned toward Peterson Lane. They lived a mile out of town in an isolated area.

“Aren’t you going to the doctor?” I couldn’t believe she was going the opposite way. Duncan couldn’t walk. Her legs were like dead things.

“There’s no point.” JoHanna took a long look down the way the doctor had gone. “He’s done all he can do.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Maybe they didn’t have enough money for the doctor to come back. “He’ll put it on credit.” I spoke without thinking, horrified the instant the words left my mouth.

“It’s not a matter of money,” JoHanna said, starting to walk toward home. “Old Doc’s done what he can.” She had managed to get the wagon out of the yard and close to the edge of the road.

“Shall I walk with you?” I was already walking beside them. I didn’t want to go back to the party, and I didn’t want to go home.

“No. We’re fine. Will will be home if he gets word.” She was walking fast, the wagon leaving narrow ruts in the soft red earth.

“Can I do anything?” I stopped at the corner of Redemption, wanting to go but not certain. Elikah would be waiting for me.

“Yes, you can.” JoHanna stopped walking long enough to turn to me. “Take the gramophone home with you and keep it safe for Duncan. Ask Agnes to loan you a wagon. She’ll be glad to do it just to keep the gramophone out of her house.”

“I’ll take good care of it.” I’d have to figure out how to get it home and hide it from Elikah. He didn’t hold with such contraptions.

As if she sensed my worries, JoHanna stopped. “Are you sure?”

Looking into her blue eyes, I was sure. “I can manage that for you, Mrs. McVay.”

“JoHanna,” she corrected, taking five seconds longer to stare into my eyes and make certain that I could do what she’d asked. “Bring it out to the house tomorrow, and I’ll give you some squash and beans and potatoes for your husband’s supper.”

“I hope Duncan is okay.”

JoHanna didn’t answer. She started walking again, a ground-covering stride that meant business. I’d never seen a woman walk with such determination, and I felt a chill. She was going out to that isolated house, all by herself, with her daughter nearly dead from a lightning bolt.

I didn’t tell Elikah about the lightning. Didn’t have to. It was the talk of the town before JoHanna and Duncan had made it to the turnoff for Peterson Lane. When I first got to Jexville I was amazed at the speed with which tales got carried from one end of town to another. I learned in a few days that good gossip was enough for a man to get up from a haircut and a shave and hurry over to the café for a cup of coffee and a lean-down. While the women met over kitchen tables and clotheslines, the men hunkered over coffee and talk at the café, or in the barber’s chair.

By the time I got home, three men had already been by the barbershop to give Elikah the news, and he’d been over to the boot stop to tell Axim. By the time I got home that afternoon, it was already settled that the hand of God had smote Duncan McVay for her waywardness and for her mother’s wild and wanton ways. It was God’s punishment on a nest of sinners, or at least those were the sentiments of most of the townspeople. If there was any sympathy at all, it was for Will, a man surrounded by willful women.

It had taken me longer to get home because I had to hide the gramophone. I’d borrowed a wagon from Agnes, but I knew better than to try taking the player home. Elikah had strong views on music and dancing. Since I was new in town, it took a little thinking, but I finally managed to wedge the wagon and gramophone up beside the haystack at the livery stables. It was safe and dry, and there was little chance that anyone would stumble over it. At least for a night. Then I hurried home to start dinner.

One of my favorite things to do after dinner was to sit out on the porch and swing. The creak of those old chains gave me a sense of peace, even on the hottest nights.

It was at night that Jexville revealed its true beauty. It reminded me of a dog that strayed up to our house when I was fourteen. Suke was an ugly, yellow animal with small eyes and mange. At night, though, after the dishes were done and the younger children put in bed, I’d sit on the stoop and Suke would come up and push her nose into my hand. There, in the darkness, we could both be beautiful.

When the stars came out at night and the wind whispered through the pine needles rich with the smell of resin, Jexville had a kind of allure. There were areas where oaks and magnolias made lush groves. Some of the new settlers had planted pecan trees, which would grow into groves of big gray trunks with slender, intricate branches. When the rawness and redness of the new main street and the smell of new lumber for some of the stores finally wore away some, it would not be as bleakly ugly. My own little house, the yard scratched barer than a scaly chicken’s head, would have flowers in the next spring. With a little care, a little effort, Jexville would improve. Hard work could turn a lot of things around.

With the day finished and the night ahead, I could slip into my old daydreams. They were silly things, gleaned from the pages of penny magazines and glimpses of the traveling shows that sometimes played at the Meridian Opera House. I knew they were false, but they gave me intense pleasure. It was years later before I began to wonder how a human heart can know something to be false and still try so desperately to believe in it.

The night passed, and the hot, pink kiss of the morning sun found me dressed and pacing the kitchen floor. Elikah was a handsome man back then. He took great pride in his mustache. While I made breakfast, he made sure that each hair was in place. In his starched white shirt and black suspenders, he did look the part of the town surgeon, much more so than Dr. Westfall, who always looked as if he’d been stampeded. Elikah was fond of saying that in a town without the good fortune to have a doc, the barber often served that purpose. It always gave me a little chill, which made him smile.