Touched (45 page)

Duncan weighed nothing in my arms. I took her through the kitchen and into her room, where I tumbled her into the bed and drew the spread over her from the other side. She still wore her shoes and coat, but it didn’t matter. What could such things matter now?

Jeb put the rooster at the foot of the bed and backed out of the room. “I tried to stop them,” he said again. “There was nothing I could do. They tied me in a chair in the barbershop. A barber’s chair.” He spoke with sad bitterness.

I watched his lips move, still thin and blue from the cold. I heard what he said and understood the words, but not their meaning. “I think I’ll make some coffee.” I started toward the kitchen when I heard JoHanna’s wail of anguish. It was a sound I’d never heard before, a cry of fury and pain, a mortal wound. Then came the pounding of feet on the front porch boards, then another cry from JoHanna.

“Easy.” Jeb Fairley gripped my elbow. I don’t know if he was supporting me or holding me back, but I couldn’t have moved had I known where to go. We simply stood, joined by his firm hold, until there was only silence on the front porch.

Will opened the front door and came in. He went to the linen closet at the end of the hall and lifted a stack of white sheets. Turning, he caught sight of me. “Mattie, would you make some coffee? Jeb, if you don’t mind, could you give me a hand?”

Before Will turned completely away, I called out to him. “Where’s JoHanna? Is she okay?”

“She’ll be in in a moment.” He looked toward the kitchen. “That coffee sure would be appreciated.”

I left the hall and went to the kitchen and lit a lamp. With the same match I lit the stove and waited for the wood to kindle as I drew water and measured the coffee into the metal container of the pot. In my head was the pounding of seconds, time slipping by. Life continuing on. There were other noises, of water heating, wood crackling in the stove. Time passing in the brief respite before I would begin to feel again, when I would have to let myself understand what had happened.

The front door opened and Will came in. He went to his bedroom and came out with a suit, socks, and a pair of polished black shoes. They caught the light from the lamp in the buffed leather.

“Mattie, would you put some water on to heat? Not for the coffee. A big kettle of water.” His voice was quiet with shock. “JoHanna’s going to wash the body right there on the front porch.”

“Does she need some help?” I could help. I could help wash Floyd. He had been my friend.

“I’ll ask her. How about that coffee?”

I pointed to the small kettle, which was finally beginning to sing. “In a minute. It has to drip through.”

“I’ll ask JoHanna what she wants you to do.” He went back onto the porch, closing the door very carefully behind him.

It struck me how important the tiniest things become when life has halted. I lifted the kettle and poured the water in the dripolater, hearing each drop of water as it fell through the metal, soaked into the ground coffee and struck the tin bottom of the pot. I’d heard the sound a million times in my life, but I had never really heard it. In the next room, Duncan was breathing with a soft, easy rhythm. It was the sound of promise. Outside, a night bird cried an eerie message.

Will came in for the hot water, pulling clean washcloths from the drawer beside the sink. He and Jeb disappeared back onto the front porch, the door a final click behind them. The coffee had dripped, and I poured four cups, fixing Will’s black and JoHanna’s with a spoon of sugar. I guessed that Jeb would take his with milk and sugar, so I made the last two cups that way. I had intended to take them out on a tray, but I hesitated. It struck me as bizarre that we would sit out on the porch drinking coffee with Floyd dead at our feet. Yet JoHanna would not come in and leave Floyd alone. I picked up my cup and hers and went down the hall to the front door.

Using my toe, I kicked the wood, and Will opened the door. He was holding a lantern, but he had not killed the headlights of the car. JoHanna stood on the ground beside Floyd. She had unbuttoned his shirt and was washing his face and hair. I hesitated, the coffee steaming in the night.

JoHanna was almost a silhouette, lit so strongly from behind by the headlamps of the car. The light Will held was weak by contrast, filling in only the shallowest planes. Her hands worked with such tenderness that I heard Will swallow a sob.

“You and Jeb go on inside and have your coffee,” I told him. “I’ll give JoHanna a hand.” I was surprised to find that I sounded so reasonable, so strong.

Will put his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think you should do that, Mattie.”

His voice was still distant, as if he could not believe what he was seeing. Surely this was a nightmare that would end when the sun came out and we could truly see. It was all a trick of the strange lighting, the contrast of shadow and night.

“I’ll help JoHanna.” I lifted both cups of coffee. “I brought us some out here.”

“Let’s get us some coffee,” Jeb said. He was still standing on the porch without a coat. He had to be freezing, but he never gave any indication. He reached out to Will and took the lamp, setting it down on the painted gray boards. Putting his hand on Will’s back he gently pushed him toward the front door, which was still open. Will stumbled slightly, then stepped through the door and Jeb closed it behind him. Jeb stepped close beside me, his cheek cold against my ear.

“It’s awful, Mattie, but JoHanna said she’s going to wash him and put him in Will’s suit before anyone else sees him. Doc Westfall has pronounced him dead and noted all the injuries. Sheriff Grissham can’t be found anywhere in the county, so I guess it’s okay to dress out the body.”

His words were a babble against my ear. What he said was important, but I couldn’t be troubled with such details as Sheriff Grissham. Doc Westfall wasn’t any help either. There was nothing they could do for Floyd now. It was JoHanna’s hands that he required. Her touch, and as I watched she lifted a soapy cloth to his chest, the steam rising from the warm water like his spirit departing.

I nodded absently to Jeb and walked to the steps. Midway down I stopped, aware that Jeb was still on the porch, waiting. “Go inside, Jeb. It’s freezing out here. JoHanna and I will take care of him.”

Uncertain what he should do, he hesitated. Turning quickly, he opened the door just enough for his narrow frame and slipped inside. I took the last three steps and moved beside JoHanna. With the car lights behind me, the scene shifted drastically. Floyd’s white profile gleamed in the harsh light, bloodless. His fair hair, dampened by JoHanna’s washing, looked dark and clung to his scalp. For the first time I felt a twinge of pain so bitter, so intense, I almost dropped the coffee. Floyd! His name fluttered up from my lungs and into my brain. I wanted to call him back, to scream his name so loudly that he would hear me and return.

“JoHanna.” I pressed her cup of coffee toward her. “Drink this.”

She took the cup and sipped, but her gaze never left Floyd’s face.

“How could they?” she asked, as if she expected an answer from me that would explain. “How could they do this?”

I touched his jaw with fingers still warm from holding my coffee cup, but I could bring no heat to him. He had been dead for several hours. JoHanna drank her coffee in large swallows and put the cup on the porch.

“On my life, they are going to pay for this,” she said as she bent to unbutton his shirt the rest of the way.

Together we managed to get his shirt off. His chest showed no evidence of the wound that had killed him. It was his back that gaped raw from the gunshot.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that they had shot him in the back. In fact, it gave me a measure of comfort that he had not been looking at them as they pulled the trigger. He did not have to confront the cruelty and meet it eye to eye. Floyd would not have understood such total evil. At least shot in the back, he may have thought he had a chance of getting away. He may have died with hope.

JoHanna washed him first, then tore up one sheet and used it to bind his torso, winding the clean white cotton around and around him while I braced my legs and held him up. JoHanna dressed him in one of Will’s finely starched shirts and a black vest, and finally the jacket.

Even though the night was cold, JoHanna and I were sweating by the time we moved down to his pants. JoHanna unbuckled his belt and then stopped. “Maybe you should go inside and let Will come out and help me.”

“I’ve seen a man before.” It was the first words we’d spoken since we started. I wasn’t the innocent JoHanna had met at the birthday party of a chinless wonder. I could help wash Floyd. I wanted to do that for him.

“It isn’t that, Mattie. It’s …” She stopped.

Pushing her hands away I undid the buttons of his fly. The fabric was stiff, awkward. Something inside my head warned me, but I didn’t slow down or listen. I unbuttoned his pants and in the harsh arc of the car’s headlamps, I saw what they had done to him.

I slowly lifted my hands, and saw the smudges of blood. I did not move or utter a sound. JoHanna turned to me and folded my hands into her own. Against the white frame house, our shadows appeared to pray.

“Mattie, go on in the house. Send Will out to help me.”

JoHanna’s hands warmed mine, and after what seemed like a thousand years I pulled air into my lungs. There was a scream trapped deep inside me. Far too deep to find its way out. I shook my head. I knew who had done this. And why. I recognized the deft handiwork of a man who loved the idea of a scalpel. That knowledge gave me the strength not to go insane.

I would not give Elikah the pleasure.

“Let’s wash him.” I felt the tears against my cool cheeks. “I don’t want anyone else to see him this way. No one will know what Elikah did to him. No one.”

JoHanna began to tug at his pants, sliding them from beneath him. He was heavy, and we struggled. “Oh, they’ll know. They’ll know and they’ll pay because of it. They will pay for this. I swear it.”

Even as she talked she removed his pants and together we washed his horrible wound and bound him with clean strips of cotton sheet. At last we managed to get Will’s suit pants on him. Together we put on his socks and shoes.

“He would like these shoes,” JoHanna said. Her voice broke, but she continued. “They’re fine leather. Will got them in New Orleans. Floyd would appreciate the craftsmanship.”

“What are we going to do now?” I asked.

JoHanna turned so that she could lean against the porch. “I don’t know except they’re going to pay. I don’t care how. I don’t care what it takes. I’m going to find them and make them pay.”

“You know it was Elikah.”

I thought she would deny it, but she didn’t. “I know.”

“And probably some of Tommy Ladnier’s men, if not Tommy himself.”

“He’s capable.”

“And Sheriff Grissham?” I wasn’t certain.

“Up to his eyeballs.” JoHanna had no doubts.

Sheriff Grissham and Tommy Ladnier were the most powerful men in the county. What could we do against them? JoHanna stood in the cold night. She rolled down the sleeves of her dress but that didn’t still the chattering of her teeth. We needed to go inside, but she lingered against the porch and acted as if we had the power to avenge Floyd.

“We can’t make them pay.” I saw it clearly if she did not.

“Oh, we can.” She spoke softly, as if she knew a secret. “And we will.”

The front door creaked open slowly. Will came out onto the porch, his face well lit by the headlights of the car. “JoHanna.” His voice sounded ghostly, and I looked up to be sure it was him.

Something in his voice touched her, too. “What? What is it, Will?”

He stepped closer to the edge of the porch, closer to Floyd, and knelt down and touched Floyd’s forehead, brushing back a strand of damp hair. “JoHanna, Jeb just told me that they’ve put John Doggett in prison. They’re saying he killed a family of five out on Red Licorice Road.”

Thirty-eight

D
AWN found me sitting on the bank of the creek behind JoHanna’s house where Floyd and Duncan and JoHanna and I had gone swimming one hot summer day. Floyd had sat with his back against the tree where I now sat, and the dense green leaves had dappled his blond hair with sun. I could see him clearly. I could hear his voice in the whisper of the bare September trees as they rustled with a chill autumn wind. My tears were spent, and I knew I should go back to the house to be there when Duncan awoke. When JoHanna and Will would have to tell her about Floyd. Somehow, I could not convince my body to move.