Maud's Line (11 page)

“Was it one of the Mounts, do you think?”

Lovely shook his head. “Maybe I read too much.”

Maud didn't know what to say. So she said, “Let's see how that cut is. We better do it at the pump.”

They were at the pump, and Maud was enjoying the relative cool of the morning and wrapping Lovely's head with the rest of the strips, when he said, “I'm gonna lay 'round here today. I feel a little light-headed.”

Maud stood back from her work. He did look hollow eyed. “I'm not surprised. That was a blow.”

“Will you put the mule to pasture?”

“Sure. You think you're getting sick?”

“Might be.”

She felt his earlobe for fever. “You may be a little hot. It's hard to tell this early in the day. Should we bring out your cot?”

They set the cot and its pillow on the west porch, the coolest place in the mornings. Lovely settled in with the Bible and Maud went about her chores with her mind turned to Booker and herself. She was sweeping the front yard, thinking about how her mother would take to her pick, how she would be proud of her and like Booker, and how he would like her, when she heard Lovely call. She went to the west side of the yard to find that he had pitched up his breakfast over the side of the porch. Chickens were pecking in it.

Maud's first thought was to protect her own health. She didn't want to get sick so early into courting. Rather than bring the dipping pan and dipper out, she drew water in a bucket and brought Lovely a cup. She put the bucket and cup down beside him, and, as she backed away, told him that she would bring him more food. Lovely washed his mouth out, spat at the chickens, and lay back down on his cot. He turned his face toward the wall of the house.

When the sun hit the cot midday, they moved it beneath the branches of the live oak tree. In the late afternoon, Blue brought in a mess of fish, and Maud cleaned them by the pump. She, Blue, and Mustard ate fish, and gave Lovely the only food he wanted, a hushpuppy. By the time Booker rode up, Maud was convinced Lovely had the influenza, and she used his illness as a reason for them not to linger. She left her father and Blue discussing politics on the front porch and Lovely still on his cot under the tree and rode off behind Booker on his horse.

They went again to the cemetery. They took the horse into the shade with them to scare away any snakes, tied her to a branch, and settled on a stone that marked the grave of a great-great-uncle. They moved from necking to petting and, in between bouts, began telling each other every significant event that had happened in their lives and many of the insignificant ones, too. Booker was thirty years old. He'd been married. His wife had died in childbirth, and so had the daughter she'd carried. After that, he took to peddling to remove himself from daily reminders of loss and distract himself with new horizons. He was not interested in any woman back home and hadn't found, until now, anybody who interested him. He'd often thought he'd never find anybody again. The reawakening of feeling wasn't as frightening to him as he had imagined, but it was surprising. He'd thought romantic life would pass him by, that he would be a witness to it, but only a sad one.

Booker's tragedy made him all the more attractive to Maud and also made him seem more reliable. Maud wanted someone as stable as her daddy was shaky. Someone who would talk to her about books and ideas, who would take her to exciting places, who thought indoor plumbing and electricity were basics of life. Booker seemed to fill that ticket, and it didn't hurt that he was also handsome, sexy, and sweet smelling. She rode home holding on to his waist with her face against the back of his shirt, listening to the slow clip-clop of his horse and thinking that she'd never dreamed this kind of happiness would find her. Her contentment lasted until Saturday night.

Maud was standing at the stove on Saturday
morning when she heard a groan from the other room. Mustard was outside doing his business. It had to be Lovely. Through the door frame, she saw him holding a hand to his head. Between his other forefinger and thumb was the band of cloth he'd worn to bed. It dropped to the floor. Maud went to the main room. Lovely's scab had come off with the band. She returned to the kitchen and moved the skillet off the burner. She took Lovely to the porch, settled him in the chair, and went back in to get from the chest a patch of cloth she'd set aside for a quilt. She wet it in the dipping pan and gave it to Lovely to hold to his wound. He didn't want anything to eat. So after she finished cooking for Mustard, she took Lovely to the pump, doctored his head with Mercurochrome, and bandaged it again.

She ate and went about her chores. Mustard went about his. Lovely stayed on his cot. When the sun reached its peak, Maud helped Lovely move his cot back outside under the live oak tree and fed her father and herself. In midafternoon, Mustard was in the barn and Lovely still under the tree. Maud bathed behind the privacy fence at the pump and went back to the house to finish dressing. The window curtains were closed against the sun and the room was dim when she opened her drawer in the chest. But she instantly saw that her good clothes had shifted since she'd picked up her Woodbury soap. Not much, but into some disorder. She opened the little box that held her mother's cameo. It was there. She counted her handkerchiefs. All three were present. So were her two good scarves, her good gloves, her good handbag, and her visiting hat. She checked under her cot. The edges of her books were uneven. That confirmed her suspicion: Her father had looked for his money while she was behind the fence. He wanted it for Saturday night. She chuckled. He could look all he wanted. She'd hidden it in a jar behind a row of canned beans in the cellar. He wouldn't go to the cellar unless a tornado was climbing his tail.

Maud made cornbread and left it along with onions, beans, fatback, and gravy for her men to eat. Then she walked to Nan's. She found Sanders crying out on the porch and heard Ryde shouting before she went in the door. Renee and Morgan had been frightened into silence. Andy was on the floor happily playing with naked thread spools. Ryde went out the back door cussing. Nan handed Maud a hot iron.

Ryde had entered Andy in the Prettiest Baby in Ft. Gibson Contest. He was agitated about winning. Maud understood he needed the prize money. And she understood the usefulness of contests for cattle, horses, hogs, pies, and quilts. But a prettiest baby contest seemed mean-spirited to her. She figured all women probably believed their babies were beautiful, and she felt it was cold-hearted to spoil that illusion. But she also thought that Andy was dark enough that he had a good chance of winning. Babies with Indian blood seemed to win more often than pale little things. While Maud ironed, her mind went to the children she might have with Booker. She hoped they'd be dark. But, standing next to the stove, she felt as hot as a firecracker, and with her cousins more lively with their father out of the house and Nan tired before they'd even left, she also hoped that whatever children she and Booker had were far off in the future and few. She turned her mind to perspiration. She wanted away from the irons and the stove, and hoped, on the way to town, she could maneuver into some shade in the wagon.

She assigned her cousins seats in the buckboard based on where the sun was most likely to hit, and she slid down into a little patch of shade. But when they came to a point on the section line where she knew she'd be able to see Booker, she sat up high. He was talking to a man next to a car. She waved twice but couldn't catch his eye. She leaned again into the shadow of the tailgate and tried to avoid both the sun and the dust. She wished for rain and asked Nan how long it'd been since the last good one. Nan told her to the day, and for the rest of the journey, Ryde cussed the heat, worried aloud about his corn and onions, and talked about his crops wilting.

When they arrived at the circle of trees where the contest was, the photographer sponsoring the event had already set up his backdrop and camera. However, not many contestants had shown up, and Maud, having been to other photographic contests, knew that the Indian mothers weren't very particular about time. She knew the photographer, too. He was white and clock finicky. Maud spent much of her time watching him crane his neck, take his watch out of his pocket, and wipe his brow with his handkerchief. The rest of her time she spent trying to ensure that Andy stayed in a better disposition than the photographer did. From where their quilt lay, Maud also watched the wagons, cars, and horses on the main artery into and out of town. With so much to look at and Andy so wiggly, she gave little thought to Lovely sick at home or to her father searching for his money while she was gone.

Booker joined her in time to see Andy win, Nan get a free set of pictures, and Ryde get the ten-dollar cash prize. Shortly afterward, she and Booker escaped on his horse over to the remains of the fort, where the food was spread. They were eating fried chicken and wilted lettuce on a log near the fort's well, and she was telling Booker what she knew about the efforts to rebuild the stockade when she saw her cousin Renee running their way.

Renee stopped, heaving for breath. Maud said, “Just take your time, take your time,” wishing the child would gulp in enough air to say whatever she'd come to tell.

Finally, Renee spit out, “Daddy said to tell you, John Mount was bit.”

Maud laughed, relieved. “Well, that's too bad. Did your daddy bite him? Or was it somebody else?”

Renee's eyes grew wide. “Not Daddy. A dog. A rabid dog.”

Maud felt like a fist grabbed her heart. “When, Renee? When did this happen?” She stood. Booker laid his plate on the log and stood, too.

“I don't know. A few days past.”

“Last week?”

The child nodded.

Maud turned to Booker. She hadn't told him about the dead dog. And that smacked her almost as hard as Renee's news had. He would realize she was holding back. While she was trying to decide how to justify that, Booker asked Renee, “Is John Mount a friend or a family member?”

“Neither,” Renee said. “We hate the Mounts. Last week, they left a dead dog on Uncle Mustard's kitchen table.”

Booker turned to Maud. His eyes were wide. “I see,” he said. Then he added, “No, I don't really.”

Maud put her hand on his arm. “I was going to tell you. I was just looking for the right time. Then it slipped my mind.”

“That happens. Dead dogs in the kitchen are as common as biscuits.”

“It just . . . It's part of a feud. It goes way back.”

Maud was remembering her daddy telling Lovely and her to keep their eyes wide for something sneaky when Renee added, “The Mounts axed one of their cows in the back.”

Booker's chin pulled in. “When was that?”

“Last week. Sometime before the dead dog,” the child added.

Booker frowned and cleared his throat.

Maud's mind was caught like a shoat in a fence between trying to read Booker's mind and the possibility of the dead dog being rabid when Renee turned to her and said, “You told Mama that Lovely's sick.”

“With more than the knock on the head?” Booker asked Maud.

She was trying to recall the symptoms of rabies. They weren't coming, except for the fear of water. She'd left a cup and a bucket freshly drawn under the tree. She was focused on the image of that bucket when she answered. “He has the influenza or something. He's running a fever.”

“Is he turning away from water?”

“I was just trying to think. I can't say for sure.”

“Did the dog bite him before it died?”

“No, it was dead when we found it. But Lovely touched it.”

“I don't think you can get rabies from a dead dog. I think it has to bite you.”

“What if you get some of its spit on you?”

Booker ran his hand over his mouth. “I don't know about that. Maybe.”

“We better get home.”

“We better get a doctor,” he replied.

They sent Renee back to her parents, left their food on their plates, and rode to Dr. Ragsdale's office in the middle of town. A sign on his door said his hours were during the week. They walked to Berd's Drugstore. John Berd didn't think rabies could be carried without a bite. He thought the skin had to be broken for the virus to get in. It was then that Maud remembered Lovely's thistle poke. Her mind's eye saw him massaging his palm with his thumb. She felt sick to her stomach. She leaned against Booker.

They left Berd's and stopped everybody Maud knew. No one had seen Dr. Ragsdale. But one woman said she'd seen his car in front of Taylor's General Store. They went there. Booker knew his employer's son and Hugh Singer knew Booker's position with the law. He went with them to ask the sheriff to run the doctor to ground. But the sheriff and neither of his deputies were in, so the three of them walked back to the store, and the merchant placed a telephone call to the doctor's home. His wife said he was on the bayou fishing, that she didn't expect him home until after dark. Singer asked that the doctor call him at his home and he took down from Maud a list of Lovely's symptoms.

By that time, Maud was racked with worry. She was too anxious to meet up with her family or attend the speeches at the fort. But she was afraid to go home to see what was happening with Lovely. All she wanted to do was stay with Booker and cling to him like silk to an ear of corn.

They rode toward the bottoms, Maud clutching his waist. They stopped at Mr. Singer's. Booker had hidden his wagon in a clump of trees between the potato barn and the main house. He parted the blue canvas. They crawled into the nook between the shelves and onto his pallet. Alone and in relative private, they did what came naturally—up to a point.

Maud told Booker she was too worried about Lovely to go any further than they'd already gone. And although she felt some guilt over using Lovely that way and more over not going home to tend to him, she didn't feel guilty for enjoying herself as much as she could. Sex felt as natural as sunshine and weeds. But she wanted out of the bottoms and into a stable life with Booker, and she didn't want to be in a family way until she had what she wanted.