Maud's Line (35 page)

She'd had Mr. Singer's books for more than two months. She'd avoided returning them for fear of his seeing her condition. She didn't particularly want to run into Lizzie, either. She didn't feel embarrassed about the baby in general, only irritated and depressed. But while most people had forgotten about Booker, Mr. Singer and Lizzie wouldn't have. They probably even knew how he was doing. She didn't want to know that herself. She didn't think she could bear hearing about his success. And she didn't want Mr. Singer or Lizzie feeling sorry for her.

But the books looked like snakes coiled on the chest every time she passed. And since it was cold outside, she was inside as much as out. She put the books in a drawer. But that felt like knowing a snake was hiding under a bush, and that was painful, considering the way her mother had died. So she brought the books back out, and on a day between Christmas and New Year's, she decided she'd take them back. Since it was the holiday season, she added three jars of plum jelly to the feed sack.

She put on her father's heavy coat. The only mirror was the little one behind the sheet, so she couldn't see her entire figure. But she held the looking glass down to her stomach to see if the coat hid her condition. She thought maybe, maybe not. Still, she figured she needed to return the books before she got any bigger. She set off on Leaf on a gray day into a wind that was cold.

If Mr. Singer was home, she planned to turn around and try again the next day. But when she got to within sight of his house, she was relieved to see that his garage was an empty hole. She rode to the hitching rail, tied Leaf there, and walked to the summer kitchen. Smoke was curling from its chimney and stovepipe, but the door was shut against the cold. She knocked.

Lizzie invited her in. The room was warm; fires were burning in both the stove and the fireplace. Maud set the sack on the table, brought out the jelly jars, and moved to the hearth. She held her hands over the flames while Lizzie heated up water for coffee. They talked as friends. Eventually, warmed by the coffee and fire, Maud started sweating. She moved away from the fireplace toward the door. But it was closed against the weather. She swiped beads of sweat off her upper lip with her forefinger.

Lizzie said, “You can take yer coat off.”

Maud hesitated. But she was comfortable and had some company. Gossip was the only entertainment anybody had; Lizzie had probably already gotten word of her situation. So she unbuttoned the top of her coat and took the bull by the horns. “I'm in a family way.”

Lizzie's eyebrows lifted.
“Ahum,”
she said. “Who's the lucky daddy?”

Maud had gotten accustomed to the Negro woman's directness. It was completely opposite from the way any Indian would react, and probably most Negroes, too, for all she knew. But she was used to directness in white people, and she figured Lizzie, having worked for Mr. Singer for so long, had acquired some white ways. Still, Maud stammered. “It's, uh, Billy Walkingstick's. I've been seeing him a good while.” She suddenly felt even hotter and worried that she looked embarrassed.

“Coming soon?”

Maud ducked that question with “I wish it'd come today.”

Lizzie turned to the sink. She pulled the plug. The water gurgled down the drain. When the noise went away, she turned around. She opened her mouth. Then she turned back to the sink. Maud wondered what she'd been going to say, but she was almost certain she didn't really want to hear it. She said, “You'll thank Mr. Singer for me, please?”

Lizzie let out a sigh. Her shoulders rose and fell. She turned around and said, “Yer'll be needing some more books. Can't do much with a big belly.”

Maud left with three more books and was thankful to have them. She'd liked
Elmer Gantry
enough to read it twice, had read the Spanish influenza book twice, too, and parts of the medical dictionary again and again. But if it hadn't been for Leaf, the boredom and the loneliness of the farm, even with Billy there, would've been more than she could've taken. She sorely missed being able to talk about books and ideas with Lovely—and with Booker—if she let herself dwell on that. But she didn't. She rode past the school, and as construction had halted for the holidays, she walked Leaf around the new building. While she did, she daydreamed about teaching. That could be something she could do. But she couldn't teach and tend a baby. And she would somehow have to get enough money to go the teachers' college in Tahlequah. She wished she'd asked Booker more about what all he'd done to teach. But when she thought about that, she found her blues coming back, and she'd learned to steer clear of them when she could. She turned Leaf away from the school, and before she went home, she stopped in and visited Nan.

The family spent New Year's Day at her grandpa's. Ame and Viola came in with Ame's oldest two girls, cousins Maud particularly liked and rarely got to see. The women cooked; the men talked and smoked in the yard. The weather was warm and sunny. When the meal was over, everyone except Lucy and Viola went back to the yard and shot cigarette butts off of fence posts. Maud, for one day, forgot her condition, her grief, and her worry, and enjoyed the company, the shooting, and the hopefulness of the new year. 1927 and 1928 had been terrible years. She felt that no matter what happened, 1929 would be a better one.

At dusk, she and Billy rode home. They went at a clopping pace he set to protect her and the baby, and so slow that her mind and eyes wandered. When they were almost to Gourd's, she noticed car tracks in the dust. Two lines of them. She felt almost certain they hadn't been there when they'd gone up the line that morning. She looked toward her house. There wasn't a car in the yard. She peered east at the lane to Nan's allotment. The tracks hadn't veered in that direction. She looked down the road to the wild. No tracks there. The tracks were on her lane. Somebody had visited. Maybe her daddy. Billy kept talking about a bull he had his eye on, but Maud's mind was glued to who could've driven a car to her house. She peered into the lean-to in the distance. The light was almost gone; it was a black hole. Her father's car could be in there, and she wouldn't be able to see it. But there were two sets of tracks. The car had come and gone. Billy hopped off his horse to open the first guard. Maud studied the tracks. She couldn't remember the treads on her father's car, but he'd been gone so long he probably had different tires. She hoped that if he'd come he'd come alone.

Billy remounted after the guard was in place and dismounted again at the second one. He kept talking about building a herd of his own. Maud kept studying the tracks. She hoped nobody had come in and stolen everything they had. The house wasn't locked. The door didn't even lock from the outside. Maud looked to the chicken house. One chicken remained in the yard. She needed to scoot that hen in and close them all up.

Billy led the horses to the barn. Maud herded the stray chicken into the hen house, secured the door and flap, and went to the porch. She stopped at the front door, fearful about going in even though she knew whoever had come had already gone. She wished she'd taken her rifle with her and slowly turned the knob. The house was almost dark. The corners were in deep shadows. She went to the sheet and jerked it back. Crates and clothes. She felt relieved. Then she recalled the dead dog on the table. She turned to the kitchen, half expecting to see another one. But the table was clear except for salt, pepper, jelly, and the Calumet tin of pencils. All the guns they'd left behind were in the corner. She opened the top drawer of her chest. Her father's lighter was there.

When she picked the lighter up, she sensed her heart pounding. She felt faint and sat down on the side of the bed. The Banjo felt clammy in her hand. She was almost sure somebody had been in the house. She couldn't say why. Everything seemed in place. Her father would've probably taken his lighter had he come and gone away. And he would've known where she and Billy were. So it most likely wasn't him. Maud felt disappointed. She missed her daddy. She hoped he'd come home before he got into trouble he couldn't get out of. Grief overtook her again. She was familiar with it, knew that when she lay down it would crawl all over her like night descending and that she might not be able to shake it the next day. Still, she felt overwhelmed. She slipped out of her coat and her shoes. Without taking off her dress, she climbed under the quilts. She pretended to be asleep when Billy came to bed.

She got up three times in the night to pee. She took her dress off when she came back in the final time and rubbed her hands over her belly. She hated the baby in a way she hadn't in weeks, and she felt so heavy that the few steps to the bed seemed like walking in loose sand. When she got back under the covers, she lay awake staring at the place on the ceiling where she knew the crack ran, even though it was too dark to see it. She felt it cut across her from her collarbone; over her left, misshapen breast; down the crevice beneath it; up the hill of her belly; and down to her right hip bone. Maud wished the crack would open her up. She'd reach inside, snatch that baby out, and . . . give it to some woman who wanted one.

She was still in bed when Billy rode off to work the next morning. She got up only when the sun from the east window was too bright to ignore. The weather had turned cold again. She put on her coat, went to the outhouse and the pump, let the chickens out, and came back in and took the pan of biscuits Billy had made out of the oven. They were still warm. She slathered a biscuit with butter at the stove, sat down at the table, and slathered it with jelly. She was trying to work up the energy for chores when she caught the sound of a motor. She focused her eyes on the pencil tin to listen harder. The motor belonged to a car. She put one hand on her back and the other on the table to push herself up. She went to the window. The car was stopped at the first cattle guard. It was bright blue.

A shock zigzagged through Maud's body. The baby kicked. A spasm grabbed her between her legs. Her knees buckled. She caught herself with a hand on a knob on Billy's chest of drawers. It slowed her fall, but she still crumpled to the floor. She looked for a place to hide. Behind the sheet was the only cover. She crawled over there. She pulled herself up by holding on to the crates. She looked in the mirror. The face staring back looked like a stranger's. It was puffed with fat and pale; the hair was chopped like a boy's. She was breathing so hard she heard herself wheezing. She couldn't let Booker see her looking so bad. She pulled the sheet completely closed and sat down on a crate. Billy's dog started barking. She waited.

Booker knocked on the main door. The dog kept barking. Maud heard Booker say, “Settle down.” He knocked on the door to the kitchen. He said something else to the dog. It whined in a friendlier way. The porch steps creaked. Maud stayed put. She listened for the sound of the car. She heard the rooster. Its crow made her think that he'd check the outbuildings and barn. The dog was quiet. Maud wished she'd had time to get to the cellar. He might not check in there. She tried to smooth her breathing by thinking of the river. She closed her eyes and imagined the sandbar. She thought about searching for rocks. Her mind's eye swept the ground. She felt her breath even out. She was thinking about holding a smooth red rock in her hand when she heard Booker open the door.

He pulled the sheet back. He was wearing a heavy coat and his bowler. His eyes were as green as ever, flecked with gold. He said, “I've come for you, Maud.”

She looked down at her belly, in part to hide her face. “You're a little late.”

“Mr. Singer called me last week. He told me the situation. He'd written before, suggesting I visit. But I was waiting to hear from you.”

Maud looked up. “I didn't know where you were!”

“The post office forwards my mail. Why didn't you write? My Fayetteville address was in my first letter.”

Maud looked down again. “That letter got destroyed.”

“You tore it up?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn't tear it up. It . . . it's too hard to explain. It got destroyed in the rain.”

Booker's voice raised a little. “Why didn't you let me know? You could've sent me a message by Mr. Singer.”

Maud looked up. “I didn't know that, Booker. I didn't know where you'd gone. You up and left me without warning.” Maud could feel herself getting more agitated, and she felt trapped by Booker and the sheet. She stood up. “Get out of my way. I need space to breathe.”

Booker took his bowler off and held the sheet open with his other hand. He said more loudly, “You don't need to be so ill-tempered.”

Maud turned to face him. “Ill-tempered! How dare you! I'm just getting my temper worked up! You leave me without a word and have the nerve to come back here and call me ill-tempered! You'll be lucky if I don't take a gun to you!”

Booker let go of the sheet. The muscles in his jaws tightened. “That's the problem, Maud. I'm not used to shooting people. It's not any way to live.”

“I haven't shot anybody, Booker.” Maud glared.

“No, but you're threatening to.”

“It's just a figure of speech. Believe me, Booker, if I was gonna shoot you, I wouldn't give you any warning. I'm smarter than that.”

Booker wiped his brow with his palm. He pointed to the bed. “Do you mind if I sit down.”

“Do what you please.” Maud thought about sitting herself. But she felt like she had the upper hand and she intended to keep it.

Booker sat on the edge of the bed, laid his hat beside him, and straightened his back. “Look, Maud. If you'd read my letter, you would've known I needed to do some soul-searching.” He held up a hand. “I don't like being lied to. And I'm not used to lying to the law. I don't think I can adjust to that way of living.”

“So you left me here to take care of everything?”