I cast a look at her, noticing for the first time that she was older than I’d thought. The fine lines around her eyes were visible only when she stopped smiling. Her chestnut hair was livened with reddish highlights, but there was also silver there, especially at the temples. I looked back at Duncan.
“She’s nine and I’m forty-eight.” JoHanna spoke without turning around. “I was sinfully old when I conceived and tragically old when she was born. The biggest disappointment in town was that my old body didn’t give out and allow me to die in childbirth.”
She was smiling, but there was a strange energy behind her words.
“You look fit enough.” The words popped out of my mouth before I thought them through. Speaking before thinking was a habit that had gotten me in trouble more than once. I’d vowed to curb it, but so far had only dulled it back some.
JoHanna put her hands on my shoulders and laughed. “Fit enough for what?” she asked. “Getting pregnant or having the baby?”
I could feel the blush move up my face, and I could see that only delighted JoHanna the more. Still laughing, she shook her head and pointed me toward the kitchen, where Agnes Leatherwood was pulling the dasher out of the gallon of ice cream she’d made.
“Mrs. Mills has brought a gift,” JoHanna said, ushering me into the room.
Agnes took one look at the ruined box and dropped the ice cream dasher. “Thank you, Mattie.” She took the box and put it in the sink. “That was very thoughtful of you.” Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at JoHanna.
“The taffy didn’t set too well.” I realized I should have thrown the box away. All of the women were staring at me, at the dribble of taffy on the floor where I’d held the box away from me.
“Too humid for candy to set, but it was a sweet thing to think of.” JoHanna went to the sink and got the dishcloth. In a moment she had the sticky candy off the floor.
When she looked up, she saw that all of the women were still staring at me. She tossed the dishcloth across the room into the sink. “You know, Agnes, it’s a shame that you won’t let Annabelle dance. The girl is fat. Some exercise might do her good.”
I saw the glint of humor in JoHanna’s face as she winked at me, then turned to face the fury of Annabelle Lee’s mama.
“Annabelle is not fat. She’s highly sensitive. And dancing is a sin.”
“So is gluttony, but that hasn’t stopped a good number of people in Jexville.” JoHanna looked completely innocent, not as if she wasn’t pointing out that half the women in the room were on the portly side.
“You are a scandal, JoHanna McVay. You’re going to be the ruination of Will’s good name and his business.” The woman who spoke was big, and her face had gotten red.
“I dare say Will can take care of his own reputation and his own business.” JoHanna went to the sink. “Now are we going to serve up this ice cream or not?”
Outside the gramophone had wound down. There was the scratch of the needle across the record, and then the sound of Duncan winding the handle. The record got off to a slow, dragging start, then picked up speed and was soon racing at a fast clip.
“Serve the ice cream,” Agnes said. She was still angry, but she didn’t have the courage to confront JoHanna directly.
JoHanna dipped the big spoon into the metal container and lifted out the ice cream, complete with big chunks of peaches. “This looks delicious, Agnes.” She transferred it to a bowl, then handed it to me.
“Duncan looks hot. I’ll take this to her.” I didn’t wait to see the reaction to my words. I walked out into the hot sun letting the screen door slam behind me. I should have taken the bowl to one of the children waiting in the next room, but JoHanna had stood up for me.
Duncan waved but didn’t break her dancing.
I held up the ice cream, the condensation on the bowl leaking over my fingers and dripping twice into the dust. Duncan grinned at me, and I signaled her to come into the shade and get the ice cream. She was so hot. Dust had begun to stick to her legs.
The sun was still shining in that white-hot way of July, which meant no storms were immediate. The air was perfectly still, so still that the scratches in the record were suddenly magnified. The song was a ragtime. I don’t remember which one, but I held the bowl, glad to be out of the company of those women and fascinated by the intricate steps Duncan was only too pleased to perform for me.
There was no warning. The bolt of lightning came out of the hazy blue sky. It was a double fork. One prong hit the pine tree and the other Duncan. A blue-white light flared over the entire yard, and a ball of fire ran down the pine tree and exploded against the side of the house.
When I looked back at Duncan, she was on the ground with smoke coming off her and big holes burned in the yellow dress.
The bowl of ice cream fell to the ground, but my fingers were still bent in the shape of holding it. I remember that I thought I couldn’t inhale. The dress was already too tight, and the air was suddenly sucked dry of oxygen. It seemed like an hour that I stood there, trying to run toward Duncan, trying to breathe, trying to scream.
JoHanna came out the back door not even bothering with the steps. She ran like a gazelle, her skirt flying up over her legs. She fell to her knees beside Duncan and lifted her into her arms.
Duncan’s head flopped back, and I could see her eyes were rolled up in her head. Smoke came from her hair, which had fallen out in great clumps. I could smell the burning hair and cloth and flesh, and I felt the tears sliding over my face.
Some of the other women had come outside, and the children were peeping through the screen door. No one made a sound. There was just the music, and finally the needle made its way to the end of the record and set to shushing against the label.
“Get a doctor.” I spoke but didn’t believe I had. When I turned and no one had moved I pointed to the boy named Robert. “Run and get the doctor.”
He took off fast, his eyes too large for his pale face.
JoHanna sat in the dirt, Duncan crushed against her, and she rocked back and forth. Small sounds came from her, murmurings that I couldn’t understand.
No one went to her, so I did. It was impossible to look into Duncan’s rolled up eyes and not know that she was gone. The bolt had knocked the life out of her in one powerful blast.
I was standing just at JoHanna’s shoulder, wondering what to do, when the clouds began to roll out of the west. They were the same clouds that had been hovering on the horizon since noon, growing darker and angrier with each passing hour. But they’d hovered in the distance, far away from the red clay streets of Jexville. Now they were on the move. They came toward us, thunder rumbling louder with each tick of the clock. Lightning shot out from the low-lying clouds in nasty forks.
I knelt down and put my hand on JoHanna’s shoulder. “Let’s take her inside,” I said.
She ignored me, murmuring softly to her dead baby in that strange, lilting pattern. I didn’t know then, but it’s the same noises a mother cat makes when she’s trying to lick life into a kitten. Cows and dogs and horses have their same version of the noise. All animals do, I suppose.
“Mrs. McVay, let’s take her inside. It’s going to storm.” I lowered my grip to her arm, trying to move her gently away from the corpse. When I looked behind me, no one else had moved. They were watching us as if we were some strange creatures imported from an exotic land doing things they’d never seen before.
“Will someone help me get them inside?” I tried not to sound angry, but I hated their cowlike faces, the stupid way they stood, slack jawed.
“She’s not dead.” JoHanna whispered the words, but I knew they were meant for me. In that moment, I swear I thought I’d die from pity. How could she look at that burned body that had been flung halfway across the yard and not realize that the life had gone?
Finally, Nell Anderson stepped forward. “The doctor is on his way, JoHanna. Let’s take Duncan in the house, where he can examine her.” She spoke with gentleness.
“She’s not dead.” JoHanna shrugged away from both of us. “Just leave us alone. Go away and leave us alone.” She bent down lower, shielding Duncan from our sight.
Behind me, Rachel Carpenter started to cry softly. “Somebody get Reverend Bates,” she said. I heard another of the children slam out of the house and run. I never turned around to look. All I could think of was Duncan, alive one minute and dancing her heart out. Now she was gone.
I knelt beside JoHanna just as the first big drops of rain began to fall. They struck the dust where Duncan had been dancing, causing little flares of orange to jump up, as if the ground were alive and pulsing. The stump of the pine tree sizzled.
“Mrs. McVay, let’s take her inside. It’s going to rain.”
“She’s isn’t dead.” JoHanna never stopped rocking. “She can’t be.”
I could hear the rain in the magnolia tree beside the gramophone. It hit the slick green leaves with snaps and pops. It hit me, too, but I didn’t feel it. I could see it striking JoHanna’s shoulders, fat drops soaking into her coppery dress.
Nell Anderson knelt beside JoHanna on her right. “We need to send for Will. Where is he this week?” She reached out to straighten one of Duncan’s little socks. Her shoe was missing. It had been blown clean off her foot.
“He’s in Natchez.”
“We’ll send a telegram.”
“Try the Claremont House. He’ll be in there sometime today.”
Nell was crying, and I was crying. Only JoHanna didn’t cry. Nell got up to send the telegram, but I stayed, watching the rain soak into JoHanna McVay as she keened softly to her dead girl.
When I looked up, the other children and mothers had left or gone inside. Agnes and Annabelle Lee were standing at the door, watching. They were both crying, too.
The ground had begun to puddle with water, but JoHanna refused to consider going inside. Dr. Westfall arrived, his white hair flying around is head and his black bag in his hand. He tried to lift JoHanna, but she hunkered down over the body and cried out to be left alone. I saw his hand move out to Duncan’s neck and rest there for a moment, and then he reached up and closed her eyes. When he stood, he shook his head at Agnes and walked to the back door.
They spoke in low whispers for a moment, and then he went inside.
“JoHanna, we have to move out of the rain.” I knew if she didn’t get up and move, they were going to come back outside and force her. I could imagine what they were doing. They’d send for the undertaker. They’d give JoHanna a shot. Then they’d tear them apart. I put my hand on her arm. “We have to go inside if you want to keep her a little longer.”
“Make them leave me alone.” She finally looked at me, and she was crying. “She isn’t dead. I can feel her. Make them leave us alone for just a little while.”
“Move under the magnolia tree.” It didn’t offer much protection, but it was better than nothing. The rain had leveled off to where it was a steady drum on the leaves. Together we picked up Duncan and carried her the few feet to the tree. JoHanna sat with her back to the trunk, cradling her child.
“Make them leave us alone.” She didn’t beg or plead. She asked.
“Just for a while.” I didn’t know how long I could hold them off. I didn’t know why I felt like I needed to. All I knew was that once they took her baby, she’d never get her back. A little time wasn’t much to ask.
I walked across the yard, my gray dress sopping. Inside the house I heard the murmur of low voices. They were already planning what to do, how to do it. The undertaker was on the way, and Dr. Westfall was filling a glass syringe with something. It certainly wasn’t for Duncan.
“Leave her alone.”
Everyone in the room turned to look at me. I could see from their faces that I gave them a fright.
“She’s in shock. The girl is dead, and we can’t leave her out there in the rain.” Agnes wrung her hands as she spoke. She wasn’t hardhearted, just unable to think beyond what appeared proper.
“Leave her alone. It’s her child. There’s nothing to be done for Duncan. Let Mrs. McVay have the time.”
No one had ever paid the least attention to anything I’d ever said before. Maybe they didn’t know what to do, so what I said was better than nothing. But we stood there for fifteen or twenty minutes, looking at one another and listening to the rain. Agnes made a pot of coffee and gave us all a cup, and we took seats around the kitchen table, where the unfinished bowls of ice cream had melted and begun to draw flies.
The undertaker came in the front door, along with the Methodist minister. We were a sorry group, but no one wanted to go to the back door and look out in the yard.
Sitting there in that hot kitchen, I knew that JoHanna was not liked, but no one could have possibly wished that tragedy off on her. No woman is capable of wishing the death of a child on another. At least that’s what I believed.
Finally the rain stopped. It had been thirty minutes or more. I knew there wasn’t much longer to wait. I could see on their faces that they feared for JoHanna’s sanity. They were repulsed by the idea that she could embrace a dead body. To their way of thinking, it was best to get it over with.
“Let me talk to her.” I stood up and waited, but no one else volunteered. Walking across the kitchen and out the door, I saw things with a clarity that was painful. The leaves of the magnolia had been washed a deep hunter green. Part of the red dirt from the road had flooded into the yard, creating muddy red miniature rivers that cut around the magnolia, as if Duncan and JoHanna were stranded on an island. Up above, the sky was a perfect blue, deeper in color than it had been all summer.
JoHanna was as I’d left her, all energy and attention focused on her child. She was brushing Duncan’s face with her fingertips, talking so softly I couldn’t make out the words. Her hair had come down from the bun she wore and it was longer than I’d expected, and wet now, so that it was darker. It clung to her neck and shoulders and molded to her breasts beneath the wet dress.
I walked across the yard, slowly, dreading every step. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. About ten feet away, I stopped. “It’s time to go inside now, JoHanna.”