Touched (37 page)

Duncan’s eyes grew vague as she concentrated. “I saw them lying in the field beside the house, side by side, the woman and then the children, the two boys beside the mother and the little girl last.”

“And the man, what was he doing?”

“He was on his knees by the ditch where the water was running fast, and the rain was coming down. I thought he was praying.” She closed her eyes. “But he had drowned them.”

“Are you sure?” John asked.

“What difference does it make?” JoHanna said. “They’re dead. He’s dead.”

John straightened up and looked at me. “Because if he didn’t kill them, someone else did. And that someone may still be on the loose around here. That’s the difference.”

“What should we do?” JoHanna asked. The thought of that entire family hanging there was eating away at her. They were dead, certainly, and hanging there couldn’t matter to them. But it was another violation to leave them there to swing in the sun like some awful fruit, slowly ripening. The right thing to do would be to notify Sheriff Grissham and let him cut them down. But calling the sheriff put JoHanna square in the middle of some questions that had no reasonable answers.

“Let it go.” John signaled me again with his eyes as he left the room.

I met him in the kitchen. He was standing at the sink staring out the window at the chinaberry tree. The yard was covered with leaves blown down by the storm.

“Things are bad in town,” he said. “There’s lots of talk. After you drove away, they wanted to come out here and burn the house down.”

“Why didn’t they?”

“Doc Westfall shamed them. Some of the men are truly afraid, Mattie. Someone’s got them so worked up they believe JoHanna and Duncan can can kill people with a look. Those are the ones Doc shamed. But the ones behind all this … They know better, and they’re doing this deliberately.” He didn’t look at me.

“You think it’s Elikah, don’t you?” My stomach had grown tight, hot.

“Maybe. He stayed in his barbershop, made certain he wasn’t part of any crowd. It doesn’t make any sense.” His hands flexed on the lip of the sink, gripping, then relaxing. “That’s what frightens me. It doesn’t make a bit of sense, but they’re acting like it does.”

“Are they going to hurt us?”

His hands tightened on the porcelain, a pulse of frustration. “I want you to help me convince JoHanna to leave tonight. She can get to New Augusta or Hattiesburg. I’ll go to Mobile and wait for Will to come in on the train.”

“Why can’t we go to Mobile?” It didn’t make sense for us to go in the opposite direction from Will.

“There was storm damage. I’m not certain how bad, but it may not be safe for you. The roads north will be clearer. Besides, it’s hot. There’s always sickness after a storm like this.”

“Yellow jack.” I’d heard the stories of epidemics. Those were wartime epidemics. They didn’t happen now, did they?

“If you go on to Hattiesburg, you’ll be safer.” His hands loosened with a deliberate effort that tensed his shoulders. “It’s the best I can do.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

He finally turned around. There was something else he wanted to say. “Mattie, the talk is ugly. About JoHanna. About the past.”

“What are they saying?”

“That she takes lovers when Will’s out of town. That Duncan isn’t his child.” He hesitated. “That Floyd is her lover. And yours.”

“That’s crazy talk. Floyd doesn’t even understand—”

“I know.” The gentleness of his voice stopped me. “Right now the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get out of here.”

“What else are they saying?” I saw it in his eyes, something worse than lovers.

“It’s Duncan. They say she’s wicked. Marked. A child of the devil.” He tried to smile, but fear held his lips too rigid.

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. One look and you can see Will McVay stamped all over her.”

“Mattie, they’re afraid. They aren’t looking, or thinking. And what I’m afraid of is they’re going to come down that road and do something that I can’t stop.”

“Do they know you’re here, with us?”

He walked to the table and put his hands on the back of a chair. He was a man used to action, to moving on, and now he was stuck. Whatever he’d taken from Will, he’d lost his freedom in the bargain. “They’re curious about me, but there are other strangers in town, people stranded by the storm. I tried not to ask too many questions, but there was this secretiveness. Wherever I went, I felt it. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. They were watching me, calculating. They’re planning something, and they weren’t going to let a stranger in on it. They don’t trust anyone.”

“We can’t leave without Floyd.” I brushed past him and went to the sink. Evening was falling and it was time to start supper, but I had no appetite and no idea what to make. JoHanna was still in the bedroom with Duncan. I could hear the rise and fall of her voice as she talked on and on, soothing, comforting, mothering.

“I looked everywhere for him.”

Something in his voice warned me. I turned around to face him. “You think he’s been hurt?”

He spoke slowly. “I think they have him.”

“They?” My heart pounded at the thought of Elikah, at the pleasure he’d take in tormenting an innocent like Floyd. “Who’s they?”

“Some of the men. Your husband, the sheriff, that Odom man. I don’t know all their names.”

“And Mr. Moses?”

“I don’t know. His wife was very upset. I don’t know if she knows where they are and what they’re doing and won’t say, or if she’s worried about her husband.”

“They know Floyd isn’t right.” I felt as if the blood was coagulating in my heart. No matter how hard or fast it beat, the blood had gelled and wouldn’t move. Each beat brought a sharp pain.

“That’s exactly the reason they took him. Floyd would go along without a fight, never imagining that they would hurt him.”

“We have to find him, John.” My legs were liquid fire, my breath scorched dust. I couldn’t think because the need to act was so powerful. Floyd. They would hurt him. Each second was a notch of pain.

John was across the room before I saw him move, his hands assisting me into a chair.

“I looked everywhere. The livery stable, the jail. I climbed up and looked through the bars. He isn’t in there. I went around the back of the barbershop and through the feed store. I don’t know where he is.” His hands rubbed my shoulders; then he picked up one of my cold hands and rubbed it between his own. “I heard a rumor that they’d taken him somewhere.”

“Where?” I turned to look at him, snatching my hand away. “Why didn’t you say so? You have no idea what they might do to him.”

But I saw in his face that he had a very good idea, and that he was fairly certain we were too late.

“Tommy Ladnier’s.”

The only thing that came to me was the image of boots. Tall, black leather boots as elegant and slick as a coachwhip snake’s hide. Black boots that glistened in the sunlight worn by a snake-slender man with a slow, assessing smile.

“Tommy Ladnier, the bootlegger?”

“I don’t know if they meant for me to hear that so I’d go off half-cocked. It could be a setup, but those black boots have disappeared from the boot shop.”

“Did they … did they act like he was still alive?” Something pressed against the back of my throat, a tumor of fear that threatened to gag me. Fear, for Floyd and for what was happening, had begun to grow inside me like a new and terrible organ, tentacles shooting into my weakened legs, into my brain to stop my thinking.

John caught me by the nape of my neck as I slumped in the chair. He put me back in the chair, then slid his hands down to hold my shoulders. He knelt beside me, shaking me. “Don’t faint, Mattie. Don’t you dare faint. Not now. I need you. JoHanna needs you.” His hand groped at my leg until he found the derringer still in my pants pocket. “God dammit, Mattie, you can’t go down on me now.” He pressed the gun hard into my flesh, harder than the fear, external and internal pain in conflict, for me.

He made me look at him, see him. His voice reached through the fear and caught at me, drawing me back to the chair, the table, JoHanna’s kitchen, the derisive chatter of a big black crow outside the window. It was the hoarse voice of the bird that finally anchored me. The crow had come to pick through the storm debris. They’re scavengers, crows, eating dead things, waiting for death.

I almost fell when I tried to stand, but John helped me up and I went to the window. The crow was perched on a fence post, staring in at us. Waiting.

“What is it you want me to do?” I could do what he told me. I couldn’t think of anything on my own, but I could do what he said.

“Start packing JoHanna’s things. And Duncan’s. No matter what she says, we have to get them out of here. North. To Hattiesburg.”

“She won’t go if she finds out about Floyd.”

By the time I heard the creak of the floorboard, it was too late. I looked over John’s shoulder to see her standing in the doorway, a hand on either side of the frame as she braced herself.

“Finds out what about Floyd?”

She spoke softly, the ripple of water flowing over the hard clay bottom of a shallow creek. A whisper of sound, but a constant force, one not to be denied.

John said nothing as he got up slowly from his knees and turned to face her. “You have to leave. Tonight. With Mattie and Duncan.”

My fear arced across the room and touched her, making her flinch. It occurred to me that JoHanna was not used to governing her life with fear. It was so much more painful for me to see it in her than to feel it in myself. But she fought harder. She struggled against it even as she held herself upright by the door frame.

“What about Floyd?” There was no tremor in her voice. She spoke as calmly as if she were asking if we had eggs in the house.

“JoHanna, they’re saying that Duncan is the daughter of Satan. They’ve lost their minds with fear and vengeance. They’re going to hurt Duncan, and you, if you try to stop them.” John’s voice was raw with helplessness and worry.

“What about Floyd?” JoHanna repeated.

“Floyd can’t be helped right now. Not by you or me. Once you’re safe, once Will is back, we’ll go and find him.”

“Then you know something’s happened to him?”

“I suspect as much. I know nothing for certain.”

“Where is he, John? Where have they taken him? Is he still alive?”

“I don’t know, JoHanna.”

“And if you did, you wouldn’t tell me, now would you?”

He sighed, an admission of defeat. “I can’t lie to you, Jo. Not even for your own safety. You choose your own path, and I won’t send you down it on lies.”

JoHanna nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of her head. “Mattie, would you get some bags out of my closet? Two. Put a few of Duncan’s clothes in one. Easy things. Nothing fancy. We’ll pack something for us in a minute.”

I glanced once again at the post outside the kitchen window. The crow stared back at me, then flapped his wings once and lifted awkwardly into the air, winging away into the purpling sky as night walked softly toward us from the east.

I left them in the kitchen and went to her bedroom, where I could still hear every word they said. They argued, back and forth. John told her what he’d told me. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but he meant what he said about lies. He could not deceive her. Not even for her own safety. The packing of the bags was a hopeful thing for John, until he discovered exactly where it was she meant to go.

Thirty-two

I
T was decided. John would go to Jeb Fairley’s house and leave an anonymous note reporting the hangings out on Red Licorice Road. JoHanna had recalled the name of the twisty little path that led to the macabre scene, and other than Doc Westfall, Jeb was the only person JoHanna had any faith would contact the authorities on the strength of an unsigned letter describing such a gory scene. Even if Jeb suspected where the information came from, he’d keep his mouth shut. JoHanna was positive of it, and I agreed. Once the note was delivered, John would use the darkness to search the town. Sheriff Grissham was not a man to patrol the streets. There had been no need for such tactics. JoHanna had determined that John might discover more by spying in Axim’s windows than by asking questions. If Mr. Moses had returned home to his wife—without Floyd—then John might press for some answers.