Touched (38 page)

Less than certain about the plan, John conceded because he could think of no other. He took the pen and wrote down the information as he and JoHanna concocted it by the light of a single lamp on the kitchen table. “Five people are dead on Red Licorice Road. I don’t know what happened, but it’s a gruesome sight. About five miles down from the old federal road.” John folded the note and put it in his pocket.

By the time they were done, I had packed for all of us, except John, who had already made sure that not a single possession of his was left in the house. He’d come without much, and what he had was in his pockets or the small bundle of clothes he’d tied together, his journal and pen in the middle.

After scouting Jexville, if he discovered nothing, John would take Mable from behind Elikah’s house and ride for Mobile, where he would telegraph the facts to us and wait for Will’s train. JoHanna wanted him to steal a car, but John pointed out that a horse might make better time if the roads were blocked by trees. Mable was a good horse, steady and willing.

We loaded the car in complete darkness, just in case anyone was watching. JoHanna walked out the back door without a thought of locking it. There was no point. If they came and wanted in, they would get in. JoHanna got behind the wheel with John in the passenger seat and we drove through the sticky heat of the night toward Jexville.

John had convinced JoHanna that the furor of the multiple hangings would buy Floyd a little diversion, and more time, if he was indeed being held at Tommy Ladnier’s Biloxi home. JoHanna had promised not to take any rash action, only to watch the house and determine what was happening until John could arrive with Will. They both knew it would do little good to contact the authorities on the coast. Tommy Ladnier did not have the political connections that Will had, but he had more local muscle, and a lot of it included the lawmen of the area. Tommy paid hard coin for the loyalty of the badge.

In short, terse sentences that contained nothing of John’s normal speech, he laid out the best possible scenario about Floyd’s condition. As the red car pushed through the humid night toward town, John told us that he did not believe Floyd’s life was in real danger. They might have beaten him, and undoubtedly humiliated him, but John was certain he was alive. John said that Floyd was helpless, and men like Elikah and Clyde Odom could not pass up a chance to torment a helpless creature. But surely they had not seriously injured him. More likely they were having sport at his expense while they kept him down at Tommy’s, a jester for their parties.

Sitting in the backseat with Duncan pressed against me and a much subdued Pecos on her other side, I tried not to think of my husband or Clyde Odom, a man I’d met once in passing on Redemption Road. A man who’d taken grim pleasure in belittling Floyd and putting his hand on my breast because he felt certain that the conditions of my life would not allow me to protest. Like Elikah, Clyde and his brother Boley understood the finest shadings of humiliation, of cruelty. They were capable of things that John had not considered. But how far would Floyd allow it to go? He was an innocent, but he knew the difference between right and wrong. And because he was an innocent, he might try to fight them if they pushed him too far. I closed my eyes tight and let the hot wind whip my hair free of its pins.

Will would get Floyd back. Will, with his deliberating eyes and his broad shoulders. He would make them let Floyd go. For Will, along with his muscle and his brain, knew every senator and congressman in Washington. Tracing his progress homeward, John would catch him on the way and wire him. Will might even stop in Jackson and speak with the Governor. Floyd would be rescued.

The car bumped across the railroad tracks and I opened my eyes as we slowed to a halt. John opened the car door. JoHanna’s hand stopped him.

“Be careful,” she whispered to him, taking his hand and holding it to her lips with her face turned so that Duncan could not see her tears. “Be careful, John.”

“I will.” He got out of the car and walked away without turning back. In seconds the darkness swallowed him, and I remembered my first meeting of him. I had always thought he would disappear, and I had a sudden, terrible foreknowledge that we would never see him again. When Will returned, John would seek out the solitude of the riverbank once again. He would go back to his writing, to his pursuit of the past, because he did not have the promise of the future that he wanted. He would not try to take her future with Will. He would not ask for even the chance. What was between him and JoHanna was over, killed by the ugliness of the people in Jexville.

Perhaps it was wrong, forbidden, a sin before God. But it did not seem so terrible a thing.

Duncan had eased into a troubled sleep, and I climbed over the seat into the front even as JoHanna turned the car south toward the coast.

“He’s a good man,” JoHanna said as the car picked up speed.

“He seems to be.”

JoHanna brushed the tears from her cheek. “John will send us a telegram at the Seaview if he finds out anything we need to know. I told him we’d be staying there.”

“JoHanna.” The word escaped me. “What are we going to do?”

“Whatever we have to, Mattie. Whatever it takes to get Floyd back. Then we’ll leave. I never believed they were bad people. Narrow-minded, sanctimonious, hypocritical, all of those things in abundance. But I never even considered the possibility that they would truly hurt me.”

“They’re afraid.”

“Of what?” Her voice rose in frustration. “Of a woman who minds her own business? Of a child who loves life? Yes, we are a terrifying duo.”

“You scare them because you wear the britches. Not Will’s britches. You don’t need to take his because you have your own. Everything you believe goes against the grain of the men.” I thought of what she called her religion. “Of the very land they work, the animals and trees they use. The women and children they rule. You want them to consider something other than their own needs, their own desires. They don’t like that.”

“I never tried to force them to believe the way I did. None of them.”

I finally understood it. “No, but you made them think. And that, in a town like Jexville, is unforgivable.”

We drove in silence for several minutes. Finally, JoHanna glanced at me. In the pale wash of steamy moonlight, I couldn’t tell if she was beaten or tired. “They need to think, Mattie. They’re like fat cows, all lined up and following one behind the other. They’re so eager to be led, to be told what to do and how to do it. Especially the women.” The bitterness made her voice hard. “Especially the women. I didn’t set out on any crusade. I didn’t. I just refused to pretend to go along. But I’ll tell you one thing. Not a single one of them is worth one of Floyd’s smiles. He doesn’t have to think his way to goodness. It comes from his heart. We’ll find him and we’ll leave. We won’t even go back for our things. We have enough.”

She knew then that we couldn’t go back. It wasn’t voluntary. Not really. I looked in the backseat at Duncan, so peacefully asleep. So trusting that we would take care of her. “They’ll kill her, JoHanna.”

“Yes. They’re capable of such a thing. I finally accept that.”

“You should have let John come with us.”

“No.” She swerved in the road to miss part of a tree that had not been fully removed. “If I could be certain that Elikah wouldn’t beat you, I would have made you stay, too. It isn’t safe to be my friend. It’s because of me that they even thought to hurt Floyd. Because he was my friend.”

I remembered the day we walked to the creek to see the baptism. The day Mary Lincoln drowned in her pure white dress, the long sash hanging on the roots of a submerged tree. The creek had shifted the tree slowly, inch by inch, along the deep, sandy bottom. It had taken years, perhaps, for the tree to suddenly appear in a pool where countless other people had been safely immersed. On the way to the baptism, JoHanna had talked to me of trees and nature, of awareness of the value of all living things. In her world, though, there was no reckoning for creatures such as Elikah. Because she could not harm another out of anything except survival, she had not accepted, not truly, that others were capable of such acts. Now she knew it, just as I had learned so long ago at Jojo’s hand. I fought back the burn of tears. This was a lesson I would have spared her.

“It wasn’t because Floyd is your friend,” I told her, finally able to reach across the seat and touch her. “Elikah and Clyde and the others have done this because they are who they are. They would have found some other reason or some other weaker creature to destroy.” I squeezed her arm, and she took her hand off the wheel and grasped mine, holding on to me. “This isn’t your fault any more than those dead people hanging in a tree are Duncan’s fault. Could be that you delayed this, because they were a little bit afraid of you.”

“Oh, dear God, Mattie, what if I brought all of this down on us?”

I shook my head. “You told me, JoHanna. We are by nature what we are. Some folks are just mean. You didn’t make them that way, and nothing you do or say can change them. Nothing.” I gave her a minute to think about that. “We could be smarter than them, and I’m not certain driving to Biloxi is the smartest thing we can do.”

JoHanna used her shoulder to brush tears from her cheek. “It’s the only thing I know to do, Mattie. We have to find Floyd, before it’s too late.”

In the backseat Duncan stirred, moaning softly as she opened her eyes. “Mama, I have to pee.” Duncan leaned her chin on the back of the seat. “And I’m hungry.”

JoHanna squeezed my hand once, briskly, then withdrew it to put it on the wheel. I could almost feel her straightening, drawing up to face the challenge, to meet her daughter’s needs.

“We’ll stop in a little while, Duncan, but you’ll have to wait to eat until we get to the coast. We didn’t bring any food.”

I grinned into the darkness and leaned over the seat to pull a bag from the back. “Wrong. While you and John were plotting, I got some bread and cheese and that fresh milk. We might as well drink it before it spoils.”

Duncan clapped her hands, waking Pecos who demanded a crust of bread. As we ate the coarse bread and cheese and passed the milk bottle around the car, we left behind the worst of our fears, at least for the moment. At Duncan’s suggestion, we sang all of the dance songs we knew as we drove through the night toward the Mississippi Sound and the home of a bootlegger.

Thirty-three

A
STRANGE squalling sound and laughter penetrated the layers of deep sleep. My eyes opened slowly and followed the long, red gleam of the car hood to the biggest expanse of water I’d ever seen. It was a landscape of grays. Stranger still was the sight of a woman in a pair of rolled-up men’s pants, floppy sun hat on her head in the predawn light, chasing a fussing rooster who pursued a big white and gray bird along the edge of the surf. In the backseat of the car, Duncan McVay was laughing.

“Get him, Mama,” she called out, climbing over the seat and starting toward her mother and Pecos. I rubbed my eyes and watched as Duncan ran awkwardly through the waist-high grass toward the water. Past JoHanna, the gray sky met the dark, slick grayness of what had to be the Mississippi Sound. I rolled down my sleeves and pulled up my collar. The hot snap after the hurricane had broken, and fall had returned with its melancholy dawn mists and dampness.

“Head him off, Duncan.” JoHanna issued the order as she ran ahead to try and flank Pecos.

Head darting forward and back, wings flapping in some strange ritual, Pecos ran at the white bird, then danced away. The white bird had a big bill. It looked like it could snap Pecos up and swallow him whole. Overhead the sky was filled with strange cries, and I looked up to see more of the white birds, so different in the air than on land. They circled and swooped, graceful, elegant, creatures of the air. For the first time I felt sorry for Pecos. He was such an ungainly creature. He couldn’t even fly twenty feet. And now he’d set his heart on courting one of the beautiful sky birds. I got out of the car and went to help round him up. In my pants and lace-up shoes, running was much easier than in a dress. I angled across the grass so that I would intersect the running line of mother, daughter and rooster farther down the beach.