Touched (39 page)

As I trotted along, I tried to recall the events of the night. JoHanna and I had talked until the monotony of the motor, the rhythmic flickering of the headlights along the sides of the road, had spun me into sleep. I had joined Duncan in that haven of forgetfulness. Instead of going to the hotel, apparently JoHanna had stopped the car along the highway and gone to sleep herself. We had all awakened with our first view of the water. Or my first view. Will and JoHanna had been to the coast before. As I’d discovered on the ride, they’d been to some of Tommy Ladnier’s parties.

JoHanna knew Tommy far better than she’d ever let on to John, or me. Both she and Will knew him. It was a thought that troubled me.

“Pecos,” JoHanna called him gently. “Come here, you fool. It’s a seagull you’ve set your heart on, and she’ll have nothing to do with you.”

Pecos didn’t believe a word JoHanna said. He shook out his wings and danced toward the gull, making ardent little rooster noises as he pranced and strutted. The gull eyed him calmly, as if debating whether to gobble him up or not. Standing on her skinny little legs, she turned her head back to the sea, ignoring his advances. Above us the gulls wheeled, cutting suddenly toward the water, diving headfirst into the rolling waves with an explosion that made me cry out in alarm. Foam breaking around one bird, it struggled back into the air, a small fish captured in its beak.

The other birds circled and cried, winging over the water for another look.

Pecos was oblivious to the water antics of the gulls. He had eyes only for the solitary one that continued to stand on the beach. He eased closer to her, walking around to look at her from another view. Puffing out his chest, he called to her with a lot of fancy cackling thrown in.

“Why doesn’t she fly away?” Duncan had caught up with JoHanna. She stood by her mother and asked the question.

“I don’t know.” JoHanna had given up chasing Pecos. When the gull left, we’d be able to catch him.

“Do you think she knows he’s a rooster?” Duncan asked.

“I suspect she knows he isn’t a seagull. I’m not certain she knows exactly what he is. But I can tell you, if we don’t catch him soon, he’s going to be our supper tonight. That bird has been nothing but a torment for the last few days. Aunt Sadie was right. The only place inside a home he deserves to be is inside a pot.”

Duncan laughed at her mother. “He can’t help himself, Mama. He’s fallen in love.”

Duncan meant the words in jest, but they went straight to JoHanna’s heart. She paled, then forced a smile. “I suppose love is a force that should earn some patience from others,” she said, ruffling Duncan’s hair. “But I’d like some breakfast and a bath. We should go to the Seaview and check in.”

“Why didn’t we go last night?” Duncan asked. “You should have gotten me and Mattie up if we were going to camp on the beach.”

“I didn’t mean to sleep the whole night. I was going to take a nap, but I didn’t wake until I felt the dawn mist on my face.” JoHanna smiled, then bent to kiss Duncan’s cheek. “Catch that nasty bird of yours and let’s go get a room.”

“Can we have Biloxi bacon and grits?” Duncan licked her lips in anticipation.

“I think that sounds delightful.”

In answer to my questioning look, Duncan laughed. “It’s fried mullet, Mattie, with a big old plate of hot buttered grits. And maybe biscuits, if we’re lucky. You’ll love it.”

I had walked a little closer to the edge of the water, analyzing the funny feel of the air, the faintest twang that rested on my tongue when I opened my mouth.

“It’s salt water, Mattie. You can feel it on your skin, taste it.” JoHanna smiled. “It’s easier to swim in salt water. It holds you up some.”

I looked out to the horizon where I thought I saw something in the distance.

“That’s a small barrier island. This water is the Sound. On the other side of the island is the Gulf of Mexico. I remember you telling me once that you dreamed about the blue water and white beaches.” JoHanna pointed to where the tantalizing bit of land drifted in and out of visibility. A hint of being there for just a split second, then gone in the haze. “There’s a ferryboat that goes out there. An excursion boat, out to Ship Island. We can take a picnic, and you can see the Gulf. After we find Floyd.”

We turned back to the car, and I halted in the dark gray clay that formed the lip of the beach. My attention had been so focused on the water, on Pecos and his romance, that I hadn’t thought to look behind me. The biggest, grandest house I’d ever seen was not a hundred yards away. Huge oaks seemed to open their arms to the water, embracing the salty air, inviting everyone who passed to look and admire. I was so taken with the house at first that it took me a while to see the hull of a boat in the front yard. The portico on the right side of the house looked as if it might be falling, and a rocking chair was crashed against one of the trees. Other bits of debris became evident, and as I looked, five men rounded the corner of the house and began putting up ladders on the portico.

“The hurricane,” JoHanna said. “But it doesn’t look that bad. Not here, at least. That’s the DeSalvo House.”

“Yancy DeSalvo?” I couldn’t believe it. Yancy DeSalvo starred in moving pictures. Callie, who had fallen in love with his movie poster outside the Star Theater in Meridian, had said he was from Mississippi. She was concerned that he wouldn’t do well in talkies because of his accent.

“Actually, the house belongs to his parents.” JoHanna smiled at my open awe. “But he comes here fairly often.”

“You’ve met him?” I couldn’t believe it.

JoHanna’s face took on a speculative look as she stared at the house. “At some of Tommy Ladnier’s parties. Tommy draws an interesting crowd.”

“What are you thinking, JoHanna?” I could see it in the calm stillness of her features. But her eyes weren’t still. They were crackling with some internal flame.

“Tommy’s house is right on the water. There are brick terraces that lead down into the Sound.” She was thinking aloud. “If the DeSalvos have a work crew, surely Tommy does, too. If the DeSalvos have five or ten men cleaning up after the storm, Tommy will have fifty. He has to do everything bigger and grander than anyone else. I told him once that his vanity would be his downfall.”

It wasn’t possible that I’d caught on to her suggestion. “You don’t honestly think that we could pretend to be workers and get away with it?” I looked at her figure. She was wearing pants, that was true. But not from the front, back or side did she look like a man. And I looked like a boy. A skinny, weak boy that no one in his right mind would hire as a laborer.

“Not as workers.” JoHanna’s smile was pleased. “We could bring sandwiches to sell to the crew. We could pass ourselves off as caterers. And we could do it in such a way that Tommy would never recognize me.”

“And what about me?” Duncan had been listening to the conversation with sharp interest.

“You and Pecos are going to have to stay at the Seaview.”

“No!” Duncan lifted her chin. “I want to help Floyd.”

JoHanna shifted so that she could find Pecos. He was still doing his rooster dance of affection to the gull, who stood unmoved by his attentions. “If you want to help Floyd, catch that damn rooster and let’s go to the Seaview. We need to bathe, change, and eat. And then we’ll come up with a plan.”

Duncan turned away, kicking a clump of sea grass as she did. “I won’t be left behind,” she said to the Sound. “I won’t be.”

I looked at JoHanna, who lifted a shoulder. “I’ve never denied her anything I could get for her. I suppose we all have to learn there are things we simply can’t have.”

She went and got in the car, and I followed. Fifteen minutes later, an out-of-breath Duncan returned to the car with the rooster wrapped in her shirt. She was bare from the waist up, and shivering, but Pecos was contained. I got the only sweater I’d thought to pack for her and we headed down the highway toward the hotel.

Our progress was slow. The neatness of the DeSalvo house had not prepared us for the fury the storm had wreaked elsewhere. Men with cross-saws were out removing the trees which had been uprooted by the force of the wind. Huge oaks, their root systems as big as houses, had fallen. JoHanna was near tears. “Some of those trees are hundreds of years old,” she said. “Some of them survived the storm in 1906, and now they’re gone.”

“There are lots of trees left, Mama.” Duncan patted her shoulders. “Look, there’s a bunch.”

And we looked at the grove of live oaks that marked the entrance to a large house set back from the road. Men with ladders were headed toward a tree, and I saw the remains of a small boat in the branches. The wind and water must have picked up the boat and hurled it into the oaks.

Roofs had been swept from houses, buildings collapsed by the weight of water and wind. All along the water the piers and wharves that had been built for boats or fishing had been destroyed. In most places only the posts remained, marking where once the wooden piers had stood. Stricken by the scene, JoHanna drove slowly to an enormous white hotel that looked like an old mansion. The sign out front, plastered with leaves that looked as if they’d been embedded into the wood, proclaimed it to be the Seaview.

JoHanna slowed the car in the white shell drive. “Thank goodness,” she said. “I was beginning to think the storm might have blown it away.”

The massive building, fronting the beach with fifteen enormous white columns, had made a good target for the wind, but the walls were solid. JoHanna said the bricks were handmade by slaves, coated with heavy plaster and then painted white. We pulled up to the front where a man in a red uniform opened the door for me and JoHanna, and then took our bags out.

“The lobby is a little damp,” he said, not smiling at all. “But the rooms on the second floor are fine.”

JoHanna thanked him and gave him a coin, and he drove the car away while another man took our bags and followed us into the lobby.

My trip to Mobile and New Orleans had given me a glimpse of the splendor of a fine hotel, so I didn’t gawk and act like a bumpkin. The hotel, even with maids sopping up water from the carpets and carpenters replacing window frames and panes, was beautiful. And there was an amazing cheerfulness about the clerk and bellboys as they signed us in and took us to a room. Duncan was busy with the suitcase where she’d secreted Pecos. She was terrified the rooster would get in a tizzy and give himself away. She didn’t see JoHanna when she signed our names as Martha Lindsey, Jane and Emily Lindsey. The scratch of the pen across the heavy pages of the registry book gave me a chill. I had forgotten, for the moment, why we’d come to Biloxi.

“Will John know how to get us a message?” I whispered to her. As we followed a young man in a smart red jacket to our rooms, she nodded. “John knows the names.”

The bellman carried our bags as if they weighed nothing. Unlocking the door, he stowed our luggage, opened the windows, and waited discreetly by the door until JoHanna gave him a coin, too. The Seaview was an expensive place, just getting up to the room.

I went to the window, touching the heavy rose fabric of the draperies. They matched the wallpaper of wild roses and green leaves, which matched the dark rose chaise beside the window. Outside the sun was burning off the gray mist, and though the wind was chill, the day promised to be fine.

“I’ll have a bath first,” JoHanna said as she watched Duncan free Pecos. “Then Mattie.”

“I’m hungry.” Duncan looked up from the bird.

“Call room service,” JoHanna directed. “Then figure out some way to confine that bird. We can’t have him flying out the second-floor window every time he gets a yen for a seagull.”

Duncan sighed as she went to the bell pull and tugged it gently. “You act like you wish me and Pecos weren’t here.”

JoHanna turned in the doorway. “I wish you weren’t. Because I love you and I want you safe. If I’d had time to take you to Hattiesburg, I would have. And I’m telling you now, Duncan, if you give me the first bit of trouble, I’ll put you on a train to New Orleans. The first one that pulls out. You can stay with Vanessa.”

The threat was enough to make Duncan clamp her mouth shut. She waited until her mother closed the bathroom door before she turned to me. “Vanessa is a bitch. I hate her.”

“Who is Vanessa?” I asked. I’d never heard JoHanna mention her.

“Daddy’s cousin. She disapproves of Mama and me. She thinks Daddy made a mistake in marrying Mama.”

“She says so?” I couldn’t believe it.

“All the time. In front of Mama and Daddy and me.” Duncan grinned. “She calls me a rotten brat. She says Mama bewitched Daddy and he’s never gotten out of the spell.”

I sank down on the chaise to wait bath or food, whichever came first. “I hope we don’t have to meet her.”

Duncan went to the window and stood with her hand on Pecos’s shifting head. “I guess I’ll have to stay here with the rooster while y’all have all the fun.”

Thirty-four