Touched (41 page)

Love took the rolls out of the oven before she answered me.

“Mr. Tommy likes for us to stay here. He don’t hold with us running all over the place.”

“I have to get my clothes and things.”

“Get that loafin’ Dillard to go get them. Or ask Mr. Tommy for some new things. He’s free with his money.”

“I really prefer my own things.” I edged toward the door. I had to get back to JoHanna and let her know I was okay. She’d be worried sick. I was half an hour late already. “I’ll be back before dawn, ready to go to work. How many do I cook for? What time in the morning does Mr. Ladnier like to eat?”

“They come in shifts, mostly. Fourteen, give or take a few. Them whores don’t eat breakfast, so you don’t have to mess with them. They’ll try to have you runnin’ trays of toast and coffee upstairs, but don’t let ‘em get that foolishness started. They like to ack like they something, but they just whores, and don’t you let ‘em forget it.”

“Will you be here in the morning?” I was suddenly concerned about the job I’d undertaken. I’d never cooked for fourteen men.

She put her hands on her wide hips and waited. Finally she spoke. “What you doin’ here?”

“I need a job.”

She came around the counter, her arms dusty with flour up to the elbow. “What you really doin’ here?”

I didn’t know what to say. JoHanna’s warning came back to me. She’d told me not to talk to the women in the house. I could feel Love’s look boring into me, her small eyes completely dark. I’d never really had a conversation with a colored person before, and I had to make her believe me. “I need the work.”

“Say now, child. You gone tell Love the truth or I’ll be calling Mr. Tommy in here to ask. You got thievin’ on your mind, you put it aside. Nobody steals from Mr. Tommy. Nobody.”

“I’m not a thief.” I’d never taken a single thing in my whole life. The idea that a colored person would think me a thief made me angry.

“You no cook neither. What’s your business here? And this is your las’ chance to tell the truth.”

She would call Tommy Ladnier and get me fired before I’d even begun. She was a big, shrewd woman. “I’m looking for someone.” I whispered the words it seemed, but she heard them clearly.

“One of Mr. Tommy’s young men?” She gave me a contemptuous look. “You done give away your freshness to one of those men? More fool you are. You’d best get outta here.”

I shook my head. “I’m looking for someone else.”

Her eyes halted, not looking or seeing, but thinking. She sucked her full bottom lip into her mouth as she thought. “You lookin’ for that stupid boy. That handsome fella, but not all together in the head.”

I nodded. “Floyd.”

She released her lip and it popped out of her mouth. She shook her head. “You get outta here, and you don’t come back.” She went back around the counter and picked up a large brush. Without looking up at me she dipped the brush in a bowl of melted butter and began working on the hot rolls. “Get outta here. I’ll tell Mr. Tommy you didn’t know nothin’ about cookin’ and I sent you on your way. He won’t come lookin’ for you if I says I fired you.”

“I have to find Floyd.” She was sympathetic to me. I could tell. She didn’t want to be, but she was.

“He ain’t here no more.”

Disappointment made me cry out, a soft ah that made her look up at me in sudden concern. “Where is he?” I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice.

“He ain’t been here today.” My panic had frightened her, and she wouldn’t look at me.

“But he was here yesterday?”

“Get outta here while you can, girl. Don’t be asking no more questions.” The rolls drank the butter as she passed the brush across them.

“I have to find him. He’s not able to take care of himself. Just tell me, was he here yesterday?”

“He was here yesterday,” she confirmed. “I made him some French toast. He said it was his favorite.” Her hand stopped in midair. “He liked that French toast with the powdered sugar and the syrup. That boy could eat.”

My disappointment gave way to a sense of relief. “Then he was okay? He wasn’t hurt?”

“He wasn’t hurt bad.” She started buttering the rolls again. “Little white girl, you get yourself out of this kitchen and this house. You go now before Mr. Tommy fines out what you askin’ about. Cause if he fines out, he will make you one sorry little skinny girl.” She didn’t look at me as she talked. She swept the brush across the warm crust of the rolls.

“Just tell me that Floyd was okay. Can you tell me that?” She kept on brushing the rolls until the smooth brown tops glistened. “He was okay.”

“Do you know where they took him? Did they take him back to Jexville?”

She put the brush down. “They took him somewhere else. Mr. Tommy don’t ask Love where he can take folks who make trouble for him. Maybe they took him home. Maybe they took him for a swim. Now you, little girl, you get out!” She clapped her hands hard together and a puff of flour floated up around her. “Get out before you get in big trouble. I’m gone count to ten, and if you ain’t gone, I’m callin’ Mr. Tommy. I can’t risk gettin’ myself in trouble to save your skinny white hide. So go!”

Thirty-five

I
RAN the whole way back to where JoHanna had parked the car. The grass in the pecan orchard had not been cut all summer, tall bahia that tangled around my feet and clutched at my skirt. Limbs had been blown down all over the orchard, and I dodged them as I cut through the rows and rows of gray, leafless trees, staying clear of the roadway just in case Love wasn’t good for her word, or wasn’t able to convince Tommy and the boys that she had sent me away. Finding JoHanna and not getting caught were the only thoughts I allowed myself, but beneath that was a steady joy that Floyd had been at Tommy Ladnier’s, and that he was okay.

The red car was a flare of color in the gray-green of the orchard. JoHanna paced beside the car. Her long stride took her forward, then she pivoted and went back.

“JoHanna!” I called as soon as I was within yelling distance, and struggled on through the grass.

“Mattie!” She started running toward me. “Oh, Mattie, I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

“It almost did.” I pulled in air. “It’s Floyd.” I clasped the hand she held out to me. “He was there, but he’s gone now. The cook said he was okay, but they took him someplace else.”

“Where?”

I shook my head, still trying to get enough breath to talk. “She didn’t know where.”

“Are you certain he was gone? She could be lying. She could have made up a story just to get rid of you.”

I thought of Love, hands on her big hips, small eyes watching me with neither pity nor compassion. “I don’t think she was lying.”

JoHanna signaled for me to get in the car. “We have to get back and check on Duncan. I told her to order from room service and to stay in the room.”

But—

It was unspoken. Duncan had been raised not to be afraid. She couldn’t comprehend the damage she could do by straying out of the room and being seen by the wrong people. She was enough like JoHanna that she wouldn’t believe the danger until it was too late.

As we maneuvered onto the main road, we were forced to slow down. Mules and wagons were pulled up on each side of the roadbed. Men with their shirt sleeves rolled and their faces gleaming with sweat loaded debris into the wagons while the mules stood patiently, cowlike tails flicking at the yellow flies and mosquitoes, which seemed to have blown in by the millions.

The afternoon had drawn even more workers out along the beach front. The sky was still gray, but the sun burned hot and angry, heating the clouds into a sticky humidity. Ignoring the stifling heat, the men worked on. Sometimes they paused as they heard our motor and waved or whistled as we drove by. I was taken by the fact that so many were dark haired with deep tans. Olive-skinned people descended from sailors, handsome men who flashed a smile at us as they wiped the sweat from their foreheads. Most of them were working hard, but in a couple of places, where the damage was worst, some stood beside their property and stared at it, as if they did not believe what had occurred.

We passed an empty section of beach where five black wreaths erupted from the sea grass. At first I thought they were thin old women dressed all in black, but JoHanna slowed, and I could see that the wreaths had been hung on sturdy wire stands, the legs planted firmly in the sand. The black ribbons blew lazily on the erratic gulf breeze. JoHanna said that someone had been killed at sea, probably five fishermen, and the wreaths were a symbol of death and mourning. Victims of the sea.

I thought of the dead family on Red Licorice Road, victims of a storm far worse than a hurricane. What madness had come swirling through the rain and wind to stop at that neat little farm? I could not believe that a father, even touched by madness, could systematically drown his wife and children. Especially not a three-year-old girl. I had avoided looking at their contorted faces as much as possible, but I could not forget that child’s feet, dark and purpling beneath the folds of her wet gown. The image haunted me, as did that family, left dangling in my imagination.

JoHanna’s driving pulled me from my dark thoughts. Once clear of the wagons and mules, JoHanna drove too fast, but no one seemed to notice us as we whizzed toward the Seaview. Turning into the white shell drive, JoHanna relaxed, easing her grip on the wheel. Once again, a young man met us at the door and took the car while we hurried inside.

“Mrs. Lindsey?” The voice of the clerk stopped us halfway across the lobby. “There’s a telegram for you.” He waved an envelope at us and JoHanna hurried to the desk to get it.

I watched her face as she ripped open the envelope and scanned the thin white page. She looked up at me, her face curiously blank. “Will is on his way here. John is going back to Jexville to search for Floyd there.”

“That’s all it says?” I had expected more. More detail. Had John been able to find anything out about Floyd? About who had taken him and brought him down to Tommy Ladnier’s? About the dead family? When would Will arrive?

JoHanna crumpled the telegram and then held it in her hand as she started toward the room. After seeing the look in her eyes I would have walked through Jexville stark naked rather than ask her another single question about the telegram.

We found Duncan on the hotel room floor with shreds of newspaper all around her. She’d ordered a paper from room service and had been busy with a pair of scissors from the front desk, clipping out every storm story. She had ordered the stories into three piles. One for Florida, one for Alabama, and one for Mississippi. There were thousands dead in Florida, where the storm had swept across from the Atlantic and then regathered her strength in the Gulf of Mexico for an assault on Mobile.

JoHanna sank into a chair as she read the clippings, passing them on to me with a sigh or shake of her head. The devastation in Florida was in the millions of dollars. More gruesome was the front page listing of locations and a count of the dead and injured. “Miami: known dead 194; known injured 75; estimated dead 115; seriously injured 250. More than 10,000 homeless.” And the count moved across the state. Miami Beach, Pompano, Hollywood, and on and on.

According to the stories printed in the Mobile
Daily Register,
Mobile had been hit twice by the storm with winds up to ninety-four miles an hour. But there had been no known loss of life. JoHanna shook her head as she handed that article to me. “We were very lucky. The eye must have passed over Mobile.”

I started to say that Mobile, sitting right on the Bay, had escaped with no deaths. In Jexville there were at least five. Neither JoHanna nor Duncan needed to be reminded of that, though, so I watched Pecos scratching around in the unread portion of the paper.

With a light breeze fluttering the curtains in the room and Duncan on her stomach, feet crossed behind her back, it didn’t seem possible that so much destruction had occurred. I went to the window and looked out at the Sound. The water was choppy, gray tipped with white. The sun broke free of the clouds and gave the water a million sparkles before it disappeared behind the clouds again.

“Is Will coming here?” I asked. I hated to pry, but JoHanna wasn’t going to give out any information.