Touched (44 page)

I got back in the car and waited. Duncan found me there. She wore a crown of coral-colored spider lilies that the old gardener had made as a going away gift for her. She radiated happiness, casting glances at the front door of the hotel as she chatted and waited for her father to come out. As much as she loved her mother, Duncan worshiped Will. I tried not to imagine what was being said in that second-floor hotel room, where the curtains lifted and floated on the breeze that swept across the aqua water of the Gulf of Mexico, over the spit of land known as Ship Island, skimming the top of the dark gray Sound and finally into the window.

“What are they doing? We were already packed. And we have to get Pecos.” Duncan got out of the car and slammed the door with impatience. “I’m going to get them.”

“Wait here with me, Duncan.”

“We have to get to Jexville. It’s going to be dark and we won’t be able to hunt for Floyd.” She started up the drive, shells crunching beneath her determined step.

“Wait, Duncan. Please.”

She stopped and turned slowly. “What’s going on?”

“I think your folks need some time to talk. Give them a minute.”

“About what?”

“Things that have happened. Will has missed a lot. JoHanna has to tell him things so he can figure out the best plan.”

“She can tell him on the way.” She started toward the hotel again.

“Duncan …” I looked up to see JoHanna standing on the front steps, both of our suitcases in her hand. My heart stopped. Will was not coming with us.

The door behind her opened and he came out. Taking the bags he took steps longer even than hers and left her behind as he came to the car and stowed the luggage. “It’s time to go home,” he said as he cranked the motor and slid behind the wheel.

Will did not object as JoHanna gave him directions to the farm to get Pecos. He said nothing at all. Duncan leaned on the back of the front seat and talked a blue streak to him, but when he answered her only in monosyllables, she settled back and looked at me. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

I shook my head.

We pulled into the farmyard, and Duncan climbed out of the car and went around to the back to call her rooster. Will got out and went to the front door to pay the farmer the amount due for Pecos’s board.

Left alone in the car with JoHanna, I wanted to tell her what I had said. I had gone over it again and again in my mind, and I had not said anything that implied JoHanna and John were involved. I had not meant to imply that. Surely I had not. “JoHanna, I didn’t say anything about John,” I finally blurted.

For a moment she didn’t respond. She kept her attention focused on Will’s back as he stood at the doorway talking to the farmer. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out money. The screen door opened and the farmer took it, shifting it into his own pocket.

“Have you ever thought about the degrees of absence?” JoHanna asked. “How a person can be physically gone, and still there. Or how he can be sitting right beside you and not be there at all?” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “I meant to buy some of those dark glasses they were selling on the beach. Sun protectors. Did you see them?”

Suddenly furious at her flip question, at what she’d done, I got out of the car, intending to go and help Duncan catch her rooster. If Pecos had gotten any encouragement at all from the farmer’s hens, he might decide he didn’t ever want to be caught again. If JoHanna was so all fired up about things being true to their nature, maybe she’d order Duncan to leave him where he could be a real rooster. I slammed the car door hard as I stalked away.

Duncan met me as I rounded the corner of the house. Pecos was not happy about being captured, and neither was Duncan. Large tears rolled down her cheeks. She held the rooster extended in front of her, and he had his spurs out, as if he meant serious business.

“He doesn’t want to come with me.” She managed the words between sobs. “He’d rather stay here.”

“Oh, Duncan.” I wanted to go to her, but I wasn’t getting near Pecos and those spurs. I’d come too close twice before and knew how sharply they could slice.

“He pecked me and came at me.” She took a breath. “He’s never done that to me. Never.”

I could hear the chickens gossiping over the latest henyard development. Pecos heard them too and began to struggle in Duncan’s hands.

“What should I do, Mattie?”

“Oh, Duncan, I could wring that rooster’s neck myself.” How was it possible that two McVays had been betrayed in less than twenty minutes? “Do you want him bad enough to hold him all the way back to Jexville? I think once you get him home he’ll straighten up. He just got a taste of being king of the roost and it’s hard to go from being king back to being someone’s pet.”

Duncan turned back toward the chicken yard. The hens were frantically running here and there. Maybe they were looking for Pecos, maybe not. Who could tell what a chicken was doing?

“What should I do, Mattie?”

I could see her arms were tired of holding the bird. They were shaking slightly. Pecos had given up struggling, but he kept his attention on the chickens.

“What’s wrong, Duncan?” Will had come around the corner of the house and was standing, watching us.

“Pecos doesn’t want to be my pet rooster anymore.” Duncan managed the words with a show of bravado that made my eyes sting. “He wants to be king of the chickens.”

“He does, does he?” Will walked up, tousled her hair, and then lifted Pecos into his arms. He cradled the rooster against his chest as if he were a baby. With one finger he turned the rooster’s head so that Pecos’s beady little chicken eyes were staring directly into his. “Are you sure that’s what you want, Pecos? Being the rooster isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“He thinks it’s terrific.”

Will lifted his eyebrows at Duncan. “Perhaps you should tell Pecos that he might last it out the rest of this year, but by next fall, he’ll be replaced. Some new cock will come along and Pecos will be fair game for the roasting pan.”

Duncan’s tears dried. “They’ll eat him?”

“Honey, once we drive out of here, do you think Mr. Longeneaux will even try to remember Pecos from the other roosters around here? He may try, but in a week or two, one bird will blend into the other and by next year …”

Duncan looked back at the chickens. They had settled down considerably. Pecos, held tightly in Will’s arms, had also grown more docile.

Duncan held out her arms to her father. With great care, Will placed Pecos in them, making sure his spurs were relaxed.

“I think we should all go home.” Duncan started toward the car, the rooster in her arms. “That storm just got everything messed up. Once we get home, things will get back to normal, won’t they, Daddy?”

When Will didn’t answer, Duncan stopped and turned back to him. “They will, won’t they?”

“Tell me, how bad did the storm hit the house?” he asked as he opened the door for me and Duncan and ushered us into the backseat. Duncan settled with Pecos pressed between her body and the door. The car roared to life, and we were headed for Jexville, headed into the night.

Thirty-seven

T
HE stars were brighter than I’d ever seen them, and a pale quarter moon hung in the sky as we drove the final few miles to Jexville. It made me think of the legend of Anola and the Hunter’s Moon that John Doggett had told us. The legend of a river where the dead sang out at night to those who would listen.

Duncan had fallen asleep in my lap, and I was glad for the solid warmth of her against me. Summer was gone. The creeping cold of night and the air blowing back on me from the motion of the car had chilled me through to the bone. Still, nothing the weather could provide was as cold as the silence in the front seat. Will’s hands moved on the steering wheel as he guided the car through the darkness that contained only the hush of hibernating insects. That slight movement of his hands, side to side, adjusting for the bumps and curves, was the only motion in the front seat. JoHanna might have been turned to stone.

I snuggled down with Duncan, Pecos asleep at last between her feet, and tried not to hear the anger.

When the car turned on Peterson Lane, I knew exactly where we were and I sat up straighter, searching for the familiar landmarks in the swift flare of the headlights. There were so many things I wanted to say in the last moments of the ride, before the wheels stopped and life was no longer suspended, things that had no words but were only emotions. I wanted to tell them that whatever had happened, they were meant for one another. They were part of one thing, a union that gave both more substance. I wanted to tell them that the thing that had come between them was not violent or mean or cruel, and was therefore forgivable. I wanted to say these things, but I could not say a word. My feelings were true, but there was another truth, too. JoHanna had betrayed Will. I did not understand how two things so diabolically opposed could both be real. My lack of understanding kept me silent, as silent as the two of them.

In the headlights of the car I saw the large oak trees that framed the front of the house and I felt a measure of relief. We were home. Maybe once they were free of the car, JoHanna and Will would talk. Maybe Duncan, when she awakened, could prevail on them to remember a life that did not include John Doggett or his shadow that now separated them.

I struggled up in the seat and started to wake Duncan as Will turned the car into the drive. “Let her sleep,” Will said. Instead of going to the back, he drove to the front steps where he could carry Duncan and the luggage inside with greater ease.

I was looking for my shoe in the floor of the car when I heard JoHanna’s small cry. Will had stopped the car, and I heard the air leave his lungs. I looked toward the house, expecting to see that someone had burned it down, but it was there, dark against the starry night. In the beam of the headlights Jeb Fairley sat on the steps. At first he was so still I did not see him. He rose slowly and stood, his tall, thin frame coatless in the cold, hands hanging at his side, as he waited for us to get out of the car.

“Jeb!” JoHanna opened her door as Will killed the motor. Her voice was a cry for help and she stumbled in front of the car.

Getting out on his side, Will left the door open as he hurried forward, catching JoHanna at the front of the car. They began to struggle, Will trying to hold JoHanna and she trying to escape him and get to the porch. The headlights cast their shadows against the front of the house, tall distorted images that joined together in slow motion, blending into one form on the front of the house, creeping across the front door and the windows as they fought in a horrible, silent battle of wills.

“Jeb!” JoHanna almost broke free, but Will held her.

“I didn’t know where else to bring him,” Jeb said.

It was then I saw the bundle of clothing on the porch. I recognized Jeb’s coat on top and wondered why he wasn’t wearing it. I slid out from under Duncan’s head and eased out of the car, trying hard to move fast, but unable to, cold syrup pooling on a saucer. Too slow.

“Mattie!” Will called out to me, but he could not let go of JoHanna. She had turned into some wild creature, and she fought against him, thrashing with small, harsh noises. Against the front of the house her shadow lunged and twisted against Will’s tall form. I kept walking, up to the steps, up to Jeb, who looked down at me.

“I’m sorry, Mattie. I tried to stop them.”

I lifted the collar of the coat and found Floyd. “Floyd?” I did not believe what I was seeing. It was impossible that the cold, still features were those of a young man I had come to love. “Floyd?” I asked again. I knew he was dead, but I brushed my fingers across his check, hoping for a flush of warmth. He was chill, the texture of his skin no longer human.

Jeb reached down to me and helped me up the steps. Behind him, JoHanna’s shadow had ceased its struggle. She leaned against Will, shaking with soundless sobs.

“Duncan is still in the car,” Will said. He wanted to go to his daughter, but he held JoHanna against him, giving both restraint and support. Duncan was still asleep. We could not wake her. She could not see Floyd.

Looking at Jeb, I still didn’t believe he was there. I slowly dropped my arm that he held and he released me. “We need to take Duncan in the back door,” I told him. Without waiting, I went back down the steps and lifted her into my arms. Jeb offered to take her, but I shook my head. Her small body was hot, alive. Real. Duncan was not part of the nightmare, and I clung to her while Jeb got the bags and the sleeping Pecos from the floorboard. Avoiding the front steps, we walked around the house to the back door and went inside.