Touched

by Carolyn Haines

  JoHanna knelt down and straightened Duncan’s legs, pressing the tops of her feet and her ankles. “Can you feel that?” she asked, looking up.

  I was standing behind Duncan, holding her up. For the first time that day I saw fear in JoHanna’s eyes. She’d known all along that Duncan was alive. But she couldn’t guarantee that the child would be normal.

  Duncan shook her head no.

  JoHanna pressed her knees. “How about here?”

  The quick shake.

  JoHanna’s hands moved higher, to her thighs. “Here?”

  Duncan began to understand. She reached down with her own hands to capture her mother’s, pressing the fingers deep into her legs in a moment of panic. She shook her head, fast, then more wildly as she began to look first at JoHanna and then at me. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “Let’s put her in the wagon,” JoHanna said, indicating the red wagon that was parked behind the magnolia tree. We lifted her, JoHanna with the legs and me with the shoulders, and carried her to the wagon. As soon as she was settled, JoHanna took the handle and turned toward Peterson Lane. They lived a mile out of town in an isolated area.

  “Aren’t you going to the doctor?” I couldn’t believe she was going the opposite way. Duncan couldn’t walk. Her legs were like dead things.

  “There’s no point.” JoHanna took a long look down the way the doctor had gone. “He’s done all he can do.”

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Maybe they didn’t have enough money for the doctor to come back. “He’ll put it on credit.” I spoke without thinking, horrified the instant the words left my mouth.

  “It’s not a matter of money,” JoHanna said, starting to walk toward home. “Old Doc’s done what he can.” She had managed to get the wagon out of the yard and close to the edge of the road.

  “Shall I walk with you?” I was already walking beside them. I didn’t want to go back to the party, and I didn’t want to go home.

  “No. We’re fine. Will will be home if he gets word.” She was walking fast, the wagon leaving narrow ruts in the soft red earth.

  “Can I do anything?” I stopped at the corner of Redemption, wanting to go but not certain. Elikah would be waiting for me.

  “Yes, you can.” JoHanna stopped walking long enough to turn to me. “Take the gramophone home with you and keep it safe for Duncan. Ask Agnes to loan you a wagon. She’ll be glad to do it just to keep the gramophone out of her house.”

  “I’ll take good care of it.” I’d have to figure out how to get it home and hide it from Elikah. He didn’t hold with such contraptions.

  As if she sensed my worries, JoHanna stopped. “Are you sure?”

  Looking into her blue eyes, I was sure. “I can manage that for you, Mrs. McVay.”

  “JoHanna,” she corrected, taking five seconds longer to stare into my eyes and make certain that I could do what she’d asked. “Bring it out to the house tomorrow, and I’ll give you some squash and beans and potatoes for your husband’s supper.”

  “I hope Duncan is okay.”

  JoHanna didn’t answer. She started walking again, a ground-covering stride that meant business. I’d never seen a woman walk with such determination, and I felt a chill. She was going out to that isolated house, all by herself, with her daughter nearly dead from a lightning bolt.

  I didn’t tell Elikah about the lightning. Didn’t have to. It was the talk of the town before JoHanna and Duncan had made it to the turnoff for Peterson Lane. When I first got to Jexville I was amazed at the speed with which tales got carried from one end of town to another. I learned in a few days that good gossip was enough for a man to get up from a haircut and a shave and hurry over to the café for a cup of coffee and a lean-down. While the women met over kitchen tables and clotheslines, the men hunkered over coffee and talk at the café, or in the barber’s chair.

  By the time I got home, three men had already been by the barbershop to give Elikah the news, and he’d been over to the boot stop to tell Axim. By the time I got home that afternoon, it was already settled that the hand of God had smote Duncan McVay for her waywardness and for her mother’s wild and wanton ways. It was God’s punishment on a nest of sinners, or at least those were the sentiments of most of the townspeople. If there was any sympathy at all, it was for Will, a man surrounded by willful women.

  It had taken me longer to get home because I had to hide the gramophone. I’d borrowed a wagon from Agnes, but I knew better than to try taking the player home. Elikah had strong views on music and dancing. Since I was new in town, it took a little thinking, but I finally managed to wedge the wagon and gramophone up beside the haystack at the livery stables. It was safe and dry, and there was little chance that anyone would stumble over it. At least for a night. Then I hurried home to start dinner.

  One of my favorite things to do after dinner was to sit out on the porch and swing. The creak of those old chains gave me a sense of peace, even on the hottest nights.

  It was at night that Jexville revealed its true beauty. It reminded me of a dog that strayed up to our house when I was fourteen. Suke was an ugly, yellow animal with small eyes and mange. At night, though, after the dishes were done and the younger children put in bed, I’d sit on the stoop and Suke would come up and push her nose into my hand. There, in the darkness, we could both be beautiful.

  When the stars came out at night and the wind whispered through the pine needles rich with the smell of resin, Jexville had a kind of allure. There were areas where oaks and magnolias made lush groves. Some of the new settlers had planted pecan trees, which would grow into groves of big gray trunks with slender, intricate branches. When the rawness and redness of the new main street and the smell of new lumber for some of the stores finally wore away some, it would not be as bleakly ugly. My own little house, the yard scratched barer than a scaly chicken’s head, would have flowers in the next spring. With a little care, a little effort, Jexville would improve. Hard work could turn a lot of things around.

  With the day finished and the night ahead, I could slip into my old daydreams. They were silly things, gleaned from the pages of penny magazines and glimpses of the traveling shows that sometimes played at the Meridian Opera House. I knew they were false, but they gave me intense pleasure. It was years later before I began to wonder how a human heart can know something to be false and still try so desperately to believe in it.

  The night passed, and the hot, pink kiss of the morning sun found me dressed and pacing the kitchen floor. Elikah was a handsome man back then. He took great pride in his mustache. While I made breakfast, he made sure that each hair was in place. In his starched white shirt and black suspenders, he did look the part of the town surgeon, much more so than Dr. Westfall, who always looked as if he’d been stampeded. Elikah was fond of saying that in a town without the good fortune to have a doc, the barber often served that purpose. It always gave me a little chill, which made him smile.

  As soon as he was finished with his eggs and grits and the dishes were done, I hurried out to retrieve the gramophone. I had thought out a route that would skirt the edges of town and, most important, Janelle Baxley. On my first day in Jexville, Janelle had made it her business to tend to my business. Getting off the train in Jexville, I had been frightened and worried. My first emotion at Janelle’s warm hug and piercing blue eyes was delight. With her lace blouse and fitted skirt, she seemed so grown and capable. That was before she told me how everyone in town wanted to help me forget the fact that Elikah had been voicing his misgivings about me in the café. She said it was only normal for a bridegroom to be nervous, but that Elikah had gone to the station to meet me with enough money in an envelope to send me back home if I didn’t look tractable and decent.

  Janelle was one person I didn’t want to meet as I was pulling the gramophone down the road to Peterson Lane.

  I’d picked a good time of day and managed to get across the railroad tracks without even sighting so much as a rabbit. Once I was
away from the town, I walked a little slower, letting my arm rest from the pull of the wagon. It was a hot day. Too hot for my ugly navy dress, but I had nothing else to wear. It seemed only overnight that I’d given up my cool cotton shifts for grown-up clothes. The trade was distinctly not in my favor. I didn’t dwell on the disappointments of growing up as I walked along. A blue jay marked my progress with warning cries, and there were stirrings in the high Johnson grass that tufted the road. Alone, I could let my imagination fly. I could pretend that down the road was a wagon of Gypsies who would take me in and teach me to tell fortunes and sing. We’d travel the world, and I would become famous for my dreams and visions. We’d sail across to Europe, where the king and queen would ask me to visit them for tea. It would be a spectacular life, and it shimmered just around the next curve in the heat.

  Peterson Lane curled in and out beside the banks of Little Red Creek, a crystal amber and gold creek that took its sweet time shifting through pastures and woodlands and finally down to the swamp on the east side of Jexville. At places, Little Red was shallow enough to wade across, with a pure sand bottom that was as close as I thought I’d ever get to white sand beaches and blue waves. There were holes, though, where a tree had fallen and a natural dam piled up, making the water deep enough to swim. I didn’t know those places. Not yet. It was JoHanna and Duncan who would teach me such pleasures in my new home.

  When I first came up on their place, I stopped and took some time. The first thing that caught my eye were clothes on the line, among them the remains of Duncan’s yellow dress. JoHanna had been up early to wash.

  Six oak trees shaded the front yard, far enough away from the house that they gave some shade but didn’t smother it. On the east side of the house was a screened porch with a swing. It was completely shaded by two towering trees, a magnolia and a cedar. The side yard on the west was sunny. That’s where the clothes hung as still as slats of wood in the windless morning. Farther back from the house was an old chinaberry tree. Parked behind it was a beautiful red car.

  There had been plenty of cars in Meridian. Jojo had bought one once, but it didn’t last. One day it was gone, and Mama never knew if he’d wrecked it or lost it or if the bank had come to take it away. And no one dared to ask. It had been black and ugly, smelling of grease and trouble. I didn’t care when it was gone, except the noise always gave us some warning when Jojo was back.

  This car, though, hidden somewhat by the clothes and the tree, was like something from one of the magazines I loved to read. A movie star would have ridden in it. Someone exactly like JoHanna.

  The hot sun scorching the part on my head finally brought me back to the dirt road I was standing in. It hadn’t been a long walk, but I was already sweating in the July heat. Part of it was the dress. It wasn’t really a summer dress, but as a married woman I had to have long sleeves and sufficient folds of skirt. Until I’d married, even though I was too old, I’d worn the dresses of a young girl. We didn’t have the money for extras, and I’d never felt bad about being cool and comfortable in the summers. This blue dress was strained at the waist where Mama had gotten pregnant with Lena Rae. She hadn’t worn it in years. She said after four children, her waist had never gone back. Then four more had stretched everything to the point that not even a corset could help. So when I accepted Elikah’s offer, I got the blue dress.

  I was lost somewhere between the past and the present when I saw a furtive movement out by the last oak tree in the front of the house. The yard was raked clean of all leaves, with beautiful flowers blooming in clumps of reds and yellows and purples and a pink as electric as the sky at sunset. Among all that color there had been the shifting of red on brown.

  A dog?

  I hadn’t heard any barking, but some dogs didn’t. Some liked to sneak around from behind. I wasn’t afraid of dogs; in fact I got on with them pretty good. I’d learned, though, that a sneaky dog was like a sneaky person. You turned your back at your own peril. Still pulling the wagon, I eased down among the trees. If the dog didn’t come out barking, maybe it would just slink away.

  I wasn’t prepared for the sudden flurry of feathers just at face level, nor the strange, torn cry that came along with it. I fell back, crying out loud as I put up my hands.

  I felt the center of my palm sliced open as the air around me beat with the confusion of dust, feathers, and talons. I screamed again as I tried to get away from the creature, but I tripped over the handle of the wagon and fell backward. The bird came right after me, thrusting its claws forward as it beat the air with wings. I thought immediately of a hawk or eagle, but I managed to catch a look at it as I yelled for help. It was a brown rooster.

  There was the sound of the screen door slamming. “Pecos! Get off her!” Footsteps sounded on the porch and then across the yard.

  I had pulled the heavy skirt over my head to protect my face. Groping around behind me, I was shocked to make contact with a big foot attached to a strong leg. I knew that it was Will McVay, JoHanna’s husband.

  Before I could right myself, he lifted me, shaking my skirt down around me as he brought me up into the sunshine and air filled with small chicken feathers.

  “Are you hurt?”

  He had one side of his suspenders up and one down over a cotton undershirt. There was lather on one side of his face, and in the dirt at his bare feet was the razor. He eased me to my feet and released his grip on my armpits.

  Looking in his eyes, I saw old Suke looking back at me. I was in as sorry a shape as that poor dog had ever been. Will McVay had seen my drawers made of a flour sack. Shame burned my cheeks and made my scalp tingle as if it were being bitten by ants. “I brought Duncan’s machine.” I mumbled because I could talk but couldn’t look at him.

  When he didn’t answer and didn’t move, I had to look up. Instead of staring at me, he was looking at the ground, just to my side. I looked down there, too, and saw the blood. It was dripping from all four of my fingers and just a little slower from my thumb.

  “Pecos caught you with a spur.” He reached over and lifted my left hand. The palm was sliced clean open. From his back pocket he pulled a starched white handkerchief and wrapped it around my palm, drawing the knot tight. “The fingers require a lot of blood. Looks like Pecos laid open some arteries.”

  It didn’t matter what he said. I watched his lips move, the soap lather already dried on his face. He had dark brown eyes the color of Lizzie Maples’s chocolate pound cake and black hair combed back from his strong face.

  He was not handsome, not like Elikah. There was not a dimple in his cheek or the quick ability to show pleasure or anger. There was a distance from his feelings that he guarded closely. Neither anger nor pleasure would be his master.

  His hand went under my elbow as he steadied me while at the same time he bent to pick up the wagon handle. Together we walked to the porch, where he let the wagon stop and guided me up the steps.

  “Hannah, baby, we’ve had a little accident.” He opened the screen door for me, then nudged me inside.

  He wore a scent like rain falling through sunshine and beating on wide green leaves, of grass fresh cut. Clean. Stepping from the harsh sun outside into the cool dimness of the hallway, I thought I’d faint. His grip on my elbow tightened just enough to support me, and in a few seconds I was across the floor and seated on a green sofa with strange carved legs and a back that arched and scrolled like a dragon’s. I was in a dream.

  The carpet was a red as dark as drying blood, but it was swirled with a pattern of colors and design that made me want to cry it was so beautiful. The chair across from me had a high back and fringe that dangled to the floor. Instead of a doorway to the dining room, there were curtains, thick and heavy and tied back with more tassels, these thick as ropes and made of gold. The light filtered in the room through soft white curtains at the windows that seemed to be made of gossamer lace.

  I was aware of his eyes on me, watching with that guarded look that betrayed nothing. I knew that he piti
ed me, but it was not the hard pity of the women of Jexville.

  “Has marriage to Elikah been so terrible that you’ve forgotten how to speak?”

  His question sent the blood thundering to my cheeks and ears, and I looked down at the carpet, finding comfort in the vivid colors.

  “Mattie speaks when it’s necessary. She did a fine job of taking up for me and Duncan yesterday.”

  At JoHanna’s voice I looked up, relieved to see her. She was standing by the strange curtains, her arms lifted above her head as she twisted her thick chestnut hair into a bun. She held the pins in her mouth and still managed to talk around them with perfect clarity. It took only a minute for her to have her hair in order, and she lowered her hands and came into the room.

  “How bad did Pecos get you?” She reached for my hand and I gave it to her. The handkerchief was soaked with blood.

  “Get the turpentine, Will.” She cast a look at him.

  “Needle?”

  My gut turned quickly. Would they have to sew it up? I’d never had stitches, but Jane, the girl after me, had cut her foot open one summer. Jojo had held her down while she screamed and thrashed and Pres Watkins had put five ugly stitches in her foot. Mama and I had sat on the back steps, crying.

  Untying the knot, she revealed the gash. Her fingers poked at it with the same gentle touch she’d used on Duncan. “Just the turpentine,” she called out to him, “and a clean cloth.” She turned back to me. “This will burn like hellfire, but it won’t get infected and you won’t have to have it stitched.”

  Unable to verbally agree, I nodded. I’d had turpentine poured into a wound before. But it was better than stitches.

  We went out on the front porch, and Will held me while JoHanna stepped in front of me, holding my hand.

  It was liquid fire, but then it was over. I found myself back in the house, seated at the kitchen table with a fresh, clean cloth wrapped around my hand and a cup of coffee steaming before me.