JoHanna dropped the hat and ran her hand over her head. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“What happened?”
She stooped to get her hat, put it on her head, gave the rooster a toss out into the grass, and turned back to the clothesline. “Duncan.” It was all she said.
I could almost feel the stiff bristles of hair beneath my hand, though I had not moved in her direction. “JoHanna.” I spoke her name on a whisper.
“My lord, Mattie, you’re acting a total fool. It’s hair. It’ll grow back.” She folded another towel, her motions fluid and mechanical.
“It was so beautiful.”
“It’ll grow back.” Her voice was impatient, but when she turned to me she stopped folding her towel and smiled. “I made Duncan a braid of my hair to play with. We’ll grow out together.”
At last I was able to focus my attention on something other than her ruined head. I looked at the window where Duncan’s beautiful peach curtains undulated in a tiny breeze. “What did the doctor in Mobile say?”
“So the gossip is out.” JoHanna turned back to the clothesline and her work. Instead of putting the pins in a little sack, she left hers stuck on the line. “I suppose it was all over the picnic.”
“Janelle.” It was all I needed to say.
“Well, Dr. Liebermann—he’s a specialist in neurology—said that it was possible something in Duncan’s brain had been damaged by the lightning.” The only indication of her pain and fear was the tremble in her hands as she missed the clothesline trying to put a pin back. “There’s no way to tell. She may regain the use of her legs and her speech.” She shrugged. “She may never walk or talk again.” She took down one of Will’s shirts. Her hands moved over the collar, a gesture she wasn’t even aware of. It was as if she were trying to draw the essence of her husband from the cloth.
I reached out and took her hand, holding it in mine.
“I can’t cry out here. Duncan might see.” She let me take the shirt from her and she moved on to another, unpinning and folding it to drop down in the wicker basket that she pushed along in front of her with one foot.
“The gossip is that Duncan died.” I don’t know where those words came from, but I let fly with them before I even considered what they meant.
JoHanna never missed a tick as she took down the clothes, her gestures once again perfectly fluid and mechanical. “I know.”
“What should I say? I told Janelle it was true, because …”
JoHanna stopped and looked at me, her eyes like some strange, fractured gem that caught the light and shattered it into blue chips.
“… Because they said that not even Satan would have her, and that he sent her back. So I said no, that it was God who sent her back because He’d given her a chore.” I was on fire with the need to confess what I’d said. What if I’d made it worse for Duncan?
JoHanna’s laughter rang across the yard, causing Pecos to streak over toward us, his wings lifted in the preamble to attack.
“Stop it, Pecos.” She flapped a shirttail at the bird before she whirled around and hugged me to her. “Mattie Mills, you are too good to be true.” She started laughing again, this time a conclusion, a softer sound. At last she wiped her eyes and hugged me again. “I’ll bet that old biddy is still trying to get that out of her craw.”
“You aren’t mad?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Why would I be mad? It was the perfect answer to gag that old witch. How can she wag her tongue about that without giving Duncan credit for being blessed?” An idea lit her eyes. “You know, there’s a big baptism next Sunday down at Cedar Creek. Some of the girls Duncan’s age are going to be ‘washed in the Spirit.’ “ Her smile widened, and the worry of the last few days lifted. “I think maybe we should go watch. Me and you and Duncan.”
“Okay.” I agreed, knowing I would do whatever necessary to get away. “And Will?”
“He’s gone off to Washington to deliver some goods to a few old politicians.”
I was so astounded by that news that I couldn’t even answer. Will needed to be home instead of halfway around the world.
“Sunday. I’ll come by to get you about nine o’clock. I can pack us a little picnic.”
“How?” I looked around. The car was gone.
“Oh, Duncan and I have been working on this.” She folded the last towel, picked up the basket, and started walking toward a shed in the back. I followed along with Pecos trailing me, his wings held up and out and his movements a sideways skitter as he kept watch over me, just in case I made a desperate move that he needed to punish me for.
When we got to the shed, JoHanna motioned with her head toward the old red wagon she’d used to haul the gramophone. In it now was a cowhide rocker that had been strapped into the bed of the wagon with two good leather belts. JoHanna put the clothes down and touched the chair, putting it into motion. The straps allowed a bit of rocking, but not much.
“It’s Duncan’s litter; we will be her bearers.” JoHanna’s smile was delighted and mocking. “We’ve already tried it out, and she finds it quite comfortable. I can pull her in that and have plenty of room for the picnic basket.”
“Okay.” I believed that JoHanna could do anything. If she had pulled out an embroidered carpet and said we would fly on it to Cedar Creek, I would have agreed.
“Then it’s settled. Come on in the house and have a glass of tea.” She hefted the laundry basket up on her hip and started walking toward the house. I had to stretch my legs to keep up with her. JoHanna didn’t waste a movement. She was direct, purposeful. In my hot gray dress, I followed like a willing sheep.
Five
I WAS waiting in the swing in my Elikah dress when I caught sight of JoHanna. Even though I was looking for her, at first I didn’t believe what I saw. She was wearing her big straw picture hat with a mixture of black-eyed Susans and reddish-brown rooster tail feathers around the rim. Her sleeveless yellow dress actually had a band of swinging fringe along the hem. She would have caught the attention of a blind man in a hurricane.
She strode with her hands behind her back, her chest cutting the air in front of her like the figure on the prow of some gallant sailboat. Behind her came the wagon with Duncan and the rocking chair tipping forward and back. Riding on the back of the wagon was Pecos, his wings constantly shifting up to preattack mode as he scanned left and right for any threats to his beloved human.
I flew off the swing and went to meet them at the corner. Elikah had gone down to the shop, even though it was Sunday. Once a month, Tommy Ladnier made Sunday deliveries to Chickasaw County. It wasn’t his best territory, but he was unwilling to give it up to the Dillard boys in Greene County, so he made his regular deliveries and enforced the perimeters of his territory. I had deduced that the barbershop was his drop-off point. The men all went down to the barbershop for a few nips and to investigate Tommy’s wares. Elikah said the men liked the barber chairs, but I thought it was because the shop was long and narrow, and if the blinds were closed on the front window, it was a private place. There was also a folding table in the back with chairs for five. The one time I’d gone to clean the shop, I’d found decks of cards and the multicolored chips that gamblers used for money. It wasn’t the only illegal card game in Jexville, just one of the more regular. And one of the more protected. Sheriff Quincy Grissham was one of the men who went in the back door of the barbershop on those Sunday mornings.
Elikah liked for me to go to church. He said it was a woman’s duty to keep up that end of the household for her family. When I’d told him I was going to the baptism at Cedar Creek, he was happy as a one-eyed dog on a butcher wagon. It didn’t matter that the service was Baptist. Elikah was a Methodist because that’s where he happened to light when he moved to Jexville. He said there wasn’t a penny’s worth of difference between the two, so it was no big shake if I went to the Baptist service. Lots of people from the Methodist church would be there.
“Hi.” I ran up to the corner, sort of
breathless. It was better for me to meet them on the street than to have them seen at the house. “Hi, Duncan.” She stared at me with that direct, pefectly composed look. A lot of the bruising was gone, but she still looked pretty bad. Her legs were wrapped in clean bandages where the burns were worst, and her hair was still a terrible mess.
“Been watching for us?” JoHanna asked as I fell into step beside her.
“Yeah.”
“Elikah wouldn’t want you going with us.”
She spoke a statement. I didn’t feel compelled to lie, so I didn’t say anything.
“He’s a handsome man.”
“Yes, he is.” A flush touched my cheeks. I looked at her, a quick glance to see if she was being polite or sincere. She was sincere. “Why didn’t he marry a local girl? I saw them at the Fourth of July picnic. They would have married him. Why didn’t he marry one of them?”
JoHanna looked back to smile at Duncan. They didn’t speak a word, but there was something that passed between them.
“I suspect Elikah didn’t want to be bothered with a wife who had family right around him.”
I nodded. Elikah had never offered a question about my family or about how they were doing. He’d given me money to mail a letter to them, but even when Mama wrote back he handed me the letter and didn’t even ask what they’d said. If he had family, he didn’t say. He was a man who just didn’t have much need for other connections.
“How is Elikah?”
“Fine.” I looked down at my new shoes. “He bought me a dress and some shoes, but it wasn’t as nice as the one y’all sent.”
JoHanna kept pulling the wagon. We’d passed the last building on the road until we got to the Hancock farm, about half a mile out of town. Cedar Creek was another mile. It was going to be a long, hot walk.
“Will has excellent taste in women’s clothes. He picked that out for you.” She smiled at my shocked expression. “My only concern was that it might cause trouble for you, but Will said you were smart enough to handle it.”
“I haven’t shown Elikah the dress.”
“Handle it however you see fit.”
We walked along in near-silence; the only sound was the creak of the rocker or an occasional flap from Pecos. The rooster made me nervous at first, but it became apparent he had no intention of leaving Duncan’s side.
“Why are you going to the baptism?” I’d been to the Mississippi Methodist Church twice since I’d come to Jexville, and none of the McVays had been in attendance. “Are you Baptist?”
“No.” She gave me a look. “Why are you going? Are you religious?”
That question set me back on my heels. I was going to be with her. So far as I’d seen, God hadn’t made any great interventions in my life for the better. But church was a woman’s duty, and it was a place to go. “I’m going ‘cause you asked me,” I finally answered. “Do you believe God might heal Duncan?” That had been at the back of my mind, too. I was wondering if JoHanna was hoping for a miracle.
JoHanna walked on a bit, her face calm, serene. “What I believe is hard to say,” she said, her pace steady, the sun hot on both of our shoulders. “I believe ‘god’ is in all living things, even grass and trees. It’s a tough belief in a sawmill town.” She was mocking herself.
“You think trees have God in them?” I looked around. The huge pine trees along the roadway had already been harvested. In a nearby field, the raw stumps still bled resin, the scent as pungent as any other death. On the other side of the road, the stumps had been burned or pulled out and pasture allowed to grow. Half a mile back, the huge trunks of the unharvested trees made a leafless wall of brown.
“I think every thing alive has something of a soul.” She cut a look at me. “Even men.”
I knew she was teasing me, but the idea was so fanciful I couldn’t let it go. “Who else believes this?”
She shrugged. “Not many around here, that’s for sure. But it’s an old religion. I certainly didn’t make it up.”
“Did you get baptized?”
She laughed. “If you count swimming naked in a cold creek and glorying in the beauty of the water a baptism, then I’ve been immersed. But as far as I know, people who believe like me don’t even have church buildings or any kind of formal rituals.”
I watched her face and saw the humor and spark of mischief that I’d seen duplicated in Duncan’s face the day she’d danced. Now I understood better why the men of Jexville disliked her so. She talked wild. Her words were tiny darts of freedom that stung the men, even when she spoke of nothing but trees and creeks. Her awareness of things struck at the root of men’s lives. Why it should threaten them so, I didn’t understand, but I knew it did.
“Why are we going to this baptism, then? It’s the Jexville Baptist Church.”
“I know.” Her blue eyes were shot with light and gave back to me the vista of the pine forest and the blue sky. “Since you’ve been spreading the word that Duncan has been sent back from the dead to complete a mission for God, I thought we’d show up and just watch.”
“JoHanna!”
“No harm in watching.” She still held the wagon handle behind her back, and she turned to face the road once again. She started walking, knowing I’d fall back into step with her.
It was my first indication that she actively sought to start talk about herself. She stirred the fires of speculation with deliberate actions. “And Duncan?” I looked over my shoulder at her and met her dark gaze. It was impossible to read the expression on her face, but I thought for a moment that a shadow of sorrow touched her eyes and drew her dark eyebrows together. Then it was gone, and she looked at her mother’s back. It was as if she touched JoHanna, who turned back to look at her. That silent communication passed between them.
“It’s okay, Duncan,” she said. “You’ll be dancing on their graves in a matter of no time.”
“JoHanna!”
She laughed, and if I had closed my eyes, I would have seen her as a girl. She was such a contradiction.
“Tell me about growing up,” she said. “What’s your best memory?”
My new shoes were still stiff, but they were getting a good breaking in as we moved along the road. There was no traffic, and I hadn’t felt so safe and content in weeks. The memory she requested wasn’t hard to grab hold of. In her company, I felt bold enough to tell it.
“My sister Callie and I snuck into the Meridian Opera House one afternoon.”
“Ah, the spice of trespassing.” She nodded. “And an opera house, the perfect place for adventure. Do you like opera?”
I looked down the road. The trees were tall and thick in this area, shading the road. There had been talk of the state sending in heavy equipment to improve the highway to Pascagoula. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I never got to hear one. The place was empty. It was afternoon, and Callie and I wanted to look at the costumes.” Even from such a distance, the memory made me smile. “The dresses were beautiful. They were slick and had those glittery things sewn into them, like fairy brides.”
JoHanna smiled. “Fairy brides, no less. And were you afraid?”
“Yes. Callie and I were terrified we would be found out. We had no business there. Mama didn’t have money for us to attend a real performance. We only wanted to see what it was like in that building where the people came out late at night all dressed up and laughing.”
“I have some records of operas. Will buys them for me when he goes to some of the bigger cities. He says it sounds like cats in a fight, but I like some of them.”
“Records?” I couldn’t hide my amazement. “Of operas?”
“It isn’t the same as a show, but you could at least learn the music if you wanted. Maybe Will and I would act them out for you.”
I laughed at the idea. Would they really do such a thing? “Okay.”
“When he gets home,” she promised. “Maybe by then Duncan will be well enough to play a part. We’ll do costumes and the whole thing.”
I
looked back at Duncan. Pecos had moved up to ride on the arm of her rocker. He heard something in the distance, and he swiveled his head all the way around without turning his body. It made me real nervous.
“Here’s the turn.” JoHanna pulled the wagon down a steep drop that ended in a six-inch bed of sand. It took both of us to heave the wagon through.
From the woods the sound of singing came like sunshine through thick leaves, just a phrase here and there. It was an old hymn, one Mama used to sing at the kitchen sink when she cut up the turnip roots that were the staple of our fall diet. She said the song gave her comfort, but it only made me afraid. It was about going home, across the River Jordan. That meant dying and going to heaven. I didn’t like the song.
Coming through the trees, the pure, true voice of the woman singing had power. We eased along, being as quiet as we could, until we came out at the top of an incline that swept all the way down to the amber creek.
The Baptist choir was standing on the sandy slope in the beautiful robes they wore each Sunday: crimson red on the whitest sand I’d ever seen. Farther back on the grassy part of the slope just above and behind the choir were the spectators with their picnic baskets. After the service there would be food.
In between both groups was a cluster of young girls, all in white dresses. They’d come to be washed in the blood and accepted in the church as members. Even as we stopped the wagon, undid the belts, and lifted Duncan and her chair out onto the sand, the minister was walking down into the amber swirl of water. The baptism had begun.
He was a tall man with dark hair slicked back neat against his head, his lean body cutting the current of the water as he waded in until he was waist deep. Turning to the bank, he lifted his hands. The choir finished off the song they were singing about coming to the Lord. The young girls clumped together; then one stepped out and began to wade into the water.
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