“It’s pound cake,” Duncan said, her mood already shifted. “If Floyd can find another wagon, Mama said we could go to the river later today.”
JoHanna appeared in the doorway with a tray laden with a quarter of a cake, steaming coffee, and a rose in a tiny vase. I didn’t see the October-sky pink as intensely as anything Duncan had described, but the sight of that beautiful flower stung my eyes.
“I said Mattie could go to the river if she felt like it and if Aunt Sadie said so. But give her a chance to eat her cake and see.” She gave me a look.
“Maybe walking would do me some good. I’m kinda sore.” There were places where the sore was bad, but there were other places that felt like if I could move around, they’d limber up.
“We’ll see.” She put the tray down on my lap and lifted the deck of cards from it to hand to Duncan. “A couple of games. Then you and I are going to the store.”
“When’s Floyd coming back?”
“Lunch. Then we’ll see about the river.” She walked over to the window and looked out. “If you stand up you can see her,” she said.
“The river,” Duncan interpreted. “Mama says water is a female.” She saw she had my attention. “She said calling the Mississippi the ‘father of waters’ was the only mistake the Indians ever made, except not killing the first white men who came here.”
“I don’t think the Indians meant father of waters.” JoHanna spoke to the window. She turned toward us, and I saw the light of mischief in her eyes. “Father is the interpretation that the Spaniards put on the Indian term. Spain was, at that time, and still is, I should add, a very patriarchal society. Any figure of reverence or authority would naturally be male.” She lifted her eyebrows. “According to the men who heard it.”
I was surprised by my own laughter. “Where do you think of these things?” I asked her.
She grinned, a real complete grin. “Will asks me the same question. But he doesn’t wait around for the answer. I don’t think he really wants to know. Do you?”
I was suddenly aware of the risk. What she offered was not a simple answer to a question—it was revolution. I felt my smile slipping, and I tried to hold on to the lighthearted moment.
JoHanna left the window and came up to the bed. She put her hand on my forehead. “Cool,” she said. “You’ve weathered the worst, Mattie. Aunt Sadie promises. I do believe you can get up after lunch, if you want.”
“I want.”
“Good, then we’ll go to the river.” Duncan’s eyes were bright, an imp of mischief dancing there with the same abandon that Duncan had once danced the Charleston. “She wants to meet you, Mattie. She’s heard lots about you this summer from me and Mama.”
Seventeen
THE Pascagoula was not what I’d expected. In my mind’s eye it was a deep blue river with willows bending over the banks, a picture-book river winding placidly past small towns. I was correct in visualizing it as low on one side with high bluffs on the other, but that was as far as my imagination took me into fact.
We had come to the end of the road where the bridge was to have been built some thirty-odd years before. It was the easier route for us, because of our disabilities. Before us, the water was a mesmerizing element.
The river itself was yellow-red, sluggish looking. Looks were deceiving. Rains north of us had clouded the river and bloated it, giving it that lazy look, JoHanna said. But it wasn’t slow, she warned us. Far from it. The current wasn’t a steady flow, as I had imagined, but a confusion of small eddies. In places, it was smooth as glass. Suddenly a churning motion would break the water and a swirl of suction would be revealed. Whatever luckless object happened by would be suddenly sucked deep into the river. It could be a floating branch or a bottle, or a man. The river took whatever it could, JoHanna said. Sometimes the object would disappear, the vortex closing as fast as it had come. Later, it might be released far downstream, or it might not ever be seen again. JoHanna said there was a treasure of riches and broken dreams on the bottom of the Pascagoula.
JoHanna said the water would clear by tomorrow and that then we could swim, if Aunt Sadie gave her permission for me to get in the river water. A hot bath was definitely in order, JoHanna said, but Aunt Sadie didn’t believe in the healing properties of the Pascagoula, and she feared some infection would get me.
Since I tended to agree with Aunt Sadie, I was relieved. But I was glad to sit on the bank and watch Duncan and JoHanna and Floyd, and even that crazy Pecos, as they ventured closer to the murky depths.
Since JoHanna had insisted that I be hauled in a wagon by Floyd while she pulled Duncan, we didn’t go as far upstream as Duncan wanted. There was a place with a sandbar that Duncan loved. JoHanna said we would go there tomorrow if we could walk and swim. For today, though, we were to look only.
The enormous brick and mortar pilings that reared out of the current were a melancholy reminder of the bridge that was never built. More than fifty feet in height and wide as half a locomotive, they rose above the river, still resisting the constant tug of the current. Set in twos, there were fifteen pair. I couldn’t begin to imagine how the men got them down to the bottom of the river without being swept away.
“Daddy drew the way the bridge would look,” JoHanna said. “He wasn’t an architect, but he had a flair for being able to conceptualize things. He had it all, down to the little decorative iron touches.” She smiled. “I’m glad he never lived to see these barren supports here. That would have broken his heart.”
“Do you think Mr. Senseney is alive somewhere, building other things?” I was still wondering about the hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that had disappeared along with him. JoHanna’s sixty-two thousand, five hundred dollars included in it. I’d done the arithmetic.
“I don’t think so.” JoHanna held the handle of Duncan’s wagon. “I don’t think he’s alive at all. I think he was killed up in New Augusta, when he went to buy the supplies. That whole neck of the woods is fraught with outlaws and their kin. I think Mr. Senseney had too much money on him, and he was the kind of man who liked to show off a little.”
JoHanna’s eyes had a rare distance in them, so I thought of something else to talk about. “When we go back, can we stop in the town?” We’d passed through it as fast as they could pull the wagons in the sandy road. JoHanna had said very little about the gaunt wooden frames that were left, skeletons of the past. I couldn’t tell if JoHanna wanted to race through the town because she didn’t want to talk about it, or because she was so eager to get to the river. Duncan had told me how much she hungered for the water, just to see it.
“I’ll give you a tour,” JoHanna said.
“Then I want to come back and fish.” Floyd looked at the water. “There’s a big one in there. I’ve heard the stories about that big tabby.” He looked at us all, one by one. “He weighs over a hundred pounds. If I could catch him, I’d be somebody.”
The handle of Duncan’s wagon hit the dirt with a soft thud. JoHanna was at Floyd’s side in one swift step. Her hand was on his cheek, directing his gaze deep into her eyes. “You are somebody, Floyd. You’re very special. You don’t need to catch a fish or do anything to prove it.”
Floyd’s grin was lopsided, and a flush warmed his cheeks. “You say that all the time, Miss JoHanna. You think I’m somebody, but the people in Jexville don’t. They think I’m a fool.”
I looked down in shame. Floyd wasn’t as simple as I’d thought. He was aware of the way people spoke of him. How could he not be? They did it to his face, as if he couldn’t understand.
“You can’t be responsible for the shortcomings of others, Floyd. You’re who you are. That’s plenty. You give some folks honesty, and they don’t realize the value. Give them a pretty dress, and they think they have something worthwhile.” She brushed her fingers across his jaw. “You’re very special. Catch the fish if it makes you happy, but do it for you.”
“Maybe I’ll get my picture in the paper.” Floyd turned away from he
r and looked into the water. “Now that would be something. Maybe my mama would read about me and know that I’d grown up to be someone she shouldn’t have left behind.”
Down river there was the sound of men rafting the logs, someone whistling a ragged tune. I looked at my hands, so pale in the bright sun.
“Let’s head back to town,” JoHanna said. “We’ll see what the river has to tell us tomorrow.”
“I’ll be back today.” Floyd made the promise to the river before he turned the wagon I rode in and started back toward the ghost town of Fitler.
The town proper of Fitler, or where it had been, was only half a mile from the river. Unlike Jexville, where all trees had been chopped down to make Redemption Road a straight line, Fitler’s main street snaked around the huge oak trees. The buildings had once been set back from the street where unruly shrubs now dominated. We were in no hurry as we meandered along the road, stopping to look at wild flowers or the prickly pear that could pierce thin shoe leather. I had the nagging sense that someone followed us, just beyond the shelter of the trees that grew on both sides of the road. In my perch in the wagon, I looked up often but saw nothing. My own guilt was playing games with me, as if Elikah had left his barbershop to come to Fitler and spy on me. As if he knew what I had done. I tried to ignore the sense of being watched.
At the middle of town, JoHanna stopped the wagon Duncan rode in and looked around. “When I was a little girl, there was a piano in that bar. Mr. Senseney’s bar. All evening long it would be going with the lively songs the men liked to hear. But sometimes, early in the morning, one of the whores would come down and play it. I always wanted to ask her the melody, it was so strange and haunting. I would sneak out of Aunt Sadie’s and come over and hide in those old bushes in my nightgown and listen to her play. I could see her through the curtains, and she didn’t look much older than me. She was killed, though, before I ever got to talk to her.”
“Killed?” I asked.
“Some man cut her with a knife, and she bled to death before the doctor could get there.” JoHanna stared at the two-story frame. “Corpses would float up, down in Pascagoula, sometimes two a week. The high-stakes card games brought a lot of violent men here. A lot of the killing went on at the floating saloons. There were houseboats that would dock, pick up a load of gamblers, and then move back out into the river, where they could tie up at some out-of-the-way place. No law ruled those hellholes.”
“There’s pirates’ treasure, too,” Duncan said.
“That tale drew plenty of fortune hunters up to Fitler,” JoHanna agreed. “Floyd knows some stories about that.”
“Where did everyone go?” I looked at the rambling structures, what looked like the town had been thirty or more businesses. The only thing left was a small grocery that also served as a postal and telegram office with a bait shop on the side. The wooden frames of buildings past were like a mirage. They gave the idea of a town, but when I looked closely, it wasn’t there. I wasn’t certain it ever had been. The contrast to what I’d come to know in Jexville was too extreme.
“Most of the folks went to other river towns. The coast.” JoHanna pulled the brim of her ever-present hat lower to shade her eyes from the afternoon sun. “I heard Lonnie and Frank, the bartenders at the Last Chance, are working for Tommy Ladnier. His private home. I remember them as handsome young men. I’m sure they add a note of elegance to Tommy’s little soirees.”
“Mr. Ladnier has nice clothes,” Floyd said. “I’m making him a pair of boots. Very special.”
I looked up and down the abandoned street. “What would have happened to Fitler with Prohibition?”
JoHanna shrugged. “Nothing. Like the coast. Like Jexville. There’s liquor in every cabinet, folks just hide it and pretend not to drink. This country is in love with hypocrisy.”
The skin on my neck prickled just as Pecos shrilled with alarm and flew off the back of Duncan’s wagon. All of us were startled, and we all swung around at once to find a tall, dark-haired man standing not five feet behind us. He’d come up so silently that we hadn’t heard a thing.
“You’re right,” he said, as if he’d been part of our conversation. “The people in this country want to live the life of what they see in the film-strips, but they don’t want others to know what they do.”
JoHanna should have responded. She should have said something to the man for frightening us, for sneaking up on us and eavesdropping on our conversation. Instead, she looked at him and caught her breath as if she had a sudden pain. His dark gaze was proud, direct. Effective. He spoke to her, communicating something that made my skin prickle. Her lips parted to speak, but whatever she’d meant to say did not come out.
“Who are you?” she asked instead.
Before he could respond, Floyd swung around on him. Dropping into his gunslinger’s crouch, Floyd inched his hands up until they hovered over the wooden pistols he wore wherever he went.
The stranger’s face shuttered, his eyes narrowing as his legs bent slightly and he lifted his hands to his sides. “Can we talk?” he asked, his voice a threat and a request.
“Be careful, Floyd,” Duncan warned.
Floyd hesitated, shifting just enough so that his body protected JoHanna if the lead began to fly. “Put your hands in the air.” He drew his right pistol and pointed it at the stranger’s chest.
The stranger complied, large hands moving slowly into a position of surrender, though surely he could see that Floyd’s guns were wooden. The stranger wore no weapon that I could see. His face registered no trace that this was a fool’s game. He treated Floyd as if he had a cannon. Floyd’s face was flushed with success, and pride.
“Easy, Floyd.” JoHanna placed a steadying hand on Floyd’s arm, as if she too believed he carried a loaded weapon.
I wondered if they had all gone insane.
“Now maybe he’ll tell us his name,” JoHanna prompted, “before you have to do away with him.”
The stranger stepped forward, left hand still in the air while he extended his right to her. “John Doggett. And you are JoHanna McVay.” He looked at Duncan. “You’re the daughter, Duncan. And?” He looked at me and Floyd. I found that I, too, was holding my breath. He was a highwayman, a figure of dark fantasy. Surely if I blinked he would be gone.
“Mattie and Floyd, my friends.” JoHanna finally stepped forward as if to shield all of us from his too obvious interest.
He gave Floyd a nod. “You did an excellent job of protecting Mrs. McVay.” He looked at me, assessing my place. “And her family.” He returned his attention to her. “I’ve heard many things about you.” He spoke to her as if they were alone. Then he instantly dispelled that notion by giving Duncan a smile. “And your beautiful daughter.”
“I’m sure you have. Gossip, like hypocrisy, is a delicious little sin, isn’t it?” JoHanna’s voice held a strange note of haughtiness.
Instead of getting angry, he laughed at her. For one crazy instant I thought of Will.
“Part of the gossip I find so delicious is your understanding of the river.” By the end of the sentence he was no longer teasing. “You know the power that it has.”
JoHanna was caught in a draft of erratic wind. She seemed to be blown back from him, then toward him, yet her body never moved a fraction of an inch. “I have respect for the river. For all of nature.”
The strange man nodded, his dark gaze sculpting her face. He was without age. Or I should say indeterminate. He could have been twenty-five, or he could have been forty-five. His skin, an autumn bronze, seemed more natural than sun-kissed, and his dark hair, I finally noticed, was pulled into a thong at the nape of his neck. There was no gray, but a shift in his facial features would age him, then the hint of a smile would hurtle him back to a younger age. Somehow, I had the craziest notion that he was actually from the past.
“My people once lived beside the river.”
The words he said weren’t strange, but the effect on JoHanna was profound. She was unabl
e to stop looking at him.
“Are you from around these parts?” Floyd had moved beside Duncan, where he’d put his big, gentle hand on Pecos’s head, stroking the bird’s ruffled feathers.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t really an answer, and it wasn’t designed to be one.
“Do you live here in Fitler?” I asked. He made me uneasy. Not that I was afraid of him. Not in the least. But he commanded all of our attention in a way that concerned me. He was a presence, and I knew then that I could not blink him away.
“Sometimes.” He smiled at me and I felt safer, and more annoyed.
“You’re Chickasaw, aren’t you?” JoHanna stepped toward him, examining his features as if he were a statue, something that could be walked around and studied without giving offense. She lifted her hand, as if to touch him, then dropped it back to her side.
“Pascagoula, Chickasaw, Mingo, Scot, Irish, Welsh,” he compressed his lips and raised his eyebrows, “barbarian.”
JoHanna laughed out loud, and Floyd and Duncan joined her. I sat in the wagon, the sun beating down on my head, and wondered if this was a sun-induced fantasy. I took in John Doggett’s clothes. He wore a collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, gray pants that were well worn along the contours of a body fit and lean. Scuffed boots that had once been expensive. There was nothing unusual in his dress, except that his clothes seemed an afterthought. Barbarian. It fit him well, except I could find no hunger for blood in his eyes. There was something there, but not cruelty.
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