Touched

by Carolyn Haines

  “Damn you, Pecos,” I said. “That’s the second time you’ve spurred me. I ought to cook your scrawny ass. I think Aunt Sadie was on the right track when she wanted to make dumplings with you.”

  Everyone around me went completely silent, and I looked at them.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Nearly ten o’clock. You slept for twelve hours straight.” JoHanna’s voice was rigidly controlled, a calm, steady voice.

  I nodded. JoHanna was giving me the strangest look, and Duncan had finally stopped crying. Floyd stood in the doorway, and John Doggett sat beside me on the bed, his large hand holding the cloth against the six-inch slash that Pecos had opened up between wrist and elbow. I had the clearest memory of John’s eyebrows and the way his lips moved when he talked about some girl who went to live with the Indians on the Pascagoula River.

  “Welcome home, Mattie,” JoHanna said. She brushed her hand over my face and lifted my chin up to the kerosene lantern she held in her other hand. She studied my face intently. “Do you know me?”

  “I know you aren’t Mary Pickford.”

  My response brought laughter that started rather feebly but continued to grow as they each looked at one another. Finally, they were all laughing until tears came from their eyes.

  “Who would have thought Pecos would bring her out of it?” Floyd asked. He went and got the rooster and put him on his shoulder. “As soon as John finishes with Mattie, I think we should put the boards across the windows. The wind is getting mighty high. This is going to be one bad, bad storm.”

  Twenty-eight

  ONCE the wound given to me by Pecos had been cleaned and dressed, I ate a bowl of potato soup and went back to sleep. I awoke, infrequently, to the sound of Pecos’s claws clacking on the hardwood floor beside the bed. Either he was serving as sentinel to my sleep, or he was angry because I’d taken Duncan’s bed. I didn’t waste more than a few seconds on the question but immediately returned to the soft darkness of a dreamless sleep. When I finally surfaced, it was to an eerie gray light and the howl of wind. The rain, driven by the wind, hammered the windows that were crisscrossed with boards in long gusts that sounded like rocks being shaken in a jar. My first impulse was to pull the sheets and pillows over my head. The house groaned as if it were coming apart at the seams, while outside the trees fought their own battle against the gales. They moaned and strained, a subtext of noise to the challenge of the wind.

  I knew instantly where I was, and my arm, and Pecos’s presence in the room, perched on the back of the rocking chair JoHanna had sat in to watch me, was testimony that I had not dreamed the events before I went to sleep. I laid in Duncan’s bed and decided I was glad to be back in the present. My retreat had been into the past, but a past that had never existed. I knew that. It had been a choice—to avoid a present I could not tolerate. JoHanna’s rescue of me, the strange power of John Doggett’s voice, and Pecos’s unintentional attack. Somehow the combination had given me the link to the present, a path back.

  Stretching against the clean cotton of the sheets, I felt the most peculiar sensation seep into me. During brief lulls in the wind I could hear voices in the kitchen. The storm was blasting the house, and because of where I was, I felt safe. I was also a little afraid, but mostly safe. I got up and slipped into the robe JoHanna had placed at the foot of the bed and went to find her.

  I found them all in the kitchen, huddled around the table. Duncan sat in JoHanna’s lap, and Floyd and John sat on either side of her. Pecos followed me into the kitchen, and I took the fourth seat at the table.

  “It’s a hurricane,” JoHanna said. “A lot of people are going to suffer.” A single lamp on the kitchen table cast a golden globe of light on our hands and faces. It was strange illumination. The outside light was pearlized, a glowing gray, as if the sun had forsaken us and sent a weaker cousin in her place.

  “Is it going to blow the house down?” Living in Meridian, I’d heard about hurricanes, but they only affected the coastal area, or so I thought. Jexville was a good forty miles from Mobile Bay, and then another goodly piece from the open water of the Gulf of Mexico. But the big storms obviously had a long reach.

  “This house is well made.” JoHanna looked around the kitchen just as a big limb slammed into the side of the house. “If one of the trees falls on it …” She didn’t have to finish. The big oaks out front had deep root systems, but they also presented a big target for the wind to catch. I wanted to look outside, but I was unwilling. The noise of the wind was enough to convince me that the storm’s raw power was more than I wanted to witness. I would linger in the safety of the lamplight with my friends.

  “What about Will?” I asked.

  “He’s still in New York. I’ll get word to him that we’re safe as soon as I can.” She wrapped her arms tighter around Duncan.

  Duncan shifted, loosening JoHanna’s hold. She cocked her head, a gesture that Pecos, standing beside her, immediately imitated. “I like the storm,” she said softly. “Listen to the wind. It’s terrible, so angry.” She took her mother’s hand. “But none of us were in the dream. It was only strangers.”

  There was an undercurrent of emotion around the table. Fear? Apprehension? I couldn’t be certain.

  “You like it because you think it won’t affect us.” JoHanna was frowning. “A lot of people are going to be hurt by this. The last storm that came through in 1906 leveled the pine timber from the coast up to Fitler. The destruction was complete. Some folks haven’t recovered yet, and here it comes again.”

  Duncan twisted so that she could look behind her, reading her mother’s expression more than her words. “You always say that nature is supreme, that people forget her power. You say that nature is the only force to bend humans to her will, and that it’s good for us to know we aren’t all-powerful.”

  When no one spoke, Duncan continued, her voice more determined. “You said that when man is able to control the weather that he’ll destroy the earth.” She turned in JoHanna’s arms to look at John Doggett. “You said it, too. I’ve heard you talking with Mama.”

  Doggett’s smile was sad. “It’s true, Duncan. But some lessons are painful, and hard to watch. Nature tends to punish the good and the bad without discrimination.”

  His words struck me at the base of the spine, a tingle of apprehension. I had so fully accepted his presence in the house. I had climbed out of myself using his words as footholds. But why was he here? I lowered my chin and watched him through my eyelashes. He was at ease, but sad.

  “Some people need to hurt.” Duncan’s gaze turned inward, her mouth taking on a hard line that looked older. “This is what I saw in my dream, and it’s going to happen to everyone in Jexville. They’re all going to be touched.” She put her cards, face down, on the table. “I keep remembering the dream, and I know some of it’s here, in Chickasaw County. People drowned. Water running in creeks and ditches.” Her forehead furrowed and she rubbed it with one tired fist. “But it doesn’t make sense. It’s land like a farm where the bodies are. Not all on the coast.”

  JoHanna gathered her daughter to her chest, hugging her tightly. “Hush, Duncan.” JoHanna looked over the top of Duncan’s head and into Floyd’s worried eyes.

  “What is it?” I felt the tension, but I didn’t fully understand. The storm was going to do awful things, but we couldn’t stop it, and we were safe. Will was safe in New York. What was going on that I didn’t understand?

  They exchanged a glance, as if trying to decide whether to tell me or not.

  “We should all leave for Fitler as soon as we can.” JoHanna’s gaze dropped to Duncan’s hands on the table. “It would be best.”

  They were all afraid, or if not afraid, at least apprehensive. “Why?”

  “Mattie, do you remember Red’s funeral?”

  The scene came back to me with blistering shame. I hadn’t forgotten it. I’d simply buried it away. I felt the flush rise up my cheeks as Floyd turned to gaze at me. He’d touc
hed me. Not in any suggestive way, but a simple restraint. That was why Elikah had beaten me. Oh, I remembered.

  “I see you do remember.” JoHanna hesitated. “I made reference to a natural disaster, a plight brought down by God. Well, here it is.” She held her palm out, fingers pointed toward the window. “This is going to be the final straw. They’ll think Duncan and I called this down on their heads. They won’t call it witchcraft, but that’s what they’ll believe. In their hearts.”

  “They don’t have hearts.” I spoke with great bitterness. “And who cares what they think?”

  “I do. I’ve lived here most of my adult life not caring what they thought. I’ve always irritated the people here, but I’ve never been afraid of them. But this storm … the helplessness against it. They could turn on us. On Duncan.”

  And they would. She didn’t have to say it. They would. The fury of the storm was nothing compared to what they would do. They were frightened, and threatened. A helpless child was the perfect target.

  “I left Tommy Ladnier’s boots out on the counter.” Floyd got up and paced the room. “I should go put them away.”

  “They’ll be fine,” JoHanna and John said in unison. As an afterthought, JoHanna went to the phone on the kitchen wall. “Maybe we can ring through.” She tried, but the phone was dead.

  “Trees on the line,” John said. “It would have been a miracle if it worked.”

  “Mr. Ladnier will be very upset if something happens to them.” Floyd turned at the stove and came back toward the table.

  “You can’t help a hurricane, Floyd.” John pushed back his chair. “I’m going to light the stove and make some coffee. It’s chilly now, but once the storm passes it’ll get hotter than blue blazes.”

  “Summer’s over.” I ventured the assessment.

  “Not by a long shot. Watch and see. After the storm it’ll get as hot as August. Sticky hot. I’ll have my coffee now and be hot later.” He went to the stove and readied everything as if he’d spent the better part of his life in JoHanna’s kitchen.

  I started to comment, but it was pointless. And coffee sounded good. Coffee and maybe some toast. I was starving again.

  Worried about Tommy Ladnier’s boots, Floyd suffered more than anyone else through the long hours of the storm. We drank coffee and talked. John had lived all along the coastal rim, and he knew about storms from Key West to Galveston. With amusing stories he kept our spirits up. He believed that we’d caught the western side of the storm, the weaker side. It was the eastern edge, and whether the tides were low or high, that determined the power of destruction, he told us.

  Through the long hours of wind and rain, the crack of tree limbs, and the sudden assault of some windblown object against the house, we passed the time as best we could. JoHanna and Duncan taught us to play gin, a game that Floyd did not care much about. To John’s delight, I discovered that I had a talent for cards. When JoHanna and Duncan tired of gin, he taught me to play poker. It occurred to me that Elikah would be scandalized, and it gave me a stab of pleasure. I spent what few moments I spared Elikah visualizing him beneath the weight of the biggest tree in existence.

  We made more coffee and ate more toast when the clock indicated it was past noon. I thought there was a slackening in the force of the wind when I went to the kitchen window to look out.

  John Doggett came up beside me, his hand lightly touching my back. “We were lucky. The worst is over for now.”

  “Do you think it did much damage?” I saw a big tree, the tip of Elikah’s boot showing from beneath it, and I hoped.

  “Not the hurricane. Some trees, a few barns and houses. The real danger for us, this far inland, is the tornadoes that come with a hurricane. There are sure to be some, and those are the real forces of destruction.”

  Perhaps Elikah had been picked up by a twister and carried off, never to be found again. I liked that even better than the idea of the tree. I wouldn’t have to pretend to mourn his death. I could simply say that he was gone. Just gone.

  It was after two o’clock before the winds died and the rain stopped. Just as John predicted, the sun returned with a vengeance. John and Floyd got hammers and crowbars and began pulling the boards from the windows. No glass had broken, and as the boards came down we were better able to see the yard.

  Small limbs and leaves were scattered about in the side yards. The chinaberry tree was undamaged, and John had moved Will’s Auburn out into the more open field where green and brown leaves had been plastered to the bright red paint, but otherwise it was undamaged. We slipped out the back door and made our way, JoHanna holding Duncan in her arms, to the front.

  The big oaks that bordered the road had survived with the loss of only a few big limbs. With some cleaning up, they would not show the ravages of the storm by next spring. But the cedar had not been so lucky.

  The trunk had snapped about fifteen feet from the ground, and the entire tree had fallen over, the green boughs taking up half the side yard.

  “Oh.” JoHanna set Duncan on her feet and ran to the tree. She stopped at the trunk and put both hands on it, her palms sliding over the red bark much the same way she’d felt my body for broken bones.

  “If we cut it below the break, it may live.” John walked beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jo.”

  “I spent many an afternoon under these branches.” JoHanna sighed. “Get the bow saw out of the shed. Maybe you and Floyd can take care of it before we go to town.” She started walking back to us, stopping at Duncan to brush her head. “The fronds were too dense. The wind …” She shook her head.

  Floyd got the saw from the shed, which had lost its door. JoHanna went in the house, but Duncan and I shook the leaves out of the hammock and sat in the shade to watch. I was acutely aware of John as he worked. He was slighter across the shoulders than Floyd, but when he took his shirt off, the bumps and ridges of his muscles were hard and lean. He was a man who worked for a living, and not just with a pen. He pulled a string from his pocket and tied back his long dark hair as he bent to the saw, working in complete rhythm with Floyd. They were perfect contrasts, one dark, one light. Although Floyd was as hot, he worked with his shirt on. He was eager to get to town to check on his boots.

  Duncan grew weary of the heat and wanted to go back in the house. I held her arm as she made the walk with slow, deliberate steps, awed by the grim determination that forced one foot in front of the other again and again and again. She was stronger. Much stronger.

  I helped stack the smaller pieces of wood, wondering if JoHanna would actually burn her tree in the fireplace this winter. Floyd assured me that she would. JoHanna loved the tree, but letting it rot in the yard would not bring it back. And JoHanna had her hope that the trunk would survive.

  An hour and a half later we were done. Twelve feet of red trunk remained intact. The rest of the tree had been sawed and split into stacks. The sun burned down with a fury that had begun to condense the puddles of water, giving the air a soupy humidity that made me long for a cold swim.

  Instead, Floyd, John, and I took turns pumping water over our heads, gasping at the cold. JoHanna and Duncan appeared at the back door with towels, a picnic basket, and the keys to the car. We were going to drive Floyd to the boot shop to rescue his work. Then we would take a tour of the countryside and finally go to Fitler to make sure Aunt Sadie was okay. John warned us as we got in the car, me and Duncan and Floyd and Pecos in the back, that the roads might not be passable. JoHanna’s cedar would not be the only casualty of the wind, and chances were, plenty of trees had fallen across the road. The bow saw was packed in the trunk, along with gloves and jugs of water.

  An hour and two trees later, JoHanna conceded that it would be faster for Floyd to walk into town. Peterson Lane dead-ended not far past the McVay house, and there was little traffic on it. The busier roads would be cleared, but for the next day or two, JoHanna would not be able to drive anywhere.

  JoHanna put sandwiches in Floyd�
�s pockets, and then looked up when John selected several for himself.

  “I thought I’d go with Floyd, take a look at the town while he’s gathering up his stuff. See how much damage there was.” An undercurrent cut through his words.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.” JoHanna looked down the road as if she expected to see General Sherman headed our way, torches in hand. “Thank you, John. You’re a good friend to us.”

  “I’ll see about Mattie’s husband, too.” A muscle jumped in John’s cheek, his eyes flattened with fury. In that instant he was transformed. Barbarian. The word suited him. I almost hoped he would meet up with Elikah. My husband found it easy to beat a woman. John Doggett would give far better than he got.

  “Don’t start anything, John. There are innocents …” Her gaze drifted to Floyd, who stood in the middle of the road, legs slightly parted, as he patiently waited for John.

  John’s muscle twitched again.

  JoHanna’s voice took on an urgency. “You can leave, John. I can, if it comes to that. And Mattie can come with us. But Floyd won’t. Not even with me. This is his home. The only one he wants.”

  The dark head nodded once, swiftly. He shifted the sandwiches to his other hand and then brushed a kiss on JoHanna’s cheek. The action startled me, though it was done without the passion of a lover. I looked away, at Duncan and Pecos, to give JoHanna and John the privacy they needed.

  JoHanna spoke again, and her words pulled my head up to look at her as she gave her instructions to John.

  “Would you stop by the telegraph office and have them send a message to Will at the Waldorf that we’re fine here? I don’t want him to worry.”

  John nodded, then stepped back and joined Floyd at the road. “We’ll be back later. If they need help in town, we’ll give them a hand. You girls will be okay, won’t you?”

  “I want to see.” Duncan had climbed up to sit beside Pecos. “I want to see if it was like my dream. I’ll know it if I see it.”