Touched

by Carolyn Haines

  Thirty-five

  I RAN the whole way back to where JoHanna had parked the car. The grass in the pecan orchard had not been cut all summer, tall bahia that tangled around my feet and clutched at my skirt. Limbs had been blown down all over the orchard, and I dodged them as I cut through the rows and rows of gray, leafless trees, staying clear of the roadway just in case Love wasn’t good for her word, or wasn’t able to convince Tommy and the boys that she had sent me away. Finding JoHanna and not getting caught were the only thoughts I allowed myself, but beneath that was a steady joy that Floyd had been at Tommy Ladnier’s, and that he was okay.

  The red car was a flare of color in the gray-green of the orchard. JoHanna paced beside the car. Her long stride took her forward, then she pivoted and went back.

  “JoHanna!” I called as soon as I was within yelling distance, and struggled on through the grass.

  “Mattie!” She started running toward me. “Oh, Mattie, I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

  “It almost did.” I pulled in air. “It’s Floyd.” I clasped the hand she held out to me. “He was there, but he’s gone now. The cook said he was okay, but they took him someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  I shook my head, still trying to get enough breath to talk. “She didn’t know where.”

  “Are you certain he was gone? She could be lying. She could have made up a story just to get rid of you.”

  I thought of Love, hands on her big hips, small eyes watching me with neither pity nor compassion. “I don’t think she was lying.”

  JoHanna signaled for me to get in the car. “We have to get back and check on Duncan. I told her to order from room service and to stay in the room.”

  But—

  It was unspoken. Duncan had been raised not to be afraid. She couldn’t comprehend the damage she could do by straying out of the room and being seen by the wrong people. She was enough like JoHanna that she wouldn’t believe the danger until it was too late.

  As we maneuvered onto the main road, we were forced to slow down. Mules and wagons were pulled up on each side of the roadbed. Men with their shirt sleeves rolled and their faces gleaming with sweat loaded debris into the wagons while the mules stood patiently, cowlike tails flicking at the yellow flies and mosquitoes, which seemed to have blown in by the millions.

  The afternoon had drawn even more workers out along the beach front. The sky was still gray, but the sun burned hot and angry, heating the clouds into a sticky humidity. Ignoring the stifling heat, the men worked on. Sometimes they paused as they heard our motor and waved or whistled as we drove by. I was taken by the fact that so many were dark haired with deep tans. Olive-skinned people descended from sailors, handsome men who flashed a smile at us as they wiped the sweat from their foreheads. Most of them were working hard, but in a couple of places, where the damage was worst, some stood beside their property and stared at it, as if they did not believe what had occurred.

  We passed an empty section of beach where five black wreaths erupted from the sea grass. At first I thought they were thin old women dressed all in black, but JoHanna slowed, and I could see that the wreaths had been hung on sturdy wire stands, the legs planted firmly in the sand. The black ribbons blew lazily on the erratic gulf breeze. JoHanna said that someone had been killed at sea, probably five fishermen, and the wreaths were a symbol of death and mourning. Victims of the sea.

  I thought of the dead family on Red Licorice Road, victims of a storm far worse than a hurricane. What madness had come swirling through the rain and wind to stop at that neat little farm? I could not believe that a father, even touched by madness, could systematically drown his wife and children. Especially not a three-year-old girl. I had avoided looking at their contorted faces as much as possible, but I could not forget that child’s feet, dark and purpling beneath the folds of her wet gown. The image haunted me, as did that family, left dangling in my imagination.

  JoHanna’s driving pulled me from my dark thoughts. Once clear of the wagons and mules, JoHanna drove too fast, but no one seemed to notice us as we whizzed toward the Seaview. Turning into the white shell drive, JoHanna relaxed, easing her grip on the wheel. Once again, a young man met us at the door and took the car while we hurried inside.

  “Mrs. Lindsey?” The voice of the clerk stopped us halfway across the lobby. “There’s a telegram for you.” He waved an envelope at us and JoHanna hurried to the desk to get it.

  I watched her face as she ripped open the envelope and scanned the thin white page. She looked up at me, her face curiously blank. “Will is on his way here. John is going back to Jexville to search for Floyd there.”

  “That’s all it says?” I had expected more. More detail. Had John been able to find anything out about Floyd? About who had taken him and brought him down to Tommy Ladnier’s? About the dead family? When would Will arrive?

  JoHanna crumpled the telegram and then held it in her hand as she started toward the room. After seeing the look in her eyes I would have walked through Jexville stark naked rather than ask her another single question about the telegram.

  We found Duncan on the hotel room floor with shreds of newspaper all around her. She’d ordered a paper from room service and had been busy with a pair of scissors from the front desk, clipping out every storm story. She had ordered the stories into three piles. One for Florida, one for Alabama, and one for Mississippi. There were thousands dead in Florida, where the storm had swept across from the Atlantic and then regathered her strength in the Gulf of Mexico for an assault on Mobile.

  JoHanna sank into a chair as she read the clippings, passing them on to me with a sigh or shake of her head. The devastation in Florida was in the millions of dollars. More gruesome was the front page listing of locations and a count of the dead and injured. “Miami: known dead 194; known injured 75; estimated dead 115; seriously injured 250. More than 10,000 homeless.” And the count moved across the state. Miami Beach, Pompano, Hollywood, and on and on.

  According to the stories printed in the Mobile Daily Register, Mobile had been hit twice by the storm with winds up to ninety-four miles an hour. But there had been no known loss of life. JoHanna shook her head as she handed that article to me. “We were very lucky. The eye must have passed over Mobile.”

  I started to say that Mobile, sitting right on the Bay, had escaped with no deaths. In Jexville there were at least five. Neither JoHanna nor Duncan needed to be reminded of that, though, so I watched Pecos scratching around in the unread portion of the paper.

  With a light breeze fluttering the curtains in the room and Duncan on her stomach, feet crossed behind her back, it didn’t seem possible that so much destruction had occurred. I went to the window and looked out at the Sound. The water was choppy, gray tipped with white. The sun broke free of the clouds and gave the water a million sparkles before it disappeared behind the clouds again.

  “Is Will coming here?” I asked. I hated to pry, but JoHanna wasn’t going to give out any information.

  “Yes. Straight here. He won’t even go to Mobile. John was able to get word to him.”

  “When will he arrive?” I noticed that Duncan gave up her pretense of disinterest at news of her father. She was still aggravated at being left behind, but the idea of Will’s impending arrival pushed her over her bad mood.

  “Tomorrow afternoon.” JoHanna’s voice registered no emotion.

  “Daddy’s coming tomorrow?” Duncan dropped the scissors and rolled over so she could sit up. “I can’t wait! He’ll find Floyd and take care of everything. Then we can go home. Pecos and I hate being cooped up here in the room, hiding.”

  JoHanna’s smile was unsteady. “He’ll take care of things, Duncan. I’m sure he will.” She got up and paced to the edge of the rug.

  “And he’ll find Floyd, won’t he?”

  It did not escape JoHanna or me that Duncan had rephrased her statement, turning it over and into a question. Though she had said nothing until now, Floyd
was very much on her mind.

  “You haven’t had …” My voice was strident, and Duncan and JoHanna stared at me. I swallowed and tried again. “You haven’t had any dreams about Floyd, have you?”

  Duncan shook her head. Then frowned. “I dreamt about the man in the water, and that was the last dream. Mama, you don’t think Floyd has drowned, do you? The storm was over before he left us.”

  JoHanna’s voice was sad. “No, I don’t think he’s drowned.” She paced to the window, looking out to sea.

  “Then Daddy will find him and everything will be okay again.” She lifted her arms and stretched. “What are we going to do until Daddy gets here?” Duncan looked at me. JoHanna slipped from the room and went into the separate bath and closed the door.

  “We could get some cards. Maybe play gin or hearts.” I could hear JoHanna. She was crying, and I was doing my best to distract Duncan. “Since your mama’s here to watch Pecos, maybe you and I could go walking around the grounds. The hotel is pretty.”

  Duncan tried to feign indifference, but she was sick of the room, and she got up and put on her shoes.

  “JoHanna, Duncan and I are going for a walk. Watch Pecos.” I spoke through the bathroom door.

  “Don’t leave the hotel grounds.” Her voice was hoarse, raw.

  “Mama?” Duncan touched the wood of the door for only an instant. Before JoHanna could reply she fled the room, slamming the door on me and Pecos.

  I caught up with her in the hallway. Her legs seemed to heal more and more with each passing hour. She wore a short dress, a dark green smock, and I noticed that even the scars from the burns were beginning to fade. Her hair had taken a sudden growth spurt. Dark and thick, it was lustrous, catching the dim lights of the hallway and holding them deep.

  “Let’s go to the gardens,” she said, leading the way.

  Gardeners were hard at work on the rose bushes and the flower beds. The wind had ripped all of the leaves from the huge oaks that marked the grounds. The sound of saws was menacing, but the smell of the fresh wood was familiar, and comforting. Men were cutting back damaged limbs, mending the ravages of the storm. An old man in blue overalls and a blue work shirt took a shine to Duncan. He showed her where some of the old limbs, so heavy and graceful they actually touched the ground, had been braced to prevent severe wind damage. He assured us that by spring the Seaview gardens would once again be the setting for beautiful weddings and parties where wealthy people danced among the trees.

  I could see that the hurricane had done heavy damage, but not nearly as extensive as the havoc wreaked by the salt water in Tommy Ladnier’s terraced gardens. With a wave the old man went back to his saw, and Duncan and I walked along the white shell paths. Duncan told me of the tons of oysters harvested and eaten to procure the shells for the walkways. The act of walking, the freedom of movement, the bustle of the gardens, and the friendliness of the workers, all combined to bring Duncan out of her moodiness. She ran and talked with the gardeners, asking questions or laughing, teasing the young and old with her impish smile and quick tongue. It was a pleasure to see her as an ordinary child, a nine-year-old girl playing on the grounds of a luxury resort. Yet each time I turned a corner or came upon a new vista, I was struck by the oddness of the scene. Though the day had warmed to a hot summer feel, the grounds were stripped of all greenery. My body registered summer, but my eyes gave me the facts of winter. The perversity touched me in a way that made me afraid. It was a feeling I did not want to acknowledge or explore, so I listened to Duncan’s bright chatter and watched the pleasure with which the workmen responded to her. She was a bright and precocious child, and in a place where no one knew her, she was so very easily loved. Perhaps JoHanna and Will would never go back to Jexville. Perhaps we would all go and live somewhere else. New Orleans. Natchez. St. Louis. Towns along a river that JoHanna could learn to love as much as she loved the Pascagoula.

  Still in the long blue dress of the sandwich girl, I hunted for the few spots of shade and sweltered and indulged in fantasy as Duncan sported. I wanted to give JoHanna some time alone to pull herself together. The idea of returning to the room and the lash of her naked emotion kept us both outside longer than we otherwise might have remained.

  After an hour, though, we were sweaty and itching from the bites of the deer flies and mosquitoes. Even Duncan was ready to return to the screened coolness of the room.

  JoHanna met us at the door, all trace of anguish gone. She smiled as she drew Duncan into her arms and hugged her. “We’ll get up early tomorrow and take the excursion boat out to Ship Island,” she said. “Mattie has been waiting all of her life for a view of the Gulf. Since we’re this close, we shouldn’t let the opportunity pass.”

  Duncan clapped with delight, but then her smile darkened. “What about Pecos?”

  JoHanna laughed. “I hadn’t thought of him.” She looked at the rooster, who jumped to the window and pecked at the screen. “I suppose we could take him back to the beach this afternoon and let him hunt his lady love. Tomorrow, though, we’ll have to find a chicken yard and board him.”

  “What about Daddy?”

  “We’ll be back and packed to leave before he gets here.” Duncan nodded. “And then we’ll find Floyd?”

  JoHanna’s chest rose silently, a long breath. “Yes. Will can find him, Duncan. Your father can do what we can’t. If Floyd’s back in Jexville, the men will tell Will where he is.”

  Jexville. How was it possible that a word could strike as painfully as a knife. Jexville. It plunged into my gut and weakened my legs. I knelt on the floor and began picking up the scattered newspaper. We were returning to Jexville, and I felt a rush of fear. Somehow, in the past day, I’d managed to forget that Jexville waited for me. I had become a person who lived only in the present moment.

  In the course of the past several days, I had undergone a strange series of transformations. Because JoHanna asked it, I had become the sandwich girl spying on Tommy Ladnier. Walking the grounds, I had sold my cookies and sandwiches to the workers, and they had accepted me for what I said I was. When Teddy gripped my arm, when Tommy Ladnier looked into my eyes, when the wind whipped about my face in the car, or when the deer flies bit the back of my neck—I was those sensations and emotions. There was no connection to things I had felt or thought in the past, no desire to anticipate the future.

  As I gathered the newspaper, my fingers brushed the deep burgundy and gray of the rug. Color, texture, the faint odor of time. Weak sunlight broke free of the clouds and slanted across my fingers, changing my skin to a blistered white. Here, at this moment, I was something and someone else, and I resisted the return to Jexville with every ounce of strength I possessed. But reality was so much stronger than I was. Even as I touched the woven wool of the rug, felt the sun, I knew I was a transient in a place of transient comfort. The Seaview was only a momentary respite. I was not a McVay. JoHanna could not absorb me no matter how much I wanted her to do so.

  The clippings scattered from my fingers as a sob broke from me.

  “Duncan, put Pecos in that bag and take him on down to the car.

  We’ll be down in a few minutes. And don’t let him out of the bag no matter what. If that desk clerk sees him, we’ll be put out on our ears.” JoHanna knelt on the floor beside me. “You don’t have to go back, Mattie. We can keep this room and you can stay here.”

  Pecos and I cried together. He resisted the snare of Duncan’s hands as heartily as I fought against the truth of my situation. JoHanna held my shoulders and said nothing until the rooster was captured, stowed in the bag, and Duncan had hustled out the door with him.

  “Mattie, listen to me. You can stay here and file for divorce. Will can set everything up for you. There’s no need for you to go back to Jexville. You don’t ever have to see Elikah again. I mean except in court, and maybe there’s a way to take care of that. I’m not certain, but Will knows these things.”

  She smoothed my hair and rubbed my back and talked. My tears w
ere spent, and I listened. I didn’t doubt what she said, but I couldn’t explain to her that the words were draining the marrow out of my bones. If she dissolved the Mattie of Jexville, there would be no one left. I could stay in the Seaview, in this very room. I could bathe and dress and go down to the dining room to eat, but what part of me would that be?

  I had let go of the Mattie who’d picked blackberries with two young blond girls named Callie and Lena Rae. Sometimes, I could still catch the sound of their laughter, and I knew it. But it was distant now, released when I chose not to linger in the past. When I thought of myself, alone, at the Seaview, there was only a terrifying blankness. I could visualize myself going through the motions of the day, sleeping, dressing, eating, walking along the beach. Absent, though, were the thoughts and emotions of such a Mattie. That Mattie did not exist. Not yet. Maybe never.

  I listened to the sound, sensible words of JoHanna and understood a terrifying thing. I had to go back to Jexville. I could not go forward until I went back.

  Thirty-six

  RIDING at the front of the big boat, I tasted the salt spray as we bumped through the waves. I kept my eyes focused on the horizon, and what had once been a speck of land grew larger and larger as we slapped and wallowed our way toward Ship Island. During the night the heat wave had truly broken, and the sun had risen on a crisp fall day that made the excursion to see the Gulf of Mexico a magnificent adventure. Or at least that’s how JoHanna decided to play it. She had to do something to keep from going insane at our lack of ability to help Floyd. Her skin had taken on a fine white sheen, a papery luster, as if all of the moisture were being burned away behind it. Duncan, on the other hand, had accepted that JoHanna and Will, when he arrived, would be able to make things right. Wherever Floyd had gone, Will would fetch him back. I tried not to think about it, and I took my comfort from the fact that Duncan had not dreamed of Floyd. The bond that linked them was so strong, I felt certain she would know if anything were truly wrong with him. Whenever I felt the gnawing sickness of frustration or the chill of apprehension, I held onto that thought and forced the dark mood away. I could not afford to cater to any unfounded fears. I would confront the future with courage.