Touched

by Carolyn Haines

  Janelle’s news silenced me. It was so unexpected, so out of the blue. Elikah was over forty. He was still lean and fit, a handsome man for those who didn’t know the core of him. Deep inside, he didn’t have a patriotic bone in his body, and he had no intention of risking his hide. He just wanted to sound noble.

  “Surely he doesn’t mean it?” Agnes Leatherwood stared at me. “He could be killed. Those Nazis will kill a medic as quick as a soldier.”

  I shrugged. “I think it would be a noble thing. After all, it would be a shame to waste Elikah’s talent, when the boys need him so.” I slipped my cigarette case out of the one pocket we were allowed on any dress or shirt. The gold case, with inset lighter, had come from London, a gift from Duncan before the war, when she’d gone there to dance.

  “You mean he hasn’t discussed it with you?” Agnes was on the scent of some clue to my relationship with my husband. When all other gossip ran out in Jexville, there was always the Mattie-Elikah bone to gnaw. “He’d consider signing up without telling you?”

  I smiled slowly, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. “Of course. Whatever Elikah does is the exact right thing.” I shrugged as I inhaled again. “He never has to discuss anything with me. I agree with everything he says and does. Going to war is exactly the right thing for my husband to do.”

  “Why don’t you put out that cigarette and have some ice cream?” Agnes pushed a bowl at me, but I avoided it. “You’re thin as a bamboo sprout. A woman needs a little meat on her bones as she ages.” She gave me a meaningful glance.

  “You were always too thin.” Janelle covered her anger with a look of concern. “I always felt if you’d had a little meat on you, you could have had children. I guess it just wasn’t in the Lord’s plan for you.”

  I was used to Janelle’s meanness. It didn’t even sting anymore.

  Before I could zing her back, Nell Anderson stepped into the kitchen. “Do you need some help with that pie and ice cream?” She spoke calmly, but it was clear that she spoke for the women who remained seated in the living room, waiting, while we bickered in the kitchen. Apparently everyone had heard the exchange.

  “We’ve got it,” Annabelle Lee said as she bustled away with two heaping bowls in her hand. Exclamations of delight came from the living room as Agnes went out with more bowls.

  “How are you, Mattie?” Nell stepped closer. She was ramrod straight with hair completely white. Her oldest son had been killed at Normandy, and the heartbreak had made her suddenly old.

  “I’m fine, Nell, and you?”

  “Good. I’m good. What’s the news from JoHanna?”

  “She and Will are in Washington.” I thought Nell’s interest was sincere, but I’d learned not to ever reveal more than the bare essentials.

  “And Duncan? Did she go back to dancing after the baby?”

  “She’s in New York.” I smiled. “She’s quite a sensation. They say little Clair is dancing in her diapers. Just like Duncan used to do.”

  “I miss those McVays. It’s been twenty years, and I still miss them.” Nell smiled, too, and for a moment the pain was so intense I thought I felt my heart breaking with the memories.

  As if she read my mind, Nell continued. “I remember the first day I met you, Mattie. It was at Agnes’s house. It was the day Duncan got struck by lightning.”

  Annabelle Lee stepped to my side and gave Nell a bowl of pie and ice cream and thrust one into my hand before I could resist. “Try it, Mattie,” she said as she backed away.

  “You were just a child,” Nell continued. “We had all gone into the kitchen to serve the ice cream, and Duncan was outside dancing her heart out. You know, I was certain she was dead.”

  Outside there was a rumble of thunder, a long growl of clouds heavy with rain. The ice cream was cold in my hand, and a sudden gust of cool wind blew through the open kitchen window. I shivered.

  “Mattie, are you okay?” Janelle put her bowl down and took my elbow. “You’re as white as a ghost.”

  “I’m fine.” My fingers were cramped in the shape of the bowl. I held it out to Nell, and she took it from me, unhooking it from my hand and putting it down on the kitchen table.

  “What’s wrong?” She held my hand between hers, rubbing it until the fingers relaxed.

  I shook my head.

  She held on to my hand, and in her eyes I saw that she suspected what my life might really be. It wasn’t pity that I saw but sorrow. “What I came in here to tell you was that I read an article recently about those islands off the coast that you’re so wild about. You know the government ordered everyone off them.”

  “Really?” I remembered the wooden shanties that Michael Garvi told me were used as summer homes. In unguarded moments I found myself imagining a life in one of them.

  “It’s part of the war. They don’t want anyone living there for fear the German subs will see the lights and use them as a guide. The entire island chain is in a blackout.”

  “I always wanted to live on one of those islands.” It was the most revealing thing I’d said in twenty years, and I was surprised to hear the words come from my mouth.

  “Why, the first good hurricane would blow you away, Mattie.” Nell was surprised by my flight of fancy.

  “I suppose.” I was embarrassed.

  “You know, if that’s what you really want, you should wait until the war is over and then go down to Mexico. I hear it’s beautiful down along the Gulf. Blue water, white sand. My son, Albert, went down there to look at some of those Mayan ruins. You know, he was an archaeologist before the war.” Her eyes glistened, but her voice was strong. “He said it was paradise there.”

  “Mexico?”

  “He planned to move there for a year or two, after the war.” She picked up her pie and ice cream and held it a moment. “He said it was like being born into someone else’s skin.” She walked over to the sink and put her bowl in it. “Sometimes, at night when I can’t sleep, I pretend that he’s in Mexico.”

  I walked across the kitchen and put my arm around her shoulders. It was the first time I’d voluntarily touched anyone other than JoHanna or Duncan in twenty years. “I’m sorry, Nell.”

  “Albert had more of his dream than most people get.” Nell had regained control. “Albert and Duncan. They both got more than most of us. You’re still a good-looking woman, Mattie. Don’t wake up to find yourself old and dried-up.” She turned away and walked into the living room. I could hear her telling Carrie and the other women good-bye.

  Outside the window a fork of lightning streaked the sky, and the sound of thunder rattled the window panes. The storm was upon us. Without bothering to find my gloves or purse, I ran out the back door and into the street that had once been red dirt. I ran just as the first heavy, fat drops of rain began to fall.

  More to aggravate Elikah than anything, I’d taken a job as a court reporter. The irony also pleased me. Every time there was a trial in Jexville, I sat beside the judge as an official of the court, the woman who had shot Tommy Ladnier and never been charged with a single crime. The job also gave me the money to buy an old car. I only used the old Ford to drive to Fitler to see Aunt Sadie and Jeb or to go to the post office in Mobile, where JoHanna sometimes sent me letters.

  I walked to work, preferring the exercise to the car. I walked to the small café where I took my lunch. Food held little interest for me. I had come to believe that I was afraid to taste anything. One delicious taste, one moment of weakness, and I would crumble. So I walked and hoarded my gas rations.

  As I ran through the rain, I thought I had enough gas to get me across the border. Nell Anderson had opened that door. Mexico. I had seen the aqua waters of the Gulf only once. Now they pounded in my head like my footsteps on the road. For years all impulse had been held rigidly in check. All desire. All life. I could not stand it a moment longer.

  I ran as hard as I could in the tight, short skirt of the dress. I ran past Elikah’s barbershop, not caring if he saw me or not. He would not sto
p me. Not this time. I was leaving, no matter what he threatened. John Doggett was long gone from New Orleans. He was covering the war for the Kansas City Star. He was far from Elikah’s reach. Quincy Grissham had been defeated in the election six years before. Will and Johanna were safe and happy. And Duncan. Duncan had danced her way across the stages of the world and into the arms of a young man who wrote songs for a living. They were poor but happy in New York, where Duncan assured me his star would rise with his next musical. Duncan still danced, but she mostly put her long, graceful legs to work chasing Clair around their apartment.

  Only I remained trapped. Held captive by my own inability to flee. But that was over. I was going now, and Elikah could not stop me.

  I pounded into the house and flung open my closet door, rain dripping from my face and hair. I had suitcases and more clothes than I could ever pack. I grabbed them from the closet by the hangers and shook them free of the wire to push them helter-skelter into the first open piece of luggage. Raking shoes into my arms, I threw them on top.

  Everything in my closet had come from Will or JoHanna, extravagant dresses to set the tongues wagging in Jexville. It had been the only thing JoHanna could do to amuse me. Had the clothes not come from her, I would have left them behind.

  “What are you doing?”

  I turned to find Elikah in the doorway. He had run behind me all the way home. A strand of hair, slicked with rain and a heavy sprinkling of gray, hung in his left eye. His chest heaved slightly with the exertion, and his left hand, the one with two crooked fingers, clutched the doorjamb.

  “I’m leaving.”

  He spread his legs in the doorway. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  It was the most civil exchange we’d had in years.

  “It’s over, Elikah. I’ve had enough. We’ve punished each other enough.” I slammed the first suitcase shut. “We’ve punished ourselves enough.”

  It was the sound of his chuckle that made me turn around. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mattie. I’ve only begun to work on you.” He stepped toward me.

  I thought at first he might hit me, and in that split second I felt the return of a fear I thought I’d left behind forever. In opening the door to Mexico, I had also opened the door on hope. With it came fear and a billion other feelings that I had not allowed for so long I had thought they were dead.

  “Let me go, Elikah. We can both have a life.” I spoke to him as reasonably as I knew how. In my newfound desire to live, I had forgotten what he was.

  He shook his head. “You think you can let twenty years go by and then decide you’re going to walk out.” He shook his head harder. “You’d better think again.”

  “Janelle said you were talking about enlisting. We could both go our separate ways. Start over. You can sell the shop and the house and keep all the money. I just want to go. I just …”

  The shrill of the telephone caught me in midsentence. No one ever called the house. I had no friends. Elikah’s friends were the type who met him after dark at the barbershop. They were hard men with pouting faces who drank the whiskey still illegal in Chickasaw County, even though the rest of the nation had long ago conceded that liquor could not be abolished. They sat in the shop and played cards, drinking and talking about the growing “negro problem.”

  I walked to the telephone in the small hallway and picked up the black receiver. “Hello.”

  “Mattie, it’s Sadie.”

  There was trouble in her voice. “What is it?”

  “It’s Duncan.”

  There was not a chair to sit on so I eased one hip onto the telephone table to steady myself. “What is it?”

  “She’s not hurt.” Sadie sounded even more worried. “She called me this morning. I’ve been trying to reach you all day. She was very upset. She said something happened last night. She had a dream. About a man in the river reaching out to her and calling to her. She made me promise that I would call and tell you. She said she knew who it was. She said …”

  I looked at Elikah. My gaze fell upon his feet, and I saw the boots. They were brand-new. He’d had the bootmaker who’d bought out Mr. Moses when he retired make the boots. They were exactly like the pair Floyd had made for Sheriff Grissham. The pair Elikah had worn every day until they had worn out. He’d just gotten the new pair only a few days before. The beautiful design of the vamp was struck by a slant of weak light from the window. Outside the storm was breaking up, and the sun was shining with a pale yellow light.

  “Mattie! Mattie!” Aunt Sadie’s voice was tinny and worried. “Did you hear me, Mattie?”

  I hadn’t heard her, but it didn’t matter. “I have to go, Aunt Sadie.”

  “Duncan said she would call you later tonight. She was frantic, Mattie. Truly afraid. She was talking about trying to catch a train down here, but it’s so hard with the war.”

  “If she calls you, tell her that I’m fine.”

  “She hasn’t had a dream since they moved from Jexville, Mattie. What does this mean? She said she knew the man in the river, and that she had to talk to you.”

  “Tell her I’m fine.” I hung up the telephone before she could continue. Later, much later, I’d explain.

  I turned back to face Elikah, my gaze moving from those boots up to his eyes. For a long time now I had not allowed myself to feel even my hatred for him. I was surprised at the power of it. Twenty years had not dimmed it. He had also forgotten what I was capable of.

  “I’m going, Elikah, whether you like it or not.”

  “Not after all this time, Mattie. I’ve wasted too many years to see you leave now. We’re in this together, to the end.”

  I would never understand why he hated me so. Me and JoHanna. And probably Duncan, had he ever known her as a woman. What had we done that made him willing to spend his life hurting us?

  “At least we’re talking about this.” I went into the kitchen. “I’ll make some coffee.” The stove was gas now, and the blue flames shot up the minute I turned it on. The old cast-iron kettle had been replaced with a shiny silver one with a whistle.

  Elikah took a seat at the table. “You won’t leave here alive, Mattie. Get it in your head; you’re not going anywhere.”

  I put coffee in the pot. “I’m going out in the yard to feed the chickens. I’ll be back.” I pushed open the screen and went out to the barn. Mable had died ten years before, and we had buried her beside the barn. Now our only animals were the chickens I raised for their eggs and in honor of Pecos, who was buried in Natchez beside the Mississippi River.

  I walked to the back of the barn where I kept the chicken feed and got a panful before I walked to the back of the yard.

  “Chick, chick, chick.” I called the birds over to me. None of them had the sense of a flea, but I loved the soft murmuring noises they made as they pecked the dirt for the cracked corn I threw.

  I’d covered Mable’s grave with some flowers, a weedy-looking plant that would produce, later in the summer, a tiny yellow bloom with a deep purple throat. I’d gotten the plants in Fitler, from the grave of a woman I never knew, Lillith Eckhart. She had been twenty-two years old when she was hanged for poisoning her husband. She had been young, desperate. Impetuous. I had planned better. And waited for a war.

  Glancing up at the kitchen window, I made certain Elikah wasn’t watching as I plucked a big handful of leaves and stuck them in the one pocket of my dress beside my cigarettes. The juice of the crushed leaves stained my hand, a strong smell, a lot like tobacco.

  Halfway back to the house I thought to drop the chicken pan before I walked in. Elikah sat at the table, waiting. His hard eyes calculated how far he’d have to go to stop me.

  I braced my hands against the stove. “Maybe I haven’t thought this through,” I said. “I don’t want trouble for JoHanna or John Doggett.”

  “Or yourself.” He grinned, leaning back in his chair.

  I patted my pocket and spoke absently as I picked up a potholder to grab the kettle.
“I must have left my cigarettes in the bedroom.” He hated that I smoked. Without a word he got up and went to the bedroom to find them. He took great pleasure in tearing them apart in front of me.

  As soon as he left I opened the kettle and dropped the fresh green leaves inside. When he returned I had a cigarette lit. I blew a ring of smoke in the air.

  “Put the cigarette out.” His hands were clenched at his sides.

  Behind me the kettle screamed. Without looking away from him, I walked slowly across the kitchen to the back door. I took one last drag and flicked the cigarette out into the yard.

  “Since we’re talking, it’s time you stopped that vulgar habit. Smoking makes a woman look cheap.” His small victory made him hungry for more.

  I ignored him as I went to the stove. I poured the water into the coffeepot and turned off the gas.

  “I think a lot of things are going to change around here.”

  By allowing myself to feel again, I’d signaled to Elikah that I was vulnerable. He’d waited twenty years for that sign from me.

  He took his seat at the table and waited for the coffee. My hands were shaking as I poured the cup, strong and black, just as he liked it. Twenty years had passed, but I hadn’t forgotten. He watched my hands, taking pleasure in my fear. I poured another cup for myself and leaned against the counter, holding the hot cup in hands that visibly trembled.

  He sipped the coffee and made a face. “Everything you touch smells like cigarettes. That’s the last one you’re going to smoke, you hear?”

  The coffee steamed in front of my face, the smell of tobacco clearly present. Elikah drank again. “I’ve got to get back up to the shop. It was closing time when you ran by like a scalded cat, but I need to put the combs in the disinfectant and bring the towels back here. I need you to wash them for me.” He took another swallow and pushed the cup aside. “I’ll be home for supper tonight, and I expect you to cook something.”