Touched Read online

  “Annabelle is not fat. She’s highly sensitive. And dancing is a sin.”

  “So is gluttony, but that hasn’t stopped a good number of people in Jexville.” JoHanna looked completely innocent, not as if she wasn’t pointing out that half the women in the room were on the portly side.

  “You are a scandal, JoHanna McVay. You’re going to be the ruination of Will’s good name and his business.” The woman who spoke was big, and her face had gotten red.

  “I dare say Will can take care of his own reputation and his own business.” JoHanna went to the sink. “Now are we going to serve up this ice cream or not?”

  Outside the gramophone had wound down. There was the scratch of the needle across the record, and then the sound of Duncan winding the handle. The record got off to a slow, dragging start, then picked up speed and was soon racing at a fast clip.

  “Serve the ice cream,” Agnes said. She was still angry, but she didn’t have the courage to confront JoHanna directly.

  JoHanna dipped the big spoon into the metal container and lifted out the ice cream, complete with big chunks of peaches. “This looks delicious, Agnes.” She transferred it to a bowl, then handed it to me.

  “Duncan looks hot. I’ll take this to her.” I didn’t wait to see the reaction to my words. I walked out into the hot sun letting the screen door slam behind me. I should have taken the bowl to one of the children waiting in the next room, but JoHanna had stood up for me.

  Duncan waved but didn’t break her dancing.

  I held up the ice cream, the condensation on the bowl leaking over my fingers and dripping twice into the dust. Duncan grinned at me, and I signaled her to come into the shade and get the ice cream. She was so hot. Dust had begun to stick to her legs.

  The sun was still shining in that white-hot way of July, which meant no storms were immediate. The air was perfectly still, so still that the scratches in the record were suddenly magnified. The song was a ragtime. I don’t remember which one, but I held the bowl, glad to be out of the company of those women and fascinated by the intricate steps Duncan was only too pleased to perform for me.

  There was no warning. The bolt of lightning came out of the hazy blue sky. It was a double fork. One prong hit the pine tree and the other Duncan. A blue-white light flared over the entire yard, and a ball of fire ran down the pine tree and exploded against the side of the house.

  When I looked back at Duncan, she was on the ground with smoke coming off her and big holes burned in the yellow dress.

  The bowl of ice cream fell to the ground, but my fingers were still bent in the shape of holding it. I remember that I thought I couldn’t inhale. The dress was already too tight, and the air was suddenly sucked dry of oxygen. It seemed like an hour that I stood there, trying to run toward Duncan, trying to breathe, trying to scream.

  JoHanna came out the back door not even bothering with the steps. She ran like a gazelle, her skirt flying up over her legs. She fell to her knees beside Duncan and lifted her into her arms.

  Duncan’s head flopped back, and I could see her eyes were rolled up in her head. Smoke came from her hair, which had fallen out in great clumps. I could smell the burning hair and cloth and flesh, and I felt the tears sliding over my face.

  Some of the other women had come outside, and the children were peeping through the screen door. No one made a sound. There was just the music, and finally the needle made its way to the end of the record and set to shushing against the label.

  “Get a doctor.” I spoke but didn’t believe I had. When I turned and no one had moved I pointed to the boy named Robert. “Run and get the doctor.”

  He took off fast, his eyes too large for his pale face.

  JoHanna sat in the dirt, Duncan crushed against her, and she rocked back and forth. Small sounds came from her, murmurings that I couldn’t understand.

  No one went to her, so I did. It was impossible to look into Duncan’s rolled up eyes and not know that she was gone. The bolt had knocked the life out of her in one powerful blast.

  I was standing just at JoHanna’s shoulder, wondering what to do, when the clouds began to roll out of the west. They were the same clouds that had been hovering on the horizon since noon, growing darker and angrier with each passing hour. But they’d hovered in the distance, far away from the red clay streets of Jexville. Now they were on the move. They came toward us, thunder rumbling louder with each tick of the clock. Lightning shot out from the low-lying clouds in nasty forks.

  I knelt down and put my hand on JoHanna’s shoulder. “Let’s take her inside,” I said.

  She ignored me, murmuring softly to her dead baby in that strange, lilting pattern. I didn’t know then, but it’s the same noises a mother cat makes when she’s trying to lick life into a kitten. Cows and dogs and horses have their same version of the noise. All animals do, I suppose.

  “Mrs. McVay, let’s take her inside. It’s going to storm.” I lowered my grip to her arm, trying to move her gently away from the corpse. When I looked behind me, no one else had moved. They were watching us as if we were some strange creatures imported from an exotic land doing things they’d never seen before.

  “Will someone help me get them inside?” I tried not to sound angry, but I hated their cowlike faces, the stupid way they stood, slack jawed.

  “She’s not dead.” JoHanna whispered the words, but I knew they were meant for me. In that moment, I swear I thought I’d die from pity. How could she look at that burned body that had been flung halfway across the yard and not realize that the life had gone?

  Finally, Nell Anderson stepped forward. “The doctor is on his way, JoHanna. Let’s take Duncan in the house, where he can examine her.” She spoke with gentleness.

  “She’s not dead.” JoHanna shrugged away from both of us. “Just leave us alone. Go away and leave us alone.” She bent down lower, shielding Duncan from our sight.

  Behind me, Rachel Carpenter started to cry softly. “Somebody get Reverend Bates,” she said. I heard another of the children slam out of the house and run. I never turned around to look. All I could think of was Duncan, alive one minute and dancing her heart out. Now she was gone.

  I knelt beside JoHanna just as the first big drops of rain began to fall. They struck the dust where Duncan had been dancing, causing little flares of orange to jump up, as if the ground were alive and pulsing. The stump of the pine tree sizzled.

  “Mrs. McVay, let’s take her inside. It’s going to rain.”

  “She’s isn’t dead.” JoHanna never stopped rocking. “She can’t be.”

  I could hear the rain in the magnolia tree beside the gramophone. It hit the slick green leaves with snaps and pops. It hit me, too, but I didn’t feel it. I could see it striking JoHanna’s shoulders, fat drops soaking into her coppery dress.

  Nell Anderson knelt beside JoHanna on her right. “We need to send for Will. Where is he this week?” She reached out to straighten one of Duncan’s little socks. Her shoe was missing. It had been blown clean off her foot.

  “He’s in Natchez.”

  “We’ll send a telegram.”

  “Try the Claremont House. He’ll be in there sometime today.”

  Nell was crying, and I was crying. Only JoHanna didn’t cry. Nell got up to send the telegram, but I stayed, watching the rain soak into JoHanna McVay as she keened softly to her dead girl.

  When I looked up, the other children and mothers had left or gone inside. Agnes and Annabelle Lee were standing at the door, watching. They were both crying, too.

  The ground had begun to puddle with water, but JoHanna refused to consider going inside. Dr. Westfall arrived, his white hair flying around is head and his black bag in his hand. He tried to lift JoHanna, but she hunkered down over the body and cried out to be left alone. I saw his hand move out to Duncan’s neck and rest there for a moment, and then he reached up and closed her eyes. When he stood, he shook his head at Agnes and walked to the back door.

  They spoke in low whispers for
a moment, and then he went inside.

  “JoHanna, we have to move out of the rain.” I knew if she didn’t get up and move, they were going to come back outside and force her. I could imagine what they were doing. They’d send for the undertaker. They’d give JoHanna a shot. Then they’d tear them apart. I put my hand on her arm. “We have to go inside if you want to keep her a little longer.”

  “Make them leave me alone.” She finally looked at me, and she was crying. “She isn’t dead. I can feel her. Make them leave us alone for just a little while.”

  “Move under the magnolia tree.” It didn’t offer much protection, but it was better than nothing. The rain had leveled off to where it was a steady drum on the leaves. Together we picked up Duncan and carried her the few feet to the tree. JoHanna sat with her back to the trunk, cradling her child.

  “Make them leave us alone.” She didn’t beg or plead. She asked.

  “Just for a while.” I didn’t know how long I could hold them off. I didn’t know why I felt like I needed to. All I knew was that once they took her baby, she’d never get her back. A little time wasn’t much to ask.

  I walked across the yard, my gray dress sopping. Inside the house I heard the murmur of low voices. They were already planning what to do, how to do it. The undertaker was on the way, and Dr. Westfall was filling a glass syringe with something. It certainly wasn’t for Duncan.

  “Leave her alone.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at me. I could see from their faces that I gave them a fright.

  “She’s in shock. The girl is dead, and we can’t leave her out there in the rain.” Agnes wrung her hands as she spoke. She wasn’t hardhearted, just unable to think beyond what appeared proper.

  “Leave her alone. It’s her child. There’s nothing to be done for Duncan. Let Mrs. McVay have the time.”

  No one had ever paid the least attention to anything I’d ever said before. Maybe they didn’t know what to do, so what I said was better than nothing. But we stood there for fifteen or twenty minutes, looking at one another and listening to the rain. Agnes made a pot of coffee and gave us all a cup, and we took seats around the kitchen table, where the unfinished bowls of ice cream had melted and begun to draw flies.

  The undertaker came in the front door, along with the Methodist minister. We were a sorry group, but no one wanted to go to the back door and look out in the yard.

  Sitting there in that hot kitchen, I knew that JoHanna was not liked, but no one could have possibly wished that tragedy off on her. No woman is capable of wishing the death of a child on another. At least that’s what I believed.

  Finally the rain stopped. It had been thirty minutes or more. I knew there wasn’t much longer to wait. I could see on their faces that they feared for JoHanna’s sanity. They were repulsed by the idea that she could embrace a dead body. To their way of thinking, it was best to get it over with.

  “Let me talk to her.” I stood up and waited, but no one else volunteered. Walking across the kitchen and out the door, I saw things with a clarity that was painful. The leaves of the magnolia had been washed a deep hunter green. Part of the red dirt from the road had flooded into the yard, creating muddy red miniature rivers that cut around the magnolia, as if Duncan and JoHanna were stranded on an island. Up above, the sky was a perfect blue, deeper in color than it had been all summer.

  JoHanna was as I’d left her, all energy and attention focused on her child. She was brushing Duncan’s face with her fingertips, talking so softly I couldn’t make out the words. Her hair had come down from the bun she wore and it was longer than I’d expected, and wet now, so that it was darker. It clung to her neck and shoulders and molded to her breasts beneath the wet dress.

  I walked across the yard, slowly, dreading every step. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. About ten feet away, I stopped. “It’s time to go inside now, JoHanna.”

  She looked up but said nothing.

  I heard the screen door close behind me and I turned to find nine-year-old Mary Lincoln and Annabelle Lee coming toward me. They stopped.

  “Is she dead?” Mary asked. “I’ve never seen a dead person.”

  “I have.” Annabelle Lee looked at the ground. “Lots of times.”

  “Go back inside.” I tried not to snap at them but couldn’t help myself. “Git! Right now.”

  Mary darted around me and ran up to the tree. At the sight of Duncan she froze.

  I wanted to scalp her on the spot, and I was just reaching out to do that when Duncan’s eyes opened. She stared directly at Mary.

  “Don’t sing with your mouth open, Mary, or you’ll drown,” she said.

  Two

  JOHANNA closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. That was the only movement, until Mary went squalling back into the house with Annabelle Lee on her heels. They acted as if they’d seen Satan. Duncan was a frightful sight. She looked like Job after the Lord had sent down His plagues, only worse. The smell of her burned flesh was indescribable, but she was alive.

  She stared after Mary and Annabelle, but she didn’t move. It was JoHanna who finally straightened her back and eased Duncan into a sitting position.

  “We have to clean those burns,” JoHanna said as she lifted Duncan’s leg and looked at a spot as big as my hand that was real bad. “Is Dr. Westfall still in the house?”

  She was talking to me, but I could only swallow. I still didn’t believe Duncan was alive, but she was looking at me. Only by now there were great dark circles beneath her eyes. The rain had mostly put out all the little smoldering fires in her clothes and hair. Great clumps were missing, and she looked just awful. It occurred to me that I was caught in a nightmare. No one could survive lightning. Duncan was dead. I was in shock.

  “Mattie, could you get the doctor out here?” JoHanna cradled Duncan against her chest. Her eyes, edged with white, darted in the direction of the house.

  I didn’t have time to budge from the spot. Dr. Westfall and his black bag came flying out of the house, sent no doubt by Mary and Annabelle Lee. Agnes was in the doorway, along with the remnants of the party. They were as awed as I was—and about as useful.

  Dr. Westfall stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Duncan, but then he came on over and began to look at her arms and legs. He knelt in the wet grass, ignoring the damage to his suit pants. The discoloration in Duncan’s face was bad, but there were no burns there. Her scalp was singed, but the damage wasn’t that bad. Dr. Westfall went for the more serious wounds on her legs.

  “Second degree here, JoHanna.” He talked as he worked, but he kept lifting a furtive glance at Duncan. Even as he touched her, felt the warmth of her flesh, he didn’t believe she was alive.

  No one did. Except JoHanna, who’d refused to believe that she was dead.

  “Let’s move her in the house.” Dr. Westfall rose to one knee.

  “No.” JoHanna’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “I need water, disinfectant, a place to work. The burns are serious.” He held his anger barely in check.

  “No. We’re not going in that house. We’re going home.”

  “JoHanna …”

  “Do it here, Doc. It’s her legs and her back. I can feel the heat.”

  “It’s a matter of sterile …”

  “Duncan is not going in that house.” JoHanna looked up at the building not thirty yards away. There wasn’t anger or hatred or fear in her gaze. It was like a person who sees a snake in the road ahead and decides to take a detour.

  “Go get some water and some rags.” The doctor addressed me even though he didn’t look my way. “Be quick about it.”

  I took off like a scalded cat and was back with Agnes’s best crockery bowl filled with hot water and a stack of her white dishcloths.

  Shaking his head at JoHanna’s stubbornness, Dr. Westfall bandaged the worst of Duncan’s burns, brusquely warning JoHanna about the ones on her back and how they were to be washed and dressed and what would happen if infection set in. He worke
d with great efficiency and without ever speaking directly to Duncan. For her part, she never cried out though her eyes were clouded with pain. She stared into JoHanna’s eyes, taking her comfort there.

  With the bloody washbowl and empty bottles of disinfectant at his feet, the doctor finally looked Duncan directly in the eyes.

  “Do you know who you are?” he asked. He was puzzled by her silence. She was a child, and the wounds had to be hideously painful. Why hadn’t she cried out?

  Duncan looked at him, comprehension plain on her face, but she didn’t answer.

  “Duncan, can you hear me?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can she talk?” he asked JoHanna.

  “She did. To Mary.” JoHanna placed her fingers on Duncan’s throat. “Talk to me,” she said softly.

  Duncan swallowed but said nothing.

  “It could be shock. It could be something that’ll wear off in a day or two.” Dr. Westfall didn’t look at all certain. His fingers raked through his nimbus of white hair. “Bring her to see me tomorrow, JoHanna. I’ve done all I can for now. Tomorrow we’ll be able to tell more.”

  “I will. Thank you, Doc. You’ve been good to us.”

  He grunted and stood, snapping his case shut and shaking his legs so that the wet knees of his britches didn’t stick to his skin.

  JoHanna continued to hold Duncan on her lap until Dr. Westfall was gone. I noticed that he went around the house and down the street, obviously unwilling to answer the questions that the women inside the house would bombard him with.

  “Let’s go, Duncan,” JoHanna pushed herself up and then turned to give Duncan her hand. The child took it but didn’t stand.

  Without being asked I went behind her and caught her under the arms, taking care not to touch her back. She was tall but thin. I’d lifted plenty of sacks of feed and watermelons. Duncan weighed about the same as two big Shouting Methodists. She was just lankier. When I finally got her feet under her, I eased her weight back down.

  I’m not certain if her legs shifted or her knees buckled, but she wouldn’t take the weight. JoHanna came to help me, but after a few tries it became clear that Duncan either couldn’t or wouldn’t stand.