Touched Read online

  He was handsome, but I didn’t want to admit it. “He’s different.” I shrugged one shoulder and accepted the cup of chamomile tea she’d steeped for me. The honey jar was sticky as I moved it beside my cup. “He’s down at the river with Duncan and JoHanna and Floyd.” I glanced up to see what reaction that drew. None, to my disappointment. I might have said Nell Anderson was there.

  Aunt Sadie wrang out a dishcloth to wipe down the stove top. “I hope JoHanna finds out about him. Satisfy my curiosity. He comes and goes, but he mostly keeps to himself.” She chuckled softly. “I like that in a person. Shows they can get along with themselves. Lots of people can’t do that.”

  “Or else they have something to hide.”

  Aunt Sadie’s smile faded. “What is it, Mattie?”

  I held the hot tea, glad for the feel of the thick cup in my hand. “I think he likes JoHanna.”

  She didn’t register any reaction, but she pulled out a chair and sat down on the edge of it. “Are they up on the sandbar?”

  I nodded. “They’re working on Duncan’s legs. Mr. Doggett said she’d be able to walk by the full moon in October. I hope she isn’t disappointed.”

  Sadie dried her hands on her apron, stood, then reached around behind her to untie it. She picked up JoHanna’s hat that I’d put on the chair beside me.

  “I think I’d better take this up to her. She’s getting a little too old to have the sun beating down on her face.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  She shook her head. “No, you just take a nap. I need to look for some sassafras root, and there’s a patch not far from the sandbar. I can kill two birds with one stone.” She plopped the hat on her head and started toward the front door, turning back with a sly smile and a little lift of her chin. “When I was a young woman I loved my hats. I suppose JoHanna takes after me in that regard. Even now, I put on a hat and I think I can still strut.” She closed the door behind her, softly, as she left the house.

  I was still smiling as I finished my tea and unbuttoned my blouse and skirt. The heavy white sheets of my bed looked awfully inviting.

  I awoke to the wonderful smell of something baking and the buzz of conversation in the kitchen. Duncan’s laughter swung, bell-like, as if the wind blew it to me in soft waves. Stretching, I lay in bed and listened, a shameless eavesdropper on the McVay clan. Their lively talk soothed me, reminding me of the rare mornings when I overslept and Mama and Callie and Lena Rae got in the kitchen to get all the other children up and fed. My stomach grumbled loudly at the aroma of peanut butter cookies.

  “I’ll be walking in two weeks,” Duncan promised. “John said the muscles were ready to wake up.”

  “You’ll walk when you’re ready, but you’ll walk,” JoHanna answered her.

  “It’s a shame John wouldn’t come home with us for supper,” Aunt Sadie answered.

  “It’s a shame Floyd had to go back,” Duncan responded, a note of wistfulness in her voice.

  I got up then, the pleasure of lingering sleep slapped from me by Sadie’s comment. She had invited John Doggett to eat with us. The man had worked his charm on her as surely as he had everyone else. Except me and Pecos.

  My hair was a jumble, but the top of my head was too sore to allow a brushing, so I smoothed down the wild hairs as best I could and went into the kitchen.

  “Mattie.” JoHanna came to me and took my hands. There was a smudge of cookie dough on her left cheek. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” I hid my concerns. “The sleep did me a world of good. Something smells wonderful.”

  “I was able to walk in the river.” Duncan claimed my attention as she sat at the table, a half-empty saucer of cookies in front of her. Pecos sat beneath the table, accepting the cookie crumbs she offered him out of her hand.

  “How long have you been back?” I felt as if weeks had elapsed. “About an hour. Long enough to bake cookies, most of which Duncan has consumed. Or at least the part she hasn’t given that evil bird.” Aunt Sadie looked over her glasses at Duncan to let her know she wasn’t getting away with feeding Pecos under the table.

  “I walked in the river.” Duncan demanded a response.

  “You walked?”

  “John said the water held me up, but that with practice and hard work, I’d be able to walk on the land. He said I was amphibious!” She slapped the table lightly with her palms and laughed. “Like a frog. They’re better in the water than on land.”

  The shock must have shown clearly on my face, because JoHanna put her arm around my shoulders and took me onto the small screen porch off the kitchen where Sadie had hung my plants to dry.

  “Mattie—”

  “What if she doesn’t walk!” I turned on her. “You’re letting that man set her up for bitter disappointment.” “Mattie—”

  “How can you do this, JoHanna? You don’t know a thing about him.”

  “Mattie—”

  “What would Will say?”

  “Mattie!” Her voice cracked out, pulling me up short. I looked at her and found that I was panting.

  “Duncan’s legs are much better. She walked yesterday; today she made even more progress. John isn’t leading her on. She’ll walk in two weeks. I’m positive.”

  “Just because he says it, how can you be so sure?” My voice was soft.

  “She’ll walk in two weeks.” She reached up and brushed a tendril of my unruly hair from the corner of my mouth. “I’m the one who said two weeks. John only repeated it. He didn’t make it up.”

  That took the wind out of my sails, and I shifted my weight so that I was standing a little further away from her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “You don’t care for John, and you don’t want to see Duncan hurt. It’s okay, Mattie.”

  “Floyd has gone home?”

  “He caught a ride with Nell.”

  “I think maybe I should have gone with them.” I hated myself as I said those words, but somehow John Doggett had squeezed me out of Fitler. His presence had changed everything. The only place for me to go was back to Jexville. The longer I put it off, the harder it was going to be to go back.

  “You don’t ever have to go there.”

  She could say that, but it wasn’t true. I had to go back. Either to finish what I’d started or to continue on. “If I were you, I wouldn’t have to go back. But I’m not you.” I couldn’t look at her. “I don’t feel I have another choice.”

  She put her arms around me and hugged me, holding me against her body warmed by the oven. “Oh, Mattie. You have to do what you feel is right. If it’s going back, then that’s what you have to do. Just promise me if that man tries to harm you in any way, you’ll call me.”

  I wanted to say that I’d call Will, but I crushed the impulse I had to hurt her, not understanding it even as I knew it was wrong. “If he acts mean, I’ll leave again,” I promised her.

  “Jeb is coming up here tomorrow to help search for Red Lassiter’s body. I’m sure he won’t mind giving you a ride back.” JoHanna sighed. “I wish we could all stay up here forever.”

  “Why don’t you move up here?” Will was gone a lot, but he could drive from Fitler as well as Jexville. “Or y’all could move to Natchez or New Orleans or New York, for that matter.” A lot of Will’s business was big city clients. It actually made more sense for them to live in a city, and JoHanna would be far happier in a place with theater and dance and libraries and other free-thinking women.

  She watched my thought processes in my eyes, her smile widening. “I live in Jexville, contrary to Aunt Sadie’s caustic statements, because of the schools, for Duncan. In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any other children in Fitler. And Will’s brother has a place over on Kali Oka, there’s that family tie.” She shook her head. “And it’s part Dunagan stubbornness. My parents came here to make their fortunes. I guess I don’t want to leave this area because some narrow, righteous people make me uncomfortable. And last but not least, ther
e’s Aunt Sadie. She’s getting on up there and I don’t want to leave her alone. Now she doesn’t want me underfoot all the time, but I need to be close enough if she needs me.”

  What could I say to all of that? At least she didn’t stay out of fear. “Whatever you decide today, there’s always tomorrow. If you go back to Jexville, you can leave in a week, or a month. Or a year.”

  I felt the pressure of my unexpected tears, hot and scalding behind my eyes. “Unless I have a child.” I swallowed. “How can it be that the one thing I could love with all of my heart is the thing that might destroy me?”

  JoHanna caught my shoulders in her hands and held me tight. “A child is always that for a woman, Mattie. Always the risk of potential destruction, if you love them enough. When you’re older and stronger, you might not feel it’s such a risk. Or you might not care.”

  Looking at her kind face, I knew then that I would never have a child. It was as sure as knowing that I would grow no taller or that my hair would never be blond like Callie’s. It was a physical fact. One that no amount of grieving or remorse could change. My hands crossed instinctively over my stomach. JoHanna saw the reflex, but she didn’t understand what it meant to me.

  “Are you hurting?”

  “No.” I dropped my hands to my sides. “No, I’m fine.” But I knew that something inside me had died. Perhaps not an organ or tissue, but something necessary to bring forth new life. Whether the doctor’s instruments or my own fear had killed it didn’t matter.

  “Mattie, are you sure?” JoHanna’s gaze scanned my face, then dropped down to my body. “You’re not bleeding?”

  “No, really.” I lifted my shoulders. “I’ll just have to make certain that I don’t get pregnant again.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  There was a hint of teasing in her question. If I went home, I was not foolish enough to think that Elikah would not expect me to fulfill my duties as a wife. I focused on a worn place in the floor, feeling the heat of my sunburn more intensely than before.

  “There are ways to prevent pregnancy.” JoHanna had taken pity on me and stopped teasing.

  “Elikah wouldn’t wear one of those.” He’d expounded too many times on the pleasures of the “natural” feel of a woman. Besides, he wouldn’t do anything that marred the picture of perfect manhood he felt he presented.

  “There’s something else. You put it up inside you and take it out when you’re finished.”

  “Inside me?” I looked at her at last, half repulsed by what she said and half expecting to see the glint of the devil in her blue eyes. But she wasn’t teasing.

  “Contrary to popular belief, Mattie, your fingers won’t fall off and you won’t grow horns if you touch yourself.”

  I couldn’t imagine. “What is it?”

  “It’s like a sponge. It stops the sperm from getting up inside you. A blockade, if you will.”

  Now she was grinning again, and the image she’d created did have some amusement value.

  “How do you get it out once you’ve put it in?”

  “You take it out yourself. It’ll take some practice, but you can learn to do it. And the best thing is that Elikah won’t even know what you’re doing.”

  “It’ll work?”

  JoHanna wiped the cookie dough from her face. “Nothing is perfect, but it works pretty well.”

  I was still having trouble imagining that I could do this, but when I thought of the doctor in Mobile and what I had done there, I knew I could manage a bit of sponge.

  “Where can I get this?”

  “Doc Westfall.”

  My head snapped up. “I can’t ask him for this. It would humiliate Elikah. No one can know!” The safety she’d offered me was suddenly snatched away, and panic flooded me.

  “Doc won’t tell Elikah. Besides, he suspects you’ve had a miscarriage. He’ll think you want time to heal before you try again. You can even tell him that.”

  I hardly dared to believe her. “He won’t talk to Elikah about this? Those men all talk.”

  JoHanna’s smile reassured me. “Doc won’t talk. Especially not to Elikah.”

  I nodded. “I can do this.” I took a deep breath. “I can.”

  “You can.” She walked over to the line where Aunt Sadie had hung my plants to dry. “Comfrey,” she said. “I’m sure Sadie was pleased to get this.”

  There was no sign of the strange flower I’d found. I suspected she’d thrown it away but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. For all her gruffness, Sadie had a tender heart.

  “Mama!” Duncan’s happy cry pulled JoHanna back toward the kitchen. “Pecos pecked Aunt Sadie on the butt!” She laughed, and there was the sound of Sadie’s angry tirade at the bird.

  “I’ll get you, you filthy creature!”

  “Mama!” Duncan’s voice held alarm.

  We ran into the kitchen to find Sadie chasing the bird around and around the kitchen table with a broom.

  “Save Pecos!” Duncan was laughing, but there was worry on her face.

  “You’d better get out of my house, you claw-footed Satan!” Sadie gave a mighty swing that toppled a chair over.

  “Sadie!” JoHanna jumped into the brawl, going for her aunt rather than the chicken.

  “Run, Pecos! Run!” Duncan pounded the table and shouted encouragement at the rooster.

  Pecos made a dead run for me, and since he’d sided with me against John Doggett, I ran to the back door and held it open. Pecos made a clean getaway, flapping into the backyard, where he stopped, cocked his head at Aunt Sadie, who was panting in the doorway, broom held at the ready.

  “I’m going to cook that bird,” Sadie vowed. “With tender dumplings.”

  Pecos lifted his wings and shook them at her, lowering his head and giving a mean chicken squawk.

  “You devil!” Sadie shook the broom at him. “Your days are numbered.”

  JoHanna was trying not to laugh, and even I couldn’t help grinning.

  “More like Pecos is going to give you a stroke,” JoHanna said, putting a gentle hand on the broom handle. “Come on back in the kitchen and I’ll pour us all a little of that scuppernong wine you keep hidden under the sink.”

  Sadie swiveled on JoHanna. “He’s pushed me too hard, JoHanna. I bent over the oven to get the cookies out, and that brown bastard pecked me.”

  JoHanna’s laughter spilled out. “Tough as your old butt is, I doubt he did any damage. Now let’s go have a drink.”

  Twenty-two

  JOHANNA poured me a cup of coffee and gave me a promise that it would help the headache that pounded behind my eyes. I had discovered, belatedly, that Aunt Sadie’s scuppernong wine carried a healthy afterkick. We had all three gotten a little tipsy, laughing and cranking up the gramophone in the living room. Aunt Sadie had taught me to waltz, while JoHanna gave me instruction in the livelier steps of the Charleston. Duncan, happy in the belief that she would soon be dancing herself, shouted instructions and encouragement from the sidelines. Exhausted from the pleasure of it all, I had tumbled into bed, tingling with silliness and joy, unaware that misery hovered over my pillow and waited for the dawn.

  “It’s only a hangover,” JoHanna said. “It’ll pass.”

  I glared at her, wondering how she could not be suffering. She’d had as much to drink as I had. Maybe more.

  “Practice,” she answered, reading the look on my face. “I’m also twenty pounds heavier than you. Once you get some meat on your bones, you’ll be able to drink more and suffer less.” She chuckled.

  Aunt Sadie came into the room perkier than I’d ever seen her. She was wearing a beautiful lavender dress that shimmered in the soft white morning light. Behind her glasses her eyes had been touched with something to darken the lashes, and there was a tint of subtle pink on her lips. Instead of laying her low, the wine seemed to have given her new life, new blood.

  “Where’s Duncan?” she asked.

  “Asleep.” JoHanna smiled. “She wore herself out in the
river, and then watching us dance last night. She’ll sleep another hour or two.”

  Sadie nodded, bringing her cup of coffee to the table with us. “That’s a good thing. They’ll be dragging the river today for Red’s body. When I went to check the mail yesterday, Karl said they were bringing men over from Jexville and Leakesville. It would be just as well if Duncan didn’t see that.”

  “I agree, but …” JoHanna’s eyes were troubled. “We’re going to have to make an appearance at the river, though. To stop the gossip. If we hole up here in the house, it’s only going to make it worse when we do go out.”

  Aunt Sadie drummed her fingers on the table. “Wouldn’t that be better done some place other than the river, especially when they’re dragging for a body? No telling what they might pull up, or how it’s going to look.”

  “The river’s the place to take a stand. We won’t stay long enough for Duncan to see anything. We just have to put in an appearance and let folks know we’re not hiding. If they’ve got something to say, I want them to know I’m not afraid to face them. And Duncan’s not afraid either. We’ll get down there early, just as they’re getting started, and then come right on home.” JoHanna looked down into her coffee cup as she finished.

  She wasn’t afraid. Not for herself. But she was afraid for Duncan, and she couldn’t hide it from me. I could only hope she was a good enough actress to hide it from the men she was going to confront. If they sensed any weakness in her … I could imagine the pleasure Elikah would take in recounting even the smallest sign of JoHanna’s fear. Elikah was not alone in his desire to see her brought low—no matter what the occasion.

  “Jeb will be down there.” Sadie got up to put another stick of wood in the stove. “French toast,” she said, letting us know the menu. “Duncan asked for it last night.”

  My stomach roiled at the thought of food, but I was also hungry. The conflicting needs made my head pound worse.

  “Starches will help soak up the alcohol. If you can eat it’ll make you feel better.” JoHanna still had a smile for my condition, as worried as she was about Duncan.