Touched Page 26

  I moved about the house, tracking the rising and setting of the sun. Looking out the front windows I watched the storm clouds gather while the sun burned golden among the changing colors of the single sycamore tree in the empty lot across the street. I fancied myself a little girl again, scuffing through the first crisping leaves that had fallen. Sitting at my window, I could feel the delicious crunch beneath my feet. The long walk on the way to school. The first cedar smell of unpacked sweaters. Thick socks. Fall. My favorite of all the seasons.

  As the pains in my body lessened, I was able to reconstruct the small fragments of joy from long ago. More familiar than the present was my fancy, single moments of the past spun into days where all of my senses were amazingly acute, and there was no suffering, no cruelty. Elikah would come home to find me at the window, gazing out into some scene I’d taken from the past and embellished and carved until it was as real as the touch of the windowsill beneath my hand. With a queer kindness, he would lead me back to bed and feed me, talking of this and that, trying to draw my interest in a place and a people I had never known and completely wiped from my mind.

  I had at last escaped Jexville.

  I was not unhappy. Perhaps I was happier than I had ever been. I no longer had the ability to judge such things. There were the windows, Elikah, the food he brought me. I knew those things to be real, but real had no value any longer. As soon as my meal was finished or Elikah had finally fallen asleep, I would ease out of bed and return to a window. There I could feel.

  The kitchen window had a view of the paddock where Mable grazed. I knew the mare, and some of my fantasies included sneaking out to saddle her and ride. There was no place I wanted to go, but I wanted the sensation of riding. I knew better than to leave the house, though. Elikah had made it clear that I was “away.” No one in town, other than Doc Westfall, could know that I was in the house, crisscrossing the rooms in search of another view. The idea that Elikah thought he had me trapped amused me. I had learned how to travel far away to places he could never even imagine. He was the prisoner, not me.

  I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t appreciate the fact that he had also become the servant. I had not tried to light the stove or wash a dish. Those were skills of another Mattie. I had no need for food or dishes, except what he insisted that I take. I needed only my window, where I watched a childish Mattie following the sounds of a crying infant. The baby was in distress, and young Mattie, with her thick, curly hair in pigtails down her back, hunted through the narrow green tunnel of foliage that led to the sparkling white sand of a reddish river. There, in a shallow trench dug in the white sand, was a baby. Delighted, Mattie lifted the child high into the blue sky. The baby reached down to Mattie, holding out chubby fists, content at last.

  “Mattie?”

  Someone called me from the tunnel of green, someone hidden from view, but I knew the voice though I could not place it.

  “Mattie?” There was fear in the voice, an emotion that made me jerk away from the window and whirl. A woman with hair clipped so close to her head that it looked like a bathing cap was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Behind her were Doc Westfall and Elikah.

  “Mattie, it’s me, JoHanna.”

  I knew her voice, but the way she looked at me made me afraid. I put my hands up to cover my face.

  “Mattie!” She took three long strides across the room and pulled me into her arms. She held me tight, so tight it made my ribs ache, but it was also good because I felt her warmth. Her tears struck the top of my head, hot little nails of emotion.

  “You’re a dead man, Elikah Mills.” She spoke with such anger that I thought her words might slice across the room and cut Elikah in half. I imagined him, cut down the middle like the chickens I’d cooked long ago for a barbecue in a place I couldn’t remember.

  “I’ll get a few of her things.” Doc Westfall started toward the bedroom while Elikah stood in the doorway. His hands hung down at his sides like something dead. I’d admired his hands as he was feeding me, the way they scooped just the right amount of potato on the spoon, lifting it all so smoothly to my mouth. Never spilling. Never miscalculating. Now they were lifeless. He would not look at me.

  When Doc came back with a small bag, a pair of my underwear hanging out, Elikah stepped out of the doorway, out of the way. Her arm still tight around me, the woman led me through the house and out into the grayness of an approaching storm. The sun had disappeared and the heavy mass of clouds had finally begun to move our way.

  Twenty-seven

  KNEELING before me in the bright yellow kitchen, the woman with the funny hair cried as her fingers traced the still-bruised tissue of my face. A young girl, her head also strangely clipped, stood in the doorway and cried, too. They both looked at me as if something terribly important was missing. I held out my hands and checked my feet to be sure all of me was there. Several days had passed since they brought me to this house, and each day they cried over me first thing every morning. They would make coffee, put a cup on the table for me, and begin to touch me and cry.

  “Mattie, look at me.” The woman put her palm against my cheek and drew my face down so that I gazed at her. She had the bluest eyes. Looking into them was like being touched by her. And she was crying again.

  “What’s wrong?” My voice sounded funny because I hardly talked any more. In the places that I liked best, there was no talk. Only movement through time. And sensation. I looked beyond her, out the window where a big rooster perched, cocking his head this way and that as if he watched us. At my look, he lifted his wings and made a menacing sound. He seemed to dance toward me, puffing out his chest and waving his wings. The rooster was constantly around, too.

  “Pecos.” The girl chided him. “If you can’t behave go outside.”

  But I didn’t mind him. He was interesting. I’d never seen a rooster in a house before.

  The woman took me to a bedroom where she turned back the cool cotton sheets. The most beautiful peach-colored curtains lifted on the wind. I could smell the storm coming, and I turned from the bed to look out the window. The storm had been building for days, massing dark clouds on the horizon. Now, at last, it had begun to move over us.

  “Mattie, I’m going to write your mother. And your sisters, Callie and Lena Rae. I’m going to tell them how Elikah beat you and ask them to come see you.”

  “Callie?” There was something I had to tell my sister. Something important. I remembered! “Tell her not to marry. No matter what Jojo says.”

  The woman pressed her palm lightly against my jaw. “Yes, Mattie. Callie and Lena Rae. They love you. We love you, Mattie. Me and Duncan. Try to remember.” Her face brightened, and she hurried out of the room to return with an enormous straw hat with fancy rooster feathers on it. “JoHanna McVay and her daughter, Duncan. Remember us? Do us a little dance step, Duncan.”

  With a laugh, Duncan sang and hummed a ragtime tune and did a few awkward dance steps with her stiff leg. When she finished, the woman applauded, and I did, too, to be polite.

  “JoHanna,” the woman said. “Say it, Mattie. Say my name.”

  “Jo-Hanna.” Warmth tingled deep inside me. “JoHanna McVay.”

  Her face shifted into surprise, then joy. “Yes, Mattie, yes. I’m JoHanna.” She motioned the girl to her side and pulled her close with one arm. “And Duncan.”

  “Gramophone.” I remembered her with a gramophone.

  “Oh, Mattie.” The woman hugged me on one side and the girl on the other. Then she kissed both of our heads. “You’re coming back to us, slowly but surely. And now I want you to sleep. Doc Westfall said sleep was the best medicine.” She knelt down beside me and began unlacing my shoes. The girl joined her, taking my other foot. I could have done it myself, but it was easier to let them than to fight about it. When they were done they lifted my legs and put them in the bed, drawing the soft spread up to my chin.

  “You can still see out the window.” JoHanna pointed to where the curtains billowe
d on a hot, fast breeze. “I have to go and cook us some supper. Give a holler if you need anything.” She kissed my forehead. “Anything at all.”

  Something in my head buzzed a warning. She was too close, too real. I would be hurt. I looked past her out the window, where it was safer. Clothes on the line were snapping in the sudden gusts of wind. My younger sister stepped from behind a sheet. She and my next sister were playing among the clothes. I couldn’t remember their names, but I knew them, knew they were eleven and ten, respectively. They darted among the wash, laughing and trying to tag each other. I smiled and waved at them, but they couldn’t hear me because of the storm.

  “Mama, there’s no one out there,” the girl in the doorway whispered. “Who’s she waving to?”

  The woman shook her head to silence the girl. “When Doc came up to Fitler to get us, he said Mattie was having trouble telling what was real from what she imagines. She sees someone out there, Duncan. She sees them better than she sees us. So we’re just going to have to make her focus on us again.”

  “How?” The girl tottered into the room on unsteady legs. The right one dragged a bit behind her as she walked.

  She was distracting me from my sisters out in the yard. I got up and went to the window where I could see outside better. The sky was getting grayer and more overcast, the wind blowing hard. It was going to be a bad storm.

  The woman came and led me back to the bed. “Rest for a while, Mattie.” Her words were gentle, but they were also a command. I’d learned from Elikah about commands. I lay down on the bed, my hands resting on my stomach.

  “Geez, she looks like a corpse!”

  “Duncan!” The woman shook her head. “She can hear you, even though she acts like she can’t.”

  “He beat the dickens out of her.” Duncan’s voice broke. “Is she going to get better, Mama? Is she?”

  Her anguish hurt me, but there was nothing I could do. I would have soothed her if I could, but I had nothing to give her to make it better. I glanced at the window, wondering when they would leave me so I could go and look outside.

  The woman took the young girl by the shoulder and they left the room, taking care to see the door was left ajar. I lay on the bed and listened to their voices. A man had joined them. He had a deep, pleasant voice, and he spoke softly. When I was certain they were deep in conversation, I got out of bed and went to the window. There was an Auburn Touring car beneath a chinaberry tree, and I stared at the automobile. It was beautiful, and I remembered a handsome man, dark hair neatly groomed, chocolate eyes laughing and teasing. But the buzzing started in my head again, and I saw that the car was a fire truck. My sisters were hiding behind the other side, laughing at me as they peeked around the big silver front bumper. They were older than when they’d played in the clothes on the line. Older and prettier. They wore dresses, and they laughed at the handsome firemen on the truck. But it was me the firemen pointed out. They held out their hands and urged me to come out the window and climb on board the big red truck. They were going to take me for a ride.

  “Mattie.”

  I ignored the man’s voice as he spoke from behind me. The firemen didn’t talk. They only smiled and touched and nodded, saying without words that they liked me, that they wanted me to come with them on the big red fire truck.

  Strong hands grasped my shoulders. Too real, they went through my dress and skin right to my bone. I struggled to free myself, thrashing and twisting against those big hands that seemed to want to hold me in a place I didn’t want to be.

  “Mattie.” He spoke calmly, though he was fighting to keep his grip.

  “Mattie.” He shifted me toward the bed, and when he managed to get me down on it he held me with one hand while brushing his long, black hair out of his face.

  “Easy, Mattie, it’s me, John Doggett.”

  The name echoed around my head and then left.

  “Easy.” He held me with one hand and pulled a chair up beside the bed with his free one. “Easy.” He moved his hand away from me inch by inch, always watching to make sure I didn’t try to bolt and escape. I knew better than to move. He could still hit me.

  “JoHanna and Duncan have gone to get Floyd. I told them I’d stay here with you until they returned. I said I’d tell you a story.”

  He smiled, and I thought how handsome he was. If only he wouldn’t talk aloud. If only he’d shut up and talk with his eyes. I reached up to put my fingers on his lips, and he closed his mouth. He caught my fingers in his hand and held them tightly before putting my hand beside me on the bed. Very gently he held it there. Then he nodded and stared at me.

  His eyes were intensely black with straight eyebrows that were now drawn together in concentration. He shifted closer, so that I could see the texture of his lashes, thick and long, the bristle of his beard beneath his skin. Though my gaze strayed, it always returned to his eyes. And then I saw myself in the black depths. The swelling was gone from my face, but the bruises were still dark, fringed in green. They were healing. I reached up to touch my own face and saw my hand in the reflection of his eyes.

  Mattie.

  He did not speak the word, but I heard it.

  Mattie, come back to us.

  He called to me with his gaze. He did not speak. His lips did not move.

  Please, Mattie.

  I heard his voice, but his lips did not move. I touched his lips again and felt them curve only slightly in a smile.

  “JoHanna asked me to tell you a story, Mattie.” He spoke against my hand, his life puffing lightly against my fingers. “I’ve picked out one I think you’ll like. If it isn’t right, Floyd will be here soon to take over as the master storyteller. For the moment, my story is about a young girl who decided to have an adventure on a river.”

  I closed my eyes and felt his words against my fingers, and I began to listen.

  I awoke to unnatural blackness and the sound of panic. In the darkness people were scurrying around and there was the sound of breaking glass as a woman cursed with great ability. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep or where I was. But I had slept. After nights and nights of sitting at my windows watching, I’d finally slept. Inside my head the memories were quiet.

  “Where’s Pecos?” The young girl who had trouble walking demanded. I recognized her voice easily.

  “Duncan, that bird has sense enough to get someplace safe. That’s why he’s been missing for the last hour. He’s smart enough to realize we’re in for a bad storm and he’s found himself a safe place to be. Now we’re going to do the same.”

  “I’m going to hunt for him.”

  “Over my dead body. I’ve got enough to worry about without you going out into a bad storm.”

  “I’m not afraid of storms.” There was defiance in the words.

  “I’m not either, but you’re not going out there. This isn’t just a thunderstorm, Duncan. Can’t you feel it? This is a grandfather of a storm.”

  A man’s soft voice spoke. “Imagine it, Duncan. Zeus up there in the clouds getting ready to pour some serious tragedy down on us mortals. A little entertainment for the gods.”

  “Right.” She spoke with sarcasm. “It’s just an old storm. Ever since I got struck by lightning, Mama acts like a little rain is going to kill me.”

  “Duncan, you’re staying inside this house. If Pecos wants to come home, he will.”

  “I’ll go look for Pecos, Duncan.”

  This was a different voice. Younger than the other man. Golden and light. I liked the sound of it. I knew this man and he made me feel safe.

  A door closed and footsteps went down the wooden steps.

  Someone had come into my room and closed my window, so I got up and went and opened it. The peach curtains, slinky as silk, fluttered in the wind and draped around my body, teasing my skin with cool caresses. It was as dark in my room as it was outside, so I had no concerns about being seen. Beyond the window I heard the golden man calling for the rooster named Pecos. The storm had blocked out al
l signs of moon or stars, and the clouds seemed thick and dense, moving close to the ground like the march of a midnight army.

  I saw the man in the light from the kitchen window. His hair was longish and golden. Floyd. I knew him. I knew that I liked him. He was tender, gentle. He had been kind to me sometime in the past, though I couldn’t remember when or why. The wind pressed his shirt into his brawny chest, and he lifted his chin and called for the rooster. “Pe-cos! Pe-cos!” He called strong and hard, but the wind whipped the words from his mouth and tore them apart. “Pe-cos!” He moved toward the outside shed. He tried to force the door open, but the wind blew against him. I could see he was strong, but the wind was strong, too, and it came in gusts that made it hard to fight. The door gave suddenly, swinging out toward him. A squawking, flapping blast of feathers shot from the shed. The bird half ran, half flew across the yard directly to the window where I stood.

  Before I could move, he flew up, talons extended, and came at me. I felt his claws dig into my arm, and I heard my scream, though it sounded as if it came from a great distance away.

  Behind me there was the sound of running feet, and then the man and woman and the young girl were all around me. The woman held my arm while the man put pressure on it to stop the flow of blood. In the light of a lantern I watched the dark red blood drip off my fingers and dance against the waxed wood of the floor.

  It didn’t hurt, not yet, but I knew it would. Reaching up to push the hair out of my face with my other hand, I saw the other scar, the curved hook in the center of my palm. That, too, had been made by the rooster. I remembered. Pecos. The red-brown flurry of feathers and claws as I stood in the hot yard pulling a wagon and a gramophone. Pecos! I remembered!

  Around me JoHanna and Duncan and John Doggett were chattering and getting bandages and turpentine. In a corner of the room the rooster waited, his beady little eyes following each and every movement that I made. We looked at each other, and he lifted his wings out from his body and shook them at me, a warning.