Maud's Line (14 page)

Maud hoped that if her mother had been there it was to keep Lovely from going with their father. She thought about asking if he knew the Mounts were dead. She hesitated. Lovely wasn't in his right mind. If he didn't know, and she told him, he could tell somebody else. He'd spilled her hiding places. In the state he was in, he couldn't be trusted. And surely her daddy wouldn't have taken him to kill the Mounts. But he might have taken Ryde. The light had been burning at Nan's in the night. “Lovely, I'm going over to Grandpa's. Aunt Lucy and Viola will've cooked Sunday dinner. I'll bring you some back. You can tide yourself over with biscuits. I'll get you a cup of water. I want you to drink it.”

“I can't right now.”

Maud's heart jumped. “You're afraid of water?”

“My belly still hurts from the shot.” He rubbed his stomach. “Don't worry. Doc watched me drink.”

Maud left the house and went straight to the cellar. It was a log dugout covered with a sod roof. She pulled back the door and looked at the steps and dirt floor. The sun hit them both. She held her breath and listened for snakes that occasionally retreated to the hole in the heat of the day. She heard nothing but silence interrupted by insect and chicken sounds. She stepped down, palming the dirt of the wall. The first thing she checked was the shelf where she'd hidden her daddy's money. The jar was gone. She muttered a curse on her brother, moved the bean jars back into place, and reached for a jar of plum jelly from the shelf below. She slipped that jar into the pocket of her overalls. When she did, she recalled Booker seeing her dressed in them. She felt ugly.

But Maud knew she couldn't waste time thinking about her looks. She had a pressing job to do. She climbed out of the hole, shut the door, and secured it. Then she got her rifle from the porch and set out through the back fields, avoiding Nan's house because she didn't want to see her uncle Ryde until she had a notion of what to say to him. She directed her mind toward her grandfather's place. Early would probably be there. He was prone to telling tales in town, embellishing even the plainest plank on the porch to make it sound like the yellow brick road. But if anybody listened close enough, they usually heard kernels of truth. She didn't want any of those spilling out.

Who else would be there? Uncle Ame and Aunt Viola, for sure. She needed to talk to Viola about Lovely, and her grandpa and Ame worked as a team. But Lucy, Cole, and Blue would be there, too. And it was Sunday; other family might've drifted in. Maud turned off onto another cow path, hoping to see as few kin as she could.

When she got to the horse pasture, she was relieved to see that Early's and Blue's horses weren't there. She looked ahead to the house. At that time of day, folks would be in the side-yard shade. She wouldn't be able to tell who until she was close. But to her relief, it turned out to be only the older generation. They were sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree trunk and stumps. She took a deep breath and waved to them.

Maud wanted to blurt out her trouble. But she needed to be certain somebody hadn't just gone into the house. She sat down on the ground and quickly found that Early and Blue had gone into town. Lucy, Cole, and their baby were at Nan's. She heard, too, rapid fire, that Lucy's feet were swelling and Blue was courting a white woman who had a bit in his mouth. After that gossipy spray, Maud wanted to run a straight line. She announced without warning, “The Mounts are dead. Killed, as far as I can tell.”

Her grandfather's eyebrows ran up to the wrinkles of his forehead. He cocked his head like he'd heard a near owl during the middle of the day.

“They're down at their house, out in the back. Buzzards have been at them. I covered them with quilts to keep them away. Daddy's Banjo was by one of their boots.” She reached into her bib and pulled it out.

Maud's grandfather and uncle Ame both cussed. Then they put their hands on the ground and stood. Ame was small and bowlegged. He looked like a fullblood, wasn't a talker, and wouldn't look anyone straight in the eye. Her grandpa was over a head taller; one of his shoulders was higher than the other, but his legs were straight. He was also dark, but lighter than his brother. He ran his hands down the sides of his overalls, looked up to the sky, and said, “Did the Mounts have any hogs left?”

Maud tried to remember hogs. “I was in such a state I can't recall.”

His next remark was to Viola. “What'd you and Lucy do with them brooms?”

“They's against the back stoop.”

“Get 'em fer us.”

Viola got up. Maud said, “What're we gonna do, Grandpa?”

“Ame and me'll take care it, Maudy-Baby.”

Maud felt such relief that she was suddenly glad the Mounts were dead. She wanted to throw her arms around her grandpa's neck, press against his bib, and cry. But he wouldn't take to that.

He said, “Anything else we need to know?”

Maud couldn't bear to put words to what she'd seen. “Daddy's rifle's gone. I'm thinking he thought the Mounts gave Lovely the rabies. But Doc Ragsdale was down. He doesn't think Lovely's infected. Giving him shots just as a precaution.”

Maud's grandfather nodded toward her hand, the one that held the lighter. “Did he drop it or leave it on purpose?”

“Don't know.”

“Did he kill 'em alone, or did Ryde help?”

“Don't know that, either.”

Ame said, “I wouldn't put it past Ryde.”

Grandpa said, “Me. neither. And then get scared and leave the bodies. Neither one of 'em can think through a damn thing.” He looked toward the sun and squinted. “Did Ragsdale go on down to the Mounts?”

“No. He went back to town. He was depending on John Mount to get to him. I guess he's afraid to go into the wild.”

Ame said, “That's a good thing.”

Viola had returned with the brooms in time to hear her brother-in-law's last question. She said, “Bert, if Mount don't show for his shot, that doctor'll go looking fer him. That's what Pappy would do.”

Bert said, “We better get going.”

“What are you gonna do?” Maud said.

Her grandpa looked over her head. “What I want you to do is poke around Nan's. See if you can find out if Ryde had any part. If he gets to talking, we could have a real problem on our hands.”

“I'd say two bodies is a problem.” Viola picked up her spit can and turned her head.

Maud sighed. Murder was awful. The thought filled her with shivers. But in a deep crevice inside, she felt pleased that her father had defended Lovely. It was the first time in her memory he'd done that, and she thought that if she saw her daddy again she'd thank him for it.

Her grandpa continued, “Be cagey with Ryde. Ifin he didn't have a hand, we don't want him finding out. Jist visit pleasant like.”

He and Ame walked off toward the horse lot, each carrying a broom. Maud and Viola turned to the house. There were two front rooms, a kitchen in the back, and, attached to the main structure by a porch, another room where Blue and Early bunked. Viola went into the south room in the main part of the house. Maud sat on the side of a bed in the other front room and gripped its iron footboard. From the south room, Viola said, “Pappy told me when yer grandpa and Ame waz boys, there waz a neighborly killing 'round here. Yer great-grandpa drove it. But yer grandpa played a part, and yer great-uncle Coop pulled the trigger. Mr. Singer's mother waz in on it, and his brother took the rap. It were a long time ago. I never heared the full story. Ame's never said a word about it, though we've been married since '99. My pappy warn't no killing man, but he were in the thick of it, trying, as best I recall, to heal yer grandma's wounds. She waz a little girl and the wolves had been at her.”

Maud had never caught a whisper of that story. And hearing it told from another room made it feel as spooky as a critter creeping out of the mist covering a field. Maud recalled her mama saying that time moved in a circle, not like an arrow. She felt dizzied by that circle and clutched the iron rod to hold herself to the mattress. She was still holding on when Viola came into the room.

They set out to Nan's carrying with them Maud's plum jelly and a slingshot Bert had whittled for his grandkids. They agreed on a story about Bert and Ame going fishing. But then it occurred to them that nobody put much effort into fishing on Sunday after dinner was eaten. They settled on a story about leaving the men at home with their heads under the hood of Ame's car.

Maud didn't know Viola as well as she knew the rest of her family. Her uncle Ame had married her and moved with her to the Creek Nation after his first wife had died. Except for long visits, Maud hadn't seen either one of them since. However, Viola was somehow also blood kin to her through her mother. Maud didn't know enough to untangle that web, but she felt that if her own grandmother had lived she'd be much like Viola. She kept her gait slow to match the older woman's walk and watched her out of the sides of her eyes.

Viola was dark to the bone, her skin wrinkled by weather, her eyes deep set. Her hair was braided down her back and a wad bulged her lower lip. She drew a bandana from her dress and wiped sweat off her brow. “Give me the lowdown on Lovely.”

The question led Maud to where she wanted to go. “He's not right in his head. And, like I said, the doc doesn't really think it's rabies.” She described Lovely's accident in the barn. Then she added, “He's seeing things. Thinks Mama's come to visit him. Thinks other people are talking to him. I haven't told him what I found at the Mounts.”

“How high's his fever?”

“Not so high he should be seeing or hearing things.”

Viola peered out toward a field of potatoes and moved her wad to the other side of her jaw. They'd walked another fifty feet when she finally remarked, “The men'll come up from the wild by Gourd's. We'll look in on Lovely after we finish this visit.”

At Nan's, they found Maud's aunt Sarah and four of her kids had come over from Muskogee in Sarah's oldest boy's car. They admired his new Chevrolet and caught up with Sarah's family gossip. Ryde and Cole had taken the buckboard to Ft. Gibson before Sarah had arrived. With Ryde gone, Nan seeming normal, and with other kin around, Maud's mind let go its grip on the events of the morning. Food revived her energy. By the time she and Viola said their good-byes and walked the section line toward her house, Maud was almost feeling like she'd imagined the bodies the same way Lovely had imagined their mother dropping by.

She was drawn back to reality when Viola said, “I don't know if we'll get much out of them men when they come in. Ame and Bert try to protect you younguns. They think book learning is the way to go. Couldn't read much themselves 'til they waz grown.”

Maud recalled nestling in her grandfather's lap, reading out loud from whatever book was in the house, and him drawing out pennies for her from a little black purse in his bib when she finished. Now she wondered if he was encouraging her, or was learning with her. “Can they read Cherokee?”

“No, yer grandma could read it real good. But Ame and yer grandpa waz raised over in Arkansas, away from the rest. I think their daddy may've been mostly white.”

“Don't they know?”

“Not total sure. They waz orphaned in the Hard Times. Come here as kids 'cause their mama had told 'em this waz where her people lived. Her name waz Margaret. She waz a great-niece to my grandpappy and to yer great-grandfather. They waz brothers.”

Maud understood that her great-aunt was trying to educate her and that she ought to remember what she said. But she didn't think she could. That type of information was important in times past when roles were compiled and allotments handed out. But she had too many other things to think about. She said, “I need to mark all that down,” just to be polite.

“When ya get the chance. Now people can't keep up.”

They were in the shade of the swale trees before either one of them spoke again.

“Was your pa a real medicine man?” Maud asked.

“Sure waz. Prutty good one, too.”

“Did he give shots?”

Viola cackled. “He didn't have those. He gathered medicine the Breath Master gives us and doctored with it.”

Maud knew something about the Creeks' Breath Master. He wasn't much different in his creating ways from the Genesis God. Maud started to say that Lovely's girl had him reading the Bible. But she checked her tongue because Lovely had been too sick to spark. She hoped he didn't lose Gilda because of that.

When they passed the trees, they saw that Bert's wagon wasn't at the house and that Lovely was in Mustard's chair on the porch. There was, it seemed, a whiff of moisture in the air, and they talked about the possibility of rain until they got to Gourd's, where Maud went inside to retrieve her mother's pistol.

They found Lovely with the Bible on the planks next to his chair. He looked perkier than Maud had expected. She gave him some food from Nan's, and they talked about Sarah's kids until the wind came up. Then Maud left to milk the cow and close up the chicken house. When she got back, drops of rain had speckled the dust. They moved the rocker against the wall. Lovely and Viola slid to the planks and sat. Maud took the chair.

Thunder rumbled. The tree branches swished with the wind, dark clouds rolled in, and lightning zigzagged in the sky over the river. When the rain came, it played on the far side of the porch like the shake of a rattle. The three of them were lost in the show and saying very little when Bert's wagon appeared on the crest of the ridge by Gourd's house. The mules stopped. Bert and Ame sat still in the downpour. Then they got off the far side of the wagon and went into the house. Maud told Lovely they'd been down at the river to see if anything worth salvaging had been thrown up on the sandbar. The lightning and thunder died, but the rain continued. As dark descended, Maud, Lovely, and Viola went inside one at a time and lay down to sleep.