Maud's Line Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 by Margaret Verble

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Verble, Margaret.

  Maud’s line / Margaret Verble.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-544-47019-4 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-544-47192-4 (ebook)

  1. Teenage girls—Fiction 2. Allotment of land—Government policy—Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma—Fiction. 3. Oklahoma—History—20th century—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3622.E733M38 2015

  813'.6—dc23

  2014039683

  Jacket design by Christopher Moisan

  Jacket photograph © Getty Images

  v1.0715

  For my mother,

  her brothers, and first cousins

  1

  Maud was bent over one row suckering tomato plants and Lovely was bent over the next one. They were talking about a girl Lovely had his eyes set on. But a cow’s bawling interrupted that. Maud unfolded and looked toward the river. Lovely did the same. The bawling was loud, unnatural, and awful, and it set them to running. They ran first toward the house, not toward the sound, because neither had taken a gun to the garden. Maud stopped at the steps; Lovely rushed in for their rifles. Armed up and not bothering to talk, they both ran straight toward the pump to get to the pasture below the ridge where the howling was coming from. If they hadn’t been fearful, they would’ve run fifty more yards to the gate and gone through it. But they were scared and hurrying, so they climbed the barbed wire just past the pump, and Lovely snagged his sleeve, leaving behind a piece of blue cotton waving like the flag of a small foreign country. Maud did worse than that. She snagged her leg below the knee at the back, opening a tear deep at its top and three inches long. Maud was vain about her legs and Lovely had only three shirts, but still they ran, focused on the bawling, without minding their mishaps.

  When they got to the cow, Betty was folded with both her head and her rump sticking up. Between them, smack across the ridge of her spine, were three wide, angry gashes. She was thrashing all over the ground. She’d flattened out a circle of weeds, and, oddly, out of the center wound, a stalk of poke protruded. It was a thick stem of poke and resembled, stuck out as it was, a spear. That’s what Maud thought as soon as she saw it.

  Lovely yelled, “Her back’s axed. We’ll haveta shoot her.” He moved toward Betty’s head and raised his rifle. But then he just stood, cheek on the stock, eye down the sights, finger on the trigger.

  Maud yelled, “Pull it.”

  But the end of Lovely’s gun shook like a leaf in a breeze. So Maud raised her rifle, moved a step west to keep from shooting her brother, and waited until she had a good look at an ear.

  The blowback of skull and brain splattered onto Lovely’s overalls and shirt. He lowered his gun and looked down at his bib. He said, “I’m gonna be sick.” Before he completely bent over, he threw up fatback and biscuits over pieces of cow head.

  Betty’s legs kept flailing. Maud shouldered her rifle again; said, “Move farther back”; looked down her sights; and sent another bullet into the white patch between the cow’s eyes. Then she cradled her gun in the crook of her arm, cupped her hand over her mouth, and cried, “Betty, I’m sorry.” Her shoulders heaved. She felt the blood trickle down the back of her leg. She looked at the rivulet, laid her gun on the ground, and tore off a Johnson grass blade. She plastered it over the wound and then sat in the weeds and watched the cow twitching to death.

  Tears watered Maud’s eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. Betty was a tough Hereford with a big heart and strong legs and, the year before, had climbed a fallen tree to escape the worst of the flood. But any dead cow would’ve been a disaster. They’d lost all but three of their herd to the water. To take her eyes and mind off of Betty’s trembling, Maud looked over to Lovely. He was wiping his bib with a leaf. She said, “Don’t worry about that. We’ve got to save this meat.”

  Maud sent Lovely off to round up their uncles, Blue and Early. The men came back with Blue driving Great-Uncle Ame’s 1920 Dodge sedan. He maneuvered it into the pasture as close to Betty as he could get, and the four of them strung her up to the sturdiest tree around. They set to butchering, talking about the meanness it took to ax a cow in the back. They gave Blue the hide to cure and packed Betty’s meat in old newspapers and feed sacks. They deposited those on the floor of the backseat and agreed they’d pay Hector Hempel, the dwarf who ran the icehouse, two rump roasts for storing the meat. The men drove off with the car loaded so heavy it didn’t rattle.

  Maud walked to the house. She first tended her leg and then drew her dress and slip off over her head. At eighteen, she was fit, dark, and tall like the rest of her mother’s family and most of her tribe. She was more of a willow than an oak, and her figure and personality had grown pleasing to every male within a twenty-mile radius, to some of the women, too, and to most of the animals. Maud carried that admiration the way eggs are carried in a basket, carefully, with a little tenderness, but without minding too closely the individual. She drew on another slip and dress, tossed her and Lovely’s dirty clothes in a tub, and pumped cool water over them until they were completely covered. She left them to soak while she filled one of the front-yard kettles with water and lit a fire under it.

  While she stirred their clothes in the kettle, her heart sank further than it’d sunk since the flood, and tears came to her eyes again. Heat rose up to her cheeks, and the fire under the pot made her shins hot. She poked the clothes with the pole and gave in to crying and to some self-pity she didn’t much admire. She wanted a washer with a tub and ringers. They were advertised all the time in the papers. So were refrigerators, lamps that turned on with buttons, toilets that flushed in the house. She lifted her dress out of the water with the end of the pole and dipped it again. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and forced her mind off of the things she wanted. She turned it to the cold kind of cruelty that would kill an innocent cow. She felt Betty’s twitching in the wound on the back of her leg, felt her bawling all over again in her heart.

  But she was recovered and hanging the clothes on the line when the men got back to the farm. And although they were noticeably tired from the butchering and lugging of meat, and Lovely was still shaken from the whole ordeal, they pitched in and scooped out the wash water, carried it to the garden for the tomato plants, and set wood for a fire in the pit. Maud had saved back enough meat to feed some of their extended family: Blue and Early, of course; and her grandpa, Bert; and her great-uncle Ame and his wife, Viola; and her aunt Lucy and her husband, Cole. She didn’t save out any for her father. It was Saturday and late in the afternoon. He wouldn’t crawl back until well into the night.

  Blue left to clean up and fetch the others. But Early hung around to eat his share of the beef. He was only twenty-six, and his talk was about going to town, gambling, and people of the female persuasion. Maud found Early a lot of fun, and having him to herself raised her spirits some. She teased him about his plans for the evening and fed him the food that was ready, except for the onions. She told him he needed to hold off on those out of respect for the women.

  Shortly after Early l
eft, Blue came back in a wagon with his father, Ame and Viola, Lucy and Cole, and their baby boy. He pulled the wagon close to the fire and hitched the mules to the rail. There weren’t enough chairs for everybody to sit, so they ate from the wagon bed, some in it, some standing around the tailgate. And it was a feast—beans, onions, biscuits, hominy, the beef, lettuce, asparagus, and two pecan pies Lucy had baked.

  While they ate, they talked about who’d murdered the cow. Not that it was much of a mystery. The Mount boys, or men, John and Claude, were the culprits. Everybody agreed on that because of the sneakiness of the crime and because the Mounts had a history of meanness that Grandpa and Great-Uncle Ame swore extended for generations. The Mounts’ paternal grandpappy had once set fire to his own dog and blamed it on his neighbor. One of their great-uncles had been the biggest allotment stealer in the Cookson Hills. He’d locked three men in a cabin with a barrel of liquor and wouldn’t feed them or let them out until they’d signed their papers over to him. Then when they did, he wouldn’t even let them have the rest of the whiskey. And the Mounts’ mama, Ame claimed in almost a whisper, had more than a little Comanche in her.

  So the talk centered more on what to do. Calling in the law was out. Nobody around the wagon trusted the law nor had any reason to. The law wasn’t set up for Indians. But the older folks were against revenge on the practical principle that it multiplied trouble, and the younger ones deferred to their elders by habit and weren’t particularly hell-bent in their natures. Blue (according to Bert) had come into the world with an even disposition and a mark on his head, now disappeared, that had determined his name. Lucy was still a young wife who had been tamed by her marriage. Cole was a married-in white; he respected his in-laws’ customs and folded to whatever they wanted.

  As for the next generation down, Lovely took after his mother, who’d been as calm as the surface of a pond at twilight. Maud was growing more toward their mother’s way every day. However, she’d been born with more of their daddy’s nature, and his temper was hot. That was how he, as a boy, had come to be called Mustard. His last name was Nail, and as an adult, he was still bad to fight. So even though his daddy had been mostly white, nobody in Maud’s mother’s family knew of a fullblood in the state of Oklahoma with a more appropriate handle. Mustard Nail would want to kill the Mounts, everybody agreed on that. So after Lovely and Cole had doused the fire with dirt and the stars popped out as the evening wore on, the talk turned to how to break it to Mustard that his cow was gone.

  “I think it might be best to lie,” Viola said.

  “He’ll know she’s gone. And he spent five bucks breeding her,” Lovely replied.

  “That’s two cows, then,” Grandpa offered.

  “Hector already knows we put her down ’cause her back was broke,” Blue said.

  “What did you tell him, exactly?” Lovely asked.

  Early had already reported to Maud that Lovely had remained laid out on the backseat of the car at the icehouse, resting from the shock with his arm across his eyes. Maud wasn’t surprised in the least. Her brother had always been sensitive. But it wasn’t the fault of his name. It was commonly used for boys in their mother’s family, and none of the rest of them, five Lovelys in all, had turned out to be anything but tall, unflinching, and good with a gun. At nineteen, Lovely was tall enough, a couple of inches beyond six feet. And he could shoot fairly well when he could force himself into pulling a trigger. But his temperament had caused their mama, while still alive, to coddle him and had put him at odds with their father. Mustard was hard on Lovely and occasionally claimed he had four girls rather than three girls and a boy. Maud’s two older sisters were married and gone, and her mother, Lila, was dead, so it was Maud who stood between Mustard and Lovely. She did it with words and sometimes they worked.

  Blue said, “Told Hector you had to shoot her, Lovely. Didn’t say much else. He could see yer feet hanging outta the window.”

  Lovely shooting the cow had been the story Maud and he’d agreed on before he’d gone to fetch Early and Blue. And neither had told their uncles the truth. “You think Hector’ll say anything to Daddy?” asked Maud.

  “Hard to tell,” Blue replied.

  “I’ll caution him next time I go for ice,” Grandpa said. “He knows Mustard like ever’body else.”

  “I think a broke leg’s the best bet. She broke her leg. Had to be shot,” Blue said, practicing the lie.

  “That sure sounds better than a broke back,” Viola said. She picked up her tin, spat into it, and wiped her mouth with a bandana.

  With that agreed, the family gazed at the Milky Way, passed Lucy’s baby back and forth, and talked about relatives who were on the next farms over, away, or dead. They also talked about Early, who, they figured, was taking money off of some fool drunk he’d lured into cards. The conversation was sprinkled with laughter that kept Maud’s mind off of Betty, and the family didn’t split up until the moon dimmed the stars and provided them light for traveling.

  Maud and Lovely went to bed not long after the others departed, and Lovely was asleep on his back when Maud, half awake and listening to the wolves howl in the wild, heard her father’s car stop at their first cattle guard and then at their second one. She was on her side pretending to sleep when Mustard opened the door and tripped on the threshold. He fell loudly on the floor. After that, he gave out a groan. When Maud determined he wasn’t going to stir, she got up, put a pillow under his head, and then settled into deep sleep.

  She awoke in early morning light, looked at her father still on the floor, and decided he didn’t seem that worse for the wear. He’d managed to get home without visible bruises or swollen eyes, and he wasn’t drooling. His left arm seemed a little crooked, but she could tell from her cot that it was just thrown at an odd angle. She glanced at her brother’s cot, determined he was still asleep, softly set her feet on a plank, and stood up. She stepped behind a sheet hung on a wire that blocked off a corner for privacy, pulled her housedress off of a peg, and drew it over her head. She checked the rag around her wound and saw a patch of blood dried in the shape of a hammer’s head. She decided to leave the bandage in place, slipped out from behind the sheet, and stepped to the kitchen. She plucked her toothbrush from a cup, lifted the dipping pan from the counter, and went out the kitchen door, closing it softly.

  When she returned, Mustard was still on the floor, but Lovely was up. Maud had set the kindling the night before, so she fiddled the fire to life and was frying fatback when her brother came in from his morning time alone. She nodded toward the other room. Lovely whispered, “Eggs,” and held up three fingers. He sat down in a chair at the table and took up a newspaper that was two days old.

  Maud usually waited to eat until her father and brother were fed. But Mustard hadn’t shown signs of stirring, so she ate with her brother. The two were finishing off their second biscuits when they heard a faint “Goddamn” from somewhere near the floor beyond the kitchen door. Maud got up with her plate in her hand, set it in the dishpan, and laid another dish on the table.

  Mustard made more noise than he did most mornings. The grunts and groans came first from the front room and then from out in the yard. Maud thought they were for effect rather than an indication of any particular distress. Her father acted badly with the same regularity as the rooster crowed at dawn. But he had a conscience to him, so remorse usually followed soon after the ache of alcohol or the burn of temper had cleared out and gone.

  When Mustard finally got into the kitchen, he placed both hands flat on the table and eased into his chair. “You should’ve seen Charlie Pankins when I left him. Goddamn, he were a mess.”

  Maud held up the coffee kettle. “You want some before your eggs?”

  “I believe I do.”

  Lovely shoved a saucer toward his father without lifting his eyes from reading.

  Mustard scratched the back of his head. “We got our hooch offin a Choctaw who was packing his load in a feed sack.”

  Maud pick
ed up the saucer, held it about four inches from the table, and poured coffee into it. She set it down slowly next to her father’s right fist.

  Mustard said, “You might have to pick that up for me. I’m a little shaky.”

  Maud turned back to the stove, settled the kettle, and picked up the saucer in both hands as carefully as if she were cradling the back of a baby’s head. Mustard slurped his coffee, wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand, and said, “Yer the best.”

  Maud held the saucer until Mustard drained it and poured him another he was able to hold on his own. She knew she was her father’s favorite, and this was even with her oldest sister looking more like him than his face in a pond. She said, “Daddy, we’ve got some bad news for you. Betty broke her leg in the pasture. Lovely had to put her down.”

  “Say that again,” said Mustard.

  Lovely looked up from his paper. “Had to shoot Betty in her head, Dad. She was bawling as high as the moon.”

  “You shot the goddamn cow?” Mustard’s face was turning red.

  “He had to, Daddy. I saw her myself. She was lying on the ground, unable to get up. It was a pitiful sight. Lovely put her out of her misery.”

  Mustard wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He shook his head. He sat there in silence until Maud slid eggs onto his plate and picked out some fatback from a platter under a sugar sack. Mustard ate with a smacking noise until Lovely turned a page of the paper, and then he said, “One shot?”

  “Two. She was tough.”

  “Whatchya do with her?”

  Lovely laid his paper down. “Took her to Hector.”

  Mustard wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again. “I believe I need a cigarette.”

  Lovely’s chair scraped. He went to the main room and slid back into his seat at the table with a cigar box. “Want me to roll and light it?”

  Mustard nodded and patted his breast pocket and then his pants pockets. “My Banjo’s somewhere. Probably the other room.”