Maud's Line Page 5

  “It’s pretty bad. I’ve already seen it.”

  Maud felt like she might, on the strength of that remark, get out of having to bury the dog. And she wasn’t above using her gender to her advantage. She said, in a voice that was a little less assertive than she usually used with her brother, “How bad?”

  “There’s blood everywhere.”

  “What kind of dog was it?”

  “Dog, dog.”

  “It’s the Mounts’ doings.” Maud leaped to that conclusion without even drawing a breath, and for a few minutes, she and Lovely distracted themselves from the carcass in the kitchen by discussing their neighbors. They took into account that they’d found Betty in the Mounts’ pasture, or what the Mounts called their pasture, which was really just scrub in the wild between real pasture and the river. And they took into account a fistfight Mustard had had with Claude Mount during the last election. They also counted in the real possibility that Mustard and Ryde had done something in the early morning light to settle the score with the Mounts over axing Betty’s back. But then they figured it might be just as likely that the Mounts would’ve gone after Ryde, and they knew no meanness had taken place at their aunt’s. So they left it at that, and Maud asked, “Do you think they actually killed it in the kitchen?”

  “Don’t know. I can’t see them bringing it into the house to shoot it. But there’s a lot of blood for them to have kilt it somewhere else. I got some on me.” Lovely held up his hand and spat on it.

  “Why are you spitting on yourself?”

  “I got a thistle poke.” He massaged his palm with his thumb and then swiped his hand on his overalls.

  “I’ve told you to wear gloves a thousand times.”

  “I was wearing gloves. It poked me through one.”

  Lovely looked toward the river. The sun was past four o’clock. “If Dad doesn’t stop off somewhere, he could be home in an hour.”

  “We better get to digging, then.”

  “Let’s dig in the garden. We can make fertilizer.”

  “Do you want to drag it out, or do you want me to?”

  “Well, I’ve already seen it,” he said. “And it didn’t get to me like Betty did. I’ll drag it out. You get the shovels.”

  They dug a hole three feet deep and a foot longer than the dog. While they threw dirt, they talked about whether the dog belonged to somebody or was one of the feral ones that lived in the wild of the river, roamed the sandbar, and sometimes took up with the wolves. It was a dog they’d never seen. But dogs and cats turned up around the house on a regular basis, and if their father hadn’t been so particular about the kind he wanted, they could’ve had their pick of a half dozen or so. This dog was mostly black and a little long-haired, but not speckled with burrs. Lovely had dragged it to the garden wrapped in the only tablecloth they had, and with a good bit of regret, Maud agreed to bury it in that cloth. Lovely shoved the carcass into the hole with his boot. It raised a little dust when it hit the bottom. He said, “Should we say something over it?”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t know. It might’ve been somebody’s pet.”

  Maud looked around. Sunflower stalks were growing at the north end of the garden. They weren’t yet blooming, but they had the makings of buds. She walked over to them and broke a stalk off. She walked back to the hole, knelt, and laid the stalk on the tablecloth.

  By the time Mustard got home, Maud had Lovely’s overalls soaking in cold water in the kettle in the yard and the kitchen looked as usual except for the bare wood of the table. Mustard came in weary but carrying news of various conversations about the fire. He reported on arguments about its origin and was halfway through his meal before he rubbed his thumb along the grain of the wood, and said, “Cloth on the line?”

  Maud was at the stove picking a biscuit out of the oven. Lovely was at the table with his father. He cleared his throat. Maud straightened up, dipped some beans onto her plate, and said, “We’ve got a little problem, Daddy.”

  Mustard grunted.

  Maud sat her plate down and slid into her chair. “Do you want a cigarette?”

  “Not through eating. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, I went visiting Aunt Nan, and when I got back, the cattle guards were down.”

  Mustard had hominy on his knife. He threw his head back and dropped several kernels into his mouth. Then he waved the knife in front of Maud’s face. “That reminds me.” He pointed the knife at Lovely. “You kids lied to me about Betty. Her back was axed. If you wasn’t so big, I’d whip the tar out of you both. As it is, as soon as I finish this meal, I’m gonna kick yer butts.”

  Maud and Lovely glanced at each other in a communication they’d used since before their mother’s death. It was barely noticeable to anyone else, but it said between them, Don’t run. He’s just bellowing.

  “We’re sorry about that. We didn’t know how to break it to you, and she had to be put down, no matter.” Maud rubbed her thumb over the headdress of the Indian on the Calumet baking-powder tin they used as a pencil holder. She was glad the tin had been on the floor and unsplattered with blood after the dog had been left on the table.

  Mustard pinched the end of his nose. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why anybody would want to protect the Mounts.”

  “We were protecting you, Dad.” Lovely spoke. “If you stormed off and shot one of ’em, then where would you be? In jail, we reckoned.”

  “Somebody would have to catch me first. Haven’t you got any faith in me?”

  “We do, Daddy. But you’ve been known to fly off the handle,” Maud said.

  “Somebody bring me an ashtray.”

  Lovely got up, went to the front room, came back, and settled a clear glass ashtray on the table. Mustard took his Banjo, a pouch of tobacco, and papers from his shirt pocket. After he’d rolled his cigarette and taken a couple of puffs, he said, “Ryde figured three hogs to a cow. But then I told him she was carrying, so we upped it to four.”

  “When did you do it?”

  “While everybody was watching the fire. Any attention grabber can be an opportunity. Remember that.”

  Maud and Lovely were used to Mustard’s parental advice. It included “Cut up, not crossways,” “Hit ’em before they know yer mad,” and “Stomp ’em if you can; yer a lot less likely to break a hand.” They saw his recommendations as signs of affection but tried not to dwell on them. Maud was imagining the dead hogs when Mustard added, “Shot ’em in the head and then cut their throats for good measure. Little hogs, though. Not big-hog season.” He said that with a tone of regret.

  “Well, they got even,” Lovely said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Killed a dog and threw it on the kitchen table.”

  Mustard pursed his lips and trimmed the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Is that it?”

  “It was pretty bad, Dad. Shot it in the head and slit its throat. Blood was everywhere. Ruined the tablecloth and Maud had to soak steel wool in vinegar and use it on a spot on the table where the blood leaked through.”

  Maud moved a plate. “Didn’t get it all. I think it’s gonna have to be sanded.”

  Mustard extended his hand and fingered the spot. “I can take care of that.”

  Lovely reached for the honey pot, dipped a spoon into it, and let the honey drip onto a biscuit. Watching the honey’s slow move, Maud recognized that she’d been expecting storming and threatening. Maybe her father figured one dog against four hogs and thought he’d gotten the better of the Mounts? She didn’t want to encourage more retaliation, so she said, “Thanks, Daddy. It wasn’t really all that bad. Was it, Lovely?”

  Lovely was as practiced as Maud at settling Mustard’s temper, and he hopped back into the conversation with “Naw. We used the tablecloth to lug him to the garden and buried him there. He’ll grow fat onions next season.”

  Mustard lowered his eyebrows and winced. Then he took a long drag and stumped his butt out in the tray. “The Mounts g
enerally go up in their meanness, not down. Keep yer eyes wide fer something sneaky. One dog fer four hogs ain’t exactly enough.”

  2

  Maud often found her uncle Ryde as difficult as a cow with a twitchy hind foot. But she conceded that he was the best square-dance caller around. Her job on the way to the dance was to protect his fiddle from his children. She rode in the back of his buckboard on a quilt with her cousins, Morgan, Renee, Sanders, and Andy, holding the instrument in her arms as if it were a baby. The sun was still shining on the potato plants and Maud’s back was against the west planks of the wagon bed where she was trying to stay squeezed into a little patch of shade. When they arrived at the schoolhouse rubble, Ryde stopped his horses in the middle of the line. He said fire was still burning under the ash and the only thing salvaged from the building was a book that had been locked in the safe because it was dirty.

  “What was its name?” Maud asked.

  “Don’t know. It’s about a bunch of people walking to church, telling each other tales. Some of ’em stories will scald you bald.”

  When the wagon started rolling again, Maud’s mind stayed on the dirty book. It tickled her to think about people telling naughty tales on the way to church, and she decided that if she saw Booker, which was her primary wish, she’d ask him if he was familiar with the book. As the wagon rolled along, the combination of naughtiness, literature, and Booker focused Maud’s attention like pollen focuses bees. She clutched the fiddle so tightly that it made creases on her arms.

  When Ryde pulled up at the dance corner, Maud was relieved to turn the instrument over and eager to walk the streets with Nan and her children. The town’s two drugstores, two cafés, and the Golden Rule Grocery excited her, but her favorite place of all was Taylor’s General Store. And that was where she, Nan, and her brood headed to first. Once they got there, Morgan ran off to play with other boys, and Renee was charged with minding Andy and Sanders out on the front porch. Maud and Nan went inside and marveled, fingered, and yearned so much that Maud temporarily forgot about looking for Booker. It wasn’t until they reemerged into long afternoon shadows that her mind once again veered to her main mission. By that time, the streets were filled with wagons, horses, mules, automobiles, and people. Maud parted ways with Nan, walked in and out of stores on Lee Street, spoke with people she hadn’t seen in a while, and let a boy she knew from school buy her a Coca-Cola. After finishing the soft drink, she extracted herself with the promise of a dance and with the excuse of needing to give Lovely a message from her father.

  Maud didn’t really think Lovely and Early had yet made it into town; Lovely hadn’t started washing up when she’d left, and Early would want to make a late appearance so he could make the women wait. As for Mustard, Maud didn’t think he’d take the occasion to slip down to the Mounts’ to extend the feud because, for the moment, he had the upper hand. She figured he’d spend the early part of his evening near his bootlegger’s and come to the dance shouting drunk but before he was falling down.

  She did keep her eye out for the Mount brothers so she wouldn’t be taken by surprise again. But with the town filling up, it was hard to scan the crowd well enough to be certain someone wasn’t coming up on her from behind or at her from a catty-cornered direction. She stayed mostly on the planks in front of the stores, looked in windows for items that struck her fancy, and talked to girls she knew, and to more boys, too. She’d promised several dances and had gossiped about a friend’s upcoming marriage when, from down the street, she heard the fiddlers tuning up. She loitered some more, went into and out of Berd’s Drugstore without buying anything, and wound toward the dance corner looking for the bright blue canvas that was to her mind the prettiest thing ever set against the sky.

  Near the corner, she walked the length of the Pierce building, hesitated for a moment, and then peered through its two arches to the fiddlers’ stage. Above it, men were hanging lanterns and behind them were two rolls of blue sitting atop the hull of a wagon. The rolls sucked Maud’s breath into her chest. Her heart began to flutter like a bird that wants out of a cage. She spun around and put her hand on one of the stone columns that supported the second story of the building. Her other hand she drew to her breast. She needed a plan to get over to the wagon. She couldn’t think of one; her wits had suddenly scattered. So instead of walking toward the bright blue, she crossed the intersection, brought a buckboard to a halt without noticing it, and walked entirely in the opposite direction. She passed clumps of blanket Indians sitting on the curb wearing black hats with feathers, passed their wives and children parked in groups not far away, passed a small house, and walked even farther up the road until it bordered a long, deep lawn in front of the Nash Taylor mansion.

  Mr. Taylor had been dead since Maud was a little girl. But his grandson (who was also Mr. Singer’s son) lived in his grandfather’s house and ran the general store that still bore the Taylor name. The home was the grandest Maud had ever seen, even bigger and better than her Mr. Singer’s, and although she’d never been inside, she’d toyed in her imagination with the home being her own from the first time she’d laid her eyes on its two-story center section and double front porches. She didn’t actually hope to live in that house, but she hoped to live in one just like it. And whenever she glimpsed the home, she used it as a guide, much like a sailor uses the brightest stars in the sky. She sat down on one of the sandstone slabs in the front lawn and positioned herself at an angle so that she could see the house without appearing to watch it, see the road, and also, in the far distance, see a corner of one of the blue rolls over Booker’s wagon. The house and the blue canvas anchored Maud while she tried to plan.

  She was still cogitating when she heard the first tune, “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.” After only a few bars, she bolted up with the notion that she needed to retrace her steps quickly and get to Booker before other girls started swishing their skirts around him. The very thought of him clasping some girl’s forearm and twirling her around made her feel as frantic as if she’d found a thief in the house. She passed the clumps of blanket Indians so quickly that she didn’t smell the smoke from their pipes and cigarettes, nor did she realize that she’d stepped right into the middle of a penny-pitching contest that stopped to let her go by.

  When she got to the dance corner and saw all the men, women, and children standing at the edge of the square just tapping their toes and not yet dancing, she felt foolish. She knew as well as anyone that nobody danced the first dance and that all parties had to get started by some brave couple who took the floor (or the watered-down dust) and showed off enough to erase everybody else’s embarrassment. Her uncle Ryde yelled out, “Who’s gonna claim this ground?” and Maud craned her neck to see one of the Benge boys and his new wife step into the patch. The Benges were kin to nearly everybody standing around the dirt square and the new couple was, Maud agreed, the most attractive in town. So by the time the fiddlers started “Red Robin” again, four squares of couples had moved into position. Booker wasn’t in any of the squares, and the crowd in front of Maud had thinned out enough that she could see the onlookers on the two other sides of the patch as well as she could see the stage where Ryde and the other fiddlers were. She scanned the crowd. Booker wasn’t in it.

  About that time, she felt a tap on the shoulder. Jimmy Foreman, a good-looking, skinny boy she’d known most of her life, led her into the dirt. They joined a new square and danced two more dances before Jimmy was cut in on by Henry Swimmer and Henry was cut in on by John Leeds. Maud decided that she looked better on the floor than she would’ve looked standing around it and that dancing was the best place to be appreciated by Booker. She figured he must be looking on, even if, as her eyes searched the rims of the dance patch, she couldn’t locate him. The light was now entirely cast by lanterns. Maud couldn’t make out the blue except in her imagination. But she could see a canvas roll. Booker’s wagon was still there.

  And it continued to be when the fiddl
ers broke and the dancers went off in clumps to drink lemonade or stronger brew sold out of the trunks of cars. But Maud, instead of availing herself of any refreshment, took the break as an opportunity to do what she’d been wanting to do for at least five dances. That was to go to Booker since he wasn’t coming to her. But as soon as she reached an angle where she could see the wagon and its owner well enough, she realized that Booker was there to sell, not to dance. She felt foolish for having spent so much time thinking anything else. He was beside his wagon, holding a pot out to a woman she couldn’t place. But she could tell from a distance that Booker was reciting the advantages of that particular pot over all others on this Earth or any other planet.

  Maud felt a jab of jealousy. She fought an urge to stride over to the wagon, grab that pot, and buy it herself. To contain that feeling, she looked around at the people who had wandered in back of the stage, and she saw, at a distance, Billy Walkingstick. He was talking to two other boys she knew, but she also knew she could lure Billy into anything, even a briar patch. So she walked in a direction that would both avoid the wagon and catch Billy’s eye, and sure enough, like a bass following a lure, Billy disengaged himself from his friends, and shouted, “Hey, Maud, don’t be highfaluting.”

  Maud replied, “Oh, Billy, you surprised me. I didn’t know you’d taken up square dancing.”

  Billy said, “Haven’t. Didn’t have anything better to do. You been dancing?” He fell in next to Maud.

  “A bit,” she said, and kept walking. But then she suddenly stopped. “That peddler over there has something I want to look at.”

  “What is it?”

  “Several things. Women like to look. You know that.” She took off toward Booker’s wagon.

  Billy dropped his cigarette, crushed it with his boot, and caught up with Maud in a couple of long strides. She was pleased he did. His puppy eagerness and Indian good looks made him the perfect escort to be seen with.

  She went straight to the Woodbury soap. She picked up a bar, read its wrapper, and held it close to her nose for a sniff. Booker was making change with his back to her. She was afraid he wouldn’t turn her way until she sniffed the bar silly, so as soon as that transaction was completed, she said, “How much did you say this was?”