Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [14]
“Do tell Master John we’ll have supper at seven.”
“Yessum,” the girl said, and took her sinuous way out.
“There’s a sassy wench,” Mrs. Montgomery did not forbear to say. “I can’t say I much like the eye on her.”
“You don’t find much to your liking this evening.”
“Oh child,” Mrs. Montgomery said, melting suddenly. “You do put me to shame.” She clutched her daughter’s hand and pulled her down to sit beside her. “Of course it’s right that you should know your duty to your husband. And he is a good man—even I know it.”
Mary Ann kissed her cheek, then disengaged to pour the coffee. With a sudden clatter the children ran in.
“You’re back soon,” their grandmother said.
“Pa sent us,” Willie told them.
“You saw your Pa on the riverside?” said Mary Ann. “Did he go into Mason’s?”
“We didn’t see,” said Willie. Fanny pressed against her grandmother’s knee and gazed up at her wistfully. Mrs. Montgomery plucked a lump of sugar from the bowl and popped it into the little girl’s mouth.
“Mama!” Mary Ann reproved her.
Mrs. Montgomery bridled and looked away. “And Mister Forrest?”
Mary Ann shook her head, just slightly. “I don’t think we’ll wait supper.”
MARY ANN SLEPT COLD, knees curled to her breast. When she woke the first time the bed was still hollow. At her second waking there was a small fierce warmth attached to her back like a limpet—Fanny had wormed her way into the bed and wrapped her arms around her mother from behind. Mary Ann worked herself free and shifted the sleeping child onto her lap and stroked her smoothly back to sleep, then carried her to her mother’s room and put her into the bed. Mrs. Montgomery stirred, though without entirely waking, and gathered the child to her. Cautiously, Mary Ann backed out.
She stood for a moment in the passage, listening to the sighs of the sleeping house, before returning to the room she shared with her absent husband. It was two hours yet before dawn, but she dressed for the day, and went down the stairs with her street shoes in her hands. John Forrest sat in a straight chair in the parlor, now leaning forward, now back. A teacup on the table near held sweet-smelling dregs of a laudanum brew. A bullet in his spine from the Mexican War had left him crippled and he could not get comfortable to sleep stretched out. Indeed he slept little in any posture. For most of any night he waked and watched.
When Mary Ann caught his eye, he shook his head. She perched on the edge of the love seat and began buttoning up her shoes.
“I’ll go along with you,” John said.
“I’d be glad if you did,” she said. “Maybe you can rouse Jerry too.”
John nodded, climbed his cane hand over hand to reach his feet and took a second walking stick from beside the door as he went out. By the time Mary Ann had wrapped a shawl over her shoulders and opened the front door, the two men were waiting for her below the stoop.
They went slowly, John laboring along with his two sticks poking up like the hind legs of a grasshopper. Jerry shuffled and stooped and sucked at the stem of an unlit cob pipe. Once Mary Ann tripped over a ridge of dried mud from a wagon rut and Jerry ran a hand under her elbow to steady her.
“Watch yo step, Mistis.”
“Thank you, Jerry.” With a turn of her waist she slipped free of his hand and stepped forward, slim and straight under the dome of brilliant stars that arched over the town to the Mississippi, where the crescent moon pricked into a cloud bank like a fishhook sinking into fluff mud.
They went north along the river, going carefully over the rickety plank walk above the mud, toward the lamplight and grumbling of Mason’s.
“I’ll go in and see,” John said.
“Thank you, Brother,” said Mary Ann. John passed her one of his sticks and ran his free hand over his waistband before he pulled open the door and went in. Mary Ann stood aside from the wedge of light that spilled out, and soon someone had shut the door, muting the burr of urgent voices and the rattle of the dice. Jerry studied the cloud bank rising on the west side of Mud Island.
“Mi’ rain dis mornen,” he suggested.