Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [16]
Mary Ann completed her circuit of the table and set her hand on Forrest’s other shoulder, a calming touch she meant it to be, but now he turned his red rage on her, flinching and twitching this way and that like a blind man stung by invisible bees. The man across the table had palmed the dice and scraped back his chair, beginning—“Lookahere, lady, you got no right”—but another man snatched at his sleeve to quiet him. Forrest might well remember an insult to his wife when he came to himself and if he did he would make them pay.
“Come away, Mister Forrest,” she said. “Your children want you.”
Still he did not seem to see her, though he’d stopped writhing in his seat.
“Fanny wants you,” she said slowly.
Something collapsed in Forrest’s face as he turned in the direction of her voice. “Whar is she? Whar’s little Fan?”
“Come along with me,” Mary Ann said. “I’ll take you to her.”
John managed to get the pistol away from Forrest as he rose, knocking over the chair he’d been sitting in; he tucked it into his own belt. Forrest’s hat had fallen under the table; Mary Ann crouched down to retrieve it. The pack of onlookers parted before them. Outside, the dawn was turning blue.
“Go on home,” Mary Ann said to John and Jerry once they were clear. “I’ll walk him cool.”
Jerry raised the sock of money mutely.
“Just set that on my chest of drawers, if you would,” she said. “I’ll see to it when I come back in.”
She guided Forrest north along the riverside. A yellow dog came down past them, trotting over the planks, tail tucked and head riding low. Forrest was still white and shaking, though he smelled no worse than hot and sweaty; they’d left the reek of tobacco and whiskey behind them in the gambling den. With a shudder he turned toward her.
“Whar’s Fan? You said—”
“Hush. Fan’s all right. She’s with her grandmother.”
Forrest’s eyes came partway into focus; she thought a glimmer of last night’s quarrel might have returned to him.
“What day is it,” he asked.
“My Lord!” said Mary Ann. “It’s only Tuesday. But it can’t be that you don’t know. Keep on with this and you’ll ruin us all.”
“I was winning.” He held her shoulders and leaned fiercely toward her. “I was winning, I know I was.”
“That money has gone home ahead of you,” she told him. “I mean to set it by. For Fanny’s wedding and to give our Will a start when the time comes. Don’t you see, there’s no amount of money worth you losing yourself like you do! Every man has a weakness, and this thing is yours. You must know you can’t master it and just keep away.”
He let go her shoulders and lowered his eyes. “Let me have a minute.”
She watched him scramble down the bank to the water’s edge, where he crouched on his heels and gathered water in his hands to throw back all over his face and his head, not caring how he wet his clothes. For a minute or more he stayed hunkered down, his head turned toward the south point of Mud Island. Kingfishers skimmed the surface of the brown, slow-moving water. Of a sudden the sun cleared the buildings of the town with a great scattering of light, and the cloud bank west of the river was edged with copper and gold.
His eyes were clear when he came back toward her, combing his hair back with his fingers. Downriver, a white steamboat was chuffing toward the piers. A cloud of small birds gathered behind the paddle wheel.
“Pretty,” she said, pointing over his shoulder. He turned and they watched the boat together till it was securely docked. She handed him his hat and he put it on his head and when he had fixed the angle of it, he slipped an arm around her waist. She let him walk with her that way.
“And what is your weakness, Missus Forrest?”
“You,” she said, feeling a warmth in her face as they moved shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “I don’t mind to allow it, my weakness is you.”
FOR TWO WEEKS RUNNING, Forrest woke in the night with a weight on his mind … something he couldn’t get a sound hold on. The full moon lowered through the window; he could not return to sleep. Shadows of wisteria