Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [26]
Of all the relatives in Mary Ann’s train, Forrest liked J. B. Cowan best. The doctor was certainly aware of the obus that his aunt had detonated in the dining room, but he did nothing except blow lazy smoke rings and talk on soothingly dull subjects such as the price of cotton and tobacco and the shifting of land values in North Mississippi and West Tennessee.
From the kitchen came a smash of splintering crockery, and the younger woman’s voice shrilled. Aunt Sarah’s lower tones came in behind the first frustrated shriek, soon had covered it and smoothed it all away. By now it had grown dark outdoors. Forrest heard a splash as someone tossed a basin of water out the back kitchen door, and a dog yelped for getting a wet tail.
“It’s a mite chilly.” Doctor Cowan got up and stilled his rocker with a hand on its top post. “I believe I’ll go in.”
“Good night, Cousin,” Forrest murmured.
In the corner of the porch, John Forrest was not quite snoring, lost in a laudanum haze. The cold Forrest felt in his own bones had little to do with the weather. Though he did not see his twin sister now as often as he used to, he knew she would come a few minutes before she laid her strong square hand on his right shoulder, and he knew what she was going to say.
“Brother,” Fanny Forrest said. “You have got yourself in a right ugly fix.”
He reached across his chest and caught her right hand in his left. “Don’t I know it,” he muttered.
“Nothen to do but meet it head-on.” Fanny said. “Yore wife will be expecten you to make it right.”
“Some things are jest wrong all over.” Forrest looked up; her eyes were deep-set and dark as his own.
“Is that a fact?” she said. “I expect you know more about that than I do.” She gave his hand a parting squeeze and let it go.
“I’M NOT ASLEEP,” Mary Ann’s voice said, as soon as he had crossed the threshold.
Forrest maneuvered the bedroom door shut behind him. Of course he’d known it futile to hope she would be. The whole dark room seemed to hold its breath. He listened to the slow pump of his heart. Though his wife was a lady, it was not unknown for her to fly out at him if provoked. She’d shout until her hair came loose and red patches flared beneath her cheekbones. But not tonight. The house was packed full as a straw tick, with even adults sleeping three to a bed, children rumpled together like puppies in a sack. No more than he, Mary Ann didn’t want all her kin and his to know their trouble. The cutting would be quietly done. Almost in silence.
“You asked me once about those chicks.” Her voice was husky in the dark.
Chicks? What chicks? Forrest’s mind scrambled. He stood with the door an inch from his back, and he still had his boots on. It came to him that she must be harking back to one of the first conversations they’d ever had, long before the least shadow of trouble fell between them. His heart raised up a little at that.
“I’ve decided,” Mary Ann said. “I’ll hang on to my chicks come hell or high water. Be damned to the panther or the Devil himself.”
“And you a good Christian woman to talk that way.” Forrest had the faintest hope the quarrel could be turned to banter.
“You better not think I’ll stop at talk.” A match sizzled, flared up, and Forrest’s eyes contracted. On the far side of the bed from him, Mary Ann was lighting a lamp.
He sat down in the chair beside the door and began working off his left boot with the wooden bootjack. “What do you want me to do?” he said.
Her look was a blue bolt between his eyes. “Tell me the truth about those high-yaller brats she’s whelped in the yard.”
Forrest swallowed. “Her chirren and our’n are brothers and sisters. Well, you ast me.” He peeled off his stocking and draped it over the top of the empty left boot. “I mean the least’n. Not Thomas. The one she come here with.”
“Well, that is surely a comfort. Thomas is not one of your bastards. And what about the one she’s toting in her belly?”
Forrest felt his face beginning