Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [60]
“No better,” Forrest said.
Cowan only shook his head at first. “She’s awful weak,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”
Forrest went into the house, set his hat on the rack and straightened his jacket. He touched his weapons and his gold, but felt no reassurance from them. He went up the stairs to the second floor, empty hands swinging.
“Don’t touch her.” Mary Ann’s voice was cold as winter stone. “I won’t have your black hands on her.”
He could see Catharine, standing in the doorway, lamplight soft on the glossy curve of her cheek, her kerchief neat above her brows, eyes empty, mouth expressionless—she was always so when so rebuked.
“Get out,” Mary Ann said.
Catharine turned, walked past him, down the stairs. He watched her away, searching for any trace of insolence, a swing of her hip beneath the calico—there was nothing of the kind. Presently he heard the back door close and pictured her walking, straight and slim, past the cistern to the stall where her own healthy child slept calmly.
With an effort he crossed the threshold, into the stink of blood and runny shit. They had just cleaned up little Fan again and were tucking her up in the big bed. His mother came past him, carrying a tin basin out. The stench abated when she had gone.
Mary Ann’s eyes passed over him. She did not speak. But I won, Forrest thought to say, and wanted to justify himself still further. I won close on four hunnert dollars. And don’t a man have a right to some relief? I don’t drink whiskey nor use tobacco. I don’t take laudanum. I don’t pray.
Mary Ann lowered her head, and sat stroking the girl’s hair and shoulder as she shifted and murmured in fretful sleep. No word was spoken until Mariam came back into the room with the basin washed and dried and empty.
“Mother Forrest,” Mary Ann said then, pushing her weight up from the bedside chair. “I have just got to lie down for a spell.”
“Yes, child,” Mariam Forrest said. “I know ye do.”
“You’ll call me if—?”
“Yes. I will.”
Mary Ann went out without saying a word to her husband or looking at him. Slowly Forrest crossed the floor and lowered himself into the chair at the bedside. Mariam Forrest sat in a ladder-back chair against the wall.
“That gal has got a right to be weary,” she said, with no particular inflection in her voice. Forrest looked across the bed toward her. She took up a basket from the floor and went on shelling butter beans, her eyes bent steady on her work. Forrest felt a little easier in his mind. Cain’t afford to think about it he told himself. He laid a hand on Fan’s forearm. The child had quieted and breathed easily in sleep.
Butter beans pattered from basket to bowl. The quick nervous surge of his gambling adventure began to drain away from Forrest. His eyes were heavy. Poor Fan was breathing with her mouth open, a light rasp away back in her throat. The ticking of the beans slowed down and stopped and Forrest looked across at his mother, who was sleeping in well-disciplined silence, bolt upright in the straight chair except that her head had rolled to the right and rested against the wall. A vine of scar wrapped over her left shoulder. Her shoulders were almost as high and wide as his.
He’d dressed her wounds, that time the panther tore her back. It shamed him but he’d let no one else undertake it. In fact she’d told him what to do herself, between clenching her teeth on a rag to control herself at the pain of the liniment. Since then he’d never seen her bare. He had seen slaves aplenty though, with the weal-grids of whip scar raised on their backs—lashed there by himself sometimes. When he must and when there was no other way before him. The screech owl from its post just beyond the open window poured quicksilver gibberish into his ear. He wanted to reach through and wring its feathered neck, but it was thought to be bad luck to kill an owl.