The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [31]
“Where we going?”
“Just follow me.”
At Woodrow’s she knocked loudly at the screen door, in defiance of her sister, who when she wanted Woodrow would come to the door and stand close to it, not knocking, sending her white lady waves inside. She knocked loud enough to be heard, and Sarah in her apron, her hands a little bloodied from some freshly slaughtered game, responded in good time.
“Woodrow here?” she asked Sarah.
“Out around back,” Sarah said, taking in both Maggie and Boyd with her characteristically slight and indifferent appraisal.
After Sarah was gone Woodrow all but said he did not believe Maggie cared much for his bride. But in fact Maggie wanted to feel close to Sarah. She wanted Sarah’s affection and she courted Sarah in her own way. Whaley didn’t like Sarah because she was a colored woman and haughty about it—uppity was the word Whaley used—but Maggie knew the truth about Sarah: she was a hard woman. Wasn’t a warm bone in her body far as Maggie could tell. She figured Woodrow had to see a different side of her, but she knew that even Woodrow struggled with Sarah’s moods.
Not one day went by that Maggie did not feel bad about what happened to Sarah. She had to remind herself of Sarah’s miserly spirit, but in death those faults seemed to fade. Wasn’t it the color of Maggie’s skin that caused Sarah to look right through her if she looked her way at all? It wasn’t personal. She was good enough for Woodrow to love, and he did love her.
They found Woodrow sitting on a crab pot, studying his hogs. He looked up, then right past them like he did most everyone, black or white. Only living things she’d seen him study were his boys or his grandbabies, that was about all aside from the horizon, the tide, oaks and yaupons in the yard to see if the wind was shifting, the lit end of those cigars he loved.
“Woodrow?”
“Right here,” said Woodrow. If he was looking at either of them he was looking at Boyd, who was switching his head back and forth between Maggie and Woodrow as if previously separate parts of his life—work and lust—had just come together and he was caught off guard.
“Boyd needs a place to stay.”
She did not look at Boyd. She didn’t have to; she could feel his embarrassment.
“Do he?”
“On his own. I was thinking your summer kitchen,” she said, gesturing toward the one-room, many-windowed outbuilding. A few years ago, before Crawl took off for Morehead, Woodrow had built Sarah a kitchen on the back of the house so she wouldn’t have to traipse in and out of the weather. Then he’d fixed up the summer kitchen for Crawl and his off-island wife, Vanessa, to stay in, but Vanessa didn’t last out the winter before she dragged Crawl back across the sound to Morehead. Since then it had sat empty and so far as Maggie knew it was the only empty structure on the island.
“What’s Boyd thinking?”
“Boyd ain’t,” said Boyd, finding his voice and finding it creaky and low. “Obviously somebody’s doing Boyd’s thinking for him.”
Woodrow smiled slightly, then nodded at the summer kitchen. “Screens is all busted up.”
“We can mend them.”
Woodrow looked briefly in her direction, and she thought she saw an eyebrow raised at her “we.” Later she would get to know Woodrow’s every twitch, his every syllabic emphasis; she’d learn to read him, which was as hard as learning to read Braille, for it called on a different sensory approach than she’d ever known before.
“Best soak them in kerosene when you get them patched,” he said, seemingly to his hogs.
“How come?” asked Boyd.
“Keep the bugs away,” said Maggie rotely, as if this trick was obvious to the world, not just their island where the bugs could make life miserable to outsiders especially.
“He have to share the outhouse with me and Sarah,” said Woodrow.
That’s no problem, she nearly said, but she caught herself this time. She’d best be careful, speaking for him, calling his shots, presuming to know what was and was not a problem