Then Ford walked into the woods one evening and didn’t come back. I knew he was gone when I stepped out of the shed the next morning because the dogs had vanished with him, leaving the yard silent and empty. I found Carolina pulling weeds in the garden, wearing Ford’s big work gloves. “He didn’t come back last night?” I asked.
She glanced up at me, the sun in her eyes. “No.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Not really. He does this sometimes. He might not be back for a week or two.”
“He stays gone that long?”
“He has before.”
“Do you think he really has visions?”
“I know Ford makes up stories,” she said, “but I’ve seen a lot of his visions come true. Like when he said you was coming into our lives.” She smiled. “Ford’s not like everybody else, Johnny. He’s closer to God. You ought to hear him pray sometime.”
“Did he ever tell you what happened to his finger?”
She laughed. “He said he went to a whorehouse in New Orleans and met this voodoo woman. She gave him a concoction to drink that got him so high he didn’t even feel it when she cut his finger off. Said she needed it for a spell. Every time I ask about his finger, he tells me another made-up story. I guess I’ll never know.”
I knelt down beside her in the dirt and we pulled weeds together for a while in silence. After a while, I asked, “Do you think … does Ford have any children?”
“I don’t know a thing about Ford except what he’s told me,” she said. “He might have kids all over the country, for all I know.” Then she went back to weeding.
For the first couple of days and nights, I watched the woods at the edge of the yard for Ford and the dogs to come walking back. But it wasn’t long before I forgot that he was gone. It was peaceful being alone there with Carolina. Sometimes I stood at the shed door and watched her for long stretches sitting on the top step of the porch, looking straight ahead at nothing in particular. She didn’t wiggle her feet, which must have been falling asleep, or shift to a more comfortable position. She didn’t move so much as a finger to scratch her nose. She was utterly still. The more time I spent with her, the easier it was to see why Ford was so taken with her. She cooked for me, in the mornings biscuits and gravy and in the evenings fried green tomatoes and potato cakes and greasy chicken legs. One Sunday morning we made a chocolate cake together, rain drumming on the trailer’s tin roof. I taught her to play poker and she taught me gin rummy. Sitting on the porch one afternoon, she spent almost an hour drawing a splinter out of my palm. When she left to take a bushel of beans to the neighbors down the road I found myself standing at the end of the driveway watching and waiting for her to come back, like that white German shepherd tied outside her father’s barn in North Carolina. I didn’t want those days to be over. But then Ford was home again, as suddenly as he had disappeared.
The first sign of his return was the dogs. They came straggling out of the woods before him, as if to signal his coming, and loped to the porch where Carolina and I sat playing cards. We stood watching the trees expectantly and when Ford finally came into view there was a strange sensation in me, of mixed relief and disappointment. He walked slowly down the wooded slope and into the grass, a bedroll on his back, shirt hanging almost in shreds. Carolina and I hurried across the yard to meet him. He was weak but smiling. He kissed Carolina and leaned against her small body as if for support.
“What did you see this time?” she asked as we headed back to the trailer.
His smile faltered. “Something I didn’t want to,” he said. Carolina and I exchanged a glance but didn’t press him. Once he was clean and fed I expected him to tell, but he didn’t. I felt ashamed for wanting to hear, when Carolina seemed not to care. I realized then how much I wanted to stay there, how much I longed for nothing to change.
LAURA
Before Clint died, when I first figured out I was expecting, Zelda got me an appointment at the Health Department. When you don’t have much money, there’s not a lot of choice where you go to the doctor. I sure didn’t like the one I seen there. That first appointment he didn’t look at me, not even when he was telling me things. I felt like he was there just because he had to be. Zelda said that was probably true, because sometimes the government lets new doctors work at places like the Health Department to pay back their school loans. I missed some of my appointments after Clint drowned because I was too tore up over him to remember anything. Then I got kicked out of the trailer and it felt like everything was upside down. But soon as I got settled in the yellow house, I went back for my appointment. It was the same doctor. This time he did something he called an ultrasound. He squirted warm jelly on my lower belly and moved a wand around. I didn’t like him standing over me, with my shirt up and my pants down around my hips, but I liked seeing the baby’s dark shape on a television screen. His heartbeat filled the whole room. I was proud my baby was strong. I wanted to laugh and clap my hands but the doctor had a stern face. After the ultrasound the nurse left. He set down on his stool and talked to me. “You know,” he said, “you should have kept your appointments, Miss Blevins. It’s important for both mother and baby to have the proper prenatal care.” He looked at me over the top of his glasses. “You’re lucky there are no complications.”
“The baby’s okay?” I asked. He was making me nervous.
“Fortunately, yes. But it was very irresponsible of you. Any number of things could have gone wrong.”
“But they didn’t?”
The doctor’s face didn’t change much but I could tell he was getting miffed. “I don’t think you understand the potential seriousness of your negligence, Miss Blevins.”
That word “negligence” gave me a bad feeling, like when I found out Clint had been wearing a dead boy’s clothes all along. “But the baby’s okay, right?” I asked again. The doctor gave me another hateful look over his glasses, then he got up and walked away. I felt sick as I gathered up my purse and went to the waiting room to find Zelda.
On the way home she kept asking what was wrong but I couldn’t talk. It seemed like somebody was always threatening to separate me from my baby. Zelda let me out and I went up the steep porch steps, straight inside to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face and neck. When I seen myself in the medicine cabinet mirror with my face dripping and my eyes big, I looked more like Mama than ever. All of a sudden that scared me more than anything. I rushed to the kitchen looking for scissors but I came to a butcher knife first. I couldn’t stand having Mama’s hair for a second more. I stood right yonder at the sink and sawed it off. It looked awful. I could tell by how everybody stared at me at work the next morning. But I didn’t care. My head felt lighter. I was still worried but it made me feel better to have the weight of Mama’s hair off of my shoulders. Louise said she used to cut all of her kids’ hair. She asked if she could come over later and shape mine up some. When she was done it was like seeing a new person in the mirror.