Chapter 20
Boone
Lula lets in the whole winter trying to drag in a goddamn water barrel. She makes it a few feet indoors, water splashing over the sides. “What in God’s name are you doin’?”
“You’re burning up. We’re bringing the fever down.”
“You’re gettin’ everything wet. Shut the door! It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”
“I’m trying,” she says. She wraps her arms around the barrel, crouching down low for leverage, and pulls it back slow.
More frigid water splashes over, spilling onto her chest this time, a little on her face.
Soon as the cold hits her, she squeals like a piglet yanked by the tail. “Good lord, that’s cold,” she says.
“Ain’t you clever,” I mutter, low enough she can’t hear me. “You suppose the water ain’t known it’s winter?”
The barrel’s far enough inside she can shut the door. It slams shut and she locks it, looks at the barrel and the path to the washroom. “You might need to get in the barrel. I don’t think I can drag this all the way to the tub without getting more water on the floor.”
I bark a laugh. “I ain’t gettin’ in that thing. That’s all our washin’ water, you ding-dong.”
“Did you just call me a ding-dong?”
“Hell yeah, if you think I’m climbin’ into that daggum barrel.”
“Boone Maddox,” she says, hands on her hips, fiery as a she-devil twice her size. “There’s a whole outside full of frozen water. I’m not worried about running out. Now you get in this barrel or I will put you in it.”
Her eyes narrow like she’s sighting down a rifle. She takes one step toward me and I realize she’s serious.
“Lula,” I warn.
Her hands extended, she comes at me like she’s fixing to lift me up under my arms like a child. I jerk away on instinct.
“Don’t you go motherin’ me.”
“Boone,” she says. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine. Just sore is all.”
She catches my chin before I can turn my head, not gentle but not cruel either. Her fingers are cold as creek water. “Look at me.”
Christ, the way she says it makes me want to mind her. Makes me want to be put in my place. Makes my gut go hot.
“If we don’t bring your fever down,” she says, “you can start seeing things. You can seize. You can stop breathing.”
She gestures at the barrel. “Now. You get in.”
I look at the water, at the thin skin of ice already trying to creep across the top where the cold air’s touched it. My heart stutters.
“Ain’t there another way?” I say, and I hate how pitiful it sounds.
Her eyebrows lift. “Hot as you are, every minute you sit here complaining instead of cooling down is cooking your insides,” she snaps.
Then, taking a breath, she takes some of the bite out of her nagging and turns it to honey.
“I know it’s unpleasant, but you’re burning up.
And God help me if you’re not breathing when Okee gets back. ”
“Y’all’ll be too worried ’bout kissin’ each other to concern yourself with my dead body.”
“Okay, that’s it,” she says, yanking me forward hard. “I’ll put you in headfirst if I have to.”
“All right!” I shout. I pull my shirt up over my head.
“I know this is just a dirty trick to get me out of my clothes,” I tease in protest. I unbutton my trousers.
“If you want a looksie, I’ll show you what I got, ain’t gotta go schemin’.
” She turns her back as if to make a point.
I kick down my trousers, raise a leg and slip in.
The shock of it makes me suck in a gasp.
Holy hell, it’s colder than I thought possible.
“Christ Almighty, woman, if I die out here I’m haintin’ you for the rest of your life.
” My other leg settles in, and I lower myself to my waist. My teeth chatter.
“You sure this is needsome? You said yourself the bullet was barely a piece of lead.”
“It’s not just a bullet. You can’t go openin’ your blood to the air without infection fightin’ to get in.
The cold won’t fix what’s ailin’ you. Just keepin’ you from cookin’ your brains while your body fights.
Now keep goin’,” she drawls, falling into it easy the way she does when it’s just us.
Lets me hear the part of her before she married off to royalty or whatever it were.
“Why don’t you talk to Okee like that, huh?”
“Hush or I’ll hold you under.”
“M-mean thing,” I say, the cold forcing a shudder through me. I settle deeper, water pouring over the sides, through the floorboards, wetting the edges of the rug.
“Good.”
“H-how’d you manage to get a man to marry you once, huh? Cruel as you are,” I spit, letting my suffering do the talking.
“Same way lots of girls do. My momma arranged it for my own good.”
“Hold on, now,” I interject, recalling she was raised in a whorehouse. “Where’d you meet this fella?”
“Church.”
I don’t say nothing, because what I’m thinking ain’t polite. She explains more on her own.
“Momma was worried I’d end up at the Gemini, so she found me a husband.
A boy from church. One day I was stuck in that stinking saloon, the next I was in Greenbrier, in a big house with servants.
I do remember it kindly.” She lets out a wistful hum, elbows propped on the barrel’s edge.
“Eli was good to me. He just fussed over foolish things.” Lula’s face tightens, like she’s holding back a memory.
“Wouldn’t hardly let me step off the porch.
He was cross enough about my lessons with the doctor, and that was with him watching over my shoulder half the time.
But,” she says, and her mouth twists, “he did enjoy it, calling me like a dancing bear to entertain company. ‘Lula,’ he’d say.
‘Tell them about the plants you’re growing in the garden.
’” She mimics the voice, polite and pleased with itself.
“And I’d do it, because that’s what wives do.
I’d stand there and recite the recipes for tinctures and swear the benefits of this or that herb, and they’d widen their eyes like I was some curious thing. ”
She makes a little motion with her hand. It near makes me laugh, except nothing about it is funny.
“He wasn’t perfect,” she says, softer. “But he was mine.” Her voice goes quiet. “And I never feared him.”
The words settle heavy in the air between us. A shiver runs through me again, powerful enough to slosh water over the rim. Lula sets a hand on my hair, soothing-like.
I drag a breath in, shaky. “Say what you want about proper, and law, and what your preacher tells you a man’s supposed to be—lovin’ Okee’s the best thing ever happened to me.”
Another shiver hits and my teeth clack. Lula presses down on my head a little, like she’s reminding me to stay put, to stay here. And something turns.
“Reckon lots of folks never feel love like that. Didn’t know it were possible myself until it happened.”
The thought of it stings my eyes, my chest tightening.
Damn him going out there alone in hell frozen over.
If he gets himself killed, I’ll never forgive the bastard.
I hold my breath a second at the thought of him not coming back, and it ain’t something I can stand to think about for another moment.
Lula pets my head again, comforting and cursing me in the same look.
Something about her touch lets me exhale a breath and settle.
“You deserve that kind of love,” I say. “Not just companionship, but real plumb stupid love.”
Her fingers still.
“You deserve a love that ain’t a bargain between your momma and somebody from church. Not a life where the best thing you can say is ‘I never feared him.’ You deserve somebody who sees you whole.”
Lula looks away fast, like she can’t bear to be looked at straight on.
“Oh hush, you fool,” she says. “Minute ago you wondered how I managed to trick a man into marrying me at all.”
“Don’t you know the difference between me teasin’ and tellin’ you true?” I ask.
Lula’s hand slides off my hair. I shiver again, and water slaps the barrel. Lula steadies it with her palm.
“I mean it,” I say, really looking at her now, and my pulse does a strange little stumble. My heart knows if Okee had gone to town instead of me, I’d have been the one to kiss her.
The cabin goes quiet and makes the fire sound loud. Lula stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. Then her cheeks color just enough for me to notice.
“Well that’s certainly sage advice,” she says at last, “from a man sitting in a barrel like a pickled ham.”
I can’t help but laugh at that even as I shiver. Lula looks at me a long second, like she’s deciding whether to drown me or laugh. Then her hand goes to my forehead. “You’re cooled down. Come on then,” she says, and steps back to give me room.
Lula’s already got a towel in her hands, coarse and thin. She slaps it against my chest.
“Hold that,” she orders, and my fingers close around it like a man obeying without meaning to.
The towel’s scratchy and cold at first. I wipe my face, my hair, water dripping down my neck and onto the floor. Lula turns away, busying herself, swiping water with a rag.
I’m shivering hard enough my teeth clack. My hands are clumsy with cold. I wrap the towel round my middle, then sink down on the edge of the bed just long enough to catch my breath.
Lula turns back to me. Her eyes make that quick, doctoring sweep before she steps in close and lays the back of her hand against my forehead.
“You’ve come down well,” she says.
Seems like I ought to have some smart thing ready. I don’t.
I just watch her while she fusses over me. Pretty little thing.
Funny, the things I took to in her ain’t anything like Okee. First time I laid eyes on him—tall and broad, all bronze and long black hair, built like his Creator had taken His time—I knew I was done for. Then he went and turned out rare in every way a man can be, and that was the end of me.
This is different.
Lula’s a little general in a skirt. Mouth made for cussin’. Green eyes quick and cutting as a cat’s. I knew she was trouble the minute she looked at me mean. But being shut up here with her, day after day, learning the ways of her. Thought makes my knees weak.