fast.â She bit her lower lip. While still on her cot, sheâd begun feeling guilty about necking with Billy. Not about the necking itself, which theyâd done before, but about necking when Booker had been carted off to jail, and about necking after meeting Booker at all. She told herself that had she not known Billy expected it, had she not been light-headed from the cigarettes and beer, if it hadnât been dark, and if she hadnât been feeling like she was ready to burst, she never wouldâve done it. She was hoping that none of that showed on her face when Lovely added, âShe gave me her Bible to read.â
âHer Bible? She brought it to the dance?â
Lovely put his head in his hands. âNo. We walked over to her house to get it. All the Starrs are Christians.â
Maud smiled. âNot all of them. Some are outlaws. The rest have to look respectable just to live down their bank robbers and killers. Donât worry about it.â She got up, opened their little icebox, took out some fatback, and started slicing it. After sheâd slapped several pieces into a skillet, Lovely added, âI think Iâm gonna read it.â
âYou should. Itâs got interesting stories.â Maudâs mind swam to Jonah and the whale. Sheâd learned the tale in school, and it had captured her imagination the same way
Moby-Dick
had. Maud didnât feel any particular animosity against individual Christians as much as she was inclined to see the hypocrisy in their religion. Beyond that, she was too mixed blooded to have any truck with the Keetowahs, and there werenât any other faiths around. So she hadnât given religion much thought beyond recognizing that powers in the universe, like the river and the sun, were mightier than humans and had to be reckoned with. She did hope there was a force that would propel her into a better life, but she felt like that could only be a combination of pleasing looks, some education, and her wits.
About that time, a grunt came from the next room, and the conversation about the Bible died. But as soon as Mustard slid in at the table, he was eager to swap news. Heâd arrived in town with some of his running buddies as the band was closing up and a fight was being organized on the dance square. Heâd laid a bet on whoâd win, and he reached into his pants pocket and drew out several large bills. âBy damn, donât ever bet against an Indian if heâs fighting a white man. If the Indianâs sober, youâll lose everâthing ya got. Iâm gonna get my dog with these winnings. Lovely, after breakfast, weâre gonna build us a dog house and pen. Weâll use them boards and wire we salvaged from the roostersâ coops.â
Maud did her chores while they hauled from the barn wire and boards that had, before the flood, been fighting cocksâ pens. The posts were still standing, and as they strung the wire, she sat in her daddyâs chair holding
Arrowsmith
and thinking about Booker in jail. When Mustard left to ask Blue who he knew with a ready litter, Maud was so busting to talk about Booker that she blurted out even before Lovelyâs butt reached the stoop, âThe sheriff arrested the peddler for setting fire to the school.â
Lovely had heard that. âDoes he have any evidence?â
âOnly vicious gossip. And him selling kerosene.â
âHeâs a stranger,â Lovely added.
That was, of course, the root cause, at least in Maudâs estimation. She knew there were strangers in No Manâs Land where, for all of her life, theyâd come from every corner of the continent to make money in wheat. She also knew there were strangers in the central part of the state where oil was gushing, and in the Osage oil fields in the Outlet. But around the bottoms and Ft. Gibson, strangers came only to dig potatoes. And it was too early in the season for them to start