3stalwarts

by Unknown

  Mary had not noticed her face, but she had felt the hands upon her body.

  “There’ll be time and time,” Mary had heard her voice. “How is it, dearie? Pretty bad?”

  She had not expected an answer: Mary felt that her hands would tell her whatever might be needful. She heard her saying to Dorothy, “A fine girl for bearing. I’m not troubled. And she’s healthy. I should estimate a girl by place and action. Light a fire.”

  Now Mary saw her face— round-cheeked, with a small, serious mouth, and unworn eyes. Her skin was freshly pink and white— a strange thing in so old a woman living westward; only her hands were toil-scarred.

  Ma Hovey brought a pitcher of cool water and a rag and pressed the hair back from Mary’s forehead.

  “Does that feel better, dearie?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Rest yourself, then, all you can.”

  For a moment the unworn eyes, clear blue, looked down into Mary’s wide grey shadowed ones. It was like seeing an immeasurable distance up-ward; she was soothed as if white clouds touched her with dry soft coolness.

  Mary obediently closed her eyes, but when she heard Ma Hovey’s broad feet turn away she opened them and looked at the grizzled curly hair caught neatly in its crocheted purple basket.

  There was a distinct spring in the old woman’s step. Bringing a woman through childbirth was the stuff of life to her; when she put her hands upon a laboring body, she put her own years out of sight. She sat down softly on her stool, and Mary heard her laying down laws upon laws to Dorothy.

  Dorothy’s voice was humble. To the last moment, her homely face had kept its determined cheerfulness. She had made little jokes with Jerry. Had he thought of twins, for instance? Would he like it four in family? But when Ma Hovey came, she had relapsed into a frightened creature who held Mary dear.

  But Mary had not cared; these things were all like wind at night— unseen, but dimly listened to.

  Ma Hovey had said, “You might as well fetch Dr. Earl.”

  Both men had said that they would go. He was expecting; he would be ready; he had promised, at a word.

  “One of you two had ought to stay.”

  Dorothy sounded panicked.

  Ma Hovey grunted.

  “No, let them both get out. They’re no use, their dreary faces.”

  But Robert had gone alone.

  “I’d feel ashamed,” said Jerry.

  Mary wondered where he was. She did not want to see him. She resented the fright in his eyes that infected her in her still moments. But she listened now. Would he be by the well, perhaps, getting himself a drink of cool? Or would he be out in the barn? Or maybe listening by the back window, where the cockscomb lifted shriveled tufts?

  What she could see her eyes found tiresome. The smell of steaming water on the hearth was stifling in her nostrils; her skin identified the lamp heat, and the fire warmth; and she lay dully at the mercy of the things that made a man and woman.

  A little breath of night air stole through the slightly opened door. She seemed to feel it coming long before it came to her. She was aware of it creeping past the ankles of the seated women; it flickered the fire gently; it stole on across the floor to the foot of the bed and tried to lift itself. She lay deathly still, unable to help it, seeking to will it upwards. Then it did rise across the sheet; it stole upon her body with its cooling finger-tips; she felt it in her nostrils, damp and sweet with meadow smells. It eased her eyelids, and touched the stiff skin on her forehead, chilling the bubbles of sweat. For a precious breathless instant, it carried her senses through the cabin walls.

  How was it that she could hear through the dry, piled logs the beat in the night outside: the ticking of the crickets; the throb of greenbugs in the grass; the indefinable stir of the small creeping things underground and on the ground— the moles, the grubs, the worms; the wet sly inching of the marsh slugs; the ants awake in sandy palaces; the spiders casting their dew-pearled threads; the gnats that hatch in darkness, troubling the still pools; the unseen midget things that make the pulse and keep the earth alive?

  She had not been born in these wide sprawling lands, she had not grown where one burnt acre stood for the first work of a man against the wilderness; yet her senses were alive to them, as if the soft hollow in her hardened palms could feel the whole world sleeping.

  And then through it her stretched ears caught the steady crunch of boots upon the road. They trod stiffly back from Onondaga way, and she remembered that night before the spring came, so long ago, when Jerry walked to her out of the mist. She knew his step. He stopped at the turn-in to the cabin. She could imagine his thin face staring at the window light. But her heart hardened in her. He had turned away. The dismal burden of his boots crunched out the precious little sounds. The burden entered her, her eyelids were made heavy, and her heart bent down… .

  “He’s young,” Ma Hovey was saying just above the gentle beating of the fire. “But he’s been civil to me and I do allow that he does well. A young doctor, but minded to learn from those that know his business better. He doesn’t hold with cotton swathe or cricket mark or twice around the bas-ket, but he’s young. Young people don’t believe-Hark! There’s the boy. Poor boy. I feel a pity for him. Hush… .

  “Yes, dearie, coming on? Let them. Old Ma’s tending of you. Carry them through, stronger. But not too strong. You’ve got a long ways to travel, dearie, but you’re fine. Here’s water for your forehead. Yes, be easier. My, that was a dandy big one! That’s the kind that counts. Yes, I know it. Yes, but that’s the kind. It’s like an extra horse hitched to a wagon. Guarantees you through the bog holes. But don’t think of it. Don’t think of anything, dearie. That’s a fine girl. That’s a good one, too. You’ve got a good long ways to travel, but Ma Hovey’s riding with you… .

  “Yes, Mrs. Melville. Still some time; but just the same, that young man of a doctor might as well turn up or else I’ll have to get him a surprise to greet him… .

  “No, now don’t look worried, Mrs. Melville. Land to goodness, Ma Hovey’s brought a basketful of babies free with her own self. You needn’t be a-worrit. Give the young feller his two dollars, get a medical blessing if you like, and leave him stay to home— that’s what I’d say. But this boy’s like them all. He’s earning money and thinks he’s bound to spend it. Like a funeral, too. What good’s a coffin? Oh, I’ve laid them out, poor things. Three that I helped to being bora. The same very hands, identical, these here. It’s funny… .

  “Yes, I’ve helped my lot of babies. I always call them mine, Mrs. Melville. And why not? A good percentage of them wouldn’t be at all except for me. I mind the first. The doctor couldn’t make it in his sleigh with two fat horses. Couldn’t venture it. Those horses got floundered down in snow, he said, and he was troubled with deep rheumatism, making him lame. But I walked in on Indian snowshoes. I went out that afternoon, I mind, and bought them for a dollar and a half, a yard of India cloth. I wasn’t troubled by a pair of horses. Yes, it was Tremaster’s boy. She was a little thing, no more than a curled leaf to handle, and the baby ranting in her like a scalping redskin. The man’s no better than a howling baby himself. I saw that just at once I got inside the door and stamped the snow off’n the shoes. So I told him, ‘Wipe your nose and boil some water.’ He done it, but he never liked me after. I showed him how to hold her hands, and I did everything. At least the baby did, a ranting boy; I never knew one lust so hard for air. He’d got the cord around his neck and was choked blue. I do declare he swore in French when I had cut him free. And do you know there wasn’t thread in all that house? Poor little pretty, out there striving in those woods without a blessed notion. She had a woolen skirt of English weave and I unraveled a thread. Yes, Mrs. Melville. And there wasn’t any harm, and the boy’s a man now down in Albany, making speeches in Assembly, no doubt about canals. Oh, well, Tremaster never really liked me, I suppose. And that was how I started in, so don’t you fret yourself. …

  “Yes, dearie, if you wan
t a sip. Now take a good hold of them straps. Drive yourself if you’re so minded. There’s hills and rivers, but there’s time. I’ll cool you, Dearie… .

  “Yes, Mrs. Melville. He better had turn up. You and me might just as well arrange the table. Yes, it’s hard; but that’s all right. There’s nothing comfortabler than a good stout table, all concerned. The places I’ve seen babies born in! In some old countries women kneel. I saw a Swedish girl that did it that way. Her man just held her there, between his knees. They were moving westward; it came on sudden; and there wasn’t chance to bring her to a house. Twins, I tell you, for a fact. Under a beech tree with the curiousest little chipmunk. That’s it— just stretch it that way.

  “Now, Mrs. Melville, let’s us set down and wait a minute, comfortable. My feet get tiresome to me sometimes and if I don’t set down I get all wearied. If you had a wet of cordial, and you might cook up a little tea to give her after. Not too strong and without sugar. Bohea tea’s the best, though I don’t gainsay a cup of hyson, and the city people fancy souchong. Yes, I am slightly partial to peach cordial. It’s a pleasant drink for surely.

  It settles flutters in a woman. Good for you, too, Mr. Melville. Don’t you worrit. Drink it slow— and you might just companionate what I’ve got left here with a small drop more. I make mine in a burnt-oak keg, but this is very tasty. There! There’s the doctor. Yes, he’s coming fast. That quiet boy has stopped him. Asking how his wife is, probably. And the doctor says she’s dandy. Oh, well, you might as well set back those glasses, Mrs. Melville. I’d rather he had nothing till we’re finished. Out of sight is out of thinking… .

  “Yes, Dr. Earl. We’re doing nicely… .”

  Mary no longer cared to ravel out the messages her twisted senses carried to her. She tried to fetch a smile forth for the doctor; she saw his face bent over her, the lamplight on the tightened skin beside his eyes, the slow contraction of his pupils after his dark night ride. It was the face of a young man under thirty, with shaven cheeks and a gently optimistic mouth that smiled back at her.

  “How are they, Mrs. Fowler? Pretty bad?”

  She nodded.

  His clothes smelled strong of horse-sweat and tobacco. He had curling hair, cropped short, bright brown in color.

  “Everything’s fine,” she heard Ma Hovey telling him; and his voice, “Good.” And Ma Hovey, a bit sniffily, “I expect you’ll want to see for yourself.”

  Their faces with their voices swam backward.

  When they returned, the doctor was speaking. “You’re quite right, as usual, Mrs. Hovey— though I think you underestimate the time.”

  Ma Hovey’s voice was pleased.

  “She’s one of them that gets determined on it, Doctor.”

  “Maybe so. I’ll wash my hands now.”

  Dorothy bustled for a basin and a clean towel for him, but Ma Hovey lingered by the bed, tending Mary with a proprietary bending.

  “You’re doing finely, pretty. Finely. Oh, ease down your back! Does it feel better when I put my arm down under it?”

  The doctor seated himself beside the hearth and pulled his pipe out. He whittled off tobacco in his palm and stuffed the bowl. The rich blue coils of smoke were tapered out and whisked into the chimney.

  “The road surprised me,” he said to Dorothy. “I expected it much rougher with all the heavy travel passing over it.”

  “You didn’t have no trouble finding here?”

  “No, no. Not a bit. I’d been up to the corners less than a week ago. A man got knifed in the gang that’s working next to Cossett’s tavern. Whiskey brawling, I expect. They got me Sunday morning. So all I had to do was turn right, there, instead of left, and yours is the first house.”

  He wiped the crumpled leavings of the whittled plug off on his trouser knees.

  “Come in, Mr. Fowler,” he invited.

  “No, thanks,” said Jerry.

  “Want to see me?”

  Jerry was wordless, but the doctor read his eyes. He stepped through the doorway with him, his arm on Jerry’s shoulder.

  “Everything looks right enough. Don’t worry.”

  Ma Hovey returned to the hearth.

  “A nice young man, I think,” said Dorothy, her voice stiff and thin.

  Ma Hovey grunted in her short, round nose.

  The doctor was gone for several minutes. Once in an interval Mary heard his footsteps matching Jerry’s in the front yard. The beat was methodical, heavy, a little out of stride. What right had Jerry to keep the doctor outside? She wanted to see him again. She was pinning her faith on his optimistic face. She must see it. She shut her teeth together, closing sound.

  Dorothy looked timidly over the bed. There were little bulges just be-side the corners of her homely mouth. She glanced at Mary’s eyes, and her own were frightened. Mary fretfully tossed her head. Then Ma Hovey’s clear blue eyes swam up beside Dorothy’s head.

  Her hand came out to rest on the set forehead.

  “What is it now, dearie?”

  Mary’s lips were calm in their deliberate speaking. Her voice was surprisingly clear. She heard herself:—

  “I think it’s beginning to happen.”

  Ma Hovey had ducked down with questing hands. Mary heard Dorothy mumbling something. Words were slurred. “I never knowed there was such power in a body.”

  “Go get in that doctor,” Ma said shortly.

  Then Mary’s sensations boiled out like a flume. She heard Dorothy: “Come inside, Dr. Earl.” The doctor’s quick heavy steps. Her own distortion. Her lips opening. Jerry’s footfalls halting at the door, stock-still. The silence. Then the lamp swam down and round and she was on a harder bed. The firelight was red, red, red. She saw herself upon a road. Her legs ached. Her feet were stumbling and her eyes looked down and saw not even pebbles. A wheel kept creaking, way off somewhere. It approached irregularly from behind. Voices kept talking, sharp hard-breathed snatches. The creak came on. She made a desperate effort, but the revolution of the earth held back her feet. There was a darkness not far off, a black lid above the light that someone was putting down. The creak came clearer. She dared not look around. That sound. It creaked again. She shut her teeth and did not hear it. But the blackness was inexorable. There was but the thinnest ray of light. A knife edge at the edge of the world. It entered. She had not heard the wheel that turned; but now it came again beside her ear. She saw a white face, she saw the bones under the skin, and the white sightless eyes. And in each eye a mirrored face… .

  Time had been… .

  She heard the doctor laugh. He held a little squirmy thing above her face. Ma Hovey said, “Her’s a lovely.” She was bustling. Somebody was weeping. “Here, you hold her, Mrs. Melville.” The evolution had caught up with her and passed, and she was free.

  She closed her eyes.

  Heat that was deathly all day long, sweltering marsh-side heat that shimmered in lazy waves over the still, high grass, that killed the sounds of passing wagons, that dulled men’s voices; in the wood lot south of the barn the locusts made an all-day sawing.

  But the log walls of the cabin enclosed coolness born of the living, un-sunned earth on which the puncheons rested. It lapped round Mary, cradling her. It stilled Jerry’s eyes when he sat at the bedside, holding her hand in quiet. It put a change on Melville whenever he came in from reaping, and when he went forth again the clack of the whetstone on the scythe fell through the torrid shrieks of the cicadas like drops of water.

  In the quiet, Dorothy moved in softness. She made little dainties out of the food she had, fresh beans and young potatoes; squash, too, were forming; for supper she went out for the fresh wheat and ground it in a small burnt-oak mortar by the kitchen door and made milk mush of the milky grains. As regular as time, she came into the kitchen, her long face red with sunlight, to watch Ma Hovey emptying the cradle and moving softly for the bed.

  Those were the moments that marked Mary’s being for her now. She would see Ma Hovey with the corner of her eye and hear her move
ments making ready. Outside, Melville’s scythe would shear through wheat stalks, swinging as if it walked. But inside, the stillness would be great with waiting. Then a cry would break forth, a thin parody of human utterance, but blatant as life itself. There would be a breath in the air as Ma Hovey came forward towards the bed. Dorothy would stand by the footboard, looking down, her face all swollen with her childless heart. But then Mary would turn on her side and look away from her, straining her eyes to see as Ma Hovey turned back the blanket and put inside the short, wrapped bundle. Ma Hovey would unwrap the band that barely seemed to hold the milk in check. Sometimes when the breast was free, before the small red lips could make their ring upon the nipple, the milk would pour forth.

  Then Ma Hovey laughed.

  “There’s life in there to drink a basketful. My, my.”

  And she would direct the mouth to its holding. Her pink face would grow pinker yet with sentiment.

  “See the little pretty drink it! Ain’t she the hungry girl? A little guzzler. Hark, how she puffles, squashing in her nose. She’ll take it all tonight, I’ll guarantee.”

  Even Dorothy at the bed-foot could hear the anxious breathing. She would steal round the corner, boots a-creak, and fill her eyes.

  But Mary did not notice them then. However her back ached by evening, in that twilight time she felt her life uprise in the full breast. (“There’s no thing like it,” said Ma Hovey, “to ease a woman’s troubles.”) It was outpouring from the instant that the ring was formed by the child’s lips; it seemed to rise from untouched wells; it carried forth the mark of time, making her body young; it took strength from her in a flood that seemed to have no end; and it left strength in its place, to heal and grow; it was rich with warmth; it had a scent of its own, stronger than the milk of beasts-a sweet, rich scent that made a perfume in the baby’s skin. In all the world, she felt, no spring uprose from earth that came more freely, and she felt proud to hear Ma Hovey saying, “I never did see such a mass of milk in living woman. She should be rearing twins at very least. Look at the baby, ain’t she the pretty? Look at her bulging midwards, will you,