Grace of a Hawk

by Abbie Williams

  Mrs. Jeffries blinked several times before regaining her composure. She pursed her lips but conceded, “I’ll send Meggie with the basin,” and motioned for her daughter to accompany her from the room. The girl, Meggie, offered a shy smile before following her mother.

  Sawyer sat atop the bed and gathered my feet upon his lap, unlacing and removing my boots. His lips lifted in a half-rueful grin as he murmured, “Seems we cause a stir wherever we go.”

  The ache encircling my belly tightened its grip, the pains so evenly spaced I could have set a timepiece by them, and Sawyer took my knees into his grasp, gently stilling their incessant trembling.

  “Darlin’,” he murmured.

  Tilson approached to rest a hand upon my shoulder. “I’ll wait to examine you until the basin arrives and I’ve a chance to wash up. How are you feeling, honey?”

  “They are still perhaps two minutes apart,” I said, anticipating his next question.

  Tilson’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. His lined and craggy face remained so very dear to me; I loved him as much as I remembered loving my own daddy, long ago in another life, and wasted no time feeling guilt over this fact. He murmured, “For certain before morning, then, we’ll meet her.”

  A rapping on the door indicated Meggie returning with the basin. She handed this to Tilson and left with obvious reluctance, peeking over her shoulder as the door closed, and Tilson washed his hands; the droplets stirred by the motion created tiny, wet plops of muted sound in the little room. I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes, bracing against another onslaught, and was suddenly beset by an image of Rebecca – the picture of her disappearing into the crowd materialized like a still photograph on the backs of my eyelids; I was troubled by the fact that she’d not looked back at us as she crossed the street. To my flustered mind it seemed ominous, a sign I may never see her again.

  Stop this, I admonished, opening my eyes and willing away the frightening thoughts. You are in a state of nerves. Rebecca is not in danger.

  Sawyer moved to sit near my hip and braced my lower back with his forearm, holding steady. He kissed my temple, which was already slippery with sweat, gathering my hair and drawing its heavy, braided length away from my face. Tilson took up the customary position at the foot of the bed; on any other birthing occasion, I would be at his side at this point in the proceedings. My knees began to shake anew and Tilson cupped one warm hand over the right, patting me, reassuring with no words, before lifting my skirts to examine my body’s progression.

  “All feels well. You’re far along, as I figured,” he mused, eyes fixed on the wall above mine and Sawyer’s heads as he explored my swollen flesh; his physician’s gaze, I’d always thought, one which saw inward, using hands and fingers for sight rather than eyes. He lowered my skirts. “I do hope you two have settled upon a name for the youngster, as you’ll likely be meeting her within the hour.”

  The pace of my heart increased another notch, not only at the prospect of holding my daughter after dreaming of her all these many months, but at the knowledge of what my body must do in order to produce her forth into the world.

  Tilson saw my agitation as he dried his hands on a length of linen. Adopting the brusque tone he knew would best rescind my fears, he said, “Lorie, there ain’t a reason to worry. You are healthy as a mare. You oughta be up and walking, at least for a spell. Sawyer, you help her about the room. I aim to hurry over to yonder saloon and collect Becky.” His wrinkled face creased into a smile. “If you’ve a mind to allow it, that is, honey.”

  “Of course, please do,” I said, reassured; no harm would come to Rebecca as long as Tilson was there.

  “Mind your wife’s every order, do you hear me, son?” Tilson instructed Sawyer, before resting his gentle touch upon my cheek. “You’ll be right as the rain, Lorie. I’ll return shortly.”

  Tilson collected his hat and tightened his holster belt; his footfalls sounded on the steps and in his absence Sawyer flowed into motion, arranging his holster within easy reach on the bedside table, placing my boots on the floor, worrying over the pillows situated behind me. He stroked my hair, bundling it at my nape, recognizing, “The pains are coming faster.”

  I nodded acknowledgment of this truth, gnawing at my lower lip.

  Sawyer cupped my jaw. “For this moment, we must put aside thoughts of all else.”

  For all that he’d witnessed dozens of foalings at his family’s livery stable I realized afresh this would be his first time at a birthing bed. I reached for his hand. “The pain will only escalate, love. You must prepare to see me hurting. She is our first, and may therefore take time –” The next word broke around a hard and inadvertent gasp as a contraction seized my innards, this one stronger than any prior. Sawyer held fast and I thought of Letty Dawes, whose twins were the first birth with which I’d assisted Tilson. The strength of Letty’s grip had startled me that July afternoon nearly a year ago.

  Sawyer said, “Tilson has spoken to me of what to expect. He warned me that watching you suffer through it would be most difficult of all.” He gathered me close, bending his face to my unkempt hair. “I would bear any pain for you, my Lorie, and would bear this pain in your place, were I able.”

  “I know it,” I whispered, sheltering in his embrace before another pain surged. I hissed a sharp breath; the contractions ebbed as swiftly as they overtook. In the momentary lull I requested, “I’ll walk a spell, as Tilson suggested. Will you help me up?”

  Sawyer kept me tucked close to his side, allowing me to set the pace about the small room. I felt less vulnerable walking rather than prone upon the stripped bed; there was a quality to the muffled sounds in the rooms adjacent, the rise and fall of murmured voices and the knowledge that others lingered nearby along a shared hallway, which allowed a crack in the heavy boards I kept nailed over the memories of my time at Ginny Hossiter’s – the gaping pit containing ugly and hated remembrance. I would not allow those memories to intrude; would that I could banish them for all time.

  As we walked, Sawyer recognized my need for distraction and spoke in his storytelling voice. “Have I ever told you about the day Whistler was born? I was late for a picnic at the Carters’ farm and I knew it was an insult to Clairee to arrive so late, especially since I was well beyond boyhood, but I couldn’t leave before my horse came into the world. Her dame was a beautiful bay mare, bred with Piney Chapman’s stock, the finest in Suttonville. Daddy promised me the foal…”

  Sawyer paused in this beloved and oft-told tale as I cringed forward, rubbing the base of my spine with his knuckles. Though I’d never been inside the Suttonville livery which his family owned in the old days, I suddenly beheld the picture in his thoughts, seeing plainly that summer afternoon in 1860, dust motes twirling in the sun slanting between the slats of the stall in which Whistler’s dame labored. I witnessed Sawyer crouched as near as he dared, a much younger Sawyer than the man I knew now, a sunburned boy slender with gangly youth, forearms resting on thighs, surrounded by the scents of hay and horse. Anticipation lit his boyishly handsome face; I accepted the sweetness of this vision as a gift.

  “Her forelegs emerged first, as I’d expected,” Sawyer continued when I’d straightened, the ache of the contraction receding, though not for long. Already I tensed, dreading the next, as he said, “And I saw at once that she was a paint—”

  I interrupted the tale to add, “As was her sire.”

  Though my gaze was directed at the floorboards I felt the warmth of his grin. He murmured, “You’ve heard this story before, it seems…”

  I pressed my face to his ribs, unable to answer. The intensity of the pain had grown shocking and I could not help but groan.

  Sawyer cupped the back of my neck. “Lorie. Do you want to lie down? It seems a brutality to keep you walking.”

  I shook my head in immediate response. The night unfolding outside the rippled glass of the east-facing window appeared clear and fine. Curtains covered the lower half of the pane but stars s
pangled the darkening sky in the upper, having winked into existence without my noticing; Rebecca and Tilson remained absent despite the advancing night. Sawyer obliged my request, leading me about the room in an endless circle, stopping when I required it, murmuring in his low voice, telling me stories of his boyhood days in the holler, neither of us openly acknowledging our growing concern over Tilson’s and Rebecca’s whereabouts. Sweat eventually drenched my dress and Sawyer helped me from it so that I wore only a shift, a now-soiled garment let out to accommodate my girth. We’d just resumed the cumbersome pacing when there was an excited rapping on the door and young Meggie Jeffries called from the hallway, “Mother wonders do you need her assistance, Mr. Davis?”

  Sawyer asked, “Has Tilson returned?”

  “Mr. Tilson has not,” Meggie said, with plain apology in her tone. “Please do call if you need a thing, Mother said.”

  Her footfalls danced back down the wooden steps, leaving us in bewilderment, but I could dwell upon little other than the contractions flowing one atop the next, in a successive wave of agony; just as I was about to tell Sawyer I needed to lie down an entirely new ache heaved across my lower abdomen. Sudden wetness streaked my thighs, hot beneath the sweat-dampened shift, and I felt in that moment the wetness was my heart, liquefied and draining away – I thought I was losing our baby.

  “Is it blood?”

  I’d lost a child before and I would die before losing this child. Sawyer carried me at once to the bed, baring my lower body with movements simultaneously urgent and deft. Grasping my knees, stilling their violent shaking, his voice cut through my panic; he said, “No, Lorie, no. It is but your birth water.”

  Gasping with fearful breath I attempted to sit, to achieve the impossible task of glimpsing the flesh between my thighs. Sawyer eased me back against the stacked pillows and braced above. He looked deeply into my distraught eyes. “Lorie, it is all right. I will help you, but you must focus. Can you do that, love?” At my jerking nod, he smiled sweetly, hiding away all of his worry, any hint of trepidation. He whispered, “Good.”

  Sawyer left my side only to wash his hands in the basin and reposition the lantern, bringing it closer. He rolled back his sleeves, fair hair trailing the sides of his forehead. He removed his eyepatch and took up a position at the foot of the bed, easing the damp shift out of the way and drawing my hips closer to him; my legs bent and splayed wide, my head fell back as stabbing pain attacked my belly, lowering into my bowels. I felt an almost complete loss of control over the workings of my body and reached blindly above my head, panting, to clamp hold of the bedposts, gripping with both fists.

  And then, half-choked with the wonder of it, Sawyer cried, “I see her, I see the top of her head! She’s right here!”

  I knew what I must do, instinct overriding all else. My teeth ground together in my skull as I strained through the gouging pain of a crowning head. I gulped for each breath, struggling to push again, and again, and yet again.

  Sawyer said, “Once more!”

  I can’t…

  I tried to speak the words but they would not emerge. ‘Once more’ became a hundred more. A groaning sob bulged in my chest; I felt as though I would push myself inside out, undulating pain so intense it seemed I would never be free of it. Stinging heat seared the flesh between my legs. Bursts of light flashed behind my closed eyes, as though I’d been struck at the bridge of my nose.

  I can’t do this…

  Sawyer cried, “Her head is out! Once more, Lorie!”

  Surely I would snap the bedposts with the force of my gripping. I heaved and experienced a tremendous gushing; unable to see past the swell of my belly, I pictured a broiling waterfall bursting from my nether region.

  Sawyer’s grin split his face as our daughter emerged from between my parted thighs. For there she was, our girl, held up and cradled in her daddy’s long, lithe hands, slippery-pink and streaked with blood. A cap of wet golden hair covered her scalp.

  “She’s here!” he rejoiced, wiping tears upon his right shoulder, and I struggled to my elbows, tasting the salt of tears as I cried and laughed at once, enraptured at the sight of her in Sawyer’s tender grasp. Her fists and feet appeared blue-tinted and churned with energy; a chuffing squall parted her tiny lips, both eyes clenched tight. A long, crinkled rope, pulsing with blood, trailed over her tiny stomach, the last link between our two bodies. Sawyer bent and pressed his lips to her forehead, worshipful.

  “She’s here,” I whispered, laying my hands upon her at long last, swiping fluids from her tiny mouth with one practiced sweep of my littlest finger. Sawyer placed her in my arms and leaned to kiss my lips, with utmost care. Blood covered his familiar hands as he proceeded to knuckle my belly, ordering softly, “Once more, darlin’, push once more.”

  The delivery of the afterbirth was messy but swift; Sawyer, at my instructions, snipped the birthing cord two fingers above our daughter’s belly and tied the end with a length of twine from Tilson’s satchel.

  “You’re bleeding still, but not an alarming amount,” Sawyer said, bundling a length of linen to tuck between my aching legs as I cuddled our daughter to my breasts, marveling at the perfection of her little face, unable to keep from pressing my lips to her cheeks, her forehead, her crinkly closed eyes. Sawyer helped to tidy both our daughter and me as best he could, using a linen he’d dampened in the basin; he restacked the pillows and at last knelt and wrapped the two of us in his embrace.

  “Mo mhuirnín milis,” he whispered. “My Lorie, how I love you. The both of you.”

  “She’s here,” I repeated, tears streaming. My body felt as though a team of draft horses had trampled over it but all of the pain summarily receded into the distance, straight through the walls of the boardinghouse room and into the night, eradicated by the intensity of what we’d accomplished. I looked from our child to Sawyer, who’d delivered her into the world, this man I loved so fiercely it was akin to pain. I traced my fingertips over his face, whispering, “You did marvelous work.”

  Tears streaked his right cheek and he disagreed, “The work was yours, Lorie-love.” He cupped a hand about our daughter’s head, his wide palm bracketing the fragile curve of her skull. “Mo iníon milis, welcome to our family. We love you so.”

  “I’ve imagined so many times what she would look like.” I kissed her again; I could not cease kissing her sweet face, already fathoms-deep in love. I recalled, “You didn’t name Whistler until later that first night.”

  “That is indeed true,” Sawyer agreed, and I tugged him closer, our mouths joining with a soft suckling sound. His nose brushed my cheek, his taste was upon my tongue, the sweat of my skin combining with the salt of his. I held fast to my husband, our child between us as she’d been in the womb, recognizing and imbibing the blessing of them without speaking, as if to do so would be to somehow negate it. Sawyer nuzzled my jaw, my ear, resting his lips to my temple; he murmured, “I would name her for you, my sweet love. Lorissa Rose, if that suits you, darlin’, and we’ll call her by her second name, as to avoid confusion.”

  “Yes, that’s the way of it.” As I spoke there was a swelling of voices from the lobby below. Hurried feet ascended the stairs, more than one pair, surely Rebecca and Tilson at last returning. Wouldn’t they be surprised to see what Sawyer and I had achieved in their absence, wouldn’t they delight in meeting our daughter? I intended to scold them for arriving so late; it did not occur to me in that moment of joyful wonder over my baby that such rapidly-approaching footsteps could mean danger –

  Sawyer was steps ahead, rising swiftly, collecting and buckling his holster, his entire frame taut with sudden tension; positioning near the closed door, he called sharply, “Edward?”

  But the reply was not Tilson’s.

  Sawyer flung open the door.

  Life changes most when you least expect it, Papa had always been fond of saying.

  But what if you always expect it? I’d contradicted the summer of my ninth or tenth year, intending n
ot to be impertinent; rather, I enjoyed discussing things Papa, who never failed to speak to me in a scholarly fashion, who perpetually sought ways to challenge my intellect.

  You shan’t, dear heart. Constant expectation would prove a tiresome path.

  I shall make up my mind to always expect it, from this moment forth, had been my final say on the matter.

  I believed him now.

  Lifting my hem to hurry across the street towards a saloon called The Dolly Belle, I heeded Papa’s words. I was no coward, and sustained no false modesty; I had weathered the loss of my father and mother, my husband and marriage, the content and quiet life I had once called my own – all vanished as permanently as smoke in the rising wind of War. I bore two sons to a man I dearly loved, and with whom I believed I would grow old, only to learn of Elijah’s death in the blistering summer of 1863, while Nathaniel was yet three months from being born.

  Each of these changes indeed struck without warning, serving to pierce ragged holes through any security I hoped to claim; I remained grateful beyond words for the presence of my brother and, later, my uncle, both of whom rearranged their lives in order to help me with Cort and Nathaniel. Though as a little girl I’d anticipated change as a tremendous potential adventure, I’d grown into a woman who neglected to expect and instead despised it, with its startling nature and resultant agony. And yet, here I stood on a dirty street having chosen to undertake the most significant change of my life, that of leaving Iowa and journeying into unknown territory –

  As I had a thousand and more times since he rode away from me that wretched August morning, I held his face in my mind and silently prayed, Come back to me.

  Leaning over the elaborate upper balcony a floor above the ground, watching my uncertain approach, Mary was visible from the waist up; as I neared, she hissed, “Around back!” and promptly disappeared. I paused and pressed both hands to my belly, drawing a slow breath, fighting the smothering sensation which had crept behind me ever since word reached us that Boyd and Malcolm were missing; if I let down my carefully-constructed rampart, the terrible feeling would ambush. The sense of hovering menace was heightened by the lack of color as gray twilight rolled across the town, creating the illusory sense that all objects retained no substance. I needed to discover what Mary wished to tell me but I was simultaneously terrified; as long as I believed Boyd alive, as long as the hope existed of seeing his face once more in this life, I found it possible to continue moving forward.