by Kyle Onstott
At ten o’clock by the erratic clock on the mantel the pains first assailed Blanche. At first they were only a vague discomfort which caused her to leave the sitting-room and to go to her bed. Maxwell sipped his hot drink, undisturbed, and had Meg stir up another. The day was cloudy, threatening rain. His first intimation that Blanche was in labour was a cry, a loud shriek, more of terror than of pain, followed a moment later by another louder one. He heard Lucretia running through the hall, flat of foot, and up the stairs. He roused Alph, dozing on the floor beside his chair, and sent him to seek his young master.
‘Tell him come, come quick, drop ever’thin’. Tell him Miz Blanche is sheddin’ her chil’,’ he instructed the boy.
The boy left the room at a trot and Maxwell heard him slam a door as he left the house. He also heard rapid footsteps on the floor above him, and another shriek. He got to his feet and wandered down the hall, uncertain whether to climb the stairs, when he met Lucretia Borgia hastening toward the kitchen.
‘She havin’ it. Miz Blanche havin’ it. She hurtin’ powerful bad,’ she informed her master without stopping.
‘I reckoned,’ he said to her disappearing back. There was another scream of anguish, more audible here than in the sitting-room.
Lucretia Borgia returned from the kitchen carrying a large bucket of steaming water in one hand and a sheaf of clothes piled on the other arm. ‘Take here, suh,’ she ordered her master. ‘Stan’ outn my way.’ As she hastened up the steps, she called over the banister, ‘That Tense wench, she ain’t no help, no help at all.’
Maxwell realized that he could be of no help either and retraced his steps to the sitting-room, where he did not sit down, but toddled back and forth across the floor to relieve his anxiety. Scream followed scream, but they seemed to grow weaker. Meg appeared with an unordered toddy on a salver, which his master accepted. The boy was wide-eyed with interest in the proceedings upstairs.
‘Miz Blanche droppin’ her sucker, suh, Masta?’ he asked with enthusiastic innocence.
Maxwell’s open palm crashed against the impertinent child’s cheek, hurting the arthritic hand more than the cheek. The boy did not know for what he was punished, since he had intended his question to be courteous. But white men were strange. One never knew how they would respond. He retreated to the kitchen.
Alph returned out of breath. He had hurried to find his master, as he was instructed, and had run all the way back.
‘He comin’, Masta, suh. He comin’. Masta, comin’ fas’ as he kin,’ he reported between gasps.
‘Come here an’ take a swig of toddy. You petered out runnin’,’ said the master, who, repenting of his temper to Meg, made amends with indulgence to his brother.
The screams issuing from the house told Hammond why he had been sent for even before he entered. ‘How long she been carryin’ on?’ he asked his father and without waiting for a reply proposed, ‘I goin’ to sen’ fer Murrey, put a nigger on a mule an’ send.’
‘Lucretia Borgia’s up with her. She goin’ to be all right. Hurtin’ though, seem like. Better git Murrey though, I reckon. Ain’t much of a doctor. I don’ trus’ him but he the bes’ they is,’ concurred Maxwell.
‘I’ll sen’ Mem, I reckon. Otherns too young an’ don’ know the way,’ suggested Ham tentatively, and the absence of reply implied his father’s consent. He went to the kitchen to find Agamemnon and to give him his instructions.
He returned to the sitting-room with the assurance that Mem was on his way to summon the physician. He seated himself in a chair, but could not stay quiet, and rose and limped back and forth across the room. He shuddered at the screams that came from above. ‘Reckon I better go up? Reckon I kin help do somethin’?’ he asked his father.
‘Jest be in Lucretia Borgia’s road,’ replied the father. ‘She on her high hoss, mindin’ me to stan’ one side. She goin’ to slap you down, you git in her way. You’d think I her servant, ’stead of her mine.’
‘Tense helpin’ her, I reckon.’
‘She sayin’ Tense ain’t no account,’ said Maxwell.
Conversation languished. Father and son had nothing to say to each other, and yet they were as one, listening for the cries that came from above. Both suffered with the girl who was struggling to produce an heir for them. The shrieks subsided into groans, which grew less frequent. The older man believed that this betokened a growing weakness, an exhaustion of the woman in labour, but he did not say so to his son lest he aggravate the apprehension he knew was in the young man’s heart.
The clock ticked away on the mantelpiece. Maxwell was so used to its click-clack that he had ceased to notice it, but now it impinged on his consciousness and he marked each passing minute. Before Memnon had had time to reach Benson, Maxwell was rising periodically to patter to the window to scan the driveway for his return with Doctor Murrey.
Hammond climbed the stairs. Walking down the hall, he rapped with his knuckles on the bedroom door before he opened it. Lucretia Borgia was bent above the bed.
‘I takin’ care Miz Blanche. It mos’ here. It comin’. You go on downstairs an’ set down, Masta, suh, an’ don’ hender me,’ Lucretia Borgia looked up to command. ‘Ain’t goin’ to be no dinner fer you an’ yo’ papa, nor fer none of us, savin’ whut Dite an’ Ellen kin set,’ she added.
The tone of the woman’s words braced Hammond’s spirit.
Memnon returned. He had found the doctor, who had said that he would come. Hammond settled down to wait for his arrival, confident that when he came he would deliver the baby quickly. Towards two o’clock the screams ceased; the silence was oppressive, more painful to the husband than the wails had been. He wondered whether his wife’s strength might be completely spent, even whether she might have died.
A heavy step upon the stair! Lucretia Borgia was coming down. Hammond was exhausted, expecting the worst. Lucretia Borgia came into the room, cradling in her arms a swathe of white clothes. Protruding from the clothes was the head of a child, red and amorphous. Lucretia Borgia was all a-grin with satisfaction. She went first to her young master and bowed to display her precious burden, and then to Maxwell.
‘How Miz Blanche come on?’ Hammond demanded.
‘She sleepin’ now, I reckon,’ the woman said. ‘She jest ’bout petered a-havin’ it.’
Hammond breathed easier.
‘He ain’t very big,’ Maxwell looked at the child critically. ‘Like, he’ll grow.’
Lucretia Borgia hugged the baby to her chest. ‘He? It ain’t no he,’ she announced.
Maxwell’s heart sank. He had wanted a boy. But he made no comment.
Hammond looked again at his child’s face. ‘It’s gotch-eyed, like Charles,’ he declared.
And it was. The eyes were distinctly crossed, not with the normal strabismus of the newly born, but with a divergence which would prove permanent. Charles in Natchez had expressed the hope that the child would not be cross-eyed. Had his kinship with his sister had anything to do with the phenomenon, Hammond asked himself.
The least he could do was to go up to see the mother, but when he came, she was sleeping. Tense crept softly across the room to let him in, her finger to her lips. He stood by the bedside and looked down on the exhausted girl, sleeping on her back, her hair drawn back in a long braid. What if the child was a girl? What if its eyes were crossed and it was small and wanting in vigour? She had done her best, he reasoned compassionately. Perhaps her next child would be a sturdy boy.
When he went downstairs again, Lucretia Borgia still held the baby in her arms, jostling it up and down to quiet it and looking devotedly into the tiny, wrinkled face.
‘Who you plannin’ to suck it?’ queried Maxwell.
‘Its mamma ifn she kin, if her milk come good,’ Hammond answered casually.
Lucretia Borgia turned away in repugnance at the proposal, but interposed no word.
‘No white lady goin’ to suck her chil’. Poor trash, mayhap sometimes when they ain’t got no wench come fres
h. Spoils ’em,’ explained Maxwell.
‘We ain’t got no right fresh wench, our own self,’ Hammond objected.
‘Let me, Masta, suh,’ proposed Lucretia Borgia. ‘My sucker most weaned, an’ I got milk yet. Plenty milk.’
‘Your milk too ol’, an’ you too ol’,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘You always wantin’ to git into things, always wantin’ to be It.’
‘Lucy the freshest we got,’ suggested Hammond.
‘She too ol’, too,’ said the older man. ‘Milk from a young wench always better, sweeter like.’
‘Then Big Pearl is all we got,’ sighed the boy.
‘That black gyascutus in the house!’ scoffed Maxwell. ‘She cain’t walk, she got to gallop, knockin’ things aroun’. Besides, she got Wilson. Ol’ Mista Wilson, growin’ like he is, take a lot of milk.’
‘See how Big Pearl treat that young ’un!’ said Lucretia Borgia. ‘Throwin’ him aroun’, jest like he a bag of oats, jest like he a iron baby.’
‘Course, Lucy kin help out with Wilson, need come, an’ leave Big Pearl’s milk fer Sophy,’ Maxwell reasoned.
‘Sophy?’
‘Sophy,’ Maxwell repeated. ‘Goin’ to name her Sophy, I reckoned, after her grandma.’
The son nodded his head in acquiescence. ‘Lay her down,’ he told Lucretia Borgia, ‘an’ fetch Big Pearl.’
‘You going to give suck to your new mist’ess, Miz Sophy,’ Hammond said when the black girl came in. She had never before been admitted to the house.
Lucretia Borgia lifted the baby gently and placed her in Big Pearl’s arms. Big Pearl gave a scream of delight and smothered the child with kisses. ‘Ain’t it sweet, so white an’ red!’ she cried.
‘Ol’ Mista Wilson’s nose will be out of joint,’ Maxwell laughed.
‘I reckon she milkin’ enough fer two,’ commented Hammond.
For a while now, time ceased to have meaning. No longer did the ticking of the clock impinge upon Maxwell’s awareness. That Doctor Murrey did not arrive was now of no importance. Memnon reavowed that he had seen the doctor at his home in Benson and that he had promised to come, but Mem was hardly to be trusted. He believed that he was telling the truth, but there was no knowing to whom he had talked or what had been said. Mem feared doctors, believed that they carved people alive, especially black men, and his traffic with Murrey, if at all, had been as brief as possible. If the birth of the child had been prolonged or if it had gone amiss, the blame would have fallen upon Memnon, but, since all was well, he escaped with small censure.
22
Later that afternoon the weather turned warmer after it began to rain, first in a steady drizzle, and then with pelting showers. It was a dreary afternoon—good for toddies before a slow-burning fire. All had gone well, except the sex of the child, but the acceptance of the name he had so casually and cannily bestowed upon it mollified Maxwell’s displeasure. He revised his vision of a handsome, alert, and precocious grandson, one who should be to Hammond what Hammond had been to him, into a vision of a granddaughter as beautiful, charming, gracious, and complacent as that Sophia who had given him Hammond. With Hammond blood from both sides of her house, he foresaw a paragon of womanhood.
Even though the services of Doctor Murrey had not been required, Maxwell was disappointed that he had not come. He had little confidence in the man’s skill, but, such as it was, it was not fitting that a planter’s child should be born without its benefit. Besides, Doctor Murrey enjoyed corn whisky, and Maxwell had foreseen a pleasant interval, after the doctor’s task was accomplished, of toddies before the fire and an interchange of gossip.
The erratic clock had just struck five when Maxwell heard in the lane the approach of horses, which took him to the window, where he recognized the doctor’s vehicle, a kind of hooded calash, drawn by a team of weary bays. He was glad that the doctor had come; now they could have their seance, and it was so late that perhaps the doctor could be persuaded to remain for supper, possibly to spend the night.
He called for Memnon to open the door, but heard the patter of Meg’s bare feet running to forestall Mem’s welcome. He watched a white youth wind the reins around the whip on the dashboard and alight from the rig awkwardly. He was enormously tall, emaciated, cadaverous. He made his way round the vehicle to its other side, and, reaching in, appeared to have much difficulty in helping out of the seat a man whom Maxwell recognized to be the doctor, dressed in a long coat and beaver hat. A Negro boy took the horses, while the doctor clung clumsily to the youth who tried to support him. The doctor took three steps and stopped. He stood unsteadily, supported by the youth. The doctor was drunk, dead drunk.
Maxwell made his way to the front door, of which Memnon had taken charge and driven Meg away.
‘Not much use us comin’. He’s drunk,’ called the youth. ‘Got to git him to bed, if one is ready. How the wench come along? Had it yet?’
‘It ain’t no wench. It Miz Maxwell,’ Maxwell explained.
‘A white lady? Then I cain’t do nothin’. Doctor don’ hold with me doctorin’ whites—jest yet awhile. I could have done it, an’ if it been a nigger,’ the boy said.
‘The chil’ done come. It a girl chil’,’ Maxwell explained.
‘Then we git him in bed. He be all right later on. He gits this way,’ the tall youth explained.
Hammond, hobbling down the stairs, overheard and called to Memnon, ‘Git out there an’ he’p, he’p the white gen’leman, cain’t you? Cain’t you see? Gittin’ slothy agin? Wantin’ I should touch you up?’
Memnon wanted no touching up. He rolled his eyes towards his master and leaped forward to support the doctor on the other side from the youth.
‘Carry him upstairs an’ put him into bed—that room agin mine, not down next your mist’ess. Mus’n’t rile her now, the way she is,’ Hammond commanded the slave.
The pot-bellied, florid little doctor staggered unsteadily through the door, securely embraced by Memnon. He remembered to remove his high hat in a gentleman’s home, but otherwise surrendered to the slave’s ministrations. Memnon led him gently up the stairs, the youth, embarrassed, falling behind. Maxwell, disappointed of the chitchat he had anticipated, retired to the sitting-room again. Hammond followed the guests up the stairs, waited in the hall while the youth and Memnon removed the drunken doctor’s clothes and thrust him into bed, and then escorted the young man down the stairs.
As they entered the sitting-room, Maxwell settled himself more firmly in his chair, not after all to be bilked of his conversation. ‘Readin’?’ he asked.
‘Yes, suh. Much as I kin, suh, the doctor this way,’ replied the tall youth still standing, diffidently.
‘Set down, set down,’ invited the old man. ‘Meg,’ he called, ‘stir us a toddy.’
The youth chose a chair and seated himself. ‘No, thanks, Mista Maxwell, suh,’ the boy slowly shook his head. ‘No toddy fer me.’
Maxwell looked at him with a kind of alarm. ‘You’re ol’ enough,’ he opined. ‘Temp’ance?’
‘Jest fer me,’ the boy said, ‘not fer you or nobody else. If I am goin’ to make a doctor, I ain’t wantin’ to be like him.’ A feeling of disloyalty in what he had said caused him to add, ‘Doc, he’s right good. He knows, when he ain’t drinkin’, only he drinks and cain’t stop, seems like. Worser all the time.’ His curved lips grew straight with his determination, a serious glance fell from his blue eyes, he brushed his bush of black hair from his forehead with long fingers, and he sought to restrain a blush from his fuzz-covered cheek.
‘In that case,’ conceded the old man, unable to find an argument to alter the boy’s conviction. ‘Live in Benson?’ he asked, accepting a toddy from Meg’s tray.
‘Yes, suh, now, that is, readin’ with Doc Murrey an’ stayin’ with him,’ the young man made clear. ‘I belong out at Bankside. You knowin’ me, Mista Maxwell, suh; leastwise I knowin’ you. I’m Willis Smith, son of Willis Smith of Bankside Plantation,’ he proclaimed proudly.
; ‘Laws! Willis Smith’s boy. Course I know you, know your papa that is. Good blood!’ Maxwell nodded, impressed.
‘I remember back, you come to our house, buyin’ saplin’s, stayed fer dinner,’ Willis recalled. ‘I didn’t like you that time, ’cause you wantin’ my playboy off of me, only my papa wouldn’t sell him.’
‘I recollec’, I recollec’; you cried to keep him,’ said Maxwell. ‘Wouldn’t eat no dinner, so afeared your papa goin’ to sell him. A right likely Jew-faced yaller boy.’
‘That right. Out of Old Cinthy, she say by a Jew peddler. His name is Job, ’cause papa say he have so much patience with whut I do to him,’ Willis explained. ‘I gotten him yet.’
‘In Benson?’
‘No; Job at the plantation still, suh. He married up, an’ I don’ want he should have to divide from his wench an’ her baby. He still body-servants me when I go to Bankside.’
‘Willis Smith? Willis got plenty, used to have. Whut fer he makin’ a doctor outn you? You the oldest, ain’t you?’
‘Yes, suh, I Papa’s oldest boy, oldest livin’, that is. Papa, he ain’t rightly makin’ me no doctor. I makin’ me one. It my own doings. Yes, suh.’
‘Whut the world comin’ to?’ Maxwell speculated. ‘Fathers ain’t got no say, seem like. Willis knowin’ you had ought to stay on the plantation an’ make a planter. He needin’ you.’
‘The world needin’ me. People, people needin’ me,’ Willis’ eyes shone with fervour. ‘My little sister, you remember her, Nellie, she die. Purtiest, little, yellow-haired chil’ ever live, an’ the sweetest, sweet as clover honey. Putered sore throat, folks said; they wouldn’t let I should kiss her. I knowin’ right then, when we layin’ Nellie away, I goin’ to make me a doctor. Wasn’t no call she should die. The doctor drunken, Murrey drunken. I ain’t a-go’ to be drunken—an’ I go’ to study hard an’ learn. I goin’ to save folks from dyin’.’
Hammond, who had taken no part in the colloquy, interposed, ‘That case, one would think Doc Murrey——’
‘Ain’t nobody else,’ the boy interrupted him. ‘Only doctor in Benson. Besides, he good when he ain’t drunken. He kin learn me, an’ he got books, doctor books, big ones, that I kin read.’
