Once a Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  The broom, Danny’s second weapon, is lying in the wet yellow grass and I pick it up and wave it around. A big black bearlike dog snarls at me and dives for the handle, but I swing it away. Then a dirty white terrier goes for my ankle. I kick him like a football and he wails, but he’s soon back.

  Finally, a dirty brown beagle gets Three Legs down and goes for the throat. Both dogs’ eyes are wide with fear and anger. Their white teeth flash the air and then I see blood. The smell makes the dogs more ferocious. One of them catches the hem of Sunny’s coat, but Danny clubs him with the heavy walking stick and he backs off.

  Susie screams, “Make them stop, Mama. Make them stop!” Danny and Sunny are yelling in their loudest imitation of their father. “Git. Git, you son of a bitch! Git!”

  I have to do something or this is going to end like last night’s chicken slaughter.

  “Here, Sunny, take the broom.” I toss it over and she catches it in midair and starts wildly whacking whichever animal is closest. “I’ll bring Pa’s gun!”

  Running for the house, I’m surprised at my speed, even with my bad knee. When I get back, Three Legs is lying on the ground, gurgling blood, but still he tries to defend his family. He growls and snaps at the terrier that’s chewing on his hind leg and finally gets his teeth on the terrier’s neck in a death grip.

  I fire once into the air and the dogs all jump and stare at me, but when I fire again, nothing happens. Now what? The dogs and children are in such a tight bunch, I dare not shoot at them. My only chance is if I can draw the varmints away, but it’s dangerous. Finally, I have no choice. The black dog leaps over Three Legs and is five feet from Mira. I back toward the barn door, where we’ve hung the five chickens we saved for stew birds.

  “Here, doggies!” I call, swinging a bird by its neck so they can see. “Here, doggies! We know you love chicken.” The canine that looks like a small black bear turns, sniffs the air, and leaves the pack. I throw the chicken on the ground and back away so the animal will think it’s free food and when he pounces on it, I shoot. Crack!

  “One down!” I yell like it’s a game.

  “Yay, Ma!” Danny hollers.

  I pick up the chicken and dangle it out again. “Here, canines,” I encourage, hoping another animal will fall for the ruse, and the brown beagle goes for it. Crack! Another dog falls.

  “Hot-diggity!” Mira crows.

  There are only two final monsters and one, the terrier, is almost gone, still held in the jaws of the dying Three Legs. “Wallop the wolf, Danny,” I yell. “Hit him so hard he’ll see stars.”

  “Stand back, sisters,” Danny says, winding up like he’s going to hit a baseball coming fast. Whack! he blasts the animal up in the air. The creature whines, lands on his side about twenty feet away, and bam! I shoot him in the head.

  “Is everyone okay?” I ask in the sudden quiet, after laying my firearm on the lawn and running forward. Susie and Mira are crying. Sunny is white as a sheet, but Danny is wound tight with fury. He takes his pocketknife out and finishes the terrier.

  Then we all look at Three Legs. The gash on his throat, inflicted by the fierce wolf dog, has drained him. I kneel down and take Three Legs’s head in my lap. “Poor brave puppy,” I say.

  He wags his tail once and then he is dead.

  AT BEDTIME, WE pray for our brave dog. “Dear God,” Susie says. “Thank you for giving us Three Legs. He was a great friend. He protected us and he died in battle, just like a soldier. Please keep him at your side until we come to you.”

  “Glory, glory, hallelujah,” Mira sings, and we all join in. “Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. His truth goes marching on!”

  Upstairs, I open my journal and sit with the pillows piled behind me in the bed. The experience with the wild dogs has affected us all in different ways. The girls are nervous and won’t go out alone. Sunny keeps asking if we can get rabies from their saliva, and Danny can’t stop talking about the incident as if the dog fight were a battle in the war.

  Me . . . when I look out the window at Spruce Mountain, despite the raging war in Europe, Asia, and Africa, I am surprised to feel peace. This winter, I have survived an auto accident, a blizzard, and an ice storm, but in battling the wild dogs I’ve found a part of myself that I thought was lost.

  I’m a woman alone with four children, but I can endure. The warrior once lost has returned.

  58

  January 10, 1942

  Frau Chef

  Today dawned gray and windy, but it was the first day of school after winter break and I drove the children over to Hazel Patch. Everyone was excited to hear about the execution of the wild dogs, and I felt like Annie Oakley, female sharpshooter of the Old West.

  Back home, I fed the half dozen chickens that are still alive, put a load in the Maytag, and carried all the Christmas things up to the attic. Just as I was coming down the stairs, I was surprised to hear a familiar cadence.

  “Eins—zwei—drei—vier. Eins—zwei—drei—vier.” Then in English, even louder, “One—two—three—four. One—two—three—four.”

  Heavy boots marched across the wooden bridge. It’s the POWs, but Ada was supposed to call me!

  The hair on the back of my neck rises. This time I really am alone, no Mr. Roote for a chaperone, not even Danny and the girls . . . but I’m tired of being afraid . . . so I take a deep breath, grab a sweater, lift up my chin, and go out to greet them. I’m the Woman Boss, I remember!

  Standing in the yard are six German men in denim uniforms, including Leopold and Eckhart.

  “Frau Chef!” All the men salute me. “We greet you as a friend!”

  “Where are your guards?” I ask them. “There are supposed to be two guards.”

  The men look confused and shrug their shoulders. Then Leopold sees the fallen tree on the porch and the pile of lumber. “We work?” he asks, and I observe he’s picked up a few more words in English.

  I have no drawings prepared this time, but I pantomime what I want them to do, cut up the tree, remove it and reconstruct the porch roof. Then I take the men to the barn and show them Dan’s tools and the lumber that Sadie brought.

  When Eckhart takes charge, I head outside to hang out the laundry. It’s another unseasonally balmy day, but I’m getting used to it. Already the hills are greening and though I know winter is not over, maybe we’re through the worst of it.

  Not long ago, this situation would terrify me. The men now have access to potentially deadly weapons—hammers, saws, and crowbars. They could kill me and escape. Back in the kitchen I glance at the highest shelf, where I keep the gun, but I don’t get it down.

  Moments later, there’s the sound of a motor. It must be the army guards that always transport the POWs, but when the brown military vehicle bumps across the bridge, there’s only one sentry. He’s a thin man with his helmet pulled low. He gets out slowly and salutes, then he smiles a familiar crooked smile.

  Light

  Dan hugs me so hard his plaster cast digs into my back, and the young Germans laugh as they watch from the barn. “Hurrah!” they call. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  “But how? How can you be here?”

  He puts a finger to my lips. “Let me be sure the boys have everything they need and then I’ll explain. Do you have food? They’ll need a midday meal. I told Ada Mullins not to call because I wanted to surprise you.”

  Quickly, he explains in German where to put the branches and trunk of the willow tree and where to pile the scrap lumber from the porch, then he comes inside. “Tea?” I ask. “We’re out of coffee and I didn’t get a new ration card in the mail.”

  “Tea’s fine.” While I’m in the kitchen he builds up the fire, then we sit down on the sofa, shoulders touching.

  “How did this happen? Is it just temporary, or are you free?”

  “Not exactly free.” He touches my neck, then smells my hair. “I’ve missed you . . .” Then he tells the story. “You knew Reverend Miller and the sheriff came to see me a
t the prison?”

  “I knew they were planning on it, I didn’t know when.”

  “Well, a few days ago, Hardman, the Reverend Miller, and Billy Blaze showed up at Moundsville. They had it all planned, a three-prong attack, performed with military precision. The pastor sat at my bedside in the infirmary and told me how the farm work, being a mother, and worry were seriously grinding you down.

  “He described how your knee was hurting again and how another storm had damaged the house. He convinced me that the moral thing, in this case, was to compromise my beliefs and sign myself out as a conscientious objector willing to do public service. He even brought the registration forms required by the draft board.

  “Meanwhile, Sheriff Hardman and Bill Blaze met with the warden and made a pitch that I be transferred back home to be assigned as a translator at the White Rock Prisoner of War Camp. Billy Blaze threatened that he’d write an exposé about the unsafe conditions at the Moundsville Prison if the warden refused.”

  “That’s all it took?”

  “Not quite. We didn’t want to tell you anything until Mr. Linkous met with Judge Milbank to be sure he’d change my sentence. I now have one year of public service at the POW camp.”

  There’s a crash as the men saw through the big branch and it falls the rest of the way through the porch. Dan runs outside to be sure everything’s okay and I can hear him talk to the men in German again. They answer in German and go back to work.

  “Except for the porch, the place looks fine,” he says when he returns. “Kids at school with Mrs. Miller?”

  “It’s their first day back after winter break. They’ll be so excited you’re home. We prayed for you every day. How long can you be here?”

  “Just eight hours this time, and then maybe tomorrow if the men don’t finish by five . . . I prayed for you too and for the kids and for the men at war on both sides. I prayed for my fellow jailbirds. There is so much misery in the prison, Patience.”

  Another crash breaks our conversation. “Are you sure they’re okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah, they seem to know what they’re doing, but I’ll check on them again, then let’s go up the mountain, where it’s quieter.”

  “It’s gray and cold out there.”

  “Not so bad . . . We can take a quilt and snuggle.” He grins and raises his eyebrows like a comedian.

  “Daniel! With German soldiers just yards away?”

  “I can watch them at a distance and they’ll call if they need anything.” He looks at the clock on the mantel. “We have two hours before the noon meal.”

  While Dan goes outside to supervise again, I quickly check the pantry to see what sort of food I can rustle up. I have a few cans of pork and beans and some freshly baked bread that will go with the homemade butter and cheese. I can get canned pickles and canned peaches out of the cellar . . . but nothing for dessert. Then I remember the decorated Christmas cookies Mrs. Miller gave me. There are still a few dozen left in the tin.

  “Ready?” Dan calls, standing out in the yard. I grab my old farm coat and the flying goose quilt and hurry out to him.

  “You’re too thin,” I say, looking up at Dan. He’s wearing a blue denim shirt and a denim jacket, the same as the prisoners, but he has two white armbands. The one on the left says TRANSLATOR. The one on the right says GUARD.

  “Don’t they feed you in prison?” We hold hands as we take the path to the upper pasture, and I only ask him to slow down one time.

  “Yeah. Three meals a day, but sometimes they were so bad, I couldn’t eat them. Ronald, my roommate, got the leftovers.”

  “Ronald the rat?” I repeat.

  Daniel nods, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me. “Yeah, I gave him to Bones when I left. . . . I’m sorry I put you through so much, Patience. I didn’t know how hard it would be.” We kiss again.

  “I like it out here,” Dan says, spreading the quilt on the flat rock we sat on so many times before. Below, us the Germans work diligently. One fellow takes a break, wipes his face with a bandanna, and looks up at us. “Woman Boss!” he yells, and salutes.

  “I greet you as a friend,” I yell back. Then, sitting next to Dan, I say what I’ve been thinking ever since he told me how he was released. “I hope signing the CO form and the draft registration doesn’t weigh on your conscience. . . .”

  “No. Now that I’m out, I see that I can do more good here. I’m teaching the POWs English and trying to get their workforce organized. My goal is for the young Germans to see we’re more alike than we’re different; same with the locals. Getting to know each other might make it harder to kill each other. We have only one world and we’re in this together.”

  “I’m so tired of hate,” I confess. “Hating the Germans. Hating the Japanese. Sometimes even hating you. Carrying it around wears me out.”

  “Drop the hate, Patience . . . It’s our job to be happy. I learned that in prison. Every stinking day I was there, I tried to remember . . . It’s our job to be happy and to love.”

  The echo of the German men singing rings off the mountain and the earth smells like wet dirt and growing things. Suddenly the clouds part and a golden shaft illuminates the river, a ribbon of light that winds through the valley.

  “It’s strange,” I say, taking Dan’s hand. “The drums of war still roar, but even in these dark times, the Hope is still here.”

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my husband, Tom Harman, and my friends and family for supporting and encouraging my writing.

  A book is not a solitary effort and I appreciate all who have helped me. Foremost would be Lucia Macro, my editor at William Morrow (and her wonderful staff), and my wise agent, Elisabeth Weed.

  And now a note to my readers. Life is not easy. I’ve said this before, but every day, I get a note from someone telling me how much they like my books, and this keeps me going.

  I hope I encourage you too.

  This is our purpose, to love, to lift up, to inspire each other.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Patricia Harman

  About the Book

  * * *

  Q&A with Patricia Harman

  Reading Group Discussion Guide

  Historical Photographs

  About the Author

  Meet Patricia Harman

  PATRICIA HARMAN, CNM, got her start as a lay midwife on rural communes and went on to become a nurse-midwife on the faculties of Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University, and West Virginia University. She lives near Morgantown, West Virginia, has three sons, and is the author of two acclaimed memoirs. Her first novel, The Midwife of Hope River, was successful around the world.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  About the Book

  Q&A with Patricia Harman

  Q: It’s been a while since we’ve visited Hope River. What drew you back to Patience, her town, and her friends? Were there any challenges specific to setting the book on the home front during World War II?

  A: As the author of the Hope River novels, I have come to love and admire the characters in the books. I missed them and wanted to find out what they would be up to in a time of upheaval, conflict, and worldwide turmoil. In my stories, I like to look at big events and imagine how they’d affect ordinary people on the local level. The challenge, as always, in writing historical fiction is doing the extensive research that goes with it, but I don’t mind because I learn so much.

  Q: Daniel is a conscientious objector. We haven’t gotten many stories of C.O.s during World War II. Perhaps we think of objectors as more of a Vietnam War phenomenon. Daniel is actually patriotic, in that he fought in World War I and he does believe in his country, but he just doesn’t believe in fighting another war. Can you talk a bit about the situation with conscientious objectors during WWII and what they faced?

  My husband and many of my men friends were conscie
ntious objectors during the war in Vietnam. Some served time in prison for their beliefs; a few went to Canada. I was a pacifist in those days too and we had the honor of meeting many of the older men from the War Resisters League, the Committee for Non-Violent Action, and Peacemakers who, like Daniel Hester, refused to fight in WWII. Their courage and dedication were so profound it humbled me.

  Q: Patience is still a midwife, but the role of the medical community in childbirth changes substantially after the Great Depression. Why do you think women were so quick to hand their care over to the primarily male doctors at that time?

  A: There were a number of reasons that women in the 1940s began to give birth in the hospital with male physicians. First, during the postwar period, roads improved in rural areas and hospitals became more accessible.

  Women were convinced that hospital births were safer. Prominent physicians, like Dr. Joseph DeLee, the author of the most important obstetric textbook at the time, described childbirth as a pathologic process that damaged both mothers and infants. Because of that view, he said, only physicians should be allowed to deliver babies and the midwife should be abolished.

  Women wanted to seem modern and informed. They heard about twilight sleep and knew they could only get it at the hospital. Twilight sleep was an amnesiac that gave laboring women the illusion of short painless labors, but the truth was they just couldn’t remember a thing. They suffered tremendously and were often strapped down because they were uncontrollable. They still had pain and were treated like wild animals.

  Finally, the American Medical Association actually did a publicity campaign to discredit midwives, portraying them as dirty, out of date, and untrained. It wasn’t until British obstetrician Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s book Childbirth Without Fear came out in 1942 that women began to question what they’d been told about the process of childbirth and began to take back control of the experience and look for providers who would support them. Sometimes they found a midwife, sometimes a doctor, but they demanded to be treated with respect.