The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  Turnbull Mountain came alive now, the night silence broken. She heard the call of men as the late shift came down off the trail. The miners had made it through another night and would be wanting their glass of beer. Gracy was used to seeing men drunk after shift, even when that shift ended at sunrise. From far away came the muffled sound of a dynamite charge and the rhythmic thumping of a stamp mill.

  She watched the red streaks in the sky fade to magenta and amethyst and thought again about the young family in Mayflower Gulch, thanking God the birth had been a good one. Over the years, Gracy had watched too many women die. She thought then of the woman on Potato Mountain who had given birth to her fourth early in the summer. She had three others who were still toddlers at her feet. The birthing had gone well. Gracy had tied the cord and handed the baby to the mother, then gone to call the father. When the two returned, the mother was dead. Had the woman’s heart given out or had Gracy done something wrong? she wondered. She wished she could explain it to the husband, who now had four little ones to care for. But she didn’t know what had happened. That death and all the others over the years had begun to weigh her down, made her wonder if it was time she stopped delivering babies.

  Gracy shook away the thoughts of death as she climbed back into the buggy and flicked the reins. “Time to get home, old horse,” she told Buddy, going downslope now. Gracy was tired. Her shoulders hurt, and she hoped Daniel would rub them for her. His fingers were strong, and he would knead her back the way she kneaded bread dough, pushing out the kinks. He’d fix her tea and toast, too, and then she’d put on her nightdress and sleep. Gracy was grateful she could almost always sleep. Later, she might get out her scraps and piece a quilt for the newborn baby, maybe ask one of the women in the sewing group to join her, for there was nothing a woman liked more than making a baby quilt.

  As she rode through Swandyke with its buildings scattered along feather-stitched streets, Gracy nodded at each person she passed. She didn’t recognize some of them, but she was aware that everybody knew her, so she didn’t want to offend. The horse knew where to go, and without Gracy’s prodding, Buddy made his way to the livery stable. He’d been standing in the cold all night and deserved his rest, too, Gracy thought, as she stopped the buggy inside the stable. She was glad the hostler was there. He would unhitch the wagon and feed Buddy for her.

  Gracy gathered the birthing rags and the bag she always carried with her and got down from the buggy. “Hello, Earl, I’m back,” she called to the stable boy. “Buddy could use a good rubdown if you’ve the time.”

  Earl was in conversation with three men, but they stopped talking when Gracy spoke. The men walked toward her.

  “These fellows want to see you, missus,” Earl said.

  Gracy searched her mind. She couldn’t recall any babies due just then. But there were always women back in the gulches who didn’t call for her until the pains were on them. Well, it couldn’t be helped. Worn out as she was, she would go to them. God always gave her strength, although for how much longer, she didn’t know. She tired more easily now, and she seemed to dwell more on the hardships of birthings, the pain, the deaths. Those were other reasons she’d begun to think her time as a midwife might be over. Perhaps it was time for someone else to birth the babies, although there was no other midwife in Swandyke. She was the last one. She hadn’t mentioned quitting to Daniel yet, but it was on her mind.

  She waited for the men to reach her, and then she frowned. She knew them, and none was in need of her services. In fact two of them, the undertaker and the doctor, would have let their wives die before they called for her. She couldn’t imagine what they wanted.

  “Missus Brookens,” the third man said. She liked him better than the other two, liked him almost as much as she did Daniel. He was the sheriff, John Miller.

  Gracy frowned at the “missus.” “Why so formal, John?” she asked. She glanced at the two men behind him, angry men who would dance on her grave, and wondered if mischief were afoot.

  When the sheriff did not answer but only cleared his throat and looked around him, Gracy said, “Be quick about it. I’ve just attended a birthing in Mayflower Gulch and need my sleep.”

  “The baby live, did it?” the undertaker snarled.

  Gracy gave a slight nod.

  “Well, ain’t it the lucky one.”

  “Ignorance,” the doctor added. “Midwifery’s naught but ignorance and superstition, if you ask me.”

  Gracy did not reply to the insults. She wasn’t surprised by them. Instead, she asked, “John?”

  “I don’t like it, don’t like it a bit, waiting for you like this, like you was a scoundrel, but it can’t be helped.”

  “What can’t be helped?”

  He kicked at the straw on the floor of the stable and shook his head. Then he looked square at Gracy. “I got to arrest you for murder, Gracy.”

  “Murder?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  Gracy shook her head. What the sheriff said made no sense. “What are you talking about, John? That baby was breathing as much as you or me when I left him a couple of hours ago. He’s no more dead than … them.” She nodded her head at the undertaker and the doctor.

  “I’m not talking about that one. It’s the Halleck baby, the boy born four days ago. Jonas Halleck brought him to the undertaker last night.”

  Gracy stood frozen a moment, grasping the buggy wheel to steady herself. How could that baby be dead? He was fine when she left him the day after he was born. Had she done something wrong, missed a problem she ought to have seen? Was the death her fault? She was more aware than anyone that she was not infallible. Babies had died before, and she feared sometimes that it was because she didn’t know enough to save them. A baby she had delivered in Nevada had seemed all right, but an hour after she left him, he was dead. He’d turned blue and died, the mother had said. Gracy’d always wondered if she had stayed, if she hadn’t been anxious to get home before a blizzard obscured the trail, could she have saved the child?

  She hadn’t delivered the Halleck baby but had been sent for a day later when the infant began choking. Jonas Halleck himself had acted as midwife. He told Gracy the baby had come too quickly, that there hadn’t been time to send for her. He was an educated man, wealthy by Swandyke standards, and his wife had come from quality. People in Swandyke respected him.

  Still, Gracy had never liked him much. Daniel had worked at Mr. Halleck’s Holy Cross Mine that last winter and had been let go, told there was no need for him anymore. Mr. Halleck had accused Daniel of high-grading, but that wasn’t the reason. Daniel had complained about shoddy materials used in the mine and a buildup of gas.

  “I expect he named it the Holy Cross because he thinks he’s Jesus Christ hisself,” Daniel had said.

  Gracy hadn’t thought about all that when she’d learned the baby was in distress. She’d rushed to the Halleck house and been shocked at the sight of the baby. He was struggling to breathe. It was good she’d come, because there was mucous in the infant’s mouth and he was choking. But Gracy had cleared it, and the baby was healthy when she left him. Mr. Halleck had done a poor job of tying the baby’s cord, so she’d retied it with her stout linen thread. She’d checked the boy over, looked into his eyes, listened to his heart, and pronounced him as fine as if she’d delivered him herself. “I guess you could take my job from me if you’d a mind to do it,” she joked. But none of them laughed, not Mr. Halleck, his wife, Edna, nor the daughter, Josie.

  And then Mr. Halleck had said Gracy was not to tell anyone about the baby, that he had grand plans to announce the birth himself. It had been a strange request, but then everything about the birth was off.

  Edna had retired from society weeks before, claiming ill health, and Josie had stayed at home to care for her. Nobody had suspected Edna was pregnant, but then some women were like that. Probably Edna, being highborn, considered it unseemly to be in public once her pregnancy showed. That was what Jonas Halleck said, at any rate.<
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  Now, Gracy shook her head. In fact, her whole body shook. There was no way she could have hurt an infant. “That baby was breathing fine when I left him, but sometimes it happens, they just die. I don’t know the reason.” It had always bothered her that God would reach down and snatch away a life. She didn’t understand it. “Maybe it was pneumonia,” she said. “It’s common enough in the high country.”

  “It was not pneumonia,” the doctor snarled.

  “No. Then it was just God’s will.”

  “Not that, either,” the doctor said.

  Gracy turned to observe him—Richard Erickson, Little Dickie, people had called him when he was young. He was a small man and not just in stature. He’d gone away to medical school, then returned to Swandyke just that summer, full of himself and his medical knowledge. He’d told the women they ought to have a doctor attend their birthings, that Gracy was no better than a witch with her herbs and her salves and all her soothing talk. But the women ignored him, and he resented that. The mothers had gone to Gracy for years, and they didn’t see a need for a man with all his fancy learning. His shiny metal instruments scared them. Gracy could have worked with the doctor. There were times when Gracy would have welcomed a trained physician, times when the baby was turned or too big to pass through the birth canal. Or when there was something wrong with the infant. She lacked knowledge a doctor might have. But Little Dickie had made it clear that if the women went to Gracy, they shouldn’t bother him if anything went wrong. Gracy wondered then if the young doctor resented that Mr. Halleck had sent for her instead of him.

  “I’m sorry for the death, but babies just die sometimes. It isn’t murder.”

  “Oh, it was murder, all right. I can tell you that,” the doctor said. He started to continue, but the sheriff interrupted.

  “Gracy, that baby was strangled,” John said. “Jonas Halleck says you did it.”

  Two

  “Strangled?” Gracy gasped, staring at the sheriff. She felt faint and took a deep breath to calm her body, which was flushed. “How can that be? Are you sure?” Heartsick, she grasped the buggy to steady herself. How could anyone think she had killed a baby, had done it on purpose? The idea sickened her.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know?” the doctor asked. He raised his shoulders a little, trying to look taller, but he didn’t succeed.

  Gracy drew back at his scorn. Lord knew the town needed a doctor, had for two years, ever since the old one died. But did it need this one?

  They’d had an understanding, the midwife and the old doctor. Gracy took care of childbirth; he was in charge of the town’s health. Oh, she helped him when there was a mine accident, made the rounds of the cabins with him during the diphtheria outbreak, just as she called on him when there were complications with a birth or when something was wrong with a baby. But they knew their boundaries. Gracy wouldn’t do surgery or prescribe medicines. She left cancer and broken bones and worn-out hearts to the doctor, just as he left the childbirth bed to her. He got nervous waiting around for a baby to be born, he’d said. He didn’t have the patience to sit through the hours of labor and was grateful she took charge of all that. And he admitted the women were more comfortable with Gracy than with him.

  But Little Dickie—Dr. Erickson, he’d insisted she call him, although he still called her Gracy—he’d said midwifery was based on superstition and old wives’ tales. And he’d told Gracy she had no business taking care of sore throats and chilblains and fevers after the old doctor left. “There was nobody else they could go to. You’d expect me to let those folks die?” she asked the young doctor. She could have harmed them more than she’d helped, he replied, and Gracy scoffed, “But I didn’t.” She knew he resented the way sick folks still came to her with their ailments, even though she gently sent them to the new doctor. Folks didn’t like him and complained he had no sympathy in him. He chided them and talked in medical terms they didn’t understand. And then he charged them money and asked for payment right then. And he wouldn’t take barter.

  So she wasn’t surprised that Little Dickie wanted to blame her for something. But murder? Gracy shook her head to show the outrageousness of it.

  The sheriff glanced around the stable as if not wanting to confront Gracy. But finally, he raised his head and stared directly at her. “It was murder, all right. Strangled he was. There was a furrow around his neck and even a bit of the cord stuck to it.”

  “Could it have been an accident?” Gracy asked. Please, God, she thought. Let it be an accident.

  “Not likely.” The sheriff shook his head.

  The undertaker, Coy Chaney, sneered. “Thought I wouldn’t notice, did you? Thought when I put that little thing in a coffin, I wouldn’t take a look at it. There it was, plain as day, a ring like ruby silver around its neck.” The man glared at her.

  Gracy blanched under Coy’s gaze although she wasn’t surprised the undertaker was against her, too. He’d been biding his time, waiting to get even, because he blamed her for the death of his daughter. But it was the man’s own fault the little one had been born dead. Coy had gone to town for Gracy when his wife went into labor but stopped at a saloon to brag a little and let the boys buy him a drink. And then another. He’d gotten so drunk that he’d forgotten to fetch her. So it wasn’t until the next day that one of his boys came to the cabin for Gracy. And by the time Gracy reached the Chaney house, the woman was all but senseless, and the baby was dead in her womb. It was another of those births that haunted Gracy, because the baby could have lived. The mother had lived, however, but only because of Gracy’s care.

  Coy didn’t credit her for that, and he wouldn’t take the blame for the baby’s death. He wasn’t that kind of man. Instead, he pointed his finger at Gracy. He claimed he’d awakened her before stopping at the saloon and told her to go to his wife. Gracy’d gone back to sleep, he said, had slept while his poor missus was moaning in pain in her bed, scaring the life out of their four little boys. Coy might not have been so angry if the baby had been another boy, but this one was a girl, and he’d never have another. The childbirth had left his wife unable to bear again. Folks didn’t believe what he said about Gracy, not after Daniel let it be known that the undertaker had never come for her. But Coy stuck to his story, and after a time, Gracy thought he’d begun to believe it. And his wife, too.

  “Little Dickie.” The sheriff cleared his throat and started again. “That is, Dr. Erickson examined the body. He said there’s no doubt the boy was strangled. It might have looked like an accident if the thread fibers hadn’t been on his neck.”

  “A linen cord,” the doctor added, “the very cord a Swandyke midwife uses.” He pronounced “midwife” with distaste.

  Gracy shook her head, still trying to accept that the baby was dead. “I doubt the cord I use is thick enough to choke a person.”

  “Then you must have wrapped it around his neck two or three times. Maybe more.”

  “He was alive when I left.” She had checked him well, checked him twice over, in fact, then had pressed him against her chest, had felt his heart beat against her own.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “So you say.”

  “And who’s to say otherwise?”

  “Jonas Halleck,” Coy interjected, a sneer on his face. “And his wife and daughter.”

  Gracy stared at the man, incredulous. How could they say such a thing? Gracy felt a heaviness in her stomach almost as if she had swallowed a stone.

  John stepped in then. “Jonas Halleck says you strangled that baby, Gracy, says you turned your back to him, but he was in the room. The baby was dead when he picked it up after you left. That’s a powerful charge from a man like Mr. Halleck.”

  Gracy shook her head back and forth, as if to clear her mind of what she’d just heard. She was tired, more tired than she’d ever been, not from the exhaustion that came from being up all night with a woman in labor but a kind of senseless fatigue that was the result of incomprehension. “But why would I do th
at?” she asked. Why indeed?

  “Meanness,” Coy told her. “He fired your husband last winter, told him he was a useless old man who couldn’t pull his weight, accused him of high-grading.”

  Gracy tensed at the memory. Mr. Halleck had had no right to say such a thing. Daniel had never stolen high-grade ore in his life. The charge had been unfair—and hurtful, because after Mr. Halleck spread it around that Daniel had high-graded, the other mines wouldn’t hire him. But he hadn’t high-graded. He’d only complained about conditions in the mine.

  Daniel had looked for different work, but the only job he’d been offered was sweeping out the Nugget saloon. Gracy had been mad enough to chew nails. Daniel being treated like that was another reason she’d begun thinking it might be time to give up her midwifery. It wouldn’t do for her to have her work when Daniel was at home doing odd jobs all winter. She could tell people she’d decided to call it deep enough. That was what the miners said when they quit a job. Together, they’d find a way to earn their living.

  The hostler had unhitched Buddy but was hovering around, waiting for them to leave so that he could spread the gossip. He’d left the buggy where it was, and Gracy leaned against the wheel, fearing her legs would give out. “I didn’t do it, John,” she told the sheriff. “A layoff isn’t a reason to murder a child. You know yourself I wouldn’t hurt a baby. My work is about giving life, not taking it.”

  Coy started to interrupt, but the sheriff held up his hand. “I guess that’s up to a jury, Gracy.”

  Gracy ran her hand up and down a wheel spoke. “That baby was born on Monday. If I killed it the next day, why did they wait until last night—two days later—to bring it to the undertaker?”

  The sheriff nodded slowly. “I never thought of that. Why’s that, Coy?” he asked.