The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  Gracy nodded and peered at the liquid in her cup. Better to keep everything about that baby secret, she thought. If folks knew Josie was the mother, they’d be awful interested in the father. Josie didn’t need that speculation.

  “I think I told you he buried that baby back behind his house, laid it in a dynamite box and dropped it in a hole in the ground,” John continued. “He said Mrs. Halleck made him dig it up, maybe the only time she ever stood up to him. She said God would punish them if that baby wasn’t buried in sacred ground, said she was going to get a preacher whether Halleck liked it or not. Maybe Halleck figured he would go to hell if he left the baby there. Old Halleck’s a Bible-thumper, too.”

  Gracy raised her coffee cup to her lips and drank. The cold liquid made her feel better. She liked a cup of tea, particularly when she was tired. But coffee, now that was a drink to make the blood course through your arms and legs. She wished she had a bit of cream to add to it. They’d kept a cow in Virginia City for a time, but Swandyke was too high up for a cow, too cold. Besides, who would milk it if Daniel was away on one of his prospecting trips and Gracy got called out for a day or two? Still, she missed pouring cream off a jar of milk and spooning it into her coffee, missed churning her own butter, too. She had to buy it at the mercantile, and that place charged jewelry rates. John nudged the sugar bowl toward her, but Gracy shook her head. Sugar ruined a good cup of coffee. Nonetheless, she picked up her spoon and stirred the unsugared liquid, thinking.

  After a time, Gracy set the spoon in the saucer and looked up at John. “Edna is a Bible woman, and it would sit hard with her if that baby didn’t have a Christian burial. Most likely, she taught Josie about the Bible, and the girl would have wanted a proper service for the child, too. The two of them must have insisted, and maybe Mr. Halleck was afraid somebody would find that grave, and that would be worse than admitting there’d been a baby.”

  John thought that over. “Mr. Halleck isn’t a man to take orders from a woman, much less his wife, and you said she was beat down. I imagine he can thump her pretty good, the girl, too.”

  Outside came the sound of tin cans rattling again. Maybe Daniel had come home and fallen into the pile. He was none too steady when he drank. And he wouldn’t be holding his liquor well, because it had been a long time since he’d been on a bender. Gracy went to the door and opened it, but the night was black, and there was no sign of Daniel, no sounds of a dog barking. The bear again, she told John, or maybe the wind had blown hard enough to rattle the cans. Then she saw a shape in the dark, a man, and she thought some miner must have been drunk and fallen into the can pile. She stood a minute to let the cold rid her of the tiredness before she closed the door and went back to the table. “I don’t know where Daniel’s got to.”

  “I’ll see to him when I leave,” John offered.

  “I’d be grateful.” She thought back to what the two had been talking about. “There are times when a woman will stand up to the worst kind of beating. Maybe Edna threatened to take the baby to town herself if Mr. Halleck wouldn’t do it. And Mr. Halleck was afraid Coy would see the boy had been strangled and blame him. So he came up with the story about me. But I don’t understand why anybody would think I’m the guilty one.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Gracy had been staring into her coffee cup, and now she looked up quickly. “No I don’t. How can you ask it?”

  For a moment, John studied the oilcloth. Then he stood and walked around the room, stopping at the fireplace where he stared into the coals. “Here’s what I think, Gracy. Like I said before, if you get charged by a judge, it ought to be manslaughter. I don’t suppose you know about the law, do you?”

  Gracy shook her head.

  “If you kill somebody in a fit of passion, it’s not murder; it’s manslaughter.”

  “Passion? What passion?”

  “As I see it, you could have been so angry at Mr. Halleck for what he did to Daniel, charging him with high-grading and keeping him from working in any of the mines, that you wanted to get back at him. You didn’t plan it. You just acted, wrapped a cord around the baby’s neck to strangle it.”

  “But that’s not what happened,” Gracy protested. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Of course I believe you. But I know you’ve helped a girl or two who didn’t want to be pregnant. Some say that’s murder, too. You performed an abortion, maybe more than one.”

  “I won’t say I did, and I won’t say I didn’t. But even if I did, it’s a different thing. That’s not a living baby.” She nodded to emphasize the point. “I will tell you I’ve sent girls to that doctor in Central City who advertises she specializes in diseases peculiar to women.” She looked at John fiercely. “Remember Ruth Bond that froze to death right outside her cabin? Her death was no accident. She was pregnant. That’s why I can’t slam the door on a girl who doesn’t want her baby.”

  John turned from the fire and stared at Gracy, startled. “I thought Ruth missed the trail, got confused with all the snow swirling around. I remember I told you it was a shame the way she died no more than five or ten feet from her own door.”

  “She was carrying a baby, and it wasn’t her husband’s. Remember, he’d been in prison for a year or more? She told me she’d been raped by a miner from the Tiger, and I believed her. She’d been beat bad, and when I examined her after that, I could see she was tore up. She knew there was a baby started and asked me to get rid of it, and I wish I’d done it.” Ruth’s death was another that made Gracy feel guilty, that added to the load of remorse she carried.

  She watched John leave the fireplace and walk around the room again, stopping to pull back the curtain and stare out into the blackness. “John, that manslaughter idea you came up with, me killing the baby, is that what you think happened?”

  “I told you I didn’t,” John said. “But I expect a prosecutor will say that at the hearing. Here’s what’ll happen, Gracy. First there will be a hearing with a judge and a prosecutor to determine if you’re to be charged. The judge is a circuit rider, going from town to town, and he’ll be in Swandyke week after next. So that’s when the hearing will be held. The prosecutor presents evidence, but you’re not allowed to open your mouth at the hearing. If the judge finds there’s enough evidence to charge you, he’ll set the trial for the next time he’s here, a month or so from now. That’s when you’ll have a chance to defend yourself.”

  Gracy waved her hand as if to dismiss the idea. “No matter what I thought of Mr. Halleck, I wouldn’t kill the boy, because he’s a child of God. You ought to know that.”

  John opened his mouth to say something, but just then, there was a pounding on the door. “That must be Daniel,” he said.

  “No, why would Daniel knock?” Gracy asked, and went to the door, opening it to find a man standing there, rain dripping off him. “Ben sent me for the Sagehen,” he said.

  Gracy frowned, because she couldn’t see the man’s face in the dark and didn’t know who he was.

  “I’m Davy Eastlow. Ben Boyce’s wife, Esther, she’s having her baby. Best you follow me.”

  Now Gracy knew the man. She smiled. “I’ll just be a minute. Let me get my bag. John, thanks for the company,” she said, as if the sheriff had come on a social call. Gracy hummed a little, gathering the clean cloths she would need and putting them into her bag. She scribbled a note to Daniel, then reached for her cloak, which was hanging on a peg. She felt a familiar thrill. A baby coming, and someone needed the Sagehen. The conversation with John seemed to slide off her, and she thought of the birth of a Boyce baby instead of the death of the Halleck infant. She grabbed her bag and started for the door, stopping to smooth Daniel’s pillow on the bed. He’d be coming home tired, maybe drunk, and would be wanting her there. She wished he wouldn’t have to sleep alone that night.

  Six

  All the tiredness left Gracy as she scurried down the trail to the stable, Davy Eastlow leading his horse a few steps behind her, the sheriff watc
hing from the doorway, shaking his head but making no move to stop her.

  There was nothing like a child to be born on a night that was fresh with rain, stars shining now, to lift Gracy’s spirits. She would think about the Halleck baby later. Right now, a woman needed her. Gracy was lighthearted, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She wondered how many more times she would feel this happiness. But she wouldn’t think about quitting now, not when there was a baby waiting to be born.

  “You want to ride my horse?” Davy called. Without turning, Gracy waved him off. Stepping fast, she could walk to the stable in less time than it would take her to mount the horse and fasten her bag to the saddle. “Earl, I’ll be needing my buggy,” she called to the stable boy. She’d told him that hundreds of times, and the boy knew to hurry. He led Buddy out of the stall and hitched him to the buggy, then helped Gracy climb in. Davy tied his horse to the back of the vehicle and sat in the seat beside her, reaching for the reins. Gracy batted aside his hands and said she would drive. The horse wouldn’t respond to anyone but her, she said, which wasn’t altogether true. But they’d go faster, surer, if she handled the reins.

  “We’re going to Mayflower Gulch,” he told her, and Gracy smiled to think there were two births in two days in the same part of the Tenmile. Maybe the two babies would grow up to be friends. Perhaps if this one was a girl, she might even marry the boy who was a single day older. Maybe she would be like Emma, knowing about herbs. The midwife could teach her healing, and one day she would follow in Gracy’s footsteps. The old woman smiled at the possibilities, then shook her head. What foolishness. She was getting soft. Still, they were nice thoughts.

  “When did she start her labor?” Gracy asked. She wished she could remember Mrs. Boyce’s name.

  “Esther,” Davy said, as if reading her mind. “Esther just said to get the Sagehen. I don’t know about such.”

  Of course he didn’t, Gracy thought. An old bachelor like that. How would he know? Still, he lived with the Boyces.

  Gracy remembered the scandal of it. Ben Boyce and Davy Eastlow were already in Swandyke when Gracy and Daniel moved there. The two men weren’t young then, maybe forty. They trapped in Mayflower Gulch, beaver and fox and weasel, built a cabin in an aspen grove, the trees so thick you could hardly walk through them. Gracy had stopped there once with Daniel, and had found it clean and neat as her pie safe. She hadn’t expected that from a pair of old bachelors. The two men had scurried around their cabin, proud to have guests. Ben had ground the beans for coffee, while Davy put on the water. Then they’d taken a black currant pie from the window, a pie still warm from the stove, and cut it into four pieces. Gathered the currants themselves, they’d said, and Gracy marveled that two bachelors would have the patience to pick enough tiny berries for a pie. It had been a good pie, too, as good as if Gracy had made it herself, and she had said so.

  “It’s Davy does the cooking. See there, we got a cookstove,” Ben had said. “He keeps up the house, too. I tend the garden and hunt. We eat pretty good.”

  When she left, Gracy had seen the garden, the lettuce, the rows of turnips and radishes. How did Ben keep the wild animals from the produce? she wondered. She was lucky if the deer and the rabbits left enough of her own garden behind for a meal or two.

  “Those boys might as well be married,” Daniel had said.

  “They get along better than most couples we know.” Gracy had agreed.

  But then, last fall, Ben had come home with Esther, him old enough to be her father. There had been talk about where he’d gotten her. The postmaster said Ben had received an awful lot of letters from back East, and he reckoned Esther was a mail-order bride. Another speculated that Ben had gone to Denver and gotten drunk and woken up to find himself married. But most agreed Esther had worked in a dance hall over in Kokomo. Ben never said, nor Davy either. It was Daniel’s theory Ben had baited her with a fox skin red as the sunset, red as Davy’s hair, loaded her onto a sled warm with wolverine pelts and taken her to Mayflower Gulch.

  There was talk about Davy, too, some saying he should move on, give the couple a chance. But the cabin was half his, the trapping, too. The men had been together too long to be separated. “She’ll be to hell and gone before she parts them,” Daniel had predicted. Others agreed. Give her a year, they said, maybe less. She wouldn’t last out the winter, snowed in with two old men, her young like she was, pretty as candlelight. She’d go back where she’d come from once the thaw came. But she hadn’t. Gracy had seen her in town and knew the reason. You couldn’t go back to a dance hall with a swollen belly like that.

  “You’re the Sagehen,” Esther had said. “I’ll send for you when my time comes.”

  “I ought to check you now, make sure everything’s all right,” Gracy had told her.

  “That’s silly. What could be wrong? It’s only a baby.” She’d smiled the dreamy smile of first mothers. “I hope my time’s in midsummer when the flowers are blooming. If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Rose for the wild roses around the cabin. If it’s a boy, well, I guess he’ll have his father’s name. But I’m hoping for a girl. There’s already too many males in that place.” Gracy had met her in the mercantile where the girl was buying bullets. “Ben’s taught me to shoot,” she said in explanation. “He says I’m a natural-born at it, could shoot a wildcat through the eye.”

  “It’s a skill to have,” Gracy replied.

  “I help him trap,” she added, lowering her eyes as if she’d been caught bragging. “But I’d rather shoot an animal than trap it. Being caught in a trap’s a hard way to go. In a trap, you’d know you was dying, and you’d lie there thinking about it, watching your blood flow out. I wouldn’t want to go to my eternal jubilee that way.”

  Now as Gracy sat beside Davy in the buggy, she asked about Esther. “Does she cook?” she asked.

  “She’ll do,” Davy replied.

  “She said she hunts.”

  “She did, but it’s not a woman’s place. Ben takes care of the hunting.”

  Gracy wondered what Esther did in that cabin all day long. “I expect she’s a breath of fresh air. When I met her in town once, she talked about the wild roses.”

  Davy didn’t reply, and they rode in silence under the wet firs. Gracy could abide a silence, but she was curious. Of course, what was between the three of them wasn’t any of her business, but that didn’t stop her “She’s a pretty girl. Sweet, too, it seems. I met her only once, so I can’t say I know her.”

  Davy turned to the side and looked at the night.

  The moon was out, and Gracy was glad because that made it easier to see the trail. If Davy didn’t want to talk, that was all right with her.

  “They say you murdered a baby,” he said abruptly, turning back to Gracy.

  Gracy took a deep breath as the image of Josie’s baby came back to her. “Yes, they say that, but I didn’t kill the baby.” When Davy didn’t reply, Gracy added, “If it makes a difference, I’ll turn around. You can fetch the doctor.”

  “I never had any use for doctors,” Davy said. “Besides, Esther don’t want him, says he thinks he’s too good for her, the way he looks down his nose at her, like she’s not worth a continental. He’s got no call to treat her like that. It ain’t his business where Esther come from…” Davy’s voice trailed off. “No, she won’t want him. She said to fetch you, even though I told her what’s said in town about you murdering a baby and all. I heard it this morning when I went to the mercantile to buy her a can of peaches. She had a craving for them. I didn’t know I’d be back in Swandyke so soon again. She’d said the baby weren’t due yet.”

  Davy shut up then, as if he’d talked himself out. He didn’t speak again until he pointed to a turnoff and said, “Go left there and stop where the trail starts up. We’ll have to walk because there’s no room between the trees for the buggy. Esther wanted to make a road to the house, but me and Ben wouldn’t allow it. We don’t want company. It ain’t far now.” He got out of the b
uggy and untied his horse. Gracy took her bag and followed.

  She saw the cabin in the moonlight shining through the aspen trunks that always reminded her of bones, smoke curling out of the chimney, as pretty a sight as any she ever saw. A smaller replica of the cabin, new-built, stood a few rods away. That must be where Davy lived now, Gracy thought. Of course, it wouldn’t be right, the three of them living in a one-room cabin. She wondered if Davy resented having to leave. But that wasn’t her business, either, and she put thoughts of the odd trio out of her mind as she scurried to the dwelling.

  Davy was ahead of her and he flung open the door. “I brung the Sagehen,” he said. He stood in the doorway, staring at the bed, and Gracy had to shove past him to enter the room.

  Esther lay on a quilt, her legs spread, while Ben stood at the end of the bed, his face red and wild. “It’s coming out. I’m not knowing what to do,” he said.

  “That’s my job. Move aside,” Gracy told him, hurrying to the bed and setting her bag on the floor. She glanced down at Esther, then grinned. “Why, you hardly need me at all, Mrs. Boyce. That baby wouldn’t wait. It’s almost here.” She turned to the men. “Get me hot water fast so’s I can wash up first.”

  Davy grabbed the teakettle off the cookstove and poured water into a basin, water so hot it almost took the skin off Gracy’s hands. She worked quickly, putting on her apron, washing her hands, then nudging Ben aside. “You’re doing a first-class job, Mrs. Boyce—Esther, is it? It’s almost over. Oh, yes, you’re doing finely. The baby’s halfway born. Now you push hard with the next pain.” Just in time, Gracy positioned herself to catch the baby, because in a moment, Esther groaned and pushed, and the baby fell into Gracy’s hands.

  “A boy!” Ben said. “By Dan, Davy, she’s give us a boy.”

  If she’d been paying closer attention, Gracy might have thought it odd that Ben would announce the baby’s sex to his partner instead of to his wife, but Gracy was too busy with the baby to notice. “You hold him,” she said, handing the infant to Ben. “I didn’t have time to get out my scissors.” She placed the baby in Ben’s hands while she opened her bag and took out the scissors, linen string, and clean cloths. Dipping the string in hot water first, she thought of the thread that had been around the Halleck baby’s neck. But she shook the thought out of her head and bound Esther’s son’s cord. She handed the silver stork scissors—the very scissors Nabby had left to her—to Ben and told him to cut. Fathers who cut a baby’s cord seemed to bond a little better with them.