The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  Gracy didn’t care what people in New York thought about her, but she was concerned about folks she knew in Colorado, maybe in Arkansas. She hoped there were no reporters from back there. “The reporters being here, is that good or bad?”

  Ted shrugged. “It depends on the judge. Some judges think it’s their job to ask questions. If a judge likes to see his name in the papers, he’ll likely talk too much, ask you questions himself, and argue with Doak and me. As far as I know, Judge Downing isn’t an investor in the Holy Cross, but still, he’ll treat Jonas Halleck with respect. We’re lucky the judge isn’t up for reelection, else he might turn this into a circus.”

  “Looks like it already is,” Gracy said, turning to gaze through the open doorway at hawkers outside selling Cornish pasties and doughnuts and cups of lemonade One had tried to sell an apple to Gracy as she approached the building, then realized who she was and said, “Well, if it ain’t the baby killer.” That was what she was to people who didn’t know her, Gracy realized—and to some who did.

  Despite the fact Ted had told her earlier that the judge might exclude women from the trial due to the delicate nature of the charge—what mining town woman was delicate? Gracy had scoffed—a third of the spectators were female. Mittie McCauley sat in the front row again, next to Daniel and Jeff. The young woman had brought supper to Gracy three times that week, and that very morning, she had shown up at the Brookens’s cabin at first light with a breakfast cake, made with cinnamon and brown sugar. There was a nurturing about Mittie that moved Gracy. It was a pity the woman had no children.

  Gracy knew many of the women in the courtroom. Two or three smiled at her, and one woman waved the hand of a girl no older than Emma when she died. Gracy had birthed the girl. In fact, she had delivered most of the children there. The women had brought baskets with them, probably their dinner, since the trial was expected to last all day, maybe longer.

  The people Gracy knew smiled at her and waved and made gestures of support, but not all of them. Effie Ring was halfway back in the courtroom with Georgia Simmons, Pearlie Evans, and two other women, all of them once Gracy’s friends. They had turned against her. Little Dickie Erickson sat off to the side. He was dressed in a black suit and wore spectacles, which made him appear older, but only by a day or two. He stared straight ahead and wouldn’t look Gracy in the eye. Next to him was Coy Chaney, who scowled at Gracy when she glanced at him, and behind them sat Jonas Halleck and his wife, Edna. Jonas kept his gaze at the front of the room. His face was drained of color. Gracy stared at Edna, who, like Gracy, wore black, but Edna would not look at her, either, only kept her eyes on her hands folded in her lap.

  Gracy glanced around for Josie and realized the girl wasn’t with her parents. For some reason, Gracy had expected her to attend the trial. After all, she was the mother of the baby Gracy was accused of murdering. What mother wouldn’t be there? But then, who knew Josie was the mother? Jonas Halleck had claimed Edna was the mother, and who doubted him? Gracy had told only John Miller and Ted Coombs the truth.

  She thought the trial might be too much for the girl, who was already fragile. Besides, the prosecution hadn’t listed her as a witness—in her state, there was no telling what she’d say, Ted had explained. For that reason, he didn’t plan to question her, either. Nor had Edna been listed as a witness, although the one time John had questioned her, she’d agreed that Gracy had killed the baby. “With Halleck testifying, Doak must believe he doesn’t need her,” Ted had speculated to Gracy. “Maybe he thinks she’d be sympathetic to you.” Ted himself didn’t plan to call Edna, either, for fear she’d accuse Gracy. He hadn’t been able to question either woman. Jonas hadn’t allowed it.

  The courtroom was jammed now, with people standing along the walls and in the doorway. A few were outside, hoping others would leave so that they could push inside. Gracy hadn’t expected so many people, and she felt fluttery inside. “Is it always this bad?” she asked Ted.

  He shook his head. “Like it or not, Gracy, this is a big case. It’s been written up from here to the East Coast. There are ministers in Denver preaching against you.”

  “They don’t know me. They don’t know what happened.”

  “When did that ever make a difference?”

  Gracy was about to respond when the clerk pounded on his desk and told everyone to rise. “The Honorable Judge Downing presiding,” he announced.

  The judge came into the room, looking a little surprised—and maybe pleased—at the size of the crowd, then sat down, and when there was a murmur, he pounded his gavel.

  “No need for a trial. She’s guilty,” Coy Chaney said in a loud voice.

  The judge pointed the gavel at Coy. “One more comment from you, sir, and you will be ejected from the room.” The judge glared at Coy, who glared back, then looked away. “Now if that is understood, we will begin jury selection.”

  “I know most everyone here,” Gracy whispered to her lawyer, and indeed, more than one potential juror nodded and smiled at Gracy or told the judge she’d delivered his child.

  The prosecutor, too, realized that Gracy knew many of the potential jurors. “I believe I must request a change of venue,” he said when, by mid-morning, only seven jurors had been selected. Gracy remembered Doak well from the hearing less than a month before—hard and mean-spirited. “It is impossible to get an impartial jury in Swandyke. I believe we should move the trial elsewhere—to Middle Swan or to Breckenridge.”

  “Too late, Mr. Doak. You should have thought about that earlier. We are going to begin this trial today—and here in Swandyke,” the judge said “Now on with it, sir.”

  Doak nodded, as if he’d gotten what he’d asked for. The clerk called another name, and Gracy was startled to see Davy Eastlow stand up.

  “No,” Gracy muttered, and she whispered to Ted what had happened at the Boyce cabin.

  The prosecutor asked Davy a few questions, then said he was satisfied.

  Ted was not so quick to agree on Davy. “You know Mrs. Brookens?” he asked.

  “She delivered my partner’s boys.”

  Gracy listened for snickering but heard none. Apparently no one in Swandyke yet suspected that Davy was the father of one of those babies.

  “You like to eat, do you?”

  Davy looked startled and didn’t answer, while the judge leaned forward and frowned. “What kind of question is that?” he asked.

  “A perfectly logical one if you will indulge me for a minute,” Ted replied.

  “I’m betting the answer is yes. That’s the way I’d answer it,” the judge said. People laughed, and that time, the judge did not gavel them into silence. He glanced at the group of newspapermen as if to see whether they’d written down his remark, then motioned for Davy to answer.

  Davy didn’t respond at first, just turned to stare at Gracy. “I reckon,” he said after Ted prompted him.

  “Venison?”

  Davy shrugged.

  “Is that a yes?”

  People glanced at each other, not understanding what was happening.

  “Get on with it, Mr. Coombs. This isn’t a boardinghouse,” the judge said.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Eastlow, is it true that Gracy Brookens came to your cabin to check on your partner’s wife and found you and Mr. Boyce treating her shamefully? Is it true the two of you refused to care for her? Did Gracy Brookens throw your dinner into the stove because she objected to your treatment of Mrs. Boyce?”

  People snickered again.

  “Well?” Ted asked.

  “That Sagehen had no right. Weren’t my place to fix Esther’s supper. She wants to eat, she can do for herself.”

  “With two newborn babies to care for?” Ted asked.

  “Ben never should have married her. Them babies changed everything. We was all fine before they come along.”

  Ted started to ask another question, but the judge interrupted. “We haven’t got all day, Mr. Coombs. I’m guessing you’ll excuse this man for cause. Am I ri
ght?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “I’d vote guilty,” Davy said, before the judge told him to step down. As Davy walked down the aisle, men in the courtroom looked away, but women glared at him. Gracy knew that Swandyke folks would wonder about him now, would wonder about Esther, too, and the babies. Perhaps she should not have told Ted what she had done with Davy’s supper.

  “Hurry it along,” the judge said, and as if both the prosecutor and the defense attorney were tired of interviewing, the two men quickly agreed on five more. The twelve jurors sat down in rocking chairs in a boxed-off area that served as a jury box, sending up a racket of squeaks as they moved back and forth.

  When the jurors were settled, Doak stood and walked over to the twelve. “Members of the jury,” he began, “your duty is to find this woman, this Gracy Brookens, guilty of murder, the murder of a helpless baby.”

  Ted stood to protest, but the judge waved him down. “He can say what he wants. Your turn’s next,” he said.

  “Mrs. Brookens—the Sagehen, as some call her—played God with the life of an innocent, a child not more than a day old. She appointed herself God and took his life.”

  Edna Halleck moaned, and people in the courtroom muttered and shook their heads. Doak apparently forgot what he was going to say and had to look down at a paper in his hand to find his place. He cleared his throat, and continued. “That baby was God’s perfect child, the heir of one of our finest citizens.”

  He turned and pointed a finger at Gracy. “But that woman there did not want the baby to live. She had a grievance against his father, a man as beloved and respected as any man in this community. You see, Jonas Halleck had recently fired Gracy Brookens’s husband, a man known to be shiftless, intemperate—and a thief!—and Mrs. Brookens was determined to get even.”

  Gracy glanced at Daniel and mouthed, “For shame.” Jeff put his hand on his father’s arm, but Daniel didn’t move. He sat stone-still, his head high. Gracy read the humiliation in his face.

  “You see, Daniel Brookens is an old codger, too feeble to handle the work in a mine. There have been accidents”—Doak shook his head but did not explain—”and Mr. Halleck could no longer use him. I’ll grant you Mr. Brookens had worked for the Holy Cross every winter for five, ten years, and he might have had a claim on that job. But he high-graded, stole the very ore that belonged to his employer. Mr. Halleck is a reasonable man, a Christian, but what mine owner would employ a thief? And a drunk!”

  Gracy shook her head and whispered to Ted to stop the prosecutor. She knew Daniel hadn’t high-graded. And he’d never been drunk on the job. Since Daniel’d made that promise in Nevada, Gracy could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d gotten drunk.

  “Now, I’ll admit that was a sad situation, one that would cause difficulty in a household, but the Brookenses had a son who could help them, so they were not left destitute,” Doak continued.

  He kept on. “That wasn’t good enough for Mrs. Brookens. She harbored a hate for Jonas Halleck, a hate so strong that she would do anything to get back at him. And anything included murder—murder of an innocent boy.

  “She took a cord out of her medicine bag and wrapped it around the baby’s neck again and again. Then she pulled and pulled until she pulled the life right out of that baby. She must have smiled at that as she laid the lifeless little body in the cradle, smiled to think of how she had stolen that family’s happiness. She thought the Hallecks would believe the baby had died a natural death. And they would have if Coy Chaney in his wisdom had not observed the mark around the baby’s neck and discovered the fibers of a cord used by a midwife.”

  Gracy, sickened, looked down at her hands and shook her head. How could anyone think she had done such a thing?

  The prosecutor all but shouted then. “Folk remedies! Potions! Tonics! That’s what midwifery is about.” He paused dramatically after each word and nodded at the jurors. “Yes, such things exist even in a fine Colorado mining town like Swandyke. Why, Gracy Brookens is illiterate,” he said. Gracy herself started to object. She could read, in fact, had read every word in the Bible, and more than once. But Ted touched her arm, and she kept still.

  Doak listed so many foul charges that when the man was finished, Gracy felt dirty. Could people really believe she was as devoid of all godliness as he claimed?

  “Our turn,” Ted whispered, but he didn’t stand until the judge said, “Mr. Coombs, do you have anything to say?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Ted said, rising slowly. “I just wanted to finish writing down all the lies Mr. Doak recited so I can answer them. First off”—he turned to the jury—“your job is not to find Mrs. Brookens guilty. Your job is to find out if she is guilty. It is to find out the truth. And when you know it, you’ll return a verdict of not guilty, because Mrs. Brookens is innocent. The evidence will show that. She didn’t kill a baby. She couldn’t have.”

  “No,” a woman muttered.

  Ted paused to let the woman’s utterance sink in. “There’s not a one of you who doesn’t know the Sagehen. You know her because she delivered your children, and if she didn’t, you know her by reputation. She is a good woman who goes out in mountain blizzards with no thought of herself, when women need her. She is a midwife, a woman trained to deliver babies. And she does it for no more pay than a load of wood or a bucket of raspberries, maybe not even that, because she loves women. And babies. When has Gracy Brookens ever turned down someone who needed her? She is one of the finest women ever created under heaven. I know that, and you know that.” He looked at the jurors one by one. A couple of them nodded. One scowled.

  “Mrs. Brookens has delivered hundreds of babies along the Tenmile Range and lost only a handful. Some of those babies she birthed were weak in body or mind, but she never hurt one of them. In fact, there are a good many babies in this place—and women, too—who would have died without Mrs. Brookens. Gracy you all call her. That’s what I’ll call her, too.”

  Ted paused and drank from a glass of water on the table. “You know that for a time, Gracy was the only person on the Tenmile who could doctor you. So some of you went to her when you broke bones or needed a cure for chilblains or pneumonia. And you’re sitting right here in the courtroom because she healed you.

  “Now I’ll agree with the prosecution that the Halleck baby may have been murdered.” He paused. “Or maybe not.”

  Gracy jerked up her head at that, but Ted went right on. “If the baby was murdered, the murderer was not Gracy Brookens. By the time you hear all the facts, you’ll know Gracy no more committed a murder than you did.” He pointed to one juror. “Or you.” He nodded at another. “Or you. Or any of you.” He was silent a moment. “And you’ll have a good idea of who really wanted that baby dead.” He turned and stared at Jonas Halleck. The man did not look away but only stared back. “No, your job is not to find Gracy guilty. Not at all. It is to find the truth, and when you know it, you will return a verdict of not guilty.”

  Ted paused a moment, then glanced at Daniel. “Now, as to the charges of drunkenness and high-grading the prosecutor made against Mr. Brookens, Mr. Halleck never went to the sheriff with them. If somebody stole gold ore from me, I’d have asked for satisfaction. Wouldn’t you? Mr. Brookens was not let go because he was a drunk or a thief. Oh, no. Daniel Brookens was fired because he complained about conditions in the mine. He complained about shoddy materials and a buildup of gas underground. Mr. Halleck, that ‘beloved, Christian man,’ didn’t want to spend money making the mine safer. That’s why Mr. Brookens was let go.”

  Ted started to sit down, then stopped as if remembering something. “Oh, and by the way, Mr. Doak, Gracy Brookens can read and write as well as you can.” He held up a letter Gracy had sent to him. “And her handwriting’s a good deal better.”

  People laughed at that, although none of the ones who found the remark funny sat in the jury box.

  Ted smiled and sat down, and Judge Downing said, “Mr. Doak, you may present yo
ur evidence.”

  Doak smiled and stood up. Then he turned to Gracy. “Mrs. Brookens, I apologize for my error. I would not have thought someone so steeped in superstition could read.”

  “Your Honor…” Ted protested.

  “Mr. Doak, that wasn’t necessary,” Judge Downing said.

  Doak smiled, as if he and the judge shared a joke. Then he called his first witness—Coy Chaney. After Coy was sworn in, Doak asked him his occupation.

  “Coroner and undertaker,” he said.

  “And you were the one who first discovered the Halleck baby had been murdered?”

  “I was.”

  Coy was silent until the prosecutor said, “Well, tell us about it, man.”

  “You bet.” Coy grinned as he glanced around the courtroom, although the grin disappeared when he looked at Gracy. “My guess is she done it,” he said, pointing at Gracy. “Couldn’t have been anybody else.”

  “Your Honor, Mr. Chaney is not here to guess,” Ted protested.

  “Quite right. The jury will ignore that. Mr. Chaney, you will stick to the facts.”

  But the damage had been done, Gracy knew. How could the men on the jury forget what they’d heard?

  Coy, looking pleased with himself, sat back in his chair and told how Jonas Halleck had brought the baby to him to be buried, how he had found marks of a cord that had been wrapped around the baby’s neck and fibers of the cord itself. And he knew the boy had been strangled. It was the same story he had told at the hearing, although he embroidered it with more detail and gave himself credit for discovering the murder. Once or twice Ted objected to something Coy said, but Gracy thought it was a waste of effort. The jury had already heard Coy say he believed she was a killer.

  When Coy was finished, the prosecutor appeared satisfied, and Gracy understood why. She’d suspicion her own self.

  But Ted didn’t look convinced when he stood up. “You are acquainted with Gracy Brookens, aren’t you?” he asked Coy.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And how is that?”