Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  “Oh, Mary . . .” Anne said, and she sounded tired. “Bless you, my dear, for staying with me . . .” She gritted her teeth against a spasm and Mary wiped her forehead with a damp rag. “How I wish my dear Jack was here . . .” she added, “so I could wring his fucking neck . . .” and then another contraction was on her and she grabbed Mary’s hand and squeezed.

  God, how well she endures the pain . . . Mary thought. After nearly a lifetime of playing the man, Mary had come to honor those things that men honored, and the stoic endurance of physical pain was one of them. She felt her admiration for Anne Bonny increase even as she wondered if she herself could be so hard in the face of such agony.

  Abuelita said some soothing words and ran her hands over Anne’s huge abdomen.

  Abuelita was in command now, and she was as competent, as self-assured, as totally in control as any field-grade officer Mary had ever seen, and no one knew better than Mary the need for command presence, the absolute necessity of having a steady officer in charge during crisis. The sight of Anne’s water pooling on the red tiles had driven from Abuelita’s mind the trauma of seconds before. With tears still streaking her fat, brown cheeks she began to shout orders, even as she led Anne to the bedchamber.

  Servants scrambled in all directions. Abuelita nodded toward the bodies on the floor, shouted something else, and seemed to give no more thought to the two dead men in her house, the third lying just outside her door in a wide patch of blood-soaked dirt.

  Abuelita guided Anne back to her room, had her lie on the bed, and her troops darted in and out with sheets, towels, water, lemonade, glasses, and bowls. Mary had never felt so eager to surrender herself to another’s authority. She stood by, ready to carry out any orders she was given, but Abuelita seemed to need no help from her.

  “Here now, here now, squeeze my hand . . .” Anne gasped, half sitting up, the muscles in her neck standing out proud. Mary squeezed, but for all her strength she could not squeeze harder than Anne’s crushing grip. Mary gritted her teeth as well and endured the pain that Anne was inflicting on her, and in a way was even glad for it, as if it helped her in her empathy, as if she could share Anne’s pain and thus lessen it.

  “Oh, dear God, oh, dear God.” Anne collapsed back on the pillow, her eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling. Mary wiped her forehead with a damp cloth because she felt like she had to do something, and that was the only thing she knew to do. She wished it would end.

  Abuelita De Jesús placed her hands on Anne’s big belly and gently pressed her fingers down, here and there, feeling the living thing underneath. She frowned, stared off at nothing as she felt the baby’s position. She smiled, not a joyous grin but rather a small, intimate smile of satisfaction. She nodded, smiled wider at Anne, who ignored her, and issued another string of orders.

  The afternoon dragged on, and the only real mark of time’s passing was the moving shadows across the room and the ever-increased intensity of Anne’s moans and the power with which she crushed Mary’s hand in her own seemingly tireless grip.

  Finally, with back arched, she said between clenched teeth, “I have to push, I have to goddamn push!” but Abuelita, who understood the intent, said, “No, no! No . . . poosh!” and then Abuelita made gasping sounds to show Anne what she must do.

  Anne fell back again, muttered some words that made Mary glad for Abuelita’s lack of English.

  Some time later—it seemed like hours, but the sunlight coming in around the curtain put the lie to that—Abuelita again examined Anne, and with a genuine smile said, “Poosh, Hanne, poosh!”

  Anne clenched her teeth, arched her back, and her face was a mask of pure determination as she pushed down. Mary, looking at her, could not begin to imagine what she was going through, what it felt like to be Anne Bonny at that moment.

  “Poosh! Bueno!”

  “Arrrrhh.” Anne pushed, panted for breath, pushed.

  Abuelita tapped Mary on the shoulder, nodded toward the place between Anne’s legs, and since Anne seemed to have completely forgotten her presence, Mary stood and stepped back and looked.

  There was blood and fluid everywhere. Mary was used to blood, but this was something different. Blood on the soaked white sheets, blood on Anne’s smooth, gleaming, muscular thighs, blood on her stomach and matted in her soft reddish blond pubic hair.

  Her vagina was stretched out beyond what seemed possible and it made Mary cringe and emerging from that bloody place, a pink hump of flesh, a tuft of light-colored hair. It all seemed to Mary as if it was going terribly wrong, but Abuelita looked not in the least concerned as she coached Anne in her soft Spanish and gently, gently eased the little head out.

  Anne arched again, clenched and pushed, and suddenly the head was out and in a great welter of liquid and blood and gray flesh and umbilical cord the baby was free, blinking in shock at this turn of events. The room, it seemed, sighed in relief, Anne collapsing on the bed, the attendants in their delight, Abuelita deftly severing the umbilical cord and wrapping the boy—Mary saw it was a boy—in clean white swaddling clothes.

  Mary stepped back to the head of the bed, took Anne’s hand. She smiled down at her friend, who seemed to have finally succumbed to her exhaustion, lying still with eyes closed. “Annie, Annie darling, it is over,” Mary whispered, and Anne nodded her head, just slightly, in acknowledgment.

  Mary smiled wide. She could hear the baby mewing now. A tiny life, a brand-new person.

  “It is a little boy, Annie, a perfect little boy,” Mary whispered. “Would you hold him now?”

  Anne did not open her eyes. She turned her head away from Mary. “No,” she said.

  For an hour Mary sat in a straight-backed chair at the edge of the room and held the baby while Abuelita and her servants tended to Anne. Mary cradled the little bundle in her arms, looked down at the tiny face, the wide blue eyes which looked back at her.

  She sang soft songs and the baby did not cry, did not fuss, did not make a sound. He just looked at Mary and Mary looked back. She imagined that the baby was trying to understand this profound change that had just happened and she hoped that he was thinking that it would be all right, that this new world might hold some joy for him. She was trying to show him that there was love to be found here, too, outside the warm embrace of the womb.

  “Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish maidens, farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain . . .” Mary sung, soft. She did not know any songs that were really appropriate for children, but she sung soft and melodic and the baby was content.

  Your first hour on earth. Whatever will the rest of them be like for you, little one? Mary thought. Your Aunt Mary could tell you much of what not to do . . .

  Mary did not know what was to become of the child. The idea of the birth had been so monstrous a thing to comprehend, she had given little thought to what might happen to the baby after he was born, nor did Anne appear very approachable on the subject.

  She looked at his little face and suddenly the thought of parting with him seemed too painful to consider. She forced herself to admit, silently but consciously, that he was not her baby, and that realization made her ache as well.

  Mary stood, keeping the infant tight to her chest, and stepped over to where Anne lay with eyes closed on the bed. Abuelita and her troops had cleaned her up, changed her dress and sheets, and now she was letting her exhaustion carry her away.

  “Annie, dear . . .” Mary whispered, and Anne’s head lolled over toward her and she opened her eyes.

  “Ah, Mary. It’s over now, thank God. Now perhaps we can get back to where we are meant to be.”

  “Back . . . ?”

  “Back to sea, Mary, my beauty.”

  Mary nodded, but inside she felt hollow. Back to sea? It seemed so unhappy an idea, like rolling out of a warm, dry bunk to lay aloft and stow sail on a stormy night. Thoughts of remaining behind, of raising the little boy as her own, flashed though her mind. “Would you like to see your baby?” Mary asked.

 
Anne made a noncommittal sound, lowered her eyes to the bundle of cloth, and Mary pulled back the cloth so that Anne could see his tiny face. “Hmm,” Anne said. “Odd-looking thing.”

  “What is to become of him?” Mary asked.

  “Oh, Jack has it all arranged, dear. Abuelita will take him in, raise him as her own.”

  “But, Anne . . .” Mary did not know what to say. “Let another raise your child?” The thoughts and the emotions were coming fast and disorganized. “What of his welfare?”

  At that Anne smiled a weak smile. “I am thinking of his welfare. Am I not doing the best for him, by not forcing him to suffer a mother so horrid as me? He will be happy here. Lord knows you love it enough.

  “Abuelita will make up some tale. He will not grow up knowing he is the bastard son of a pirate and a whore.”

  This seemed to exhaust her, and she rolled her head away and closed her eyes. “It is the best way, Mary, dear, depend upon it.”

  Mary held the baby tight and felt tears in her eyes and she knew that Anne was right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SOON AFTER, Abuelita De Jesús came and took the baby from Mary and gave him to a wet nurse, and Mary saw him again only a few times. It was better that way, she knew, because her sense of loss was only increased with each moment she held the child.

  Anne Bonny’s convalescence lasted for one night. She was up early the next morning, buoyant and cheerful, and Mary might have thought that she had been drinking at that early hour if she had not been so clear-eyed. Having some semblance of her former body back, and the dread of pending childbirth behind her, seemed to lift Annie extremely.

  “Now that I am able, Mary, I will cheerfully help you with your housekeeping. Sweep, cook, beat shirts with a bloody rock, whatever you might wish.” Anne was perched on the edge of Mary’s bed, and Mary, still half-asleep, could only grunt in reply. It was quite the opposite of the natural order of things.

  “And when we are done with that,” Anne continued, “I think we should look to our weapons. It is in the articles we signed, you will recall. I grieve to think of the state of our blades in this horrid climate, not to mention our firelocks. We must be ready for when the others return.”

  Again Mary grunted. But she knew Anne was right. Soon they would be in the sweet trade again. She threw off her blankets, pushed her fantasies aside, and climbed out of bed.

  For another week they carried on with their routine, helping out with the housekeeping, eating, sleeping, strolling in the evenings. Anne became more animated with each passing day, discussing future plans, places where the Pretty Anne might cruise, things that they might do with their growing fortune.

  Mary was polite, and listened, but did not add much.

  And then, on the morning that Anne’s son turned eight days old, on the morning that Anne first said, “Damn it, it is high time that Jack returned,” in a tone that was at once hopeful and edged with growing concern, one of the fishing boats pulled back to the beach with the news that Calico Juan’s sloop had been seen in the offing.

  Anne and Mary hurried down to the beach. From the surf line they looked out over the water. That familiar topsail was just visible past the low-lying islands around the entrance to the harbor at Caibarién.

  Anne turned and looked at Mary with the most genuine look of pleasure she had worn in some time. “Oh, body of me, Mary, I have never been so happy to see anything in my life!”

  Mary nodded, but she did not smile. “Yes indeed, Annie, dear. It is time for us to quit this place.”

  They walked back up to the De Jesús home and Mary went into her room and with great sadness she took off her soft cotton dress and once again pulled on her wool shirt, slop trousers, red waistcoat, and blue jacket.

  But she had not lied to Anne. She was happy to see the sloop, ready to leave that town. She had been playing at the quiet life, but it was not really hers. The peace, the near bliss, she had found in Caibarién was not real. It was an illusion. Mary Read had had a surfeit of ephemeral happiness and she wanted no more.

  It was time once more to go to sea.

  The Pretty Anne rounded up into the wind and the anchor was let go and it plunged down through the clear water. Jack Rackam stood at his quarterdeck rail, his best sword at his hip, his fine clothing hanging a bit loose on him. He had not been eating well.

  He felt a vague dread that seemed to center in his stomach, but he could not attribute it to his being reunited with Anne. That was a part of it, to be sure, wondering how he would be greeted, wondering if Anne had fared well, if she had had a difficult birth, facing the silent censure of that bitch Read—Lord knew what they had been up to, what unnatural things she had been filling Anne’s head with—but that was only a part of it.

  The dread, the hard thing in his stomach, was not a passing fancy. It had settled in, like an unwelcome guest who would not leave. It was all his fears, wound up so tight that they became something solid and took up residency in his guts.

  It was the poor hunting they had found, the few pathetic fishing boats they had robbed, the potential discontent of the men who might turn him out, like he did old Charles Vane. It was the certainty of the noose if they were caught, with him having accepted the governor’s pardon and then gone out on the account once more. It was the possibility of disgrace and the possibility of piling the sloop up on the rocks and the yellow jack and the thousand things that plagued a man such as he.

  It was the Pretty Anne. She was growing increasingly decrepit, beyond what the pirates were able to repair in their secluded coves on their sparsely inhabited islands. They would have to get another ship, but that meant his finding one and then successfully capturing it.

  It was the Guarda del Costa, the Spanish guard ships that patrolled the Cuban coast. The Pretty Annes’ depredations had not been grand, but neither had they gone unnoticed. Jack had no doubt that they were being hunted; the Dons were keeping a damned sharp eye out for him.

  Damn Dons, goddamn Dons and their damned guard ships . . . The Spaniards would draw and quarter him, disembowel him, burn him at the stake, impale him so that he would take days to die. When he thought of it, it made the hard thing in his stomach turn over, made his insides feel less than solid, so he tried not to think on it, but he could not help it.

  Of all the world of enemies he faced, it was the Spaniards he feared the most.

  “Anchor’s holding, Captain,” said Richard Corner, lumbering aft, and then, a second later, “Are you well, Jack, my dear?”

  “Yes. Why would you ask such a thing?” Jack snapped.

  Corner shrugged. “You looked like you was not well.”

  “I’ve a world on my shoulders, you know. I’ll warrant you don’t appreciate what it is like, to have command such as I do.”

  Corner nodded. He was a big dog. Kick him, pat him, it made little difference. “Shall I get the boat over, then?”

  “Aye, get the boat over.”

  Jack wondered if other captains felt these fears. Old Charles Vane, who always seemed so cool, did he have that hard thing in his gut? It was difficult to believe. And if not, did that mean that he, Calico Jack Rackam, did not have the stuff of which captains are made? That possibility frightened him most of all.

  Ten minutes later, Jack, in the sternsheets of the boat, hand resting on the tiller, was rowed ashore, into the bosom of the enthusiastic crowd on the beach, and that gave his sagging confidence a bit of a prop. Jack stood and lifted a small chest of money and handed it down. It was for all of the village, he explained to the grinning men, and though it cut much deeper into his personal fortune than his previous gifts had, still he could not let the people of the town think that he was any less successful now than he had been in years past. His sense of himself would not allow it.

  He hopped down into the sand, pleased by his welcome but nervous still because he had yet to see Anne. And then, like a ship parting the seas, Abuelita De Jesús pushed through the crowd, Anne on her arm—a smiling,
lovely Anne in her European dress, a relieved, beaming Anne, Anne with arms wide, happy to see him, and for a moment Jack felt a reprieve from all the anxiety as he took her in his arms and hugged her to the cheering of the crowd.

  They made their farewells to the De Jesúses and the others, gave their thanks all around, collected up Anne’s things and Mary’s as well, and within the hour they were back aboard the Pretty Anne and under way.

  The lovely little town of Caibarién was just disappearing around the headland when it occurred to Jack that he had never asked after the baby. He opened his mouth, even uttered the beginning of a word, and then thought better of it. If Anne had not mentioned it, no reason that he should. Best not to stir all that up.

  At least, he hoped that that was the best course of action. He was not sure. He felt the thing in his stomach turn over again.

  They stood on for another mile or so and then the wind, which had been steady, began to come in puffs, a sure sign that it soon would fail altogether.

  Anne had shed her fancy silk dress and once again was wearing her big wool shirt and her loose-fitting slops with the wide leather belt and sheath knife around her waist, a red cloth bound around her head. She was barefoot and she delighted at the smooth, warm planks underfoot once more. She loved the familiar motion of the sloop.

  “Let us come to an anchor, yonder,” Jack said, pointing over the starboard side. A half mile away was the mainland of Cuba. At the place where Jack pointed, a small island stood just off the coast, no more than two hundred yards at the farthest, a green hump of jungle-covered land with a shallow channel between it and the big island.

  Thomas Quick, at the helm, pushed the tiller over. Anne sprang to her feet, whipped the mainsheet off the cleat to which it was made fast, let the rough line run through her palms. Her hands had grown soft again during her time ashore, and the rope burned her and the tiny sharp bits of manila left splinters where the sheet passed, but Anne did not mind. It was time to get her hands tough again.

  They ran down toward the channel that passed between the small island and Cuba proper, sometimes bobbing in the swell as the wind failed, sometimes shooting ahead in a burst of speed when they caught a puff. The water grew more shallow and light in color as they closed with the land, the seas more choppy.