by Ruth Glover
Perhaps she was too intent on the fact that God wouldn’t hear if her heart wasn’t right, and not bold enough when it came to her needs in the face of what seemed to be a near state of emergency. Certainly her heart was filled with uneasiness; certainly it was a time to pray, from desperation if not from faith.
She’d give it a try; it couldn’t hurt, it might help. Squeezing her eyes shut against the storm, Tierney whispered a prayer that seemed, to her doubting heart, to be caught away in a whisk of wind, never to be heard by man, but perhaps by God, if He were being magnanimous.
When they reached the coulee, it promised to be a heart-clutching and body-wrenching experience to descend to the refuge below. But the team needed a rest, and so did the driver, of this Tierney was certain. Will was rigid and frigid, especially his hands, which had been holding the reins all the way and must be numb and stiff.
He drew the team to a halt momentarily and studied the trail down. The ground was frozen solid, lumpy and icy.
“I think,” he said to Tierney, “I’ll unhitch and lead the horses down. To try and wrestle the wagon down would be disastrous, I’m afraid, and I wonder if we’d ever get back up. Yet the team needs a drink and a rest.”
Tierney nodded, peering out of the blanket she had finally pulled up around her, squawlike, for protection.
“I’d suggest you come on down, too,” Will said, speaking into the wind. “It won’t be easy, but you need the exercise—it’ll get the blood flowing good again, and bring more feeling into your arms and, er, lower limbs.”
As Will was unhitching the horses, Tierney unwrapped herself and clumsily climbed out of the wagon, realizing it was the height of foolishness to expect Will to be a gentleman under such circumstances and help her down. Just before clambering over the wheel, she thought of food and knew it wasn’t likely Will would come back and rummage around for cheese and crackers or whatever.
Remembering the items Mrs. Corcoran had sent along, Tierney located the bag under the seat of the wagon where she had dropped it. She picked it up clumsily, tucked it under her arm, and prepared to climb over the wheel. One leg over the edge of the wagon, the wind found an entrance, and she caught her breath in a gasp as it swept up and under her full skirts, billowing them like a tent and chilling her in an instant. Startled, her gloved hand slipped from its grip, her foot slid off the hub, and she crashed to the ground. But she was down and apparently intact. And that included her dignity, for Will had not seen.
And she had the sack with her. Unfortunately it had opened in the fall and the tarts and doughnuts had scattered out like small wheels rolling across the prairie. And no wonder—they were frozen solid. She gathered them up and thrust them back in the bag, wondering if they could possibly be eaten. Of course she hadn’t thought to get a cup or any means by which to get a drink. Fine pioneer! My first emergency, and I lose my wits! And my balance!
Stumbling over the broken clods of frozen ground that Will and the team had left behind as they half slid their way down the embankment, Tierney arrived at the bottom, more quickly than she had planned, but again, she was down, and again she was safe.
Sheltered as it was from the wind, still the coulee was cold, and the stream no longer ran, unless it did so under the ice.
Slipping and sliding down the side of the coulee, Will had followed the horses, to indeed find the stream frozen, but not solidly. Stamping and kicking, he broke the crust, and the horses lowered their frosty muzzles into the icy water. When they were finished drinking, he pulled them over to where dried grasses offered some sort of fodder, and they fell to nuzzling and eating.
Huddled under the bare branches of a bush of one sort or another, Tierney opened the sack, removed a doughnut, and passed the sack to Will. His expression as his teeth skidded off his first bite was enough to make her laugh, in spite of wind and weather and miserable circumstances.
Will, too, managed a grin. “I’ll just chaw away at it,” he decided and suited action to words. Gnawing and chewing, they managed some small sustenance. Will, never mentioning the missing cup, knelt on the frosted ground at the stream’s edge, cupped his hand, and drank. Thirsty and having no other choice, Tierney did the same. Her hand tingled with cold and, before she put her glove back on, she slipped her hand inside her coat and into her armpit and shuddered again as another frisson of shivers ran over her.
Not caring to wait too long, the weather being what it was, Will led the horses above as soon as he could, Tierney following, the sack of goodies in one hand as, with the other, she clutched weeds and bushes along the trail to help herself up the bank. Will was, by then, hitching up the team, and Tierney climbed back into the wagon.
“Why don’t you sit on the bottom,” Will suggested, “instead of the seat? I would do it myself if I could trust the horses to make it home.” But the trail over the prairie was indistinct, and there was too much at stake to delay even for a few minutes.
Tierney found a place among the horse blankets and quilts in the bottom of the wagon and hunkered down out of the worst of the wind. But she felt great sympathy for Will as he took his place again, to be battered by the fierce wind, and she watched him bow his head as though struggling through the gale. Ahead of him the horses bent their heads into the harness in much the same fashion and pulled doggedly onward.
It was the middle of the afternoon that the first flakes fell, softly at first, too light and dainty to be dangerous. Or so one would think, catching a single flake on the palm of a dark glove and examining it. But the glove, unwarmed by the hand within, was too cold to melt the unique thing, and one realized its potential for danger. Tierney blew the snowflake away, shivered again, and tucked herself more securely under the blanket. She tried leaning back against the side of the wagon, but the jouncing was terrific as the wagon made its way over a road turned solid, with no give to it whatsoever.
Frightening in their silent purpose the flakes fell. They swirled around the faces of Will and Tierney, they piled on the seat beside Will, on the wagon floor beside Tierney. Soon the road became obliterated and there were no landmarks, insofar as Tierney could see when she peeped over the edge of the wagon, looking with awe at the scene—white as far as the eye could see, and all within an hour of the first flake.
As though reading her thoughts, Will turned his head, and shouted, “Good thing we’re as near home as we are. I know right where we are. The nearer we get to Fielding and home the more worn the road is, the deeper the ruts, and the better the horses can see it.”
Tierney closed her eyes and thought of Pearly. What would Pearly do in such a circumstance? Pray, of course. Tierney had tried it earlier, but not in such a state of anxiety as now. Perhaps she hadn’t been earnest enough before. Most desperately now she attempted it again: O God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Pearly, please hear this plea for help and get us home safely!
After that, jolted continually though she was, she must have dozed, although, to her panic-stricken thinking when she awoke, she feared she might have slipped into the sleep of death that fell on freezing people. But realizing that all her limbs felt the cold and that they moved satisfactorily at her command, she sighed with relief and felt a little foolish. Tierney knew, from conversations with Pearly, that she wasn’t ready to meet God.
What would it be like, to face the living God and not have made your peace with Him? It was an uncomfortable thought, prompted by the desperate situation and her realization that it could happen, without warning and without preparation. Her earlier prayer, as with this one, had been one of desperation and not contrition. Did God get impatient with people who cried out to Him in emergencies and forgot all about Him in better times? These uneasy speculations were interrupted by welcome news:
“Not far now!” Will sang out through frozen lips, and Tierney’s thoughts turned with relief to happier things—a fire, a hot cup of tea, a good warm supper.
This time Will helped her down, having clambered out and made his way to the back of the wag
on where he removed the tailgate. He began pulling boxes and crates and bags from under the great heap of blankets he had carefully spread over them to keep cans and jars from splitting and cracking. The food items had been warmer than she had, Tierney realized, wishing belatedly that she had crawled under the waterproof tarpaulin that sheltered the entire store of goods.
It was two snow-covered figures who trundled their way, arms laden, across the few feet of ground from the wagon to the porch.
There was no reason to find it ominous when Lavinia didn’t come outside to welcome them. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard them; the snowfall muffled most sounds. It was a white, silent world. And dark; even the moon and the stars hid themselves on this most stormy of nights. Tierney blessed the team that had, unerringly, trudged them homeward to their warm stalls, good grain, and satisfying currying, when Will would take a gunny sack and sweep them free of the last vestiges of snow still clinging to their broad, steamy backs, and rub and brush them dry.
There was no reason to feel alarm when there were no footsteps across the snow on the porch; it was too newly fallen, too recently come.
But when they stepped inside, to stand momentarily on the mat at the door, it was both ominous and alarming when Lavinia was nowhere to be seen, the house was colder than it ought to have been, and no tea kettle simmered on the stove and no supper.
“What the—?” Will muttered. “Vinnie! Lavinia—!”
It was a sleepy-eyed Buster who greeted them from the doorway to the front room, his hair touseled, clutching his “bankie” to him.
“Mama’s sick,” he said.
“O God!” Will exclaimed, and it was a prayer. Hastily setting down the box he carried, stamping his feet heavily on the mat, he began unwinding the scarf that obliterated most of his face and pulling off the flap-eared cap from his head. Sitting down, while Tierney stood dumbly by, beginning her own unwrapping, Will pulled off his galoshes, removed his coat on which the snow was quickly turning to water, dropped everything on the linoleum, and fled toward the front room and through it to the bedroom beyond.
Her own things removed at last, Tierney took a moment to hang up the coats and scarves and hats, set the overshoes aside, and then gathered up the bemused Buster in her arms.
“Mama’s sick,” he repeated. “Did you bring me something?”
What a long and lonely time it must have been for the child, his mother ill, perhaps in bed for goodness knew how long, and the time stretching interminably until his father should come home.
“Of course,” Tierney reassured him. “Now first, let’s go see if we can be of any help.”
Tierney, with Buster by the hand, made her way to the bedroom. How cold it was! Obviously Lavinia hadn’t been able to tend the fire. The little hand Tierney clasped was warm, however, as though the child had been cuddled warm and secure under blankets.
Standing in the bedroom door, she could see Will leaning over the bed. Lavinia, white-faced and obviously frightened, was stumblingly explaining.
“It’s the baby, Will. Something’s wrong. It’s far, far too early, and yet . . . and yet I know it’s trying to come. Ohhhh, Will!” Her explanation turned into a cry as, apparently, another pain struck. Even from the doorway, even through the covers, Tierney could see the turgid belly stiffen and distend.
Will looked around wildly. “My Lord,” he said, just as wildly as before, though just as prayerfully, “what’ll we do?”
Hesitantly Tierney stepped forward, leaned over, and brushed the damp hair back from Lavinia’s forehead. With her eyes fixed on Will she said, just as tensely as he had spoken, “There’s no question about going for . . . whoever it is . . . that midwife, I suppose?”
Knowing it was indeed out of the question, she added, hopefully, “Or your neighbor. But,” she answered her own question, “she’d be only two miles closer than the woman in Fielding, right?”
Will, swallowing convulsively, nodded dumbly. “I could try—”
Not knowing much about blizzards, still Tierney had experienced enough in the last few hours to say, “It probably isn’t a good thing. We—you and I—will have to manage alone—”
It was enough to startle Will into action. “I’ve got to try,” he said, the muscles of his jaw working. “Listen, Lavinia—” he bent toward his panting, sweating wife, “I’m going for help. If I can get to Fielding, I will. Otherwise I’ll stop at the Brokaws’ and bring Lilyan. Hold on, Sweetheart. Be brave just a little longer.”
He might just as well have said “a lot longer,” for that’s what it proved to be.
A lot longer, and still, when he and Lilyan Brokaw arrived, Lavinia struggled helplessly against the contractions, though weaker and weaker.
Frightened almost out of her wits, Tierney found herself actually wringing her hands as she waited. Her gripping fear was that the child would come with only herself to deliver it. And yet the fact that it didn’t seem to budge was just as agonizing.
“Dear God,” she whispered, “I can see how selfish and stupid our prayers can be, always telling You what to do, trying to decide for ourselves what’s right. It’s up to You to sort them out and do what’s best for us. But please, please, don’t let Lavinia die!”
It was a much-needed prayer, for by the time Will and Lilyan Brokaw arrived, dawn was coloring the sky with pale light and Lavinia was almost past help, having sunk into a state of half-awareness, rousing only to struggle and groan. Even that was becoming less with each futile effort to expel the burden from her body.
“How is she?” Will asked when his wraps had been laid aside and he had approached the bed. Lilyan Brokaw had preceded him, having been busy in the sickroom while Will was unhitching and caring—once again—for the weary team of horses.
Lilyan Brokaw, a hefty woman in her early fifties and the mother of eight, turned from the bed, and said in an aside, “Not good, Mr. Ketchum. Though it’s early and the child is small, still there’s something wrong. Very wrong.”
Lilyan tried, with whatever skills she had, to advance the babe in the womb; Tierney, worn and trembling, turned to the kitchen to build up the fire, boil water, and make tea. Good reviving tea; even it failed in its restorative powers this time. Tierney was terribly afraid.
Creeping back, finally, with a cup of tea for Mrs. Brokaw, it was to hear the neighbor woman say, somberly, “It’s never going to come on its own.”
Will looked ghastly—worn with his two long trips, his lack of rest, his hunger, and his terror.
“Do something!” he pleaded.
Still Lilyan Brokaw hesitated.
But looking at that desperate face, perhaps thinking of the living child asleep now in his own bed upstairs, perhaps moved by the eloquence in Will’s eyes, Lilyan Brokaw was moved to try that something, desperate measures indeed for an unskilled person.
“We have to get the child out,” she said flatly, “though I’ve never done it. I had it done to me once, and it . . . well, it worked.”
Her voice faded, and it was, in its way, as eloquent as the silent but speaking eyes of the husband on the other side of the bed.
“Bring a pan of hot, soapy water,” Lilyan Brokaw said with a sigh, and Tierney did so, along with numerous clean towels.
And then she fled the scene, not needed, and totally unable to bear the screams that ripped through the house from the hoarse throat of the tortured woman as Lilyan Brokaw, stolidly and with dogged resolution, thrust her hand into the birth canal and, by force alone, withdrew the scrap of humanity that was the cause of it all.
Wet, bloody, and motionless it lay, at the last, on the towel Will held out, tremblingly, for the deposit of his second son.
When, ashamed, Tierney crept back, it was to see Will standing alone, his second-born in his arms, his wife unconscious, and Lilyan Brokaw, almost as pale as the patient, going about the job of cleanup. Here Tierney tried to help, bringing fresh water, finding an old sheet to be torn into padding, taking the bloody linen and putting it to
soak.
Finally Will handed the dead babe to the reaching arms of Lilyan Brokaw, who took it to the kitchen area to be bathed and dressed in the clothing Tierney located, having helped sew on it across the past months. Finally, Lilyan wrapped the tiny mite in a small blanket, as Tierney stood by, feeling helpless in the face of so great a tragedy.
“Here,” she said, feeling that, finally, there was something she could do. “I’ll put it in the little crib in their bedroom. I’m sure, once she’s . . . alert again, she’ll want to see her baby.”
But Will was waiting. As soon as he saw Tierney, he rose from his knees at the side of the bed, reaching one last time for his son. How pathetic the sight; how final the good-bye.
Lilyan, who was checking on the swooning Lavinia, said abruptly, “Miss Caulder, take the baby. Will, you need to be here by your wife.”
It was difficult to say who was the most startled, Tierney or Will. He handed her the dead child and turned immediately to the bedside.
“What is it?” he asked.
“She hasn’t stopped bleeding. It’s . . . it’s just flooding from her. Oh, Will, I’m not capable of the care she needs!” Lilyan, good, helpful neighbor, was in despair.
“Miss Caulder . . . Tierney,” she called, “quickly, bring more towels! Lay the baby down and bring more towels!”
There were no more towels. Frightened and trembling, Tierney located what she could—extra sheeting, dish towels, even a thick, woolly blanket. Hurrying back with these it was to find Lilyan and Will lifting the supine Lavinia and shoving the rubberized sheet from the baby’s crib under her body. Lilyan took the items Tierney offered and began stacking them also beneath Lavinia and packing them into place on her torn body.
