3stalwarts (149 page)

“How are they, Mrs. Fowler? Pretty bad?”

She nodded.

His clothes smelled strong of horse-sweat and tobacco. He had curling hair, cropped short, bright brown in color.

“Everything’s fine,” she heard Ma Hovey telling him; and his voice, “Good.” And Ma Hovey, a bit sniffily, “I expect you’ll want to see for yourself.”

Their faces with their voices swam backward.

When they returned, the doctor was speaking. “You’re quite right, as usual, Mrs. Hovey— though I think you underestimate the time.”

Ma Hovey’s voice was pleased.

“She’s one of them that gets determined on it, Doctor.”

“Maybe so. I’ll wash my hands now.”

Dorothy bustled for a basin and a clean towel for him, but Ma Hovey lingered by the bed, tending Mary with a proprietary bending.

“You’re doing finely, pretty. Finely. Oh, ease down your back! Does it feel better when I put my arm down under it?”

The doctor seated himself beside the hearth and pulled his pipe out. He whittled off tobacco in his palm and stuffed the bowl. The rich blue coils of smoke were tapered out and whisked into the chimney.

“The road surprised me,” he said to Dorothy. “I expected it much rougher with all the heavy travel passing over it.”

“You didn’t have no trouble finding here?”

“No, no. Not a bit. I’d been up to the corners less than a week ago. A man got knifed in the gang that’s working next to Cossett’s tavern. Whiskey brawling, I expect. They got me Sunday morning. So all I had to do was turn right, there, instead of left, and yours is the first house.”

He wiped the crumpled leavings of the whittled plug off on his trouser knees.

“Come in, Mr. Fowler,” he invited.

“No, thanks,” said Jerry.

“Want to see me?”

Jerry was wordless, but the doctor read his eyes. He stepped through the doorway with him, his arm on Jerry’s shoulder.

“Everything looks right enough. Don’t worry.”

Ma Hovey returned to the hearth.

“A nice young man, I think,” said Dorothy, her voice stiff and thin.

Ma Hovey grunted in her short, round nose.

The doctor was gone for several minutes. Once in an interval Mary heard his footsteps matching Jerry’s in the front yard. The beat was methodical, heavy, a little out of stride. What right had Jerry to keep the doctor outside? She wanted to see him again. She was pinning her faith on his optimistic face. She must see it. She shut her teeth together, closing sound.

Dorothy looked timidly over the bed. There were little bulges just be-side the corners of her homely mouth. She glanced at Mary’s eyes, and her own were frightened. Mary fretfully tossed her head. Then Ma Hovey’s clear blue eyes swam up beside Dorothy’s head.

Her hand came out to rest on the set forehead.

“What is it now, dearie?”

Mary’s lips were calm in their deliberate speaking. Her voice was surprisingly clear. She heard herself:—

“I think it’s beginning to happen.”

Ma Hovey had ducked down with questing hands. Mary heard Dorothy mumbling something. Words were slurred. “I never knowed there was such power in a body.”

“Go get in that doctor,” Ma said shortly.

Then Mary’s sensations boiled out like a flume. She heard Dorothy: “Come inside, Dr. Earl.” The doctor’s quick heavy steps. Her own distortion. Her lips opening. Jerry’s footfalls halting at the door, stock-still. The silence. Then the lamp swam down and round and she was on a harder bed. The firelight was red, red, red. She saw herself upon a road. Her legs ached. Her feet were stumbling and her eyes looked down and saw not even pebbles. A wheel kept creaking, way off somewhere. It approached irregularly from behind. Voices kept talking, sharp hard-breathed snatches. The creak came on. She made a desperate effort, but the revolution of the earth held back her feet. There was a darkness not far off, a black lid above the light that someone was putting down. The creak came clearer. She dared not look around. That sound. It creaked again. She shut her teeth and did not hear it. But the blackness was inexorable. There was but the thinnest ray of light. A knife edge at the edge of the world. It entered. She had not heard the wheel that turned; but now it came again beside her ear. She saw a white face, she saw the bones under the skin, and the white sightless eyes. And in each eye a mirrored face… .

Time had been… .

She heard the doctor laugh. He held a little squirmy thing above her face. Ma Hovey said, “Her’s a lovely.” She was bustling. Somebody was weeping. “Here, you hold her, Mrs. Melville.” The evolution had caught up with her and passed, and she was free.

She closed her eyes.

Heat that was deathly all day long, sweltering marsh-side heat that shimmered in lazy waves over the still, high grass, that killed the sounds of passing wagons, that dulled men’s voices; in the wood lot south of the barn the locusts made an all-day sawing.

But the log walls of the cabin enclosed coolness born of the living, un-sunned earth on which the puncheons rested. It lapped round Mary, cradling her. It stilled Jerry’s eyes when he sat at the bedside, holding her hand in quiet. It put a change on Melville whenever he came in from reaping, and when he went forth again the clack of the whetstone on the scythe fell through the torrid shrieks of the cicadas like drops of water.

In the quiet, Dorothy moved in softness. She made little dainties out of the food she had, fresh beans and young potatoes; squash, too, were forming; for supper she went out for the fresh wheat and ground it in a small burnt-oak mortar by the kitchen door and made milk mush of the milky grains. As regular as time, she came into the kitchen, her long face red with sunlight, to watch Ma Hovey emptying the cradle and moving softly for the bed.

Those were the moments that marked Mary’s being for her now. She would see Ma Hovey with the corner of her eye and hear her movements making ready. Outside, Melville’s scythe would shear through wheat stalks, swinging as if it walked. But inside, the stillness would be great with waiting. Then a cry would break forth, a thin parody of human utterance, but blatant as life itself. There would be a breath in the air as Ma Hovey came forward towards the bed. Dorothy would stand by the footboard, looking down, her face all swollen with her childless heart. But then Mary would turn on her side and look away from her, straining her eyes to see as Ma Hovey turned back the blanket and put inside the short, wrapped bundle. Ma Hovey would unwrap the band that barely seemed to hold the milk in check. Sometimes when the breast was free, before the small red lips could make their ring upon the nipple, the milk would pour forth.

Then Ma Hovey laughed.

“There’s life in there to drink a basketful. My, my.”

And she would direct the mouth to its holding. Her pink face would grow pinker yet with sentiment.

“See the little pretty drink it! Ain’t she the hungry girl? A little guzzler. Hark, how she puffles, squashing in her nose. She’ll take it all tonight, I’ll guarantee.”

Even Dorothy at the bed-foot could hear the anxious breathing. She would steal round the corner, boots a-creak, and fill her eyes.

But Mary did not notice them then. However her back ached by evening, in that twilight time she felt her life uprise in the full breast. (“There’s no thing like it,” said Ma Hovey, “to ease a woman’s troubles.”) It was outpouring from the instant that the ring was formed by the child’s lips; it seemed to rise from untouched wells; it carried forth the mark of time, making her body young; it took strength from her in a flood that seemed to have no end; and it left strength in its place, to heal and grow; it was rich with warmth; it had a scent of its own, stronger than the milk of beasts-a sweet, rich scent that made a perfume in the baby’s skin. In all the world, she felt, no spring uprose from earth that came more freely, and she felt proud to hear Ma Hovey saying, “I never did see such a mass of milk in living woman. She should be rearing twins at very least. Look at the baby, ain’t she the pretty? Look at her bulging midwards, will you,

Mrs. Melville? Such a little guzzler for a girl!” “Drink,” thought Mary, “drink. There’s more, and more, and more. There will be always more.” The baby would begin to sigh and loiter in her sucking. Her round cheeks would redden over the new inward warmth. The flush would spread in a recognized progression. The ears, the eyelids, forehead, even the skin between the tiny, separate hairs that made her eyebrows, would grow hot. A distillation, silvery as a night sheen on red clover heads, would come forth upon the skin. Only the button nose stayed white from its own pressure. Yet even while the baby drowsed and woke, suckled and drowsed in always longer spells, Mary was conscious of her inexhaustible outpouring. Even at last, when it slept in surfeit, rocking its head like a honey-drunken bee, a few last drops would ooze forth on its lazy mouth.

Then the feet of the two women would move softly here and there. Mary would lie quiet, with the still ease of new being. So the evening stole in, and she herself dozed in the sound of firelight.

She did not listen to their quiet going-off to bed: Dorothy and Melville looking down; Melville’s eyes embarrassed, Dorothy’s bright; Jerry’s good-night, the three days he stayed after the child came, when Ma Hovey went outside for nightfall and they were alone.

Jerry sat close to the bed; the low stool brought his head just level with the pillow.

“I’ve got to be leaving soon, Mary.”

She would hush him with her hand. His dark thin face was still. His hair made a shade against the light. It was a wonder to her that the baby had fair hair.

“I’d want to name it, now, before I go.”

“What do you want to name it, Jerry?”

He found it hard to meet her eyes.

“I’d like to name it Mary. I would. Do you remember when you told me, after we finished the first lock? I said boys’ names. And you said what if it was a girl? And you were right.”

She smiled. It made her happy. Then he kissed her and stole out to his bed in the barn. She heard his good-night voice to old Ma Hovey; and Ma Hovey came in and helped her make ready for sleep. They were alone, then, like two women at a mystery, when the night was breathing just be-yond the window. And she wished this time might never end.

6

“He said the woman had a baby”

Mary sat in the cabin doorway sewing patches on a shirt of Jerry’s. It was the first time in many days that she had thought of him to mend his clothes; and all she could find for her penitence was this tattered shirt he had left behind two months ago. Dorothy said that the shirt was not worth mending: “I wouldn’t touch no shirt of Robert’s was so disconnected.”

The elbows were completely raveled out; and a piece of the tail had been cut off and sewed for an extra pocket on the breast. The small, uneven, manlike stitches made her face sober.

October was coming in. Down beside the marsh the maple which stood with half its roots in water was touched on the northward side with pinkish red. The marsh grass was acquiring yellow, and the meadow had turned a duller green. The blackbirds flew in mammoth flocks, higher than in summer; and when they settled, the grass was jarred with their unceasing bickers. The arch of the sky was untouched blue; and the sun shone strongly.

Mary had the baby in the cradle on the doorstone. She was sleeping now; and from time to time Mary touched the cradle with her foot to hear the rockers mutter on the uneven sill. Then she looked up and out across the marsh. Many of the diggers had passed on. One shanty smoke with which she had been long familiar rose no more; and Melville said that the contractor had his section finished. You could see his section shaped, the prism for the water, and the towpath wide enough for horses, and on the other side the narrow berm. But here and there for miles both east and west the little knots of men were digging slowly. To Mary it was all a dream. She thought of it now, vaguely, for the shirt in her lap and the needle in her fingers. The needle needed threading. Mary stared westward.

Far away she saw a dust cloud traveling along the fence. It approached her with an unwavering swiftness that even to her eye carried a familiar gait. After a little she saw the horse’s head, held high, with the small ears freshly pointed, and then on the seat of the wagon a figure she recognized immediately.

She made herself ready to wave; for he was traveling at such a pace that she supposed he wished to reach Utica at nightfall in the very least. His head was bared to the sun and his fat red cheeks were windburned. He grasped the reins in a fat hand and Mary saw the mouth of the racing horse half opened by his weight of wrist. There was no mistaking Caleb Hammil.

As he came to the corner of Melville’s first field he spied Mary seated in the cabin door. He waved his hat, yanked the right rein— and Bourbon took the turn-in skillfully, lifting the inside wheel and snapping the rear ones into line. He braced his feet and slid to stop.

Never heeding him, Hammil threw the reins over the dashboard and hopped off. His fat face beamed.

“Hello there,” he said. “How are you now?”

Mary smiled.

“Just finely,” she said, looking down.

The fat man followed her gaze, and instantly dropped his voice to a whisper.

“So that’s the baby. A girl, I’ve heard tell; a pretty one. Can I look at her?”

“Yes. She’s sleeping now.”

“Just to see her face. Don’t wake her, Mrs. Fowler. I’ll bend down.”

He knelt before the cradle’s foot and with infinite pains stretched one fat hand forth to lift the blanket’s edge. His breath whistled from the effort of kneeling.

“It’s a pretty baby. Takes after you, I judge,” he whispered. “I’m real glad it came out well.”

He let the blanket fall back into place and carefully got to his feet.

“Can I set down and visit a little spell?”

“Yes, please. But let’s go in. Can’t I get you something?”

“No. I’ve ate an hour since.”

“Some milk— a piece of pie?”

They moved softly into the cabin.

“What kind of pie?”

Mary smiled. The contractor always made her think of an eager little boy. He had no consciousness of self.