Caleb (3 page)

6

Before the week was out, Caleb was working in the plantation office at the back of the house.

Now that he was no longer working in the fields, Caleb was able to get a clearer picture of the Three Rivers plantation and its people. The house itself, a substantial three-story wood-framed building, was about fifty years old. A veranda wrapped around three of its sides, and fluted wooden pillars flanked its big front door. The house was set in about three hundred acres of prime cotton land, which was worked by some twenty slaves. The field slaves, their wives, and a dozen children lived in whitewashed wooden huts scattered around a cookhouse. A series of barns containing livestock and farm equipment separated the huts from the house. The six house girls ate in the kitchen but slept in an annex at the back of the house.

Caleb moved his few belongings into the loft above the coach house. Miss Nancy gave him some of Jardine’s father’s cast-off clothing, which had been in storage since the old man died four years before. As Caleb began to settle into the routine of the house, his biggest challenge was getting the books in order. Since taking over the plantation upon his father’s death, Jardine’s method had been to throw all the paperwork into a big box. He’d figured he would find the time to get it organized one of these days.

Caleb set to work, and within a month the books were in order. For the first time, Jardine knew whether Three Rivers was making money and why. Caleb told him that he was paying too much for seed and manure, that he had money in the bank in Charleston not drawing any interest, and that Jed Carter down Oaksley way owed him money that was long overdue.

“You know, Nance,” Jardine said in bed one night, “I was right. That boy is a goddamned—”

“Don’t swear, Boyd.”

“Well, he
is
a marvel,” Jardine said defensively, “and we might never have known it. What did we ever do without him?”

“We managed,” said Nancy mildly.

“Don’t you like him?” Jardine demanded suspiciously. “Is he causing you problems here in the house? I’ll—”

“Far from it, Boyd,” Nancy said firmly. “Caleb’s turned out to be very useful around the house. I just don’t think he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ, that’s all.”

“Now who’s swearing?” said Jardine triumphantly.

Caleb was more than just useful, Nancy had discovered over the past weeks. He was an extremely well-trained house servant. Unlike Cassie, the house girl, he knew how to lay the table perfectly, with every piece of silver and crystal in order and the damask table napkins folded at each place like little caps. He knew which wine to serve and when, how to make beer, which spice went with which meat, and much of the other household minutiae that Nancy would have learned from her mother had she not been orphaned so young. Instead—though she hoped he didn’t realize it—Nancy was learning from Caleb. In her sewing room, she kept a big lined-paper book that was filling up with the useful information she’d gleaned.

Jardine didn’t notice the difference, but Mrs. Rafe Bentley, on one of her visits to Three Rivers, commented, “My dear, I must compliment you on your table arrangements. I haven’t seen anything to match them this side of New Orleans. And how do you get your silver gleaming so?”

“Hickory ash, household soda, and hard work,” Nancy was able to tell her, thanks to Caleb.

One day as they were going over the household accounts, Miss Nancy asked him, “Caleb, we haven’t talked about this, but what you said to my husband that day on the wharf, the day he bought you—did you mean it?”

“Yes, Miss Nancy,” Caleb said without looking up from the account book.

“Do you still mean it?”

“No, Miss Nancy.”

“But you still want to be free, Caleb?”

“Yes, Miss Nancy. I always have. I always will.”

7

When Nancy was about eight months pregnant, she cut herself on a bit of old wire in the bottling room, and blood poisoning set in. Helplessly, Jardine watched her turn pale and then as yellow as old lard. Her girlish gaiety faded away, and she seemed to sink into the big old bed as if she would disappear into the mattress. The poison spread up her left arm until it was dark gray streaked with virulent yellow all the way to the elbow. A fever raged in her that cold compresses and herbal medicines did little to fight.

“I’m all right, darling, really,” she told Jardine. “Just tired. I’ll be better tomorrow.” But he had seen too much blood poisoning to believe her.

Outside, Jardine told Caleb, “I’m going to ride to Wisshatchie for Dr. Hollander. I’ll be back late tonight. You and Cassie look after Miss Nancy, you hear? If anything happens to her, I’ll—” Jardine stopped. He knew he was wasting time. Jumping on the big roan, he spurred away from the house toward the turnpike. Caleb turned back and walked into the house feeling helpless.

Boyd Jardine always was a strong believer in luck, but that day his luck ran out. Rainfall had been heavy recently, and when he got to the Ossingamee River, he saw that it was in flood. The mule ferry had turned over and sunk. Time after time, he forced the roan to plunge into the fast-running river only to have it lose the fight against the water and begin to be swept downstream. Finally, tethering his exhausted, heaving, and lathering horse to a rowanberry bush, Jardine sat down and cried like a boy of seven, not a man of twenty-nine.

Back at Three Rivers, the shadows of evening were falling when Cassie came running into the little office, where Caleb was trying to make a stubborn column of figures add up twice in a row.

“You better come,” she gasped. “Miss Nancy . . . she’s worse . . . she’s . . .”

“What can I do?” Caleb demanded. “Master’s coming with the doctor.”

“You just better come,” she insisted. “You better.”

When Caleb got up to the big bedroom at the front of the house, he saw that Cassie was right. Miss Nancy was totally yellow now, and she seemed to have shrunk to the point where only the pitifully small bump of her pregnancy stood out underneath the covers. In contrast to the bright white pillowcase, her face looked like one of the little yellow apples that grew out near the horse barn. It was dwarfed by her rich chestnut hair, which fanned out across the pillow.

“Caleb,” she said, “is my husband—”

“He’ll be back, Miss Nancy,” Caleb said helplessly. “It won’t be long now.”

“I’m so weak, Caleb,” she said faintly. “I feel so weak.”

“Can I get you anything, Miss Nancy?” Caleb asked, wanting more than anything to escape from that room, with its terrible odor of decaying flesh.

“No,” she whispered. “Yes, get me a sip of water. From the nightstand. Please.”

Caleb filled a china teacup from the earthenware crock and held it toward Miss Nancy. “Please,” she said. “I can’t—”

Sitting down on the bedside chair, Caleb supported her head with his left hand while he put the cup to her cracked lips. Her skin felt hot to his touch and her neck limp and boneless. He poured a trickle of water carefully into her open mouth until she started to cough.

“Enough,” she croaked. “That’s better. That’s much better. Thank you.” Caleb eased her head back into the groove of the pillow.

Caleb started to get up, but she stopped him with a hand that felt as though it were on fire. “Please,” she said. “Please stay. Sit, sit.” She tried to raise her head. “Cassie,” she said to the house slave, who was hovering behind Caleb wringing her hands and praying, “I think I could eat something. Could you make me some soup?”

“Yes, Missy, right away!” Cassie said and fled through the bedroom doorway.

When she was gone, Nancy looked up at Caleb, who had sat back down on the bedside chair. “Caleb,” she said faintly but evenly, “I think I’m dying.”

“Miss Nancy—”

“Please listen. I’m so weak, but I feel no pain. I think I’m beyond pain now, Caleb. I don’t think I can hold on until Mr. Jardine gets back with the doctor.”

“You can do it, Miss Nancy.”

“I don’t think so, Caleb,” she said. “Poor Boyd. You will look after him for me, won’t you?”

“Miss Nancy,” Caleb couldn’t think of anything to say.

“He’s not a bad man, Caleb. Be patient. Help him. He’ll need it.” Her small right hand still gripped his wrist. There was no strength in it.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, so faintly that Caleb could barely hear her. “I’m so sorry . . .” Her voice faded away.

“Miss Nancy—”

“. . . about the baby . . . my baby . . . I just know it’s a boy. Boyd so wanted a son . . . and I so wanted to . . . to give . . .”

Her fingers released his wrist, and her hand fell limply to the mattress.

8

“Miss Nancy?”

Her eyelids, the yellow of old ivory, had closed, and her sharp little chin seemed to be tucked into the frilly top of her white lace nightgown. Her left arm, which lay on the bedcover, was almost black. Caleb picked up her right arm to feel for a pulse, but there was none. He tried pressing two fingers to her childlike throat. Nothing. Finally, in desperation, he went to the dresser, picked up the silver-filigree hand mirror, and pressed it to her slack lips. Again, he put the mirror to her mouth. Nothing. Miss Nancy was dead. There was no way out of it.

Caleb was leaving the room to go tell Cassie, when he looked back at Nancy’s slim body with its incongruously distended stomach. There was a baby in there, he thought. Perhaps a live baby.

Caleb left the room and met Cassie as she was coming up the stairs with a tray covered with a white cloth.

He made up his mind. “Take that back downstairs, Cassie,” he said. “Miss Nancy doesn’t want it.”

“But—”

“You do as I say. And keep that fire on. Put a pot of water on the stove. As soon as it boils, you bring me a big bowl of it and put it down by the door. Don’t you come back in here until I tell you. Understand?”

Cassie looked at him with big eyes, nodded, and went back down the stairs two at a time.

Caleb returned to the bedroom. Miss Nancy’s body lay still on the big bed. Only the bump stood out; it seemed to be getting bigger. Caleb couldn’t look at anything else. Going to the window, he stared into the distance toward the turnpike, hoping to see a cloud of dust coming from that way. But there was none, and soon he wouldn’t be able to see. Caleb lit a big oil lamp with a leaded-glass shade that looked like a church window. He put it on the bedside table and again looked down at Miss Nancy. He shook his head. Looking was not going to get the job done.

Going into the master’s dressing room, he picked up the ivory-handled straight razor from the marble washstand. Caleb felt the edge and gave the razor a few hard whacks on the leather strop hanging on the wall. He tested it again. Plenty sharp. Caleb took a large towel from a pile on a shelf near the washing bowl. He carried it and the razor out into the bedroom and put them on the bedside table. Caleb felt an urge to go back to the window, but he shook it off. Reaching down, he grabbed the bedding and threw it on the floor, completely revealing Miss Nancy in the nightgown that had crept up above her knees. She looked like a child, a little yellow child with a swollen belly.

Steeling himself, Caleb reached down, gripped the hem of her nightgown, and gently worked it up until it was over the bump of her pregnancy. He deliberately kept his eyes on the nightgown, but when at last he had to look down and saw the small triangle of rich brown hair where her legs met, he felt nothing but anxiety. The blue-veined skin stretched tautly over her belly like an over-inflated balloon. Now how did Mr. Regan show them?

His mind flashed back ten years to Boston, when Brent’s tutor, a failed medical school student at Harvard College, had interrupted their ancient history lessons with demonstrations of some of the basic surgical techniques he had learned before being asked to leave.

“Now, boys,” he’d said, “there will be times when your patient will not be able to get that baby out by herself. She just can’t. What are you going to do, Brent?”

The thin blond boy of thirteen looked blank. “Go for help?”

“There ain’t no help,” Regan said scornfully. “There’s just you and that woman and that baby inside her. And they’re both going to die if you don’t do something and do it quick. I’ve told you all this, damn it. Don’t you boys ever listen? I’m giving you the benefit of my considerable education. Do you want to study that dusty old Greek history, or do you want to learn something useful?” Without waiting for an answer, he snapped, “Caleb?”

Wide-eyed, Caleb stared at the tutor. Finally, he guessed, “Ces . . . cesarium something?”

“Right!” said Regan. “Cesarean section. At least one of you dunderheads is paying attention—some of the time.” He looked scornfully at Brent. “How the hell,” he asked the boy, “can you actually own this nappy-headed boy if he’s so much smarter than you?”

Brent didn’t answer. He just gave Caleb a dirty look that let him know he would pay for his lucky guess.

“Okay,” said Regan. “Pay attention. I’m only going to do this once. I only have one fig.” Reaching over to the fruit bowl, he grasped a ripe Smyrna fig and held it out to the boys. He tightened his grip on the fruit until it seemed that its tight purple skin would burst. “Now, this is your pregnant woman’s belly. In there is a baby, and it has to come out. And it has to come out in a hurry. The poor little bastard could suffocate in there. Either of you boys happen to have a scalpel on you?” When they both looked baffled, he sighed. “Hand me that penknife, Brent.”

Taking the little pearl-handled knife in his hand, Regan brought the thin blade up to the fig until it nearly touched. “Now, boys,” he said, “you have to imagine that this fig has a belly button right about here.” He touched the fruit delicately with the tip of the blade. “Now, don’t go plunging in there. You’ll just mess that poor woman up, and that baby will still be in there snug as anything. No, you go due south of that umbilicus—old Snodgrass says about a hand’s width—and you go in, there!”

The boys watched with fascination as the thin blade cut into the purple skin and a little spurt of juice welled out. Brent closed his eyes.

“Now, don’t be fainthearted, boys. When you cut,
cut
. You’re not hurting that woman; you’re helping her. As old Snodgrass says, the man with a scalpel in his hand is God. He can do no wrong. Anyway, you just press down on that scalpel hard and c-u-u-u-t”—he drew the word out as the blade plunged in and cut vertically—“through the abdominal and uterine walls. You won’t hurt the baby. He’s well tucked in down there. You have to give him a nice big cleft to escape through.” The fig gushed its rich green many-seeded insides, and both boys closed their eyes.

Putting the penknife down on the desk blotter, Regan reached his delicate fingers down into the depths of the slashed fig and pretended to take out a tiny baby. Then he extended the pulpy mass of the ruined fruit toward his charges. “Care for a bit of fig, boys?”