The Reluctant Midwife (20 page)

“I just hope none of the Bishops' cattle have a positive test,” the vet worries as we bump down the rutted road onto the the Bishop farm. There's a wet wind, but we've dressed for the weather, with knit caps, winter jackets, and long flannel underwear.

As they promised, the men have the animals ready in the barn, and all four of the Bishop brothers are present so there's no job for me except to circumvent a fight.

“Cigarette?” Cora asks, holding out a pack of Pall Malls. Her light brown hair is long and lank with bangs down to her eyebrows, and her voice is low for a woman. Probably the cigarettes.

“No, thanks. I don't smoke.” We're sitting on a bale of hay watching the men work, and she puts the cigarettes away as if she's made a social blunder.

“I've always been afraid to smoke,” I admit.

“My gran says it's good for you, that the smoke clears your lungs.”

“Lots of people say that.”

“Hey, watch it, George!” Beef yells at a man who seems to be his younger brother. “You stomped on my foot.”

“Well, sorrrrrry!” George mocks him. It's cold in the barn and steam comes out of his large red mouth.

“They say you're a nurse.” That's Cora.

“Yes, I work part-time at White Rock CCC Camp.”

“The Bishop men hate the CCC camp. Hate the boys there too. Say they're a bunch of pansies, parading around in uniform as if they were some kind of heroes.”

“They're just regular fellows, earning money for their families and staying off the streets. Young men get into mischief if they don't have work to do.”

“The Bishops hate them because the camps are run by the government. They hate anything to do with the government, hate Roosevelt, hate Herman Kump, the governor. I hate them too. The feds killed my pa. He was a moonshiner, until they gunned him down. This was back during Prohibition.” The girl rattles on as if she's had no one to talk to for months. “That's how I came to live here. The Bishop brothers were moonshiners like Pappy and took me in when he died. Now I'm Aran's woman. Do you think we could still have a baby? Him being older like?”

My attention is on the men.

“Number twenty-three?” Beef snarls, looking up from his notebook. “Speak up, George. You got rocks in your mouth?”

“I said twenty-five!”

“Well, shout it out.”

“Fuck you! It ain't easy pulling on a cow's ear while reading a metal clip.”

“Do they always go on like this? The brothers?”

“Yeah. They're a quarrelsome bunch. You get used to it.” Cora pulls the pack of Pall Malls out again and lights one, then pinches the wooden match head to be sure it's not hot before flipping it across the barn floor.

“So, you think I could still have a baby even if Aran's an old man?”

“How old is he? He looks fit.”

“Forty-five.”

“I would say yes. Does he want to be a father?”

The woman smiles shyly and blows smoke over her head so it won't get in my eyes. “Yes, he does. Is there anything special I should do?”

“Goddammit!” It's Earl, the bald one this time, the one who looks like Beef without hair. Things are getting tense, and there are still eight more cows to go. So far all the injection sites are negative.

I turn back to Cora. “Well, you want to eat a lot of healthy food, milk, meat, vegetables, corn bread, and beans. Then you want to have relations often.” I don't know why I don't say
intercourse
. It's not like Cora is a church lady or something.

“Like every day?”

“No, three times a week would be fine. Also, don't drink moonshine.”

“Not at all?” Cora asks.

“Women who drink too much alcohol have funny-looking offspring and they're not too smart.”

“What
should
I drink?”

“Milk. It's good for your baby's bones and, also, the midwife says, raspberry tea. You can pick the leaves now if you can find a stand of berries, then put them in a tea ball or a little bag of gauze to steep in boiled water. Do you have a tea ball, one of those little metal things on a chain that you dip in your cup?”

“Aran will get me one.” The woman's pale face lights up. “He loves me that much!”

“Last cow,” yells Hester. He leans over her flank, studying the area that he'd shaved three days ago. “Blum,” he calls. “What do you think?”

“Why the fuck are you asking him?” Beef complains. “You're the vet. He's just a walking vegetable.” The whole group is tense because they know if there's one positive result the cow will be sent to the slaughterhouse and the rest of the herd quarantined for a month.

“The doc doesn't speak but that doesn't mean he's dumb.” Daniel defends his friend with a jaw as tight as a steel bear trap. “He's given the Mantoux test to hundreds of soldiers at Walter Reed. This animal has a red spot that's almost five millimeters.”

The barn is silent. Even the cattle have stopped mooing. Blum leans over and stares at the mark while we all hold our breath, and then shakes his head no, meaning it's not reactive.

“Woo-hoo!” the brothers crow, and throw their hats in the air.

“I'm getting cold. Are we almost done?” I stand and do a fake shiver, ready to get us out of the Bishops' barn before a real quarrel starts.

Daniel takes the hint. “I'll send the forms into the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. Clean bill of health for your herd, Aran. Congratulations, everyone! They look good.”

“Thanks,” says Earl.

“Sorry we gave you a hard time,” offers Walter.

Beef just turns around and plods away. There's something familiar about that walk, a discouraged look, and I wonder if Beef is troubled by nightmares of explosions in trenches, men crying, and blood.

It's a raw day as I head for the camp and I'm surprised as I pass Mrs. Stone's place to see a line of trucks and horse-drawn vehicles heading into her drive. Curious, I decide to follow them. At the gate there's a sign:
FARM AUCTION. MOUNTAIN FEDERAL BANK
.

Since my grocery deliveries have dried up, I haven't visited the old lady once in more than a month and now my heart freezes. How could I have let this happen? If I had been Patience, I would have raised holy hell about the gas company's harassment. I would have driven to Charleston and picketed on the steps of the State Capitol until I got justice, but now it's too late.

I park behind a cart with two mules and wander over to the barn where a crowd of fifty men has churned the grass into black mud. These neighbors, I think, are like vultures, here to take advantage of Mrs. Stone's weakness. I don't exactly know how these sales work, but I figure someone's about to get Mrs. Stone's property for a song, and it probably involves the gas company.

Near the barn door, the old lady stands next to the auctioneer, a stout fellow with a wide face, wearing glasses and a bow tie. She's dressed smartly in a gray coat with a gray lambswool collar. They consult a document laid out on an old wooden table. Standing over on the porch of the house is Sheriff Hardman and two suits from
the bank. The sale begins when a man in a denim jacket brings out a nanny goat and two frolicking kids with droopy ears.

The auctioneer steps up on a podium. “We'll start this tax sale with the stock, then the machinery, then the land, and lastly the contents of the house. What am I offered for this good milker, a purebred Nubian that gives a gallon of milk a day and her two offspring, all in excellent health?

“Do I hear three dollars? Three dollars, now three, now three, will ya' give me three?” I'm surprised when the crowd stands silent and no one raises their hands. The auctioneer is confused and the bankers seem concerned.

“Okay now, gents. Loosen up. Let's try two. Two-dollar bid, now two, now two, will ya' give me two? Will you give me two, just two greenback bills?”

“Two bits,” says Mrs. Stone in a little-girl voice.

“That's unheard of! Do I hear a dollar? One greenback dollar! Now one, now one. Will you give me one?” He goes on like this for five more minutes, but the wide gray sky just muffles his singsong. Finally . . .

“Call the sale!” someone yells, and the auctioneer, having no other bids, has to close.

“Sold for one quarter,” he yells with disgust and knocks his gavel on the table. “Unbelievable! Why she's worth twenty times that much!”

Mrs. Stone hands the quarter to one of the suits, takes her animals back in the barn, and the sale goes on. Twenty goats all sold to Mrs. Stone for ten cents, or two bits, and each time her voice gets stronger.

I begin to understand that this auction is rigged. Not one of these neighbors plan to buy the old lady's farm; they're here to make sure no one else does.

The auctioneer leads the crowd to the farm machinery. “What
am I bid for this 1920 John Deere? It's a beauty. Not a speck of rust on her,” he begins without spirit. “Do I hear twenty? Twenty greenback dollars. Now twenty. Now twenty. Who will give me twenty?” Again no one bids. “Do I hear ten?”

The bankers rub their clean-shaven chins and wipe their spectacles. This sale isn't going as planned, and there's no way anyone is going to get the two hundred dollars in back taxes that someone has decided Mrs. Stone owes.

I look around the crowd, wondering who the oil and gas man might be and see One-Arm Wetsel, Mr. Hummingbird, and Charley Roote, the old veteran who was one of my grocery delivery customers, along with a dozen other familiar faces.

“Do I hear ten, ten, ten?” Dead silence. The auctioneer shakes his head and looks at the bankers. One of them shrugs. The John Deere goes to Mrs. Stone for three dollars.

I stay until the actual land comes up for sale, and for a minute I think the farm is lost. The auctioneer starts the bidding at two hundred dollars and is down to one hundred dollars when a man with slicked-back hair wearing a pin-striped suit exits a late-model Graham and walks toward the front. This is it, I think, the company making its move.

The oily-haired weasel starts to raise his hand to bid, but is immediately surrounded by farmers who, without even touching him, make their point clear. Mr. Hummingbird towers over him at almost seven feet tall, and Charley Roote strolls over and opens his jacket to display a pistol tucked into his belt.

“We don't think you really want to buy this farm, mister,” Charley growls, boring into the fellow's eyes. “It wouldn't be healthy. We think you want to get right in that shiny auto and go back where you came from. Understand?”

The farm goes for five dollars, sold once again to Mrs. Stone. Thinking it over, I realize she's spent about twenty dollars in all,
and now she's clear and free of the bankers, tax men, and the oil and gas company . . . at least for a while.

By the time I get to White Rock I'm two hours late.

“About time you got here,” Boodean chides me. “Lucky the brass had to go to Camp Laurel for a meeting. What happened, car trouble?”

“I'm sorry. Did I miss anything?”

“Nah. Just a bellyache and a boil. Then Lou Cross came in for some more of that salve you had made for his wart at the pharmacy. He says it's really working.” Mrs. Ross holds out a cup of fresh coffee and I tell them about the farm auction, but no one is as excited about it as I am.

When I get home, I get a better reaction. Eager to narrate the story, I run up the stairs to tell Patience and she gets so worked up, Daniel has to tell her to calm down.

“This is great. This is great,” she keeps saying. “The people are taking control! They're fighting back.”

“I've never seen anything like it,” I continue, enjoying her enthusiasm. “The farmers stood up to the bank, and Mrs. Stone got her land back. Then they chased the oil and gas man off the property. The auctioneer didn't even bother to sell the household contents, because by then he knew they were beaten. The whole thing must have been fixed by someone. . . .”

Daniel, who reads the paper religiously, enlightens us. “I've heard about these sales in the
Times
. They're called penny auctions and started in the Midwest. Nationwide, they estimate, a quarter
million farms have been foreclosed on, so the farmers are getting organized.”

“But they don't have a union, do they?” That's Patience, always a union supporter.

“County agriculture societies seem to be the instigators,” Daniel goes on. “Or sometimes they're spontaneous. However they happen, the locals bid ridiculously low and some won't bid at all. If an outsider or a land speculator shows up, things can get rough. There have even been a few deaths, though no one was charged. The banks walk away with a fraction of what's owed and the farmer gets his land back. This may be the first penny auction in Union County, but it won't be the last.”

“After it was all over,” I share with a smile, “I saw the old lady wave at Mr. Roote, so I think maybe he was the one who got the other farmers to show up. She was almost gay, and he was standing very tall.”

Snow, like feathers, falling softly, down and down and down. “I hope the installers from the Mountain Farmers Telephone Co-op come today, although with this snow they might not,” I worry out loud.

“I lived for a long time without a phone before I moved here.” That's Patience, resting back on her pillows. She has good days and bad days and I never know what each will be. Lately she's taken to knitting little things for the new baby, tiny booties, a sweater, and this seems to cheer her, give her hope.

“But it would be so nice to know that you had a pedestal phone like Lilly's on the bedside table.” I hold out a blue-and-white-flowered chipped teapot filled with hot water. “Raspberry tea?” She nods her head yes. We're eating breakfast up in her room off a wooden tray that I constructed myself and then painted with flowers.

“I hate leaving you alone today. Daniel and Blum are out on a call. We don't even know when they'll be back. What if you need something? Maybe I should quit my job.”

“No, Becky. You can't quit. You've done a lot for us, just moving in. I'll be okay.” Patience turns, smiling. “I love the snow.”

“So do I. I grew up in the north country, Brattleboro, Vermont.”

“I was raised in Deerfield, Illinois, near Chicago,” Patience offers, and I realize how little we know about each other.

Then there's silence as we both stare out the window.

The roof of the barn is covered, the lawn, the meadows, the branches of every tree and shrub. And the snow is still coming. Up on the mountain, the fir and spruce are dark against the white. Here and there a golden oak that hasn't lost its leaves brightens the scene.

“So beautiful,” Patience whispers. “You asked me about my previous births the other day. . . .”

“Don't talk about it if it makes you sad.”

“It's okay. I think it's important that you know. You
are
my midwife.” Here she gives me a sly smile, teasing, because she knows, unlike her, I'm a reluctant midwife.

“I've been pregnant four times. I abrupted my first when I was sixteen. I was an orphan and conceived unexpectedly with my love, Lawrence, an art student in Chicago.

“He was killed in a train wreck on his way to tell his parents that we wanted to marry. I read about it in the paper and lost the pregnancy a few days later. The baby was stillborn and, having plenty of breast milk and no other employment, I became a wet nurse.”

I listen without comment, but my eyes widen thinking of so much sadness.
To lose your lover and your child in one week! How could she endure?

“What happened to your parents? Couldn't you turn to someone in the family?”

“My only grandma died of consumption, a slow, lingering death, then my father, a first mate on a freighter, died in a storm on Lake Michigan, leaving my mother and me deep in debt. A few years later, when I was twelve, Mama died of TB. She hemorrhaged in her sleep and I found her in her bloody bed in the morning. That left me alone and that's how I got sent to an orphans' asylum in Chicago.” She recounts all this as if describing the weather, a drought, a blizzard, a flood.

“Is this too much for you?” she asks, squeezing my hand. The midwife has noticed tears in my eyes.

“No, I'm just amazed. I had no idea you've had such a hard life.”

Patience laughs. “We all have hard lives, Becky. Don't you know that? Sometimes you just have to take your wounded heart out, stitch it up, stuff it back in your chest, and go on. . . .” Here she pauses and I picture myself doing that. Stuffing my wounded heart back in my chest.

“Anyway,” Patience continues after smoothing her hair. “I mourned deeply, but I was young and eventually fell in love again. This time, the man was a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Pittsburgh, Ruben Gordesky. We married and were together seven wonderful years until he died in the Battle of Blair Mountain when he was only thirty-five, along with a couple of hundred other union men. I thought I'd never love again, then Daniel came along and we conceived our first time.”

Here she gets a faraway look in her eyes. “We weren't married or even engaged and since I'd never had a baby with Ruben, I assumed I was barren. . . . It was just something that happened in the middle of a thunderstorm. Oh, that sounds so bad!” She smiles and raises her eyebrows.

“Here I was, trying to establish myself as a reputable professional and then I get pregnant and I'm not even married. I was distraught. The community would never accept me as a midwife.
I even thought of taking some herbs that would make the baby go away, but I decided I deserved to be happy. If I wanted a baby, I would have one, to hell with what people would think.

“Daniel found out I was expecting and we decided to marry. We had a date for the wedding and everything, invited the Maddocks and the Dreshers, one of Daniel's big clients. Well, the wedding came off, a quiet one in town with Judge Wade, on a snowy day like this, but I abrupted a second time months later, went into painful contractions out in the fields bringing in the hay. I should have known better. By the time I got to the house, the baby came out on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. I named her Rosie, because she was so red, and I buried her behind the barn on Wild Rose Road with that other baby. You remember, the dead premature baby someone left in a carton at your clinic?”

I let my breath out and consider coming up with an excuse to get out of the room, but Patience needs to talk, so I hold my seat. When something traumatic happens to you, whether it's the loss of a limb, the loss of a lover, or the loss of a child, talking it through is part of healing.

“After that,” she continues, “I thought for sure that I couldn't have children, but within six months I was pregnant again. This time, Daniel and I went to Torrington to the specialist and were told that I must have a blood disorder. He was pretty sure I would just keep losing babies and wanted me to have a termination and get sterilized.

“He told us it would be too hard on me emotionally and physically to keep losing a baby every year. In a way, I think he was right, but Danny Boy stuck and he was worth everything. So despite the bleeding with this pregnancy, I don't give up hope.” She rolls over and puts her head in my lap and I stroke her hair. Outside the window, the snow falls and falls.

“I'll say the blessing,” Daniel announces when our Thanksgiving feast is placed on a table next to Patience's bed. “Lord, we thank you for this bounty and for these friends. . . . Amen.” It's a short prayer and we have a white tablecloth and candles that Patience insisted on. We have all dressed up; the men, even Danny, in long-sleeved shirts and ties and Patience and I in our second-best dresses.

Ordinarily, we begin our meal without preamble, and I'd thought Daniel was more like Blum, a skeptic when it came to God, but I guess I was wrong. Little Danny folds his hands, making a church and then a steeple, and there are tears in Patience's eyes as she looks at her rounding belly. Maybe she's saying a prayer for her unborn child. The fetus is now around twenty-eight weeks, too early yet, much too early.

Outside, the snow falls again, tiny white flakes and there are
three inches on the ground, but it won't amount to much, which is good, because I have to go to work on Friday.

“Do you want to carve the ham?” Hester asks Blum. I'm always surprised when he treats the doctor as if he's normal, an intelligent companion who's just lost his voice, rather than a handicapped patient who has lost his mind.

Isaac takes the carving knife and slices the ham neatly with his nimble surgeon's hands. We also have fried trout from the river, home-canned green beans, mashed potatoes, and a pumpkin pie with whipped cream that I made myself with a recipe Patience gave me. All of the food is from our garden or the farm animals, except for the flour, sugar, and lard, and this pleases me, because, for the first time, I had a hand in growing it.

“Milk?” Patience asks pouring for everyone. I hold out my cup and am happy that I don't have to go to work at the CCC camp today. I worry about the boys when I'm away too long, but they have the day off too, so unless they get into some kind of shenanigans, at least there won't be any serious accidents.

I take in the room, the flickering candlelight on the faces of my friends. We don't have much, but for this day, this week, we have enough and we are safe in each other's care.