When Henry Came Home (40 page)

             
He pinned his upper lip between his teeth, but remained, sitting by her side and holding her hand. Another contraction came, and her fingernails bit into his palm. "Mary—" he said, feeling desperate to help her. He shifted a little and cradled her head in his lap, smoothing the hair away from her face. She sighed as her body relaxed again and closed her eyes. It was a little over five minutes later that the next one came, and he watched helplessly as her face contorted and her fingers clawed for a hold. Suddenly, he could sit idly by no longer, and he moved her head to rest on a pillow and reached for his cane, fumbling in the dark and catching it just as it began to fall to the floor, out of reach. He pulled himself up, went to the clothes tree in the corner, and slipped on his robe.

             
"Hen—" she said, faint, "’s not time..."

             
But he could see that the contractions were coming quicker now, and left the room. The hall was cool and dark, but he did not notice as he went through. He flung the front door open and stepped out onto the porch. "Ian!" he called, then cleared his throat because the sound did not carry. He could see a small light from the cracks between the planks in the barn wall. "Ian—!" The call was cut short by a cough and he grasped his chest, wheezing hoarsely.

             
Fortunately, the boy had heard, and called back a faint, "Coming!" A moment later the barn door grated open and a sleek black horse raced out into the night, a small form clinging tightly to its back.

             
He heard her calling from the bedroom: "Hen—Henry--!" and fear clutched at his heart, tightening in his chest. Gathering his robe again, he hurried back, stumbling a little. At her bedside, she grasped his hand and he started to sit and then stopped, afraid. He was weary already—if he should sit, and not be able to stand again when needed-- So he stood over her, holding her hand and aching to cradle her body. She had kicked aside the sheets by now, and sweat trickled from her brow. Again her nails dug into his hand, but he didn't feel the pain. Still, she smiled up at him, the expression grim and tight.

             
"What can I do?" he asked, swallowing. She shook her head—nothing. He turned his eyes upward and began silently to pray.

             
It seemed like hours before the doctor arrived, but the ride from town was not long and the little man made haste. The horses squealed in protest as he reigned them to a halt, and a moment later the bedroom door slammed open. He gave a quick smile, setting his bag on a chair and preparing as fast as his fingers could fly. His look, now, was one of both experience and hard knowledge. "Boil some water in the kitchen," he ordered, turning to the boy who had followed him in. He looked up quickly at Henry.

"Two women... from the church, coming to help. The wagon'll be here any minute."

              "Hey—Doc--" panted Mary, under her breath.

             
He came up next to her and Henry moved away a little so that he could check her pulse and listen to her heart. "Good girl," he said, turning his back. "Looks fine."

             
Henry moved closer again, holding almost as tight to her arm as she to his. She looked up and smiled in a moment of relief, and the worry on his face dissolved a little, confined mostly now to his brow and eyes.

             
The women arrived then, and bustled into the room. Henry knew he had seen them before—at church, in town—and probably he knew them, or Mary did, or maybe even one of them was her mother, but no names came to his mind and he could not recall the faces, either. One approached him and put her arm around his waist, a gesture he noticed only vaguely. "Come dear," she said, using her other hand to pry Mary's fingers away from his arm. "'Tain't a man's place, and you'll only drive your mind half crazy." And then he sensed that his hand was empty, as it should not have been, and before he could object he found himself in the hall, and the door was closed.

             
He paced a small oval outside of the door until he heard her scream. His breath caught at the noise, and he threw open the door. One of the women—the other, this time—pushed past him on her way to the kitchen. Down the hall a little, she stopped and turned, quickly. "She'll be all right," the woman scolded, and disappeared into the kitchen.

             
Henry stood just outside the threshold, undecided. Just as the woman was coming back with a bowl of steaming water, a scream to shatter windows broke from the room, and the woman glimpsed his terrified face. She laughed, heartily. "'S only natural," she told him, pausing between him and the door. She laughed again. "Men got no stomach for such things. Wars," she said lightly, tossing the words over her shoulder as she vanished into the dimly lit bedroom. "Heh. Wars! Men, always tryin' t' outdo, with their death and weapons. They won't. Can't!" The door slammed in his face.

             
He stood there gripping his cane, stunned by her words. He sensed, somehow, some great wisdom there, just beyond his reach. She had sounded so certain, so secure in the knowledge that life would continue. She knew, of course, because she had felt it in her belly.

             
There came an anguished shriek and he moaned, resting his forehead against the wall.

             
It continued for hours, on into the early morning and through the sunrise. He turned and leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. All he could hear were her screams, and he ached to console her. The women bustled in and out around him, but he no longer knew why they were there, until one of them repeatedly stuck her finger into his shoulder. He looked up.

             
"Dear, you've gone's white as a sheet."

             
He heard her voice only dully, and after a moment she was gone. He sighed.

             
But then she returned, dragging a chair. She set it against the wall and took his arm, prodding him into it. He sat, at last, with the cane across his knees, and realized suddenly how very tired he was, although it didn't matter. His leg throbbed. The woman pressed a glass of water into his hands and left. He looked at the glass in his hand, but didn't drink. He noticed that he had blood on his hand in a vaguely curious manner, and realized a moment later that it had been Mary's nails biting into him. Strange... he didn't feel any pain.

             
He sat for another hour more, and then there was a cry. It was faint, and came from tiny lungs and a tiny body. He sat up, suddenly, and the cry came again, more loudly. It shook him to the bone. The glass slid from his hand, shattering as it hit the floor and splashing the bottom of his robe with water. He ignored it, and called hoarsely for someone to help him up. The boy, Ian, had gone away somewhere.

             
He had to see his child. He didn't care, not anymore, that they didn't want him in the room. It was his bedroom, his house. His child.

             
He stood, ignoring the pain although he sensed immediately that he had cried out, and felt a cold perspiration on his brow. Entering the room, he crossed the floor and sat down on the bed, sheets covered now in blood. She lay there, pale and sweaty, and the child lay in her arms. He faltered, feeling a lump in his throat, and reached out to touch the face of the tiny, wrinkled, red child. His hand trembled, because it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He looked up at her, in wonder, and she smiled weakly. There was a glow about her face, and he saw there, suddenly, a likeness to the image of the Virgin Mary, and divine motherhood.

             
"A girl," she whispered.

             
He could not find words, his heart full, mind bereft.

             
"What shall we name her?" In her arms the infant sighed softly.

             
"Daisy," he said, suddenly, not knowing quite why. She nodded slightly, and his world was complete.

             
"There's—too much blood," said Doc, at the end of the bed.

             
Henry looked up, and at once the rest of the world was there, oddly because he had not noticed it before. The women were in the doorway, and then they were gone. "I—don't understand," he said, confused.

             
"I'm sorry," whispered Doc, his eyes turning down. Then he, too, was gone.

             
Henry looked after the doctor, unable to take it in. It was too much. He looked at his wife and the child.

             
"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice was like a gentle, soft breeze.

             
"No," he told her.

             
"Please, Hen," she said. Her hand reached out and rested on his arm, her face imploring.

             
He looked at the baby, now rosy pink and sleeping, and then back at her. With trembling, weak arms, she held out the small bundle and he took it, gingerly. "Oh—God—" he pleaded.

             
Her hand moved to embrace his. It was cold, and he held to it tightly, trying to warm it. "I have to go," she said, and tears began to roll down her cheeks, silent. "You have to be strong now, Hen," she whispered.

             
He began to weep. Suddenly, a lifetime of farewells and I-love-yous had to be said in moments, and he could not take it in. "Do you understand," he said, urgent, holding her tightly with the child between them, "do you—" his voice broke, but he went on. "Do you understand how much I
love
you?" He wanted her only to know this, to understand—to somehow understand by his words his overwhelming, all-consuming love for her, before she—

             
"Yes," she whispered, and was gone.

             
He held her for a moment more, feeling her body sink limply into his, just as it had so many times when she lay sleeping in his arms—then he laid her carefully down, wiping the wetness from her face that was his tears and hers, mingled.

             
He sat on the bed with the child and his wife, who was cold now, very cold... and he sobbed.

             
The doctor opened the door a little. "Is—there anything I can do?" he asked, quietly. "Someone I can get?"

             
He held her body against his, sobbing, and did not look up.

             
Other than Henry, hardest hit by Mary's death was Pa. He rode over in the late morning and Ma came out onto the porch to meet him with the baby in her arms. He looked at her face, and did not have to be told. Turning his horse with a violent jerk, he spurred out into the wild, into the brush country, and did not return for four days. He rode and then he ran, leading his horse behind him, and then he fell to the ground, bellowing his anguish like a great beast. He ate wild creatures he caught with his hands, half-cooked over a blazing, hellish fire that singed his hair at the tips. Out here, in the wild—this was a place to grieve. Death, out here, lost the sharp quality that lanced to the bone. It seemed almost right, a mere part of the turning of seasons, going round and round. In the wild, death was merely the exhalation of a vast, breathing thing.

             
In the city, though, in civilization, death was horrifying. It killed a man inside, hollowed him out like a jack-o'-lantern without a candle. It loomed over all that men had built, the last and final irony, because for all of man's great progress, in the end there was still death, final and absolute, a travesty to the triumph of civilization. It was the one wild thing that remained, that could never be quelled, could never be pacified or tamed. In a house, with draperies and china and sofas it was not right; it was unnatural, and terribly, terribly strange.

             
And so Pa left to bury his anguish in the place of truth, to deny no more that it was the place from whence he had come. And it eased the aching, grinding pain.

             
When he returned, late in the afternoon of the fourth day, grizzled and dirty, he let out half and one more of the wild horses and sat on a fence post in the corral, watching then streak out over the plain, fast and lean. "There's gotta be somethin' wild left," he told a passing ranch hand, sharp. The hand glanced up, nervous, searching for a reply, but Pa was not looking at him.

             
He sat and watched the land and the sun until it set and then heaved himself to the ground and lumbered wearily into the house. It was quiet as he went into the kitchen, dark and still. He filled a basin with water and stripped, to wash himself. When he had done he went into the bedroom he shared with Ma and lay down next to her, his strong breaths like locomotive steam, reassuring in the dark.

             
Ma turned to him, and he held her while she cried as a woman will.

              In the morning Ma was strong again, and she talked as she rocked the baby, nursing it with a rag dipped in warm milk, and as Pa dressed. "We cleared out the sewin' room for him, and he's been there since. He don't come out—I been leavin' meals just inside the door. I ask't a time or two if he wanted somethin', he just said no. Thought I prob'ly oughta just keep the babe in here, nights." She looked at him for approval, and Pa grunted affirmatively. He left the room and Ma followed him into the kitchen, where she already had things warming for breakfast. She carried the child with her as she worked, natural as walking for her.