Nobody's Child (17 page)

Her very first chick, alive in the womb of another woman.

“No matter how far I roam,” she said, her gaze shifting to Ian asleep on the couch, “I will always come back. This is my home.”

She looked back at the gentle outline of Sophia's swelling belly under a crisp cotton top. “One day, a time will come when I am but a memory. Then one of my swallows will carry on.”

“Laura Ann?” Sophia called out from her bedroom half an hour after her turn in the bath, washing up from a brutally hot day.

“Yes?” Laura Ann said from her bed. Like in the old days with Daddy home, speaking to each other at night after the lights were out, she answered her friend in Daddy's old room.

“The baby's moving again,” Sophia said, her voice cracking. “Would you like to come feel it?”

Laura Ann hesitated to respond. This, the very answer to her prayer that night, yet it seemed so dangerous, so personal. She might connect for good and never let Sophia go. Like a last kiss before saying goodbye forever to someone you love, perhaps it was best not to kiss at all.

She lay there for a long moment in silence.

Sophia called out again. “Laura Ann, I understand if you don't want to. But it would mean a lot to me.”

She could wait no longer, every fiber screaming to jump up and run to Sophia, to lay her face on her friend's gown and cry for the baby she might only see once. To hold it, even if only through the soft fabric of Sophia's skin, to cuddle the life that she'd given away to save a farm she'd vowed to protect. She'd sold her chick to buy the nest.

Laura Ann rose, like a spirit under the control of another, drifting from her room to the bed next door. Sophia sat propped up, pillows under her back, her legs splayed, the outline of her
belly visible under her nightgown. Starlight their only illumination, Sophia was a dim form on the sheets. Yet, like seeing with infrared vision, and with a mother's sense, Laura Ann could discern the form of the baby as it moved under the cotton covering of Sophia's nightclothes.

A tiny life bumped and stretched inside this woman. A life that began inside her own body. Laura Ann's heart leapt for that life to be inside
her,
to move and announce its coming to
her
family. She knelt at the side of the bed, but Sophia patted the top of the mattress. Laura Ann took a seat beside her, Sophia's hands guiding hers to the correct place. A knee poked up, a foot rubbed across the inside of the womb, tiny motions seeking some temporary relief in the tight confines of Sophia's athletic frame.

Laura Ann's heart slammed inside her, a question begging to be answered, a request screaming to be made known. Her hands shook under the guiding caress of Sophia's fingers. Her mouth dry, Laura Ann spoke the words that had lingered on her lips for days. No more time. She had to ask now.

“Can I see him after he's born?”

Sophia lifted her hand from Laura Ann's and put it to the girl's forehead, like the gentle touch of a mother Laura Ann could scarce remember.

“Yes. I hoped you'd ask.” She made a sound, like cooing at a baby, then added, “I promise. I'll bring this little swallow home.”

Laura Ann shook, as from a fever or a deep chill. She wanted so to see the child, to hear his name when he lay in her arms, something to give meaning to her sacrifice and to her family's roots. She yearned for Sophia to draw on the child's history, to honor treasured family names, in a way that remembered those who'd come before. The way Daddy would have wanted.

Sophia spoke again, her hand resting in its place on Laura Ann's head, perhaps sensing the unspoken need. “Like my late husband, a man he can never know … and his grandfather who
passed along proud blood through you,” she said, “I want him to be called ‘James.' “

Laura Ann's heart broke, that name so precious when spoken in this bed.

Sophia lowered her hand to rest on Laura Ann's, where together they palpated a prominence just beyond the reach of their fingers. Sophia squeezed her hand, willing the shaking to stop. Laura Ann looked up, her sister's wet eyes twinkling in the starlight.

“We'll teach him his ancestry, Laura Ann. And his middle name will be ‘McGehee.' “

J
UNE 28

Fog invaded every crevice, a suffocating cloud that blanketed the bottomland. It stole sound and dampened the morning call of birds and the crow of roosters. Even her voice felt sucked from her throat when Laura Ann tried to yell back to Ian from the barn. Like a giant muffle, it lay over her, spiriting voices away into the vacuum of an invisible sunrise.

Distance disappeared, no sense of depth to the barnyard. Buildings emerged from the dense covering as she approached them, eerie structures transforming with each step forward. She crept along ground she knew well enough to cross blind. But blind might have been better. This goo robbed her senses of direction and perspective.

In the barn, Laura Ann started the tractor and headed for the front of the house. A ride through the pasture to his canoe would save Ian — and her — a long walk through tall dripping-wet grass.

Ian bounded off the porch, grabbed the tractor's roll bar, and swung himself up on the big Case. He took a seat on the fender aside Laura Ann. “You ready?” he asked quietly, wiping
condensation off his brow. The wet blanket of cloud seemed to invite whispers, as if sound offended nature itself.

“Ready to be left alone? No.” Laura Ann wondered at other possible meanings of his question. Would she share her burden with him? Not yet.

“Secrets don't become you,” Granny Apple said once. Here sat a man she cared about more than anything on Earth, yet she kept him in a fog of her own, a dense blanket of secrecy wrapped around her relationship with Sophia.

“I'm worried about her. I wish you could stay,” she said in a furtive attempt to keep the focus on Sophia, not herself.

“If it's heat stress, she'll shake it off with rest and liquids,” he offered. “But she needs to see a doctor about that blood pressure when she gets home.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Question is, will you be okay?”

“Yes. But I plan to keep that radio of yours close by.”

“Just a minute,” Sophia called out, rushing onto the porch. “Don't leave! I packed some leftover breakfast pastries for you to take with you.”

Ian smiled, raising his hands in mock resignation. “If you insist. Those sugar horns were great.”

“Cuernos de azucar.”
Sophia repeated in Spanish.

“Whatever.”

“Hang on a minute. I think there's a couple of
marranitos
left too.”

“Yeah. Love those ginger-pigs.”

“Gingerbread pigs, Ian,” Laura Ann chided.

Fifteen minutes later, Ian sat in his canoe, his gear stowed and ready to push off into the pea soup that hid the Middle Island Creek. The tractor sat a few yards away, idling at the upper limit of the flood line. Any other day, the growl of the throaty diesel would echo off nearby ridges. Today, fog muffled the engine to a low rumble.

“You be careful,” Laura Ann said, pushing his small green canoe backward into dingy water. Ian pulled with his paddle and spun the canoe about once he hit deeper water and cleared the grip of the grass.

“No problem. Call on the radio if anything pops up.” He tarried before pushing through thick branches to join the river on the other side of the tree line. He pointed his paddle at Laura Ann. “You're my rock. You know that, right?”

“I'm a rock?” she asked with a laugh.

“No,” Ian said. “You heard me. I'm proud as punch about how you manage everything. Especially now.” He tipped his green game warden ball cap in a mock salute. “You always manage to find a way, Miss McGehee.”

His words pierced her, his trust untarnished by any knowledge of her darkest secret. She bit her lip and raised her hand in a silent wave.

Ian eased the boat forward, slipping into the fog. His last words were clear, though he quickly faded from sight. “I love you, Laura Ann. Always have. Always will.”

“Ian raved about that breakfast,” Laura Ann said, hanging a dish towel on the oven's handle. “He'll nurse the leftover pastries and make them last for a couple of days.”

“More where those came from,” Sophia replied. “Just get him back here to try them out.”

“He'll probably stop in tomorrow morning. But now we can call him any time we want with the radio.” She shook her head. “Somehow he keeps his job and his trips out here in balance.” Laura Ann looked at Sophia, remembering too well yesterday's fainting in the pasture. “How about you. Any better?”

“Good as new,” she said with a smile. “No headache. No
wooziness. No problem. So … how about a tour of the place? It's supposed to be dry today once the fog lifts. And I need to get out.” She smiled and wagged a finger. “But no long walks. Maybe we can take the truck?”

Laura Ann nodded, leading her to the back door. “I need to get out too. We'll start with the woodshop, and your stools. Then I'll show you the barn,” she said with a wave. “Something very special out there. Up in the hay loft.”

Sophia followed and for the next hour the women wove their way through her father's shop. It was a slow trek, handling stools, smelling fresh-cut wood, and walking through a history punctuated by spoken memories of Daddy. From the shop, she led Sophia to the barn, Laura Ann explaining how to care for the cows in the winter, describing how to put up hay, and extolling the virtues of dried corn, barn cats, and clover.

“Come upstairs for a minute,” Laura Ann said, gesturing up a short flight of stairs to the loft. Sophia fell in line behind her. “When my great-grandmother was little, she carved her initials and the date in one of the beams. I did too when I was six. I'll show you.”

Cobwebs of long-dead spiders hung from the corners of the stairwell, draped with flecks of hay that drifted down from above. The sweet perfume of dried grass grew stronger with each step up the old rough-cut boards of the staircase, worn smooth by more than a century of use. Laura Ann put her hand to the doorjamb at the top of the climb, pushing open a small board-and-batten door.

“Her initials are over here,” Laura Ann said pointing ahead to a dim corner of the barn where the steep pitch of the roof approached the floor. “She carved them in 1906, when she was seven years old.”

Laura Ann knelt down, running her fingers along the shallow
engraving of two ragged letters in the face of a thick beam. “N.M. 1906.” “Novella McGehee 1906,” she said, turning back to face Sophia.

But Laura Ann knelt alone.

“Sophia?” She dashed back to the stairwell. Two steps from the door where her hands had lingered moments ago, she heard a gasp. Sophia's hand extended out the door onto the worn oak flooring of the barn's second floor, her fingers balled into a fist. She moaned as Laura Ann went to her knees at the top of the stairs.

Sophia lay prostrate, her cheek bloodied where it hit a hay-littered step, arms outstretched and grabbing at air, as if clawing her way up the stairs. Her chest rose and fell in a series of raspy breaths.

“No!” Laura Ann exclaimed, slamming the door back at the top of the steps and grabbing Sophia's extended arm. Miraculously, she'd not fallen off the precarious staircase, or slid to the bottom. Laura Ann felt for Ian's radio in her pocket. She'd left it in the kitchen.

“Sophia!” she screamed, gingerly stepping over her friend and onto the stairwell. She struggled to find a way down without crushing Sophia's torso, a chest that fought to get the semblance of a breath.

Moments later, she cradled Sophia's bloodied face in her hands, fast shallow pants of air coming from her mouth. Her eyes shut, she recognized Laura Ann's touch, barely nodding, but not forming any words.

“Relax. I've got a good hold. You won't fall,” Laura Ann reassured her. “Try to take a deep breath. Slow.”

Sophia shook her head, too weak to talk, her mouth wide open to snatch every possible puff of air.

“I'm taking you down,” Laura Ann said, then threw an arm
about Sophia's waist. With another arm cradled under her friend's head, she worked her way down the stairs, dragging her over each step on a controlled slide over slick oak and tall risers.

Near the bottom of the steps, she lowered Sophia's head to the wood, desperate to speak with Ian, yet unable to tear herself away to run for the radio. The choppy breaths continued, little wheezing pants that Laura Ann knew would not fill the lungs of an expectant mother. She put a finger to Sophia's throat, frustrated that she couldn't find a pulse. Sophia's heart raced like the intense flutter of a hummingbird, with no defined beat.

“I've got to get the radio!” She squeezed Sophia's shoulder. “I promise. I'll be back.”

Sophia's panting grew more ragged, but she managed to raise a hand, as if waving Laura Ann away.

On the horns of a dilemma, she let go of Sophia and ran.

Laura Ann's heart leapt when Ian replied minutes later to her radio call, his voice scratchy, but readable.

“Say it again and slow down.”

“Sophia's collapsed. She was climbing the stairs in the barn. She's wheezing, like she can't get a breath. She can't move.” “Can you get a pulse?” “I tried. It's racing. I can't count it.”

“She is breathing, right?” he asked. She could tell he was moving fast, struggling to talk. Probably helping someone in town and trying to talk at the same time. His own dilemma.

“Panting hard. And panicked.”

“We've got to get her out, Laura Ann. Can you move her?” “I can't carry her … but I might be able to stand her up.” “Can you get her into the truck?” “And go where?”

Ian didn't reply right away, like he was forming a thought. She waited, praying for his voice, for his reassurance. For some word on how to save Sophia, from so far away.

“Buckle her in tight,” he said, the signal stronger than before. “I'm leaving town now.”

“Okay. But — “

He hadn't stopped talking, and her transmission stepped on his.

“ — at the crossing.” “Ian! Say it again.”

“I said, I'll meet you at the crossing. Understand?” “Take her to the causeway?”

“It's our only choice. Lock her in tight and drive to the neck of The Jug, Laura Ann. Somehow, you've got to get that truck to the bottom of the hill. It's the only way to get her out.” He paused, then added, “Watch her close. If she stops panting …”

“What?”

“Call me. Then start CPR.”

Laura Ann screamed at the rain-rutted road and her slow pace. Seated on the truck's bench seat, Sophia leaned into her shoulder, micro-breaths barely moving her chest, breathing like a dog that had run too far and too fast. She prayed for Sophia's survival. A mile to go to the crossing. Much too far.

Why this, Jesus? Please save Sophia. And baby James.

The road smoothed out as she topped the ridge, layers of leaves on the forest road softening the ride. Sophia's chest continued to heave in valiant attempts to get one solid breath. Laura Ann gunned the truck, moving it through the wood as fast as she dared.

“I'm there!” a voice said on the radio, Ian's first call in minutes. “At the crossing.”

“I'm in the Management Area,” she called back. “What does the hill look like?”

He hesitated, no answer. Laura Ann's back tingled with a premonition of his next words.

“You don't have any choice, Laura Ann. You
have
to get down that slope. We can't save her if you don't.”

Minutes later, she slowed the four-wheel drive to a crawl, sneaking up on the tortuous descent down to the Middle Island Creek. She'd loved driving this hill in her younger days, but never like this. Deep gullies, worn raw where water coursed down the road, yawned like canyons the entire length of the short grade. Steep wet clay, with no way to reach the bottom if the truck bottomed out, and slick as ice. Ian stood on the far bank, his truck nosed up to the stream, a rope in hand. He needed her truck on the other side, something to tie off to.

Laura Ann rechecked the four-wheel lock, scanning left and right of the gullies. To her right, she'd tumble off the edge of the road, rolling the truck all the way to the bottom. To her left, a muddy bank of ugly red clay rose up steep.

Only one choice.

Her left wheel riding up as high on the clay bank as she could grab, and the right tire riding the middle of the rutted road down low, she plunged into the descent, both hands welded to the steering wheel. She felt Sophia's hands seek her knee, a feeble hold as the cab lurched. Momentum and speed were her twin friends, the only way to power through the yawning jaws of truck-sucking trenches.

The left front wheel slung mud in a furious torrent as she gunned the engine, climbing as far up the red bank as her nerves would allow. The truck tilted precariously, weaving down the road, one tire low between the ruts, the other four feet higher and spinning on clay that had never seen a vehicle's tread. She
raced pell-mell for the creek bottom, slamming at last into piles of rocks that littered the bottom when she leveled out near the water.

Across the swollen creek, Ian pumped a fist in the air. He made a circle sign with his hand, his direction for her to spin the truck around. She let herself breathe at last, looking to her right to check on Sophia.

Her head cradled into Laura Ann's shoulder, her fingers clutching her knee, Sophia let out a short breath, and three short words.

“We made it.”

Laura Ann backed the truck up to the edge of the floodwaters, her hands cramping in their grip on the wheel. Ian called again on the radio from his place on the far bank, sixty feet away, a coil of rope in his hand.

“Check her respiration and pulse.”

Laura Ann nodded, disconnected her safety belt, and turned in the seat. “Sophia?” she asked, praying for some sign of improvement. No response.

“Slower breathing, a little more regular,” she spoke into the radio after seeking a pulse. “Her heart's still racing.” She ran to the other side to open the door and unstrapped her passenger.