The Midwife of Hope River (22 page)

“Then Beef started hitting the poor animal with the plank. That really got to me. I know he felt bad. Tears were streaming down his face, but he kept whacking the horse. ‘Get up, you black beast!' he yelled over and over, ‘Get up!,' spraying his words and swiping his eyes. ‘Get up, I say!'

“One of the men was laughing, busting his sides open. No one made Beef stop—and I lost it. Just lost it. I grabbed the plank, threw it across the pen, and slipped in the castor oil. That's when I twisted my ankle.”

He indicates his blue-and-purple foot and I wince, wondering what I would have done . . . I can't imagine watching a man beat his dead horse. It would make me furious too. The noble animal laying there . . . an animal that could have been saved.

“Well, things got ugly then . . . Beef came at me, and I pulled him down. We were wallowing around in the straw and castor oil, both upset, seeing the horse die right in front of us, and I started beating the man in the face with my fist, straddling his thick belly. That's when one of the others picked up the plank and hit me in the back . . . hit me over and over until Aran, the oldest brother, showed up. That's the old guy I've bought moonshine from. He's pretty normal.

“ ‘What the hell!' he yelled, standing there in the barn door with a bucket of water he was bringing out for the stock. He took it all in, the dead horse, the grown men involved in a barnyard brawl, and threw the water all over us.

“That's when I jumped up and left. Just grabbed my hat, staggered out of the yard, and hobbled as fast as I could for my Ford. I could hear Aran hollering at them as I started my vehicle, but the brothers just laughed.”

“Did you go see someone for your injuries?”

“No.”

“Why not? Something could be broken!” I rise and move toward the kitchen, unable to stand the disorder.

Hester groans. “You know medical people never go to doctors. Nothing's broken but my spirit. The worse part, for me, is the horse . . . the unnecessary death of the beautiful horse.” He wipes his wet eyes. “Assholes!”

 

In the next half hour, I dig through Hester's dresser to find a clean pair of skivvies and help him clean up. Though he seems a meticulous surgeon, his sense of personal order is no better than Ruben's was. The drawers are filled with a tangle of unfolded clothes. None of the socks are matched. I can hardly tell what's clean and what's dirty.

With difficulty we remove his sling, and Hester lets me wash his upper body, his neck, and his back. He can move his left arm, which is black and blue from the elbow to the shoulder, so I have to agree with him that it probably isn't broken.

While he bathes below his waist, I run downstairs, tidy the kitchen, and heat a can of Van Camp's Pork & Beans that I dig out of the pantry. Then, while he eats, sitting up in a chair, I change his linens. Finally he collapses back onto the bed like a steelworker at the end of the day.

“So what was your plan?” I ask with a smile when my nursing tasks are done; two quart jars of clean drinking water rest on the bedside table and his potty, now shiny white, is nearby.

“Plan?”

“Yeah. How were you going to get by in this state? Were you going to call someone? Dr. Blum or Becky Myers?”

“Hell, no. Anyway, Blum was in a bad auto wreck last week on his way home from a night call. His car went into the ravine along Bluff Creek. Reverend Miller was out on a call and found him, but his auto is beyond repair. He told me he's through. Doesn't want to live like this anymore, going out day and night in all kinds of weather, risking his life for almost no pay. As soon as he can, he's taking his wife and joining his brother's practice back in Charlottesville.”

I let out my breath thinking about the pregnant women in Union County, especially the ones with problems, and how this will affect them. But I don't let myself get diverted.

“So what
was
your plan?” I ask a second time. “What were you going to do about your injuries and your stock? Just lie here and rot and let your animals starve? You could hardly get down the stairs to cook or get water unless you slid on your bottom.”

His eyes are laughing. “I was waiting for an angel of mercy.”

 

June 30, 1930. New moon rising.

Called to the Klopfenstein farm again, this time to deliver Elvira and Moses Klopfenstein's fourth baby (a boy named Daniel, 7 pounds, 2 ounces). She was Ruth Klopfenstein's aunt, the one with the limp at the first birth I attended at their compound. Granny Klopfenstein has decided to leave birthing to me.

Again the women sat in a row at the bedside, wearing their black dresses, round eyeglasses, and scarves, only this time the golden-haired Molly was nursing her baby and everyone was happy because Elvira delivered quickly and in bed. I was glad Bitsy was there to see what they were like. No one seemed shocked that she is colored. I guess word gets around. Fast delivery. No tears. Moderate blood loss. Bitsy delivered the placenta.

29

Independence Day

Morning and evening, for the past week, Bitsy and I have been visiting the vet. We milk his cows, feed and water his horses and chickens, empty his pee pot, and try to keep the place decent. When I cook for him, he tells me I should take some of his supplies home, so I help myself to a sack of cornmeal, a bottle of milk, some sugar, and a half can of lard.

By the seventh evening he is much better, and I find him sitting at the table downstairs reading a veterinary text. He has on clean clothes, and a cane leans against his chair. He holds it up. “Found this in the closet when I moved here. I couldn't imagine ever needing it, but I never threw it away.” There's a lull while he limps across the room, finds a newspaper, and spreads it out on the oilcloth.

“Next Saturday is the Fourth of July celebration in Liberty.” He shows me the announcement. “You and Bitsy want a ride into town? We could make a day of it. See the parade and the fireworks.”

I shrug, thinking about the last Fourth of July celebration I went to, in Washington, D.C. I've avoided such celebrations ever since. “We could. I guess.” The vet's face gets red, and I guess that I've hurt his feelings.

“No, I'd like to go.” I endeavor to whip up some enthusiasm. “It would be fun.”

 

A few days later, we're standing in front of Stenger's Pharmacy waiting for the parade to begin. “Nice dress,” the vet comments, taking in my white outfit and white stockings. He probably didn't know I had such frocks, having mostly seen me in trousers. Because it's Independence Day, I am wearing Mrs. Kelly's little red hat. He looks rather dashing himself in a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a Panama straw hat with a black band.

“Want a soda?” The vet points to the red metal cooler with the famous white cola symbol on the front just outside Bittman's Grocery. I look at the sign: five cents a bottle.

“No, thank you.” The money for just one Coke could purchase a nice loaf of bread. Hester grins, limps over to the store, and buys us two bottles anyway, then finds us a seat on the courthouse steps. His extravagance bothers me, but not enough to keep me from enjoying the icy cold beverage.

I gaze along Main, making note of the boys in patched overalls, the little girls in hand-me-down dresses, adults with worries etched into their faces. There are so many shuttered stores. Even Mullin's Hardware, where I once bought periwinkle blue paint for my front door, has a sign saying
FOR SALE.

Far down the street and around the corner we hear the
rat-a-tat-tat
of a drum, then music, and the crowd stirs and looks toward Sycamore. It's the Liberty High School band, playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” They march proudly down Main and are followed by a color guard from the American Legion, then the Oneida High School Band and the snappy All Negro Drum Corps from Delmont. Trailing a good way behind them are the Civil War veterans.

We stand up along with everyone else for the ancient soldiers, who stroll past us in their tattered uniforms. Mrs. Kelly had explained that when West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1863, the people of the region were deeply divided. These old soldiers would be about seventy. Four are dressed in blue, three in gray.

I swipe my eyes with the back of my hand when I see the little children, their bicycles and pets festooned in red, white, and blue trailing along behind them. One little girl is leading a dog dressed up as Uncle Sam. Hester looks over, but I don't care. Though I think of myself as a citizen of the world, there's something about simple patriotism that moves me. I inevitably get a lump in my throat, and I don't even know why. Maybe it's because in Deerfield when I was young, Independence Day was such a big event.

First thing on a hot July Fourth, Father and I would go to the park near the river, spread our blankets on the lawn to save our place for the picnic . . . the Hungarian Polka Band would play in the Gazebo . . .

“Here come the horses,” the vet says, breaking me out of my reverie. Mares and stallions, ponies, and even burros prance along, their coats gleaming, their hooves washed, ribbons braided through their manes and tails.

“See that pinto?” He directs my attention to a beautiful white-and-brown horse. “See how she limps a little. Tore her back left leg on a barbed-wire fence last year, a hell of a repair. It took two hours, and I had to use chloroform.” And a little later, “There's Mrs. Dresher riding sidesaddle on her new Morgan.”

The last two horses, black stallions, are ridden by men in long white gowns with white masks ending in a point, poor reproductions of KKK costumes. A hush runs through the crowd, then someone laughs and everyone joins in except for the vet and me. My jaw is so rigid I can barely speak. “Is this for real?”

“No, just some guys clowning around, trying to get attention by tagging behind. The parade committee wouldn't allow any reference to the Klan.”

As the crowd disperses, he puts his arm through mine and guides me away toward a blue handcart where a vendor is spinning some kind of pink goo. The hot summer air smells of sugar.
COTTON CANDY
, the sign says. “Want to taste it?” Hester asks. He's trying to divert my attention.

“
No!
Twenty-five cents is too dear. You already bought me a Coke.” The truth is, I'm still sick from the sight of the men in the Ku Klux Klan costumes. What if Bitsy saw them? She's in the crowd somewhere with Big Mary. What if Thomas and Mrs. Potts are nearby? I am gritting my teeth so hard I might break them.

“It's okay,” my companion says, pulling a quarter out of his pocket and handing it to the vendor. “You can't take it with you.” Before he can receive the pink sugar stuff on a stick, I feel his shoulders stiffen and his head jerk up. Three heavyset men in overalls, across the street, are heading toward us.

“Hey, vet! Kill any good horses lately?” the one with a white cloth hanging over his shoulder yells.

“The Bishop brothers,” Hester mutters as he grabs my hand. “Let's go.” He doesn't even ask for his money back.

 

Race Riots

The last time I left a Fourth of July parade in a hurry was in our nation's great capital.

It was 1919, and Ruben had to go to a meeting with Samuel Gompers of the AFL on July third, so he came up with a plan. “Why don't you come?” he asked with his usual enthusiasm. “We could make a holiday of it.”

“I've seen fireworks and parades before.”

“Yeah, but not in Washington! A person should experience the festivities there at least once in a lifetime. It will be an adventure. We can stay with Sam Gompers.”

We both had money then. I was still working at Westinghouse and wrangled a day off with the section supervisor. Ruben was full-time with the union. We packed a bag and took the Capitol Limited out of Union Station on the second.

 

It was a bad time in the United States after the Great War. Patriotism had been whipped to a fury to overcome ordinary Americans' reluctance to join what many thought was a European conflict. When the soldiers were discharged and came back needing work, there weren't any jobs.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Lenin was riding the wave of the revolution and threatening to take over the world. There were a few bombings by anarchists in the United States, and suddenly people imagined a Bolshevik in every closet. The feds even pounded on
our
door one night, looking for Ruben, but Nora charmed them, wearing her red silk kimono, while Mrs. Kelly and I hid him in the attic.

Then the lynching of blacks started again in the South, sixty in 1918 and more in riots all over the country in 1919, several men still in their army uniforms. Pittsburgh wasn't like that. Segregation was illegal, and there was a sense of peace regarding race relations, not that people of different races mixed freely, except radicals and jazz musicians.

Still, I should have known there would be trouble, but I was clueless until I saw the headlines of the
Washington Post
on Mrs. Gompers's dining room table:
13 SUSPECTS ARRESTED IN NEGRO HUNT; WHITE POSSE SEEKS BLACK RAPIST OF TWO WHITE WOMEN.

 

“What's this?” I ask the union leader's wife as she pours tea for me from a silver teapot and the men talk union business in the parlor.

“Don't pay any attention to that trash, dear.”

“Why not?”

“It's a pack of lies by journalists competing with each other for the most sensational headlines. Race relations are already tense in Washington.” She passes the sugar “And the newspapers are making it worse, just whipping up trouble.” To illustrate, she shows me another stack of papers on the ornate oak buffet: the
Washington Times,
Evening Star,
and the
Washington Herald.

POSSES KEEP UP HUNT FOR NEGRO . . . WHITE POSSES AID POLICE IN HUNT FOR COLORED ASSAILANT . . . NEGRO FIEND SOUGHT ANEW!

“Have there really been that many rapes?”

The older lady shakes her head. “Not one that I know of, but the city's become a racial tinderbox. There's so few jobs that ex-doughboys are panhandling on Pennsylvania Avenue. The white soldiers bitterly resent the few black men who've been able to get work . . . even the lowest-paying jobs like messengers or elevator boys.”

The next day at the parade there was a scuffle, and I saw what she meant. As the U.S. Navy Band, dressed to the nines, marched past us, three white guys grabbed a black man in an army uniform, dragged him into an alley, and beat the stuffing out of him. Ruben chased them off, and we carried the injured fellow to a side street, grabbed a cab, and took him to Walter Reed General Hospital, but after that the fireworks held no interest and we left on the train the next day.

Sitting in the coach, leaning into each other, staring out the window as we chugged through Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, we struggled to hold on to some dream we had of America.

A week later, we read in the
Washington Times
that a white mob had grabbed another black man near Howard University, hung him up like a cow for slaughter, and shot him. After that, all hell broke loose. Mrs. Gompers was right. There was rioting in D.C., black man against white. In the end four men died on the streets of the capital of the land of the free, the home of the brave . . . but that was over ten years ago.

 

As Daniel Hester and I hurry away down Main Street, away from the crowd and around the corner to his office, the three brothers watch us, hate in their eyes.