The Midwife of Hope River (24 page)

“Well, I have to get back. Tell the Proudfoot woman the doc said to come soon.” The two move toward their police van. “Oh, and let me know if Mrs. MacIntosh shows up. William MacIntosh is awfully worried.”

Before they climb in, the city lawman with the granite mug stops. “You aren't from Union County, are you?”

“No, not originally. Why do you ask?”

The man shrugs. “Your accent isn't local.” I watch from the porch until the van disappears, a black stain in the mist by the river. Then I run—run for the barn.

 

Flight

Two hours later I am driving William's wobbly Olds back into Liberty with Daniel Hester following behind. Katherine, Bitsy, and the baby ride with him. It's still early and steam is rising off of the river when, behind the Texaco station, I tuck the keys under the seat of the mud-spattered vehicle and get in with them. Bitsy is going to see Mary, and the rest of us are on our way to Torrington, where Katherine can catch a train to Baltimore.

“Give Mary a hug from me,” I tell Bitsy when, to save time, we drop her on Main. “We'll be back late tonight.”

Katherine, who is scrunched low with the baby on the Model T's back floor, reaches into her brassiere and pulls out some folded green, part of her getaway cash. Without rising, she sticks her hand out the window and waves the money at Bitsy. “You'll need this for the doctor's bill,” she whispers. “And maybe food . . . Thank your mother from the bottom of my heart. I just know she fell trying to keep William from following me.
I just know it.
”

Then Hester and I, in front, with Katherine and the baby staying low in the back, speed north up 92 toward Torrington. Everywhere there are leaves on the road, torn from the trees during the thunderstorm. Twice we have to get out to pull big branches off the road.

“Thanks for helping us,” I whisper to the vet.

He shrugs. “It's nothing.”

“I didn't know where else to turn.”

He repeats himself, flicking his gray eyes to my face and tightening his jaw as if he means business. “It's nothing.”

I keep looking over my shoulder, expecting to see William Mac-Intosh, or maybe the sheriff, hot on our trail, but there's nothing back there except the empty two-lane blacktop.

 

By dark we're standing in the doorway of a one-room tourist cabin on the outskirts of Torrington, the last one available at the Riverview Travelers' Lodge. We have just learned that the next train for Baltimore doesn't leave until seven in the morning and are trying to make the best of it.

Exhausted, Katherine collapses on the single bed and falls asleep nursing Willie. I pull the covers over them. The poor battered woman is dead to the world. My idea was that she and I would sleep together in the double bed and Hester would lie down on the single, but I hate waking her and making her move, and apparently so does the vet.

“I guess I'll take this,” he says quietly, indicating a battered upholstered easy chair next to the door.

I wince. It looks really uncomfortable. He won't sleep at all.

“No, I'll sleep there. I got you into this.”

“I don't mind.”

I let out my air. I'm dog tired and in no mood for arguing. “Okay, let's share the big bed.” I turn down the stiff sheet and red-and-black-striped cotton Indian blanket. “We can keep our clothes on.” The truth is, I'd feel guilty taking the bed while he sat up all night, and even if we traded halfway through, that would mean less than four hours of shut-eye for each of us.

Hester looks dubious but then raises his eyebrows and grins. “Whatever you say. We're already outlaws, helping Katherine sneak out of town with the coal baron's baby. Sleeping together won't sully our names any worse.”

We remove our shoes but nothing else, and I use the tiny water closet to unfasten my brassiere. The vet reaches up and turns off the light. “Good night,” he murmurs, turning away.

I swallow hard. It's the first time I've slept near a man, since . . . since Ruben died, and Hester's warmth comes clear through his clothes.

Outside the small window, the neon sign winks
NO VACANCY
. Red, then green. Red. Green. Red. Green. Hester stirs in his sleep.

Oh, Ruben!
Why did we go to Blair Mountain?
I wipe my face on the corner of the blanket and choke back my sobs, but the tears keep coming.

31

Lost

“Do you think she'll make it?” I ask Hester as we see the train off. Katherine is still waving through the Pullman car window, looking like any other mother and baby on a holiday. The sleep has done her good, and her color is better.

“Yeah, I explained the situation to the porter, a nice guy, who says he knows Thomas Proudfoot. He promised he'd look after them. If the law doesn't search the train at Cumberland, they'll be okay.”

“I hope she writes. I asked her to. I just want to know she's safe.”

The vet has been especially solicitous this morning, helping me on with my sweater, pulling out my chair at Minnie's Breakfast Diner, opening the door for me. I worry that he may have heard me crying in the night.

We're halfway back to Liberty on Route 92, each lost in our own thoughts, when he poses a question that surprises me. “Have you ever been hurt by a man?”

“Why do you ask?” He's probably thinking about my tears in the night.

“Some men think it's their right.”

“Not the ones I know. My men friends believed in equality between the sexes.” Except Mr. Vanderhoff, I think . . . but that was way back . . . and anyway, he wasn't a friend.

 

By the time we make it back to Liberty, it's half past three. “Where to?” Hester asks.

I shrug. “The hospital.”

The two-story brick house, Dr. Blum's clinic, sits back from the street on a tree-lined lot, and a woman in a white uniform and a little white hat sits at a desk in the front hall. Apparently nurses no longer wear aprons.

“We're here to see Mrs. Proudfoot,” the vet starts out. “I'm Dr. Hester, and this is Patience Murphy.” The lady looks confused. She probably wonders who Dr. Hester is, and I try to hide a smile behind the back of my hand. I'd forgotten veterinarians called themselves doctors.

The nurse scans a clipboard in front of her. She runs her finger up and down a short list. “We don't have a patient named Proudfoot . . . There must be some mistake.”

“Maybe she's been discharged already. Is Dr. Blum here?” Hester continues. “Can you check your discharge roster?”

“Dr. Blum's gone. Left for Virginia four days ago. The hospital's staffed by nurses and Dr. Holden from Delmont, when he can come.” She runs her short nails down a separate clipboard. “There's no Proudfoot here.” She shakes her head irritably.

“It was a fall, we were told. Maybe a concussion.”

“Are you kin?” the nurse asks.

“Just friends,” I interject. “I'm sure you'd remember her, a big colored woman. Maybe you could ask the matron.”

A light goes on in the little nurse's eyes. “A Negro woman?” We nod. “Well, she wouldn't come here. We don't cater to Negroes.” My stomach goes hollow.

 

“Come on,” says Hester, grabbing my arm. I can see he's pissed off. It's the way she said “We don't
cater
to Negroes,” as if this were an ice cream parlor or beauty salon.

Outside, standing next to the car, Hester looks down at me. “So . . . where is she?”

“I don't know.
I don't know.
I'd heard that Blum didn't deliver black women at his hospital, but I didn't think that meant he wouldn't take care of any colored people ever, even in an emergency.”

“God damn Blum!”

“I was flustered, I'm sorry.”

“Let's go. The son of a bitch!” We get back into his Ford, whip down the street, and pull up at his office.

Inside the white house with the sign on the front,
DANIEL HESTER, DVM—DOCTOR OF ANIMALS, LARGE AND SMALL,
I'm ushered to a seat in the waiting room.

“ 'Bout time you came in,” says a large, pale, corseted female sitting at a desk. Her gray hair is pulled tight away from her face, and she looks like someone even Hester would be scared of. “Mr. Rhodes called three times, and he's really sour about it. His best milk cow won't stand up, has lost her feed, and he wants you there pronto. You have to remember to leave me messages so I know where to find you. I've been trying all morning.”

“I need to use the phone, Mrs. Armstrong.” Hester grabs the receiver. “Tell Rhodes, if he calls again, I'll be there in an hour.” Before this, it hadn't occurred to me that the vet might be losing business by helping us. I've been so caught up in Katherine's troubles, I hadn't even thought of my own responsibilities, and in my mind I quickly run over the mothers who are close to term. They should be okay . . . I hope they are okay. I could have at least sent word to Mrs. Potts that I'd be gone. Even then, I didn't expect it to be all night.

Hester cranks the phone. “Stenger? It's Hester . . . William MacIntosh's cook, Mary Proudfoot, had a fall and was taken to a physician. We checked Blum's hospital, but she's not there . . . The colored physician, I guess, what's his name, Robinson?” He's talking to the pharmacist. “Okay,” he says to the other end of the line. “Yeah, I know where it is.”

Five minutes later we're back in the Model T motoring toward Mudtown. This is the part of Liberty where most of the blacks live, maybe a hundred of them, lowland that used to be a swamp, but I've never been here, not even to a birth. Crossing Main, I observe that William MacIntosh's sedan is still parked at the Texaco station, but it's been moved forward into the mechanics' bay.

We bump across the tracks, and I'm surprised when we pull up at a handsome two-story white clapboard house with its own sign out front:
HARPER ROBINSON, MD.
I had no idea there was a black doctor in Liberty. Did Mrs. Kelly know? We were here only a year before she died and we were only delivering white babies then, so she wouldn't have needed him.

Here in West Virginia, until I became acquainted with Bitsy and Mrs. Potts, my life was completely involved with the whites. But “involved” is not the right word. I was never
involved
with either blacks or whites, only an observer. Once again I see how separate the two worlds are, like a left hand and a right hand that don't know what the other is doing.

We both jump out, but Hester warns me with a look that he wants to handle this. I collapse back onto the leather seat but leave the door open, watching a group of brown children play in the road.

The rest of the houses along the tracks are much smaller than Robinson's and are identical except for small changes that have been made since they were constructed: a picket fence here, a porch there, shutters on some. Twenty years ago, the dwellings all belonged to the railroad and were constructed for the workers who built the M and K line for the Baltimore and Ohio. That was back when West Virginia was logged in a flurry, from 1900 to 1920. Mrs. Kelly gave me the history. I only heard her get mad three times . . . That was one.

“The whole damned state was clear-cut,” she said. “And the trees that weren't chopped went up in smoke with the forest fires that followed.” Other than that, there was just that time when Mr. Finney beat up his pregnant wife and the other time when those street boys made fun of the crippled girl and Sophie chased them away.

 

The vet and a dark man of about seventy wearing a black suit, vest, and tie stand on the porch talking. They shake hands like two professionals after a consultation. The gentleman, who I take to be Dr. Robinson, adjusts his horn-rimmed glasses, looks down at the car and nods. Then Hester comes around and gets in beside me.

“What? Doesn't he know where Mary is either?”

Hester runs his hands through his short hair and clears his throat. “Mary's gone.”

“Where, home? To the MacIntoshes'? Not back to the MacIntoshes'!”

“No, I mean . . . dead. She's at the Emmanuel Funeral Home. Died two hours after she was carried to Dr. Robinson, before Bitsy even got here. Traumatic cerebral hemorrhage, he thinks, but the county coroner will have to decide. She died on Robinson's operating table before he could do anything.” He reaches over and takes my hand, which is lying on my lap like one of Bitsy's lifeless trout.

But she can't be dead. Not Mary Proudfoot! She was brave and strong. A little fall down the stairs couldn't kill her! She's supposed to be cooking corn fritters, chicken, and biscuits forever! Suddenly I'm very hot. I want to get out of the car, but Hester has already started the engine and Dr. Robinson's still standing on his porch, watching.

“Well, where's Bitsy, then?” I shout, as if the vet's hiding her. Really, I'm just angry with myself. How could I let this happen? Why did I think it was more important to get Katherine out of town and to the train station than to support Bitsy and her family? Was it because Katherine is white? If it is, I despise myself.

“Dr. Robinson thinks Bitsy's at Reverend Miller's out in Hazel Patch. The preacher and his wife came to get her when Robinson called. I can take you there later, but I have to go see that cow first . . . Mr. Rhodes will be madder than hell. I should have been there hours ago. If you come with me, I'll take you to Hazel Patch afterward.” Though I desperately want to get to Bitsy, he doesn't leave me much choice.

“Just go!” I wave my hand, indicating he should move the car . . .
anywhere.

Three hours later, after a painful interlude with an angry farmer during which the vet passed a stomach tube into the ailing Jersey and relieved her blocked intestine with castor oil, we're bumping past Hester's farm on the way to Hazel Patch. We haven't eaten all day and the sun has gone down, but he's too much of a gentleman to turn in at his place and make me walk the last two miles.

When I think of it, he's been involved in affairs that don't concern him, with people he barely knows, for forty-eight hours: first facilitating Katherine's escape, then searching for Mary and Bitsy, now carrying me to the pastor's house. My sadness drags behind me like a black cape, and I can't tell if my dark mood is sorrow at losing Mary Proudfoot, guilt over leaving Bitsy, or worry about how she must be hurting.

 

Thomas

We don't get to Hazel Patch until well after dark, but the lights are still on when we drive up to the front of the pastor's substantial log home. “Do you want to come in?” I ask Hester. I'm thinking the man must be exhausted and needs to get supper and care for his animals, but he surprises me by opening the driver's-side door and getting out.

“I'm into it this far. I met the Millers at the Wildcat Mine cave-in, remember?”

We tap softly, and Mrs. Miller greets us. She's wearing a long green chenille robe and has a hairnet over her head. Behind Mildred, on the fawn velvet sofa, sitting with Bitsy, are the preacher and a very tall black man who I remember from the flood at the Wildcat, the young fellow who went into the hole with Thomas and Mr. Cabrini. Only a table lamp, with a pale green silk shade, lights the room.

“Bitsy!” I rush in, fall on my knees, and take her hands to my cheeks, a supplicant begging forgiveness. “I'm so sorry,
so sorry.
Sorry about your mom and sorrier still for not being with you.” Bitsy smooths my hair like I'm a child. She doesn't say anything, just wipes my wet face, then wipes her tears so that they mix together on her brown hand.

Mildred Miller pulls up two more chairs as the pastor stands to greet Hester. “Can I get you some coffee?” she offers.

“Sure,” the vet says. “Thank you.”

“None for me.” I just want to go home, take Bitsy with me, and tuck her into bed.

I look around the room. “Where's Thomas?”

No one answers. Eyes meet each other, but they don't meet mine.

Finally. “He's gone into Liberty.” That's the tall fellow on the sofa. His voice is very low, and I can't help but notice that his Adam's apple goes up and down when he speaks.

Mildred bustles back into the room with a tray: coffee for anyone who wants it and a glass of water for me.

“Is he making burial arrangements?” I still don't get it, but I should have realized that no one goes to a funeral home at this time of night.

“He let out of here about nine on his burro,” Bitsy tells me. “Went to see William MacIntosh. He knows about Katherine's escape, the bruises, and the fight. I told him I thought William must have pushed our mother down those stairs. I shouldn't have said that. Oh, I shouldn't have . . .”

“Child. Don't start again!” Mrs. Miller reprimands. “You are
not
responsible. Let's just pray your brother has some sense.” I slump down on the floor, leaning my back against the davenport, held between Bitsy's knees.

“Do you want me to go back to town to look for him?” the vet asks.

“We already tried,” the young man responds.

I finally turn to him. “I'm Patience Murphy. This is Dr. Hester, the local vet.” I've never called him a doctor before, and I don't know why I do now. The men nod, and Hester stands up and shakes hands.

“Byrd Bowlin,” the young fellow introduces himself. “I saw you at the Wildcat flood . . . Thomas is my friend, but he has no place going into Liberty looking for MacIntosh. It's a good way for a black man to get his head shot off.” I know what he's thinking. Just last year a colored miner was gunned down in Mingo County for sassing the sheriff. Nothing was even done to the lawman. They called it self-defense. But that was in the southern part of the state. Union County shares a border with Pennsylvania and is north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It's more civilized here.