The Midwife of Hope River (25 page)

Byrd Bowlin goes on, “The reverend and I already drove all around town but couldn't find him. We know he stopped at the colored speakeasy behind Gold's Dry Goods. The bartender told us he was making accusations and was pretty drunk, but after that we lost his trail.” A colored speakeasy in Liberty? That must mean there's a white juice joint too! I'm so out of touch.

“We drove by MacIntosh's house three times,” Byrd continues, “thinking maybe we would see his burro if he was there, but the place was dark and we never could find him. Figure he stopped somewhere on his way home along Salt Lick, crawled under a tree to sleep it off.”

There's a shuffle on the porch steps, and we all look up. The men rise expectantly. We women stay seated, hoping to see Thomas, maybe drunk as a skunk but all in one piece. When the pastor opens the door, it isn't Thomas. With a shock, I recognize Sheriff Hardman.

“Evening.” The sheriff nods. His blue eyes sweep the room as he removes his hat. “Can I speak to you, Reverend?” Miller doesn't invite him in but steps out on the porch. Daniel Hester goes too, and that strikes me as strange. Maybe he thinks he can help in some way. Byrd stays where he is, but Bitsy flashes him a look and motions toward the back door. There are dynamics in this house I don't understand.

I've associated with Commies and radicals, suffragettes and anarchists, but this is something new to me, the level of powerlessness blacks suffer in a white community. Even those under Reverend Miller's wings tremble, fearing they will be blamed for something . . . anything.

I'd like to go out on the porch to find out what's happening, but I'm rooted to the floor. Has Hardman come about Thomas? Is there trouble in town? Is the law still looking for Katherine? Are they looking for me?

Byrd wanders casually toward the kitchen. The hand pump squeaks, and water runs into the sink. There's the clink of a coffee cup on the counter. Now Bitsy unfolds herself, and when I turn she's at the back door, kissing him tenderly. He places both hands on her waist. At any other time, I would be happy to see that Bitsy has a sweetheart, but tonight I just fear for him and hurt for her.

Her mother is dead. Her brother is missing. Now she is sending her new beau away into the night, for his own sake.

 

“Here they come,” Mrs. Miller whispers, dropping the corner of the lace curtain and turning quickly. I suppose it's poor form for a preacher's wife to be seen snooping.

A car engine cranks up, and the door swings open.

“Is Thomas okay?” Bitsy asks first thing.

Reverend Miller looks very old, and Hester looks weary. “Yeah,” the vet says. “As far as we know . . . but the cops are looking for him. They heard he was at the black speakeasy earlier tonight, mouthing off . . . then later a neighbor reported a Negro man yelling threats in front of the MacIntosh home.”

“The cops went to the speakeasy?” I ask. “You'd think the law would shut it down.” The vet rolls his eyes, indicating that I'm naive.

“His deputy drove by William and Katherine's house a few times earlier tonight, but the lights were off and no one was around. Hardman came here to order Thomas to stay out of town until he cools off.”

 

After fear and great sadness comes exhaustion, and it's hitting us all at once. Mrs. Miller yawns. The pastor looks at his watch. The vet stands with one hand on the knob. I turn to Bitsy. “We'd better go home.”

“Okay,” she says sadly. She gives Reverend and Mrs. Miller a hug, then moves to the door.

“I'm so sorry,” I tell her again and again, sitting with my arms around her in the backseat of Hester's car. “I'm so sorry.”

It isn't until we are halfway up Wild Rose Road that I remember Moonlight. I left feed for her yesterday, but other than that she's had nothing to eat. Has she given birth? My thank-you to the vet is hurried and lame. “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks for everything.”

Upstairs, I tuck Bitsy into bed, then rush down to feed the dogs, who are jumping all over me. When I finally slam out of the back, I find Daniel Hester latching the barn door.

“Moonlight's okay,” he informs me. “She had enough water and hasn't calved yet. I threw her some hay and tossed the chickens some feed. By the looks of her, she'll calf soon. Keep an eye on her . . .”

We stand together in the warm night, looking out across the moonlit pasture. It's so bright, the grass actually looks green. All around us are green growing things, and in the distance I can hear the Hope River. I lean into him, a silent thank-you, and he puts one arm around me. The smell of the animals is still on his shirt, and the almost full moon sails in and out of the clouds.

32

Comfort in the Night

The days since Mary's death have passed slowly. Is it three? Is it four? I count back. Katherine ran to us Tuesday night, the day of the big thunderstorm. Mary fell Tuesday night and died early Wednesday morning. We didn't learn of her death until that evening. Now it's . . . I consult Stenger's calendar . . . Friday or Saturday. It's all a blur. Death does that. Stops time.

The garden's full of weeds, and I have no heart to pull them. Twice Bitsy and I have ridden on Star to Wildcat, but no one has seen Thomas. Then Bitsy went into Liberty with the Millers to make arrangements for the funeral, but they can't put Mary into the ground until Sunday because the Emmanuel Funeral Home has another burial in Delmont on Saturday. Thank goodness they are trained embalmers, or Mary would start to smell. Gray clouds hang over us like a shroud, but the rain doesn't come.

 

In the night, I wake to hear Bitsy crying on the other side of the wall. The sound slices through me, uncovers my own buried grief for my mother . . . for Lawrence . . . for Ruben . . . for Mrs. Kelly . . . for all those I've lost.

I light a lantern, put on the red silk kimono, and go down to the kitchen. When I come back, I don't even knock at the door to her bedroom. I don't ask if I can sleep with her, just nudge her over, fluff up her extra pillows, then hand over the last of Mrs. Kelly's blackberry wine. We finish the whole mason jar, lying up against the metal headboard, not saying anything, just sharing our sorrow.

“Thanks,” Bitsy says as she rolls away from me onto her side. I curl around her, one arm around her waist, as I once did with Katherine, when we thought her baby was dead, our loose bodies folding into each other.

Bitsy kisses my hand, holds it to her cheek. I know what she's saying: we are more than two roommates who share a house, more than two women who share a vocation, more than friends, and this makes me cry, one sob from that deep alone pocket under my heart.

In the morning Bitsy gets up at dawn, as usual. Over tea and the homemade bread that Mrs. Miller pressed on us when we left Hazel Patch, we are silent about last night. I hold my pounding head in one hand, thinking about the blackberry wine, and Bitsy tells me that she still has Katherine's ten-dollar bill and the Hazel Patch folks are paying for the funeral. We've come out richer, but there's no joy. Mary Proudfoot is gone, Katherine is gone, and Thomas . . . we still don't know where he is.

When I trudge out to the barn with a headache the size of Lake Michigan, I'm surprised to find Moonlight licking a small miniature of herself. With the events of the last few days, her delivery was the last thing on my mind.

“Bitsy!” I scream. Moonlight looks over at me and then turns back to her calf. “Bitsy!” I yell. “Bitsy!”

My friend slips through the barn door and leans with me against the side of the wooden stall. It's another female and she's already nursing, butting her little black-and-white head into Moonlight's udder.

We name her Sunny.

 

Bad News

“Bitsy,” I ask. “Do you know much about calves and mother cows? I mean, are we supposed to start milking right away or wait until Moonlight's supply is established? This is something I didn't think of.” We are washing up the midday meal dishes, each of us in her own world.

“You could ask Mr. Hester. Maybe he would have an old veterinary book you could borrow. Why don't you ride Star over the mountain?” I take a big breath and let it out slowly. Maybe she just wants to get rid of me. Is she also hungover from the blackberry wine? Or is she just so weighted with grief that silence is the only dark place that soothes her?

 

At the top of the ridge, where the sandstone cliffs drop off, I stop to wonder at the checkered hills, rectangles of emerald green, moss, and gold; pastures, woodlots, and fields of grain. It's good to get away from the farm and the leaden weight of Bitsy's sadness. Moving anywhere brings me back to my body. It doesn't take away the grief, just puts it into perspective. Here and there black-and-white cattle, the same breed as Moonlight, graze, so small in the distance they look like toys. Far off, there's the faint whistle of a train.

Thirty years ago, this was virgin forest, thick with huge poplar and oak, maple and chestnut, spruce and fir, some over one hundred feet high. The industrialists scraped all that from the land with the coming of the railway. Now small farmers till the poor soil, eking a living out of the steep slopes and in the narrow hollows. Winding through the valley bottom in and out of the second-growth trees, the Hope River sparkles like beads of glass.

As Star and I come down the hill, I spy Hester shoveling manure out of a wagon, looking like a real farmer in blue denim overalls.

“Hi.” I slide off Star's back and tie her to a tree. He glances over but doesn't smile. Probably thinks I'm trouble on the way. “Moonlight had her calf last night.”

“Everything okay?” He stabs his pitchfork into the earth and wipes his face with a red bandanna. “You should have come for me.”

“I would have, but it happened in the middle of the night.” I don't tell him that it happened in the middle of the night when Bitsy and I were half drunk and I forgot to go out to the barn and check on her. “The calf's beautiful, black and white like Moonlight. A female! She's eating and nursing, but I realized I never asked you if I should start milking her now or wait? Do you have anything I could read, maybe an old textbook?”

“Let's go in. I have something to show you.” He doesn't answer my question, so I figure he's going to give me a pamphlet or old text on animal husbandry.

Inside the shadowy kitchen, I pump water while he washes up. For a change, the counters are clean and there are no dirty dishes in the porcelain sink. When Hester returns from upstairs, sweat free, his hair combed down, wearing a short-sleeved blue work shirt under his overalls, he hands me yesterday's copy of the
Liberty Times.
I don't have to wonder what he wants me to read; the headlines scream everything:
COAL BARON FOUND STRANGLED IN HIS OWN HOME.

“Shit!” I swear, then bite my tongue. I don't usually use such foul language.

I read the first paragraph aloud. “The body of William MacIntosh, owner of MacIntosh Consolidated Mines, was discovered by a neighbor, Mrs. Dyke of 140 High St., Liberty, around nine Friday morning, a rope around his neck . . .”

I toss the newspaper on the table. “I can't finish this.”

Hester fills me in. “The reporter says MacIntosh was found in the dining room with a rope around his neck. There was a chair turned over, but it's unclear if he took his own life or was murdered. There's no note. The death is under investigation.”

“Shit,” I say again, this time without cringing. “You think it was Thomas?”

Hester shrugs. “The night before he died, remember, there was that complaint to the sheriff's office that a black man was standing outside the MacIntosh home yelling for William to come out. And listen to this.” He straightens the paper and reads aloud for my benefit, “Sheriff Hardman is also investigating a related missing-person case. Mrs. Katherine MacIntosh and the couple's young son were reported missing three days prior to her husband's death. Readers with any knowledge of either event are instructed to call the sheriff's office immediately. Withholding information in a capital murder case could be construed as collusion.”

“Shit! Shit!” I don't seem to be able to control my expletives. “What the hell do we do now? Bitsy and I have been to the Wildcat Mine twice, asked around, but no one's seen Thomas, and it isn't like him to go away like this. If he isn't at Mary's funeral service tomorrow, we'll be really worried. Do you think he did it?”

Daniel Hester goes to the sink and pours each of us a glass of cold water. “Drink this.”

I'm pulling at the roots of my hair. “
Could
Thomas have killed William?” I ask again.

“A man might lose control if he thought his mother was thrown down the stairs by her inebriated employer.”

“But
Thomas
. . . he isn't like that. I don't think he is, anyway. And should we tell Hardman we know what happened to Katherine? She didn't just disappear, she went home to her mother in Baltimore to escape her drunken husband. If we withhold, we could be in trouble.” My mind jumps from one thing to another like oil in a hot skillet.

“Take a deep breath,” Hester orders. I try, but it's more like a gulp of air. “We should wait,” he goes on, “until we talk to Thomas, get all the information, hear his story. In the military you get a feeling for men, which ones will go off like a loose cannon and which you can trust. If Thomas did kill MacIntosh, the asshole deserved it.”

An hour later, I find Bitsy sitting on our front steps, stroking Emma's head and staring into some sorrowful space two feet in front of her. I hand her the copy of the
Liberty Times.
Her reaction surprises me.

“I'm glad!” Then slowly, as she reads the whole article, her brown face turns ashen.

“They'll think
Thomas
did it! He
never
would. He's a Christian. He might mouth off some, but he's told me before he doesn't believe in an eye for an eye.” She reads the story for a second time, and I read over her shoulder.

 

Dust to Dust

“Here, let me fix you.” I tie Star to a fence and straighten Bitsy's collar. I'm wearing my best dark dress, a navy blue flowered print, with my hair done up high. She wears her black one with white lace on the sleeves and collar and looks like a young Mrs. Potts. We both step out of our long pants and put on our good shoes, then dust off our faces with a cool rag Bitsy brought in a basket. I link my arm through hers to give her support, and we head for the front of the little white chapel.

“Wow, look how many people!” I whisper. I'm surprised by the number of buggies and vehicles parked along the road and on the wide lawn next to the cemetery. There's also a hearse with purple-fringed curtains and Sheriff Hardman's black roadster with
POLICE
stenciled in white on the side.

We enter through the double oak doors and are escorted by an usher in a dark mourning coat to the first pew, directly in front of the wooden casket. I'm relieved to see Thomas already sitting there, wearing a simple white shirt open at the throat. He rises and hugs his younger sister tight, rivulets of tears running down his strong face. Bitsy sobs too. We are all crying while Mildred Miller, the organist, plays “Nearer, My God, to Thee” without even looking at the sheet music.

In between hymns I scan the chapel. Mrs. Potts is there, and a score of others I don't recognize. Some of them must be from the A.M.E. Church in Liberty. There are only three other white people in the chapel, and I'm shocked to see Katherine MacIntosh, sitting with a man in his sixties, probably her father. She must have made it to Baltimore, stayed a few days, and come right back when she heard about William's death. Daniel Hester is here too, sitting alone in the back pew.

Since I've never been to a Negro funeral service, I don't know what to expect, but other than the singing it's the same as any other funeral I've ever been to, and there have been several, all for women, I realize . . . my grandmother, my mother, and then Mrs. Kelly.

My father's body was lost in Lake Michigan. Lawrence's scorched body, after it was removed from the mangled train, was returned to his family in Iowa. Ruben, with the other unclaimed miners' bodies, was buried near Blair Mountain. I've always thought I'd go see his grave someday, but it's never happened. Probably because I've been afraid that if I went to southern West Virginia someone would recognize me, and also because I imagine I would see Ruben's blood on the ground, a brown stain, all that's left.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Reverend Miller intones. Today I cry for them all, Mary Proudfoot and those others, long dead. I do not cry for William MacIntosh, although maybe I should. Surely he was once a decent fellow. Katherine told me how carefully he had tended the roses, the azaleas, and the butterfly bushes in front of their home.

 

When the service is over and their mother's coffin is covered with earth, Thomas pulls Bitsy into the shade of a spreading black walnut tree and confers with her earnestly. Not wanting to intrude, I stroll over to speak to Katherine, Daniel Hester, and the other white man.

“This is my uncle, Reverend Martin . . . Patience Murphy, my midwife,” Katherine introduces me. Her eyes are dull and dry, so I can't tell how she taking her husband's death. Does she believe it was suicide . . . or murder? Does she believe Thomas would have done it? Does she even care? I study her face, a mask I can't read.

No matter how difficult their relationship, William was her lover once, her friend. They made two babies together, and she knew his most intimate side. What she probably mourns is not the angry, violent, self-absorbed husband who felt himself a failure but the gentle man who loved flowers.

“Are you okay?” I whisper to Katherine as Hester and Martin gaze over the fields and comment on the crops and the drought. I pull on the sleeve of her soft gray linen dress and lead her to a bench at the side of the church. “Are you okay? It must be hard. Such a shock about William.”