Dunaway's Crossing (21 page)

C
hapter 22

T
h
at night lasted a moment and a lifetime. As Bea Dot sat through the afternoon and into the night holding Netta’s hand, wiping the sweat from her brow, telling her cousin everything would be all right, she cursed under her breath. She cursed the influenza. She cursed the operator for catching the flu. She cursed Ralph Coolidge for isolating his wife in the country and for leaving her in the care of a frightened, naïve newlywed who had no idea how to bake a loaf of bread, much less bring a life into the world.

On occasional visits to the Taylor farm, she’d picked up bits of information here and there: have lots of towels ready, wash her hands often, clean the baby’s mouth and nose immediately. But now with the moment upon her, Bea Dot flooded her brain with questions she’d never known to ask.

How long after the water breaks should the baby arrive?

What if the baby doesn’t crown? Should Netta push anyway?

Should she feed Netta to keep up her strength? Was it safe to give her water?

From Eliza’s instructions, Bea Dot had conjured images in her head, but this labor was not turning out the way she’d imagined. For one thing, she expected to have time to run to the Taylors’ house to get Eliza. But Netta begged Bea Dot not to go. “I’m afraid,” she said with a shaky voice. “What if something goes wrong while you’re gone?”

What if something goes wrong while I’m here?
Bea Dot asked herself. More frightening than a complication was a complication
without Eliza
, the only person around who knew what to expect. Bea Dot pleaded with Netta, but her cousin gripped her hand and insisted that she remain at her bedside.

Then once the pains grew closer together, time raced by, and Bea Dot worked up and down, back and forth, like a ball on a tennis court. First Netta needed a sip of water. Then she needed to sit up. She needed to lie down. She needed Bea Dot to rub her back and comfort her. She needed Bea Dot to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Although Bea Dot tried to hide her fear and exhaustion, she knew Netta saw it in her eyes.

All she could do was pray for sunrise. Terrence usually dropped by during the morning.

Netta’s eyes and mouth pinched as another contraction seized her. She clutched her quilt into bunches as she endured the pain, then panted with relief when the contraction subsided. Bea Dot sat helpless, holding her cousin’s hand and cooing encouragement: “You’re doing fine, Netta. Any time now, Netta.”

Useless words. Were the situation reversed, Bea Dot would have socked Netta by now.

Netta pushed. She pushed more. She pushed for hours, it seemed, until she had no more strength. After the tears and the strain, her face looked like it had been stung by bees. Bea Dot wanted to reach inside, pull the baby out, and end her cousin’s agony. Instead, all she could do was wait and be encouraging.

But when the baby crowned, Bea Dot momentarily forgot her fear, replacing it with excitement and joy at the first glance of her new little cousin. At last the ordeal would end. Ralph, Eliza, Will—they had all been right. Everything would turn out just fine. Finally, the baby ripped its way into the world, tearing its mother with its tiny, gigantic body, then wailing with a ferocity that belied its size.

She was a little girl, strong and healthy, who gave Bea Dot only seconds to clean her up, wrap her in a piece of torn sheet, and hand her to her exhausted mother before returning to work. No instruction would have prepared Bea Dot for the trauma. Eliza had said Netta would bleed, but so much? She plied Netta’s womb with compresses as Eliza had instructed, but Netta bled through them, the panels of ripped sheet no match for the life flowing out of Netta’s body.

She’d have to reuse them. Bea Dot applied one set of compresses and took the others to her tub of water on the stove, washing the pieces of linen and draping them over chair backs to dry. The fire’s heat on the wet fabric emitted a pungent steam, which Bea Dot had no choice but to ignore.

How could a person bleed so much? Terrified by the red-soaked compresses, Bea Dot forced a bright countenance for Netta’s sake. “You’re doing fine, Netta, just fine.” How many times had she said that? “I’ll be right back with more towels.”

“Bea Dot, help me sit up. I want to nurse my baby.”

She pulled Netta into a sitting position. Before stacking the pillows behind her cousin, she removed the pillowcases to use as compresses. She put one pillow in Netta’s lap as a prop, fearing her cousin was too weak to hold the baby on her own. Once the baby took hold of the breast, Netta relaxed slightly, and Bea Dot hustled to Will’s storage room to search for anything she could use as a compress.

She yanked the sheets off his pallet and found a towel or two. She searched his shelves and reluctantly pulled out his more tattered-looking shirts. But if Netta’s bleeding didn’t subside, these few articles would do her little good.

On the way back to the bedroom, Bea Dot stopped at the telephone and tried with desperate hope to reach an operator. No answer. She thumped her forehead on the wall next to the phone and berated herself. She should have never allowed herself and Netta to be stuck in this god-awful predicament in the first place. She should have taken Netta to Savannah, where Aunt Lavinia could look after her. Why didn’t she think of that before?

Oh, please Eliza, Terrence, anybody. Somebody please come and help.

Crossing into the bedroom, Bea Dot spied her trunk—the one Will had so easily loaded onto his wagon, carried into the camp house, and to his store. That was an age ago. She tore open the lid and pulled out petticoats, chemises, blouses, anything absorbent. There in the bottom lay a flannel receiving blanket she’d brought for Netta as a gift. She’d forgotten all about it. She took the baby from Netta’s weak, shaking arms and exchanged the child’s torn sheet of a blanket for the new flannel one. Then she laid the baby next to her mother and went back to stanching Netta’s bleeding.

Through the night she toiled, soaking with red her favorite blouse, her war crinoline, the tunic she’d bought in Atlanta, all of which meant nothing to her except the chance to keep the life from seeping out of her cousin.

She lost track of time until the sun peeked over the pine trees. As Netta grew quieter and weaker, Bea Dot tried to convince herself her cousin’s pallor was only the pale daylight on her face. The bleeding had slowed, thank goodness. Netta had stopped talking a couple of hours ago, lying still and watching Bea Dot work. The baby lay quietly cradled between its mother’s arm and her torso, as if knowing not to be of any trouble.

Her head and arms resting on the edge of the mattress, her mind cloudy with fatigue, Bea Dot sat on the hard wooden floor next to the soiled bed. For a second she thought she was dreaming the sound of footsteps. But she forced her eyes open and turned her face toward the door. Terrence Taylor, with a basket of collard greens in his hand, stared slack jawed at the bloody rags piled on the floor.

Bea Dot raised her head. “Go get your mother.”

Will’s upper arms throbbed from hours of hammering, and his head pounded with fatigue. After a sixteen-hour stretch of making coffins, he’d run out of lumber, so he trudged out of Pritchett’s shed in search of food and a place to wash up.

In the light of the streetlamps, his wristwatch read six forty-five. Options were scarce during the evening. Pineview’s one restaurant, with only one waitress still working, closed after lunch. The mercantile closed at six, but Will knocked on the door, hoping to find the clerk still inside. No such luck. After peering through the glass into the dark store, Will turned and surveyed Pineview’s empty main street.

On a normal day, he’d knock on a friend’s door—likely Ralph Coolidge’s—and pay a visit. Almost certainly he’d be invited in for supper. But nothing was normal about today or the past month. Will could think of no Pineview household unaffected by influenza.

The only person definitely working at this hour was Pritchett, who had repeatedly offered him meals. However, determined not to pass influenza on to Bea Dot and Netta, Will had sworn not to cross Pritchett’s threshold. His chest ached at the thought of Bea Dot’s dark, curly hair and her coffee-brown eyes. Their one night together convinced him that she loved him as much as he loved her, in spite of her ambivalence. As soon as the epidemic ended, he planned to sit down with her and figure out a way for them to marry.

But Will’s stomach growled like a trapped bear. To be any good tomorrow, he had to eat. He turned around and retraced his steps to the funeral home. He’d go in this one time, vowing from now on to plan ahead for meals. Fatigue burned his eyes as he trudged up Pritchett’s front steps and knocked. In a few seconds, Harley, coated with oil and smelling of vinegar, opened the door and welcomed Will in.

“Pritchett’s already gone back downstairs,” Harley explained, leading Will to the back of the house. “He’s preparing one last body before calling it a night.” Catching a whiff of death and chemicals, Will held a grubby hand over his nose as they passed the stairway to the cellar.

Harley led him to the kitchen, where Will washed his hands at the sink. Harley dished up a bowl of stew for Will and put a slice of bread on a plate. Will jumped into the food like a stray dog. Harley sat across from him with a cup of coffee.

“It’s a good thing you stopped by this evening,” he said, spooning sugar into his cup. “I’ve been talking to Pritchett, and I think I have him convinced to stop this marathon coffin production.”

Will looked up from his stew, his eyebrows elevated with hope. His heart picked up its pace. “Is the flu subsiding already?”

But Harley shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Actually, it’s the other way around. The sick are dying so fast we can’t schedule the funerals. We’ve started doing two, sometimes three, at a time.”

That explained the recent pressure to pick up the pace of Will’s carpentry.

“I got the mayor’s support,” Harley continued, “and he also spoke to Pritchett this afternoon. Tomorrow the city council will pass an ordinance forbidding individual and small group funerals.”

“Small group funerals?” To Will, the phrase made death even more gruesome.

Harley nodded. “I know it sounds strange, but it’s a temporary ordinance to require all deceased to be buried in mass graves. It’s the only way we can handle the workload and prevent the spread of disease.”

Will’s appetite vanished. Harley’s explanation provoked nightmarish images of the trenches on the western front. Packed with the terrified, sick, and injured, they may as well have been mass graves. He shuddered before pushing the memory to the back of his mind, and he sat back in his chair, eyes to the ceiling.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Harley continued. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the only way. Pritchett’s about to fall over with exhaustion.”

Will knew the feeling.

“So the good news, if you can call it that, is that you’ve hammered your last pine box.” Harley slurped his coffee. “Now we just need a few more fellows to help us dig.”

Surprise sparked in Will’s chest. “Us?”

“You, me, and Randall.” Harley pointed his thumb toward the shed behind the house, where Will and Randall had been working for the past two weeks.

Will shook his head slowly. He’d never signed up for graveyard duty, and he resented Harley’s assumption that he’d be willing to handle scores of deceased flu victims.

“Now, before you start making excuses—” Pounding at the front door interrupted Harley’s argument, much to Will’s relief. When Harley left the room to answer, Will rose from the table and searched Pritchett’s cabinets. He could use a drink.

The sound of a familiar voice caught his attention. “Looking for Will Dunaway. You know where I can find him?”

“I’m here, Thaddeus,” Will called as he passed through the hallway into the parlor. “Don’t come in. Let’s talk on the porch.” Will’s mood elevated somewhat. Netta must have had her baby. About time for some happy news. As he stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him, he smiled as he greeted his friend.

“Well, what is it? A boy or a girl?”