[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek (6 page)

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Authors: Jan Watson

BOOK: [Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek
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Emilee barely had time to make coffee, let alone fry the fatback for breakfast, before Will burst through the door the next morning. “Where’re my girls? Where’re the beautiful blonde Julie and her fetching red-haired daughter?”
“Law, Will,” Emilee replied, “you’ll wake the dead. Seeing as there’s only one room here, I reckon you can find them without any help.”
Will grabbed her plump waist and danced her around his kitchen-dining-sitting-sleeping room. He planted a noisy kiss on her dimpled cheek. “Emilee Pelfrey, it’s a good thing you’re married to my closest friend, or I would sure enough have to add you to my harem.”
“Save your charm for your wife, Will Brown.” A blush covered Emilee’s cheeks, and a grin deepened the just-kissed dimple. “Where is my Daniel this morning? He always wakes hungry as a hibernated bear.”
“Don’t fret. He just stopped to feed the animals.”
With all the commotion, both babies began to cry.
Will scooped his daughter from the cradle. Holding the baby in his arms, he bent his long body to the bed and kissed Julie awake.
 
Baby John overcame the newborn’s squalls with hunger-fueled wails of his own. As usual, a few quiet words from Granny brought everything back under control. She sent Will to gather eggs for their breakfast, then tended to her patient’s needs. Everything was going as expected. Julie was recovering nicely.
After Julie fed the baby again, Emilee would help her out of bed. Granny didn’t believe in lying in bed for weeks after childbirth. Her patients couldn’t afford the luxury of lazing around— most had more than one hungry mouth to feed. Besides, she had observed, new mothers didn’t stay weak for long if they got out of bed as soon as they were steady on their feet.
She was not surprised to learn that citified women would be puny for weeks after childbirth and couldn’t care for their own households. It made sense, all that pizen blood backing up in there with nowhere to go—no wonder they had so many female complaints. Granny’s mothers were up and seeing to their families merely days after delivery.
Julie was up in the rocker. The men had eaten breakfast and were having a smoke on the porch. Emilee had finished scrubbing the floor with bleach water and was packing baby John on her hip, making ready to leave. Granny was pulverizing egg shells she had burned in the iron skillet to mix with a little sweet milk for Julie.
“Here, honey, drink this down,” she instructed. “Don’t want ye getting sickly. This is a remedy my mommy taught me. I was weak as a kitten after Daniel’s daddy was borned. ‘This’ll keep yore strength up,’ Mommy said.” Granny lifted a small queer-shaped rock from the counter. “This here’s Mommy’s pestle. It’s the onliest thing I’ve got of hers, save one grease lamp.”
Julie swallowed the chalky-tasting drink. She caught Granny’s hand and drew it to her cheek. “Thank you for helping me through this. What would I have done without you?”
“I just do what the good Lord set about for me. He gives us all a talent. Yours is your purty voice; mine is birthing babies.”
“Wonder what mine is,” Emilee said. “Taking care of Daniel?”
“I believe yours to be having the babies for me to birth.” Granny tee-heed.
“How many, Granny?” Julie asked, smiling at her friend. “How many babies will Emilee have?”
“A tribe, I reckon. A baker’s dozen.”
“And me? Will I have more healthy babies?”
“Don’t fret yourself, Julie. Enjoy this’n ’fore you worry about more. Now I have in mind to talk straight to Will before I leave ye.”
 
Granny found Will in the side yard, still patting himself on the back, proud as a peacock. “Now, Will,” she started. “I got a right smart to learn ye. I don’t want to leave Julie less’n yore up to it.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Will huffed.
“Don’t get all toucheous, Will. Ye need to know things ye never needed to know before. Just listen.”
Will hung his head. “You’re right, Granny. I’m sorry.”
“Julie’s pert near back to normal, but ye need to watch after her and the baby.” She pulled a passel of linen cloths from her deep apron pocket. “These are clean rags for her. If she floods and it don’t seem to stop, send for me.” She kicked up a little trace of red-clay dirt with her booted toe. “It should be ’bout this color, brownish red. If it’s bright, like a sliced beet, that ain’t good.”
Will took the rags and listened intently as Granny continued. “Make her eggnog with fresh eggs and warm milk.” She walked a little ways to the springhouse door, and he followed. “The afterbirth is in here, wrapped in oilcloth.” Her eyes, deep as a well and black as pitch, pierced his. “Ye must bury it tonight in the north corner of the yard.” He shivered when she gripped his arm. “Ye must line the little grave with willow branches and set a heavy stone atop it. When that is done, take a handful of the fresh-dug dirt and throw it over yore right shoulder. Make sure it scatters over the grave. That’ll keep the haints away. Yore other wee ones were not meant to live, but this ’un’s born strong. Ye have to protect her.”
Will didn’t believe as Granny did, that the devil was busy playing tricks on people and that sometimes you could trick him back. She still held to some old mountain ways, and the weight of her concern rested heavily on his shoulders. He knew that nothing but the grace of God would protect his wife and family, but Granny stood like a little sentry between him and the cabin until he agreed.
“All right, Granny,” he said. “I won’t forget. I won’t let you down.”
 
It was unusually warm for a March day in eastern Kentucky, and the dank, dark smell of coal smoke permeated the air held close in the valley by rain-weighted clouds, obscuring the tops of the mountains. A jagged bolt of lightning ushered in the thunder boomer Will Brown had been predicting all day.
Will was as happy as he had ever been while he dashed across the barnyard with a pail full of milk, still warm from the cow, and half a dozen brown eggs, stolen from the chickens, in his jacket pocket. He was thinking of the story he would tell Julie, of how mad the hens had gotten when he lifted them from their nests and helped himself to the products of their labor.
“Hey, girls,” he’d said. “Share a few eggs with me. Remember who supplies the corn you like so much. And you have to admit, I’m much better looking than that other thief, old Mr. Possum.”
The hens had squawked and ruffled their feathers, pecking indignantly at Will’s arms before settling back on their nests.
He needed the eggs and milk to make eggnog for Julie like Granny Pelfrey had told him to do. He was so grateful to the old midwife that he would do anything she asked of him, most anything. A pang of guilt tickled his mind when he remembered the other instructions she had given after the birth of his daughter forty-eight hours earlier.
Well,
he consoled himself,
I did near everything. A man can never do all a woman asks.
He figured he’d done the best he could.
He mounted the porch steps and set the bucket of milk on the rough plank floor. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pipe and a pouch of tobacco. He would have a quick smoke and watch the storm for a minute before he went inside.
Will remembered being glad that evening when Daniel had ferried Granny and Emilee across the creek, swollen from the rain that fell steadily from leaden skies. “Our good-luck sign,” Julie had dubbed it, for it had also rained on their wedding day.
Thunder rolled, startling Will from his reverie. The shower that started two days ago, right after the baby’s birth, continued and was turning into a serious storm as night approached. Suddenly, hail began to fall and bounce as loud as gunshots against the tin roof. He hastened inside with the milk pail as the wind gusted in around him.
Closing the door, he entered the spacious one-room haven that was his family’s home. He picked up the heavy iron poker that had belonged to his father and stoked the fire in the cookstove, then added a chunk of coal. Stirring sugar into the saucepan of warmed milk and beaten eggs, he carefully added a pinch of Julie’s precious nutmeg. He poured the drink into a heavy white mug and carried it to the bedside.
The baby had burrowed under the blanket, and he pulled it back from her face. He noted a smudge of white at the corner of her mouth. So Julie’s milk was in; praise the Lord. That would make them all happy. Laura Grace had been fussy all day, demanding to be fed almost hourly. She would suck with fury for a few seconds, then pull away, red-faced and screaming like a banshee. Granny had prepared them for this possibility. She’d left sugar soothers—pieces of twisted linen, which he dipped in boiled sweetened water—for the baby to suck on. That worked for a little while, but the infant was hungry and ready for the real thing. So she slept at last, sated on her mother’s milk.
Will had proudly accomplished all of Granny’s tasks. Well, almost all. Only one thing pricked his conscience like a blackbird on an ear of corn. As Granny had instructed, he carefully kept track of the number and heaviness of Julie’s pads, fixed her meals, and cared for the fussy baby so Julie could rest. Why, he even changed the soiled nappies and wiped her tiny bottom. He told Julie the only thing that saved him was that the nappies didn’t stink. He thought he might save them to tar the roof. She had laughed and laughed.
What nagged him was the burying of the afterbirth. As Granny directed, on the evening of the birth, he had taken a shovel and a lantern to the springhouse and retrieved the little bundle. He carried it to the northernmost part of the yard and dug a deep, round hole. Satisfied, he paused to wipe rainwater from his eyes, then placed the wrapped package into the depression and quickly covered it. He tamped the dirt firmly into place with the back of the shovel and looked around for a stone big enough to cover the small mound. The lantern he had placed on the ground sputtered and cast an eerie green glow over the scene. He turned his back and pitched a handful of soil over his shoulder. It didn’t scatter—too wet—but sat there in a lump, like a reproachful frog. He jabbed at it with his shovel.
It was then he remembered the willow branches. He had forgotten the grave’s special lining. Shivering in the damp wind, he drew the collar of his coat tightly around his throat.
Well,
he thought,
I’m cold and I’m tired. I’ll fix it in the morning. Maybe the rain will stop by then.
He laid the bowl of the shovel across the grave and hurried into the house.
What made him a little uneasy was the condition of the grave when he went to check it this morning. The shovel had been cast aside. The grave was open and empty, strewn with shreds of bloody oilcloth.
Dug up by wild dogs,
he reasoned as he had smoothed the dirt back into place.
No harm done.

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