Raymond Atkins - The Front Porch Prophet

“This is kind of cozy,” said John Robert. “Reminds me of the days before the TVA.”

“Yeah, it could be a lot worse,” agreed A.J., feeling at peace.

“My water just broke,” said Maggie. She was eight months pregnant. At her regular visit two days earlier, the doctor had pronounced her fit as a fiddle and right on schedule. But be all that as it may, the snow had just hit the fan.

“You’re not due yet!” said A.J., stating the obvious. Impending childbirth always pumped him right up.

“I can’t help that,” she said. “I’ve been having pains for about two hours. I thought that maybe it was back strain, but we’re about to have a baby.” A.J. thought she was awfully calm, given the circumstances.

“But you’re not due yet!” he said.

“If you say that again, I will hurt you,” Maggie said. She was up and pacing while holding her back. She always walked during early labor, and her communications tended to be unambiguous. John Robert jumped from his chair. It was no time for sitting. First he tried the phone, which was dead. Then he shoved past A.J. on his way to the door.

“I’ll go warm up the truck,” he said as he put on his coat and his old hat with the fur earflaps. A.J. stared at him for a moment before shaking his head.

“There is no way we can make it to the hospital in this storm,” he said to his father. The wind howled loudly, as if agreeing with him. A.J.’s mind raced to come up with a plan. Estelle startled awake. When advised of the situation, she sprang to her feet and went to boil water on the gas stove. A.J. thought for another moment, and then he spoke.

“We need to try to get her to Doc Miller’s place. It’s not too far.” He looked at Maggie, who had paused from her stroll around the living room to breathe through a pain. She was notorious for short, dramatic labors and showed every indication of moving right along with this one. “Maggie, I think we should try to take you over to Doc’s. What do you think?”

“I think I would rather have this baby naked in a snowdrift than to have Estelle help deliver him. Let’s go before she comes out with a knife to cut the pain.” So A.J. went out to warm up the truck while John Robert helped her into her coat. Then they bundled her into her makeshift ambulance, and A.J. and Maggie set off into the storm. The truck bed was filled with a load of firewood cut the previous day, and A.J. was glad for the extra weight. Even so, he had to let most of the air out of the back tires before the vehicle would gain traction. As they pulled away, he saw in his mirror the forlorn sight of John Robert waving. Standing by him was a disappointed Estelle, steaming teakettle in one hand and butcher knife in the other.

The trip to Doc’s was surreal. The landscape was chiseled in snow and ice. Green lightning flashed, but there was no thunder. Trees were glazed and bent to the ground. A.J. heard the crack of a power pole as the ice brought it low. The Longstreets lived only three miles from town, but it took thirty minutes to cover this distance. They were off the road as much as on, and the truck added several dents and scrapes to its already impressive display. They were traveling backward when they entered the outskirts of town, with A.J. cursing softly as he tried to gain control. Luckily, the post office stopped their momentum. Maggie groaned involuntarily before pointing out in unkind terms he could expect to be short lived if he bounced her like that again.

“How are you doing?” A.J. asked as he attempted to get the truck off of Federal property. The tires spun and caught. His headache felt as if someone had driven a splitting wedge between his eyes.

“Better than you, looks like,” she panted as another pain hit. She dealt with the contraction, braced and rigid, and then continued. “We seem to have hit the post office just now.”

“We’re taxpayers. In reality, it is our post office. We can hit it if we want to.”

“We need to be hitting Doc’s house soon,” she replied.

They came to Doc’s long downhill drive almost as soon as she spoke. A.J. nosed it in and hoped for the best. They gained speed as they approached the carport and drifted counterclockwise with all four wheels locked. He wondered how he was going to stop but needn’t have worried. The good Lord was keeping an eye on the Longstreets that woolly night and sent a sign in the form of a beautifully restored Sedan Deville. The truck was perpendicular to the fins on the back of Doc’s old Cadillac when the two objects collided. A.J.’s door collapsed inward and knocked him over into Maggie’s lap. His new position seemed to add to her duress, so he quickly clambered out her door, where he promptly slipped and fell on the ice. When Doc emerged, he was greeted by the sight of A.J.’s truck impaled on the substantial fins of his Cadillac. Maggie was in the truck, trying not to push, and A.J. was on the ground, nursing a cracked rib from the truck door and a broken wrist from the hard concrete.

“What the hell…?” Doc began.

“Maggie’s having her baby,” A.J. informed him. Doc stepped back inside. He returned with a flashlight and a box of ice-cream salt. Doc scattered the salt, stepped gingerly to the truck, and made a brief examination of Maggie.

“The baby’s coming breech. Help me get her inside.” To Maggie he said, “Don’t push.”

“Easy for you to say,” she growled between gritted teeth. A.J. and Doc trundled her into the house and onto the spare bed, and thirty minutes later after much deft maneuvering by Doc and a great deal of waterfront cussing by Maggie, the Longstreets were parents again. A.J. and Minnie had assisted, with Minnie doing the skilled work while A.J. filled the position of tote-and-fetch boy. Maggie’s eyes shone in the lamplight as her fine baby boy was laid at her breast. A.J. and Doc shook hands, and it was difficult to tell who was prouder, the new father or the old physician, hopelessly out of date but still able to deliver a baby breech during a snowstorm in the dark.

“All these new boys would have been doing C-sections, getting excited and hollering stat. Whatever the hell that means,” Doc growled as he sipped the coffee Minnie had brewed on the gas grill. It had a slightly smoky taste.

“You did good, Doc,” A.J. said.

Maggie had worked hard, and it was late. Eventually, she drowsed. While she slept, Doc splinted A.J.’s wrist and taped his ribs. Then A.J. sat in a chair by the bed. After a time, Maggie stirred and awakened. She saw him and smiled.

“I dreamed you were gone,” she said sleepily.

“I was here the whole time,” he responded, taking her hand. Thus, the youngest member of the Longstreet clan came into the world on a blizzard’s coattails, and his difficult entrance set the tone for the life that was to follow.

“I swear he planned it,” Maggie said, back in the kitchen recounting the high points of Eudora’s wedding. “The minister had just finished saying that any objectors should speak now or forever hold their peace. The church was quiet. Then J.J. tugged on my dress and announced he had to pee. ‘Right now, Mama,’ was the way he put it. I thought Emily Charlotte was going to die on the spot.”

“Well, we told him to always let us know,” A.J. offered. J.J. had been tough to train. “I bet Carlisle loved the bathroom break.”

“He raised an eyebrow, but everyone was laughing by that time.”

“Well, the main thing is that Eudora has finally reeled Carlisle in,” A.J. said. “Now she can be truly fulfilled as a woman.” He grunted when Maggie kicked him under the table.

“Watch it,” she said. “I’m still in the mood to hit something.”

“Apparently,” he responded, rubbing his shin. “Husband beating is a serious deal. With the right lawyer, I could clean you out.”