Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Lou went into the kitchen and assisted Jesse. Lou had never seen her at school, nor the seven-year-old boy who watched them with fearful eyes. Jesse had a wide scar that looped around her left eye, and Lou didn’t even want to venture to guess how the girl had come by it.

The stove was already hot, and the kettle water came to a boil in a few minutes. Lou kept checking the outside of the cloth that she placed in the oven drawer, and soon it was sufficiently brown. Using rags, they carried the pots and the ball of cloths into the bedroom and set them next to the bed.

Louisa washed Sally with soap and warm water where the baby would be coming and then drew the sheet over her.

She whispered to Lou, “Baby taking its last rest now, and so can Sally. Ain’t tell ’xactly how it lies yet, but it ain’t a cross birth.” Lou looked at her curiously. “Where the baby lie crossways along the belly. I call you when I need you.”

“How many babies have you delivered?”

“Thirty-two over fifty-seven years,” she said. “ ’Member ever one of ’em.”

“Did they all live?”

“No,” Louisa answered quietly, and then told Lou to go on out, that she would call her.

Jesse was in the kitchen, standing against a wall, hands clasped in front of her, face down, a side of her hacked hair positioned over the scar and part of her eye.

Lou glanced at the boy in the bed.

“What’s your name?” Lou asked him. He said nothing. When Lou stepped toward him, he yelled and threw the blanket over his head, his little body shaking hard under the cover. Lou retreated all the way out of the crazy house.

She looked around until she saw Billy over at the barn peering in the open double doors. She crossed the yard quietly and looked over his shoulder. George Davis was no more than ten feet from them. The mare was on the straw floor. Protruding from her, and covered in the cocoonish white birth sac, was one foreleg and shoulder of the foal. Davis was pulling on the slicked leg, cursing. The barn floor was plank, not dirt. In the blaze of a number of lanterns, Lou could see rows of shiny tools neatly lining the walls.

Unable to stand Davis’s coarse language and the mare’s suffering, Lou went and sat on the front porch. Billy came and slumped next to her. “Your farm looks pretty big,” she said.

“Pa hire men to help him work it. But when I get to be a man, he ain’t need ’em. I do it.”

They heard George Davis holler from the barn, and they both jumped. Billy looked embarrassed and dug at the dirt with his big toe.

“I’m sorry for putting that snake in your pail.”

He looked at her, surprised. “I done it to you first.”

“That still doesn’t make it right.”

“Pa kill a man if he done that to him.”

Lou could see the terror in the boy’s eyes, and her heart went out to Billy Davis.

“You’re not your pa. And you don’t have to be.”

Billy looked nervous. “I ain’t tell him I was fetching Miss Louisa. Don’t know what he say when he sees y’all.”

“We’re just here to help your mother. He can’t have a problem with that.”

“That right?”

They looked up into the face of George Davis, who stood before them, equine blood and slime coating his shirt and dripping down both arms. Dust swirled around his legs like visible heat, as though mountain had been shucked to desert.

Billy stood in front of Lou. “Pa. How’s the foal?”

“Dead.” The way he said it made every part of Lou shake. He pointed at her. “What the hell is this?”

“I got them to come help with the baby. Miss Louisa’s in with Ma.”

George looked over at the door and then back at Billy. The look in his eye was so terrible that Lou was sure the man was going to kill her right there.

“That woman in my house, boy?”

“It’s time.” They all looked toward the door where Louisa now stood. “Baby’s coming,” she said.

Davis shoved his son aside, and Lou jumped out of the way as he stalked up to the door.

“Gawd damnit, you got no business here, woman. Get the hell off my land afore you get the butt of my shotgun agin your head, and that damn girl too.”

Louisa took not one step back. “You can help with the baby coming, or not. Up to you. Come on, Lou, and you too, Billy. Gonna need both y’all.”

It was clear though that George wasn’t going to let them go. Louisa was very strong for her age, and taller than Davis, but still, it would not be much of a fight.

And then from the woods they heard the scream. It was the same sound Lou had heard the first night at the well, but even more horrifying somehow, as though whatever it was, was very close and bearing down on them. Even Louisa stared out apprehensively into the darkness.

George Davis took a step back, his hand clenched, as though hoping for a gun to be there. Louisa clutched the children and pulled them in with her. Davis made no move to stop them, but he did call out, “You just make sure it’s a damn boy this time. if’n it’s a girl, you just let it die. You hear me? Don’t need me no more gawd damn girls!”

As Sally pushed hard, Louisa’s pulse quickened when she first saw the buttocks of the baby, followed by one of its feet. She knew she didn’t have long to get the child out before the cord was crushed between the baby’s head and Sally’s bone. As she watched, the pains pushed the other foot out.

“Lou,” she said, “over here, quick, child.” Louisa caught the baby’s feet in her right hand and lifted the body up so that the contractions would not have to carry the weight of the baby, and so as to better the angle of the head coming through. She knew they were fortunate that after so many births, Sally Davis’s bones would be spread wide. “Push, Sally, push, honey,” Louisa called out.

Louisa took Lou’s hands and directed them to a spot on Sally’s lower abdomen. “Got to get the head out fast,” she told Lou, “push right there, hard as you can. Don’t worry, ain’t hurt the baby none, belly wall hard.”

Lou bore down with all her weight while Sally pushed and screamed and Louisa lifted the baby’s body higher.

Louisa called out like she was marking water depth on a riverboat. Neck showing, she said, and then she could see hair. And then the entire head showed, and then she was holding the child, and telling Sally to rest, that it was over.

Louisa said a prayer of thanks when she saw it was a boy. It was awfully small, though, and its color poor. She had Lou and Billy heat up cans of water while she tied off the cord in two spots with the bobbin string and then cut the cord in between these points with a pair of boiled scissors. She wrapped the cord in one of the clean, dry cloths that Lou had baked in the oven and tied another of the baked cloths snugly against the baby’s left side. She used sweet oil to clean the baby off, washed him with soap and warm water, and then wrapped him in a blanket and gave the boy to his mother.

Louisa placed a hand on Sally’s belly and felt to see if the womb was hard and small, which is what she wanted. If it was large and soft, that might mean bleeding inside, she told Lou in a small voice. However, the belly was small and tight. “We fine,” she told a relieved Lou.

Next, Louisa took the newborn and laid it on the bed. She took a small wax ampule from her lard bucket and from it took out a small glass vial. She had Lou hold the baby’s eyes open while Louisa placed two drops inside each one, while the child squirmed and cried out.

She told Lou, “So baby ain’t go blind. Travis Barnes gimme it. Law say you got to do this.”

Using the hot cans and some blankets, Louisa fashioned a crude incubator and placed the baby in it. His breathing was so shallow she kept sticking a goose feather under his mouth to see the ripple of air graze it.