Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

On the bed against the eastern wall, Bonnie Sue lay on her back. This, too, was wrong. The proper position for a woman in labor was not flat on her back, where she could do nothing but writhe and squirm against the pains that rippled through her. She should have been kneeling instead, so that she could squeeze the infant from her loins. There should have been a rope attached to one of the ceiling beams, and she should have been holding tight to it, so as not to fall over. Or else there should have been a pair of stakes driven into the floor, one for each hand, to which she could have clung while squatting. But no, she lay on her back jerking with each new pain. Sister marveled at the stupidity of it. She went to her and held out her hand.

“What is it? What...?” Bonnie Sue said. “Oh, Jesus! ” she screamed, and twisted again in pain.

“Up,” Sister said.

“What?”

“Up,” she said, and made a rising motion with her hands, lifting her palms toward the ceiling. “Come, up.”

“You want — ow!” she said, “Ow!” and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Come!” Sister said, and grabbed both her hands, and pulled her off the bed. Bonnie Sue clung to her, puzzled, and then realized the woman wanted her to squat, was gently easing her into a squatting position. Sobbing, her nose running, her hair wet with tears and perspiration, she knelt before her. Sister pulled on her hands, grunting, grimacing, trying to indicate what she must do to force the child out of her. Bonnie Sue said, “Jesus!” and then, “Oh, Christ!” and then, “Oh, sweet loving mother...” and Sister squeezed her hands hard and said, “You!”

“What?” Bonnie Sue said, and looked up into her face. “Where’s my mama? Please get my — oh, Jesus! Jesus!”

“You,” Sister said again, and shook her head in anger and again tugged at Bonnie Sue’s hands, and at last Bonnie Sue pulled back against them. “Ah!” Sister said sharply, and “Ah!” again, and squinched her face and made the grunting sound again, and said, “You, you,” and now Bonnie Sue began to squeeze, screaming, “Jesus, Jesus,” pushing. “Ah,” Sister said, nodding encouragement, “Ah, ah,” and Bonnie Sue said, “Yes, please help me,” and pushed again, harder this time. Sister knelt before her, one hand extended to hold both of Bonnie Sue’s, the other beneath her to cradle the baby’s head as it began to slide from her womb. “You!” Sister shouted, and Bonnie Sue gave a fierce push below, fearing she would soil herself, embarrassed, sobbing, clinging tightly to Sister’s hand, and feeling the baby slipping from her loins, feeling suddenly exuberantly joyous, and hearing the baby’s triumphant squawl like a bugle on the air.

When Minerva got to the cabin, she found Bonnie Sue in bed with the baby on her belly. Will’s Indian woman handed her a rag upon which was the afterbirth, and Minerva immediately threw it into a slops bucket. The Indian woman shook her head violently.

Minerva didn’t know what she was trying to say. She knew only that Bonnie Sue and the baby both needed washing, and she began immediately to do that. The Indian woman stood by watching, seemingly appalled, shaking her head. Minerva took the bloodstained bedclothes from the bed and replaced them with clean ones. The woman scowled. Minerva wrapped the baby in a blanket and handed it to her. “Here,” she said, “hold the child,” and then helped Bonnie Sue into a clean nightgown, and combed her hair. She took the baby from the Indian woman, and put it into Bonnie Sue’s arms. Bonnie Sue smiled wearily.

“That was the hardest thing I ever done in my life,” she said.

“And me not here to help,” Minerva said, and clucked her tongue.

“I sure did wonder where you were,” Bonnie Sue said.

“Took it in my head to stroll up the long way. Came over the hill past where the river—”

“Ma,” Bonnie Sue said. “Is the baby...?”

“Sound as can be, child.”

“Thank God,” Bonnie Sue said, and turned to look at Sister. “Thank you,” she said. Sister looked at her blankly. “Thank you for what you done,” Bonnie Sue said.

Minerva went to the door and opened it. Schwarzenbacher looked scared to death. Gideon and Will stood with their hands in their pockets.

“It’s a baby girl,” Minerva said.

Schwarzenbacher nodded. “Is Bonnie Sue...?”

“She’s fine,” Minerva said. “Come in.”

Will hung back.

“Come in,” she said, and took his hand. “You must help me thank Sister — is that her name, is that what you call her?”

“Yes, Ma,” Will said.

“Come in, son, please,” she said.

He went into the cabin and his mother hugged him to her.

Schwarzenbacher was back the very next day.

Bonnie Sue sat up in bed, the baby in her arms. Sunlight streamed through the window, touching her golden hair with a paler wintry light. She asked whether he thought the child was beautiful and he said indeed he thought so. She asked if he thought the child favored her, being quick to add she was not seeking flattery, but thinking only of the fair hair and blue eyes; her own eyes had been blue at birth. He said he thought the child did indeed favor her, in coloring and in beauty, and then asked her what she thought to name her.

She said, “What do you think?”

He said, “I thought after your sister, unless that would cause the family pain.”

“I’ll ask them,” she said.

They talked of the weather then, of how mild it was for the last week in February. He told her he’d seen wildflowers blooming in the snow by the river, and ventured the opinion that spring would come early this year.

“Bonnie Sue,” he said at last, “have you given any further thought...?”

“I don’t yet know your name,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Your Christian name.”

“Ah,” he said.

“What is it then?”

“Franz.”

“Franz,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Franz Schwarzenbacher,” she said.

“Even so.”

For some reason they both laughed. And then fell silent.

“Further thought...” she said.

“Yes, I wondered...”

“To what?” she said.

“To what was discussed at Christmastime.”

“Ah,” she said. “That.”

She was silent for a time. She touched the baby where it lay sleeping against her breast. Then she said, “The child’s not yours. I don’t see how you can...”

“I can ,” he said firmly.

“Won’t it trouble you?”

“It will,” he said. “It troubles me even now that there’s been someone before. And I’ll tell you, Bonnie Sue, should there be anyone after, I’ll kill him and you besides. But I love you, and I’d have you if there’d been an army, that’s the truth. Now what do you say? I’ve asked you once, and I’m asking you again. If you refuse me this time...” He hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll ask you again next week,” and smiled so suddenly and so boyishly that he captured her heart in that instant. “Will you marry me?” he said.

“I think I shall,” she said.

The way they kept reading from their charts, it sounded almost religious to Hadley. Like in Genesis, where all the descendants of this one or that one were listed. His sons weren’t calling off any Schechems or Shobals, though; they were instead naming places and distances from place to place, as if by dividing the trip into segments it would become shorter than it was.

It was thirteen hundred miles, that’s what it was.

You couldn’t change that by breaking it in half or in quarters or in little bitty inches. It was still thirteen hundred miles to California, and that was twice again what they’d already traveled from Independence to here. So when he heard Gideon saying it was only a hun’ thirty, a hun’ forty miles to the North Fork of the Platte, and Bobbo saying they could make it to the upper crossing in ten days or a bit more, he found himself thinking: That still leaves more’n eleven hundred miles to go, lads. And when they talked about Independence Rock being a scant fifty miles beyond the river, and South Pass but a hundred after that, he realized that in their minds they were already through the pass and traversing the three hundred and more miles to Fort Hall, and were past that to Raft River and Goose Creek, and Mary’s River — and that was where it began sounding Biblical to Hadley.