Трейси Шевалье - At the Edge of the Orchard

After the baby found this new holder was not giving him any food, he began to cry again, voicing his displeasure.

“You got to get him something to eat,” Nancy said. “Problem is, there’s only twenty-five women in this town, and none who got babies.”

Robert was finding Jimmy’s crying almost unbearable.

“Jiggle him, and walk him up and down,” Nancy suggested. “That’s what I been doing.”

Robert took his nephew out to the hallway, for walking with him in front of the mother he would never know seemed heartless. As he passed along the carpeted corridor, two men were coming the other way: the hotel owner and another who introduced himself as the sheriff. They were brisk, talking over the baby’s cries. “Just come to check,” the sheriff said. “You got the money to bury her?”

Robert nodded.

“Then someone’ll be along to measure for a coffin. That’ll cost you six dollars. You want to have a wake or a service? We’d have to send to Stockton for the minister who comes up to the church here. Could take a day or two.”

“No, no need to wait.”

The hotel owner looked relieved: a death in the hotel was bad enough, but a body remaining for any length of time was not good for business. He nodded at Jimmy, who by now was screaming. “Looks like you got your hands full. I’ll get two boys to dig a grave for you. Cost you a dollar. All right?”

Robert could only nod again. All of these practical questions, accompanied by Jimmy’s urgent cries, made it hard for him to hold on to the fact that Martha was dead.

“You know what my wife used to do to quiet a baby?” the sheriff said. “She stuck her little finger in its mouth, gave it something to suck on. Sometimes that’s all they want-to suck. Try it.”

Robert frowned, then put his pinkie up to the baby’s mouth, tickling his lips. Jimmy dived at the finger and began to suck, surprisingly hard.

“There you go. Course, once it finds out there’s no milk in that teat it’ll yell louder’n ever.” The sheriff chuckled.

“Now, you gonna stay in that room tonight?” the hotel owner asked.

“I guess so.”

“You’ll need to pay a night’s charge up front, and pay for the sheets and the mattress-they’re ruined.”

Robert nodded. His nephew’s pull on his finger was beginning to hurt.

“I’ll tell you another trick,” the sheriff interjected, sensing that Robert was out of his depth. “Pull out the bottom drawer of the dresser and line it with a quilt, and the baby can sleep in that.” He clapped Robert on the back and went into the room where Martha lay.

Robert had been around deaths before. He had seen men die from fever or a snakebite or a fall from a horse or, once, a goring from an angry bull. Sometimes it wasn’t clear why they died; it seemed they just gave up. He had dug graves and moved bodies and stood at gravesides, hat in hand. Some of the dead were strangers, others he knew and had been friendly with. But never had he had to deal with the aftermath of the death of someone he loved, with its uncomfortable mix of the practical with the emotional. He had not seen his parents’ final moments-their eyes were both still open when he left, and they were staring at each other. It must have been Nathan and Caleb who took charge, building coffins and digging graves, Sal who ran for the neighbors, she and Martha and Mrs. Day who washed and dressed Sadie and James for their laying out. During that time he would have been following the Portage River down to Lake Erie, already losing himself in America.

Now as he began to thaw from that icy moment of finding Martha on a bed soaked with her own blood, Robert feared he might sit down on the hallway carpet and not get up again. The only thing keeping him from doing so was the hard, persistent tug on his little finger. Angry now that he’d been duped into sucking something so dry all he swallowed was his own spit, Jimmy was letting little squawks erupt from the sides of his mouth. In a minute he would start to yell again. Robert had to think of something.

He hurried along the hallway with the baby tucked in the crook of his elbow and went into the restaurant kitchen, where a man with a bulge of tobacco in his cheek was frying steaks on the range. Around his feet were gobs of tobacco and spit.

“You got any milk?” Robert asked.

With a glance the man took in man and baby, then jerked his head towards the back door. “Out in the creek.”

“You mind if I take some for-” Robert waved his arm with Jimmy in it, which caused him to start up his kittenish wail.

The cook winced. “Ten cents a cup. We’ll add it to your bill. Which room you in? Never mind, I remember. Now, get it out of here. Cryin’ babies-” He shook his head and spat.

Upstream from where the mining family worked, a silver milk can sat in the creek, the water being the most effective way of keeping things cold. Robert awkwardly fished it out with one hand. Would he ever be able to put this baby down? How did women manage? He thought of the women he’d seen with babies. Indian women tied them in slings to their backs or chests, leaving their arms free for work. White women swaddled them tight and left them with girls or old women. But newborns generally stayed with their mothers in bed for a few weeks till both were stronger.

Robert set Jimmy on the ground. Squinting and crying, every part of his face tightened with misery, he flung his arms out, his tiny hands making a pair of stars in the air. Robert paused between milk can and baby, then decided Jimmy might squirm and wave but he could not actually move himself.

Unscrewing the lid, Robert poured milk into a tin mug he’d brought, took out a handkerchief-not very clean, but it was all he had-and dipped a corner of it in the milk, soaking up as much as he could. Then he sat down, took the baby in his lap, and rewrapped the shawl around him to stop him from flailing. When he brushed the milk-soaked cloth across his mouth, Jimmy ignored it and kept screaming. Robert tried a few more times, but his nephew seemed to have screamed himself beyond thinking about feeding. In desperation, Robert stuck his little finger in the baby’s mouth again, and he quieted and began sucking. Then Robert pulled his finger out, wrapped part of the handkerchief around it, and stuck it in Jimmy’s mouth again. His nephew looked so indignant when his palate and tongue met the rough cloth that Robert smiled a little. But he kept sucking, with a resigned expression. After a minute Robert pulled his finger out and shifted the cloth to a new section where there was more milk. “There you go, little fella. Work on that.” He stuck his finger back in and Jimmy sucked. It was not an ideal solution, for he wasn’t getting milk fast enough, but it would have to do until Robert worked out a better way to feed him.

At last, more from the exhaustion of crying than from a full stomach, Jimmy fell asleep, and Robert sat with him across his knees by the stream, afraid to move lest he wake. He studied his nephew’s face, which was less red now that he’d stopped crying. His eyelids were pale blue, his nose flat, and his bow-shaped mouth was still going through the quivering motions of sucking. Everything about him seemed delicate, fragile. But he was quiet, and he was alive.

“There you are. Got him to sleep?” Nancy Lapham had come up behind him. She looked stronger than Robert had seen her in months. Crises make even the sick pull themselves up. She leaned over to peer at Jimmy’s face. “Ain’t he sweet. Martha tell you who the father is?”

Robert shook his head, his mouth tight around the knowledge he would never voice.