Fleetie's Crossing Read online

  “Now, Nessa,” said Daddy. “Don’t pick on us just because we men are worthless, good for nothing, and lazy to boot.”

  Nessa laughed. She must have forgotten for just an instant the trouble at the foot of the hill. But Mother, ever the boss, broke in. “Ed, go on and get the car before the road washes all the way to the river.”

  He must have decided to let her have her way this time because he threw on his jacket and plunged into the driving rain. He ran to the turnaround, and we could hear the old starter grinding all the way inside the house, but the spark finally did catch, and the car shuddered awake.

  Mother piled sheets and towels in my arms and picked up her sewing scissors and Daddy’s bottle of whiskey. She pushed it between the towels I was carrying and then took them back into her arms. I guess she didn’t trust me to carry the whiskey. Instead, she handed me the sheets and scissors. We ran down the front steps in the pouring rain. By the time I closed the car door, my feet were making squishing noises in my shoes, and water dripped off my nose, but the sheets were reasonably dry. I had held them close to me and bent over as I ran.

  “Katie, the river gets into that house every time we get this much rain. It’ll be dangerous for Geneva to have that baby down there. We need to get her up the hill, or the river might roll right into the cradle.”

  “You tell Burl and Fred, and I’ll work on Fleetie. Maybe you can talk them into taking her to town to the hospital. If you go up the county road and cross over to the highway, the water won’t stop you. I’ve heard Burl say it would take a hundred-year flood to cover the county road going north.”

  Daddy drove down the hill, doing his best to avoid the new trenches being cut across and down our dirt driveway. He bumped over the crossing and stopped right in front of the Sargeants’ gate. Mother and I moved out of the car as fast as we could and headed for the front porch. I could see over my shoulder that Daddy was driving back over the tracks to park the car on the rise in front of the Willis place. The water never got that high. Old Man Willis knew what he was doing when he chose that rise for his home place.

  As we shook the water off us before we went in the door, I could hear the scary sweep of the river just in the back of the house. Big water moved deep and fast, and instead of lots of splashing noises like a waterfall would make, it gave off something like a muffled roar—not terribly loud but a rumble that shook the inside of you. That sound might not be loud, but it was a sure warning to those who lived on the river.

  Mother took a deep breath before knocking. Fleetie would expect Mother to know what to do to help with the birthing, but from the way Mother was gripping my arm in a death clutch, I was pretty sure she didn’t feel all that sure of herself. She had always been just a helper, not the official midwife. No one had ever expected her to answer questions or make decisions if things got tricky. And from the sound of the river, whatever had to be done better be done pretty quick, or the water rising higher and higher up the back steps might swamp all of us.

  “Mother, are you okay? Do you know how you can help Gen?”

  Before Mother could answer, Fleetie opened the door. Her face was almost as pale as Nessa’s. I could see through to the kitchen where Fred and Burl looked like they were glued to the back wall. All four kids were sitting in the front room, as silent as stones.

  Mother and I followed Fleetie into the bedroom. She had draped white sheets on the bed and over the bureau on the side wall. Geneva was lying on the narrow bed, her face and arms wet with sweat and her fists clasped so hard that they didn’t look like hands, more like two clubs. Ridges, never there before, traced paths down her cheeks. With each breath, she let out a soft moan. Her brown curly hair was soaking wet and plastered to her head. She didn’t see us, or if she did, it didn’t register with her. The pain seemed to have captured her and taken her somewhere far away.

  All the talk I had heard about having babies was nothing like the misery I could see and feel in this room. I made up my mind right then that all the baby-having was going to have to be done by someone else in this world besides me. Leatha stepped in the room and gave me a long look. Things in this room were scary. It was one of those times when you were faced with being your mother’s big girl, and all at once, you felt small and helpless. Leatha and I would just as soon run into the next room and stay with the little kids, but we were fourteen and so expected to stay and help. We depended on each other as we took the orders and did what was needed.

  “It won’t come, Kathleen,” whispered Fleetie. “I ain’t never helped with birthin’ trouble like this. Them twins just popped out easy as you please, but this one won’t budge.”

  “Is it breech?”

  “Don’t seem to be, but I can’t see its little head. It’s before her time. It’s too far up to deliver yet. She still needs to do some real hard work, but she’s weak-like. There’s no strength in the pains.”

  “Fleetie, can’t we take her to town to the hospital?”

  Fleetie’s eyes went wide. Mother should have known that if that was the only way Gen could have this baby, then hope had deserted the doorstep. The small private hospital would not take Fred and his pregnant wife without payment up front. The striking men could not have dug up ten dollars between them, much less the fifty the hospital would demand. Besides that, the hospital was owned by rich men who also owned the mines. Miners’ families were not welcome at any time, money or not. Doctors knew this and practiced in spite of it. Dr. Parks outfitted his large clinic with extra beds just so he could help some of those who would not be admitted no matter what the condition of the patient might be.

  “Kathleen, we can’t go there. The hospital won’t take strikers. Can you help her?”

  “I don’t know, Fleetie. I’ll do anything I can, but this is dangerous. You and I don’t know how to turn a breech. We could hurt her really bad. And this may not even be breech. We can catch a baby when nature is working, but there is no telling what may be working against her.”

  Fleetie caught her breath. “We’re all she’s got. They’s nobody else.”

  Mother went as pale as the rest of them, looked beyond the suffering Geneva, and fell silent as sleep. I figured she was thinking hard to pull up every scrap of knowledge she had ever heard or witnessed about stubborn deliveries. Mother was a thinker. I had seen her think our way through lots of trouble, but it took her a few minutes to do it. She stood there motionless for what seemed like forever. Fleetie stood still like me. We were afraid to move as we waited for an answer. Finally, Mother spoke, and the tension broke.

  “Fleetie, I don’t know if I know enough, but I remember some things that may help. We’ll try it. Anything is better than letting Geneva suffer like this. Help me, and we’ll get things going.”

  Fleetie smiled for the first time and wrapped her arm around me and Leatha. “Just tell us what to do.”

  Mother walked to the door. I wanted to laugh but didn’t dare. The captain was back in charge, and she was getting ready to snap out orders. I got ready to jump.

  “Dorotha, come here. I need for you to run out to the car and tell Ed to drive to town and get Dr. Parks. Tell him I said to bring him here if he has to throw him in the trunk. Say it just like I said it. I mean it! Tell him I said to hurry fast and don’t use the county road. He will want to try to save time, but the water will be over the road someplace near Gaton, more than likely. Move, Dork, hurry. Do it right now!”

  Dorotha, the second-eldest Sargeant daughter, had something of the look of a kid who had been assembled with spare parts. Her white-blond hair and black eyes didn’t seem a good fit. Her legs were long and slender, but her knees and elbows were too big and made her look as awkward as she was. She had a tiny waist and shoulders so broad, they looked more like a boy’s than hers.

  As a twelve-year-old, she was as strong as Fleetie, but she was full of the dickens. She was Fleetie and Burl’s odd child out, kin to non
e of the clan in temper or looks. She was funny most of the time, but she could turn on a dime and drive us all silly with her bossy demands. All of us who knew her wavered between laughing or secretly wishing to take after her with a long stick. Susanna, Fleetie’s aunt, swore she had been switched at birth by gypsies.

  Mother’s order filled Dorotha with self-importance. She tore out of the house without even a scarf to turn the rain. Like all Fleetie’s children, she loved Daddy. Now she had a good excuse to climb up into his car and hear his teasing directed just to her.

  Mother moved to Geneva’s side and crouched beside the bed. “Geneva, honey, we have got to get you out of this bed. You are going to have to walk around the room. The baby is way high, and we have to help him move down some. Will you let us get you up?”

  Geneva nodded through her fog of fear and pain and tried to sit up. Mother and Fleetie grabbed hands around Geneva’s back and cradled her onto the side of the bed. Geneva’s legs trembled as she stood and began taking unsure steps. Fleetie and Mother supported her, praised each step, and helped her establish a rhythm of step, step, step, breath, step, step, step, breath. As each new contraction grew, it brought a grinding moan rumbling from deep inside her. Instead of crying out, she doubled over, rocked back and forth, and fought the pain with a low agonizing bellow. As her body struggled, they rubbed her back and murmured the same soft sounds they used with fretful babies.

  As each pain subsided, the two women walked Gen in a circle around the room.

  Dorotha, acting briggedy as usual, pranced herself into the bedroom to report that Daddy was on his way to town.

  Mother looked up and spoke before Fleetie could snap. “Thank you for helping. We are proud of you.”

  She sailed out of the room to brag to the other children. They were not playing her game that evening, and they ignored her as much as anyone could ignore a buzz saw swinging around the room in bigger and bigger circles. That girl was a sight with her constant jabbering and pestering. I slipped back into the bedroom, and Leatha and I sat on the floor beside the door and watched as silent as a summer schoolhouse.

  After two hours of walking, Geneva began to beg, “Oh lordy, Fleet. Let me rest. I can’t stand it no more. Please, please. God, oh please, take me. I can’t bear this.”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. “Mother, this is awful. Why can’t she lie down? Please let her just lie down.”

  I had little hope that she would listen to me, but I couldn’t stand to hear this much pain either. But I pretty well knew that Fleetie and Mother were too afraid for Geneva to pay attention to any begging, Geneva’s or mine. The deep moans ringing through the house left Fred alternately frantic then weak with frustration at being able to do nothing to stop his wife’s misery. I had seen the birth of kittens, pups, and calves, but those natural births bore no resemblance to the sounds of fear and pain punishing my ears and twisting my stomach.

  I could tell Geneva was aware of nothing now but the black pain that filled all her world. She couldn’t see us or hear us. It seemed there was nothing left for her but agony. The pain-induced panic took over her sunny personality. Fleetie and Mother were losing her, not so much to the hard work of birthing but to the monster of fear that had now trapped her reason.

  “Fleetie, she is making my veins ache. This girl is never going to deliver this baby unless we calm her down enough to reason with her. Girls, Fleetie needs a break. You two keep Geneva walking, while I go tell Fred and Burl they are going to have to help us!”

  Leatha elbowed me and rolled her eyes. “Ms. Ramsey don’t know trouble till she tries to get ole Burl working for her.”

  I figured Mother must have been about as desperate as she could ever be. She didn’t like Burl any better than I did, and now here she was, about to get him to help birth a baby.

  Mother hurried out of the bedroom and threw open the kitchen door with me close on her heels. “Burl, you and Fred get the double tub and fill it with hot bathwater from the stove tank. Fill it full. Boil extra water right now. You have to get this kitchen hot, and you have to keep warm water coming when we need it. And get me your bottle of whiskey. I know you have some buried somewhere around here. Just get it and do it quick. I brought Ed’s bottle with me, but we may need both of them.”

  She turned on her heel and about knocked me over. Fred and Burl just stood there, looking as silly as usual.

  “Burl,” said Fred. “I reckon we better do what she says. Ain’t nobody else trying to help Gen. Where’s the damn tub and that liquor?”

  “That is the blamed bossiest one woman I ’bout ever run into.”

  “You’re just too goddamn stubborn to take orders from God or anybody. Move it, Burl. My woman’s bad off. She needs help, and it’ll shore help me to do something besides listen to her moan and you mouth off.”

  “Fleetie, do you have any cure herbs stored here in the house?” Mother said. “We need basil, cinnamon, chamomile, mint, and rosemary.”

  Fleetie looked puzzled. “I’ve got chamomile and a mix of yarbs that cooks up to a nerve tonic. Do you reckon they’ll help any? She’s pretty bad off, and they’s right tame.”

  “We’re going to try it, and I’m going to make a strong tea to put in the water,” she said.

  “In the water? What good will they do in the water? I ain’t never heard of such.”

  It even sounded strange to me, and I’d never even seen a baby birthing. I could tell Fleetie wondered if Mother was all there, but she must have been so frantic to help Geneva that she didn’t argue. She went to the back-porch cabinet and dug out two gallon jars of mixed herbs and took them to the kitchen.

  Burl gave Fleetie the big eye, but she never gave him a glance. There was no time to listen or to fight her way clear of him right now. He hated orders of any kind, and female orders triggered his temper quicker than anything else. He was already mad at Mother, so poor Fleetie was high on his list right then. But Fred banged on the back door, and Burl had to stop his deviling and help him carry the tub to the middle of the kitchen.

  The fire was roaring in the cook stove, and water was set to steam on every cap. Fleetie went back to the porch to grab towels for the bottom of the tub. As she reached above to grab them off the porch line, she whispered to Leatha, “Oh lordy, young’uns, help me look out the back door. Where’s that river up to by now?”

  Leatha and I stood at the screen door and strained our eyes into the falling rain. It was like trying to look through black lace. You first think you could see something, and then you couldn’t make out what it was if it was anything. It sent a trickle of fear working down my neck.

  Fleetie whispered, “You hear that?”

  I turned my head to catch the sound, and there it was, the heavy rush of a water-borne wind rising to follow the hungry, swollen river. We could hear the throbbing urgency of the water as it rolled deep in its bed and drummed low from the top of the banks.

  Leatha cried, “It’s a-coming in, Mommy, it’s a-coming!”

  Fleetie knew from her hateful experiences with the river that time was short. She had seen it happen before. The water would come crawling up the back steps and sweep its greedy fingers around everything in the house. A plague of snakes, frogs, and muskrats would follow, and the house would be left in a ruin of mud, slime, and muck.

  Fleetie had watched five floods drive them from their home. She could measure by the sound and length of the rain when it was going to deliver a ravenous high tide. She had long ago struck a bargain with the river gods. She surrendered a ransom of furniture, clothes, and dishes and denied them her children. The fear of losing a child to the whorls and the undertow always drove her over the railroad crossing and up the mountain well before the crest could snatch away a baby child. On those drenching treks, she counted each of her kids over and over.

  Tonight, it was no secret that time was up. We had to get out of the doomed house. I
knew Fleetie would send the kids up the mountain to Hobe and Mary’s. None of her children, except Dorotha, could stand to go near that place if Hobe was home. He was sour and too quick with his belt or cane. I knew the last place she would let them go was to our house. By the time we got there, all of us would be muddy and bedraggled, and she couldn’t stand the thought of all that dirt in Mother’s white kitchen. That thing that set Mother apart might have been narrowed with all that was happening around us right then, but even then, it was not enough for Fleetie to ask such a favor of Mother.

  Flying back into the house, Fleetie yelled, “Hurry, young’uns! The water’s already up to the smokehouse. It’ll be in here quick. You all get moving up to Hobe’s. It won’t suit him none, but Mary will beg him off, and I’ll let you all go over to Susanny’s tomorrow.”

  The night’s turmoil of storm, rising water, and Geneva’s cries had done its work. The children, nearly numb with fear, made no protest and grabbed up a doll or blanket or whatever they could carry and scurried to the porch. I picked up a pile of the sheets we brought too, and we waited on the porch, while the grown-ups sorted it all out.

  “Damn, Fleet, what about Geneva? She can’t get up that hill to Hobe’s in her shape,” said Fred.

  “Fred, pick her up and pack her up to the Willises. Don’t tell me about your bad back. You’ll carry her, or both of them is gonna die! Hear me now? Do what I say,” said Fleetie. She sounded just like a big sister making the baby boy mind.

  Fred, in a daze of panic, fell right into the old pattern of following her orders.

  Mother gathered the children on the porch. The small yard around the house was working alive with the rush of water. Water was also sweeping down the road just outside the yard gate. Everywhere around us, the water was at least three inches deep. We would have to wade through the yard, across the road, and up to the railroad crossing. Just across the track was the steep path that ran beside Hobe’s branch, now grown into a white water monster too big to mess with.