The Last Midwife: A Novel Read online

  The sheriff nodded slowly. “I never thought of that. Why’s that, Coy?” he asked.

  The undertaker cleared his throat. “Halleck said he buried it himself first, but his missus wanted it dug up and buried proper and wouldn’t rest until it was in a coffin, a nice one. They bought one with brass handles and blue silk inside, even a blue silk pillow. It cost…” His voice trailed off.

  “Them waiting all that time sounds a little odd to me, too. But still, Gracy, I got to arrest you,” John said.

  “You’re taking me to jail?” Gracy stared at the sheriff, fire in her eyes. “There’s a new mother up in Mayflower Gulch to look after. It’s her first. And I have to launder these rags. She’ll need them next time.”

  “Filthy rags!” the doctor said. “You should have told her to throw them out and use new ones.”

  “And I ought to have a driver and a coach-and-four to take me to the birthings. Where would that pair get new material? They don’t have two nickels to rub together. They don’t even have the money to buy material for pillowslips. And there’s nothing wrong with rags that are washed clean, dried in the heat of the sun, then warmed by the fire during the birth,” Gracy told him. She turned to John. “She’ll need looking after at least one time.”

  “I guess she wouldn’t mind a real doctor attending her instead of a … what do they call you, a sagehen.” Dr. Erickson sneered. “You do no more good than a prairie chicken.”

  Gracy straightened her back. “The Sagehen” had been her nickname and she was proud of being called that. Years before, a little girl who’d watched Gracy run across a meadow to attend a woman in childbed had said Gracy had moved apurpose, just like a sagehen protecting her young. The handle had stuck. So Gracy had been called that in Arkansas and then in California and Nevada and Colorado, too. Swandyke once had had a Granny Grace who delivered babies, but she’d been dirty and crude and drank too much. Folks hadn’t trusted her. They liked calling her replacement the Sagehen instead of Granny Gracy, which was too close to the former midwife’s name.

  “You think that girl up there will spread her legs and let a man examine her, a man she’s never even met? You think the word ‘doctor’ means a thing to her?” Gracy was indignant.

  The doctor blanched at Gracy’s crudeness. Even the sheriff was a little taken aback.

  “Well, what do you think childbirth is? You think babies are plucked out of the ground like gold nuggets? Birthing is hard work for a woman, bloody work. You ought to know that. How many babies have you delivered, Dr. Erickson?” she asked Little Dickie.

  He cleared his throat. “In school, we studied—”

  “Ha! In school. You learn how to soothe a mother who’s never known there was such pain and wants you to stop it? Or one that doesn’t hear her baby crying the minute it’s born and fears it’s dead? You know what to tell a woman with ten kids when she begs you to put a stop to childbearing? Or what to say to her husband when he’s ready to have a go at her a week after the birth? Do you?”

  The men wouldn’t look at her, and the doctor didn’t answer. Gracy gave a bark of a laugh and turned to the sheriff. “Go ahead and throw me in jail, and if something happens to that young girl, it’s on your soul. There’s others out there that’s going to deliver, too. You tell them why I won’t be coming. You tell them to fetch the doctor over there and see what happens. Let him bear the pain and the guilt when a baby fails to take a breath or a young mother barely out of girlhood dies in childbirth.”

  “Well…” The sheriff seemed to struggle with himself. “I got to accuse you of murder, but when you put it like that, I guess there’s no reason to lock you up.”

  “I can take care of the women,” the doctor said. “Good, proper medical care, not herbs and ointment and incantations.”

  “Incantations like ‘push’?” Gracy threw at him.

  “Gracy’s right. They won’t go to you.” John paused and added under his breath, “I know my wife wouldn’t have.”

  “If you don’t lock her up, she might taken out,” Coy put in.

  “And go where?” John asked. “I know Gracy Brookens ’bout as good as I know anybody. She won’t leave those women behind with nobody to take care of them.”

  “Well, she ought to. There’s real medical help in Swandyke now.”

  None of them seemed to pay attention to Little Dickie, even the undertaker.

  “Like I say, they don’t want some sawbones,” John said.

  Gracy had had enough. She set her jaw and said, “I’m going on home. You decide you want to drag me off to jail, you come get me, John. Or you can come along now, and I’ll fix us a boiler of coffee. It’s been a long night, and I don’t want it to get longer. You, neither. No telling how long you’ve been here waiting for me.”

  The doctor and undertaker started to protest as Gracy walked out of the stable, but John held up his hand. “I’ll be responsible for her. I guess I’ve known her longer than you two, knew her even before she come to Swandyke, and she won’t run off.” He started for the stable door, calling, “You wait up, Gracy. I’ll walk you home.”

  * * *

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” the sheriff said, as he took the bundle of soiled rags from Gracy, letting her carry her birthing bag. “You got to know, Gracy, it’s not my doing.” When the Sagehen didn’t reply, he continued. “But I talked to Mr. Halleck last night, after Coy come to me. He said he didn’t see you put the cord around the baby’s neck, but the baby was dead after you left. He said you put the baby in the cradle with a blanket over it and said to let him sleep. He thought at first the little thing had died its own self, but then he saw that mark around its neck. His wife and daughter said you did it, too. So what else could I do? It’s not like Mr. Halleck is some drunken miner. He’s just nearly the most important man in Swandyke. I don’t have any choice but to arrest you. I’m bending the law as it is by not locking you up.” He sounded as if he were talking to himself instead of to Gracy. “But I couldn’t put you in jail, not a lady like you. Elizabeth would have skinned me for it. If I was to lock you up and she was here, she’d take dinner to you every day—my dinner. The other folks in town, they’ll be right with her.”

  But not all of them, Gracy thought. She had enemies. There were men who hated her because she knew they beat their wives or took them by force when the women weren’t yet recovered from childbirth. That was their right, they told her after the women complained to her and Gracy confronted the men. It was rape, plain and simple, she said, and the husbands replied it was no such thing. How could it be when they were married?

  There were women, too, who resented Gracy, because she wouldn’t abort the babies they didn’t want, couldn’t help them stop the pregnancies—couldn’t because the methods she knew about worked only some of the time. There were failures, and more than one woman whose belly swelled blamed Gracy, whispering that the Sagehen had been false because all she cared about was the dollar or two she got for delivering a baby. Some women blamed Gracy because their babies hadn’t lived. They couldn’t accept that the deaths could be God’s doing, or worse, their own fault. They couldn’t bear that guilt, and so they blamed Gracy. And she blamed herself for not knowing enough to keep the babies alive.

  The sun was up now. Daniel would have eaten breakfast, would have set out a plate for her. She wished they could have eaten together, eaten hotcakes with sorghum, bacon cut thick the way he liked it, a dish of applesauce. She would have told him about the Halleck baby. Not everything, of course. But how sweet it was, as sweet a baby as Jeff had been. She felt a sting in her heart when she thought of Jeff. She missed him so. She thought again of Daniel and how she’d have told him about that young couple in Mayflower Gulch, how they hadn’t a thing except love and how she thought that just might be enough.

  She and Daniel had been like that when they were young, with nothing but love and hopes to carry them forward. They had farmed, but Daniel was restless, and they had left out for Cali
fornia when the first news of gold came to them. They’d thought they’d get rich and would pick up nuggets right out of the stream. Gracy had even packed an extra apron to collect them. Thinking of that foolishness made her smile.

  They didn’t find the nuggets or any other gold in California, but Gracy worked as a midwife to keep them in beans and salt pork, and she’d loved it. There was no greater joy than the first cry of a newborn, no more beautiful smile than that of a mother beholding her baby only a minute old. That was reward enough for Gracy. She was paid in gold dust, in firewood and sacks of nuts. She hadn’t known how much Daniel resented her work back then, resented that she didn’t need him, and hated that she was the one who provided for them when his gold pan turned up only dirt and gravel. Daniel had been a wanderer back then, like Jeff was now. Her son had been gone the better part of a year, and she wondered where he was. Jeff had been half boy, half man when he left out, and was likely more man now, she thought. Her hands ached to touch him, to pat his shoulder, to smooth his hand. She thought of how when he was a boy, he’d climb into her lap when he was tired and rest his head against her breast.

  Now Daniel would be waiting for her, patient, for he knew a baby came in its own good time. Gracy never hurried a little one, never used the forceps in her bag unless the mother or child was in danger. She’d likely find her husband smoking his pipe, sitting on the bench he’d fashioned from aspen trunks, placed just so it caught the morning sun, a jackknife in one hand, a whittling stick in the other. Maybe he’d have picked a bouquet of her flowers and put them into the milk jug on the pie safe. Or perhaps he’d found a handful of pale green aspen leaves and placed them on the table for her. Daniel was thoughtful that way, and she needed his thoughtfulness now. She needed Jeff’s, too, but she wouldn’t have it, not now.

  The sun was up, the day already warming, and Gracy could see the flowers that surrounded her house from a long way off, the blue delphinium reaching almost to the top of the windows, the poppies red as fire, daisies spread out in front of them like a petticoat, butter-and-eggs, their pale yellow blooms like little faces. She grew more flowers than anyone in Swandyke. Those flowers, Daniel had said once, they brought her more business than an advertisement in the newspaper. But she hadn’t needed any advertising, because she was the only midwife around. If you wanted someone to birth your baby, you called for the Sagehen. She smiled at the daisies, for she loved a daisy more than any other flower, and even on that terrible morning, they lifted her spirits.

  Daniel was indeed on his bench, set in an aspen grove, staring out at the mountains. “That’s a right nice place to sit of a morning,” the sheriff said when they caught sight of Gracy’s husband. John was trying to make conversation, just as if it were mail time and he was waiting for a letter.

  Gracy nodded but didn’t reply, and they were silent until they reached the house.

  Daniel stood, looking puzzled. “John, I take it as a kindness, you walking Gracy home. I’d have been there myself if I’d known when she’d get back, but I’ve learned you never can tell.” There was a hint of a question in his voice, as if asking what was going on. Then he turned to Gracy, “You all right, honey?”

  Gracy didn’t answer, just stared at her husband, a look of such agony on her face that Daniel asked again what was wrong.

  “Daniel, there’s been an awful thing. Now you know I think the world of Gracy, and most everybody does—” the sheriff started.

  “Oh, Danny,” Gracy interrupted. “They think I killed the Halleck baby. Jonas Halleck says … and his wife and daughter…” She shook her head and began to cry. Gracy didn’t cry often, and she didn’t cry well. Her body shook with great heaving sobs. She laid her head on Daniel’s chest, and he put his arm around her awkwardly, for they were not a couple who showed their affection in front of others. He thumped her on the back with a hand as big as a chicken hawk.

  The sheriff turned away at the display of emotion.

  “That true, John?” Daniel asked after a time, and the sheriff nodded. “Well, then, that’s as stupid a thing as I ever heard. God, hell! Everybody knows Gracy’s about bringing a baby into the world, not snuffing it out.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” the sheriff asked. “It’s just that that baby was strangled—I seen the body myself—and Jonas Halleck said it was Gracy done it.”

  “And you’d take the word of a self-righteous—”

  “Can’t help it. I don’t decide right and wrong, but I got to abide by the law. That’s my job.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Daniel asked.

  John thought a moment. “Halleck says she killed his boy, and Mrs. Halleck and the girl, Josie, agree with him. So there’s an accusation of murder hanging over Gracy, and if it was anybody else, they’d go to jail. There’ll be a hearing when the judge comes to Swandyke to find out if she’s to be charged formally. We don’t have a full-time judge, you know, just one that holds court once a month or so when he’s here. He’ll decide if there’s enough evidence to make a formal charge of murder or maybe manslaughter against Gracy. If he does, then there will be a trial the next time he comes to town.”

  “Ain’t nobody in Swandyke will find her guilty,” Daniel insisted.

  The sheriff shrugged and said, “I’m hoping you’re right. You’d have to look from Genesis to Revelations to find somebody who’d speak ill of her.”

  At that, Gracy took a gulp of air and rubbed her eyes with her hands. “Oh, there’ll be some—some like Coy Chaney and Little Dickie. I bet they’re already spreading it about that I murdered that baby. And if you say a thing often enough, people’ll believe it.”

  “Well, I don’t, and I know you better than anybody,” Daniel said. Then he frowned at the sheriff. “Shame on you, John, for going along with this. You know she’d never hurt a soul.”

  The sheriff put up his hands. “I don’t have no choice. I didn’t lock her up, though. You got to appreciate that. Anybody else would have, you know.”

  Daniel scoffed. “Well, don’t that beat all. You give yourself credit for not locking up the best woman in Swandyke and an innocent one at that.” He put his arm around Gracy and held her so tight she couldn’t breathe. “You going to make her stay to home? You’d have to tie her up, you know.”

  “The girl in Mayflower needs checking on, and the Tucker woman’s had some pain. I’ll have to go to the other side of Rich Mountain if she needs me,” Gracy put in. “That all right with you?”

  “What’d you do if I said no?” the sheriff asked.

  “Go anyway.”

  “I figured such. Just don’t brag on it to Coy Chaney or that doctor, will you?”

  Gracy nodded. Daniel relaxed his grip, and Gracy all but fell onto the bench.

  “I guess you need your sleep,” John said. “I don’t know how you stay up all night at your age. You must be near seventy.” When Gracy didn’t reply, he added, “Well, maybe sixty. It’s time you gave this up.”

  Gracy nodded. It was what she had been thinking. But who would replace her if she did?

  “I’ll be going then.” John started for the trail, then stopped. “Don’t you worry none, Gracy.”

  “What do you mean, ‘don’t worry’?” Daniel asked, anger in his voice. “Of course she’ll worry. Somebody says she’s a killer, and she’s supposed to forget about it? Go on with you, John,” Daniel said, throwing up his hand.

  The couple watched the sheriff disappear, then Gracy asked Daniel if he wanted to hear what had transpired.

  “Not until you sleep,” he said. “It can wait. I know it’s a pack of lies anyway. I’ll just give your back a rub so’s you won’t wake up stiff.” He began to knead Gracy’s shoulders, kneading out the tiredness.

  Gracy sighed as the soreness left her back. “Aren’t you taking out for the high country?” Gracy asked after a bit, remembering that Daniel had planned a prospecting trip. “Looks like you got that burro all ready to pack.” She nodded at the animal grazing near the hou
se.

  “And leave you here alone to face this? What do you take me for?”

  Gracy gripped his hand, which was gnarled, two fingers misshapen where they had been caught with a gold pick. She was too overcome with fatigue and emotion to answer. Daniel had never in his life canceled a prospecting trip. But then, she’d never been accused of murder.

  * * *

  Sleep was always easy to come by for Gracy. More than fifty years of birthing babies had conditioned her to sleep whenever she had the chance. This morning was no different. Despite the silent tears running down her face, she spent only a moment fingering the worn patches of her quilt before she was asleep. The sun was just slipping onto the west side of noon when she awakened, sleep enough for a midwife. She rose and washed her face and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. She fried up potatoes and made salt pork gravy to pour over bread. It wasn’t much, she thought, but Daniel was never a picky eater. “My favorite dinner,” he’d said often enough, “is what’s on my plate.”

  They ate at a table Dan had made. He was a good carpenter. The furniture in the cabin wasn’t fancy, but it was sturdy, built to last. Gracy had made cushions for the chairs, sewed them from indigo calico that was faded now. Things faded fast in the thin mountain air where the sun was too bright—bright blue the worst, but it was Gracy’s favorite color. She liked a blue better than any other hue, so her cushions were bleached indigo, her curtains the color of columbines, her Bear Paw quilt on the bed pieced from blue and white scraps. Her scrap bag was filled with all shades of the color, and on her ride down the mountain that morning, she had thought she would piece a quilt for the new baby from them. She didn’t make one for every newborn—she didn’t have the time—but the young couple could use a quilt. She’d thought to piece a quilt for the Halleck baby, too, to show her love for it in the work of her hands.

  Eating was serious business, and the two didn’t talk until Daniel was finished with his plate and had cut an extra slice of bread, which he used to mop up the grease in the frying pan. “I been to town whilst you were sleeping.”