The Last Midwife Page 6

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  John had not come to talk about the past, Gracy knew when she opened the door to him that day, letting in the chill of the rain. He stood on her rug, water running off his hat, while Gracy waited for him to tell her his reason for being there. He slapped his hat against his leg, but he had already shaken off the drops of water. At first, he refused to look at her, glancing around the room instead, searching for something that would take his attention. But the house was plain. There were no pictures, no gewgaws, nothing to catch the eye.

  John would have come to talk about the murder charge against her, because he was not one to stop by for gossip. There could be no other reason for the visit. Maybe he’d changed his mind about not locking her up and had decided to take her to jail. Gracy wished Daniel were there. She could ask John to wait until Daniel came home, but if her husband had been drinking, he would be angry and belligerent, quick to defend her even at his age, and just then, Gracy did not need that.

  “What is it, John?” she asked after a time.

  “You got coffee?” he asked.

  “None made, but it’s no bother to fix it. If you’ll build up the fire, I’ll get the water.” She hoped Daniel had taken the lid off the water barrel so it could catch the rainfall.

  “No need.”

  “There’s bread,” Gracy said. Like John, she wanted to put off a talk that was inevitable. “Wheat bread. I’ll have a slice myself. I couldn’t eat my dinner. I guess it’s near suppertime.”

  “Going on evening. You can’t tell the time with the rain. It’s darker out there than the inside of a bobcat.”

  “It is that.” Gracy needed to eat. She hadn’t put a thing into her stomach since the little she’d eaten with Daniel that noon, but she made no move for the larder.

  The two were silent for a moment. At last, Gracy said, “Sit yourself.”

  “I guess I will if it’s agreeable.”

  Gracy nodded. “It is.”

  John looked around, then lowered himself into Daniel’s chair, a big chair that had been fashioned from logs, the bark removed and the wood polished to the color of amber. “You made this place real homey,” he said.

  Gracy nodded but didn’t reply. The sheriff hadn’t come to talk about the cabin. She went to the table and busied herself with the wick of the kerosene lamp. She struck a match and lighted it, and the lamp sent a honeyed glow over the room. Then she sat down across from John, in the chair that Daniel had made for her, one that matched his own but was smaller. The heaviness of the day weighed her down.

  The two were silent, John looking around the room, Gracy staring at him, until she couldn’t stand it. “Out with it, John. Why have you come? Are you taking me to jail?” She took a deep breath and let it out.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t blame you for it, this charge against me, you know. You didn’t accuse me of anything. It was Jonas Halleck said I did it, and Coy Chaney and Little Dickie.” She paused and gave a small smile. “You didn’t have a choice but to charge me.”

  “I know that. Jonas Halleck can be a devil-root, but he’s an important man in these mountains. I had to listen to him, especially when Coy and Little Dickie”—he spat out the last name—“backed him up.”

  “I know you did.” She paused. “What is it then?”

  John’s eyes stopped on a shelf where Gracy’s books were lined up—The Matron’s Manual of Midwifery and the Diseases of Pregnancy, Dr. Chase’s Recipes or Information for Everybody, and the Bible. All were worn, for Gracy consulted each one often. Then he cleared his throat and mumbled, “Elizabeth came to see me last night.”

  “What?” Gracy thought he’d used Elizabeth’s name by mistake, or else she’d heard wrong.

  He nodded. “Elizabeth. She visits me sometimes, when I’m troubled. We talk.” He glanced at Gracy, then looked away quickly, his face flushed.

  “She comes to you?” Gracy asked, not understanding.

  He nodded. “You’d think she’d come when I was asleep, but she don’t. I’m always awake.”

  “She’s come before?” Gracy had heard of people dreaming they’d connected with the dead, but that was all it was—dreams. This was strange. Maybe John’s grief had touched his mind.

  “When I need her. Or sometimes just to visit. She says the boy’s all right. He’s growed now. She named him Charlie.”

  Gracy leaned back in her chair and put her hand to her mouth, too astonished to say anything. Women in childbirth sometimes saw things—a mother who was long dead standing by the bedside or an angel flying up near the ceiling. She herself had seen Nabby beside her the night Jeff was born. But such visions always ended when the pain stopped. Was John possessed?

  He stared at the floor, then glanced at Gracy, the corners of his mouth turned up a little. “I know you think I’m crazy. A person would. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t pass it along, even to Daniel.”

  Gracy nodded. She’d kept secrets before, even from her husband.

  “The boy’s growed like I say, but Elizabeth, she hasn’t aged. She’s still fresh and pretty as a buttercup.” John grinned for a minute, then caught himself and frowned. “I know you think I’ve turned strange, a big man like me and sheriff to boot. I wouldn’t want it knowed around about this. Folks would think I was foolish.”

  “No. I keep things to myself.” Of course she would not repeat what John told her. If people knew their sheriff had truck with his dead wife, they would think he was indeed touched, and maybe he was.

  John leaned back in the chair, making himself comfortable. “I wasn’t going to tell you about her, but she said it was all right, that you’d understand.”

  Gracy nodded, although she didn’t understand at all.

  “The first time was in Virginia City,” he said suddenly. “You remember. I was all tore up after she died and wanted to kill myself, only I was too much of a coward. I figured maybe I’d get somebody else to do the job for me or else drink myself to death. I near did get shot dead once or twice. Then Elizabeth came to me, told me I shamed her by acting like that. If I got liquored up and killed in a fight, she and Charlie didn’t want nothing to do with me. Maybe you didn’t know Elizabeth could be like that, sharp if she had to be, and she surely was that when she come to me the first time. She told me I had to clean myself up and get out of Virginia City, start over somewheres else.”

  “I remember when you sobered up,” Gracy said. “I thought you’d got religion. Then I decided you hadn’t, that you’d just woken up.”

  “It was Elizabeth.”

  “And we all came to Colorado. Did she tell you to do that, too, to take Daniel and me with you?” Gracy almost laughed at herself, talking about such foolishness.

  John shook his head. “No, she leaves the way of it up to me, just like when she told me to come back to Swandyke and I got to be sheriff. She said you and Daniel might need me one day.”

  “And that’s why you’re telling me this?”

  “No.” John glanced over at the table and said, “Maybe I’ll have me that piece of bread now. Talking sure does make me hungry.”

  Gracy remembered she was hungry, too, and got up. She took out a loaf of bread only a day old and a dish of butter, then found a glass of wild raspberry jam she’d made from pickings up on Potato Mountain. Using her butcher knife, she cut two slices of bread and buttered and jammed them, then handed one to John. He ate it in three bites before Gracy could sit down. So she offered him her own bread.

  John shook his head. He waited until Gracy had eaten, then leaned forward in the chair, taking her hands. “Elizabeth said I had to help you. Maybe she knew those years ago that Jonas Halleck was going to say you killed his baby and that was why she sent me back to Swandyke.” He nodded his head up and down.

  “Help me?” The conversation was getting stranger and stranger.

  “That’s what she said.”

  “You already kept me out of jail. What else can you do?”

  “I ca
n get you out of Swandyke.”

  Gracy was shocked. “You mean send me to the jail in Middle Swan or Breckenridge?”

  “No, I mean, get you out of the country altogether.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the rain, then returned to the chair, holding on to the back of it. “I mean I could take you to Denver, say you should be locked up there in case somebody wanted to hurt you, you know, like Jonas Halleck might want to get the men at the Holy Cross so riled up, they’d hang you.”

  “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know it, but I could say I was afraid they would. So I’d take you down below.” John paused and sat down. “Then I’d see that you and Daniel got on a train for Chicago or Independence or even California. I’d say Daniel must have had it all figured out and was just waiting for a chance to help you escape.” He paused. “Maybe you could join Jeff.”

  Gracy felt a sting in her heart at the mention of her son. He’d been gone eight, nine months now, and she missed him every day. Daniel was blustery, but Jeff had a quietness in him. He could sit with her and look out at the splendor of the mountains turning blue at day’s end, and she knew without his saying a word that he sensed a peacefulness. Still, he was destined for something more than the Tenmile, this child God had given to her. He would seek a life beyond the range, perhaps become a doctor, for he loved to hear her talk of the women she tended. He had kindness in him, Gracy thought. Perhaps greatness, too. She hoped he still did. “I don’t know where he is. How’d we ever find him?”

  “He’d find you. He won’t be gone forever.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Gracy thought a minute. “You’d expect me to run away?”

  John nodded.

  “You’d lose your job, maybe get arrested yourself. Then what would become of you?”

  “You and Daniel stood by me after Elizabeth died. I owe you.”

  Gracy shook her head. “No you don’t. Not like that. I couldn’t let you do it. Besides, if I ran off, people would think I was guilty. How would I clear my name? John, I didn’t kill that baby. You believe that, don’t you?”

  John didn’t answer. Instead, he stood and walked about the room again, picking up the tin of lucifers and examining them. Then he turned and faced Gracy. “You don’t know how serious this is. Coy and Little Dickie have spent the day spreading it around that you strangled that baby, and they’ve got some folks convinced. Now, I have it in mind you’ll be charged with manslaughter, and that’s why I didn’t lock you up, which I’d have had to do if you faced a murder charge. I think the justice of the peace’ll agree when he comes around week after next. But if he charges murder, I won’t have any choice but to put you in jail. If you’re convicted, you could spend out your years in jail. Or hang.”

  Gracy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Nobody would hang me. I delivered most of the babies in these mountains. There’s not a soul would find me guilty.” She sounded defiant.

  John just stared at her.

  Gracy squirmed a little. “Well, I guess there are some that don’t like me. But why would I do it? Why would I kill that innocent little thing?”

  “Jonas told me you had your back turned to him and was working over the boy, that he was crying. Then he wasn’t, and when Jonas picked him up out of the cradle later on, he was dead. It’s his word against yours.”

  “Did you see the baby?”

  “I did. I saw the bits of string, too.” He thought a moment. “Leaving’s the only way I can think of to help you. You ponder it.”

  Gracy leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, her fingers worrying the coin she always wore around her neck, the one Black Mary’s son had given her so many years before. Was she guilty of something? Maybe that baby had died a natural death, died because she didn’t know enough about medicine to see that something was wrong. That would make her guilty, maybe not in a court of law but in her own heart.

  Perhaps John was right. Maybe she should leave. Swandyke was the best home she’d known since she left Arkansas. She wasn’t sure why she loved it so. Swandyke was not a pretty place. The cabins were made of logs, many with the bark still on, some unroofed because the builder had moved on before the house was finished. Jack pines surrounded the houses, blocking out the sun, and the only decoration was the can piles. Streets were muddy ruts and crooked, impassable in winter when the snow drifted above the windowsills or blocked the doors, snow so deep a person could drown in it. Winter lasted nine, ten, eleven months. She’d seen it snow in Swandyke every month of the year. In winter, the cold sifted through the logs of the house where the chinking had been knocked away, and Gracy hung quilts over the window to keep out the chill, but nothing seemed to warm the cabin.

  As if to make up for the long winters and thin springs, the short summers were glorious, the wildflowers pretty as sunrise, the aspen in early fall bright enough to blind a person. Birds flitted through the trees, bluebirds and mountain jays like bits of sky that had fallen down. There never was a sight so pretty as the sun setting over Turnbull Mountain, sending its last rays to light the firs and turn the eternal patches of snow white as a baby’s christening dress. Gracy couldn’t imagine being any place but Swandyke in the summer.

  But it was the people who meant the most to Gracy. There were the gold seekers such as Daniel, who worked the mines in winter, but come snowmelt, they left out for the mountains, their burros loaded down with picks and shovels and enough supplies to last until the first frost, although coming home a time or two because they couldn’t stand the loneliness. Most of them never found blossom rock, but they never lost hope. Not a one of them but believed he’d strike it rich someday, that the next swing of his pick would show ore. That was Daniel, vigorous as the Lord Harry, telling Gracy he’d be back with a gold mine. He’d buy her a diamond ring and a silk dress, and she’d be a lady. “Maybe we’ll go to San Francisco and live on top of a hill,” he’d say.

  “I live on top of a mountain. Why would I settle for a hill?” she’d reply, knowing in her heart she had nothing to worry about. But not for the world would she say that to Daniel.

  Gracy loved the women, mountain-hard, strong, knowing like her that come fall, they’d be no better off, but they let their husbands hope, watched as the men packed their burros, sent them off with smiles and cries of “Save me the biggest lump of gold.” But what a woman really thought was maybe he’d find a little gold this time, enough to go back home, to go back where they’d come from, where rain was warm and the wind didn’t howl its loneliness.

  They watched the men out of sight. Then the smiles faded, and the women sighed as they turned to each other, wiping their eyes with their aprons. “There he goes, one jackass following another, not the sense to call it deep enough,” a woman would say, pointing with her chin at her husband walking behind a burro. Or “I still got coffee.” Or “He was too anxious to be off to eat his breakfast proper-like, the mining fool. Come for pancakes. He always wants them thick, but I like them thin, spread out in the pan like lace.” They built lives without men, gathering rose hips for jam and fishing the beaver ponds with each other. Women friends weren’t as demanding as husbands. A woman could stay abed in the sleep-warm quilts until the sun rose and breakfast on raspberries. Still, they were incomplete by themselves, and they joyed when their men returned after three or four weeks, saying they needed supplies but knowing they needed their families more. When frost came, the women would stand outside, shading their eyes as they looked for shapes on the mountains, thinking maybe this time there really had been a strike but knowing there hadn’t been, knowing, too, that they would live out their days in the timberline country.

  Most of those women had come from elsewhere and remembered life when it was easier. But there were also the young women, mountain bred like the girl in Mayflower Gulch to the harshness of life high in the Tenmile. They didn’t know anything else. They loved the high country, and when they went below, their lungs filled up with the heavy air. They couldn’t b
reathe unless they could see mountains. They were the ones who wouldn’t call for Gracy until their labors were on them. She’d scold them for not seeing her sooner so she could make sure the babies were coming along all right. But they’d laugh and say it was only a baby. So the pain of labor seemed to come as a surprise. They thought they knew pain, but they didn’t, and it confused them. Of course, they forgot the pain of childbirth, as all women did. Later, they would laugh at themselves, say they were foolish for crying and shouting.

  When they came to town, they’d call on Gracy, show off their babies. Gracy would admire them, say how much they’d grown, say who wouldn’t be proud? She felt a kind of ownership of each one, ushering them into the world as she had.

  She couldn’t leave them, Gracy thought, coming back to her senses. She couldn’t leave the women and the children, the children yet to be born. They needed her. They might die without her. But how long could she carry on? Would they come to her now that she’d been accused of murder? She’d thought just that morning on her way home to Swandyke that it might be time to call it deep enough. But maybe now it wouldn’t be her choice. Maybe they’d stop coming to her. But not just yet.

  There was another reason Swandyke was precious to her. They’d been a family there, she and Daniel and Jeff. She’d raised the boy in those mountains, watched him grow into a strong young man, lusty as his father but made of finer stuff.

  And so she shook her head back and forth at John. “I can’t go,” she said. “I won’t go. That’s all there is to it.”

  John nodded. “I told Elizabeth you’d say that. I guess I know you better than she does.” He rose and slapped his hat against his leg. “If they find you guilty, we can talk about it again, see what I can do. I won’t let you hang—or go to prison, either. I promised Elizabeth.”