The wind whistled past his ears, the dead but clinging leaves of the oaks fluttered with the noise of a thousand whipped flags in the darkness that surrounded him. He heard another scream.
She lay curved like a bow in the disorder of the bedclothes, back arched, neck arched, biting on the red plug between her teeth. He grasped her shoulders, pressed his face against her neck, held on.
Look, she gasped, take a look.
He didn’t want to. There seemed too much slime and gore down there already; he did not want to look on the center of her suffering. But he looked and saw the blood, the running sweat in the crease between abdomen and thighs, the strangely exfolded vaginal opening. As another contraction and expansion convulsed her uterus he saw something exotic, alien, foreign in there seeking outlet, a pale crown of skin the size of a half dollar, with black hairs, that appeared for a moment then disappeared. He waited for it to show again but the contractions eased away.
Did you see it?
Yes. Yes. I saw something.
She grinned—not smiled—at him through a film of tears and sweat. It’s the baby. I can feel it. The cervix is dilated. All the way. It’s coming out. Should I start pushing next time? She was panting, panting, as she talked.
He wiped the perspiration from her face. Labor, he thought, no wonder they call it labor. This slim slight bloated-up little girl is working harder than I ever worked in my life. Should she push? Good God I don’t know. It seems much too soon. Hours too soon. Weeks too soon.
Does it hurt too much? he said.
I can take it. Clutching at his hand, she bit playfully on the thick part of his thumb. If you help I can take anything.
We’ve got Demerol. Demerol tabs in the first-aid kit.
No, no, not that. Oh no that might hurt the baby. I’d be afraid of that. Anyhow—this time she managed a smile not a grimace—somebody has to tell you what to do.
Henry pretended to smile. He thought he was smiling but could not be sure. He dabbed at the sweat on her upper lip and kissed her. She glanced at her watch and reached for his neck. Here we go again, she groaned. The contractions began. Should I push? she cried, should I push? She was overexcited yet already half exhausted.
Do what feels right, whatever feels right. He embraced her shoulders, back, and tried to absorb the pain with her.
The pains came and she labored. They receded and she rested. An hour passed and a second. Henry kept the fire going, the water warm in dishpan and bucket. He added kerosene to the lamp. With paper towels he cleaned as best he could his wife’s vaginal area—between the attacks of pain—and removed the trickle of excrement that she’d expelled, helplessly, during the last contraction.
Poor Henry, she said, stroking his bowed head, poor Henry, I’m so sorry….
Bullshit, he said, don’t you feel sorry for nobody. You rest now.
He scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water, returned to Claire’s side, waited, held her, waited…
He was dozing when her scream brought him once again tensely awake. With both hands she clutched the steel bar at the head of the bed. Her knees were up, splayed far apart. Sweat shone on her face, her eyes bulged, rolled, her mouth was strained wide open as if for a mighty yell. She did not yell. She champed down on the red rag balled in her teeth, gasping for breath. Henry, it’s coming, it’s coming, I know it’s coming.
Gripping her arm, he looked again and saw the top of a small pink head, smeared with ooze, wedged like a grapefruit in the vagina. The flesh around the jammed head seemed horribly distended, dangerously taut, about to burst or tear. He remembered something—the episiotomy—and pulled out his pocketknife, thought better of that, opened the first-aid box, found the snakebite kit. Inside the rubber suction cup was a narrow razor blade fitted with a two-inch plastic handle. He struck a match, sterilized the blade, bent close to his woman’s straining body. I can’t do this, he thought, I cannot do this. But he did it. With a hand made steady by adrenaline, or wonder, or by necessity and terror, he made a short incision through the margins of the vulva toward the anus. A little blood began to flow but Claire seemed not to feel the cut.
Help me. Help me. Henry, help me.
He dropped the blade and put his hands on her belly, adding pressure, reinforcing the contraction. The head emerged, facing down toward the floor, turning a little to the left. Push, Claire, push, he urged, push it out. He attempted to grasp the baby’s head with his fingers but could get no purchase on that slippery half-emerging half-retracting thing. Should raise Claire up, he thought, help her squat or crouch, let gravity give us some help here. Too late for that idea. Push, he urged, push, in rhythm with her straining muscles, and the head came fully out, rotating further, followed by the tiny shoulders cauled in the bloodstained silver suit of a space traveler. He held the creature in both hands and drew it forth, trailing its twisted bluish blood-filled lifeline. A gush of multicolored fluids followed, streaming onto the bed. Claire yelled—in agony or relief he could not tell—and the baby yelled in response, very much alive.
Now what? Yes: tie the cord. He pulled a shoelace from Claire’s tennis shoes, waited a moment, and tied off the umbilicus close to the baby’s belly. He glanced up at Claire’s face. Eyes shut, she panted like a runner at the end of a marathon, huffing, sweating. Henry made a second tie in the thick slippery cord, opened his knife and cut the cord between the two ties. Not too different from a calf, he thought. He carried the baby to the stove, held it in one hand and with a lukewarm cloth rinsed off the slime and blood. Claire opened her eyes, looked for him and her baby, found them and stared in wonder. Is it all right? she asked.
Henry turned to the bed and offered the red bawling wrinkled monkeylike thing to its mother. She’s a girl, he said, and she is perfect. Claire began to cry. She took the baby in her arms and hugged it to her breast, rocking it back and forth.
We did it, she cried.
Henry knelt at the mother’s bottom end to complete his job. He dabbed a little alcohol on the wounded vagina, chilling the flesh by rapid evaporation—the only anesthetic he could think of—and sutured the cut with fine needle and thread. Claire whimpered from the pain but held on, cuddling her baby.
Next, Henry pushed tenderly on Claire’s belly, in time with her renewed contractions, pressing out the placenta that streamed, like a purple amoeba with many pseudopodia, upon the newspaper he’d spread beneath her buttocks. Should fry it up, have her eat that stuff, he thought; a cow or mother coyote would. Supposed to be good for you—very nourishing. He gathered the mess in the newspaper and deposited it outside the door where it would soon stabilize like gelatin under the pelting sleet. He looked at Claire. Mother and child seemed both to be sleeping. He stepped outside, closed the door and stood in the wind, feeling the icy sleet beat on his face. There were no stars visible in any direction. He looked up at the black sky. You up there, he said, monster of the universe, I have defeated you again. But back in the cabin he discovered that Claire was still bleeding. And not from his petty surgery but from deep inside. This time he gathered her up, with baby and covers, ignoring her protests, and bundled her into the pickup truck.
He drove slowly, in low gear and four-wheel-drive, out of the fold of the mountain, over the bench and across the mile-wide slope of scree. Claire sat beside him leaning against his shoulder. Half asleep, she held her sleeping baby in her arms. She seemed exhausted. Her face looked dead white. She was still bleeding from the birth canal. Nothing he did could stanch the small but steady flow. Perhaps he had failed to squeeze out the entire placenta. Perhaps something else was wrong.
Fallen rocks lay tumbled across the road. Henry stopped, leaving his headlights on, rolled the rocks over the edge. He drove on, straddling other rocks, and reached the east side of the slope. He drove through the pygmy forest on the flank of the mountain, churning through pools of ice and liquid mud. They passed the windmill, barely visible in the windy dark. The truck fishtailed in the clay on the surface of the mesa but got thro
ugh and reached firm wheeling on the stony road that led to the rim. When he came to the wire gate Henry did not halt but drove through it, breaking the loop of rope on the end post and bearing the strands of barbwire to the ground. The old gray horse, still waiting, a dim form in the night, followed through the opening.
Henry geared down into compound low, low range, and began the steep descent of the one-lane switchback trail to the canyon floor a thousand feet below. The jolting of the truck over the ledges awoke Claire. Where are we? she mumbled.
It’s all right, honey, we’re on the way.
She nodded, closed her eyes and sagged against his side once more. The baby stirred in her arms, only its face showing from the mass of down-stuffed nylon.
He steered the truck over slides of gravel and mud that had sloughed from the bank above and poured across the road. The mud appeared frozen on the surface but he felt the rear wheels skid sideways, the rear end shifting toward the side of the road. He gunned the engine, trying to rush the pickup through before the rear slipped over the edge. Too late. They were going over.
Henry was on the outer side; he lunged across Claire and baby, half opened the door on her right, tried to push her out. Out! he shouted, get out! Half asleep, she did not understand. The pickup tilted toward the sky, at the same time sliding off the verge. Claire screamed. Henry wrapped his arms around her and held tight as the truck heeled completely over, crashed on the boulders below and rolled again. And again. The doors sprang open. The lights exploded. The cab of the truck filled with dust. Henry glimpsed dim stars wheeling above, saw a startled bird flash past, heard the shattering of glass, the smash of branches in a tree. A starburst flared behind his eyes, his world went black….
Falling rain streamed on his head. He heard the sound of wailing going on and on, on and on, as it must have sounded through eternity. He tasted something warm and salty on his lips. He opened his eyes, unwilling, and saw the pickup truck hanging above, upside down, wrapped around the trunk of a pinyon pine. The roots of the pine, loosened by the impact, rose clear of the yellow clay. The near door of the truck hung on one hinge. The glass of the window seemed covered with frost, a filigree of shatter lines. A slender bare arm dangled from the open doorframe. Threads of bright blood ran braided down the white skin, pooled at the tight gold band of a wristwatch and overflowed onto the palm and through the partly curled fingers. The sound of wailing continued, muted by the falling rain but persistent, tireless, demanding.
It seemed to Henry that his head was split from ear to jaw. He tried to lift himself to his knees. He found that one leg would not function and looking down saw the crooked bulge in his thighbone, the dark stain soaking through the pantleg of his jeans. He felt pain but the pain seemed far away. He crawled on one leg and his arms to the truck and looked at Claire inside. Her body was crushed between the buckled-in dashboard and the crumpled roof of the cab. Bits of glass glittered in her hair. Blood covered half her face, her throat, her clothing. Rain drummed on metal. The baby had disappeared.
Claire’s eyes were open and Henry thought that she was looking for him. He crawled closer until he could reach and grasp her dangling hand. It still seemed warm though he felt no pulse of blood in her palm. He thought she was smiling.
Is that you, Henry?
Yes, he said.
It’s snowing again.
Yes.
Is my baby all right?
Sure is, honey, She’s fine.
I hear her crying.
She’s all right, sweetheart.
You’re sure?
Yes, Claire.
Why is it snowing all the time?
It’s winter, Honeydew. Wintertime.
Are we almost home?
Yes.
You sure?
Almost there, honey.
Well I hope so. I sure am tired of nothing but snow all the time. She was right. He saw the snow too, a thickening veil of white pure falling gentle snow that drifted closer then farther then closer again between his eyes and Claire’s smiling face. He heard the wailing through the snow but that too, like the pain, seemed far away. He knew that he would need help but Lacey and Hooligan should arrive soon. He could almost hear their voices now, the sound of their big booted feet stumbling down the slope of rocks, clashing through the broken glass.
XVIII
Grace Mellon, his mother-in-law, Grace Whateveritwas Mellon stood beside the hospital bed, holding his baby in her arms, and said, I knew you’d do something like that. The hatred in her eyes shone clearly now, untempered by the ironical disdain that Henry had grown accustomed to and even learned to respect, in a way, knowing that she was not entirely wrong. You crazy reckless scheming cur, she said in her admirably low and even-tempered voice (a comely thing in woman), I knew you’d find a way to kill her sooner or later.
Grace paused; she spoke so calmly, smoothly, that the nurse standing at the door seemed to notice nothing out of order. Grace continued, her eyes fixed on his with murderous intensity: But you couldn’t wait. You outwitted yourself, Mr. Lightcap. You’ll not get one cent of her inheritance. Not one cent. You jumped the gun. You killed her too soon. You couldn’t wait.
He made no attempt to answer. The woman was out of her mind—temporarily insane, he guessed. She’d had Claire buried in some family plot in Denver, against his wishes, and she took the baby too. His little girl. Had her christened Claire, also over his protest, and built a living wall of lawyers between him and his daughter. When Henry limped from the University Hospital two months later and got to Denver he found the woman gone—to England, her lawyer said—and his baby gone with her. The lawyer explained that Grace had legal custody of his daughter, by court order, on grounds that Henry was incompetent, of low moral character, mentally unstable and financially insolvent. The order could be appealed, of course, and possibly reversed in due time, if he was prepared to take the matter up with the appropriate “authorities.” Said he’d be happy to recommend good legalistical assistance for him if he wanted it. Henry said he’d be back. But he was never able to gain custody of the girl or even obtain clear rights of visitation. Grace Mellon never returned to Denver. The most he ever got from his kid—Henry called her Ellie, after her middle name, Ellsworth—were holiday report cards from a town in Rhode Island identified as Newport, a place in Virginia known as The Plains.
They were right about one thing. He was financially insolvent. Insoluble, in fact. No, they were right about it all. After Denver, rather than return to Turkey Creek—unbearable thought—he drove slowly over the mountains through a blizzard to the western slope of Colorado and into the bleak wastelands of Utah. Late March. Sent no word to Harlow, to Lacey, Hooligan or the Lovers of Fur Bearers. Near the little town of Green River, Utah, he parked on the highway bridge and watched the brown waters of the river called Green flowing beneath, bearing a few yellowish cakes of ice, an uprooted tree, the occasional dead cow. Henry borrowed a fiberglass canoe from a riverman he knew, left his pickup outside the friend’s warehouse, paddled onto the stream, floated away. On his knees in the stern of the canoe, his hospital cane beside him.
He was gone for a month.
He drifted down the river, built little fires at evening, tried to eat. He drifted between the high walls of Labyrinth Canyon and Stillwater Canyon, under the White Rim and the spires of the Maze and could find no beauty in the land he had once loved more than any other. He drifted through the confluence with the Colorado River, in the center of everything and nothing, and could hardly lift his eyes to see. He camped for days, perhaps weeks, on a beach near the head of Cataract Canyon, the roar of white water a constant in his ears. He meant to drown himself in those falls and rapids but hunger began to return. He shot a deer, kept the meat in shade, watched the moon pass in its phases over the walls of the canyon, hobbled one day to the rim and saw the snow-covered mountains east, southeast, southwest and north, shining under the spring sun.
Those mountains. That river. That land and his friends
and this absurd garment of irritation, aspiration, intuition, irrational reason, inconsolable memories that he wore as symbol of life. Death would be better, sweeter, simpler. But death like anybody else must wait his turn.
Down that wilderness river alone for thirty days in a canoe through a world frozen in stone. Ravens squawked at him from the rimrock. Hummingbirds throbbed before the scarlet monkeyflower of gardens hanging from seeps a hundred feet above the river. Winding tributary canyons like the corridors of a labyrinth led away from the river into the bowels of the plateau, gorges in the seamless stone that were so deep, so narrow that for hundreds of yards he could not see the sky. He followed one to where it narrowed to a pinch so thin he dared not wedge his body through. He returned to his canoe and floated down the river and made his camp and a great horned owl hooted softly through the night and in the blue light of dawn deer walked over the sandbars to the water. He fried catfish for breakfast, made coffee and loaded the boat, untied the bowline from a willow and shoved off into the current. The sun oozed over the eastern rim, a squat bulge of plasmic fire so bright it lacked any definition of color. He soaked his hat and shirt in the silty water at his side, put both back on and drifted downstream….
He lived alone in a board-and-batten cabin at 9,500 feet above sea level, in a forest of spruce, fir and quaking aspen. Each morning he climbed the steps of a ninety-foot steel tower into the cab on top, entering through a trapdoor in the floor, switched on the Forest Service radio, leaned against an Osborne Firefinder and gazed through open windows looking for smoke. He could see for ninety miles in any direction, clear to the blue-gray mountains that circled the horizon. He did his work in that place for two long spring and summer seasons and the same work in similar places for another five. He heard the hermit thrush calling from the darkness under the trees. A redtail hawk screamed across the nearest meadow and one lone silent yellowbeaked rednecked turkey vulture soared in the sky a thousand feet above. Kinfolk.