The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

by Rhonda Riley

  We went through the same process, meeting with Granny Paynes at Pearl’s for the preliminary examination. Adam waited outside, holding a slab of wrapped ribs with Gracie perched on his shoulders. He handed Gracie over to Granny Paynes. “See what you started?”

  “Don’t go blaming me for this here,” she chuckled and held Gracie up to get a better look at her. “You sure this is the same baby? You didn’t switch her for a pretty one?”

  Adam ran his hand through Gracie’s bright red curls. “Where would we have found another one like this?”

  Gracie smiled and patted Granny Paynes on the cheek.

  Like Gracie, Rosie was big, healthy, and delivered by Granny Paynes. An easy, fast delivery that Adam once again got credit for. She came into the world faster and with more bustle than her sister. Granny Paynes barely got there in time. Gracie woke midway through the delivery. Adam dashed out of the room to get her and returned with her in his arms. “She won’t go back to sleep,” he apologized. Solemn and sleepy, she witnessed her sister’s birth. Rosie emerged with a full head of deep auburn hair and blinking, bright blue eyes.

  As ugly and unformed as Gracie had been at birth, Rosie took her first good look at the world and began a scream that lasted for months. Granny Paynes looked at Rosie and then nodded toward Gracie, who had fallen asleep, again, in Adam’s arms as soon as her sister began to wail. “This one’s a girl, too, I reckon, and as ugly as her sister was, only she’s mad about it.”

  Adam and I laughed.

  She was a cute, normal-looking baby girl within a couple days of birth. Fair-skinned redhead, with blue eyes that shaded toward green after a few weeks.

  But Rosie was also colicky. She woke every two hours and suckled as if there was a time limit and a long line of other babies waiting for my breast, then she screamed till sleep took her, then woke again to feed and restart the cycle. In the evenings, I passed her off to Adam. He adapted a blanket into a sling and, with Rosie secured to his chest, he rode Becky the old plow horse around the corral. She plodded slowly along, while he sang in his normal voice, below the lyrics, a low, steady hum. Gradually, Rosie’s crying would stop. Her father’s voice and the motion of the horse were more effective than me in a rocking chair. After Adam brought her in, she would sleep for hours. Soon she outgrew the sling.

  When she woke in the night, he would bring her to me, then take her again when she had fed and we knew the screams would begin. Often I rose from sleep to find them in the parlor, him rocking her across his knee or high on his chest. But always he motioned me back to bed and held up whatever book he was reading to show me he had entertainment. There were many mornings when I woke to find him slumped in the rocking chair or sprawled across the couch, his book on the floor and his daughter bundled on his chest, the glow of her hair brighter in the light of his reading lamp.

  Rosie’s first word was “horse.” As soon as she mastered walking, she learned to scoot one of the dining chairs up to the back door and pull herself up to stand on it. “Hoss, hoss!” she demanded, pointing toward the stable, one hand on her hip. For what seemed like years, this was our morning ritual. She ate her breakfast in tears and red-faced frustration, inconsolable.

  One day, her cries for “hoss” lasted through breakfast and into the afternoon. After lunch, I thought I had finally gotten her down for a nap, and I went out to clean the back porch and steps. A set of small footprints in the remains of the morning’s snowfall led down the steps, across the yard, and straight to the barn. Too small to be Gracie. Adam had stabled a new boarder horse, an aggressive sorrel, in the barn to separate him from the other horses in the stable. I ran to the barn. As I opened the door, the door on the other side opened, too. Adam led Darling in.

  “You seen Rosie?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, we spotted her.

  She crouched on the top rail of the back stall, facing the sorrel, her arms spread gleefully above her head. Adam shoved Darling aside. He jerked the sorrel’s stall open and slid in as Rosie whooped joyfully and leapt toward the horse.

  The sorrel screamed.

  Adam shouted as he threw himself between the horse and Rosie. Not his regular voice but a deep, percussive blast of alarm.

  He caught Rosie midway between the horse’s flank and the floor. The horse pivoted, blocking them into the corner of the stall.

  Rosie wailed.

  The horse erupted, neighing violently. Ears back, eyes rolling, he reared. Hooves smacked the stall wall. Adam clutched Rosie to his chest. He spun to keep his back to the horse.

  In the adjoining stall, I pulled myself up to stand on the bottom slat so Adam could pass Rosie over the wall to me. I held my arms out to take her.

  But Adam did not seem to see me. He pulled Rosie tighter and took a deep breath. His face changed from alarm to concentration.

  A sweet, pure tone undulated through the barn. Then the timbre of his voice shifted through the warm tones into a firm command. Calm and powerful. Solid as flesh.

  I clutched the rail to keep from falling. Inches from me, Rosie closed her eyes. Her grip on Adam’s shirt relaxed.

  Then silence. The quiet of alert, listening animals followed. One motionless second passed, then the cow muttered. Darling, still standing where Adam left her, whickered. The sorrel lowered his head. His tail swished gently.

  Adam handed Rosie up and over to me. She burrowed her face into my shoulder, her weight soft in my arms.

  “Shit, that was close,” Adam whispered. He slouched, his head against the top rail as he reached over and touched my head, then Rosie’s.

  “You okay?” I asked. He looked up, nodded, and motioned for me to take Rosie in. Then he turned and spread his hands on the sorrel, who now regarded us complacently as he chewed.

  Rosie took a long nap and was quieter than usual for the rest of the day.

  After that, she shifted from demanding a ride to asking for permission to ride, and though she was still several days from her third birthday, Adam began brief, well-supervised lessons to teach her riding, grooming, and better barn etiquette. I thought she was too young, but Adam insisted, “If we can’t keep her away from the horses, then we need to make sure she knows how to be around them.”

  A ride became part of her bedtime ritual. While Gracie bathed, Adam and Rosie rode double. Becky, the mildest of our horses, walked a slow, stately pace. Around and around the corral they went, Rosie leaning back against Adam’s chest, her face solemn and attentive.

  The time with Rosie and the sorrel was the first time I heard that sudden percussion and command in Adam’s voice. Except for our pleasure in bed, I’d seldom heard his unique voice. Sometimes, usually during a rare, unexpected moment of quiet at the table or when we tucked the girls in for the night, I felt rather than heard a low hum in the room, warm, content, and seemingly without source, like the vibrations of a motor running in another part of the house. Occasionally, at Marge and Freddie’s, Momma’s, or the church, I sensed a subtle shift in the room. I would look at him for confirmation, and he would simply smile back.

  Whatever charms Adam had with animals, he had with people, too. Carolina blue-collar folk and farmers in the 1950s and ’60s were not a people inclined to physical contact. But, as it had been with Addie, people liked to touch Adam. Children crawled into his lap.

  With women, he had the advantage of an unnatural understanding. They turned toward him when he walked near. Old women smoothed his collar or plucked lint off him as if he were their son. At church suppers, women pressed their fried chicken and beans on him, gratified by his appreciation and the gusto with which he ate. He sucked the juices off the rib bones. He had delivered his own daughters and would go elbow-deep into a mare to deliver a foal, all without flinching. Nothing of the body made him turn away. Not every woman knew all of this about him, but they could all read the musk of it on him.

  Most men liked him as much as the women did, slapping him on the back or shaking his hand when they met him. Younger men spa
rred with him, punching and jabbing in mock fights. A few of the younger husbands seemed uncomfortable near him, stiffening in resolve when he was near, but that ceased as they got to know him.

  I still expected someone to sense how truly different he was, to step forward and point a finger. But no one ever seemed to suspect anything. In the crush of our family and daily life, weeks could pass without me thinking of the difference. Except at night in bed. Always then his voice filled me, reminding me of what set him apart. As I listened to the last vibration of it vanish, I did not know him as an ordinary man.

  I listened to our daughters, too. At times of contentment, they made soft, purring moans that were endearing but not out of the ordinary. As babies, both had an unusually high-pitched scream that, when they were very upset, rose almost to the limits of human hearing and bounced back painfully from the corners of the room. Gracie rarely got to that point, but Rosie’s tantrums rose straight to the peak volume, especially when Gracie took one of her toys. When this happened, Gracie would quickly return the toy and flee. But for both of them, the power and pitch of that scream seemed to diminish as they grew from toddlers to little girls, and I’d heard nothing that sounded like Adam’s voice.

  I looked for other signs, too, examining their bodies for any changes beyond normal growth, indications that their facial features or genitals were slipping out of form. I felt twinges of guilt, as if such inspections showed a lack of gratitude, an affront to Adam’s and their obvious perfections.

  I found nothing. They were normal, healthy girls. Beautiful and round-faced. They were slim and muscular, with masses of curly red hair. Within months of birth, their blue eyes changed to shades of green. Except for Rosie’s colic, they had suffered nothing more than a few mild winter colds. They, like their sisters who followed, were preternaturally agile and fast learners, but nothing stood out beyond that. In fact, I could see little of Adam’s—or Roy Hope’s—features in them. They looked like my baby pictures.

  One night, after I had put the girls to bed, Adam and I heard the stabled horses neighing in alarm. He ran out with a flashlight to see what had spooked them. I followed in my nightgown, holding Hobo and the new dog, Gabby, back by their collars.

  An owl, luminous in the moonlight when Adam opened the stable door, turned its smooth, heart-shaped face toward us. It skipped sideways and fluttered a few feet into the air before falling back to the stable floor, its left wing dragging. The horses whinnied. The dogs pulled and barked.

  Adam took off his shirt and threw it over the owl. “Get the dogs out of the stable. I’ll take care of it,” he told me. I shut the door on the faint, soothing rise of his voice.

  As I tucked the girls in, I considered, for the first time, that his voice might have qualities beyond what I heard and felt. Could he use it to heal? Was that what I’d heard him doing with the owl?

  When he came in from the stable, my question seemed to surprise him. “No. Nothing like that. It’s just a different kind of voice.”

  “Just a different kind of voice?” I echoed.

  He grinned. “I admit it’s a good voice, a useful tool. A calm animal doesn’t fight what you need to do. I had to strap a splint to the owl’s wing.” He cupped his hands as if holding the bird. “He was so strong and light, Evelyn. I think he’ll be okay.”

  “You really don’t know what you have, do you?”

  “Oh, I know.” He lifted my hair off my shoulder and kissed my neck. “I know.”

  In the morning, he fashioned a cage out of two crates and chicken wire. The girls were in charge of the mousetraps. Gracie set the traps and Rosie dropped the dead mice into the cage. On the days we caught no mice, we fed the owl meat or scraps from the table. The cats, one as pale as the owl, the other a pregnant calico, sometimes perched on top of the cage and hung their heads over the side, peering upside down at the owl that stared blankly back at them.

  After a month, we freed the owl. Rosie had had her ride and both girls were ready for bed. The girls and I clustered outside in our pajamas under a bright moon. Adam held up the thick stick of the perch the owl clung to. He removed the makeshift hood. For a moment, the owl did not move. Turning its face toward Adam, it took one long, unblinking look, hopped from the stick to his gloved wrist, then, slowly lifting its wings, took silent flight. The girls oohed beside me. The white speck of the owl vanished quickly into the dark, distant bank of trees.

  For once, the girls went to bed without protest. I kissed them, and Adam began singing for them—two songs, one for each girl. As I climbed into bed, I heard the familiar refrain of “Amazing Grace,” which Gracie considered her song. “Silent Night,” Rosie’s choice, followed.

  I listened as Adam came down the hall, then felt him get in bed and spoon up behind me. He held me, but we did not sleep. It seemed to me that we were listening for something. Finally, I turned to him and he lifted my nightgown. I did not reach for the rubbers. I thought of the owl, of the impossible, silent lift of it into the air, as I drew my husband to me.

  The owl, in all its wisdom, did not go far from the barn and stable mice. And it did not forget the curious cats. Not long after we freed it, I saw it hunched in the stable rafters when I took coffee out to the stable for Adam.

  One morning, before the milking, I stopped to say hello to Darling. The cat had had her kittens by then, a bunch of orange tabbies and calicos that flickered around the barn. I found the bloody tail and most of the spine of an orange kitten draped over the corner post of Darling’s stall. I couldn’t imagine how it got there. Then I looked up. Our barn owl peered down, ghostly in the rafters. I banged the milk pail against the barn wall in protest. The owl simply tilted its wide, flat face down and stared impassively.

  Outside, I bent over to bury the little spine so the girls would not find it. Bile surged up my throat. I dropped to my knees to vomit and recognized the particular nausea of early pregnancy. I’d had morning sickness with the other girls, but nothing this bad. The powerful waves of nausea ripped through me, the first indication that this pregnancy was different, not one but two babies.

  I saw Granny Paynes once at Pearl’s when I was about five months along. She nodded tersely at my swollen belly and said, “Looks like you carrying one too many. You need to go to the hospital.”

  Months later, deep in anesthesia and dead to the world, I was delivered of twins at Mercy Hospital in Charlotte. This time, I was not afraid. Gracie and Rosie were normal and bright. There was no need for subterfuge.

  In the hospital, hours after the birth, I emerged from my twilight sleep of drugs to find Adam and Momma in the room with me. Momma dozed in a chair at the foot of the bed. A silken evening light shone through a break in the drawn curtains. From a chair next to the bed, Adam leaned into the column of light. He held up two fingers. “The doctors are not sure. But I saw them. We have two more girls. Like Gracie and Rosie, like you,” he whispered.

  The moldy cotton of anesthesia filled my mouth. I shook my head and croaked, “Like you. Bet they’re ugly like you.”

  He held a cup of water to my lips and nodded. “They’re healthy and all there. But, yes, they look like Gracie and Rosie did, only a little smaller and skinnier.”

  The tepid, chlorinated water did little to slake my thirst. “What do the doctors say?” I tried to sit up straight, but felt the soreness in my bottom and slouched back down again.

  “They had to stitch you up. You tore some. You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “They want to keep the babies for observation,” he continued. “They’re puzzled, of course.”

  “I want to go home. I want them with me.”

  “You should all stay for a few days and rest. Momma and I can take care of the girls at home. Rita and Bertie are with them now.”

  Momma stirred, woke with a startle, then oriented herself. Adam stood up to let her sit on the bed beside me. She smoothed my hair away from my face and took my hand. “Has Adam told you?”

  He cleared his th
roat and spoke up. “Evelyn, the doctors are very puzzled. They think something may be wrong with the girls.” He spoke in a level and serious voice as he grinned over Momma’s shoulder.

  I hiccupped and stifled a smile.

  “Oh, honey.” Momma rubbed my hand. I felt terrible. The moment should have been a joy for her.

  I slid back into sleep and woke later, to a darkened room. Momma was gone. Adam snored softly in a recliner next to my bed, his hat tipped over his face.

  The next morning, Adam and Momma brought Gracie and Rosie to see their new sisters. The five of us stood looking in the nursery window at a row of babies sleeping in plastic bassinets. Pink, not blue, blankets swaddled Jennie and Lillian—a good sign. The doctors agreed with Adam on the sex of the babies. I pressed my face to the glass and stood on my tiptoes to get a better view. Both of them slept. Not much was visible between their blankets and the knit caps. But their cheeks had the same roughly dimpled skin I had seen on Addie and their two older sisters.

  “Are they all right, Momma?” Gracie leaned against me and put her arm around my hip. Momma had pulled her hair back in a single tight braid. She looked up at me, her broad face solemn.

  “Of course they are. They’re fine. Perfect like you and Rosie were when you were born,” I said.

  “Maybe we got a bad one, so they gave us another one to make up for it,” Rosie volunteered, hopping up and down beside us.

  Adam and I laughed. Momma rubbed Gracie’s shoulders sympathetically.

  Two nurses in surgical masks came into the nursery and picked up the twins. The younger nurse gave us a brief, anxious glance.