Doom Days

by Beaman, Sara

  Margotty scowled at his terrible stutter. She kept her head down and waited for him to move but he just stood there.

  Amity laughed. “Margotty's not enthusiastic about anything.”

  “P-peace be with you, Margotty. Well met, as Robin of the, uh, Hood would say, eh?”

  “You’re right to call her educated, though,” Amity went on. “She's town obstetrix. The mid-wife.”

  “This child?”

  “Seventeen years wise,” Amity said with a smile. “Learned the business from her mother, who was one before her. This here's a traveling monk, Margotty. All the way from South Carolina on his own two feet. He's been visiting and ministering in towns all along the way.”

  “Actually, Margotty's very, uh, astute to call me 'friar.' You see, I've b-been assigned – I've taken a life administering to the community, uh, instead of devoting myself to solitary p-prayer and-”

  “Uh-huh,” Amity interrupted. “Maybe Margotty knows someone, some patient of hers, who could use some ministering?”

  “No,” Margotty said, and slipped past the friar out onto the porch of the store.

  “Oh then, um, well met, ha ha,” the man called after her.

  Slogging back to her house, Margotty wracked her brains for something to do on a rainy day that could earn her a meal. The town was full of people needing odd jobs done, but Margotty hated to do petty chores. And she hated working for someone else, following orders.

  When she got home she saw a young man at her door. She waded through the soggy morass of dripping weeds and joined him on the porch. Unlike the one at the trading post, Margotty’s leaky porch offered them little protection from the weather. Rain trickled down her hair and onto her arms, slicking her dress to her.

  “Door’s open,” she told him, shucking her wet sandals and leading him into the house. She trailed wet footprints across the floor. “What is it?” She'd seen his face before, the town was too small for any total strangers, but she'd never met him.

  “Name's Turner,” he said, clutching his wet hat. He looked around, taking in the empty, shabby room suspiciously. “My girl, she's got the complaint.”

  “Menstruation?” Margotty asked.

  The man nodded, his eyes darting to the shadows. “She got some terrible pain.” He pulled a big hunk of bread wrapped in a well-used plastic bag from his pocket and held it out to her.

  Margotty didn't take it. “I'll come see her. I'll share hot meal with you and show her some positions that ease the cramping, teach her some exercises—”

  “No! No, she don't want – she don't need you to come into the house,” he said.

  Margotty rolled her eyes. “What can I do from here? Take her to see the doctors if she's in pain. Alonzo and Sabina treat that sort of thing with their own medicines.”

  “Already saw them and it didn't help. Didn't do nothing. Every month she suffers. Pardon lady, but she said you might have some potions for her to swallow.”

  “Suit yourself. Won't work like the exercises, though.” Margotty went to the cabinet and pulled darkened shriveled leaves out of a jar. She ripped a strip of wallpaper from the wall in a flurry of dust, folded it into a little packet, and shook some of the leaves into it.

  “Raspberry leaf tea,” she told him. “Brew it up then mix it like this: two parts hot tea to one part alcohol. You can buy wine from Gretchen or moonshine from anyone who makes it, though that can be risky as I'm sure you know. Make up a small cup of this twice a day for her.”

  He looked wide-eyed at the packet and pushed the bread at her.

  “The payment is meat, or an egg, or some cheese,” she told him.

  “Got a carrot,” he pulled that from his pocket, too. It was a stunted, dirty root.

  “Meat, egg, or cheese.”

  He left the bread and the carrot and went back to his house for a strip of goat jerky. Margotty charged a high price when patients acted superstitious.

  ****

  “Peace be with you, Irene. May the p-peace of God, uh, be upon you.” The monk stepped over the threshold. Irene closed the door behind him and they sat on the hearth with their backs to the embers of the morning fire.

  Vapor began to steam off his wet clothes. “Nasty weather,” he said brightly. “Tough to travel in but it nourishes, uh, the earth for the crops - the bounty of God's...uh, yes.”

  Irene nodded and fiddled with the string of beads in her hands.

  “Prayer beads are the, uh, the accouterments of the devout Catholic,” the monk said. “What do you p-pray for?”

  “The obstetrix says they're not prayer beads. She calls them fertility counters,” Irene said.

  “Ah, yes,” the Monk said. “But p-perhaps they hold p-prayers for you?”

  “Prayers maybe. But no answers. They've been no help to me, to us.” Irene heaved a deep sigh.

  “Hard to count on b-beads for your b-blessings, no? Better to trust in the lord God, to seek His – to ask for His help.”

  “I don't think He can help me,” Irene said, a little embarrassed by the bitterness in her voice.

  “Have you, uh, asked? Have you asked Him,” the monk's voice grew tender and quiet, “to bless you with a bundle of – for the stork - a little b-bouncing bundle of joy?”

  Irene nodded and felt the sting of tears in her eyes and rushed to speak before she lost her nerve. “Margotty told me that I might not be able to. That Paul and I can't.”

  “Poor, p-poor thing. A heavy b-burden. But you are not, ah, alone, Irene. There are many women who suffer the same.”

  Irene hurried on in a rush of words. “Margotty gave me advice, but I can't take it. She told me to go to another man. The vows of marriage - we couldn't take them in a church, there isn't one - but they are still sacred to me. I love Paul.”

  “Of course, of course. Such a good husband. You wouldn't want to leave – to be separated. Naturally.”

  “No, she wasn't suggesting divorce,” Irene said. “She was suggesting...”

  “Forni-fornication?”

  “But I can't!”

  “Of course, of course not.”

  “But I...I want a baby so bad. I don't know what to do. Can you give me some counsel?”

  “You take your vows to heart, Irene, and that is, uh, admirable. A very upright woman. Pleasing, uh, to God's eye and such. Yes.”

  “You said yourself, though, that God commands us to go forth and multiply, to be fruitful. I have been faithful. Why am I barren?” Irene's voice cracked on the word and tears slipped down her cheeks. “Why?”

  “Ah, comfort, comfort.” The monk reached out and took her hands, engulfing them with his. “God works - He doesn't always, uh, do things the way you might...”

  “In mysterious ways?” Irene said.

  “Yes, uh, yes. Just so. He may have some other plan, you know.”

  Irene took a deep breath and wiped tears off her face. “I should wait, then? I should be patient? That's your advice?”

  “Oh, but you've been very patient, very p-patient,” the monk said.

  “I have,” Irene said, starting to cry again.

  “Already you have suffered. And through it all you remained true to your husband, yes?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then your reward is, uh, coming. You must count on it. You just may have to look for it, coming from other, uh, quarters, so to speak.”

  Irene looked up into his face. “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps I could, uh, offer some, some hope- some means of, uh, salvation. A way to honor your – to be true to your faith in God and your, your husband. And yet, a way to give God his glory in - bounty, in children.”

  Irene waited, watching him nervously.

  “There's a way, Irene. A way to, uh, remain chaste and yet to – to make fertile your, um, womb.”

  “I don't know what...”

  The monk reached under his robes and brought out a cloth bag. He pulled wide the drawstring and reached in for a packet wrapped in leather. He unwrap
ped it very carefully. Inside was a long glass tube with a small pore at one end and a rubber bulb at the other.

  “A relic from before the Collapse,” he said reverently. “It's a way, Irene, for the seed to be delivered to you. And yet, yet you never lay with another man. Chaste, you see.”

  “That must be what Margotty said Sabina, the doctor, could do,” Irene said, looking at the thing with disgust. “But I can't. I can't trust anyone to do it. Who would?”

  “I am a man of the, uh, church, Irene. A man who is sworn to take – to take no wife. A man, clean - not really a man, in the worldly sense.”

  Irene shuddered. “You? Then it would be your baby.”

  “Oh, not mine. Not mine, but the Holy Roman Church's. And the church is an instrument of – the church serves God.”

  “The church would give me a baby?”

  “Yes, Irene,” the monk smiled. “Yes. But you will be asked a tithe in return. If the child is a b-boy he will take vows and join the, uh, order.”

  “A priest?”

  “If he likes. Or a monk. A man of God.”

  Irene hesitated, glancing nervously at the device. “You'll take him away?”

  “No-no. We offer him an education, a vocation, a calling – a life of p-piety.”

  Irene looked back to her beads and fumbled them through her hands.

  “A son of yours, called to serve God,” the monk said quietly. “Or a beautiful daughter to alleviate – to help you in the kitchen, to help with all your other children. Once you have one, you know, the others will come.”

  Irene was shaking her head slowly.

  “It's an offer that the, uh, church makes, so to speak, to some members of the flock. No need to answer so quickly, take your time. You need to – you need to think about it and that's fine. Count on your b-beads. When the white one comes up, if you've decided, then call for me. We'll, uh, take it from there, yes? A b-baby is a very, a blessed – a blessing. On all the house.”

  “I'm not Catholic,” Irene whispered.

  “No - no worries there,” the monk said, his voice cheerful again. “No - no worries at all.”

  Irene sat stunned. The monk patted her shoulder. “A lot to, uh, digest, huh? I will leave you alone now to meditate on – to ponder it – yes, think it over. P-peace be with you, Irene. God watches over you.”

  ****

  Later that week the weather cleared up and Margotty went into her yard, cutting off herbs by the handful with her small blade. It was best to harvest the last of the garden before a frost could strip the leaves. Some plants wouldn't come back next year, so she cut those flush with the ground, shook the seeds out of them so they would sow themselves, and left big bare patches in her waist-high garden. Cinder stalked though the tangle, pouncing on grasshoppers and eating them with a crunching sound.

  Then Margotty went inside and sat on her stool, tying bunches of herbs together with pieces of thread teased out of the hem of her dress. She hung them upside down around the kitchen from cabinet handles, protruding nails, and from the half-eroded banister, which led to the unsafe second floor where only Cinder went.

  At midday, she heard a knock on the door and got up to answer it, picking a few dried leaves from her hair before opening the door. The friar she’d met at the trading post was standing on her porch.

  “Ah, yes, – Margotty. Hello there. P-peace, uh, be with you,” he said.

  Margotty went back to her stool and the friar followed her in, looking around him with awkward cheerfulness.

  “Lovely home, lovely home,” he said.

  “What do you want?” Margotty asked him.

  “Just a social – a friendly visit.”

  “I don't have anything to confess,” Margotty said.

  “Oh, uh, no. Nothing like that.” The friar went to stand by the banister and sniffed at the bundles of herbs there. He looked up the stairs, raised his eyebrows at the bird droppings that splattered the upper risers, and then strained his gaze to see into the back room.

  Margotty waited, brushing dirt from the roots of herbs off her dress and onto the floor.

  “It's a b-bit awkward, me coming here,” the friar said at last. “Yes, it's a b-bit rude but a couple of - a few members - some of my flock, so to speak, have mentioned something to me and I wanted to - to just clear some things up.”

  He stood with his long, thin hands clasped together and his tall shoulders inclined forward. He was more sunburnt and freckled than tan, Margotty saw, and his face was streaked with thin white scars from the stinging strangle runner that no traveler could avoid. Some weight on his frame or some gray in his hair would have helped to convey the respectability he was so obviously striving for, but he had neither.

  “People said something about me?” Margotty asked, seeing him shift under her scrutiny.

  “Well, not gossip, you understand. More, uh, concerns. They - well they obviously hold you in great regard - have a lot of respect for what you do, naturally. Maybe awe sometimes transforms itself – leads to suspicion, if you take my meaning.”

  “No, I don't.” Margotty knew, but she had no intention of helping him out.

  The man nodded. “They're a little sp-spooked by you, I guess. That's all.”

  “That's stupid.”

  “Oh well, it's silly, uh, superstition. They haven't been – haven't got the benefit of – don't have an education, ha ha, so you have to allow for that. Judge not, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Well, I don't know what you want me to do about it.”

  “Oh, I don't know. You could - you might cut your hair, that could be p-part of it. Wear some- put on shoes. It could help.”

  “I've got one pair of shoes and they're for winter only,” Margotty said.

  “Yes, that's the way in these frontier towns,” the friar nodded seriously. “Hard – uh, difficult times. Still, desperate times make for, uh... yes. You could tidy your yard? Or you might discourage birds from living underneath – below your eaves?”

  “I grow medicinal plants in my front yard. And I don't use the upstairs.”

  The friar laughed politely. “Well still, you might try – you could make an effort to p-put your neighbors at ease a bit. Try not to be so... uh, eccentric. It'd make your own life easier. Just a little friendly—”

  “I hate advice.”

  “Trying to help, just trying to help is all. We educated, uh...p-persons...should stick together, don't you think? You're a smart girl, hate for the, uh, good villagers to reach for their torches and p-pitchforks, ha ha.”

  Margotty pulled a scornful expression.

  “Alright then, uh, I've said enough.” He put one hand on the doorframe and gave her a little wave. “P-please consider what I've said.”

  She heard him yelp as he walked across the porch and Cinder darted between his legs.

  ****

  It was a bright beautiful fall day. The leaves of the oak over Paul and Lazarus' house were orange and russet against a crisp blue sky. White cottony clouds hovered on the horizon, topping the deep olive of pine trees.

  Irene paced on the porch, careful to stay out of sight of the houses down the hill. She watched the path and worried. The brothers were hunting, Lazarus indulging his favorite pastime and Paul along to keep him company. Lang and Hua had gone to borrow time on a stove in Granny's kitchen and catch up on gossip. Irene had stayed home, complaining of a stomachache.

  The monk didn't approach from the town, but came up from behind the house, startling Irene and stammering out his apologies.

  Irene took a deep breath and faced him as bravely as she could. “Paul will never, never know? You're sure?”

  “No word will ever drop from my, uh, lips.”

  “Even if it is a boy, and you come to offer him a job?”

  “Even if I come for him, I won't b-breathe a word of why. You, uh, have my word.”

  Irene led the monk into her bedroom, her eyes fixed on the ground and her stomach churning. He followed her in and closed th
e door gently behind them.

  “Now, now, no-no shame. No reluctance in helping God with his work. Sometimes even He needs us to lend a helping – needs us to help ourselves. Who can say what His p-plan is?”

  Irene nodded numbly. He reached under his robe and drew out the bag again, and she turned from him so she wouldn't see it.

  “It's good you wore a dress today. Makes it – makes it easy. Just slip off whatever you've got underneath,” he was arranging the pillows on the bed into a pile, “and lay here with your, uh, hips up on the p-pillows. It's all got to run down inside, you see. B-best way.”

  He turned from her and fiddled with the bag while she did these things.

  “Now, now wait just a bit. Takes me just a second. You lay quietly and think of b-babies. Think of bouncing – of bundles – little children, all around you.”

  Irene closed her eyes and tried not to listen to the sounds of him collecting it. He was quiet and quick about it.

  “Here we go, here we go. Just a quick – a short moment.” He slid back her dress and pushed her knees against her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could and felt his hands on her for just a moment, then the unwelcome cool of glass, and then a brief warmth as it flowed into her.

  “Hug your knees tight,” he said. “Keep your, uh, hips up. Count to thirty.”

  Irene did what he said while he washed his kit in the basin of water she'd brought in for him. He was packing it away when she sat up, her face burning.

  “I'll just – I'll be going right away, I expect that's what you'd – what they usually prefer. Or I could, uh, b-bless the womb and, and ask Him to let it b-bear fruit.”

  Irene nodded reluctantly.

  The monk stepped over to the bed and made the sign of the cross over her abdomen, saying something unrecognizable. When he spoke in Latin there was no hesitation, no sputtering. His voice dropped a few octaves and his speech flowed, solemn and musical.

  “There,” he said, raising his head. “Now, peace b-be with you, Irene. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we will meet again. Every day 'till the white beads run their course. Just to be – to make sure. Discretion, discretion. You can, uh, count on me.”