The roar of the waterfall upstream sounded closer, like the air had got damp and was passing the sound on. A crow called from almost straight above me. As I stood still, the hurt went away, but there was a hotness in my belly, like something had been stretched or strained. It was probably nothing. It was some kind of cramp from bending over. I wanted to pluck more creesie greens for a good mess. Because they boil down to almost nothing, you have to gather a lot just to cook up a good bowl. Nothing goes better with hot cornbread in the spring than creesie greens. I needed the bucket full just to have a decent meal. I wouldn’t have any boiled eggs to put on them, but I still had some vinegar to tame the wild, bitter taste and make it perfect.
I stooped over slow and started picking more greens. They are really just wild mustard, somebody said. But we always called them creesie greens. A pain stung through me like you had plucked a tight wire. This time the pain went right down into my groin. I stood up, and the hurt went away a little. I stood and waited, looking at the clouds easing over the rim of the mountains. What was I to do? I wanted to get a bucket of creesies after coming all that way and finding the patch. Hank and me needed them for a spring tonic. We needed something to thin our blood and get us ready for hot weather. And I needed the minerals in the greens for the baby, to help it grow strong bones and strong nerves. I hadn’t had any milk since New Year’s. I had to get a good mess of greens to go with our cornbread.
But the pain in my belly didn’t go away. The throb worked its way around to my side. It was not so much a tearing pain as a hot burning inside me. I tried to recall anything I had eat that would give me such a pain. Would bending over tear something loose inside me? I patted my belly with green-stained hands and waited for the pain to dim again. Surely my insides would cool off if I stood still long enough. I needed to outwait the pain and get my creesie greens.
But the throb didn’t fade. I stood with my weight on one leg, and then I stood with my weight on the other. I listened to the creek and the waterfall above. The pain was not sharp enough to be birth pains. And it wasn’t time for the baby to be born anyway. If the baby was born nine months from the time we got married, it would be early summer. If the baby went to full term it would be hot weather before it saw the light of day. That would be another six weeks, before the baby was due.
I leaned forward and my belly felt a little better. But I couldn’t stoop over and pick any more greens. There was no way I could squat down and gather more. I had got all the sallet I was going to that day.
Taking short steps and not bouncing any and not twisting any, I carried the bucket back down the branch, walking stiff as a kid does that has a load in his pants. Taking care not to jolt myself, I climbed over fences and through fences. When I made it to the road along the creek, I walked careful as an old woman with arthritis all the way back to the house.
Once inside, all I felt like doing was laying down on the couch. I pulled off my muddy shoes and just flopped there. I could feel my face had went pale.
“You look poorly,” Hank said when he seen me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I have just got a pain in my belly.”
“Is it your time?” Hank said.
“Just a gas pain,” I said. I leaned back on the sofa and held my belly like I could soothe it with my hands.
AFTER I LAID still for a while the pain seemed to go away a little. I thought I could wait it out. I stayed on the couch till suppertime, and then got up and fixed us a little pone of bread to go with the creesie greens. It wasn’t the supper I’d planned, but it was enough. I didn’t really feel like eating anyway. My belly was too uneasy.
“Are you sick at your stomach?” Hank said when he seen how I picked at my greens and cornbread.
“Just a little gas,” I said.
“It’s close to your time,” Hank said.
“I’d say I had at least another month,” I said.
“I’m going after Ma,” Hank said. “I told Ma she could come down and help when it was your time.”
“It’ll be another six weeks,” I said. I didn’t want to say I’d rather do without any help than have Ma Richards there. I guess Hank was scared, and he didn’t want to be alone with me when the baby come. That’s why he had thought of going for Ma Richards. Ma could tell him what to do when it come time to go after a midwife.
“I’ll be fine tomorrow,” I said. I wished I hadn’t bent over picking the creesie greens.
BECAUSE OF THE pain burning low in my belly, I didn’t sleep too sound that night. I kept thinking about what was going to happen, and about Hank going after Ma Richards. All night I laid there thinking of nothing but bad things. It wore me out, trying to get to sleep. When Hank asked me in the morning how I felt, I said better, for I didn’t want him to think no more about going after Ma Richards.
“Now that you’re feeling better it’s time to go,” Hank said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I don’t want to wait until the labor starts,” he said. “Then it’ll be too late.”
“You could go get Mama,” I said.
“Your mama’s too busy,” Hank said. “And it would hurt Ma’s feelings if you had the baby and she wasn’t here.”
I felt too weak to quarrel about it. Even having Ma Richards to visit didn’t seem as bad as quarreling with Hank again before the baby was borned.
Hank left that morning after breakfast. He marched out and hitched up the horse to the buggy without saying another word. When he was scared he tended not to talk, for if he talked he might talk out his anger. He didn’t want to lose the strength and firmness of his anger and be weakened by what scared him. I understood how he felt, but if I told him it would just make him madder. I watched him out the kitchen window as he put the collar on the horse and then the hames, then backed the horse between the shafts of the buggy. Hank could hitch up a horse faster than anybody I ever seen. He made harnessing a horse look easy as tying your shoes.
I watched him swing up into the buggy and flick the reins. And then I hurried to the living room to watch him drive up the road till he was out of sight at the bend where the road begins to climb. The pain in my belly got sharp and sideways, and I felt a little sick at my stomach. I put a hand on my throat and set still for a long time, until the feeling went away. Then I washed the breakfast dishes and tossed out the dishwater into the yard. And I got the broom and swept in the living room and kitchen. I thought the best way to cheer myself up was to keep working.
Along at midmorning there was a knock at the door. When I opened it I seen a slim man with silver hair and a fine gray suit. He looked like he might be a preacher or a lawyer. “How do,” I said, not opening the door all the way.
“Ma’am, I’m Wilson Caldwell,” he said and tipped his hat.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. I expected him to say something about representing the heirs of Mr. Pendergast’s estate. “My husband’s not here,” I said.
“It’s the lady of the house I came to see,” he said.
I invited him into the living room and asked him to set down. Then I noticed the case he was carrying. It was like a lawyer’s case, but thicker.
“I represent the Palmetto Apothecary Company,” he said. He opened the case on the couch, and you never seen such an assortment of little bottles and jars and pillboxes. “Since you are a ways from any drugstore, I bring the pharmacy to you,” he said.
“We ain’t got any money,” I said. A pain kicked through my belly.
“Our prices are the most reasonable in the state,” Mr. Caldwell said.
“I’m sure they are,” I said. “But we’re flat broke.” I pressed a hand against the stab in my stomach. That seemed to help.
“Nothing is so precious as your health,” the peddler said. It was clear he didn’t believe me when I told him we didn’t have no money. Maybe because I was living in a big old house he assumed I could not be broke.
“I can supply you with any ointment or salve, tonic or painkill
er. I have bismuth of violet and magnesia, camphor and oil of cloves.”
Because of the pain in my belly, I didn’t feel like arguing with him. I set down on a chair and let him show me laxatives and worm medicines, Epsom salts and smelling salts, paregoric and soothing syrups, boneset tea and poppyseed tea, blood thinners and blood thickeners, peroxide and alcohol. “Now this is our most special product,” he said and held up an amber bottle with a purple label.
“What is it?” I said.
“It’s our Mineral Spring Tonic,” he said. “It makes the old feel young, and the young feel stronger.” He winked.
“I just need something for a bellyache,” I said.
“This is the perfect medicine,” he said. “Would you care for a sample?”
“I ain’t got no money,” I said.
“This is a free sample,” he said. He took a spoon from his case and poured it full of the tonic. The stuff looked like molasses except it fizzed a little. When I took the tonic in my mouth and swallowed, it burned like corn liquor. I felt it sink all the way to my stomach.
“This tonic was invented by my papa,” Mr. Caldwell said. “He spent his life studying herbs and remedies learned from the Cherokee Indians. He walked all over the mountains gathering herbs and roots.”
“These mountains?” I said.
“All the mountains of South Carolina,” Mr. Caldwell said. “He knew the foothills and the mountains of this state.”
The tonic give me a warm feeling, but it didn’t make the pain go away.
“The most remarkable thing was my papa was completely blind,” Mr. Caldwell said. “Yet he drove his buggy over South Carolina and stopped at all the houses.”
“That is amazing,” I said. The pain in my belly throbbed harder.
“Not as amazing as the fact that he could find herbs in the woods,” Mr. Caldwell said. “After all, he had the horse to guide him on the roads. But in the woods he had only a cane to find his way on trails. He dug ginseng and yellowroot and foxglove and konkajohn with nobody to help him. And he never fell off a cliff, though he climbed all over the ledges.”
“How did he do it?” I said. The pain was so harsh it was making me sick.
“Nobody knows,” Mr. Caldwell said. “It was a gift. He never got snake bit, though he killed a rattler one time. How would a blind man kill a rattlesnake?”
“And he was completely blind?” I said.
“He was born blind,” Mr. Caldwell said. “He could just feel where trees and rocks and medicinal plants was. He was blessed and gifted that way. He could play the accordion too, and the guitar, and he could remember everything he ever heard. He could remember how many steps it was to somewhere. And he could tell by the sounds on the streets where he was in a city.”
“He must have been a special person,” I said. I wished the peddler would leave so I could go lay down.
“He invented this tonic,” Mr. Caldwell said. “It was the work of his lifetime.”
“Oh!” I said as the pain jolted through my belly. I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you … ill?” Mr. Caldwell said.
“I feel a little sick,” I said and put my hands on my belly.
“It must be close to your time,” Mr. Caldwell said.
“I’m afraid it is,” I said.
“I’ll come through again,” he said. “Perhaps you will need something for the baby in the future.”
“Might be,” I said.
Mr. Caldwell starting packing all the medicines back in his case. He handed me a little bottle of the tonic. “You keep this,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and pressed both hands to my stomach.
“I wish you luck with the baby,” Mr. Caldwell said. He acted in a hurry.
“Thank you,” I said, but another pain swelled through me and I turned my face away.
MY TROUBLES WASN’T over after the peddler finally left. Instead of getting better, the pain in my belly got worse. It was getting up toward dinnertime, but I didn’t feel like fixing anything to eat, and I didn’t feel like eating either. My belly was uneasy as quicksand. What if this is the baby coming? I thought. What if this is birth pains? But the baby couldn’t be due for more than a month according to my figures. What I had must be appendicitis or locked bowels, or some kind of tumor inside me.
I looked up the road, but there was no sign of Hank or the buggy. The closest neighbor was George and Hester Poole a mile and a half down the road. Even if I got out on the porch and screamed nobody would hear. I was alone in the house, and I was alone in the deep valley.
The best way to fight pain is to ignore it. I would make some hot cornbread, to have for supper, and if I felt like eating a bite for dinner I could. But soon as I walked into the kitchen and bent over the meal bin, a new pain hit me, sharp as a piece of steel rammed through my bowels. It was a different kind of pain. It was bigger than any pain I had ever felt. The thought crossed my mind that it was the pain of a giant that had struck me by mistake.
The force of the pain was so hard I couldn’t stand up straight until it passed. And when it weakened a little I stumbled to the table and braced myself by holding on to the back of a chair. I felt weak and trembly as a cobweb. What is this? I said to myself. I knowed this was a different kind of pain. It roared through my bones. But as the pain lessened I gathered my strength and limped back slow to the living room. Did I have a busted appendix? Should I get out on the road and try to walk for help? There wasn’t a doctor on Gap Creek, so even if I walked to Elizabeth’s or Joanne’s or the preacher’s house, there wasn’t much they could do. Was there something in Mr. Pendergast’s house for the pain? The laudanum had been used up when Mr. Pendergast died. All I had was Mr. Caldwell’s little bottle of tonic. And then I remembered there had been a little corn liquor on the shelf where Mr. Pendergast kept his medicines. Maybe a drink of liquor would soothe whatever was wrong inside me.
I went back to the kitchen and was about to reach up on the shelf for the whiskey when the pain hit me again. The pain come from the side like a train slammed into me. The pain was so bad I lost my breath and gasped like somebody hit on the back. “Eiiiie!” I screamed without meaning to. It felt like this pain was worser than the last. I held to the edge of the shelf, like my legs couldn’t bear my weight. “Oh God,” I said without thinking about it.
The pain drove down into my belly like a steel spike hammered into my groin, a long steel spike drove on and on. I thought I was going to fall, but gripped the shelf board and rode the pain. I rode the pain like it was a bucking horse and I was about to be throwed over the wall of a gully. The pain blowed up inside me and rose and rose and I couldn’t escape it, for the pain was right in the center of me.
As the pain begun to fade I thought my legs was going to crumble. I held on to the shelf and felt the sweat all over me. The pain was burning hot and sweat dampened my forehead and temples. Pain is like a terrible heat. I felt like somebody that had been scorched in a furnace. But as my strength returned I reached for the pint jar of liquor. It was about half full. I took the jar to the table and unscrewed the lid. The fumes flared up around my face. I took a quick drink, so it would go down without me tasting it. The whiskey burned my throat but felt calm and settling in my belly. I screwed the lid back on the jar.
As I walked back to the living room it was clear I was having birth pains. It was the easing away and the spell between the pains that showed me. How long had it been between seizures? I tried to recall what I had heard about labor pains. If you knowed the time between them you could figure when the baby was coming. I tried to think what else I remembered about delivering babies. For I was on my own, and there was no way I could stop the baby from coming. It might be dark before Hank and Ma Richards arrived, and that was hours away. I tried to think what I would need to do. I tried to think what things I would have to have. We had to boil water when Mama give birth to my younger sister and Masenier. And we used a lot of clean washcloths and towels.
T
hey say Indian women used to go out in the woods and have a baby on their own. They would walk up and down a riverbank until the baby was ready to come. And then they would pull it out of their-selves and chew the birth cord in two. I didn’t see how they had the strength with all the pain. I limped to the closet and got a bunch of clean towels and washcloths. And I put wood in the cookstove to build the fire up. I was about to take the towels to the bedroom but wondered if that was the best place to go. Would it be better to have the baby in the bedroom, or close to the fireplace in the living room? Or would the kitchen floor be the best place? I could put a blanket on the kitchen floor and then clean it all up later. The hot water would be close by in the kitchen. That seemed like the best plan.
Quick, before the next pain come, I put water on the stove to boil. And I swept the kitchen floor clean as I could. There was still red silt from the flood in the cracks of the boards, but I cleaned it all I could and spread a blanket and quilt on the floor in front of the stove and laid the towels and washcloths beside it. I even got a pillow from the bedroom and put it on the quilt.
Even though I knowed it was coming, I was not prepared for the force of the next pain. It come from behind, like a saw ripping through my backbone and innards. The teeth of the saw felt an inch long and so dull they tore flesh in gobs and strings. What am I going to do? I thought. I can’t stand this much suffering. I can’t do this all by myself. The pain was so hard my legs folded under me and I sunk down on the quilt. I laid down on my side trying to ease the hurt. I curled up trying to make it hurt less. Nothing helped. I pushed the palm of my hand against my back and that helped a little. The pain was a wall slamming into me. I seen the pain was going to get worse, not better. The pain was going to be worser than anything I had ever imagined.
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