On a Rainy Night in Georgia

by Olivia Gaines

She did as she was told.

  “Great job, lean back on your hands while I come around,” he said, scooting about the floor. “Good, good, okay on three, bear down again, let’s get those shoulders out,” he told her. He reached between her legs, pulling out the tiny shoulders of the baby’s body. By all accounts, the child appeared healthy. Well, it had all its fingers and toes which was a good start to a little prizefighter.

  The lady too was a champ. Three pushes later and the very quiet little girl was in his hand. She wasn’t crying but her eyes were open, looking up at him. Cutting the cord and tying it off with the only thing he had small enough, a clothes pin, he held the miniscule girl child in one hand. He tapped her on her little bottom, forcing her to open wide and let out a small squeak of a cry. Holding her tightly, he quickly made his way to the bedroom, finding the oldest and most worn tee he’d brought with him, swaddling her in the material before bringing her back into the living room. Her mother was shivering as if her body was in shock. Blood seeped from between the sprawled open legs, staining the rug.

  The rug in front of the fireplace was ruined, but an exhausted woman lay back on the floor as he held the child. The mother didn’t reach for the baby. If what she said were true, and based on her current state, the possibility of a mother-daughter bonding session was unlikely.

  “Lady?” He called to her. The slim form immobile on the floor. The last thing he needed or wanted was for her to give up on life. He was having enough trouble hanging in this world by himself. Ezekiel Neary didn’t crave complicity in his desire to give the universe his middle finger.

  Something is wrong.

  “Hey lady,” he said.

  The lady didn’t move. The shivering of her body had ceased and her jaw hung slack. Her tongue appeared swollen in her mouth and more than likely she was nearly dehydrated, or worse.

  “Madam,” he said again. No response. A million thoughts of what to do next shot through his head. I need to get moving. Basic first aid. I am trained for this.

  “Fudge,” he said to the tiny swaddled baby who had just peed on his arm. Her little bottom lip began to quiver, and she needed to eat. This portion of the mission, he wasn’t trained to handle. His careful language of using sweet treats labels to replace curse words left him in the lurch. This situation called for the hard stuff.

  “Shit,” he said aloud as he stooped beside the mother. Dirt was caked onto her breast and he couldn’t possibly hope to attach the child. Moving to the kitchen sink, he wet a cloth, adding a bit of detergent to it, to clean her skin. Returning to the mother’s side, he was reluctant to place the baby near her for fear of contamination of her newly born skin. Grabbing a garbage bag, he tried to rip a hole in it to rest against the mother’s body.

  “Hold on little one,” he told the baby, placing her tiny body in the old recliner. She fought against the binding of the snuggly wrapped tee shirt. Her cries were getting stronger, gaining volume with each passing second.

  “I am so sorry, lady,” he said as he used the cloth to clean her breast. She still had not moved as he placed the garbage bag over the side of her hair and body. He rubbed around the areola hoping, praying that it would stimulate the ducts to create nutrients for the baby. Gently squeezing the nipple, he nearly yelled with joy as the clear liquid oozed out. He squeezed again as a thick creamy like substance seeped out onto her skin. The more the baby cried, the more she seeped.

  “Little Bit,” he said to the baby. “I hope this is a natural action for you because I have nothing to feed you other than whole milk.”

  On his knees beside the mother, he used his finger to open the baby’s mouth, and as he prayed silently rubbing the creamy substance over her lips allowing the child to taste the first droplets of nutrition, the baby began to suck on his finger. He pulled his finger from her mouth, attaching the baby to the mother’s breast. She began to suckle.

  “What in the whole of Fuckdom is this about?” He asked, looking down at the mother. The fun names for curse words were out the window. Zeke was entering panic mode. She was in a bad state, and she would have to be cleaned up. Her feet were bleeding. Based on the appearance of her toenails, it was a stern possibility that the injuries were self-induced by the unclipped claws. Her body was scuffed up and he noticed her ankle. The skin was chaffed. He pinched her skin immediately confirming she was dehydrated.

  “I hope you are getting something out of that, baby; as dehydrated as she is, you may be getting powdered milk out them there boobies,” he said, trying to use the woman’s arm to support her baby while he took care of her.

  It wasn’t happening.

  Her body began to convulse.

  “Baby, you are going to have to wait,” he said, putting the baby on his shoulder, patting her back, trying to get her to burp. To his amazement, a little sour belch came up.

  “Good Girl,” he told the infant.

  He lay her tiny body in the old plaid recliner chair. Returning to the mother’s side, his hands massaged her belly, forcing the exhausted body to push out the afterbirth onto the second garbage bag. Another smell he wasn’t too happy to inhale. A gush of blood followed along with the other items which came out of her body that completely saturated the bag. The rug would definitely have to be burned.

  His hand touched her leg. She was burning up.

  “Shit...shit...shit,” he said, moving quickly. He ran several scenarios through his cerebral cortex, replaying training scenarios in his mind of the steps to perform in order to save the woman’s life. The fever had to come down.

  Tub.

  Nope.

  Yes.

  Shit.

  He ran to the bathroom and started a warm tub of water.

  “I can’t sit her in water after she has given birth, can I?” It didn’t matter. She needed bed rest, but she couldn’t put her in his bed in her current state. He cut off the water and pulled the wash bucket filling it with water instead. A bar of soap was not going to cut that dirt or that funk which had permanently attached itself to her person. He added dishwashing liquid to the water. If the liquid soap could take oil off a baby duck’s feathers, he hoped to hell it would take the layers of yuck off her dirt encrusted body.

  Starting with her face, he washed her carefully from head to toe, her creamy caramel colored skin showing through with each swipe of the cloth.

  “Please pardon the intrusion, madam, but I have to get you clean,” he said as he washed her intimately. She was torn, which was causing more bleeding, but he could not sew her up with so much blood. A brand-new bag of shop rags sat in the corner that he’d brought with him to do a few projects around the place once the rain let up. It was all he had and he wadded a few of sheets up, padding between her legs, then using a towel, he made a diaper to hold the rags in place. Her hair had to go. All the hair on her body had to be removed.

  Putting on a pair of old gloves, in the same trash bag he used to put the afterbirth, he cut off clumps of lice filled locks, dropping them in the bag until her hair was low to her scalp. He remembered in the corner of the back porch was a can of diesel fuel for the old truck in the garage. He went out and soaked a shop cloth in the fuel, returning to rub it across her head. Rubbing hard, he penetrated down to her scalp, killing the pests.

  “Crap,” he mumbled as he went for his razor and soap. Loosening the makeshift diaper, he applied the shaving cream to her girl curls, quickly cutting the hair down to the skin. Her flesh crawled with little clear mites.

  “Thank God you are out cold; this is going to sting,” he said, taking the diesel fuel soaked rag over her labia.

  “I will have to do it again a few times to make sure,” he told her lifeless body. “I need to get some fluid in you so you don’t die on us.”

  From the freezer, he grabbed an ice cube and placed between her lips. As hot as her body was it would melt it in no time, giving her a slow infusion of liquid.

  “Couch? Or bed?” he asked the baby, who was his only consort in this terrible circ
umstance. Her little fists were balled up, stuck in her mouth. She was an adorable child.

  “The bed is mine lady,” he said with a halfhearted grin. “You can get one of my shirts and pair of socks, though.”

  Washing her feet and clipping the ragged nails, he administered a restorative balm to the base of her feet, wrapping them in gauze. He dressed her as if she were helping a small doll get ready for bed. He added the socks to her cold feet. An old scarf his mother left at the house one summer he wrapped her head with, adding a shower cap over it in case there were any more critters still hanging on and nesting in her scalp.

  “Your feet are going to be messed up for a minute, but it is a start,” he said, lifting her to the couch. A small pillow was placed under her head along with the warmest blanket he had in the house. He placed under the lady’s bottom, the old tattered blanket that his mother used on the kitchen floor when his father brought in fresh venison. This would aid in the prevention of any seepage in case she soaked through the shop rags.

  The baby was awake again. This time she cried. It wasn’t a loud sort of cry but a soft one as if she didn’t want to impose upon him or his time.

  “Your Mama has a fever, little girl,” he said to her. “I am hesitant, but right now, it is all you have,” he said attaching the baby to her mother.

  “I need some help,” he said, looking for his phone. He dialed the familiar number to the Arch Angel Gabriel.

  He answered on the third ring.

  “Hey Zeke, you all settled in?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” Gabriel asked, wondering what his brother could have gotten himself into in less than three days.

  “A naked pregnant black woman that one of the Macklemore brothers kidnapped managed to escape, come here, and have her baby on Mama’s favorite rug. She is running a fever, I have no diapers or bottles, nor do I have any clothes for her naked ass, girly products, and a first aid kit sufficient enough to sew up her ripped-up lady parts; I had to cut all her hair off her head and rub it with diesel fuel to kill off the lice,” he said in one breath.

  “Well, damn,” Gabriel Neary responded.

  “That’s nothing. She is unconscious on the couch, but she told me that Macklemore has held for nearly a year and that the local cops are dirty. I need a plan and some help,” Zeke said to his brother.

  “I can start driving and be there by the morning,” Gabriel said.

  “Nope. The road is washed out and if they see a car coming in, they are going to know where she is. He would probably kill us both to protect this secret. I need you to get stuff over to me ASAP without anyone seeing it being delivered and I need a plan,” he said.

  “How is the baby?” Gabriel was grinning into the line imagining his tough as nails, by the book big brother dealing with a squalling, helpless infant.

  “Quiet in a weird way,” Zeke said.

  “Okay, let me work on something, I will call you back,” he said.

  “Gabriel, this is making me really uncomfortable,” Zeke responded.

  “Yeah, you may have to give her your name to get her off that mountain,” Gabriel chided.

  “We may have to do a lot of things to get us off this mountain, but first thing is first. I need food for the baby, diapers, and IV bag for her and girl stuff that I don’t have to insert or extricate. She just had a baby. I am using shop rags!”

  “I got you,” Gabriel said. “What’s her name?”

  “She didn’t tell me. Even if she did, we can’t use it,” he told his brother.

  “Then give her one so I can get you some papers on her and the baby,” Gabriel told him.

  “SheNanay,” Zeke said, chuckling. The laughter of his deep voice rumbling in his chest sounded foreign to his ears. His brother was pleased with the sound, but not at the name.

  “As in the show Martin? The loud character with the crazy hairstyles, Zeke?”

  “Yeah, she came in the house with these wild, nasty dreads, in the middle of labor and when she started pushing, she yelled out ‘oh my goooodneesss’, you know like SheNanay,” Zeke said, chuckling a bit more.

  “Well, think of the names for them both. I will call you back later, but in the meantime, let me get on the line. You said she gave birth to a little girl?”

  “Yep,” Zeke said, looking at the small bundle.

  “On it. Be safe,” Gabriel said, hanging up the phone.

  “This should be interesting,” Zeke said as he looked at his sleeping guest.

  Interesting was going to the understatement of the year. Gabriel was far cleverer than his brother ever believed and in the next four weeks, Zeke’s life would gain new meaning as he cared for the woman and child. However, first, he had to save the little lady’s life, who had just given birth to the most adorable baby he’d ever seen in all his days.

  For the first time in his adulthood, he ruefully admitted, the moment the baby looked up at him, a woman had wrapped him around his finger. She also needed a bath and some gentle oil rubbed over her fine skin.

  “I will keep you safe,” he promised the tiny little body. He had to. Ezekiel Neary just did the one thing he promised he would never do again.

  He’d just fallen in love.

  Day Two – Zeke and Michelle

  THE AIR DIDN’T FEEL right. The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling, meaning something was askew. Nathaniel Mann tuned the C.B. radio, listening for chatter. It too was quiet despite the torrential downpour of almost a week. The main road having been washed out by the rain turned the creek that ran under his home into a river. Luckily, because of his line of work, years ago he’d created several paths off the mountain, in case of such a natural, or unnatural, emergency. Thus far, he, Sharon his wife, Rocky his son by marriage, and little Nate, the baby, were all safe. He had enough food to last him for several months with enough supplies to survive an apocalyptic event.

  “Nate, is everything okay?” Sharon asked him.

  “No, something is off,” he mumbled.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “The C.B. is quiet. This is a major storm system, and I’m not hearing any chatter over the line from the Macklemores, that bumbling Sheriff Huckston, or anything else,” he said, checking the fax machine.

  “Maybe the one that got married last year has set an example for the rest of them and they are all going legit,” Sharon said with a bit of optimism

  “Not likely; they are pulling down a couple of million a year tax-free. They are not going to give that up to pay taxes to a government they refuse to even acknowledge. Harley, that’s the oldest one who runs a legit business, he was supposed to get married, but didn’t. From what I understand, the bride to be never showed up. At least that’s what his brother Jimmy Don told him,” Man told her.

  “Hold up; that is not making any sense,” Sharon responded.

  “A fire or an explosion of some sort happened in his laundry and he couldn’t make it to the airport to pick her up. He sent that weasel Jimmy Don, his younger brother. I wouldn’t send that dog to fetch my paper, let alone my woman,” Man said to his wife.

  It was the way in which he said it which made Sharon stop. In the year she’d been married to Nathaniel, she learned a few things about his behavior. One of the things which she respected was his sense of intuition. If he said a thing felt off, then a thing was off. She didn’t question. If he said it was going to rain, she’d grab an umbrella and rain galoshes.

  “Oh, my. Please tell me you are not thinking Jimmy Don did a bad thing, Nathaniel.”

  “Sharon, you have no idea the number of black women who go missing every year. Limited funds mean limited resources for searching or making the disappearances of a loved one known on a large scale. Outside of a social media post going viral, many of these women are simply lost to traffickers or sick men who keep them as personal pets,” he said, bounding to his feet.

  He needed to make a call.

  Looking about
for the cell phone he’d only recently gotten at the insistence of his wife, he slid his finger across the screen. Pulling up the contact registry, he searched for the Arch Angel. Locating the number, his finger lifted to press the button, but instead, the phone rang.

  The Arch Angel was calling him.

  “Go,” Man said into the line.

  “Calling in the favor,” Gabriel spoke softly.

  “I don’t owe you any. I paid for services rendered,” Man told him.

  “You paid for my time, licensing, and paperwork. I did you a favor by allowing you to walk through my doors instead of hanging up on you when you called. Now, I am calling you. I need your time,” Gabriel said.

  “Speak your needs,” Man told him, looking about the home he carefully tended over the years, safeguarding his privacy and life.

  “A young black pregnant girl showed up last night on my brother’s doorstep. She’s given birth to a little girl. The lady is feeling rather poorly after her year-long ordeal of being an involuntary guest of some backwoods friends,” Gabriel said. “If both are expected to have a long life, we need a plan to get all three of them off the mountain. Whoever she was didn’t matter.”

  “Then all three Nearys will need to come off the mountain as one happy family,” Man said. He knew the procedure since he’d done the same thing last year for his wife Sharon, marrying the little woman and giving her son, Rocky his name. The Arch Angel’s brother would have to do the same.

  “My thoughts exactly. However, considering the lack of luggage held by the little lady when she arrived, her trousseau is rather lacking the basic necessities. I’m not sure she even has the meds she needs to heal properly,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s a nice sized order,” Man said.

  “It’s kind of thin, from what I understand. Almost skin and bones, the request that is,” he told him.

  “Done,” Mann said.

  “Clean slate,” Gabriel responded.

  “Not until the moles are out of the mound and over the mountain,” Man said, hanging up. He scratched his head, lowering his hand as tired fingers ran across his eyes. “Damn it!”