by Stephen King
Mary Pak, Magda Dubcek, the four members of the First Thursday Book Club, and five erstwhile Dooling Correctional inmates were going. Also along was Elaine Nutting, formerly Geary. She rode with the two lady docs. Her daughter had wanted to come, but Elaine had put her foot down and kept it down even when tears began to flow. Nana had been left with old Mrs. Ransom and her granddaughter. The two girls had become fast friends, but not even the prospect of spending a day with Molly had cheered Nana up. She wanted to follow the fox, she said, because it was like something out of a fairy tale. She wanted to draw it.
“Stay with your little girl, if you want,” Lila had told Elaine. “We’ve got plenty of people.”
“What I want is to see what that thing wants,” Elaine had replied. Although in truth, she didn’t know if she did or not. The fox—now sitting in front of the slumped ruin of Pearson’s Barber Shop and waiting patiently for the women to assemble and get moving—filled her with a sense of foreboding, unfocused but strong.
“Come on!” Tiffany called grumpily. “Before I need to pee again!”
And so they followed the fox as it trotted out of town along the faded white line in the center of the highway, occasionally looking back to make sure his troop was still there. Seeming to grin. Seeming almost to say, There sure are some fine-looking women in the audience today.
It was an outing—a strange one, granted, but still a day off from their various chores and jobs—and there should have been talking and laughter, but the women in the trundling line of golf carts were almost silent. The headlamps of the carts came on when they were rolling, and as they went past the jungle that had once been Adams Lumberyard, the thought came to Lila that they looked more like a funeral cortege than gals on an outing.
When the fox left the highway for an overgrown track a quarter mile past the lumberyard, Tiffany stiffened and put her hands protectively on her belly. “No, no, no, you can stop right here and let me out. I ain’t going back to Tru Mayweather’s trailer, not even if it ain’t no more than a pile of scrap metal.”
“That’s not where we’re going,” Lila said.
“How do you know?”
“Wait and see.”
As it turned out, the remains of the trailer were barely visible; a storm had knocked it off its blocks and it lay on its side in high weeds and brambles like a rusty dinosaur. Thirty or forty yards from it, the fox cut left and slipped into the woods. The women in the two lead carts saw a ruddy orange flash of fur, then it vanished.
Lila dismounted and went to where it had entered the woods. The ruins of the nearby shed had been entirely overgrown, but even after all this time, a sallow chemical smell remained. The meth may be gone, Lila thought, but the memories linger on. Even here, where time seems to gallop, pause for breath, then gallop again.
Janice, Magda, and Blanche McIntyre joined her. Tiffany remained in the golf cart, holding her belly. She looked ill.
“There’s a game trail,” Lila said, pointing. “We can follow it without much trouble.”
“I’m not goin in those woods, either,” Tiffany said. “I don’t care if that fox does a tap dance. I’m havin goddam contractions again.”
“You wouldn’t be going even if you weren’t having them,” Erin said. “I’ll stay with you. Jolie, you can go, if you want.”
Jolie did. The fifteen women went up the game trail in single file, Lila in the lead and the former Mrs. Frank Geary bringing up the rear. They had been walking for almost ten minutes when Lila stopped and raised her arms, index fingers pointing both left and right like a traffic cop who can’t make up her mind.
“Holy shit,” Celia Frode said. “I never seen nothing like that. Never.”
The branches of the poplars, birches, and alders on either side were furred with moths. There seemed to be millions of them.
“What if they attack?” Elaine murmured, keeping her voice low and thanking God that she hadn’t given in to Nana’s demands to be brought along.
“They won’t,” Lila said.
“How can you know that?” Elaine demanded.
“I just do,” Lila said. “They’re like the fox.” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “They’re emissaries.”
“For who?” Blanche asked. “Or what?”
This was another question Lila chose not to answer, although she could have. “Come on,” she said. “Not far now.”
4
Fifteen women stood in thigh-high grass, staring at what Lila had come to think of as the Amazing Tree. No one said anything for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, in a high, gasping voice, Jolie Suratt said, “My good God in heaven.”
The Tree rose like a living pylon in the sun, its various knotted trunks weaving around each other, sometimes concentrating shafts of sunlight filled with dusty pollen, sometimes creating dark caves. Tropical birds disported among its many branches and gossiped in its ferny leaves. In front of it, the peacock Lila had seen before strutted back and forth like the world’s most elegant doorman. The red snake was there, too, hanging from a branch, a reptilian trapeze artist penduluming lazily back and forth. Below the snake was a dark crevasse where the various boles seemed to draw back. Lila didn’t remember this, but she wasn’t surprised. Nor was she when the fox popped out of it like Jack from his box and took a playful snap at the peacock, who paid him no mind.
Janice Coates took Lila’s arm. “Are we seeing this?”
“Yes,” Lila said.
Celia, Magda, and Jolie screamed shrilly, in piercing three-part harmony. The white tiger was emerging from the split in the many-boled trunk. It surveyed the women at the edge of the clearing with its green eyes, then stretched long and low, seeming almost to bow to them.
“Stand still!” Lila shouted. “Stand still, all of you! It won’t harm you!” Hoping with all her heart and soul that it was true.
The tiger touched noses with the fox. It turned to the women again, seeming to fix on Lila with particular interest. Then it paced around the Tree and out of sight.
“My God,” Kitty McDavid said. She was weeping. “How beautiful was that? How fucking oh-my-God beautiful was that?”
Magda Dubcek said, “This is svaté místo. Holy place.” And she crossed herself.
Janice was looking at Lila. “Tell me.”
“I think,” Lila said, “it’s a way out. A way back. If we want it.”
That was when the walkie-talkie on her belt came to life. There was a burst of static, and no way to make out words. But it sounded like Erin to Lila, and it sounded like she was yelling.
5
Tiffany was stretched across the front seat of the golf cart. An old St. Louis Rams tee-shirt that she had scrounged somewhere lay crumpled on the ground. Her breasts, once little more than nubbins, jutted skyward in a plain D-cup cotton bra. (The Lycra ones were now totally useless.) Erin was bent between her legs with her hands splayed on that amazing mound of belly. As the women came running, some brushing twigs and the odd moth from their hair, Erin bore down. Tiffany shrieked—“Stop that, oh for God’s sake stop!”—and her legs shot out in a V.
“What are you doing?” Lila asked, reaching her, but when she looked down, what Erin was doing and why she was doing it became obvious. Tiff’s jeans were unzipped. There was a stain on the blue denim and the cotton of Tiff’s underpants was a damp pink.
“The baby is coming, and its butt is where its head should be,” Erin said.
“Oh my God, a breech?” Kitty said.
“I have to turn it around,” Erin said. “Get us back to town, Lila.”
“We’ll have to straighten her up,” Lila said. “I can’t drive until you do that.”
With the help of Jolie and Blanche McIntyre, Lila got Tiffany to a half-sitting position with Erin crammed in next to her. Tiffany screamed again. “Oh, that hurts!”
Lila slid behind the wheel of the cart, her right shoulder tight against Tiffany’s left one. Erin had turned almost sideways to fit. “How fast will this thing go?”
she asked.
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.” Lila hit the accelerator pedal, wincing at Tiff’s howl of pain as the cart jerked forward. Tiffany screamed at every jounce, and there were a lot of jounces. At that moment, the Amazing Tree with its freight of exotic birds was the farthest thing from Lila Norcross’s mind.
This was not true of the former Elaine Geary.
6
They stopped at the Olympia Diner. Tiffany was in too much pain to go further. Erin sent Janice and Magda back to town to get her bag while Lila and three other women carried Tiffany inside.
“Pull a couple of the tables together,” said Erin, “and do it fast. I need to straighten this baby out now, and I need Mom lying down to do it.”
Lila and Mary pushed over the tables. Margaret and Gail hefted Tiffany atop them, grimacing and turning their faces away, as if she were throwing mud at them instead of screams of objection.
Erin went back to work on Tiffany’s stomach, kneading it like dough. “I think it’s starting to move, praise God. Come on, Junior, how about a little somersault for Dr. E.?”
Erin bore down on Tiff’s stomach with one hand while Jolie Suratt pushed sideways.
“Stop!” Tiffany screamed. “Stop it, you fuckers!”
“It’s turning,” said Erin, ignoring the profanity. “Really turning, thank God. Yank her pants off, Lila. Pants and underpants. Jolie, keep pressing. Don’t let it turn back.”
Lila took one leg of Tiffany’s jeans, Celia Frode the other. They yanked and the old denims came off. Tiffany’s underpants came with them part way, leaving brushstrokes of blood and amniotic fluid on her thighs. Lila pulled them the rest of the way. They were heavy with liquid, warm and sopping. She felt her gorge rise, then settle back into place.
The screams were constant now, Tiffany’s head lashing from side to side.
“I can’t wait for the bag,” Erin said. “This baby is coming right now. Only . . .” She looked at her former office-mate, who nodded. “Somebody get Jolie a knife. A sharp one. We have to cut her a little.”
“I-gotta-push,” Tiffany panted.
“The hell you do,” Jolie said. “Not yet. The door’s open, but we need to take the hinges off. Make a little more room.”
Lila found a steak knife, and in the bathroom, an ancient bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She doused the blade, stopped to consider the hand sanitizer by the door, and tried it. Nothing. The stuff inside had evaporated long ago. She hurried back. The women had surrounded Tiffany, Erin, and Jolie in a semi-circle. All were holding hands except for Elaine Geary, who had her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. She was directing her gaze first to the counter, then to the empty booths, then out the door. Anywhere but at the panting, screaming woman on the makeshift operating table, now mother-naked save for an old cotton bra.
Jolie took the knife. “Did you disinfect it with something?”
“Hydrogen per—”
“That’ll do,” Erin said. “Mary, find me a Styrofoam cooler if there’s one around. One of you other ladies, get towels. There’ll be some in the kitchen. Put them on top of the—”
A miserable howl from Tiffany as Jolie Suratt performed a steak-knife episiotomy, sans anesthetic.
“Put the towels on top of the golf carts,” Erin finished.
“Oh yeah, the solar panels!” That was Kitty. “To heat em up. Hey, that’s pretty sma—”
“We want them warm but not hot,” Erin said. “I have no intention of roasting our newest citizen. Go on.”
Elaine stood where she was, letting the other women wash around her like water around a rock, continuing to direct her gaze at any object that was not Tiffany Jones. Her eyes were shiny and shallow.
“How close is she?” Lila asked.
“Seven centimeters,” Jolie said. “She’ll be at ten before you can say Jack Robinson. Cervical effacement is complete—one thing that went right, at least. Push, Tiffany. Save a little for next time, though.”
Tiffany pushed. Tiffany screamed. Tiffany’s vagina flexed, then closed, then opened again. Fresh blood flowed between her legs.
“I don’t like the blood.” Lila heard Erin mutter this to Jolie from the side of her mouth, like a racetrack tout passing on a hot tip. “There’s way too much. Christ, I wish I at least had my fetoscope.”
Mary came back with the sort of hard plastic cooler Lila had toted to Maylock Lake many times, when she and Clint and Jared used to go on picnics there. Printed on the side was BUDWEISER! THE KING OF BEERS! “Will this do, Dr. E.?”
“Fine,” Erin said, but didn’t look up. “Okay, Tiff, big push.”
“My back is killing me—” Tiffany said, but me became meeeeeeeEEEEEEE as her face contorted and her fists beat up and down on the chipped Formica of the tabletop.
“I see its head!” Lila shouted. “I see its fa—oh, Christ, Erin, what—?”
Erin pushed Jolie aside and seized one of the baby’s shoulders before it could retreat, her fingertips pressing deep in a way that made Lila feel ill. The baby’s head slid forward tilted strenuously to one side, as if it was trying to look back to where it had come from. The eyes were shut, the face ashy gray. Looped around the neck and up one cheek toward the ear—like a hangman’s noose—was a blood-spotted umbilical cord that made Lila think of the red snake hanging from the Amazing Tree. From the chest down, the infant was still inside its mother, but one arm had slithered free and hung down limply. Lila could see each perfect finger, each perfect nail.
“Quit pushing,” Erin said. “I know you want to finish it, but don’t push yet.”
“I need to,” Tiffany rasped.
“You’ll strangle your baby if you do,” Jolie said. She was back beside Erin, shoulder to shoulder. “Wait. Just . . . just give me a second . . .”
Too late, thought Lila. It’s already strangled. You only have to look at that gray face.
Jolie worked one finger beneath the umbilical cord, then two. She flexed the fingers in a come-on gesture, first pulling the cord away from the infant’s neck and then slipping it off. Tiffany screamed, every tendon in her neck standing out in stark relief.
“Push!” Erin said. “Just as hard as you can! On three! Jolie, don’t let it face-plant on this filthy fucking floor when it comes! Tiff! One, two, three!”
Tiffany pushed. The baby seemed to shoot into Jolie Suratt’s hands. It was slimy, it was beautiful, and it was dead.
“Straw!” Jolie shouted. “Get a straw! Now!”
Elaine stepped forward. Lila hadn’t seen her move. She already had one ready, the paper stripped off. “Here.”
Erin took the straw. “Lila,” Erin said. “Open his mouth.”
His. Until then, Lila hadn’t noticed the tiny gray comma below the baby’s stomach.
“Open his mouth!” Erin repeated.
Carefully, Lila used two fingers to do as she was told. Erin put one end of the straw in her own mouth and the other in the tiny opening Lila’s fingers had created.
“Now push up on his chin,” Jolie instructed. “Gotta create suction.”
What point? Dead was dead. But Lila once more obeyed orders, and saw shadowy crescents appear in Erin Eisenberg’s cheeks as she sucked on her end. There was an audible sound—flup. Erin turned her head aside to spit out what looked like a wad of phlegm. Then she nodded to Jolie, who raised the baby to her face and blew gently into its mouth.
The baby just lay there, head back, beads of blood and foam on its bald head. Jolie blew again, and a miracle happened. The tiny chest heaved; the blue eyes popped sightlessly open. He began to wail. Celia Frode started the applause, and the others joined in . . . except for Elaine, who had retreated to where she was earlier, her arms once again clasping her midsection. The baby’s cries were constant now. Its hands made tiny fists.
“That’s my baby,” Tiffany said, and raised her arms. “My baby is crying. Give him to me.”
Jolie tied off the umbilical cord with a rubber band and wrapped
the baby in the first thing that came to hand—a waitress’s apron someone had grabbed from a coathook. She passed the wailing bundle to Tiffany, who looked into his face, laughed, and kissed one gummy cheek.
“Where are those towels?” Erin demanded. “Get them now.”
“They won’t be too warm yet,” Kitty said.
“Get them.”
The towels were brought and Mary lined the Budweiser cooler with them. While she did, Lila saw more blood gushing from between Tiffany’s legs. A lot of blood. Pints, maybe.
“Is that normal?” someone asked.
“Perfectly.” Erin’s voice was firm and sure, confidence personified: absolutely no problem here. That was when Lila began to suspect that Tiffany was probably going to die. “But someone bring me more towels.”
Jolie Suratt moved to take the baby from his mother and put him in the makeshift Budweiser bassinet. Erin shook her head. “Let her hold him a little longer.”
That was when Lila knew for sure.
7
Sundown in what had once been the town of Dooling and was now Our Place.
Lila was sitting on the front stoop of the house on St. George Street with a stapled sheaf of paper in her hands when Janice Coates came up the walk. When Janice sat down next to her, Lila caught a scent of juniper. From a pocket inside her quilted vest, the ex-warden removed the source: a pint bottle of Schenley’s gin. She held it out to Lila. Lila shook her head.
“Retained placenta,” Janice said. “That’s what Erin told me. No way to scrape it out, at least not in time to stop the bleeding. And none of that drug they use.”
“Pitocin,” Lila said. “I had it when Jared was born.”
They sat quiet for awhile, watching the light drain from what had been a very long day. At last Janice said, “I thought you might like some help cleaning out her stuff.”