The swirling snow was hypnotic. She kept blinking her eyes and shaking her head to clear her vision. Surely the snow would let up soon. She just needed to keep going.
After what seemed like an eternity of tedious driving, she forced herself to relax a bit. All she had to do was inch along and stay on the road.
Then suddenly she saw something other than snow reflected in the headlights. What looked like a pair of glowing coals was floating a few feet above the road. It took her several seconds to understand what she was seeing. The eyes of a deer. She put her foot to the brake.
Only then did she realize how slippery the road had become. The car began to swerve out of control.
As she let up on the brake, she had a fleeting image of the deer leaping into the underbrush along the side of the road.
Somehow she managed to keep the car on the road. Then ever so carefully she slowed to a stop and buried her face in her hands. Why tonight of all nights did the TV meteorologist get the forecast wrong? This didn’t look like isolated flurries to her. She was in the middle of a damned blizzard!
Which made her think of the family that had frozen to death in their truck after being evicted by Gus Hartmann. The McGraf family. Had she already gone past what once had been their property?
She was looking around for some sort of landmark when she felt the beginning of a contraction.
It lasted only a short time and ended as quickly as it came. Another Braxton Hicks contraction. Not the beginning of labor.
She took several deep breaths and put her foot on the accelerator, and slowly—ever so slowly—the car began to move again. The snow was getting worse. No doubt about it. At the rate she was going, it would be a long time before she reached any sort of civilization. Maybe she should turn around and go back. Maybe no one had realized that she was gone. She could get back in bed and try again another night.
The road was narrow. If she turned around here, she would have to be careful not to slide off the road.
Already the snow was drifting against vegetation and blurring the edge of the roadway.
What if Montgomery had already discovered that she was gone? If she went back, Montgomery would have her locked up. In the tower with Mary Millicent. Or maybe in the cellar. She would never have another chance to escape.
She continued driving forward. Her speed barely registered on the speedometer. She leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel. She blinked her straining eyes and almost missed a curve in the road.
As she inched around the curve, another pain grabbed hold of her body. She lifted her foot from the accelerator, clutched the steering wheel, and waited for it to pass.
Not too bad, she told herself. Not the real thing. There was no reason for her to go into labor three weeks early. She was healthy and had had a normal pregnancy. Freda had said so. In fact, Freda had said she was amazingly healthy. Not a single sign of anything amiss. Her blood pressure was perfect. No sign of toxemia. The baby had a strong heartbeat.
She began to inch forward again. At this rate she would reach the Oklahoma Panhandle sometime next week.
But surely she would run out of the snow soon. Just keep going, she told herself.
She checked to make sure the windshield wipers were on the highest setting.
Her neck and shoulders hurt more than the pains in her belly. Jamie rolled her head around in an attempt to relieve the tension in her neck.
The road curved again, and she spotted something just ahead. A mailbox mounted on a fence post. A place where she could turn around—if that was what she decided to do. She slowed to a stop.
Then the muscles in her abdomen began to contract and another pain grabbed hold of her body. She clutched the steering wheel and willed the pain to pass. This one was harder than the other two and took longer to recede.
She turned off the motor and headlights, then waited in the darkness to see if there was another pain. Without the heater, the temperature in the car immediately began to drop. She reached in the backseat for a blanket and covered herself with it. Then she reached for Ralph and tucked him under it, too.
She stroked his head and prayed. No more pain. Please.
What the hell was she going to do if she was in labor? She would have to go back to the ranch. She had no choice. She would be risking the baby’s life if she didn’t.
What if God was on Amanda’s side?
With that discouraging thought, she began to moan. “I’m sorry, God, if I wasn’t supposed to do this, but I was afraid of what was going to happen to me afterward. And I don’t want Amanda to raise my baby. She might not do bad things herself, but I think she looks the other way and lets bad things happen. Please, if you’re mad at me, don’t take it out on the baby. He hasn’t done anything wrong. I want him to live. Please let him live,” she sobbed. But her sob turned into a gasp as another pain took hold of her body.
When it ended, she stared at her watch with its glowing dial, hoping to determine how much time passed in between pains. But when the next pain started, she forgot to check the time. She grabbed hold of the steering wheel and waited for it to end.
Then she forced herself to stare at the watch as she waited. Almost ten minutes passed before the now familiar pain began once again. And ten more minutes before the next pain. When that pain subsided, she actually felt calmer. She knew what the situation was and knew what she had to do. What she was experiencing was not false labor. Not Braxton Hicks. Snow was drifting against the windshield. The roads were becoming impassable. Pretty soon the car was going to be buried. Unless she found some sort of shelter, she and her baby and her dog were going to freeze to death.
Jamie turned on her headlights and squinted to make out the faded name on the mailbox. It was McGraf. There would be no help for her at the end of this lane, but at least she would be out of the weather.
The lane was completely buried under snow, but she was guided by the fence posts that marched along both sides. Just as she pulled up in front of a small frame house with a sagging roof and boards nailed over the windows, she had another pain—a hard pain that took her breath away.
She took a flashlight from the glove compartment, found her boots among the pile of things in the backseat, and exchanged her sneakers for them. At one time the front door of the house had probably been padlocked, but now it stood open. She shined the light around the small front room. The floor was littered with beer cans and trash. A broken chair lay in one corner. She walked over to a stone fireplace. There was cold air coming down the chimney. A good sign. The chimney would draw.
Working in between the pains, she began gathering wood and piling it beside the fireplace—any sort of wood she could find—twigs, sticks, fallen fence posts, the broken chair, loose boards from the front porch. Ralph was always at her side. Poor little dog. How confusing this must be for him. She would have to remember to feed him and put out water for him when they settled down inside.
She slipped and fell several times, at one point striking her forehead so hard against the edge of the porch that she saw stars. Another time she slipped and slammed her hip against a tree.
Once she had a sizable pile of wood, she dug around in the trunk and backseat, locating blankets, quilts, towels, a box with the few dishes and utensils she had kept from her grandmother’s kitchen, and another box with snacks, dog food, and water bottles she’d packed with her journey in mind.
The pains seemed somewhat closer together. Not unbearable but getting harder. She kept fear at bay with busyness. Doing what had to be done.
There were two old mattresses in one of the bedrooms. She dragged them both into the living room, putting the least filthy one in front of the fireplace.
She piled wood in the fireplace then tore open the spare mattress and pulled cotton batting from it to use for kindling. She had no matches but found a tin can among the trash scattered about the house and poked some of the cotton batting inside it. Then she took the can out to the car and used the cigarette lighter to
ignite the cotton.
She knew that one was supposed to boil water before a delivery, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Since she had only three water bottles, she filled her grandmother’s soup pot with snow, and set it close to the fire.
What else might be useful? she asked herself.
She would need string and scissors for the umbilical cord. She waited for the next pain to end, then went back out to the car and located her grandmother’s scissors in the sewing stand. In lieu of string, she cut a narrow strip from a towel. And she placed the scissors and strip by the mattress.
She closed the living room off from the rest of the house to prevent heat from escaping and continued making forays outside in search of more firewood and to collect snow to melt in the pan by the fire. She discovered that it took a lot of snow to make only a little water.
The snow was getting ever deeper, but she had no way of knowing how much wood she would need and decided she would keep gathering wood as long as she was physically able. She tore rotting boards from the front gate and a collapsed shed.
She would fall to her knees when the pains began. And moan with Ralph whimpering beside her.
Finally, too exhausted to do anything more, she put out food and water for Ralph and spread a blanket over the mattress by the fireplace. It crossed her mind that she might be preparing her deathbed. And that of her son.
If she thought she was about to die, she would try to open the door so that Ralph would at least have a chance of surviving. But probably he would be eaten by wolves or coyotes if he didn’t freeze to death first.
Before she gave herself over to the mattress, she tried to think. Was there anything else she could do?
She remembered a movie she had seen about a woman having a baby alone on an island in the far north country of Canada. The woman had tied a rope to a bedpost to give her something to pull on while she was in labor. But Jamie had no rope and no bedpost. What she wanted was someone’s hand to hold. Someone’s soothing presence and voice to get her through this.
The only sounds she heard came from the howling wind.
At the end of each pain, Ralph would lick her face and put his head on her shoulder. And she would fall asleep thinking what a good little dog he was. A perfect dog for a little boy.
Then she would awaken to another pain. Terrible, agonizing pain. Pain that took over her body and her mind. Pain that took away her self-control and brought forth frantic thrashing and scream after scream. Pain that made her not care if she lived or died.
She would look at her watch and immediately forget what she had seen. Time lost all dimension. She never knew if the time between pains was seconds or hours. She forced herself to check the fire after each one. And she would reach between her legs, hoping to feel the top of the baby’s head. Then she would sleep until the pain began again.
She knew that it would end only if she could push the baby out of her. Out of desperation, she grabbed hold of her knees and pushed with all her might. Which only increased the pain.
She let go of her legs but felt such an urge to push that she pulled them back again. Toward her chest. It felt as though her insides were being pushed out of her body. She was being turned inside out. But the pushing was no longer a choice. It was something she had to do. Along with screaming. She pushed and screamed. Then dozed. And then she repeated the cycle. Again and again.
After each pain, she reached down between her legs.
He was stuck in there. In the birth canal. They were both going to die. Sooner rather than later, she hoped.
If they didn’t survive, she wondered how long it would be before they were found. Would their deaths even be reported, or would they be secretly buried and forgotten? It really didn’t matter, she supposed. Dead was dead. And with every pain, she felt closer to death. With every pain, she wondered if it was time to open the door so that Ralph could escape.
She grabbed her legs once again. And this time she felt something happening. Something moving. When the pain ended, she reached down once again and felt the top of the baby’s head.
She pulled her legs back and pushed with all her might.
This time when she checked, she felt his neck and a tiny shoulder.
Again she pushed, with all the strength left within her body. “I will not die,” she screamed. “I will not die.”
She felt the rest of the baby slide from her body. He was born.
She rolled onto her side and scooted her body around him. The baby wasn’t moving. His arms and legs were blue. His lips were blue.
She pulled his wet, slippery body toward her and shook him. Then she put her mouth over his and blew air into him.
And again. But to no avail.
“Breathe, baby,” she implored. “Please breathe.”
She stuck a finger in his mouth, which was full of mucus. She suctioned it out with her own mouth, spit out the mucus, and breathed into him again.
Then his little chest moved up and down.
And he cried. A thin, weak cry.
She clutched his slippery, bloody body to her chest. Only then did she realize how cold it was. She was shivering. The fire was almost out.
But there was more stuff happening down there. She pulled a corner of the blanket over the baby’s wet body and waited until she felt the afterbirth come sliding out.
The baby’s crying grew stronger as she tied off his umbilical cord. Then she cut the cord and wiped the blood and mucus from him with a towel, wrapped him in another towel, and laid him on a corner of the mattress. Then she wrapped the afterbirth in the blanket she had been lying on, carried it outside, and shook it into the snow.
A new day was dawning, and the storm was over.
She covered the mattress with a fresh blanket, wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, and turned her attention to the fire, leaving a trail of blood with every step she took. She stuffed the towel she had used to clean the baby between her legs, knelt in front of the fireplace, and blew on the coals. The blowing took such effort. And she felt so weak. But somehow she found the strength to blow again and was able to ignite a fresh wad of cotton batting. Then she continued blowing until it was safe to add more wood.
She closed her eyes, relishing the blessed heat that the fire emitted and worrying that the smoke from the chimney could be seen from the road.
She couldn’t stay here long. Just a few hours to get her strength back.
With the fire going, she turned her attention back to the baby. His eyes were open. “Hello, little guy,” she said. “I’m your mother.”
Chapter Twenty-three
GUS WAS BACK at Victory Hill sitting at his desk when the phone rang. He grabbed it and barked, “Yes.”
“Montgomery is dead,” Kelly’s voice reported.
Gus closed his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “Dead?”
“Yeah. Sorry it took so long. We searched the house from top to bottom. Then we spread out over the grounds, but the weather’s turned bad. A regular blizzard. One of the gardeners finally found her in the family cemetery completely covered over with snow. All she had on was a nightgown. She was lying with her arms around the marker for the stillborn baby.”
So that’s whose baby was buried there. Montgomery’s. But he couldn’t think about that now. At some later time, maybe he would process the information. Right now he had to deal with the situation at hand.
“And the girl?” he asked.
“I sent two men out in a truck with snow chains. They managed to get all the way to Alma and didn’t see a sign of her. The service station was closed but they asked at the truck stop. Lots of truckers and travelers are holed up there. No one had seen her.”
“How bad are the roads? Could she have even gotten that far?”
“I suppose, but I don’t see how she could have gotten any farther. The interstate and state roads are closed.”
“Who says?”
“The highway patrol. They aren’t allowing any traffic onto the interstate. Appare
ntly there’re dozens of jackknifed eighteen-wheelers. I’m thinkin’ maybe she headed north, in which case she might have beat the weather. Hard to say.”
“Send men out on horseback. And get hold of someone in that little town north of there.”
“Monroe?”
“Yeah. Monroe. Call law enforcement in any town where she might be holed up, but tell them not to approach the girl. Tell them she’s a psycho and may be armed. They’re to keep her under surveillance and notify you.”
Jamie cleaned the baby with warm water from the pot by the fire. Then she cleaned herself as best she could.
She had torn down there, and blood was flowing. More than when it was her period. A lot more. She tore a blanket into sections that she could fold into pads.
She winced as she wiped the blood off her buttocks and thighs, which were covered with bruises from her slips on the ice while unloading the car and gathering wood. Her shoulder also was badly bruised, and the lump on her forehead was excruciatingly tender.
She pulled on the same maternity jeans and top she’d been wearing, then let Ralph outside and closed the door.
In a few minutes, Ralph announced his return. She put out food and water for him and drank some water herself and ate a couple of crackers. Then she put more wood on the fire, curled up with her baby in her arms, and closed her eyes. Soon she would have to decide what came next, but right now she did not have the strength.
She slept off and on, waking to put more wood on the fire, change the makeshift pad between her legs, and make sure the baby was still breathing before surrendering once again to sleep.
Midday, the baby began to cry.
Probably he needed to be nursed. But how did one do that?
She wrapped him in a fresh towel, then bared a breast and propelled her nipple into his mouth, but he did not take hold. She changed positions and tried again, speaking words of encouragement. Still no luck. In desperation, she rubbed the nipple back and forth over his lips. He would suck a few times and then stop. She tried the same maneuver again and again, hoping he was getting something. Then she held him in her arms and surrendered herself once again to sleep.
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