The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  They was no way for me to be sure when the baby would come. Even if we had seen a doctor, he wouldn’t have been sure either. I figured nine months from the time we arrived at the clearing. But the date could be from any time after we left the settlement. I didn’t know enough about such things to tell from the look of my belly when I’d come full term. Every woman carries a baby different and the size of the belly won’t tell you nothing.

  Sometimes I’d feel scared. Any woman approaching her first time will feel scared, even if she’s got a doctor, and a midwife, and people telling her what to expect. Because she knows it’s going to be a lot of pain, and it’s going to take a long time. And they’s a danger, both to the baby and herself.

  But off in the wilderness like that I had nobody but my husband, and no sign that a midwife was anywhere near. It’s a good thing babies is born to young people. The old couldn’t stand the fear, much less the strain.

  By frost we dug our taters and put them in a hill beside the shed with dirt thick enough to keep them from freezing. I dried a lot of beans on strings we hung from the ceiling. And right at the end of summer I dried some foxgrapes and wolf grapes your Grandpa picked on the river across the ridge.

  One of the best things in the fall was Realus found a bee tree. Maybe he seen bees awatering at the creek and followed them up the ridge. But he found this big chestnut that was partly holler and we waited till dark and chopped it down. He lighted some wet leaves to smoke the bees. We got three buckets of honey. I knowed honey would come in good for the baby. You can quiet a baby by putting honey on your finger and letting the baby suck it. Best of all your Grandpa sawed off a holler blackgum log and made a bee gum. He put enough of the honey in the hive to keep the bees through the winter. And we’ve kept bees ever since.

  I didn’t have no calendar but I knowed it was coming up toward Christmas time. The leaves was all gone, even on the birches and willows along the creek. And back in the settlements they was probably killing hogs and making sausage. I wished I had me a calendar, but it was one of the things we done without. It had come a hard freeze, and Realus had started hunting for meat. He killed a couple of deer and smoked the meat, and hung it in the loft out of reach of varmints. We lived on turkey in those days. All he had to do was take his gun up on the ridge where he could hear them gobbling, and he’d come back with a bird for me to bake over the fireplace. We had a lot of squirrels in the fall too, but it was turkey and deer meat we lived on in the winter.

  “When you going to look for a granny woman?” I said one day when it was nigh to Christmas.

  “I’m going out looking for the nearest settlement,” he said. “I think they’s one about twenty miles north of here.”

  “Maybe I should go with you,” I said. “And if they’s a store we could get a calendar and something for the baby.”

  “It’s too rough a road,” he said. “I’ll go in a hurry and be back in two days.”

  He was right. I was in no shape to ride over the mountains. Next morning he took the gold nuggets we had saved and some deer hides and a sack of corn and rode off on the horse, holding his gun across the saddle.

  “Keep the door bolted after dark,” he called back. He had carried in a pile of wood to last me till the next day.

  It was a cold, clear day, and I didn’t worry none till almost dark when I felt this sharp pain in my belly. It just lasted a second, and was gone. I’d been shelling dried beans and was beginning to boil them. I bent down to stir the pot and felt this wetness on my dress. First I thought it was the steam, or that I’d spilled some water from the kittle.

  But then I felt it was too much water coming down on my skirt and that it didn’t smell like spring water. Didn’t smell bad, just didn’t smell like the boiling water either. I got a cloth and put it on the bench where I was setting. Only when I’d set down again did I think I’d lost my water. And that wrench I’d felt earlier had been a birthing pain.

  It was near dark, as I’ve said. I’d have to run to the spring. I left the beans boiling and throwed on my shawl.

  It was aching cold, as it gets on a clear night. And they was a big star—I called it the Christmas star—just over the mountain. The last light was reflected from the creek, but it was dark on the path to the spring. I closed my eyes to make them adjust, but I had to feel my way along. I had been watching the fireplace too long. I got to the spring and dipped up the bucket of water, still going more by feel than sight. When I stood up they was this awfullest scream on the ridge above. It was a squall that rose like a woman screaming in childbirth. I stood there froze to my tracks and shivering.

  Was it somebody playing a trick on me, or a ghost hollering, or a painter? We’d heard wolves all summer and fall.

  Something dropped to the ground up there, something heavy as a bear, or a big dog. I turned to run back to the cabin and this pain shot through me. It was the second pain, and worser than the first. It surprised me as I stumbled along. I thought they was steps behind me, but I didn’t stop to listen. Every step I imagined a claw sinking into my leg or back. It was not possible to run with the bucket, but I kind of limped and hopped along.

  The door of the cabin was not completely closed and I seen the warm light inside. It seemed to take hours to get there.

  When I got in I slammed the door and leaned against it without putting the bucket down. I pushed hard and listened, but they was no sound except my heart thumping and the boiling water on the fire. Beans is supposed to be simmered not boiled, and I’d let them get too hot. But I listened a moment to see if anything was outside. Then I put down the bucket and bolted the door.

  I took a rag and set the pot of beans off the hook onto the hearth to simmer. Then I dropped on the bench to rest. What a fix I’m in, I thought to myself.

  Children, in the awfullest times you realize you ain’t got no choice but to go on. There I was, with your Grandpa gone off for the night somewheres, and a baby coming, and a beast prowling outside. I didn’t hardly know a thing about babies, except the stuff that everybody knows. I’d heard a painter is attracted to a mother’s milk, can smell an infant miles away. That didn’t comfort me none.

  I didn’t know hardly what to do next. My only light was from the fireplace. Sometimes your Grandpa and me used grease sluts, a rag in a bowl of lard, to light the cabin in summer. And we still had a few candles brung from the settlement for special times. I guessed this was about as special an occasion as I’d ever see.

  The candles was in a bag Realus had throwed up on the rafters. I started to climb up there on the bench when the next pain hit me like lightning followed by thunder. I dropped back down to let the pain pass. When the hurting eased I seen the fire was dying down, and throwed on a couple more sticks.

  That was the first time I noticed they wasn’t enough sticks to last if you kept a big fire all night. Realus had brought in the usual amount of wood for the evening and the morning. But he hadn’t thought I’d be up all night. They wasn’t enough wood to last much past midnight if I kept a big blaze going.

  Just then they was a squall outside the cabin. It was louder than the one I heard above the spring. It was close as the shed, maybe closer to the garden patch. They wasn’t no window in the cabin to look out. I got up and tried to see through a crack above the bed, but your Grandpa had filled all the cracks with mud and grass. My eyes was ruined by the fire for seeing out. They was an opening at the eave, opposite the chimney, but I wasn’t going to climb there. I got the candles down and lit one.

  Something clawed on the side of the cabin and dropped like a sack of meal on the roof. The cabin creaked with the weight. That painter is big as a bear, I thought. The door was bolted with the piece of hickory your Grandpa had whittled to slide in the slot. It didn’t look like nothing could bust the door down. But just to make sure I shoved the bench over against the door. If the thing tried to break down the door I’d sit on the bench.

  The big cat walked around on the roof and the whole cabin was shaking. T
he building shuddered like wind was hitting it. Realus had made the cabin strong out of chestnut and hickory logs, and I prayed the pegs wouldn’t give way.

  The painter seemed to be walking back and forth on the roof, like he was trying to find a place to get inside. First one end of the roof would shake under the weight, and then the other. Splinters fell off the ceiling. He walked along the comb and then along the edges. For a while I didn’t hear nothing, and thought he might have jumped off. But then they was a scratching and growling around the chimney, and I saw what my problem was going to be. That painter was trying to come down the stick and clay chimney. He could tear it apart with one swipe of his paw. It was just pieces of wood with clay stuck over them on the inside. That devil was poking his head down the chimney and getting smoke in his face. That would make him mad and he’d slap at the wood. Bits of clay was falling down the chimney, pieces he was knocking off.

  I’d have to keep the fire going all night, so that painter wouldn’t come down. Your Grandpa had split a great pile of wood out behind the cabin, and thought he’d carried in plenty. I wished I’d carried in the rest before dark. I’d piddled away the afternoon shelling beans and sewing up the edges of a baby wrapping cut down from a wore-out blanket.

  It was the time of the longest nights of the year. It would be seven in the morning before they was any light. I looked around the cabin for what they was to burn. Biggest thing was the bench itself, two big planks Realus had hewed, and the stumps they was pegged to. The boards was too long to fit in the fireplace, but I could feed them in, the way they used to do with a Yule log.

  They was a cradle your Grandpa had made for the baby from poplar wood. He had sawed out the boards and smoothed them with a piece of glass. That could be burned, much as I would hate to. Your Grandpa had also made a kind of ladder up to the loft with pegs stuck in the logs opposite the chimney. I could pull them steps out and burn them.

  I figured all together I could keep the fire going two or three hours beyond midnight, maybe four hours if the chestnut in the bench burned slow. If the painter knocked the chimney down and put out the fire I was a goner anyway.

  A pain wrenched through me and it was worser than before. It was the biggest pain I had ever felt, and it seemed to hit me all over. I think I hollered without knowing it, till afterwards I felt it in my throat where the groan come out. But a birth pain is a different pain. It’s like something you’re straining to get rid of, like you’re awful constipated and it’s hurting and it’s going to take you a long painful time.

  I grabbed hold of the bedpost and I held on till the flood swept through me. That seemed to help a little, just to grip something hard as I could. By then I was beginning to sweat. Pain will heat you up like fire in your flesh.

  I’d heard tell they made Indian women walk before they had a baby. Now white women don’t do that. White women lay in bed and chew a rag when the hurt comes. And they take laudanum sometimes to soothe the pain. I’d heard Indian women walk back and forth along a stream when the baby is coming. That somehow speeds it up or makes it easier. I figured my case was like an Indian’s. I didn’t have no other help, so I might as well try their method.

  I walked to the fireplace and back to the wall beside the bed. It was exactly five steps and a turn. If I walked around the cabin I had to step over the bench, and that was too hard with the weight in my belly. It was five steps toward the light, and a turn. Then five steps in the dark toward the candle and shadowy wall. I was pacing like the painter on the roof. I would stop and hear the pad of feet up there. It was like we was playing some kind of game. Then I started again and counted off my trips across and back. I got up to ten before the pain hit again.

  Every time the pains got worser. This time I found myself laying on the bed before I knowed it. I couldn’t double over standing so I must have laid down on my side. I tried to hold my breath, but that made the pain harder. I gasped deep and long. I thought if it gets any harder I can’t stand it. I kept on counting like I was still walking, and that seemed to help a little. I imagined I was walking to the spring and back, and then to the creek and back. It was so cold outside, the rocks in the stream and the limbs hanging into the water wore little collars of ice. And the ice caught the starlight.

  I counted and squeezed my eyes shut and seen the stars overhead that must be out over the roof and painter and trees. The stars was so close and big they shined like falling snow all around me. If the earth was round I was in the middle of stars swishing and spreading and passing.

  When the pain weakened I got up. The painter was scratching around the top of the chimney. Bits of sticks and dried mud kept dropping into the fire. Bits of soot and mud had fell into my beans. I didn’t want no beans anyway. I moved the pot off the hearth. When I stooped down to move the kittle closer to the flames, I thought I seen the face of that painter up the chimney. Now I don’t think I did. The chimney was too far up for me to see unless I was right in the fire. But I thought I seen that devil looking at me. I had a gourd with some grease in it hanging by the chimney, and I throwed that on the fire. The flames leaped up, and I heard the painter growl and jump back. The smoke and flames must have singed him hard for I heard him fling back on the roof to the ground. The burning lard smelled terrible and smoked up the cabin a little. But I laughed to myself thinking of that cat getting grease flames in his face.

  I put the last of my wood on the fire. Even the kindling Realus had split from fat pine was gone. It seemed past midnight and so cold outside I heard a poplar crack. But I wasn’t cold. I was sweating. My hair stuck to my forehead and my dress was damp. The worst sweating seemed to be down my back. I don’t know why a woman birthing sweats so down her back.

  Something scratched at the door, high where a man could just barely reach. The door shook and the big hickory bolt in its slot rattled. Your Grandpa had made it strong, but it couldn’t hold the weight of that big cat if it lunged at the door. I pushed the bench hard against the door.

  The first ladder peg to the loft pulled out easy when I twisted it in its hole. But the second and third stuck hard. I’d need an ax or sledgehammer to break them off. They was meant to hold a man’s weight.

  That left only the bench to burn, and the cradle your Grandpa had made. That cradle was so pretty it broke my heart to think of burning it. The sides and ends was made of wide poplar he’d smoothed with his knife, and with a piece of glass. The wood shined from the oil rubbed in it. All fall your Grandpa had set by the fire at night smoothing and rubbing that wood before he pegged it together. Now the rockers was made of chestnut. They say rockers out of chestnut won’t ever creep, no matter what kind of floor they rock on. Something about the chestnut wood just grips the floor. ’Course that wasn’t a problem since we didn’t have no floor then. But a good cradle will last a family, and can be passed on through the generations.

  If I burned up the bench I wouldn’t have nothing to hold the door with, and if the painter broke down the door bolt, me and the baby would die. It wasn’t even a hard decision. When the time come I’d break the headboard across the bench and feed it to the fire.

  As the painter fumbled around over the door I could hear things fall. The gourds I had hung up, and the hoes, and the horseshoe your Grandpa had tacked there. He had some nails in a bag, and I heard them go flying every which way. Nails was hard to get, unless they was a blacksmith to make them. But a lot of smiths wouldn’t make nails. Too much hammering to fashion the little things.

  To make the wood last I’d have to measure it out through the night. It must be after midnight, but that still left six hours to go. When you tend a fire it’s almost like you’re growing a plant or feeding some kind of animal. It’s all a matter of pace and timing, not putting on too much wood and not letting the flame die down too far.

  When a fire tries to talk to you it’ll drive you crazy to figure out what it’s saying. You lean close, while you’re mending the flames with a poker, turning over a log so sparks shoot up the chimney
, and hear a kind of hush and whisper. The blues from wet bark, and the greens, will play around the edges of the flames like pieces of the northern lights. You’ll hear what sounds like another word, or just a hiss and puff. But I never did know how to interpret a fire.

  When I look into the fire I see all these mountains way back yonder, and shining valleys as far and many as you might imagine. I can see trails leading off into hollers, and houses and bright meadows where you could just keep on walking way out toward some other kind of world you dreamed about when you was a little kid.

  The painter was on the roof again. I felt the cabin shake when he jumped back up. More crumbs of dirt dropped into the fire, and I knowed he was pawing around the chimney.

  What do you mean, did I pray? Of course I prayed. But I didn’t have no time for lengthy prayers. I knowed I had to help myself, and I got on with it. I had to fight.

  That night I wished I had a drink to calm my nerves. They was tearing pain inside me and I jumped back from the fireplace. That was the first time I felt the baby shift inside me. It was like the baby turned and dropped. A fire went through my belly and thighs. I was sweating something terrible, and I thought I can’t do this. I can’t go through with it. At the same time I knowed I didn’t have no choice. That baby was coming out, and they was a rightness to it. It was like I had felt this terrible pain before. I knowed this desperate pressure and work. Maybe from the time I was born myself.

  As the pain scorched through me they wasn’t nothing I could do but hold onto the mantelpiece. I looked at the stumps the bench was pegged to. They was white oak, and seasoned by standing near the fire. If I could break them off and use them they’d burn for an hour or more and keep that cat out of the chimney.

  Soon as the worst of the pain faded I pulled the bench away from the door. It was a heavy thing, and scraped up the dirt where it went. I kicked it over in front of the fire and pushed on one of the stumps. It was pegged tight to the boards. Your Grandpa had done his work real good. I couldn’t just push the bench in the fire ’cause I needed something to prop the door.