The Truest Pleasure

by Robert Morgan

  I walked the path through the lower edge of the orchard thinking if I could get to the rock I would feel better. My bones was so weak I felt something was about to go wrong. A little snake trickled like oil across the path and vanished in the weeds. The bright sun made me feel cold, and I shivered.

  “Who are you?” somebody called from up on the hill. I stopped on the trail and shaded my eyes. There was pines looming way up on the hill but I couldn’t see anybody. The trees was so dark they looked like standing shadows.

  “Who are you?” they said again.

  The pines was a bright black. It didn’t make sense somebody way up in the trees was talking to me. I tried to see who it was, but there was just the trees up there, and the blazing sky beyond. The orchard tilted steep, and the pasture even steeper. Could it be Joe up there praying?

  “Who are you?” they called again. And then a crow flapped out of the tallest pine. It was just a crow cawing, and it sounded like it was talking to me. I tried to laugh at myself. A June bug buzzed by my face and I could feel the faint wind off its wing.

  The pain hit me again, a deep-down pain. And it felt like something burning, red hot, had been drove into me. I told myself I could get through this, for I had done it before.

  But I had forgot how bad a pain can be. You can’t really remember pain once it’s over. A pain has a taste, but you forget it once it’s gone. I thought if I could just get to the rock and rest I would be all right. The pain was loud and I couldn’t get away from it. A million birds was screeching inside me and a train roared right between my ears.

  As the pain begun to ease a little I looked up and saw this dog on the trail ahead. It was a dog I hadn’t ever seen before. Wasn’t exactly a cur, and wasn’t exactly a bulldog, but it looked like part of both. It had short gray hair that appeared brushed the wrong way. I tried to think whose dog it might be.

  I saw it wasn’t walking right. A lot of dogs trot sideways, especially when they’re young. But this dog walked sideways, weaving from one side of the trail to the other. I thought at first it was looking for something, since its head was down. Then I saw it wobbling with each step like it was about to fall.

  When the dog got close it saw me for the first time, and stopped. A chill went through me, on top of the pain, when I saw the dog’s eyes all wet and glazed over. They was fevered eyes with stuff crusted on the edges. And there was slobber hanging from the dog’s mouth like a beard. It was a mad dog for sure. It looked at me like it was cross-eyed and couldn’t hardly see me.

  “Lord help me,” I prayed. I knowed a pregnant woman wasn’t supposed to look in a mad dog’s eyes or it would mark her baby. It was the devil looking at you from those fever-crazed eyes. I tried to look away. I had heard of women that saw mad dogs and had babies that was blind and had fits. And I heard of one baby that had hair all over it like a dog, and moaned and barked.

  The dog stopped like it was trying to figure out where I was. I knowed if I moved fast I would show it where I was. I stood still and the dog growled and groaned in terrible pain. Dogs that go mad burn up inside from fever because they can’t drink water.

  I thought I would take one tiny step back in the grass to see if it noticed. I eased my left foot so it didn’t seem to move at all. The weeds twitched a little and I stopped. I moved my right foot back a little, so slow the grass and weeds didn’t even shake. I tried to think what I would do if the dog jumped. Should I turn and try to run? If I was not carrying the baby I might be able to run faster than it. But that was a big risk.

  The dog was confused. It tried to look and to sniff. It was in pain. I never heard anything more anguished. I figured if I could just back away far enough I would turn and run. But I had to keep my mind on the dog, and on each little step back. If I tripped on a rock or a weed I would be a goner, and the baby too.

  There was a kick inside me, and I felt the pain again. It was like a red-hot wire pulled through me, a barbed wire that tore hunks off what it passed through. The pain made me want to bend over to ease it. I didn’t dare put my hands on my back to cool the pressure. I had to balance the pain with the slow effort of stepping back. Every step seemed to make the pain worse.

  Never have I had to work that hard. Sweat dripped in my eyes and run down my back. My neck was wet and my armpits streamed. My hair was damp around the temples, and it felt like the sun was hot enough to set my hair on fire.

  One little step at a time I eased away. I got back a foot, two feet. The pain thundered in my ears. The dog swung its head side to side. Maybe it was trying to see where I had gone.

  I took steps so slow it made me tremble. The heat come off the weeds in waves, like steam from a washpot. I wished I could sink into the blackness of the heat and go to sleep. Sleep would be a cool shade to slip into. Sleep would quiet the noise of pain.

  It looked like the dog was pitching forward, about to leap. But it tumbled to the ground and begun twisting and growling. The dog was having a fit right on the trail. Its mouth foamed and it jerked and twitched. I backed a bigger step, and then another.

  “Step to the side,” somebody said.

  I turned and backed into the weeds at the side of the trail. There was a flash and awful bang. It was as if the sky blowed away in smoke and my ears rung. It was Pa with his shotgun.

  The dog jerked on the trail and then stopped. There was a wheeze coming out of the hole in its side, and blood wetter and shinier than any water soaked out. The dog laid still.

  Pa had followed to see how I was, and seen the dog on the path. He went back to get his gun without making a sound. I was so startled by the shot I forgot my pain a few seconds. But it come flooding back. I didn’t think I could stand up anymore.

  “I’m going to fall,” I said.

  “Lean on me,” Pa said.

  Jewel run through the grass. “Mommy, Mommy,” she said.

  “Go back and watch Moody,” I said, and stumbled on the trail. All I could smell was the burnt gunpowder from Pa’s shotgun. The air was full of smoke, and heat made the smell worse.

  “I’ve got to set down,” I said. I thought if I could set down in the weeds the pain would go away.

  “You’ve got to come to the house,” Pa said. “Keep walking.”

  I held his arm and took slow steps. Pa wasn’t that strong and I was afraid I’d pull him over.

  “Mommy, Mommy, what’s wrong?” Jewel said.

  “Go back to Moody,” I said. I couldn’t stand anymore and had to walk bent over. The pain hit again, this time like it was coming from behind. A river of hot coals pouring into me wouldn’t have hurt worse. I felt myself falling to the weeds, and was caught by Tom’s strong hands. Hilda Waters stood behind him.

  I don’t even want to talk about what happened the rest of that day. I don’t want to think about the pain of that labor. Whoever named it labor knowed what they was doing. I never worked so hard in my life, and I never hurt so much either.

  When they got me to the house and put me to bed, Hilda started water to heating in all the kettles. I reckon they always boil water before a birth so they can wash the baby and mother. Every time you think of a birth you think of the kitchen steamed up.

  I guess Pa took Jewel and Moody down to the river. Maybe he took some cookies for a picnic. I had just made sugar cookies the day before. I was too sick to notice much. Later he led them across the hill to Florrie’s to stay the night.

  Next time the pains hit Hilda looked at the clock. She wanted to know how close the pains was. “When did it start?” she said.

  “Just then,” I said.

  “No, the first one this morning.”

  “About eight o’clock,” I said.

  Hilda was a big woman that had delivered more than a hundred babies. Her daddy was the blacksmith at the village, and he drove the mail every day from the depot to the post office. She had a manner like her daddy. She worked with strong hands like a man. There was a way she put her shoulder in her work that reminded me of a man. But at the
same time she was gentle with her hands as a cat is with her kittens.

  “Roll over,” she said. “Roll on your side.”

  I turned and she rubbed my back. She rubbed slow and heavy and it helped some until the pain went away on its own.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Tom said. He stood in the door.

  “Stay out and keep the water hot,” Hilda snapped.

  It wasn’t but a minute before the next pain wrenched through me. I didn’t see how I could stand it, yet I knowed it was going to get worse. I didn’t see how I had gone through it two times before. The room was awful dark after the bright sun. As my eyes got used to the dimness I saw the dresser by the bed. There was a tortoiseshell mirror that was Mama’s, and a wire hairbrush. There was a powder bowl and puff, and a little green perfume bottle Pa had got me a long time ago on one of his trips to Greenville.

  The pain rushed into my belly again and I tried to keep my eyes on the green bottle. I figured if I could think about the perfume it would keep my mind off the pain. Light hit half the bottle and it looked like an emerald with a fire inside. I had never seen such a bright green. It was like a liquor or extract of the deep pools on the river, rich as oil. I imagined the bottle held a soothing drug, some kind of green opiate.

  “Push!” Hilda ordered. She pressed on my belly and I pushed from inside, and heard myself scream. “Push!” she thundered, and I pushed. But I tried to think of the green light in the bottle. The vessel was so little it held just a few drops. It must have been a sample give to Pa, a tight icicle holding the green oil.

  “Push, more, more!” Hilda hollered. She pressed on my belly and she run around and looked between my legs. “A little more, a little more!” she said. “You’ve got to try a little harder.”

  I tried to think of the power of the green perfume, how when it was opened something pushed its smell into the air. I tried to think what made perfume so cool, and what made it flame out in the air so. Its fumes smelled like shadows and drying flowers.

  “Harder, harder!” Hilda cried. I was crying that I couldn’t stand any more.

  “You can,” she said. “Don’t be silly.”

  It was a sick pain, like there was something turned wrong. It felt as if something was tangled up and tearing.

  “I can’t do any more,” I said.

  “I won’t listen to such talk,” she said.

  There was a white wall of screaming, like a sheet that went on forever in front of me. I tried to turn from it. I looked at the bottle and it was some kind of green eye watching me. A tree moved beyond the window and the eye blinked.

  “There, there!” Hilda said.

  I didn’t think I could stand the pain anymore. I wondered what was going to happen. Then I thought of the pigeon the Indian doctor had told me about years before. I thought of a pigeon high above the valley looking down on hot wilting weeds and conniptions of heat boiling the air. I said my secret name over and over. It sounded cool and green as the perfume bottle. And I thought of the little jug still in the bureau drawer.

  “There, there!” Hilda said again.

  The pain was the worst it had been, but it was a final strain. The hurt had gone into my eyes. They burned and stung. It was the pain of something straightening itself. “Jesus help me,” I said.

  Once more, once more!” Hilda said.

  I was emptied and collapsing. Hilda carried the baby out of the room. I figured she was taking it to the kitchen to wash it. Tom hadn’t brought any hot water into the bedroom. I listened for the baby to cry, but didn’t hear anything. I was so tired I just floated back on the bed, relieved and cold. I shivered from one end of me to the other. The green bottle was so close I wanted to reach out and touch it like a piece of green Christmas candy. It was lit from inside and I wanted to taste it with my fingers.

  Hilda come back into the room with a pan of warm water and started to wash me. It felt like she was pulling stuff out of me. “Oh!” I hollered.

  “Hush,” she said. “Got to clean you or you’ll catch fever.”

  “Where’s the baby?” I said. I was too tired to hardly think.

  “You hush,” she said. “You’ve got to rest.”

  She took the bloody sheets and put on fresh sheets. She took away the dirty water. I kept waiting for her to bring the baby.

  “What’s wrong with the baby?” I said.

  “Shhhh,” Hilda said. I could tell she wanted to finish and get gone. She was brisk and busy.

  Tom come into the room with his head bent over, like he was trying to be humble. Hilda closed the door and left him alone with me. Tom knelt down on the floor beside the bed. “Ginny,” he said, “the baby is dead. It died right after it was borned.”

  I was too tired to answer him. After a while he got up and patted me on the head. He stood there a long time before he left. I couldn’t think of anything to say. When he was gone I looked at the bottle of perfume, but the sun had moved off it. It was the color of a very dark emerald, sleeping in the shadows.

  That was the first death we had had in the family since Mama died. When I woke later that day I had this empty feeling. It was a feeling of slowness and calm. I reckon grief has a lot of dignity because mostly you don’t know what to do. There is something awesome and sweet about the death of old people. There is nothing but a cold absence about the death of a child.

  Tom had never knowed death in his family. His pa had died in the war, as a prisoner in far-off Illinois, when he was a baby. They only knowed what happened to his pa because a buddy who had been in the prison camp brought back his pa’s gold watch, and a button from his uniform. The buddy said his pa died mostly of homesickness, though he had the fever too.

  Funerals bring families together. That is a fact. Even people that are quarreling will patch things up at the time of a death. Brothers that don’t speak serve as pallbearers and have to be civil. Funerals are a time for forgetting and remembering, of dressing up and feeling the honor and shortness of being alive.

  People in the community will look forward to a funeral. They stop work and get together, even in the middle of the day. Everybody wants to see how the dead one looks in the laying out, the kind of coffin they have, to hear singing and sermons, to see how the family takes a bereavement. But I don’t think anybody looks forward to a baby’s funeral. There’s not even any gossip, and not much a preacher can say.

  I was too weak to go to the funeral anyway. I felt washed out and dirty at the same time. I laid in bed and listened to people come and go. Most brought something, a fried chicken, a cake, a basket of rolls. Some stayed and talked to Pa and Tom and Florrie. Some set longer in the living room with the family. I heard Tom out in the yard sawing and hammering. It took me a minute to think he was making a casket for the little girl. She was going to be buried and we didn’t even have a name for her.

  Some people come to the door of the room and asked how I was doing. Myrtle Goins asked if there was anything she could do.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You have been a friend.”

  “If they’s anything I can do,” she said.

  “Bless you,” I said.

  And I heard her out in the kitchen talking to Florrie. “Did she work herself too hard?” Myrtle said. “Did she get too hot? I know Ginny works like they’s a fire out. How is Tom taking it?”

  “Tom don’t say nothing,” Florrie said.

  “Are they getting along?” Myrtle said.

  “I don’t know,” Florrie said. “Everybody has their troubles.”

  Of course people come to funerals because it makes them feel good to still be alive. It’s the natural thing. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I’ve felt it myself. And it’s a good thing, because the quarrels and sickness and money worries and hate get pushed aside by the sad, sweet fact of a death.

  But I knowed Tom didn’t get any comfort from this death either. As I laid there I thought he was not one to weep and carry on and show his feelings. He would never empty out his grief to s
tart again. Instead he would build the casket and say nothing, then take the buckets to the barn and milk. Afterwards he’d walk down to the cane patch where he was thinning earlier. The cut stalks would have wilted and looked bled and bleached.

  I knowed Tom felt the sickening jolt as much as I did. The bond that held the world together had come loose a little, and you could see human life didn’t mean much. The light was wrong, poisoned by the baby’s death. The empty truth touched everything. I knowed that’s how he would feel, and there wasn’t anything I could do to make him talk about it or feel better. A baby’s death shows you things about the world you need to forget.

  As I laid there I saw why him and Florrie got on so well. Florrie had nothing to do with revivals, and she never cared much for church. She liked a good laugh above everything. I had heard her laugh when her and Tom talked out on the porch or in the yard. I never seemed to make Tom laugh and feel good.

  I don’t know if Tom ever went to bed that night. He might have set up by the little casket, or he might have set on the porch in the dark. About nine he come to the door and asked if there was anything he could do. I saw what a change there was in him. All the spite was gone, and he was humble to the confusion and pain of what had happened. But I didn’t say anything. I still couldn’t think of what was right to say. It was the kind of situation he hated most, for crowds of people to be around, and he hated to be polite and have to thank people. He would slip out at the first chance, and spend hours around the feed room and harness room.

  The next day, before the funeral, Florrie come in and said she was going to stay with me.

  “No, you must go to the service,” I said. “You can help look after Jewel and Moody.”

  “But you will be alone,” she said.

  “I will be fine,” I said.

  It was the bleeding that had made me rest so easy. When you lose blood you just feel sleepy. I had lost so much I must have bled out the fever. I floated in the bed like it was a soft raft. It was so quiet in the house after everybody was gone that I could hear shingles crack in the heat. Nails growled in corners and up along the eaves. It was so still I could hear the air threshing against itself, the way you can in a seashell.