by Donis Casey
The boys headed for the barn and the girls slouched off back to bed as Alafair and Shaw turned to go back into the house to dress. Alafair noticed as he ran across the yard at his brother’s heels that Charlie was barefoot, but it was too late to deal with it now.
“That boy,” she muttered to herself, then turned to her husband after they walked back into the bedroom. “Shaw, I don’t like the idea of leaving the girls here all alone what with a killer still on the loose.”
“I had the same thought. I figured on rousting out Kurt and Micah and having them take turns keeping watch over the house for us while we’re gone.”
Alafair grunted her approval as she pulled her chemise on over her head.
***
The two hands lived in a neat little finished room appended on to the tack and tool shed behind the barn. Their accouterments consisted of two iron bedsteads, a shelf and two clothes pegs attached to the wall, a square wooden table and two slat-backed chairs, and a Franklin stove. Shaw expected to have to walk through the tool shed and pound on the wooden door to rouse the boys, but when he pulled out of the barn in the buggy with Mary and Alafair, he was surprised to see Kurt Lukenbach’s angular form already standing in the barnyard, apparently waiting for them.
Shaw maneuvered the buggy around and pulled up next to him. In deference to the ladies, Kurt snatched off his hat. The hat was useless in the dark, but no self-respecting horseman would do without one, whatever the circumstances. “What are you doing out and about at this hour, Kurt?” Shaw asked him.
“I heard commotions. Was thinking maybe I could help with something.” He pressed the hat to his chest. “Evening, Miz Tucker…Miss Mary.”
Mary made a noise as if to respond, but Shaw was in too much of a hurry to allow pleasantries. “We have to get over to our daughter’s place, Kurt. I need you and Micah to watch the house for us tonight. Gee Dub will be back directly, but right now, the girls are alone.”
“I’d be proud to, Mr. Tucker,” Kurt assured him.
“Where is Micah?”
“Asleep, last I saw.”
“Well, you take the first watch, then. Wake him up to relieve you when you get tired.”
“Yessir. Don’t worry about nothing, Mr. Tucker.”
They rattled off down the buggy trail between the two farms, tailed by the two hounds, leaving Kurt standing in the yard with his hat in his hand. Mary and Alafair both turned in their seats to watch him until he plopped his hat back on his head and turned to walk up toward the house.
“I believe that’s the most words I’ve ever heard that boy speak all at one time,” Alafair observed.
***
Phoebe and John Lee were pacing the floor of their wee clapboard cottage when her folks arrived. Phoebe had one arm over John Lee’s shoulders and one hand cradling her enormous belly, as though the weight of her incipient offspring were too much to bear without a helping hand. John Lee was relieved to let Alafair take his place as prop. Alafair couldn’t tell much about his color in the yellow light of the kerosene lanterns, but he seemed pale, the black stubble on his face contrasting strongly with a washed out complexion. His big black eyes looked like a startled doe’s as he glanced over at Shaw, helplessly wondering what his place was in this eminently female enterprise.
Shaw took his arm. “Come on outside with me, now, son,” he said in the same gentle voice he used the soothe a skittish animal. “Let’s take care of the horses. Then we can sit in the yard for a spell and let the women do their work. They’ll call us if they need us.”
Neither John Lee nor Phoebe said anything, but they locked eyes as Shaw drew his son-in-law outside. Both were patently terrified, and only too willing to abdicate all responsibility to the experts.
Phoebe leaned against her mother like a dead weight. Her face was flushed, and the fine hazel eyes were frightened and determined at once. Her auburn curls had been twisted up onto the top of her head at one time, but had now mostly escaped and hung in frizzed hanks down her neck and around her face. She was dressed only in a shapeless, mid-length cotton shift that was damp with sweat.
Alafair let Phoebe lean on her and began walking her up and down the combination parlor-dining-bedroom, while Mary hovered about anxiously.
“When did the pains start, sugar?” Alafair asked.
“Something in my back was hurting pretty bad off and on all day. I was thinking I was having a contraction or two this evening when Mary was here. But I just been sure for the last couple hours. Woke me up.”
“How far apart are they?”
“I don’t know. Ten, twelve minutes or so.”
“Has your water broke?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, don’t you worry about a thing, honey. Mama and Daddy are here, now, and Gee Dub has gone to fetch Doctor Ann Addison. I reckon it’s going to be a little while yet, but this baby is sure on the way. Mary, go outside and set John Lee to drawing some water. Ask your daddy if you can borrow his pocket watch. Then come on back inside and pull down the bathtub, fire up the stove and start heating some water for a nice tepid bath.”
Mary immediately banged out the screen door to retrieve her father’s watch.
“Oh, Mama,” Phoebe protested, “it’s too hot for a bath! I couldn’t stand it.”
“You just trust me, darlin’. We won’t make it hot, just warm enough not to chill you. Believe me, it’ll make you feel a lot better, relax your muscles.”
***
Mary placed the tin bathtub in the middle of the parlor floor, since the fire in Phoebe’s little two-burner cook stove made the kitchen intolerable, then she heated the water in a big kettle to warm the cool water she and John Lee had poured into the tub. Mary was glad to be busy, to think of something besides murder. The physical tasks even eased the continual headache she had been living with for the past week. Mary and Alafair helped Phoebe into the tub, where she melted into the water like butter.
Phoebe took her first free breath in hours. “That does feel better, Mama,” she admitted.
Alafair pulled a kitchen chair up next to the tub, sat down, and began laving Phoebe’s back with a soft cloth. “It’ll help for a while, honey. Mary has more water heating if your bath gets too cold for you. Just let me know when you’ve had enough and Mary and I will hoist you out.” She gestured with her free hand. “Mary, unpack those raggedy old quilts and sheets and them herbs that I brought, will you?”
Mary smiled as she moved to do her mother’s bidding. Alafair was in her element, now, sitting in her chair in her coverall apron, her dark hair wrapped in a kerchief, in charge of the situation, directing her children in the business of living.
Between contractions, and momentarily comfortable, Phoebe sagged down into the water, hardly able to keep her eyes open. She sighed. “I feel pretty scared, Mama.”
“I know you do, honey.”
Phoebe managed a wry laugh. “I imagine you do know, as many kids as you’ve had. I’ve just barely got started and I’m ready to quit. Is it always this hard?”
“Pretty much.”
“Why did you keep doing it, then?” Phoebe asked her, only half joking.
Alafair squeezed cool water from the rag over the back of Phoebe’s neck. “I was always so pleased with the results.”
“Now I think you’re pulling my leg,” Phoebe accused. “You expect I’ll be a good mother, Ma?”
“I’m sure of it. And I think you’ve got yourself a fine man in John Lee. He’ll be a good daddy.”
Mary interjected herself into the conversation. “And you’ve already had a lot of practice, Phoebe, what with all the little brothers and sisters you have.”
“I have a righteous example in Mama.”
It was Alafair’s turn to laugh. “Honey, I love being a mama, love having kids around, the more the better. But I sure wasn’t born knowing how. If it hadn’t been for your two grandmas, I’d have been carried off to the insane asylum twenty years ago.”
“I don’
t believe that,” Mary said. “You’re so easy at it.”
“Oh, mercy!” Alafair exclaimed. “Don’t ever think it’s easy. It’s a lot easier now, now that you older ones are grown up and take so much of the burden off me. I’ve been lucky. Y’all are pretty good kids, willing, never in any serious trouble, at least to now. But it was a different story when I had five little kids under six years old and lived in that old soddy, just me and your daddy. We lived with my folks in that big old rambling house when Martha and Mary were born in Arkansas. After we moved up by Tahlequah, we lived with your Grandma and Grandpapa McBride. That’s where you twins were born. Then Grandpapa bought their place down here. He helped us buy our first forty acres, and Daddy and his brothers built that soddy. That was the first time I ever lived in a house of my own, such as it was. Your daddy worked like a slave every waking minute.
“Then Gee Dub came along. Grandma and your aunts helped me as much as they could, but they all had their own families and farms to work.” She shook her head and barked out a laugh at the memory. “It was like living in a crate full of monkeys. Y’all children are lucky I didn’t go crazy as a bug and smother you in your sleep. Then I had your brother James that died after a few days, and I was so overwrought and depressed about it that your daddy asked his mother if me and you kids could come back and stay with her for a spell. Your grandma saved my life, that’s for sure, and probably you kids’ lives, as well. It couldn’t have been much fun for her, a weepy crazy woman and a ragtag bunch of kids underfoot, and Bill was just pretty young himself. But she never was anything but wonderful about the whole thing, and Grandpapa, too. Why, I think he took charge of you older ones more than I did.
“By the time we moved back home, Martha and Mary were getting up big enough to help me a bit, eight and seven, thereabouts, and I had regained my wits, enough to do what needed doing, anyway. You remember any of that, Mary?”
“I remember being at Grandma’s, and I remember living in the soddy, but I don’t know if it was before we went to live with Grandma or after. I do remember all us kids sleeping together in the same bed like a litter of puppies.”
“I remember that,” Phoebe said. A distracted look crossed her face, and she struggled to sit up. “I think I’m getting another pain.” Alafair grabbed her arm and helped her into a more upright position. Phoebe’s face reddened and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the edges of the tub. She made a little squeaky sound as the pain intensified, but bit her lip and soldiered on. Alafair leaned over her with her arm draped across Phoebe’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, honey,” she soothed. “It’s okay. I think I just heard a buggy drive up. Doctor Ann is here, I’m thinking. Mary, bring me that big towel. Don’t worry, puddin’. It won’t be much longer now.”
***
Ann Addison was a full-blood Indian, half Cherokee and half Creek, well versed in traditional native medicine and lore. She was equally versed in the most up-to-date and modern scientific techniques, by virtue of having been well educated, as well as married for the last forty years to the first university-trained doctor in the Indian Territory. Doctor Ann had brought into the world a disproportionate share of the people who had been born in Muskogee County, including most of Phoebe’s siblings.
She pulled her pony-and-trap to a halt at the front door and leaped to the ground with her bag in her hand. She was wearing a conical maroon straw hat with a tiny brim, straight from the 1880’s, set square on top of her head. Though she usually wore her silver-streaked black hair wound around her head in a tight braid, tonight it was hanging loose down her back, which was her normal practice for attending a childbirth. Dr. Ann was a formidable woman in all ways, tall, muscular, and all bony angles, and she looked at Shaw eye to eye as he came forward to greet her, lantern in hand.
“Where’s our little mama?” Doctor Ann was nothing if not straight to the point.
“She’s inside with Alafair and Mary, ma’am,” Shaw said to her back, as she strode away from him and into the house.
Shaw laughed and looked at John Lee, who was standing at the front of the trap, holding the pony’s halter and stroking its nose absently. “Cavalry has arrived, John Lee,” he observed, and heard John Lee try to muster a laugh at his witticism. Shaw shook his head, full of pity for the scared boy, concerned about his daughter, but infinitely grateful that this time it wasn’t him in John Lee’s position.
Together, the two men unhitched and watered the doctor’s pony and pulled the trap over to the side of the house, glad to have a useful occupation for a few minutes before they had to return to their vigil in the front yard.
John Lee sighed as he sat down, and Shaw patted his knee.
“Nothing harder than waiting,” the older man observed.
“I’ll be glad when it’s over. Phoebe’s so small.” John Lee hesitated. “Things can happen…”
“Now, boy, don’t get to going down that road. Phoebe’s a healthy girl, and she’s got the best help in the world with her.”
“But…”
“Ssst!” Shaw hissed at him, and John Lee clamped his mouth shut so fast that Shaw laughed. “Don’t borrow trouble,” Shaw said, more gently. “Just think about the new little fellow or gal that’s about to come into your life.”
John Lee flopped back in his chair. “Well, that don’t make me feel much better, Pa. For the last months I’ve been studying on whether or not I can be a good father.”
“Why, I think you’re a natural, boy. Just set him the best example you can.”
“I never had a good example myself, until I married into Phoebe’s family, at least. Can I teach a boy to be a good man? What if he takes after my father?”
Shaw shifted uncomfortably. John Lee’s father had been the scum of the earth. How the son had turned out as well as he did was a wonder. “I’ll tell you what I was told before my first one come along. Expect them to be good, and they will be.” He laughed. “Sometimes, anyway. Just take it one day at a time, son, and do the best you can. Try to have some fun. Kids are a joy, most of the time. It ain’t all so burdensome.”
“Well, what if it’s a girl? I don’t know anything about being a daddy to girls.”
“If it’s a girl, then you’re done for, John Lee. Resign yourself to being led around by the nose like a tame old ox, ’cause she’ll charm you stupid.”
***
Alafair wandered outside just before dawn, leaving Mary and Dr. Ann Addison with Phoebe. Phoebe was laboring hard, now, but the baby hadn’t quite crowned, and Alafair took advantage of a lull in the action to catch a breath of cooler air and give the men a progress report. She stood at the screen and studied the scene before she went out. John Lee was sleeping restlessly, fully clothed, on a cot in the front yard, and Shaw was dozing in a chair with his hat over his eyes and his arms crossed over his chest. The screen creaked as Alafair stepped out, and Shaw lifted the hat with one hand and peered at her with one bleary eye.
She smiled and shook her head to indicate that the child had not yet deigned to make its entrance into the world.
“How’s Phoebe doing?” Shaw asked, his voice low to keep from disturbing John Lee.
“She’s doing good, for a first baby. Things seem to be moving along. A little while yet, I think.”
“How about Mary?”
“Well, I think she’s about to vow to remain an unmarried lady,” she admitted with a twinkle. She nodded toward John Lee. “What about him?”
Shaw stood up. “I’m glad he finally dropped off. He’s been so nervous all night I figured his arms and legs was about to fly off. Nobody’s going to be worth shooting tomorrow. Or today, I ought to be saying.” He dug his knuckles into his lower back and stretched until his spine cracked, then sighed with relief. He looked at Alafair askance. “Did you hear Kurt out here a while back?”
The question was unexpected, and she blinked. “Kurt? No, my attention has been elsewhere, don’t you know. What was Kurt doing here? He’s supposed to be watching the
house.”
“He said Micah had woke up and taken over. Said he just wanted to let us know that all was well at the house, the boys got back safe and all, and wanted to make sure everything was all right with us here.”
“That’s good.” Alafair was still unsure why Shaw was telling her this.
“I sent him home,” Shaw continued. “After he left, John Lee told me that when he rode up to get us last night he thought he saw Kurt skulking around the house.”
Alafair was taken aback. “It was like he was waiting for us when we went to wake him and Micah up,” she remembered.
Shaw nodded. “It set me to thinking. Mary told us that he was the first person to show up in the meadow after Bill was shot.”
Alafair felt her heart thud and her eyes pop. “Kurt! I can’t imagine that Kurt would have something to do with this ugly business. I mean, why would he? As far as I know, him and Bill was hardly acquainted, and if he had ever spoken to Laura, I’m not aware of it. No, wait.” She hesitated, thinking of all the times lately that she had imagined a figure lurking just out of sight. “Fire him, Shaw,” Alafair burst out in a sudden 180-degree turn from her former defense of the young man.
“Now, wait a minute,” Shaw cautioned. “I didn’t say I think he did it. It just seems that he’s turning up in odd places lately. He is a good shot. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. So it makes me wonder. But that ain’t hardly evidence enough to fire the boy. Likely as not he’s innocent of anything but being concerned. He’s always been friends with Mary.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if he’s as innocent as a suckling calf. I don’t want anybody near my children who is under a cloud of suspicion, not until the culprit is good and caught. Why, we don’t know but what Mary is still a target.”
Shaw’s eyes flicked upward off of her face, and Alafair turned to see that Mary had come outside sometime in the course of this conversation and was standing behind her, quietly listening to her parents speculate.