by Austin Boyd
“A second sense. A feeling. I call it my ‘little voice.’ “
“What does it say?” She wondered that a man so strong would depend on something so small and invisible as an inner voice.
“No words, Peppermint,” he said, his hand stroking her hair as he rocked. He stopped the motion and pointed at the base of the rocker. “Would you put your finger under there when I’m rocking?”
“No,” she exclaimed, moving back from the chair and the reach of his hand.
“Why?”
“It would hurt!”
“And what tells you that?”
“I can already imagine what it would feel like, Daddy. That’s not funny.”
He motioned to her to move close, his face a sign of trust. She pulled near but careful to avoid the soiled white curve of the rocker.
“What you feel inside, that sense of the pain you’d experience, is sort of like that small voice I’m talking about. It’s giving you a feeling of what’s about to happen, a sense of the direction God wants you to go.”
She nodded under the weight of his hand on her head, and then laid her cheek on his knee.
“Listen to your little voice,” she said, repeating Daddy’s words while she stood, watching the distant ridge.
A glint caught her eye, the reflection of a car. A silver SUV crept down the farm road, easing through ruts in the pasture. No danger of any mud this day, yet it moved with deliberate slowness, like a lost traveler scanning a street for the correct address.
Laura Ann moved off the porch to the picket fence as the vehicle passed the remains of the old tobacco barn. She recognized the ornament on the front of the car. A Lexus. The tinted windows of the fancy car hid the driver. Another emissary from her uncle? Standing alone, Laura Ann stiffened, determined to hold her ground. Soon, she hoped, she could stand side by side with Ian to weather the blistering ire of her uncle.
A woman stepped out of the car.
“Pumps?” Laura Ann exclaimed with a small laugh, too quiet to be heard. A thin woman in a skirt and loose top took an unsteady step away from the automobile as she tried to shut the door. She wobbled in the slag on her short heels, glanced at Laura Ann with a brief smile, and then grabbed for balance with a look of desperation.
Laura Ann let out a chuckle and stepped through the gate. “Need a hand?”
“Sorry,” the woman replied, embarrassed. She got her balance, then gingerly pushed the door closed and stepped in Laura Ann’s direction. “Guess I should have worn sandals.”
Laura Ann smiled. “Don’t apologize. Most folks from out of town expect a driveway or something.”
The woman stopped, her head cocked. “You know I’m from out of town?” she asked, a hint of concern in her voice.
Laura Ann pointed at the vehicle and smiled as she walked toward her. “Fancy car,” she said with a shrug. “It’s a small town.”
The visitor stood Laura Ann’s height, her skin a deeper brown than she’d seen in a long time. Black wavy hair flowed over her shoulders, framing a broad smile and modern glasses shaped like little rectangles. Her nose was a little larger than she deserved, leading down into thin lips made deep red by a fresh application of lipstick. A printed top draped loose over her upper body, matching a tight pastel skirt. Saturday afternoon in the mountains, but this woman dressed like she’d planned on a nice dinner or church. She took an unsteady step in Laura Ann’s direction, extending a hand as her smile grew.
“I’m Sophia. Sophia McQuistion.”
She didn’t look like a McQuistion. Mexican maybe, but certainly not Scottish or Viking. The visitor closed the gap between them, wobbling in her pumps on the rough drive. “Are you Laura?”
Everyone knew her name was Laura Ann. Like when people came calling and asked for James McGehee. Everyone knew Daddy went by his middle name, Angus. She stiffened again. Uncle Jack sent a woman to do his dirty work.
“My name is Laura Ann. Laura Ann McGehee. Can I help you?”
The thin woman hid something, her loose-fitting top pressed back against her tummy by a sudden breeze. A maternity top. Uncle Jack sent a pregnant woman, hoping to win her over with sympathy. Laura Ann stopped, lowering her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Sophia replied, pumping her hand out again. “Laura Ann. It’s a beautiful name.”
Laura Ann raised her hand slowly and took the woman’s grip.
Her little voice screamed.
Like connecting with a lost sister, her entire body tingled when they touched, something about this woman strangely familiar. She held the grip, struggling to understand why it affected her so. Like meeting her twin, lost since birth.
The lady brought her other hand to the embrace, steadying herself with her grip. “I’m so glad to find you at last.”
Laura Ann’s skin crawled, bumps rising on her arms under beads of sweat. “Find me?” she asked.
Sophia nodded. “It took a few months.” She nodded toward the Lexus, adding, “And a few miles.”
“Have we met?” Laura Ann asked, something inside her shrieking “run!” and another part, the curious girl, holding on to the woman’s hands to prolong the connection, to absorb some mysterious part of her that had been strangely reunited this hot day.
The woman’s eyes filled with tears in an instant. “I’ve been searching for you for a long time.”
Laura Ann pulled at the grip, nodding in the direction of the house. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Would you like to come in?”
Sophia nodded. “Yes. I would. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I guess,” she said, steadying Sophia at the edge of the rocky drive. “But I don’t know why you’d come looking for me.” Concerns about Uncle Jack niggled at the back of her mind. Surely, no one this nice would do business with him.
Once on the brick sidewalk, Sophia regained her balance, and she used her free hands to wipe at tears coursing down her cheeks. “Please, forgive me for being so emotional. It’s just—it’s just that I’ve dreamt of this day for a very long time.”
Laura Ann glanced at Sophia as she led the way up the steps. At the screen door she stopped, then faced Sophia, one hand on the tarnished brass handle. “Did my uncle Jack send you?” she blurted out. If Sophia was one of his minions, she’d have to go. There could be no welcome.
Sophia shook her head, the smile reemerging. “No. I don’t know him.” She laid a hand on Laura Ann’s where it rested on the screen door. “I come as a friend.”
“Then?”
“I’m here to thank you, Laura Ann.” More tears welled up, and she did nothing to stem their flow. “To thank you for what you’ve done for me. For us,” she added, her free hand moving to her belly.
Sophia paused a long moment, taking a deep breath. “I’m carrying a baby, Laura Ann. A child I’ve wanted for so long.” Her voice trembled with a choked sob, her chin quivering as she forced out the next words.
“Our baby, Laura Ann. An amazing gift. Through your eggs, you gave me a child.”
CHAPTER 11
Laura Ann’s heart pounded with a desperate frenzy. Her left hand came up to her abdomen, as if to feel that painful place and search for the part of her that she’d sold and lost forever. Her heart stuck in her throat and she fought to breathe, the screen door behind her forgotten.
It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. “Discreet donations by girls age nineteen to thirty.” “Generous compensation.” “Privacy guaranteed.”
The promises on the radio? All gone wrong.
“How?” she asked, her voice cracking and knees weak. Laura Ann released the door handle and sank into a rocking chair on the porch, never losing sight of the bump below Sophia’s loose top. “How did you find me?”
Sophia pulled her hand back, her fingers covering her mouth. The broad smile disappeared. “Oh, no.”
Laura Ann sat in a daze, unable to draw her eyes from the woman’s midriff as every one of her four trips to Morgantown replayed in her mind. Memories of the money she’d been paid
tugged at her stomach, acid churning in synch with her pounding heart. Nausea overwhelmed her.
“Totally private,” the counselor had assured her during the first clinic visit last November. Mounds of paperwork followed the fast-talking woman’s effusive assurances, papers Laura Ann read page by page but did not fully understand. “Select your preferences for contact with the prospective client.” She checked all the right boxes, sure she’d requested maximum privacy. But something had gone terribly wrong.
Sophia bent over, turning away from Laura Ann. She stumbled to the edge of the porch, steadying herself at the old white post. “I’m so sorry,” she said, choking on her words. “I never should have come.”
“No.” Laura Ann’s heart broke free of the vise grip she’d placed on her emotions and it jerked her out of the rocker. No matter how much it hurt, she would not let this moment pass. “Please, Mrs. McQuistion. Don’t go.”
Sophia turned, taking a deep breath. “I don’t understand.”
“Please stay.” Laura Ann approached her, willing her heart and stomach to settle a bit. “I want to know more.”
Sophia sniffled, then put a hand to her belly, looking down. Both of their gazes went to her cantaloupe-sized swelling. Without a word, Laura Ann stood up and stepped toward Sophia. The visitor alternately looked at Laura Ann, then down at her own hands, moving them slowly over the cloth that covered her pregnancy. Sophia’s chin quivered, but she stood her ground, the post to her back.
Laura Ann moved closer, no words shared between them. She extended shaking fingers toward the loose cotton print. She stopped short of touching the woman, looking up at her in silence. Their eyes met, Sophia forced a smile, then nodded.
“It’s a boy,” Sophia said after a long silence. “He’s seven months.”
Laura Ann nodded, whispering the words again, tasting their magic as they passed her own lips. “A boy. Seven months.”
A breeze blew, gusting cool. Dust swirled off the farmyard into their midst. The cold of a second gust rustled Sophia’s top, her belly rising when she inhaled. A life suspended in this gentle hammock of another woman’s body, moving up and down in synch with the wind of a mother’s lungs.
Laura Ann looked away from Sophia to her left and the source of the gusts. A mighty cauldron of weather tore in from the west, roiling clouds grey-green and wet with fury. The storms were headed straight for her farm. Laura Ann gasped in wonder at the sudden emergence of this squall, blowing in hard.
The hair on her arms stood on end. Before she could react, lightning split the air and struck at a tall spire on the barn. White light burst from the rooftop as thunder hit with a resounding boom. The jolt knocked Laura Ann off balance and she fell forward, her palms pressed hard against the swell of baby, Sophia blocked by the white porch post behind her. Beneath the firm press of Laura Ann’s fingers, she felt it.
Jolted by the thunder and her fall, the baby kicked.
Beyond the screen, Laura Ann heard the phone ring, its tone nearly drowned out in the moan of a hard wind. No time for talk. She jumped to her feet and shoved Sophia inside, then slammed the front door shut behind them. Echoes of thunder rumbled through the valley, vibrations she could feel in her gut.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Sophia stood close to the door, eyes wide.
“Wait here,” Laura Ann said, then turned to the living room window. Through it she could barely see the cows, hunkered down against the onslaught. The advancing storm obscured them, a dense grey veil draped across the pasture. Water gushed from the heavens, a well-defined wall of grey headed straight for the house.
Laura Ann pushed away and ran to the kitchen, desperate to check the barn. Through the window over the sink she could see the shattered pinnacle of her barn roof where Daddy’s lightning rod once stood on the peak of the white ventilator. It hung over at an odd angle, still attached, but less sturdy after the lightning strike. She watched a long moment for signs of smoke or fire erupting from the end of the barn. The barn looked an ugly brown, its bright red mixing with the ochre-hazel fusion of whirling dust, and the queer grey-green light of the storm.
Sophia joined her. “How can I help?”
“Watch for a fire or smoke,” Laura Ann said, pointing at the barn. “I need to check on the doors and windows.” She turned to head down the hall to the bedroom when she heard the phone ring again over the tempest’s howl.
“Hello?” she gasped, grabbing at the wall phone, mounted in the hall. She pulled the cord around the corner to watch Sophia, and past her the barn, through windows now wet with the first spatters of driven rain.
“Laura Ann!” Ian exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
“Barely. Someone came to visit,” she said, just then remembering what transpired only moments earlier. Her past confronted her in a way she’d never anticipated. “We were — we were talking, and the storm blew in fast. Lightning hit the barn.”
“Sit tight!” Ian yelled into the phone. She could barely hear him. His voice drowned in the pummeling of heavy rain, and walls that creaked against a fierce west wind. Ten thousand liquid marbles dropped on their metal roof when the wall of water hit the farmhouse.
She heard little of Ian’s voice, but two words caught her ear. Words that wrenched at her gut. Words that every West Virginian feared.
“Flash flood!”
She screamed over the tin-pounding torrent. “Where?”
“Middle Island … a few minutes …” The phone went dead, then she heard a high-pitched squeal. Moments later, Ian’s voice returned. Her heart skipped in anticipation of losing him. “ — careful. I love you.”
No matter the roar of the storm, she heard those last three words clearly, words he’d shared three nights ago, standing at the edge of the porch under the blaze of stars. His prolonged goodbye, as if working up the courage to say something he’d felt for a very long time. Words that set her on the path to the bonfire, and a new future.
Yet Laura Ann’s past haunted her now more than ever. She watched Sophia, staring out the window at the barn.
“Ian?” She spoke over the maelstrom. “Please, say it again.”
“Okay. Heard it on the scanner. Don’t — “
The line went dead.
Night battled day.
The grey-green of the approaching storm collapsed to near black when the deluge consumed the farmhouse. Phone in hand, Laura Ann reached around the corner of the kitchen to flip on a light. No response. She stood with the phone to her ear, straining against the pummeling of rain on metal above her, in hopes Ian’s voice would return. She flipped the light switch again with the same result.
Leaning over the sink, Sophia strained to see out the window. The barn disappeared behind a curtain of wet black.
Seconds after she tried the light, the room was aglow in a bluish-white, the flashbulb of another lightning strike, but farther away, down toward the Middle Island Creek. Moving east. Wind whipped over the top of the house and created a mad turbulence beyond the kitchen window, rain lit up by distant flashes, their only source of light.
Lightning struck again, somewhere across the creek, brief flashes that lit Sophia’s face. Her brown eyes reflected nature’s flashbulbs, staring out at a scene Laura Ann sensed this woman had never experienced. She pulled at Sophia, pointing down the hall toward the living room.
They walked the length of the narrow farmhouse to gaze out front windows drenched by a horizontal blast of rain. Water leaked in under the bottom of the wooden frames, their seals overcome by the wind’s force. Laura Ann retreated to the kitchen for some dish towels, and together the women set out a cotton dike across the front of the house.
Pointing out across the pasture, Laura Ann pulled Sophia close and spoke above the din. “My friend called. To warn me about a flash flood.”
“Flood?”
Laura Ann nodded, gesturing again in the direction that Sophia had come. “The low water crossing’s the only way out. Very dangerous. You need to stay here.”
Laura Ann shrugged, staring into the wet blackness, unable to see beyond the drive.
“I don’t know.”
Laura Ann poured a second glass of iced tea for Sophia, and then set the pitcher in the refrigerator. The room was damp but cool, the window at the sink opened to let in some fresh air. Rain fell in a constant stream, the sound like hundreds of pebbles dropping into baking tins. Beyond the window, a mini-waterfall cascaded off the metal roof into the farmyard below. Laura Ann imagined it must have been like this the first night Noah entered the ark. The firmament of heaven divided above Tyler County this afternoon and entire lakes fell from the sky.
Rivers of runoff water swirled away from the home, its foundation set a hundred years ago high above the turbulence. Beyond the barn, toward the wooded edge of the Middle Island Creek, water rose into the lower fields, brown swirling muddy torrents cresting far above their banks and pushing high into the hayfields. The rain and woods obscured her view of the creek, but she could well imagine what transpired in the bottomland.
A flood of this magnitude would devastate trees and lowland buildings in its path, sweeping them downstream with incredible force. Logjams would stack up in tight places and sharp bends, dangerous dams forcing water into thundering haystacks of roiling brown water, millions of gallons on a determined path to reach the Ohio River. The low water crossing would be many feet underwater by now. It could be days before the water subsided if the rain didn’t let up soon. Like the strainer at the bottom of a tub, The Jug and her farm sat in the lower half of a huge drainage, America’s longest creek. Every drop that fell upstream must eventually pass her farm.
“You’re worried,” Sophia said. Laura Ann turned to face her at the kitchen table, a cold glass cupped in her hands. Sophia’s iPhone lay silent on a blue-checkered tablecloth. Cellular service never reached the farm, even in the best of weather.
Laura Ann nodded. “Not worried … but concerned,” she replied, pointing toward the rising creek. “The water’s up into the fields.”