Whisper Town

by Patricia Hickman

  “Freda’s been so busy at the store, she’s about to shoot me as it is wanting a new floor in the back room. Both of us nearly fell through stacking up cans,” said Will. “We been up late every night this week trying to figure out how to keep the store going.”

  “You know of anyone down around Tempest’s Bog that might take her in? Or at least figure out who come up missing a newborn? The way I figure it, you can’t hide secrets like that too long, not in this county.” Jeb jiggled the basket the entire time that he spoke, trying to appease this angry little god.

  Will sat back in his chair, clamped his hands on each knee, and then laughed. “I never seen a preacher get hisself into so many fixes as you, Reverend!”

  “Boys, this is serious,” said Jeb.

  Myrtle had stayed up most of the night and then sprayed her breakfast all over his good tie.

  “Reverend, ain’t you ever been around babies before?” asked Floyd. “They don’t sleep for the first year or so.”

  “I can’t take going without sleep, Floyd. A man’s not made for such things.”

  Myrtle’s hand lifted and came over her face as though she fanned flies, but her eyelids drooped. She took a breath and then fell asleep.

  Jeb crept to a pew and set the basket down. “Let’s meet at the front of the church.”

  The men carted chairs up the aisle, following Jeb and creeping so as not to make a sound or bump a chair against a pew arm.

  “First order of business,” said Jeb. “Let’s pray.”

  3

  TUESDAYS BROUGHT WOMEN OUT INTO THE yards to do the wash and air linens on the clotheslines. As Jeb motored away from the churchyard, he had a silent conversation with a housewife he passed along the way, imagining how he might deliver Myrtle into the happy matron’s arms and then, having done his preacherly duties, hop back into his Ford and drive away in search of more holy exploits.

  Not a thought about his Wednesday-evening message had come to him all morning, his mind too dammed up with worry over what to do about Myrtle. He drove over Marvelous Crossing, past Fern’s cottage beyond the pond, and then made the right turn down the lane that would lead to the house of the only doctor in Nazareth, Dr. Forrester.

  When he pulled up and parked next to the picket fence, he tipped his hat at a teenage girl seated out on the porch. He thought he recognized her from Angel’s class, but she did not appear to know him. “Dr. Forrester around?” he asked.

  “My aunt’s inside with her baby, my cousin Ben. He’s got colic and keeps the whole house up all night. Be fine with me if they just leave him here.”

  “You say he’s got colic? Can the doctor give a baby something to help it sleep?” Jeb hefted Myrtle’s basket out of the front seat of the truck.

  The girl shrugged and fell back into a stupor.

  He waited outside the doctor’s front door until Mrs. Forrester appeared and opened the door for him. Jeb felt relief when she smiled back at him.

  “Reverend Nubey, what you bringing to us today?” She looked surprised.

  Myrtle’s eyes were open wide now and she nuzzled the blankets around her.

  “Someone dropped off a baby girl in the middle of the night, Mrs. Forrester.”

  “Terrible times we live in, Reverend.”

  “Mystery to me why they’d drop a baby off on my porch.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “The note in her basket named her Myrtle. No last name.”

  The teenage girl’s aunt came out of the doctor’s house holding her baby. “Let’s go, Shirley.” The two females climbed into a buggy parked next to Jeb’s truck.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Dr. Forrester.

  “Someone dropped a baby off on the preacher’s doorstep, Stu.”

  Jeb smiled at Thelma Forrester. She returned the smile but kept her distance.

  The doctor invited Jeb inside. The house smelled like Mrs. Forrester had stewed persimmons. A row of family photos stared back from a piano top, a well-kept lot of grown children sitting with the Forresters’ next generation posed around the adults in sailor-type costumes, the kind rich kids were forced to wear well into puberty.

  “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee, Stu.” Mrs. Forrester disappeared behind a green kitchen door. The parlor steamed up again.

  “Doc, I got my hands full as it is with the Welbys and I don’t have a woman around the house to see to this child’s needs,” said Jeb.

  Dr. Forrester lifted Myrtle out of the basket. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  “All I had to give her was milk from the icebox.”

  “Cow’s milk makes them sick, Reverend. What you need is a wet nurse.”

  “I need a home for this baby.”

  “Thelma, could you come and change this baby for the reverend?” Thelma appeared, her face red and damp. Dr. Forrester placed the baby in her arms.

  Jeb watched her lift the baby expertly and whisk her into the next room. He slumped down into a chair. “I’m grateful to you, Doc. Angel changed her before school. Diaper handling is not my calling, so to speak.”

  “You thought about driving her out to Tempest’s Bog, asking the families if they know of a girl who may have gotten herself in trouble? Could be this baby belonged to a girl too young to care for her.”

  “I’m headed that way, but truth be told, I don’t have it in me to track down her family. Myrtle kept me up all night. One end of her or the other, it seems, always needs fixing. She’s troubled, I believe.”

  “She’s a healthy girl. Newborns take their time about getting their days and nights straightened out. They don’t know when it’s time to go to bed, only when they’re hungry or wet.”

  “You know of a foundlings’ home or some such that would have women who could care for her?”

  “Only orphans’ home I heard of was up in Batesville. They shut it down in ’31, from what I hear.”

  “Well, hang it, Doc! There’s got to be a solution to this here dilemma other than the fact I need to go out in search of mother’s milk.”

  Dr. Forrester pulled out a slip of paper and wrote a name on it. “Only wet nurse in town is a handful herself, but she could give you what you need. Had a baby out of wedlock and she’s been hiring herself out to a couple of the town’s wealthy mothers. Can’t say as I know of a perfect wet nurse. They all tend to be a rough lot.”

  “You saying I have to pay this woman for her services to feed Myrtle?”

  “She lives right outside town. Follow Main through downtown and then on out to Bellow’s Pond. She lives in a shack with her other two children and her own baby. Name’s Belinda Tatum.”

  “Here’s your bundle, Reverend, all clean and fresh.” Thelma slipped Myrtle into Jeb’s arms again. “You’ve got a dozen diapers under those blankets. If I were you, I’d make a place for them other than right under her. She’ll need a clean one again soon. You may as well drop in at the Woolworth’s and pick up a couple dozen more diapers while you’re at it.”

  “I wish you the best of luck, Reverend. You’re the best-natured man I’ve ever met. I figure that when word of a good reputation spreads, things like this happen,” said the doctor.

  “You’re an instrument of God.” Thelma leaned over and stroked Myrtle’s face. “Couldn’t have asked for a prettier baby.”

  Jeb headed straight for Tempest’s Bog. The rest of his day would not be spent in folding diapers or in dealing with a hard-to-get-along-with wet nurse.

  He checked his watch. The noon hour had come and gone and he still had not gone to see Fern. Oz Mills had taken up permanent residence in Nazareth and that was a bother.

  Myrtle sighed.

  Jeb’s memory of Tempest’s Bog was a blur. He had been through the neighborhood once when he’d heard of a sick woman dying of the influenza. He’d never found her even after he had asked around, house to house, for a solid hour. Since then, he had not gotten any requests to visit Tempest’s Bog. It was prettier than its name in the daylight with
sunlight bleeding through the tree limbs like fairy highways. The sky overhead had blued up nicer than it had been at dawn when Myrtle had engaged him in the battle of wits that he had lost.

  An old railroad station had been built right next to the crossroads. The sign on the station read TEMPEST’S BOG, the only indicator that he had officially come into the community.

  Tempest’s Bog was a place that had grown up like a sixth toe on the town’s foot, as though it was a part of Nazareth for tax purposes, but otherwise a neglected appendage on the south side. Three men propped their chairs against the station’s east office entrance. One whittled soft wood while the other two passed a beverage back and forth. It was tucked into a wrinkled brown bag stained from a lot of use.

  Jeb rolled down his window. “Afternoon, fellers. Name’s Reverend Nubey, Church in the Dell.”

  Two of the men would not look up, but the whittler, minding his p’s and q’s, said, “Same to you.”

  “You lost, Preacher?” one of the other men asked.

  “I got something that don’t belong to me,” Jeb answered.

  “If it’s a bag of money, it belongs to me,” the third man finally spoke up.

  All three of them laughed out loud. One tucked his bottle into the side pocket of his brown overshirt.

  Myrtle cried out. Jeb leaned over her and jiggled the basket. The rocking had lost its effect. She wailed until Jeb poked the bottle into her mouth. For now, the cow’s milk would have to suffice.

  He told the men, “Someone dropped a baby off on my porch last night. The doctor said I should try asking house to house.”

  “Horace, you know of anyone missing a baby?” one man asked the other.

  The men all shook their heads. “We got several new babies on our road, but they all accounted for, best I can remember.” The whittler stopped his whittling.

  “Maybe it’s best I ask around anyway,” said Jeb.

  “You can ask all you want, mister, but I’m telling you, we don’t have no one missing a child.”

  “You saying she’s colored?” one of the men asked Jeb.

  Jeb nodded. He gunned the engine. It ground to a start and he threw the truck into gear. The men stared after him as he drove down Tempest’s Lane.

  Jeb knocked on the doors of three houses, each time holding Myrtle up to the person’s face when they opened the door. Some people sat out on their porches. When one group of men and women saw Jeb hauling a basket of crying baby down the street, they went inside and slammed the door closed. Jeb knocked anyway. He heard yelling from inside. Finally the door opened. A young girl, a teen of about fifteen, poked her head through the open door. She had combed her hair into tidy rows that started at her forehead and stopped at her neck. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You ever see this baby before?” Jeb asked.

  She closed the door but then cracked it open. She could not take her eyes off Myrtle, who stared out of the pink blanket. “She’s not mine, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Is your momma about?”

  The door closed. Jeb thought he had been left alone for good until the door was forced open.

  “Get gone, mister!” The woman had a wide girth and full lips that flowered open when angry.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m just trying to find the mother of this baby.”

  The taut lines in her face relaxed. “Baby?” She studied the contents of the basket. Then she said to Jeb, “Where’d you get a baby?”

  “My front porch.”

  “Who exactly are you?”

  “Reverend Jeb Nubey, Church in the Dell.” He would have extended his hand but couldn’t, so he tried his best to smile.

  “Jackie, you get out here!” she shouted.

  The teenage girl appeared, this time her face more sullen than before. “What I do?”

  “You hear of any girl out having a baby? Maybe don’t want her folks to know?”

  Jackie shrugged.

  “You lie and I can tell and God can tell, so you may as well come out with it.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Jeb told her, “I’ve been all up and down the street asking and no one knows a thing about her. You wouldn’t know of a family that would take her in, would you?”

  “Whites don’t want her, my guess?” The woman’s mouth lifted at one corner.

  “I’m not married and I’ve already taken in three youngens. Don’t seem right for this little girl to be brought up without a proper momma.”

  A large man appeared behind the woman. “It’s a girl, you say.” He didn’t smile at all and his face was without any expression.

  Jackie whispered something to her mother that Jeb could not hear.

  “Take her, Monette,” said the man. He looked up at Jeb. “Leave her here. You can be on your way.”

  “Preacher, don’t leave her!” Jackie grabbed the basket before Jeb could set it on the porch.

  “Shut up, girl!” The man was angry. He grabbed her by the shoulder. “I told you to stop mouthing off or you’d get it!”

  “Jackie, go on into the kitchen,” her mother told her.

  Jackie did as she was told but kept yelling, “He’s not my daddy” and crying.

  Jeb backed away. He held the basket close to him. The big man took a step forward onto the porch. Jeb turned and ran to his truck, jostling Myrtle. She whimpered.

  He heard the man swearing at him from the front porch. From an upstairs window, the curtain came open. Jackie waved from behind the glass, as though she shooed Jeb and Myrtle away.

  The sun had now fully bloomed into afternoon. It felt like summer. The bog part of Tempest’s Bog heated up like mud stew.

  Jeb drove them away from Tempest’s Bog. “We’re going to go and meet your dinner, little girl,” he said. “She’d best be nice.”

  “Who told you about me?” Belinda Tatum was a stout woman, at least as young as twenty. She was missing a bottom tooth. When she talked, she had a matter-of-fact tone, but she drew back her shoulders as though she expected a fight.

  Jeb stuck out his hand. “Dr. Forrester sent me over.”

  “Oh, him. Sometimes the women around town talk about me. That’s why I asked. I guess you want me to come over to your place?”

  Jeb had not thought that far ahead. “I’d be grateful if you could. I don’t know anything about babies or feedings.”

  “I come morning and night. I just weaned a kid from up north of town, so this is a good time.”

  “I’ll give you my address.”

  “I charge five dollars a week and that’s not negotiable.”

  Jeb felt the color drain from his face.

  “It pays the grocery bill, and ’sides all that, Doc says I give the best milk in the county.”

  Jeb expected her to moo.

  “You try and keep her on cow’s milk and see if she don’t get sick. Babies can’t tolerate cow’s milk, you know. You try putting her on dairy and see if she don’t die.”

  “This is just until I can find her a good family.” He handed Belinda the address.

  “You’re giving away your baby?”

  “Myrtle’s not mine. She was left on my porch.”

  “I got a cousin named Myrtle. Can I see her?”

  “Here, come out to the truck.”

  Belinda followed Jeb out, her arms still full of her own wriggling baby boy. She peeked through the truck window. “Reverend, she’s a Nigra baby.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t think she’ll mind.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I can’t do that at all.” Belinda backed away from the truck.

  “You seem like a reasonable person.”

  “Find some momma down in Tempest’s Bog.”

  “I’ll pay you extra.”

  “How much?”

  “Six-fifty a week.”

  “Seven.”

  “Fine, then.” Jeb reached thro
ugh the window and picked up Myrtle. “How about a dollar’s worth right about now?”

  4

  TOADS COULD BE HEARD MAKING A RUCKUS down the alley between Snooker’s and the feed store, like creatures engaged in mating rites.

  Farley Williams drove up on most nights from Tempest’s Bog. He was the man who danced in the evenings from the time the sawmill closed until the bottoms of his feet ached. Every night his spot in front of Snooker’s pool hall was left for him. It seemed he had always been there, like he was born on that place so he could dance a shuffling kind of step that someone overseas had taught him back in 1910, in a club down on some island beach. He would sing too, until his voice lifted so high and loud that it would send him into a kind of whirligig, a step he had added, he said, because no one could teach you that kind of thing. It came from somewhere else. The women from Church in the Dell said it was from Satan, but Farley would not say yea or nay. He’d just hold out his cup until the person asking what made him dance in such a way would give up the wait and toss in a penny and leave him alone. As long as he kept his gift a secret, people would pay for the chance to try and dig the truth out of him.

  Jeb had coaxed Angel into watching Myrtle for an hour by promising her a movie ticket and popcorn for the Saturday matinee. He stopped in at Snooker’s to ride some of the men about showing up at church for the sake of the womenfolk, but then he veered right back out of doors to talk with Farley. “You dance better than anyone I know,” said Jeb.

  “Hello, yourself,” Farley answered. He stopped and leaned against the ledge of the large picture window to catch his breath.

  “How’s the missus?” asked Jeb.

  “Tard and overwoiked.” Farley said his vowels like a man Jeb once knew from Louisiana. “Too many mouths to feed. I hear you got an extra.”

  Jeb let out a sigh. “Word spreads fast.”

  “Josephine would string me up like a trout if I brought home another child, Preacher.”

  “How about if you agree to just keep your eyes and ears open? If you hear of anything, anyone who might know something about Myrtle, will you pass it on?”

  “That I can do.” Farley hit a fine C and then sang and clapped a bar or two before he cut loose with another dance.