“Sweet talk by the daddy man.”
“Look at the she-turtle. She lays her eggs in the warm sand with hardly any thought as to what she is doing. With the result she never returns to see her young.”
“Lucky she.”
“Yes, but she sings no songs.” Magnus fixed Kitty with a judging look. “That girl Katherine Rodman I used to know, who was so bold and daring in love, where is she now?”
Kitty’s eyes glittered for a moment with a flash of hate, then slid off to one side.
Magnus went on. “Nature demands a payment for all she gives.”
“And here I thought all of us were trying to ward off trouble, pain, as much as we possibly could. Be happy.”
“Every new beginning is always accompanied by a great chorus of anguish. Since the very emergence of time even.”
“There ain’t no justice then.”
“Pain is one of the unavoidable conditions of existence.”
“I hate God then, if that’s the way He meant it to be.”
Magnus kept calm. He was sure they had been right to marry. Many a Southern girl had borne children successfully at thirteen. Besides, he and Kitty were in love. That excused everything. Pain was the negative to the positive of love.
She cried out wildly in her sleep one night. She clawed her way into his arms.
Upon examination they found a considerable discharge of blood. He had to bite down on himself to keep up his professional air.
He helped her clean up. He gave her a sedative.
Later, he retired to the office side of the building and searched through his books once more.
Reading, brooding, he was suddenly struck by a thought. Julius Caesar had been brought into the world by way of a surgical operation through the walls of the abdomen and uterus. Aha. Why not remove their own child a couple of months early by surgery? That would relieve the child-mother of pressure. The danger of infection made it terribly risky, but if it wasn’t done, both mother and child might die.
He had a casual talk with a pig farmer one day. He had observed that the body of a hog and the body of a human being were very much alike.
“Ever cut open a sow to save the young?”
“Once.” The farmer, a heavy-bellied man, spat a little brown snake of tobacco juice to one side.
“What happened?”
“Saved ’em all. ’Twas the only thing to do.”
“And the sow?”
“She got over it. Pigs like to lay in the mud and that healed her.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Wal, ’twarn’t much, really. Not if you’ve spayed dogs. It’s in the same place.”
“Weren’t you afraid of corruption afterward?”
“Sure. But I cut my fingernails good and washed my hands in lye-soap water good. ’Course I was neat about my cut. I washed the needle and thread in lye-soap water too. Then sewed it up neat and gentle. A tailor couldn’t’ve done it better.”
Magnus reset his bow tie to square it with his white collar. “By the Lord.”
It got worse each night.
Once Kitty woke up screaming, her long fingernails at his eyes in the dark. “Magnus, I’m going to die! I’m tearing inside. I really am!”
He willed his fingers steady as he scratched a match alive and lit the lamp. He gave her a nerve pill. He held her child belly in his arms.
The child inside kicked, kicked.
He thought: “If there was only some way to just slip it out.”
She asked for Gooseberry June. “I want her to be with me when the time comes.”
Magnus thought this a good idea.
Gooseberry June came the very next day.
Finally on the sixth of December, early in the evening, a full month before term, the baby made up its mind to come out on its own.
Kitty screamed and screamed in regular pulsations. Her face turned the color of leached ashes. Her eyes rolled off cockeyed. Her head bent back until her light-brown hair lay over her heels.
Magnus went in and examined her. There was no longer any need to pretend she had anything to hide from him. The baby had moved down against the pelvis. But there was little or no dilation.
Her dissimilar eyes revealed different females. An old dark mother squirmed in final agony in her brown eye; a fuzzy-legged maiden danced a dance of picnics in her green eye.
Gooseberry June sat beside the bed. She soothed Kitty with moving broad brown hands. An ancient expression took hold in Gooseberry June’s face.
Kitty shrieked. There was a gush of sudden cherry blood. Kitty fainted away.
Magnus snapped open his medical kit. Swiftly he laid out scalpel and curette. He got needle and thread ready. He had already boiled everything in lye water. He pared back his nails; scrubbed his hands thoroughly. He set white pans within reach to catch the blood. He set a bottle of rye handy. He soaped up Kitty’s distended blue child belly and washed it gently.
Then, calling on his memory of medical-college days when he’d dissected a cadaver, he chose a certain spot on her belly, between her navel and her hairy pudendum, held her bouncing body steady a moment, and then, with a single swift sweep of his hand, touched the knife to her. Her belly parted like old silk giving way. Her uterus emerged like a swimmer popping to the surface after a deep dive.
Gooseberry June’s brown face turned as pale as faded grass. “Akk! The father has done a thing against the gods!” Then Gooseberry June clapped hand to mouth and rushed outside. Gooseberry June ran erratically toward her tepee in the wooded ravine.
Again Magnus’ hand swept across her belly. This time her uterus parted. It popped open like a ripe milkweed pod. A transparent sack of incredible sleekness came to view. Inside it slept a folded baby. The baby lay still a moment; then, as if on signal, in one joyous jerk, it straightened out for a good stretch.
Magnus nicked the transparent sack with his knife.
In an instant the baby’s face was free and there was a sudden loud bawl.
“Ahh!”
Magnus separated child from mother; laid the child to one side; covered it partially with a silk blanket.
The child let go another loud bawl.
“Now to save the mother.”
It had all happened so suddenly Kitty’s belly still hadn’t had time to bleed much. Magnus quick stitched up the uterus, tight, with stout line thread. He didn’t bother to catch the trickle of blood gathering in the cavity where the child had lain. Instead he took hold of the edges of her abdomen and stitched them together, also tight. The incision formed a long funny puckered wound, like the wrinkled smile of a pumpkin jack-o’-lantem.
The baby gave yet another sudden bawl. It kicked, kicked.
Kitty awoke. “Is that the baby already?”
“Yes, my lovey.”
“It’s here then already?”
“Yes, my kitten.”
“Is it the boy you wanted, my daddy husband?”
“Yes, my child.”
Kitty sighed a great sigh. “It was all of a sudden so easy.”
What Magnus didn’t tell her was that in opening her uterus he was afraid he might have spayed her. Accidentally.
Well, no matter. It was probably for the best anyway. She was too small to have babies. She would be that way even after she became of age.
Mother and child did well.
Kitty was wildly, deliriously happy with her baby boy.
The baby was baptized Alan Rodman King, after Magnus’ father and after her family name.
Within the year, Magnus saved up enough to build them a white clapboard cottage on the west end of town, well out in the open in a meadow of grass. For a path to their door Magnus cut a swath through the meadow.
Some of the neighbors wondered if it wasn’t dangerous living that far out.
Kitty thought it was all right. What helped was that Gooseberry June had come back, after a time, to see the miracle of the Knife Child. When Gooseberry June saw that the Knife Child was favored b
y the gods after all, she and her band maintained close ties with the King family.
About the second year both Kitty and Magnus fell naturally into calling their boy Roddy. Kitty seemed to like Roddy better than Alan, and Magnus, to humor her, went along with it. They could always go back to calling the boy Alan after he had grown up.
The third year Kitty finally guessed it. That she was never going to have another baby. When she finally got Magnus to admit the possibility of it, a change came over her. The sweet minerals of youth slowly leached out of her. A resigned look settled in her eyes. At sixteen she already looked like she might be twenty-two.
The sparkle of fire slowly winked out a little in Magnus too. He knew they should have at least been glad they could make love without having to worry about another pregnancy. Both could now relax and let themselves go, be as wanton as they wished. But they weren’t glad. The bloom was off, the petals had fallen, and too bad.
The cottage had only one bedroom. Roddy for the first few years slept in a cradle at the foot of their bed. When he outgrew the cradle, and was given a cot, he continued to sleep in the same room with them. Several times Magnus wondered out loud if they shouldn’t add another bedroom for the boy. When Kitty didn’t say one way or another, and Roddy piped up saying he didn’t want to sleep anywhere else, it was left as it was.
When Roddy was four, Magnus became uneasily aware that the boy might be hearing them while they made occasional love. The boy had an uncanny way of inventing excuses for getting into bed with them just as Magnus was of a mind to touch Kitty. The boy seemed to sense the exact moment when his father was inclined to make love.
It made Kitty giggle when Roddy would call out, “Mom, can I come over and warm up with you and Dad?” just as Magnus’ hand had slipped under her nightgown. And it exasperated Magnus to note that Kitty seemed to respond more to his lovemaking at such times.
Usually Kitty helped Magnus chide the boy, told Roddy he was all right where he was.
The boy’s sudden calling out usually cooled off Magnus’ ardor. He couldn’t go on. And so nothing happened.
The next day Magnus went about his work feeling abused and Kitty went about her duties pouting.
Once the boy awoke them by crawling in with them without asking.
“Hey! What goes on here?” Magnus cried, sitting up.
“Nothing,” Roddy said brightly. “I was just lonesome a little. So I thought maybe Mom’d let me have some titty.”
Magnus crackled all over, he was suddenly so mad. “What!” In the moonlit bedroom Magnus was almost sure he’d spotted a fleeting malicious look in the boy’s eyes. “Get out! Right now!”
“Dad.”
“Get in your own bed. Right now. By the Lord!”
Kitty said, “He don’t mean any harm.”
“Roddy!” Magnus roared.
“All right, Dad.”
The next day when alone with Kitty, Magnus asked, “Do you still have milk for that boy?”
“A little.”
“Remarkable.”
“Sometimes I think the reason he wants to keep on is because I didn’t really have enough of a nipple for him when he was a baby. At thirteen it isn’t big enough.”
“Nonsense.”
“Well, I think so.”
“Does the boy seem to enjoy the suckling?”
“I guess so.”
“Or is it that he is merely hungry?”
“Both.”
“Hum.”
When Roddy was five, he began to ask questions about their family, about the Kings and where they came from.
Kitty told him what she knew. For particulars about the Worthington family, Kitty sent him to Magnus.
Magnus was loath to talk much about it.
But Roddy pressed him with so many questions about Uncle George Worthington that Magnus at last got out the old family picture of Uncle George, and wound up hanging it in the sitting room. Finally, Magnus even showed Roddy how to fix a monocle to his right eye.
“Then we could be kings someday, couldn’t we, Dad? When our ship comes in?”
“We are Kings.”
“I mean not our name. I mean for real.”
“And I mean that too.”
Kitty interposed. “Daddy, now, no riddles. The boy is only a boy.”
Magnus thought: “Yes. A boy. That time of life when you can still believe that your ship will come in someday.”
Roddy started school at six.
By this time Roddy had the long nose and the liberal lips of his father, including even the long slope under the nose. Roddy had green eyes, with brown flecks in them, and his brown hair was sun-touched with gold over the brow.
When Kitty would no longer let him have occasional titty, Roddy took to suckling the corner of his pillow, inside his pillowcase. When Kitty pinned the pillowcase shut on each change of bedclothes, Roddy switched to sucking the silk trim of his blue blanket. When she teased him about it, he gave her a very hurt look, then in boy rage rushed outdoors.
But Roddy was always soon over his sulks. In an hour he would be back, whistling, green eyes aglow with some new private game, mountain man and Indians, riverboat captains and pirates, boyish explorings. A couple of times he came back with a spray of puccoons, along with an offer to wash her feet if she was tired and would like it.
During Roddy’s seventh and eighth years, Magnus was off to the wars to help put down the rebellion. The two years put the boy even more in the mother’s corner.
Roddy took to jumping off high places, a cutbank along the road, the riverbank above the Missouri, even the roof of their cottage.
Seeing this, Magnus made him a swing.
Roddy became very fond of the swing. Sometimes Roddy pumped himself so high in it, above the fulcrum of the tree limb to which the swing was attached, that the ropes fell slack at the end of each swing, and he came down with a jerk, almost breaking the rhythm.
One day Roddy made himself a sack swing. He’d seen a picture of one in his reading book. He filled a sack with straw, tied it to a hemp rope which in turn he looped over the elbow of a huge cottonwood. He used the limb of a nearby ash for the jumping-off place.
The first time off the ash limb was the biggest thing ever. He stood teetering on the limb, just barely managing to hold onto a tit corner of the sack with his little fist, eyes as big as magnifying glasses, knees shaky—when of a sudden, daring it, crying out, “Here goes nothing!” he leaped.
And just made it. He’d just barely got his knees clamped tight onto the butt of the sack. When he passed the earth below, grass stubble rasped a pair of holes into the seat of his pants. Gollies!
Magnus gradually became taciturn, distant. He scowled a lot. He kept his experiences, good or bad, happy or sad, to himself. His liberal lips gradually thinned. His temples hollowed. His dark eyes limned over with what looked like smoke. Sometimes he appeared to be looking out of a pair of fire-scarred window frames.
Kitty on her part began to slam things, the irons on the kitchen range, the tops to storage barrels, the doors of the house. The worst habit of all was the way she slammed the lids out in the privy. When Magnus complained she’d cracked one of the lids, she only shrugged, told him to go get a carpenter and fix it.
Kitty also more and more began to let Roddy have his own way, especially when Magnus wasn’t around. When Roddy wanted to go swimming in the Missouri with the boys, she let him, even though she knew Magnus would be violently opposed to it, and even though she herself would live in terror until he returned safely.
At noon when Magnus was out on call, Roddy sometimes tried to slide into his father’s armchair. Kitty thought this was going too far and always instantly ordered him to go sit in his own place. When Roddy persisted she at last had to threaten him.
One noon Magnus caught Roddy defying his mother. She had asked Roddy to get some radishes from the garden and he had flatly refused.
Kitty turned red. “Do you want a stinger in the face?”
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“You wouldn’t dare, Ma.”
At that Magnus picked up his walking stick and snapped it once. “Well, by the Lord! Now you get!”
Roddy got.
Afterward, cooling off, Magnus said, “Son, your mother is your mother. Respect her. You hear?”
“You sometimes fight with her.”
“Not as my mother I don’t.”
“Aw, heck, Dad.”
“You hear?”
“Oh, all right.”
A carpenter showed up one day and began hammering on the window frames.
Kitty went out to ask what was up.
The carpenter told her he’d been ordered by Magnus to put on some shutters.
Kitty told the carpenter to wait until she herself had talked to Magnus about it.
Magnus went into a rage that night when she told him she’d asked the carpenter to wait.
“But, Magnus, shutters will spoil the look of our little cottage.”
“Right now I’m not so worried about the looks of our cottage. I’m more worried about your safety.”
“My safety? Isn’t it safe living out here any more?”
“Some night when I’m not around somebody’s going to take a potshot at you sitting in a lighted window like that.”
“A potshot?”
“Yes.”
“But why me?”
“I don’t know. But somebody will.”
“Who?”
“Somebody.”
“Gooseberry June and her friends?”
“I’ve heard about a fellow hanging around here.”
“You have?”
“Slinking around. Trying to catch you undressing.”
Kitty gasped. “Why, you better tell Herman Bell about this then. He’s our night watchman.”
“Herman Bell’s too dumb to catch anybody. Specially this fellow.”
Until then Kitty had sometimes been antagonistic just to be a little devilish about it, as a part of the usual bristling between man and wife. But now instead she began to worry about him.
Going to bed one night, Magnus took a newspaper and scattered its various pages over the floor, around their bed, around Roddy’s bed.
King of Spades Page 4