The Last Midwife: A Novel

by Sandra Dallas

  Instead, she went to the bed, where Jennie lay. She was tiny and white, looking as sweet as water from a spring. The doctor and midwife stood beside her, as if afraid to touch the bones that were fragile as a hummingbird’s.

  “The baby’s turned,” the midwife said.

  Gracy looked at the woman’s hands, which were as big as hams. They could not have reached into the womb and righted the baby.

  “We’ve got to pull it out of her,” the doctor added.

  “Do that, and you might kill them both,” Gracy told him. “Let me see.” She set down her bag and accepted the basin of hot water and a bit of soap that Daniel handed to her. She smiled a little as she thought he remembered she always washed her hands before touching a woman.

  She put her hand on Jennie’s forehead and felt the fever. Then she examined the woman, noting that the baby’s shoulder was where the head should have been. But Gracy would turn it. The blood soaking into the bed worried her more. “Jennie, can you hear me?” she asked.

  The woman opened her eyes, and Gracy saw the flecks that shone in them like quartz. “Who is it?”

  Gracy started to say her name but couldn’t. “The Sagehen,” she replied. “Now the baby’s turned a little, and I’m going to reach in and straighten it. And when I tell you, you push.”

  “I already tried,” she said.

  “You’ll have to try again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Isn’t there another way? She’s tired, Gracy,” Daniel pleaded.

  “There’s no other way,” Gracy snapped, “not if you want them to live.”

  Daniel went to the head of the bed and brushed Jennie’s hair out of her face, then held her hands, talked honeywords to her, and the pain of that love made Gracy look away. She forced herself to think of this as any other birth. She worked on the baby, and when it was turned and a great pain came on Jennie, Gracy ordered, “Push!”

  It took twice more, but at last, the baby was born—a boy, just as Daniel had prophesied, Gracy noted as the child let out a cry. Tears ran down her face as she realized her husband had a son, and a healthy one. But not a son she had given him. Methodically, she handed the baby to the first midwife, while she dealt with the afterbirth. She worked quickly, placing the placenta in a basin to be disposed of, then turning back to Jennie. The bleeding had not stopped. Gracy watched the blood run onto the sheet, soak into the mattress. Her own apron was covered with Jennie’s blood. Gracy turned to the doctor. He shook his head.

  Daniel caught the look between the two of them. “Will she be all right?” he pleaded.

  The doctor looked away.

  “Gracy?”

  Gracy took a deep breath. She had never been one to turn from the truth. Besides, Daniel wouldn’t want her to. “I do not believe she will make it. She’s lost too much blood, and there’s no way to stop it.”

  “No,” Daniel sobbed. He turned to Jennie, who was no longer lucid, and put his head down on the pillow beside hers and cried.

  Gracy could not stand to see him like that and busied herself with the baby, taking the infant from the other midwife.

  “What will we do with him? I don’t know anyone to be a wet nurse,” the woman said.

  “I’ll manage,” Gracy told her, and realized it would be up to her to find a home for the baby. It was unlikely Daniel knew of anyone to care for him.

  “I’ll be going then.”

  After the woman left, Gracy went to Daniel’s side and put her hand on his head. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I’ll bring the baby back to the cabin. I’ve milk powder there to mix up. Maybe he’ll take it until I can find a wet nurse.”

  He turned and hugged her waist. “Stay, Gracy.”

  She shook her head. “It’s your sorrow.”

  “It’s our sorrow,” he said, holding her tight, and Gracy, too, wept.

  The doctor studied them a moment. “If you’re going to stay, Mrs. Brookens—”

  “Go. No need for the both of us,” she said.

  He nodded, and then as he opened the door, he told Daniel, “She saved the boy’s life. He’d have died without her. If anybody asks, I’ll tell them that.”

  Gracy was grateful for the words, but she did not think Daniel heard them. She sat down in the rocker in a corner of the bedroom, the baby in her lap, her arms against the smooth wood of the chair. She wondered if Daniel had made it just as he had made a rocker for her years before, when they were expecting their first child. She did not sit there long, however, for death came quickly. Gracy was aware that Jennie had stopped breathing, and she placed the baby in the cradle and went to Daniel and raised his head from the pillow. “She’s gone, Danny,” Gracy said. And then she held him while he sobbed.

  * * *

  Gracy took the baby home, then waited until after the burying to discuss him with Daniel. She attended the service, not because she wanted to but because she believed the baby ought to be there. She was surprised at the turnout. Many of the women from the row were at the gravesite, because the prostitutes loved a good funeral. It was a chance to honor one of their own with tears and lamentations. They murmured over how angelic Jennie looked, how innocent, her hands folded over her breast, the gold ring with the bright stone on one finger. Best it was buried with her, Gracy thought.

  Gracy recognized a few of Daniel’s friends, including John and Elizabeth Miller, who moved to either side of Gracy and put their arms around her. She thought Daniel would go off and get drunk after the coffin was lowered into the grave and covered with dirt. But instead, he stood beside the mound until only he and Gracy and the baby were left.

  “I will walk home with you,” he said, and Gracy nodded. She needed to tell him about the couple she had found who had lost a child of their own and would take the baby. It would be a good fit. He would be their son, but Daniel could see him from time to time. He would be like a grandfather to the boy.

  They went into the house together as they had only months before, and Daniel fed wood into the cookstove and built up a fire. He went to the cupboard where he had kept the whiskey, but Gracy shook her head. “I threw it out.”

  Daniel nodded and sat down at the table, his head between his knees.

  “I found a couple who will take the baby. They are good people, who will raise him as their own—”

  Gracy stopped when Daniel straightened up and looked at her sharply. “What?”

  “I made inquiries. You don’t want the baby to go to an orphan home.”

  “You think I’d give him up?” Daniel looked shocked.

  “You’re going to raise him?” Gracy had not considered it. How could Daniel care for a baby by himself?

  “I won’t give away my son.” Daniel went to the window and looked out at the gray sky.

  “How will you keep him?” Gracy asked. The baby was fussy, and Gracy set him in the cradle that Daniel had made for their own little ones—a cradle she had kept all those years—while she heated water on the stove to make milk. Perhaps Daniel had found a woman who would care for the boy while he worked. Maybe one of the prostitutes had already agreed to move in with him.

  “You’ll raise him,” Daniel said, turning around to face his wife.

  Gracy, who held the kettle in her hand, raised her head so abruptly that she spilled water onto the stove, where it sputtered and sent up a wisp of steam. “Me?” She set down the kettle, the baby’s milk forgotten.

  “Of course. You’ve always wanted a healthy baby.”

  Gracy gave a dry laugh that was more like a snort, and said harshly, “You want me to raise my husband’s bastard?” She did not like the word, did not like to call an innocent baby such a vile name, but that was the truth of it. “Are you demented?”

  “Who better than you?”

  “That may be so, but I’ll not do it, Daniel. I would look into his face every day and know whose child he was.”

  “He’s my child.”

  “Yes, and the child of your mistress, a prostitute.”

&nb
sp; “You would blame him for that?”

  “I would blame you.” The baby cried, and Gracy hurried to fix his milk, then sat down at the table and gave him the bottle. He was a pretty child, his hair pale like Jennie’s, his ears so much like Daniel’s. And he was built like Daniel, too. If she had not known before, she would have recognized the moment he was born that Daniel was his father.

  “He would be yours, too.”

  Gracy sighed. “Even if I agreed, how could I raise a baby, a woman alone? I can barely keep myself as it is. I’d have to go on with the birthings, and I couldn’t take him with me. No, Daniel, it is impossible.”

  “I would take care of him then.”

  “If I could find you. Would you expect me to take him with me while I searched the saloons for you?”

  “I’ll stop drinking, Gracy. I promise.”

  “What would people say if I raised him?”

  “It’s a mining town. Worse things happen here and are forgotten. And when did you ever care what people said?”

  “I do now. I do not care to have people think I’m a freak for raising my husband’s son by another woman, while likely he is out visiting the fancy houses.”

  “I won’t ever do that again. I promise. I want us to be a family—you and me and the baby. I would move back home and be your husband again.”

  Gracy stared at him dumbfounded. “And do you think I would take you back?”

  Daniel went to where Gracy sat and got down on his knees. “I did a wicked thing, and I broke your heart. I beg you to forgive me, Gracy. I loved her. I won’t deny that. But not the way I love you. I knew you before I knew myself. You shaped me, just as I did you. I knew that day in Black Mary’s house that we were meant to be together. Jennie, I cared for her because she made me feel like I was somebody. She needed me as you never did. I’ll make it up to you if you’ll let me come home. I promise I will never step. The baby, he will be our son—your son. We’ll raise him together, as our own. We will think of him as a gift.”

  Daniel had never spoken so earnestly before, and at first, Gracy wondered if this was the plea of a man desperate for someone to raise his child. But Gracy knew him, knew his heart, and after thinking about what he said, she believed him. “If you ever stray, Daniel, I will take the baby and leave. I swear it.”

  “I’ll never give you cause,” he said.

  * * *

  It was not an easy time for Gracy, and it took her months, years even, to truly forgive Daniel. And she never forgot. How could she? Sometimes when she looked into her son’s face or stroked his pale hair, she saw Jennie, but after a time, Gracy couldn’t remember what Jennie looked like, and the boy became just himself.

  They named him Jefferson—Jennie’s last name; she had chosen it, Daniel said—and called him Jeff. They decided it would be best if he never knew the circumstances of his birth but would grow up believing Gracy was his mother. That was why they had left Virginia City. To keep the secret.

  Gracy did indeed love him as her own. She had almost from the moment he was born. Daniel loved him, and Daniel loved her, too, Gracy realized after a time, loved her more than he ever had Jennie. In the beginning, Gracy thought it was gratitude, but she came to realize that Daniel’s love was far greater, and she knew that he had never really stopped loving her. The marriage was a good one again, maybe better than before, because they both knew what they had lost and found again. The trials and heartache they had endured strengthened the bond between them.

  She came to know all that the day Daniel came home the summer after Jeff was born, with a fistful of daisies. He held them behind his back and presented them to her as if they were gold-plated. “I remember at our wedding … your hair…” he said, embarrassed. He had kissed her then, kissed her as if they were young together.

  That night, Daniel left the pallet on the kitchen floor where he had slept since he’d moved back into the house and slipped into Gracy’s bed. She welcomed him. In the morning, she burned his letters to Jennie that she had kept in her Bible.

  Twenty-one

  Gracy kept the twins overnight, giving the McCauleys time to get their house ready for the infants. On Sunday, she and Daniel helped the new parents move the babies home. Mittie and Henry each carried a boy, while Gracy and Daniel took the cradle and the clothes that Esther had made, along with bottles and milk powder. Gracy didn’t know what Mittie had told her husband about the Boyce babies, but when the man saw them, he was as smitten as his wife. “Imagine, yesterday it was just me and Mitt, and today we each got us a baby. Two boys! Ain’t that something! Didn’t have to wait no nine months, neither.” He was as proud as any new father.

  “She did the righteousness,” Gracy told Daniel, wondering what would have happened if the McCauleys had said no. Surely she and Daniel couldn’t have kept the boys themselves. Maybe if the trial ended favorably and they’d been younger, she thought. After all, their happiest years had been raising Jeff. Still, the Boyce boys would be better off with Mittie and Henry.

  Ted Coombs was waiting for them when they returned to their cabin. “From the talk around town, I’d say we’re doing pretty well. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow you’ll be a free woman,” he said, after Gracy invited him into the cabin and fixed him a plate of flapjacks.

  “I told you,” Daniel said. “I heard the same thing down to the Nugget, men saying when Gracy testifies, won’t anybody believe Jonas Halleck over her.”

  Ted nodded. He picked up a can of sorghum and poured it on his pancakes. He took a bite and then another, and Gracy was pleased to see Ted wasn’t a picky city fellow. He ate like a mountain man. “We ought to go over your testimony,” Ted said. “Folks in town already think highly of you, and when I’m done, they’ll think you’re right up there with the angels in heaven. No matter what Doak asks you on the stand, he won’t be able to cast a doubt on you.”

  Gracy looked down at her plate. She hadn’t started on the flapjacks, hadn’t even lifted her fork. “That’s just it, Ted. I’m not going to testify,” she said slowly.

  Ted stopped with a bite of pancake halfway to his mouth. Oblivious to the syrup that ran down his fork onto his hand, he said, “You have to, Gracy. Why would you not?”

  Gracy glanced at Daniel, then looked away. “Reasons.”

  “If you don’t testify, the jury will think you’re guilty.”

  “Not if they know her,” Daniel said hopefully.

  “That’s not enough. It helps if a jury likes the defendant, but they need more than that to find a person not guilty. I’m not sure you’ll get off if you don’t testify. If fact, I’d say it’s unlikely.”

  “Then I’ll have to take the chance. I don’t want to be up there answering questions. I should have told you earlier, but I didn’t make up my mind until Friday. I’ve been thinking about this since before the trial started, and now that I’ve seen what that prosecutor does, I won’t get up there. I don’t want to hurt people like Josie Halleck, and I won’t lie. Besides, the way I am, folks would know in a minute if I’m not telling the truth.”

  Ted set down his fork and wiped his hand on his pants. Then he looked Gracy in the face and asked, “What is there for you to lie about?”

  Gracy rose, picking up her plate and scraping it into the slop bucket. “Nothing that concerns you,” she said after a pause. “I’m just telling you I won’t take the stand.”

  “Then you better start thinking what’ll happen to you if you’re found guilty.” Ted hadn’t finished his breakfast, but he handed his plate to Gracy.

  “I have.” Indeed, once the McCauleys had taken the Boyce babies, Gracy had thought of nothing else.

  The lawyer turned to Daniel. “Do you know what this is about?”

  Daniel shook his head. “But I can tell you if she says she won’t do a thing, she won’t do it.”

  Ted rose. “As your attorney, Gracy, I have to tell you this is a foolish decision, and it may well send you to prison. If you refuse to be questioned, the jury
’s going to believe you murdered that baby after all.” He went to the door and said glumly, “I have to think about how to deal with this.”

  After Ted left, Daniel stood and put his arm around his wife’s waist. “Gracy…”

  “Don’t, Daniel. I know you’re going to try to get me to change my mind. But I won’t. I can’t.”

  “But why?” He looked confused. Gracy kept her secrets, but this was something she should share with him, he said.

  Gracy shook her head. “You’re about the last person I’d tell. Now don’t bother me.”

  Daniel pushed back his chair and went outside, where he smacked the washtub hanging on the wall. “Your ma!” he said, when Jeff came outside to join him. “You think you can talk some sense into her?”

  Jeff looked bewildered. “I’ve been trying to talk to her for two days. I want to ask her if that baby was really Josie’s and if she thinks Mr. Halleck is the father.”

  “It sounds to me like that’s the way of it. You know the girl?”

  “Sure. In school. She was behind me. She was sweet.” Jeff thought a moment. “Why would a man do that to his daughter?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Why did God make snakes?”

  * * *

  Mittie was not in the courtroom. Gracy knew her friend wouldn’t be there, that she’d stay home with her babies, but Gracy was disappointed just the same. She needed all the support she could get, especially now that she would refuse to say a word in her defense. There would be an agitation when folks realized Ted wouldn’t call her, and Gracy would have been glad for Mittie’s comfort.

  It seemed as if most of the rest of Swandyke had decided to attend the trial, however. Gracy had hoped that interest would drop after the first day, but it hadn’t. In fact, more people than ever were clamoring to get into the courtroom. Ted escorted Gracy through the crowd, Daniel and Jeff shoving aside people who blocked their way. “They’re thicker than crows in a cornfield,” Daniel muttered.