Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  And here she was with Lonzo by her side to keep danger offen her and her little un; here she was safe and warm, and not worried up over every shadow and noise as a wild thing must be. There was a stone jug close to the fire, keeping hot water ready for any time that the little un should be ready. There was Ma just six miles off, and coming to stay with her. And yonder in the corner was the deep walnut cradle that Lonzo had built and polished, waiting for her little un to sleep in it. But mostly she would keep her baby with her in her own bed. Lonzo said that women sometimes smothered their babies when they slept with them; sometimes a sow would smother one of her litter.…But Cean wouldn’t! A pretty mother she would be, lobberheaded as a sow, to smother her baby.

  She ought to thank Godalmighty that things were so easy for her. She was eating her white bread now; both were sent on this earth—fine white bread to enjoy, and bitter black bread to be eaten with hard silence or soft tears. But you had to eat whatever was sent. If you flung it back in Godalmighty’s face, you’d live to see the day when you would wish that you hadn’t. Cean had often heard her mother tell how Vince and Seen had paid for stiff necks and hard hearts, and exchanged them for sackcloth and ashes, as Ma called it, so that ever after they were sweeter and gentler. Ma had recounted it many a time.

  Seen had brought a baby in her arms from Carolina, a girl named Naomi Elizabeth. Ma said herself that neither she nor Pa had ever loved another child as they loved that little Elizabeth. They dared not, for “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!” Eliza-beth was born in Carolina nine months before Seen and Vince emigrated down to Georgy away from everybody. Ma said that she sinned a thousand times down here because always when she rocked Eliza-beth to sleep a-singin’ “There is a happy land far, far away,” she always thought of Carolina where folks lived close together, and had jamborees, and hay-rides on moonlight summer nights; it never crossed her mind that she was sinning in not thinking about heaven when she sang about it. Ma and Pa had a hard pull of it when they first settled here; rain rotted the seeds in the ground; the cow died of black-leg; the pigs bloated and lay down and died; even the fowls sickened, their bills and half their heads rotted off before they, too, died. Seen cooked cornmeal mush as long as the meal lasted, and they ate it without milk or sweetening. Then she stewed rabbits or birds that Vince had snared—because he would not waste his powder. He knocked squirrels from the trees with well-aimed rocks—for they were plentiful and trustin’ so that they were not hard to kill; he caught fish with a rigged-up hook; and they ate these things without salt, for there was no salt. Seen rejoiced that she still had milk for Eliza-beth, until that dried up (no matter how much water she drank) and her breasts were soft again and small as a girl’s. Oh, it was a bitter time. That was Seen’s and Vince’s time for eating black bread, and they refused it; or at least they turned away their faces from God’s hand and grumbled at His treatment of them. Now Seen blessed God that they had ever come out of it, but then she had not lived so long nor learned so much. Then she had been like Job’s wife, nagging Vince on to curse God and die, and Vince was ready to do it. They were bitter and butt-headed and thought they knew more about how things ought to be run than God did. And God had taught them a lesson.

  In the sickly late spring of that next year Eliza-beth took fresh cold and lay whimpering in Seen’s arms day and night. The cold settled in her head and made a rising in there, too far in for Seen to get to it. She poulticed Eliza-beth’s face and neck with wild comfort that Vince dug out of the soggy earth; she gave her snakeroot tea to cool the fever that burned your hand like a hot brick; she mixed catnip tea with squirrel liquor and fed the whimpering mouth that turned away from the pewter spoon in Seen’s hand. Finally, Vince roamed the woods for all manner of yerbs that he had seen his own mother treat with—calamus for chills, white sassafras roots that are better than the red, shoemake that is good for skin poison. Vince would come in with his cowhide boots caked in mud, and give-y with wet; and Seen would brew all the roots and leaves in different ways; she used them all on the child. But the fever and the swelling did not abate.

  Finally, Vince prayed such a prayer as Cean had heard him make many times since, in her own lifetime. His horny, hairy hands fumbled one upon the other where they were clasped on his breast; his eyes were tight shut, not daring to face his God open-eyed and calm-faced. He shut his eyes and reached for a hold upon God that he might wrastle with Him as Jacob did. But God seemed much nearer the Coast towns and Carolina than He did to this place nigh onto a hundred mile in the wilderness. Did God remember that he and Seen had brought their child away here among the painters and wildcats and moccasins—where just across the Fluridy line the Spanish people spoke another tongue, and wanted another war with the whites—where close to the south and west roamed red devils that itched for the skin from over yore brains? Did He? Hit were mighty doubtful. Vince would have to pray loud and agonize long to make Him hear from so far! So Vince prayed, with his brawny arms reaching into the air for power that could heal this child, this little white god whose body, made of his and Seen’s flesh, was an altar at which they had worshiped through all the days of her short lift. Vince prayed: “Almighty God, Thee canst hear though from the wilderness; Thee canst heal though the sickness be sore unto death; Thee canst touch the fevered brow and cool it in the twinkling of an eye.” So Vince praised the great God that He might be flattered and heal Eliza-beth: “Thee dost note the sporrer’s fall. Heal this leetle sporrer in our nest by Thy loving grace and tender mercy. Not that we be worthy…no! We be weak and sinful, no more than pore worms of the dust….” He beat his breast; tears of self-abasement rolled down his cheeks and were lost in his beard; he wore himself out praying, bellowing his ponderous words in the silence in which the child’s breathing came in gasps in its hurry to take leave of the body.

  When the prayer was gone into silence, Vince, still on his knees, opened his eyes, and Seen raised her head from the side of the bed. And they saw their child. Her forehead was still hot, but her feet and hands were cold, and at the edge of her tangled hair, brushed back a thousand thousand times by Seen’s yearning hand, there was a dampness which Seen had tried in vain to induce with brews of yerb tea.

  When they had boxed their child, they gave her to the earth to keep under the grass to the left of the house. Vince got down his big Bible and finished a line on the page that was the likeness of a scroll. Nearly two years before he had set down:

  Borned to Vincent Newsome Carver and

  Cean Loveda Trent Carver

  A daughter Naomi Elizabeth Jun 19 1810

  Now he added:

  Left us for Glory Apr 9 1812

  Seen would tell you now that they had humbled themselves before the Lord there at Eliza-beth’s dying bed, but that they was too long a-doin’ hit…and God had punished them, and kept on punishing them.…After that there was one child that died before its heart ever beat, and Seen lost it one day when she was alone. Then it was four long years before God sent them another child; that was Jasper. By that time God was softened by their continued tears and prayers, and he lifted up the light of His countenance upon them and gave them Lias and Cean, and, a little later, Jake. And since they had repented, Vince’s crops had prospered; now they were well off and would have something to leave their children when it was their time to pass on.

  Cean lay there in bed, praying Godalmighty that He would not let her unborn son die of a rising in the head, nor of fever, nor of anything at all as long as his mother should live. She abased herself before Him, hoping that He would know that she was properly humble where He sat yonder on a glittering throne on the other side of gates of pearl that open only inward.

  She would name her son for her father and for Lonzo’s father—Vincent Rowan Smith. It was a fine, high-sounding name. The next boy she should have she would name Alonzo, for his Pa. And she would name one of her sons for Jake—that would tickle him to death.…She smiled to herself as she drifted off into a mingled dream of her litt
le sister Eliza-beth, who would now be a grown woman, but who in Cean’s thoughts was always a little child, dead on a bed, just as she was thirty years ago; and dreams of her own sons, who would be grown men in another thirty years, but who somehow could never grow past the size of this little one within her, whom she would see with her eyes and touch with her hands before the moon shrank away to nothing again. Drowsing, her mind moiled about the ponderous spell of time that sixty years inclose.

  When the December moon was nigh onto fullin’, Cean’s mother came to be with her. And Lonzo’s father brought Dicie, his wife, to help tend to Cean when she got down. The little un was due on the full of the moon; if it put off its coming on that day, it would wait on for another change; and what’s more it would be a girl if it came on the shrinking moon. The child’s grandmothers came in time for the full moon, hoping for a boy. Lonzo would need boys to help break ground and pull fodder; girls were good for but little, except to weave and pick cotton.

  They waited about the fire, Lonzo and Cean and the two old women, while the moon moved across from east to west in its journey through each day’s hours; at night it bulged out of the fat sky, heavy and yellow and full of knowledge. The moon was a powerful thing; she pulled the tides on invisible leashes; she governed the seasons somehow, lengthening or shortening them at her will; she let the rain fall, or she withheld it, just as she pleased; her light made the ground strong or weak, all according to some curious formula which men had learned long before Lonzo’s or Cean’s time (or Dicie’s or Seen’s, either). Peas will never grow if they are planted in the time of dark nights; potatoes must go into the ground only on a waning moon, so that the roots may grow downward—and so with all rooty things; bushy things must grow upward as the moon grows.…The moon has all power; it even governs women’s ways, and who can explain that? It can muddle the wits of a child allowed to sleep in its full light. Now the sun will cut no didos, but the moon is a willful, changeable body, kind or hateful as she pleases, undependable as her face.

  Cean spread her extry quilts as a pallet in front of the fire for Dicie and Seen to sleep on where the warmth could bake their gnarled old feet. They would mumble sometimes far into the night, discussing this or that childbed, or spell of fever, or cut that brought on proud flesh. Each had brought her sack of yerbs, saved each in its season, and tied separately in clean white rags; each had brought her best knowledge to serve the need of her child and the loved one of her child. Dicie lived ten miles off, two miles on yan side o’ the river. She knew many people of whom these people had not heard in months, so she brought them news of a big hog, or the killing of a neighbor, a summer hailstorm that cut the corn to ribands, or a child that was born to Timothy Hall’s wife, red-mottled, with one eye set high in its forehead. But it died, by God’s mercy. Dicie had a bright, sharp wit about her; she talked fast and told many outrageous things, so that Cean laughed a lot at her. Lonzo never laughed much—nor cried, neither; it wasn’t his way to show what he was thinking. Seen didn’t have much to say, either; she was dreading this thing. Cean didn’t know what she was getting into.

  Lonzo dreaded it, too, but there wasn’t nothin’ to do about it. He had helped many an old sow bring forth her young. And once he had knocked a young heifer in the head because he had figured that she had hurt long enough; and she would have surely died, anyway.

  Dicie chattered, wrinkling her thin nose when she cackled over a joke; when she laughed, she threw back her head that was pert and brown and a little like a peaceable hen’s. Dicie thought little about this business. Cean was a strong girl; no foolishness about her; she’d get through in a hurry.

  On the night of the third day after the old women had come Dicie would make syrup candy and there was much talking and laughing about the fireplace. Syrup blubbered in the iron pot over the coals, and had to be stirred with the long horn spoon to keep it from boiling over. Dicie’s and Seen’s and Lonzo’s faces were well-nigh blistered from the heat. Finally Dicie tried the candy in a gourd of water one last time, and pronounced it nigh about ready to pull.

  Lonzo sat in a chair with his hands ready-larded. Cean stood behind him, not allowed to pull. She leaned over the back of Lonzo’s chair; his hair brushed against her breast; her hands lay on his shoulders; she moved her hands upward and laid them on his neck where she could feel the blood beat in his veins. Her fingers stroked downward on his beard and rested again on his neck. She could smile now to think that ever she had been afraid of him; for no cow with its first calf was ever any gentler with it than Lonzo was with her….

  Suddenly she pressed her hands hard about his neck; a heavy pain had fastened on her child and would not let go.

  Lonzo turned and looked into her face. But just then the pain let go, and she smiled sheepishly at him. She was all right; it wasn’t time, after all. But the blood beat heavier and faster in Lonzo’s neck. He spoke to his mother, who was taking off the pot of boiling candy:

  “Ma, ye’d better git things ready….”

  Dicie whirled about, and the pot of candy turned over on the hearth. Cean heard her mother shout in terror, and saw the syrup bubbling on Seen’s bony old feet as she moved them frantically up and down in the spreading pool of liquid that was hot as molten brimstone.

  Cean sat in a chair, holding her breath on another pain, while Lonzo raked the blistering, brown mess from Seen‘s feet. Dicie poulticed them with soft mullein poultices, crooning in a monotonous undertone: “You pore child!…You pore child!…I’d ruther hit was me. I’d a sight ruther hit was me….”

  After the first shock of the fiery pain Seen never whimpered. She bared her teeth against her lips and sat patiently with her swathed feet away from the fire, while waves of fire soaked and washed and soaked them. She said to Cean:

  “Take yore mind off yoreself, honey.... Jest think about somethin’ else….”

  Till long after midnight Cean walked back and forth across the room, as Dicie told her to do; she walked until she could take not one more step, for Dicie would not let her rest; she must stay on her feet even when the last pains caused her body to tremble as though it were beset by the ague, when these pains that should have been the last pains dragged her down if Lonzo’s arms did not hold her up. Back and forth, and forth and back, Dicie made her walk, and her face was green, and sweat and tears were mingled on her cheeks. And with any one of these pains she would have fallen and swounded away if Lonzo’s hands had not held her up, if Lonzo had not wiped the wet from her face and talked into her ear, saying “little un,” and such-like words. She would not complain, because her mother would not complain of her tormented feet; she would not complain even when she had to take to her bed in the hour before morning and lay tossing between Lonzo’s hands on one side of the bed and Dicie’s on the other. Seen, with her feet in a fiery hell, watched her child endure another hell, and thought that she would gladly have endured both.

  By daylight, Lonzo was sick of it. He went out into the whipping wind to feed up, to milk Betsey and turn her out. But he hurried back into the house. He asked his Ma:

  “What makes her git along s’ slow?”

  Dicie’s face was sober now:

  “Hit’s natural.…with a fust un….”

  Lonzo quarreled:

  “This hain’t natural.…They’s somethin’ wrong. Ye might ez well tell me….

  “No. They hain’t nothin’ wrong. They ‘most al’ays take longer with a fust un….”

  Lonzo turned his face away and growled:

  “Well, they won’t be no second un….”

  A pitiable smile caught at the corners of Dicie’s mouth. How many times had she heard that! And always they called her back before another twelve months were out.... Her eyes sought Seen’s eyes in gentle derision of a man’s fool blustering.…But Seen’s eyes were set on her child’s face and would not let loose of it where it lay tossing back and forth; Cean’s hair was matted, her eyes were shut and unnoticing; her hands were locked to the bedstead back of her h
ead. It wasn’t good for her to reach her hands back of her head like that, but Lonzo could not break her grip without hurting her.

  Lonzo turned away and would help no more when Cean began breathing each of her breaths with a low, animal-like grunt. She sounded too much like the little heifer that he had knocked in the head because it had hurt long enough, and would surely die, anyway.

  He stood before the fire, gazing down into the heat, and great unlikely tears ran from his eyes down into his beard. Lonzo knew that his little un was going to die. He knew from the look in Seen’s eyes that never let go of her child’s face; he knew from Dicie’s hard-folded hands that waited now, having done all that they knew to do; and he knew from the little un that grunted like a little dumb heifer that knows that it is time for it to die. Even as he listened, a-feared, her moaning quieted, her pains ceased, and she lay as though she were already dead.

  The dogs made a clamor out in front, and a woman’s voice commanded them to keep still. Nobody in the room stirred, for they hardly noted the sound. What did it matter who came or went, now that the little un was dying with nobody to help her?

  After a minute there was a framming of a fist on the front door and Dicie opened it. Lias’s Margot blew in, beating her hands and stamping her feet that were numb with the cold. She looked quickly around the room and went and stood for a moment beside the bed. She turned to Seen: