In the Fall

by Jeffrey Lent

  “I said, I promised Norman.”

  Leah spat air.

  “Even I was to, time I got up there and found her and got back down with her, Norman and the Doctor would be back long since. There’s no point.”

  “I thought about that. What horse’d Norman take?”

  “Well he took Tommy. Tommy on the cart. Only thing would go through the mud.”

  “It’s simple then. Put the bridle on Pete and use a set of lead ropes for reins and ride the booger up there and carry Marthe back down here.”

  “Pete? Pete don’t ride.”

  “Girl, Pete rides like he was born to it. You get out those clothes and dress up warm, get on a pair of Norman’s wool trousers and belt em up tight and cuff em high and you’ll ride like angels.”

  “You’ve rode that horse?”

  “Rode him all around the place summertimes. With just a looped rope around his lower jaw.”

  “I won’t. I won’t do it.”

  “Course you will. It’s me lying here with the baby asking. Course you will.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes you will.”

  And as the ice from the river it all broke free of Connie, she feeling it on her tongue as it spilled, hating it and loving it all at once. “What do you want with that dirty old woman? Old hag, wood’s whore, all grimed up and greasy and smelling like skunk long dead or something dug up out the ground? Old bitch lying up there spewing out her get like a wild creature, like an animal. Christ you got no idea. Things I heard about her. Came down out of Quebec all on her own no more than thirteen and already more willing than the men she serviced. Dirty woman. Dirty stinking bitch of a whore. Why you think she knows so much about the ins and outs of babies? How many maybe you think she’s carried? Just those odd half-dozen boys in and out of the woods? What about those others? What about the times she rid herself of them? And how about those other girls, those girls in trouble, mostly French girls, some not, would come miles to find her? Go up the mountain with trouble in their bellies, come down with trouble in their hearts. You know about all that? Anybody told you this about your great friend? I guess not. I guess not Norman. I guess not herself. I guess not one solid soul before me.”

  “You surely hate those Canadians, don’t you?”

  “I don’t hate a living person but for one. But those people make a choice, they have the choice, they sink to one end and stay there. Like creatures they live. Like dirt their minds work. I can’t change that. I can’t change that.”

  “You don’t know nothing about it.”

  “I know every goddamn thing I need to know.”

  “You don’t know nothing. What you talking bout is niggers. Just niggers. Just some people you don’t know nothing about but think you do. And you too stupid to know what you think’s part of what they is. Just niggers. Niggers like me. Stop your silly schoolgirl friendly with me, girl. I just a nigger too. Just a fat little nigger woman bout to have a child the best way she know how. And nobody, no one, not you, not Norman Pelham, gon’ tell me how to go about that. This my body holding this child, not his, not yours. Most not yours. Just this nigger woman’s.”

  “Jesus Leah. Stop it.” Connie hot with it, the heat all through her, burst like sunburn over her face. Shame, pride, anger, some fear, some sickness. Shame.

  “No. I ain’t stopping nothing. Choice is simple here. My mind is set like granite. Somebody gon’ ride that horse up the hill around the mountain and fetch her down here to look over me. Only question is, it gon’ be you or it gon’ be me?”

  Save for a time or two as a little girl when her father set her up for a brief amble she’d not been horseback in her life. So she led the giant from the barn with the blinkered bridle and makeshift reins, feeling at odds with the job and the strange constricted movement of the heavy belted-up woolen pants. She led him to stand beside the granite block with the iron ring on an eyed rod for hitching, and pushed the horse up against it and went around him to balance atop the block and holding the rope reins tight with handfuls of mane slung herself up the side of the horse, her right leg stretching and catching the broad spread of his back and her arms then pulling her up so that suddenly she slid evenly onto his back. The horse did not move. She pulled up on the rope reins and drummed him with her heels. He did not move. “Shit, you,” she said. She slid her right hand down the rope toward the bit and drew back on it, pulling his head around and slowly he stepped off, following his head. She tapped him again with her heels. As if afraid of getting his hooves wet or slipping on the hardened mud he walked gingerly across the yard toward the uphill trace, responding more to her reining than her heels, his back arched, as if at any moment he would quit this. She pulled him up short and they stood motionless. She thought about quitting it with him but not for long. She said, “Dammit Pete, we got a job to do here. Now get your ass up.” And took the long rope reins tight in one hand and backhanded with the ends to quirt him one shoulder and then the next and raised up her heels for a sharper jab and yelled loud for him to get up. And he went from standing still into a long floating gallop up the hill track, his body rolling forward with great weight as if he’d divined her intent and she somehow kept the reins as she fell forward, stretched along the high curve of his neck, both hands buried deep in his mane, her fists tight-curled into the long hair that raised otherwise to whip her face. Her legs clamped not around but against the great barrel of his sides. Not until they reached the upper leveling of ground and passed the sugarhouse at a slowed canter did she realize that her mouth, only inches from his bright bowed ears, was still pressing him to Go go go.

  Through the night woods beyond the reach of the sugarbush trails the horse went on, now at a walk, now at a trot or canter, following the rough path of mostly frozen mud but for several points where the great spruce grew close both sides where the hardened dense shrunken drifts still lay, through which he floundered, sometimes up to his belly with Connie’s feet scraping against the deeper of the drifts. She did nothing more than hold the reins loose; the horse did not so much know the way as discern the only track there was and went forward along it. The night was dark here with even the rotting snow a dull shade of the darkness. Above the containing bowl of the farm hillside the distant roaring of the ice going out was almost lost, more a disturbance in the current of air than actual sounds. Then they rounded the shoulder of the mountain and the only sound then the suck and scrape of Pete’s feet as he moved over ground that stride by stride changed degree of freezing. Still he trotted more than walked. Once one forefoot struck rock and he lost footing and regained it before Connie even felt herself began to slide, the horse making great thumping bursts from his nostrils.

  She smelled the woodsmoke before she saw light from the house and then saw the light from a distance off. She pressed the horse to canter. The bear and catamount hounds Ballou kept chained roared. Connie began to call out for Marthe Ballou and the door opened as she drew near, throwing a splay of light onto the frozen mash of the dooryard. Ballou stood in the door in his long underwear, holding across his chest a rifle and wearing unlaced boots on his feet. She pulled Pete up a dozen paces from the door, just at the edge of the light. The great hounds strained. The horse sidestepped back and forth, snorting nervous air.

  “Looka that,” said Ballou. “Pelham girl in long pants ‘stride a plough horse. Me, I always thought woman look second best the back of a horse.”

  “I need your wife, old man.”

  “Any girl come galloping up here middle of the night, she need my wife. Days now at least. Time was, not so long pass, had to wait learn was me or Marthe she be after. Not no more. But maybe so hey? Maybe you just thought Marthe be your cure. Maybe you truly be needing old man Henri to fix you scratch, hey?”

  Connie raised her voice, calling the woman’s name.

  “Aw, pipe down, she hear ya. Heared you comin fore them damn dogs even start up. She getting dress is all. How that chicken do this bitter time?”

 
; Pete was dancing from the dogs. She took the reins tight and wheeled him to face Ballou, letting the man view more horse than her. She said, “The chickens did fine.”

  Ballou slid the rifle down to dangle one-handed, the muzzle toward the ground. He slipped his free hand between buttons of his underwear and rubbed his belly. He said, “Come time, she won’t take no pay for nothing she done. But you, you send a brace fine young roasters up with her. Awful lean the venison and pa’tridge come this time of year. So send up a couple fat chickens, hey?”

  Marthe appeared around her husband, without touching him causing him to step back inside the door. One hand carried a basket filled with bottles and bundles all wrapped in cloth. In the other she held the smallest pair of bearpaw snowshoes Connie had seen. She wore a plaid mackinaw over thick layered woolen skirts. She came straight to Connie and said, “That baby coming?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. She’s bleeding.”

  Marthe nodded. “Bleed. What else?”

  “Nothing yet I guess. She said not.”

  “Bleed heavy or light?”

  “Oh Jesus I don’t know. Light she said, I think. But that was a while ago. It could be anything now. Norman went after Doctor Hurdle and Leah bid me come after you.”

  Marthe said nothing. Nodded once and handed up the basket for Connie to take. Then sat on the ground to strap the bearpaws to her boots. “Carry that stuff down. Me, I be right along.”

  “Get up behind me. We can get there quick. Pete did fine in the dark coming overhill and he don’t lack room for two.”

  Marthe stood, shuffled in her snowshoes and buttoned her mackinaw. Grinned. “Not for gin or gold, me. You see you, I run on these. Ever thing crusted fine an I just fly. Me, I go up and over, not all the way round. Could even be I beat you down.”

  “She hoped to get you there before Doctor.”

  “She just bleeding a liddle that man can’t hurt her much. Sides, I tell you, I beat you to her.” And turned and stepped into the darkness of the woods, a luminous figure against the gray-stained old snow. Walked a step or two more, paused, rocked side to side as testing the snowcrust, walked again and then skipped out into a spread-footed short loping motion. Connie heard the slap and cut of the snowshoes against the snow. Going uphill the old woman seemed to lose nothing of her stride as long as Connie could hear her moving. Then she was gone from earshot. I soured that, Connie thought. Then aloud, “Pete! Let’s get to home.” Wheeled him hard about and clapped her heels to him and loosed the reins. He jolted forward as if released. The dogs began to roar into the night again, Ballou calling after her about chickens.

  Her head still ringing from the downhill scramble of the horse she came into the kitchen and found Marthe washing her hands at the sink. The bearpaws thawing crust from their lattice to puddle the floorboards and her mackinaw flung over the tabletop. She set the basket of tonics and herbs beside it. Marthe took up a towel and dried her hands with the precision of peeling an apple and spoke before Connie might.

  “She fine so far. Liddle bleed. Nothing more, not yet.” And poured water from the copper boiler into a washbowl. Crossed the kitchen as if it were her own and took a stack of worn washed sacking towels from a cupboard, draped them over one arm and took up the bowl. “Least you got plenty water ready. Most likely won’t need but still. I’m gonna clean her up some, set with her, me. You make up some coffee so’s ready them men when they get here. They be runnin a liddle late, hey?” Grinning at Connie, teeth like amber shards. “Then come up you, tell her about you ride.”

  So Connie was still in the kitchen, still in the oversized ballooning wool trousers, still flushed and animate from the marrow out, leaning over the range with a spit of crushed eggshell in her palm, waiting for the coffee to come to a boil so she could drop the shell in to settle the grinds, when her brother came through the entry way with the short stout doctor following, the doctors cleated bootheels reporting against the boards in perfect counterpoint to his ragged wheeze. Connie dropped the eggshell in and pulled the coffee to the cool side of the range and turned as Norman spoke to her.

  “What’s that Pete horse doing dragging a pair of lead-ropes around the yard?” His face splotched red and white with cold and wind and anger rising already from knowing something somehow was done without his plan or guidance: knowing of action beyond him, behind him. How he’d see it, she knew. And before she could speak he went on, the anger rising even more clearly now and she understood it was fear as much as any other thing and she wondered if he knew that as he said, “Why aren’t you up with her? She all right?” His eyes scanning the stovetop, the hot water, the effects of Marthe.

  The doctor was coming out of his overcoat as if from a tight embrace. His pince-nez were steamed and his vest was stretched over a great tight ponderous stomach, the watch chain a line of gold links fine as sutures. “The girl’s upstairs.” It was not a question. “I’ll want hot water, strong soap and old clean quilts or blankets for when her water breaks. Or whatever mess we face. She’s far enough along we should get a baby out of it. But we’ll know that when it bawls. Also, that coffee, and applejack if you’ve got it; not, cider’ll do. He had a handkerchief out to wipe his lenses clear and dab at his face, now throwing out a fine sheen of sweat. He loosened the knot of his bowtie and the collar of his shirt and lifted up the snap-top bag of cracked leather. He saw the basket then on the tabletop and prodded it with his finger. “What’s this?”

  “Marthe Ballou’s. She’s up with her.” She looked to her brother. “She made me go after her. She’s fine; she’s all right just now. She threatened to go herself if I’d not; I had no choice.” She ran eyes toward the doctor and back. “She knows what she wants.”

  “You left her.” His eyes not hatred but swollen bright as an animal’s. She feared him.

  “You’ve made a grave error.” The doctor lifted his bag and looked to Connie, his swollen features monkish, jowled, purulent. The veins of his eyes a red lichen. He said, “A hard job multiplied without need. I’ll want the brandy with the coffee. Not in but alongside. A woman bearing or in labor is not within reason. You’ll learn that firsthand yourself one fine day.” And strode to the hallway where his bootheels diminished on the runner there and then resumed up the stairs and fell away again meeting the upper runner.

  Connie took up the coffee and poured out a cup and then a second and handed one to her brother. He’d not turned his outrage from her while the doctor spoke. She said, “Marthe says she’s fine now. Nothing going on at all. I didn’t know what to do. She was lathered up but the bleeding had stopped. It seemed best to do’s she asked, to calm her. It was a risk. There was no one here but me and she said Jump. I did. I’d dare you do otherwise given the same. And you know she don’t like that man.” Glaring hard to meet his stare, her whole body trembling.

  Norman balanced the cup and saucer on the smooth worn rim of the soapstone sink, his fingers deliberate, trembling just away from the cup, still burning her with his eyes. “I trusted you. Trusted you to do’s I asked.” His teeth set, the words coming through them.

  “Do as you asked.” She mocked his words back at him. “You think to ask what anybody else wanted? You think to ask what she wanted?”

  “Goddammit!” He swept the coffee into the sink. The rupture of cup and saucer as a physical blow to Connie, running through her. Norman said, “I did what I thought best.”

  “You! Always you! I know you. You came running down the hill and scooped her up and carried her back to bed and raced off after the doctor. Didn’t pause for a minute but racing around like you know just the right thing. The first simple thing comes into your mind, now that’s the right thing. And expect everybody else to agree with it, not question it. Just like you’re God or something. But I’ll tell you what, Norman. You was God you wouldn’t have had to run after that doctor. You would’ve known how to stay right here and make things right. Maybe even, you was God, you’d have had those other babies too. Maybe everything you ev
er thought or did would’ve been perfect, right as rain, instead of hit-or-miss like the rest of us. That’s how it’d be, wouldn’t it? Tell you what, you think about that.” Was shaking, her mouth twisted, anger contorted around the words. Her lips wet as if the words were the liquid gush of her fury.

  He stood gazing at her, his head quivering with anger, his color like new brick. He parted his lips to speak and shut them again. She faced him. The room smelled of wet wool, sweat, fear, coffee. After a long moment he turned his back to her and began picking up the broken china from the sink. Then he stood like that, not moving. After a moment one hand lifted from the sink heaped with shards. He piled them carefully on the drainboard. His back to her, he said, “So she’s all right?”

  “Go see yourself. Take up whatever it is that fat man wants and see your wife. She’s fine.”

  He then turned, his face now thoughtful. He nodded. “She knew what she was up to. She’d asked me, I’d have been hard pressed.” He paused, glanced toward the hall and went on, “She strike you as being not within reason?”

  Connie smiled. “She’s ferocious all right.”

  “Yuht.” He would not grin back but said, “So how’s that Pete ride?”

  “Kind of broad but wicked smooth. Why’d you lose your hurry to get upstairs?”

  “Thought I’d let things settle out with the three of them first.” He shook his head. “That Hurdle’s a pushy little son of a gun, idn’t he?”

  “More a popgun than anything else.”

  “Well,” said Norman, “I’m going upstairs.”

  The doctor had lighted a lamp in the upstairs hall and was tilted back in a straight chair there with his heels up on a rung. He scanned them as they came, his face wrung in smirked disgust. “I’m no use here. The colored girl won’t allow examination or cooperate otherwise. The hag Ballou sits in the rocker chirping laughter like a squirrel. A pair of monkeys the two of them.”

  “Shut that.”

  “You’ll carry me back overstreet.”