Friday, March 14, 1924
Mary fell sick around midnight. Jane was asleep, but wakened to the baby’s faint whimpering sound as if a gunshot had gone off in her ear. She sat up, disoriented for a moment by the darkness and the lack of Jon in the bed. No, that was all right. He was sitting up with Jack. So she could sleep. She paused, halfway down to the bed again, but the sound came again. Not Mary’s usual squawk-then-resettle. Jane swung out of bed and padded to the nursery.
Pale. Feverish. Dusky blue. Jane clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out. She lifted the baby from her crib and settled her on her shoulder. Mary’s breath rasped and rattled in her ear all the way downstairs.
Jon was sitting in one of the parlor chairs, Jack asleep on his chest. A lantern burned beside them, casting shadows over the cups and liniment bottles and rags littering the table. “What are you—” He broke off when he saw Mary.
“The baby’s got it.” Jane crouched down next to the chair. “We have to do something.”
“What?” Jon’s voice was as hoarse and choked as Peter’s. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Tell me how to get past those men without getting a gunshot to the back. Tell me.”
She drew another chair near and picked up the glass of salt and goldenseal gargle she had prepared earlier. She poured some one-handed into a child’s cup and, seating Mary on her lap, forced some of the liquid into her mouth. The baby spluttered and gagged. Jane clamped a rag over her mouth and let her cough it out. Then she looked at Jon.
“You’ll have to go through the woods.”
“They’ll hear me if I take one of the horses out of the barn.”
“On foot. Go through the woods on foot until you reach the telegraph line. You can follow that down to town.”
“That’ll take all night!”
“And you could have Dr. Stillman here by the morning. Once he’s here, there won’t be anything they can do about it.”
“What if they try to hurt the doctor? What if they try to hurt you or the children after he’s gone?”
“They’re not going to show themselves to the doctor. And . . . and . . .” She cast about for a way to ensure the bootleggers wouldn’t hurt them out of spite.
“I could collect some of the neighbors on my way back. Have ’em show up here with their guns.”
“Good Lord, no. That’s all we need. A shoot-out in our barnyard. No, you stay in town after you fetch the doctor. I’ll tell them that you’re returning after they leave, and if we aren’t all okay, you’re going to the police with their names and descriptions and license plate numbers and what all.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Look at them.” She brushed Mary’s fine blond hair away from her forehead. The two-year-old’s chest heaved as the air whistled in and out of her throat. Jack was asleep, barely breathing, deep plum-colored circles beneath his eyes and every freckle standing out against his pale cheeks like ink scattered across a page.
“Okay. I’ll go.” Jon stood, settling their son against a pillow in the chair and drawing the quilt back over him.
“Change into something dark. And warm.”
He nodded and disappeared upstairs. Mary on her shoulder, she went into the kitchen and threw a few splits of wood into the stove. She pumped water into the kettle and set it on to boil. Jon returned, wearing his green twill pants and brown barn coat. “How’s this?”
“Good,” she said. “Don’t forget your hat and gloves.”
He looked as if he wanted to smile for her, but couldn’t. Instead, he wrapped her and the baby in a bear hug. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too. Be careful.”
Then he was gone. Hushing the baby, she circled around the stairs and went into the darkened dining room. Through its window, she could just make out Jon’s outline as he crossed beneath her wash line, heading for the fields. She wanted to plaster herself to the glass and watch him until he was safe out of sight, but she made herself turn and retrace her steps back to the kitchen. Normal. In control. She had children to look after.
She peeped in on the olders. She was worried about Lucy, as well, who had slept almost all of the day and had no appetite when awake. In the light from the kitchen, she could see where heavy, rust-tinged phlegm had run from her daughter’s nose and mouth to stain the pillowcase. Oh, Lord, that doesn’t look good. She was on her way to get a rag to clean it up when she heard the shot.
Oh sweet Jesus no. Her body urged her to race out the door and find her husband. Her body told her to flee to the back bedroom and hide in the dark. Caught between impossible demands, she trembled, frozen, in the hallway. There was no other noise. There were no more shots. And then she heard it, the sound of footsteps and a man’s complaining, and, thank God, thank God, Jon’s voice, demanding to be let go.
The door burst open and the fancy suit came in, followed by two men she hadn’t seen before, controlling Jon with his arm twisted up to the middle of his back.
She clutched Mary to her. Her nightgown covered her more than many dresses, but it was still her nightgown, and no man other than her father and husband had ever seen her in one. She jerked her chin up. “Let my husband go.”
The man in the fancy suit laughed. “You got a spunky one there, mister. You ever have to wallop her one to make her mind?” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Take him in there.”
Jane scurried ahead of them. She shut the bedroom door and backed against it.
“What’s in there?” one of the men asked. He had a droopy mustache that could have belonged to a dime-novel cowboy.
“Two sick children,” she said. She was amazed her voice didn’t shake. “Who need to see the doctor.”
The fancy suit indicated his men should sit Jon at the table. They released his arm, and he rubbed his wrist, watching them all the while with wide, white-rimmed eyes.
“That’s what I mean. We’ve already been through this, but you didn’t listen. You’ve got kids. What do you do if they don’t listen to you?” He stared at her. “You wallop ’em.”
She hugged Mary so tightly the baby started to cry, a thin, mewling version of her usual full-lunged bawl. “Don’t you touch my children,” Jane said. “Don’t you dare touch them.”
The young man touched his chest. “What kind of a person do you think I am? I don’t hurt kids.” He nodded to the man with the droopy mustache, who grabbed Jon’s wrist and prized his hand flat. The fancy-suited man pulled a gun from beneath his jacket. Jane opened her mouth to plead, to shriek, when he reversed the gun in his hand and smashed the butt end against Jon’s index finger.
Jon screamed. The third man leaned against his shoulders, forcing him into the chair, while the droopy mustache pushed his hand open. Jane saw the young man’s arm rise, the carbon gleam of the gun’s handle, like a ball-peen hammer, and then he smashed it down again, shattering Jon’s middle finger.
Her husband screamed and wept and howled. Mary wailed breathlessly, and from behind the bedroom door, Jane heard Lucy cry out and Peter stumble from his bed. The man in the fancy suit looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Well? Go settle ’em down.”
She sidled through the door, closing it behind her. “Shh. Sssh.”
“Mama, I can’t see!”
“Get back into bed, Peter.”
Lucy’s voice was weak and clogged with phlegm. “Mama?”
“Daddy’s had an accident. He hurt his hand, but he’ll be all right. He didn’t mean to wake you up. Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep now.” She stepped through the door and latched it behind her.
Jon was rocking in the kitchen chair, hunched over his hand, moaning again and again. “Since we’re all friends, I’ll consider this a lesson learned.” The man in the fancy suit slid his gun back into its holster. “You’ve been good hosts over these past months, and this is a real good stop along the trail. I’d hate to have to kill one of you.” He looked at Jane. Smiled a choirboy smile beneath dead eyes. “So I trust this is the last time we’ll have to have this conversation.”
Jane nodded.
“Good. Let’s go, boys. Ted’s got the next watch, so we can catch some shut-eye.” He smiled at Jane. “I suggest you do the same, missus.”
_______
Jack died at ten o’clock in the morning.
After that she stopped thinking, stopped feeling. She trundled around, a mechanical mother wheeling on a track; wipe off Lucy’s nose, coax Peter to eat something, balance Mary over the steaming pan, take one child to the privy, take another, clean up Lucy’s lunch after she vomited it all over the floor, bathe the baby to cool her fever, bring Peter paper and pencils.
She didn’t tell the other children about their brother. She lost track of Jon. He was insubstantial, somehow, a ghost flitting through the rooms. They were all ghosts, waiting for darkness to come and set them free.
The men left half an hour before midnight. Three trucks, lights out, rumbling over the lane and away down the road. As soon as they were gone, she and Jon went to the barn and harnessed the horses. They worked quickly, silently. She didn’t want to talk with him, and she didn’t want to think why. It was important, the most important thing in the world, that he be gone, that he fetch the doctor, and once that happened, everything would be all right. Everything would fall into place again.
“Janie,” he said, perched on the buggy seat. There was that in his voice that would shatter her like the bones in his fingers. If she let it.
“Hurry,” she said, and turned to the house. Inside, she stoked the stove, put the kettle on, opened another can of liniment to rub into Mary’s chest. She was up in the nursery, and even from the kitchen Jane could hear her, rattling and choking, fighting for each breath.
She checked in on the olders before heading upstairs. Peter was sleeping. His breathing was easy, and except for his pallor and his listlessness, she thought him well on the mend. More rheum had run from Lucy’s mouth and nose onto her pillow. Jane swiped it off—she had changed the pillowcase three times during the day—and laid a hand on Lucy’s forehead.
She was cool. Jane crouched down beside her daughter’s bed. She put her other hand on Lucy’s chest. Which was silly. Cool flesh was a good sign. No fever. She waited. She waited for Lucy’s chest to rise and fall. Nothing happened.
“Lucy.” She shook the girl. “Lucy, wake up.” She shook her harder. “Lucy.” She sat on the bed, scooped her daughter into a sitting position. Lucy’s arms and head flopped. “Lucy.” She shook her, hard, and pressed her ear to her daughter’s mouth. Nothing. She pushed Lucy’s hair, sticky from the phlegm and greasy from days in bed, away from her face. Her sweet face. The girl was so proud of her thick brown hair. She would have to wash it, Lucy would hate to—but she couldn’t see anymore, not the dirty hair, not the still face, as the tears blinded her eyes and she curled around her little girl and sobbed.
Sometime later, she came to herself again. The kettle was singing on the stove. She tucked Lucy into bed, flipping the pillow around so her head rested on the clean side. She took the liniment from the kitchen table and went upstairs. Mary was lying in her crib, her eyes open but unfocused, the way she looked some mornings right after she had awoken. Beneath her gown, her chest and belly flexed. Dragging a breath in. Forcing a breath out. Jane opened the gown, rubbed the liniment in with firm strokes, and lifted her from the crib. She wrapped her in a light quilt and settled into the rocking chair, cradling her baby girl. She had nursed her in this very chair. Not so many months ago. She looked down. In the shadowed light, Mary’s eyes met hers. Her little body eased as she relaxed into her mother’s arms. Soon, the doctor would be here. Soon, everything would be all right. Jane cuddled her baby close. The weight, the heft of her. The life of her. She began to rock.