Jasmine whinnied and jerked her head when Betty turned Moses to follow Mr. Nolan back down the trail. Fran kept a firm hold on the reins. The horse tossed her head again and only grudgingly started on up the mountain.
She was a surefooted little horse but ready to shy at most anything. So far, Fran had only been unseated once, when a dove flew out of a rhododendron bush directly in front of them. Fran, as startled as Jasmine by the sudden whir of wings, slipped out of the saddle when the horse reared, with no harm done except to her dignity. Jasmine hadn’t even run away, but turned to nuzzle Fran’s shoulder as if wondering why she was sitting on the ground instead of in the saddle.
“I hope you know where you’re going, little horse.” Fran leaned down on the horse’s neck close to her ear. “I’m not sure I do.”
Fran could get lost in a minute. She tried hard to get her directions straight. East, west, north, and south. But where she needed to go was often some spot between north and south, east or west.
Betty told her to learn the creeks. Cutshin. Bear Branch. Chokeberry. The creeks all ran into the Middle Fork River. At least Fran did know the river. She’d even learned the best crossing places. But the creeks were different. They all looked alike. Water tumbling over rocks, downhill. Her father had once told her about the Continental Divide, where all the water flowed south on one side of it and north on the other. Or was it east and west?
That didn’t matter here in the mountains. She did know up and down. Just not north and south. At least not after the trail made a few twists and turns.
East and west, she reminded herself. Check the shadows. Moss on the north side of the tree. North, east, south, and west. That should be easy enough.
Right now she wasn’t worried. Unless she’d gotten completely off the trail, the Lockes’ place was not that far up ahead, and if need be, she could retrace her way to the center. What made her throat tight was the thought of finding her way over the mountain to the Nolans’.
She didn’t want to let Lurene Nolan down. Betty could handle the birth, if indeed Lurene was in labor, but Fran had promised the young woman to be there with her. Betty was all business and Lurene needed somebody to hold her hand and let her know she could get through this. Her mother had died some years before of tuberculosis, leaving a young Lurene to grow up in a house of men. Her father and brothers were little help to her now. She needed a woman’s touch. And not just Betty’s businesslike get-this-done-and-over-with touch, but a sweet touch of love. Fran could almost see Betty frowning at her silly thoughts.
A baby coming safely into the world was their business. Not filling in for mothers long dead. Other women in the neighborhood could do that if such was needed. But Fran couldn’t see why their business couldn’t include a gentle touch of caring. One woman to another.
Fran could learn from the women. She had never carried and birthed a baby. Neither had Betty or most of the frontier nurses. It was no wonder the mountain women sometimes looked askance at them giving out advice on caring for their little ones with no hands-on experience with children of their own. Fran wanted to go past the textbooks and lectures. She wanted to embrace how the mothers felt. That would better equip her to help them deal with the labor and birthing pains.
In the Cincinnati hospital, the doctors generally put the mothers into a twilight sleep to lessen the pain of labor. Births followed a more natural path here in the mountains. The mothers accepted and endured the pain of labor, but they welcomed the nurse-midwives to ease the baby’s path into the world.
Fran caught a whiff of smoke right before she broke out of the trees into the clearing around the Lockes’ place. A sturdy two-story log house sat squarely in front of her, with various outbuildings around it. A garden patch looked good, in spite of the scarcity of recent rains. Woody had to be carrying water from the creek to keep it green.
Smoke in the air meant Mrs. Locke was cooking or perhaps heating her laundry water in iron kettles over a fire in the yard.
“Hello.” Woody swung down out of a tree to land in the path in front of Fran.
Fran was ready with a strong hold on Jasmine’s reins. “You’re giving Jasmine a panic.”
“She’s fractious for sure.” Woody reached to touch the horse’s nose. “Reckon I could ride her on to the house?”
“Sure. My legs could do with a little stretch.” Fran swung her foot over and slid off the horse to the ground. “Don’t you have a horse, Woody?” When she thought about it, Woody was always walking when she saw him.
“Naw. We have the mule, but he ain’t much for riding. Does a fine job plowing and hauling wood. That sort of thing. Ma traded off Pa’s horse after he passed. Said the Waynards over in the next holler needed her worse than we did. Pa always said Ma was generous to a fault. He pestered her some about that, but he didn’t really mind.” He stroked Jasmine’s neck and grinned over at Fran. “I’m hoping Ben will want a horse when he gets home. Make getting around these hills a mite easier.”
“I suppose so.” Fran handed the reins to Woody. Jasmine stood still for him to mount. “She never stands that still for me.”
“She’s just tuckered out from climbing the mountain.” He looked around. “Where’s Nurse Dawson? Ma sent me out here to watch out for you in case you’uns needed help carrying your saddlebags or anything.”
“She got called to a laying in.” Fran smiled as she walked along beside Woody on Jasmine. Betty wouldn’t like her using the mountain term, but Betty wasn’t here.
“It’s good you come on. Sadie is punying around for certain. She won’t even go crawdad hunting with me at the creek. They’re plenty easy to catch right now with the water so low. You think it’s gonna rain soon?” Woody looked up at the sky and didn’t wait for her to answer. “The sunrise was kinda red this morn. That sometimes means rain on the way.”
“I hope so. Our garden at the center could use a good soaking.”
“Yeah. Ours too. I’ve ’bout broke my back hauling water for Ma’s tomatoes. And if the late corn don’t get a dowsing soon, we won’t have naught but nubbins.”
Woody peered up at the sky again, where a few white clouds floated along and offered not the least threat of rain. The boy sighed. “Pa always said it rains easy when it’s wet and hard when it’s dry like now.”
“Your pa sounds like he was a wise man.”
“He was that. Everybody said so. He knowed a lot about everything, but he always said a man could learn more. That’s how come Ma is making me keep on with school.”
“School’s in session now, isn’t it?” When Woody nodded, Fran went on. “Then how come you’re not there?”
“A man can’t be expected to go every livelong day. I wouldn’t get nothing done if I did that. I figure I can learn all the teacher knows to teach me, going a couple days a week.” At the porch, Woody slid off the horse. “Mr. Harkins is fine with that. Claims it’s some quieter on the days I ain’t there. He’s about give up on getting me to talk proper. You know, not saying ‘ain’t’ and the like, but if I did that, folks would think I was putting on airs, sure as anything. I’ll wait till I go to lawyering school to start city speak.”
“Woody!” Mrs. Locke came to the door. “Stop talking poor Nurse Howard’s ear off and go fetch some water from the spring.”
“Yes’m.” Woody picked up a couple of buckets and headed away from the house.
“Don’t concern yourself, Mrs. Locke. I’m always glad to have Woody catch me up with what’s happening.” Fran climbed up on the porch steps. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine enough.” She lowered her voice. “It’s Sadie that’s fretting me.”
Ruthena Locke was tall and bone thin, but there was a strength about her that went deeper than muscles to her very core. She would do whatever had to be done for her family. No doubt had done as much all her life. Things were hard for her without a husband, but somehow with Woody’s help she kept things going. She couldn’t be much past fifty, but deep lines creased her face. They weren’t smile wrinkles. Shadows under her faded blue eyes indicated the woman hadn’t been sleeping well.
“Is she eating better?” Fran picked up the saddlebag Woody had laid on the porch. Her routine nurse equipment filled one side of the saddlebag and the midwifery supplies the other.
“She ain’t an easy child to feed.” Mrs. Locke let out a sigh. “She can mess with a spoon of beans till she nigh on wears them out.”
Fran looked past Mrs. Locke to where Sadie played with a rag doll on the porch. “Maybe with the vegetables coming on in your garden, she’ll have more of an appetite.”
“She does favor sweet potatoes and corn.” Mrs. Locke looked out toward her garden. “We’ve been putting rain in our prayers at the church. And we’ve been praying for you too, Nurse Howard.”
“For me?” Fran was surprised. She didn’t know anyone knew she was in need of prayer. After all, she hadn’t shared her grief over Seth’s betrayal with anyone.
“Yes’m. We pray for all the nurses what come up here to Leslie County. We know mountain life ain’t all that easy for folks what weren’t raised here. It’s hard enough for those of us born to it.”
“I like the mountains.” Fran gazed toward the hills rising up beyond the garden patch.
“I can see that.” Mrs. Locke smiled. “Our petitions to the Lord are working. Our prayers will surely help my Sadie too. I know they will. I’ve done been promised it wasn’t the tuberculosis and she had a shot for some other worries.” Her smile disappeared.
“The vaccinations help.” Fran looked past Mrs. Locke toward the open door. “Woody says I might need to see your other daughter too.”
“I did think Becca might be here today, but she ain’t showed up yet. She and her man must have decided to stay another day or two with his folks ’fore he brings her over here. His people live a good piece across the mountain.”
“Send word when she gets here and we’ll come back. Woody says she’s not far along.”
“She’s got a good climb yet ahead of her for sure before she gets her baby here, but come along and see what you think of Sadie. I’ve done had you standing on the steps past time.” Mrs. Locke stepped back and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “The child grieves after her pa. She ain’t never been a young’un to clean her plate, but it weren’t till Woodrow passed on that things got worse for her. She was her pa’s little girl more’n any of the others.”
The girl didn’t show any sign of hearing her mother, but Fran thought maybe she had from the way she hugged her doll close when Fran stepped across the porch to squat down beside her. The child was fair of skin and her hair was more white than blonde. She didn’t favor Woody all that much, except for eyes the color of a summer sky.
Most of the mountain children they treated were all arms and legs, but Sadie took slender to a different level. She looked almost fragile. She didn’t seem to have the energy or the will to run, wade in the creek, or climb trees. When Fran and Betty came to check on her, she was generally on the porch or on the floor in the front room, playing with her doll or helping her mother fold towels or break beans.
“Are you drinking your milk like Nurse Dawson told you?” Fran asked.
“As much as I can.” Sadie peeked up at Fran, then stared back at her doll.
“I imagine a glass of milk will taste good with whatever your mother is baking.” Fran smiled up at Mrs. Locke.
“I do have pies in the oven. I’d best go check on them.” Mrs. Locke glanced back at Fran as she started toward the door. “You will share a slice with us, won’t you, Nurse Howard? Woody come across some windfall apples yesterday.”
“That sounds delicious.” Maybe she could get Mrs. Locke to wrap it up to take with her. She still had to check on Granny Em before she headed to the Nolans’.
After Mrs. Locke went inside, Fran put her hand on Sadie’s forehead. Even though the child didn’t feel feverish, she reached into her bag for her thermometer.
“I helped Ma wash the apples, but Woody says he did the hard part, fighting off the waspers for the apples and getting stung for his trouble.” Sadie shivered a little. “I don’t like waspers and bees. Ma said he should have shooed them off the apples before he picked them up. She says Woody always goes at everything full tilt and that some of these days he’s liable to fall clear off the mountain in his hurry. I hope not, don’t you? I wouldn’t want to lose Woody.”
“Nor would I.” Fran shook down the thermometer with a couple of quick flicks. “Did the sting get all right?”
“Ma made a paste of baking soda and water. Says that takes out the swelling.”
“Your ma knows.” She put the thermometer in Sadie’s mouth. “Now keep that under your tongue and let’s see who can win the quiet contest.”
Fran held the child’s wrist and counted her pulse. Then she checked her fingernails. Pink, as they should be. Her eyes were clear. No sign of nits in her hair. Betty had already given Sadie medicine for worms. She peered in Sadie’s ears with a scope. A little red. The girl had chronic earaches that Betty said were probably due to her tendency to croup or perhaps some sort of allergy. Plenty of plants blooming all the time to make that a probability.
Fran took the thermometer out of Sadie’s mouth. She had a slightly elevated temperature.
“I won, didn’t I?” Sadie said.
“I don’t know. I think maybe your doll was quieter.”
Sadie giggled. “It’s hard to win against Priscilla. She’s always real quiet. Even when she’s talking to me, can’t nobody else hear her.”
“What does she say?”
“All sort of things.” Sadie held the doll close. “Secret things.”
“Oh, then I’ll just have to wait until she tells me herself. But has she been feeling bad? Does she have any pains anywhere?” Fran put her stethoscope on the doll’s chest and then on Sadie’s chest and back. No congestion.
“Let me ask her.” Sadie whispered into one of the doll’s black embroidered ears. Then she held the red embroidered mouth close to her ear. “She says her ear hurts a little and sometimes her stomach feels funny.”
“Funny? How funny?”
“Like she can’t drink any more of that milk less’n she has cornbread with it.”
“Or pie?”
“Or pie.”
“Then I think we’re in luck. Here, let me fix her ear.” Fran started to pretend to put a drop in the doll’s ear, but then stopped. “But maybe first, you can show her how to tilt your head to let the drop go down the right way to help.”
Sadie held her head to the side to let Fran put in the drops and then held up her doll for the pretend drops.
Fran smiled and started packing up her nurse’s bag. “I think you’re both going to be just fine. If you drink your milk.”
Sadie looked around as though to be sure nobody else was close enough to hear. “Priscilla wants to know something.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s one of those secret things so’s you can’t tell. Not even Ma.” Sadie’s eyes shifted to the side again.
“All right.” Fran hoped that was a promise she could keep.
“Does everybody die and go to heaven?” Sadie fastened her gaze on Fran. “Even if they don’t want to?”
Fran knew Sadie wasn’t asking just about heaven. “Is Priscilla worried about somebody dying?”
“Pa did already, and Ma says everybody dies.” A tear slid out of Sadie’s eye and down her cheek. “She says Pa is happy in heaven. I want Ma to be happy, but I don’t want her to go up there with Pa. Is that bad?”
Fran laid her hand on Sadie’s cheek. “No, honey, that’s not bad. And your ma may want to go to heaven someday to be with your pa, but she’s not wanting to go right now. She wants to stay here with you for a long time yet.”
“Are you sure?” Sadie clutched Fran’s arm. “Priscilla says you’re a nurse so you should know ’bout these kinds of things.”
“I’m sure.” Again she hoped her words would stay true for this mountain family. “You can tell Priscilla that.” Fran softly poked the doll’s chest. “Now, let’s go eat some of that pie.”
Sadie ran on into the house while Fran packed up the rest of her instruments.
“It ain’t good to make promises you can’t keep.”
Fran looked up. Granny Em was at the corner of the porch.