Chapter 11

Anna entered the commissary and glimpsed around to see if any wives were there. Seeing only Gabe, his grin as wide as ever, she stopped behind the cloth bolts and fingered the texture of a cotton plaid. Green and blue irregular plaid. Her favorite colors. The blocks appealed to her Scot-Irish heritage. This one was as soft as a chick’s down. It would make a beautiful top. She looked at the end of the bolt. Twenty-five cents a yard. Dan River Mills. No wonder. An irregular plaid would make the top more expensive. It required extra yardage to match the plaid, and she had yet to buy a pattern. She moved down the counter and, from the bottom shelf, drew out a yellow cotton covered with small blue flowers. Ten cents a yard. No matching and this would give her a few cents over to pay for the pattern. Rising, she tucked the bolt under her arm.

She went to the shoes. Last night, she and Clint had talked about her wearing shoes with a firm sole. The commissary sold old lady shoes she had seen on women at Unity Church. She wanted flat-soled shoes, a guarantee that the baby would not have crossed eyes. She knew the idea was superstition. She told Clint she didn’t believe it, but why take a chance?

That night as she lay in bed next to Clint, it came to her that she never referred to the child as “our baby” or “my baby.” The child growing within her was “the baby.” Her mother had called her “my baby girl” until Anna left to marry Clint. After the ceremony and before Breakline, when they came to tell her ma and pa, Ma had said to Clint, “She’s yours now. See you take good care of her.” She had risen from her rocker and said, without turning back, “She ain’t my baby no more.”

Anna searched boxes until she found a size six low-heeled black shoe with laces to the ankle. She did not check the price. The shoes were more important than the cloth. She would not show for another month. If the shoes cost too much, she could come next month for cloth after Clint got his paycheck.

Anna waited in front of the counter, silent, staring past Gabe’s reddish hair. A partially filled jar of pickled eggs held her gaze. The floating ovals looked salty and rubbery, not worth her money. She was so accustomed to holding back tears now that she could envelope herself in a solid wall of white so thick she neither saw nor heard anyone. Once she was cocooned so, a voice or a touch was necessary to bring her back.

Gabe took the cloth from under her arm. “You okay, Mrs. Goodman?”

Gabe Shipley was not a handsome boy. His feet spread out like a duck’s, too large for his lanky body. His nose slanted a bit to the left, and his horn-rimmed glasses magnified his almost blue eyes. Yet women, young and old, gathered ’round him, hungering for a moment of his attention.

Each mother, when her daughter reached marriageable age, paraded her, much as had Cinderella’s stepmother before the prince, to the commissary and set her before Gabe. He teased and entertained with an occasional magic trick, but he never stepped forward. He often retold stories that he read from his box of novels. He recognized that he was one of the few bachelors in the camp, but his place was behind the counter. At twenty-three, he was still young to marry, yet the women always returned. He was the one thing their husbands were not. His hair was red, not soot coated, his hands scrubbed clean. No black eyelids outlined with coal dust, no black collars embedded around his nails. No teeth stained brown from years of tobacco juice. Simply put, Gabe Shipley was not an underground man. They saw him as clerk and salesman, more the businessman, more so than Winston Rafe. Camp wives acknowledged Rafe as a man of wealth and vengeance. They met him with no more than a nod of the head when he approached. He was their husbands’ boss. Distant. Remote. Gabe was open, friendly, often funny.

Anna looked past Gabe at Rafe’s office door. It stood ajar. She nodded in answer to Gabe’s question.

He began to unroll cloth from the bolt. “How many yards you need?”

“Two.”

“That won’t make much of a dress.” Gabe grinned, as if he would be the one making the garment.

“A top. It’s to make a top.” Anna set the shoes on the counter. “Give me a price on these shoes before you take scissors to the cloth, Gabe.”

Gabe thumbed through his inventory, found the page. “Seven dollars and ninety-five cents,” he said and slapped the book shut.

“Long time asking, but I need to know something.” Gabe leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. “Mr. Rafe’s orders. I been meaning to know if I put a Bible in your camp house before you and the mister moved in. Mr. Rafe’s real strong that I do that for all his families,” Gabe mumbled as if he had made a mistake and did not want Rafe to know. “So I’m asking ‘round.” He lowered his eyes. “It makes us family, so he says.”

Before Anna could respond, a voice from across the store said, “Those shoes are on sale, Gabe.” Winston Rafe walked toward the shoe display holding a cardboard sign lettered “Sale.”

Gabe looked at Rafe and said, “Oh?”

“Yep. Till they’re gone. Two dollars a pair. Going to Bristol next week for new stock. We need to pass these on to good customers.”

Anna, her cheeks red, twisted around to face Rafe. “No thank you, Mr. Rafe. I pay regular price. My man makes good money.”

“I’m helping my miners out with this sale.”

Anna’s face burned.

Gabe lowered his head. Anna knew he recognized how foolish Rafe was to behave so in public. He had straightened his back when he heard Rafe call the miners “his miners,” as if he had been dubbed lord of the manor.

Behind Rafe stood Juanita White, eyeing Anna and soaking up every word. This favor from Rafe would spread all over camp before supper. Every woman would be in before dark for a pair of sale shoes. They would question each other about why the sale had not been posted in the window before Anna asked about the shoes. She would be the talk of the camp.

Rafe would be out who knows how much money because of her.

“I can afford a sale now and then. You enjoy those shoes and stitch up something pretty for yourself.”

He took her elbow and walked her to the door, her package in his hand. At the entrance, he gave her the shoes. “Don’t you hesitate to come back if these shoes pain you any. I’ll have Gabe swap them out for something better.”

The pregnancy had bloated her so much that she felt cow-like. She wished he would not speak to her as if she were a miner’s wife. For Gabe and Juanita’s benefit, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Rafe.”

Rafe grinned and glanced about as if checking to see who had overheard her compliment. Anna pulled her cardigan tight against the morning chill. A thin shadow wrapped itself around the corner. She cringed and stepped into leaves brittle from lack of August rain.

 

Summer passed with Anna’s becoming more and more confined. The baby’s growth hindered her walking very far. Her shame at knowing she carried a child who might be labeled “bastard” kept her from going no farther than Juanita White’s. Facing wives head-on drained her more than early morning sickness had, so she stopped going to the commissary by mid-summer. She gave Clint a list and hoped he would follow through.

As an only child, Clint had no idea what to do to help Anna through this pregnancy and her self-isolation. Her list would read baking powder and he would bring in baking soda. It would read hoop cheese and he would bring back cheddar. After two trips back to exchange what he had bought, he gave the list to Gabe, who was usually propped on his stool, reading one of his books, and let him collect whatever Anna needed. Throughout the pregnancy, Clint said little and waited for instructions from Anna. She had none.

A flat orange moon emerged on a bitter October night. The year was 1944. Clint came home to an empty kitchen. No food on the stove. Breakfast dishes on the table. He found Anna in the bedroom, grasping the wooden headboard spindles and thrashing on the bed, moaning, crying a hard, scared cry. He took no time to change from his mining coveralls. He ran to Doc Braxton’s house. He pounded on the door, but no one answered. The thought that he had left Anna alone panicked him. He should be there for her. He had heard of women who died while giving birth. At thirty, Clint had no concept of a woman’s birthing. One thing he did know was that he could not live without Anna Parsons Goodman.

He back-tracked to Seth White’s. He stomped flat-footed up Seth’s wooden steps and pounded on the door. Seth opened the door as he hoisted up his suspenders.

“What you up to so late?” Seth asked. “It’s nigh on to nine o’clock.”

Between pants, Clint choked out his words. “It’s the young’un. It’s coming and it’s two months yet due and Anna’s dying and I got to get the granny and get her here before both of them die because she’s thrashing round like some cow plugged with a crooked calf.”

“Where’s Doc?” Seth stepped out on the porch.

“Gone.” Clint, now out of breath from his running and telling, dropped on the top step and leaned against the porch post.

Seth smothered a chuckle. “Guess we best get in the truck and get on with it then.” He reached behind the door for his jacket. “Juanita,” he called. “Get on over and see to Anna. Baby’s coming.” Seth reached into the crawl space under the porch and drew out a quart jar of moonshine. “Might need this ’fore the night’s over.” He placed the bottle on the bench seat between his hip and Clint and cranked the truck.

Clint eyed the jar as the truck bumped from hole to hole climbing the rise to Flatland. Seth noticed and offered him a drink. Clint unscrewed the lid and guzzled a hefty swig. The liquor seared his mouth and throat, but he swallowed. He wiped his mouth with his forearm.

“How is it, Seth, you and Juanita got only one kid being married all these years? Anna and me, we been married these seven years and this is our first hit.”

“Juanita knows how to take care of herself since Jason. She’s a genuine marvel.” The front truck wheel fell into a rut and yanked the steering wheel. “Granny said no more and she ain’t.” Seth fought back and steadied the truck. “Taught herself lots of things. Like driving up that steep hill to Flatland and back. Learned on her own. Got in this truck one evening, stomped on the starter and drove up the road. Jerked back and forth for a time, but driving nonetheless.”

“Why’d she start out at night?” Clint said.

“Who knows the head of a woman,” Seth answered. “She just done it that way.”

Within an hour, they returned with the granny. Clint rode bundled in his work jacket in the truck bed so Granny could sit inside with her bulky, black valise. They dropped Granny off at Clint’s steps.

 

“Granny’s back in town,” Brother Moon sings in his resonant baritone voice. “Oh ho, Granny’s back in town.”

Stars dance about to the night music. They twirl through the sky, giving the illusion below of constant blinking.

 

Clint jumped down from the truck, but Seth called him back. “No place for a man in there,” he said. “We’ll be best served out here on the porch.”

Clint paced the porch in the manner of all men who suddenly realize what their pleasuring has led to for their women. Seth, poised like a veteran, leaned his chair against the wall, swigging drink after drink from his jar.

Clint snatched the jar from Seth and gulped deep. “I’m the one who done this. I warrant the shine.” He stumbled toward Seth, who reached for him.

“Set down here, before you fall off in the yard,” Seth said. He belched a groggy laugh from his belly. “Seems to me the one needing this is Anna. Not you and for sure not me.”

“What’re they going to say, the women? Us out here drunk as skunks and Anna in there hollering and Granny singing?” Clint plopped to the floor like a child and rubbed his forehead. “I shouldn’t of done this to her. She won’t never forgive me.” Clint stifled a drunken sob.

“Naw,” Seth said. “She’ll forget and be wanting another one before you know what’s happened. That’s the way of a woman.” Seth settled his chair. “Besides, Granny’s in there. She’ll slip a knife under the mattress to cut the pain, and it’ll be over before you know it. Can’t no harm be done.”

“See that rattle she had?” Clint said. “What’s that about?”

“Baby rattle?”

“No. Looked like a gourd.” Clint shook his head. “You think she’s some witch?”

“Don’t go whistling down the holler,” Seth said. “It’s woman stuff. Stuff we’re not supposed to know.” Seth handed Clint the jar. “Here. You’re a man now. Proved it pure and simple.” He slapped Clint on the back. “Done made you a baby.” Seth laughed again. “Drink up.”

Clint took the jar and downed the last of Seth’s moonshine. Seth picked up his fruit jar, cranked his truck and left Clint alone on his porch.

Clint turned when he heard the door open behind him. He glanced at the colorful long skirt that stood beside him.

“Get on up now,” Granny said. “You got a baby girl to attend to.” She reached down her hand to help Clint rise.

“Anna?”

“She’s fine. Baby’s fine.”

“What should I do?” Clint stood beside Granny and waited.

“Get inside your house and name your girl-child.” Granny descended the steps.

“Wait. Don’t I pay you or something?” Clint reached into his pocket.

“No. Great Spirit takes care of such.” Granny walked to the road. “Not this time.”

“You want me to get Seth to take you to Flatland?”

“No. I walked this path many a time before.”

Granny vanished into the darkness. A cold wind hit Clint in the face as he tapped quietly on the door.

“Come in here and meet Lily Marie Goodman,” Anna said from inside. “I named her after my sister and a verse from Solomon.”

Clint closed the door behind him to cut out the rising autumn wind.