“WHEN WILL WE BURY HER?” CHRISTIE ASKED JAMES WHEN THEY heard the first wagon drive up at daybreak. It was Mittens and Sam.
“Let’s put it off a day,” said James, quickly pulling on his britches. “I don’t like the way the other girls look.”
He didn’t want to say the obvious—that if another baby died, it would be less trouble to handle the burials together. They agreed, hastily, to keep Minnie’s body as cool as possible in the springhouse with the milk and the few remaining bits of dirty ice James had cut from the pond in February. And James agreed to reinforce the springhouse further against animals and to lock the baby’s body in a trunk. In bed the night before, James had held Christie fiercely, while both prayed wordlessly over the sorrowful consequence of their passion. But she cringed at his touch.
As the sun inched up, Amanda arrived, bringing Boone’s newspaper. The Hopewell Chronicle, which was printed the day before, had yet another article about the babies and the crowds they were attracting.
QUINTUPLETS ARE
BIG ATTRACTION!
Mrs. Wheeler’s
Babies Bask in
National Glory
The article said the babies adorned the town of Hopewell like a star atop a Christmas tree. By now, the Chronicle said, the news of the quintuplets had spread across the continent, and visitors were arriving from everywhere. The Friendship was stopping every afternoon. Local merchants were gathering gifts for the quintuplets.
“They’ll forget about that wagon of presents, now that there’s just four,” said James over his breakfast. Amanda was reading the paper aloud to him, while Mittens fed the boys. Mollie and Emily Sue were still sleeping. Christie was quiet. With the poker, she shifted the back log in the fireplace and watched the flames lick it. She felt as indifferent as the log.
Mittens held the babies longer than usual that morning, rocking them and singing to them. When she left, she whispered to Christie, “Don’t you let go now, ma’am. And you send for me, no matter if it’s the middle of the night. Let’s don’t let these babies go to bed thirsty. They spirit will wander off and drink out of mud-puddles to keep from drying up.”
When Dr. Foote arrived, he reminded Christie that Minnie had always been the weakest. “The other four will do better now,” he said reassuringly.
James didn’t go to the fields straight after milking. He returned to the house, and Mama tried to shoo him out, telling him he needed to be out working.
“I’ll stay close this morning,” he said, as he left. “It would be disrespectful to go ahead with the planting.” Christie had noticed the empty look in his eyes over his eggs and sausage earlier, and she didn’t know what to say. Now she could see him in the front yard, beneath the oak tree, talking with two men. Alma’s girls had been stationed on the porch to keep out any callers. The yard was crammed with strangers, as it had been for days. But now James refused to let them come in. She saw Thurman and Henry and Joseph. There was no sign of Wad. The men were guarding the place, like soldiers around a fort. Footsteps hammered the porch. Faces pressed against the window.
Mrs. Willy came in, weeping, her hair straggling out of her bonnet in gray-streaked loops. As she bent down into Christie’s face, she seemed larger, her loneliness magnified under her bonnet brim.
“The Lord just couldn’t be without that littlun,” Mrs. Willy said. “He had to call her home.”
Mama, already busy cooking dinner, sent Mrs. Willy out to the garden. The weather was cool again, but the ground was dried out enough to hoe. “The weeds are taking hold of the lettuce,” Mama told her.
Christie’s eyes telegraphed gratitude to her mother, who saw that Mrs. Willy’s high-pitched wail annoyed Christie. Mama had already sent word to Papa and Aunt Sophie. Christie wondered if the family would come from Dundee. She wished she could be by herself, with just her children, but she couldn’t take care of them all, alone. Mama was taking care of her. Mama had a pot of ham hocks on the stove, and Lena had promised to find her some potatoes and cabbage to go in it.
Just as the clock was striking eleven, Mrs. Blankenship showed up with a jar of boiled custard. Mama allowed her in. Christie was in the rocking chair giving a bottle to Mollie, who had been fussy and active all morning. The rocker’s familiar squeak seemed synchronized with the clock’s ticking. In a conspiratorial near-whisper, Mrs. Blankenship said, “Christie, I have a family friend I want you to see because I believe he can help you out in a way that none of the rest of us can. He’s one of our most upstanding citizens. He’s versed in the skills of sympathy and puts me to shame in extending my condolences at a time like this.”
“Who?” Christie asked. The bed hadn’t been made up. It smelled. Her hair needed washing. Mrs. Blankenship was perfumed, and her sweet odor mingled with the sour stink of babies. Christie could smell the ham hocks simmering. She had been able to get down an egg early that morning, but she was afraid it would come back up.
Mrs. Blankenship proceeded blithely. Her watch on a gold chain swung against her chest like a plumb bob. “Mr. Samuel Mullins,” she said. “My husband is a friend of Mr. Mullins, and Mr. Mullins is equipped with the most appropriate advice at a time like this.” The woman touched Christie’s shoulder, and with her other hand she fingered Mollie’s blanket. “He makes it his business to help people when they lose loved ones. His business isn’t on the square. It’s over on the east side of town. He has a fine, well-appointed house, with the best furnishings and the most up-to-date techniques for caring for our loved ones.”
Mrs. Blankenship should run one of those newfangled funeral parlors herself, Christie thought. She had the morbid sensibility for such an enterprise. Christie—her head bowed, not answering—clutched Mollie against her chest. She refused to cry. Mrs. Blankenship stayed for a few minutes more, pouring out syrupy words in a slow stream. Then she said she was anxious to get back to town, to send word to Mr. Mullins.
“He can talk to James,” Christie said tonelessly.
She ran her tongue along a cavity in a back tooth. She wished Mr. Mullins would take the matter off their hands so they wouldn’t have to think about it. It seemed that everything else was being done for them these days.
She could see Jimmie Lou and Dulcie out on the porch, their faces animated and glowing with the cold. They let the mail carrier, Mr. Letcher, inside. He stuck his head around the stairway and set down a tow sack full of mail.
“I’m mighty sorry, Mrs. Wheeler,” he said to Christie. “Mrs. Letcher sent you some boiled custard.” He looked as if he might cry.
“Thank ye kindly, Mr. Letcher.”
“You got a letter from the new governor. I imagine he wants to help out.” Mr. Letcher had the important-looking letter in his hand.
Amanda read it out. “He wants to come and see the babies,” she said. “He says congratulations. Oh, Christie, we’ll have to write and tell him not to come.”
“He’ll come if he wants to,” said Christie. “There’s no stopping anybody like that.”
“What if he gets assassinated while he’s here?” Amanda asked.
“We’d have everybody here then, for sure,” said Alma. “The whole town, the whole state, the militia, the trains. It would just be open house from here on out.”
“Let her go daisy!” said Christie, shoving a quilt from her lap and rising from the rocker. “I don’t care.”
Mama had gone to talk to the children about what had happened. “They’re too little to understand,” she said when she returned. She coughed into her coat sleeve. “Clint did say something about how the other babies would do better now. I believe that is a blessing to come out of this. Now you won’t have to spread your milk around so far, Christie.”
Christie said, “You’re coughing again, Mama.”
“There’s a little bite in the air today,” Mama said. She touched the top of Christie’s head, then ran her hand lightly across the blanket covering the four babies. “The Lord never gives us more than we can bear, Christie,” she said. “You remember that. When I lost Susan, I thought I’d never live, but I did somehow.”
The babies were asleep. There seemed to be an empty space in the middle of their row, Christie thought. She wondered if they could sense it too. She had tried to keep them placed in the same order. Now Emily and Mollie were side by side, instead of enclosing Minnie. They knew the difference, Christie thought, when the two of them began fretting at the same time.
“That feller’s here,” Alma, at the front window, announced.
Mr. Mullins was a small man in a black suit with a shiny watch chain and creased trousers. Christie couldn’t remember if she had made herself presentable. At the door Mr. Mullins told Alma that he insisted on talking with James and Christie together alone. Everyone else would have to stay out for a time. He acted with the authority of a preacher. But for once Christie appreciated the protectiveness of the people around her and did not care to speak with Mr. Mullins so personally. She persuaded him to let Mama stay. Alma went out and hollered for James as if he were in the far field, although he was only at the stable, just beyond the great oak tree. When he came in, the babies woke up, and Mr. Mullins had to wait while Christie nursed them. He went outside and talked to Wad, who was in the front yard now. Wad hadn’t been in to see her. Christie figured the dying of a baby was one of those things that Wad thought didn’t call for words. She had heard the family express as much sorrow over a dead cow or a burned-up tobacco crop as she had heard over her baby. But she knew that farmers like Wad Wheeler weren’t the sorrowful type. If the seeds got drowned out by early rains, then they waited a spell and replanted. They had to.
Her mind swirled, and she couldn’t speak. She knew if she did, the words would be as garbled as geese talking when dogs got near. Mama sat in the rocker feeding a bottle to James Lake, and Mr. Mullins sat on the best mule-eared chair, the one with the needlepoint seat.
As Mr. Mullins, stiff in his black suit, began talking to her and James, she wondered what such a man was like. What had he and Wad talked about? Corn? Had Mr. Mullins ever cut tobacco? Had he ever chopped up a black racer? It was almost funny, trying to imagine this man out in the fields. He seemed to have been raised in that dark, formal clothing—a man who couldn’t touch dirt. And yet here he was talking to her and James about putting their baby in the ground. He wanted to do it for them.
“James can dig a hole,” she said. “I can dig a hole myself, no bigger’n it’d take.”
“Have you thought about where?” Mr. Mullins asked. “A family graveyard? Does Mr. Wheeler have a place on his property?”
“Dundee,” said Christie suddenly.
“We can’t go all the way back to Dundee,” James said.
“Susan’s there. All my family’s there.”
“The Wheeler graveyard on Amp Wheeler’s old place,” James said. “The Wheelers do all their burying there.”
“There’s a fine cemetery out at Maple Grove, east of town,” said Mr. Mullins. “I can get you a place there—large enough so that your future needs will be taken care of.”
Christie wanted to cry, but she refused. She was filled with despair, like a hollow cistern full of dank air.
“I reckon we can make do right here,” said James firmly. “You’re talking about more money than we’ve got.”
Mr. Mullins plucked at the material in his pants, parallel plucks at mid-thigh. “Forgive me. I didn’t make myself clear. In light of what you have done for this town, my services and what we can provide you at Maple Grove would not be of any expense to you. You’ve done this town proud, and the loss of your baby doesn’t detract from this honor.” He leaned forward. “I have another proposition if you’ll listen carefully.”
James and Christie looked at each other—possibly the first time their eyes had actually met since Minnie died. James was hollow-eyed and his face was gray.
Mr. Mullins continued, “What I propose to do is preserve your little Mindy and keep her in an appropriate case until you are able to hold the funeral service. We have remarkable new techniques that make this possible. Now, I hate to put it like this, but Mrs. Wheeler, you have your hands full with these babies, not to mention all your company, and you want to devote all your time and energy to caring for these precious babies—the little darlings who I’m sure are the treasures of your life—and having a service now, involving a great many people, might detract from caring for these babies. And I suspect, Mrs. Wheeler, that you’re not in the best of health and you need your strength. Therefore, I propose to keep the little body until such time as you’re ready. We can preserve her little body just as it is indefinitely. And, I apologize so much for this thought, but if it should happen that one or more of the others should not last, but are called to join their little sister, then we could have them together. We could keep them all together, if—heaven forbid—it comes to that. We could keep them in such a way that you could see the precious babies perfectly preserved, for always.”
Christie shuddered, and James rose abruptly, as if he were about to threaten the man. But then James sat down again with a sigh, letting the man’s words sink in. He had said “babies,” as if he expected to get his hands on more than one.
“None of this would be any expense to you good people,” Mr. Mullins repeated.
When Mr. Mullins left, he took with him the little form of Minnie Sophia from the springhouse. Christie went outside with James and they opened the trunk and saw her again. She was blue and cold, and the outing flannel surrounding her was damp. Mr. Mullins placed the trunk in a little wicker buggy and rolled it to the front yard, where his carriage was waiting. He traveled in a fine carriage, outfitted inside with black velvet and gold tassels. From the back he pulled out a small oak chest, lined with sky-blue plush, and he started to lift Minnie from the trunk, but James quickly pushed his hands away. James picked up the baby himself and placed her gently inside the chest. She was so small inside it, like a single jewel in a jewel box.
As she watched Mr. Mullins drive away, Christie realized she was out-of-doors in broad daylight for the first time in many weeks. She was looking out over the same fields from almost the same vantage point as when she had first seen the place four years ago. The freshly plowed fields rolled ahead of her like angry, rolling creek water high in the spring runoff. The land had the contours and colors of a spring flood. She stood there, rooted, for a moment until James nudged her elbow.
“Feel the air,” she said. “It’s spring.”