BY FRIDAY ALL OF THE BABIES WERE SICK. THEY WERE FEVERISH AND hot, with wrinkled, red faces and feeble, screaking cries. Their little whimpers again reminded Christie of kittens seeking a nipple. She drank the warm milk James brought in early, because sweet-milk was more nourishing before it cooled. Neighbors continued to bring milk to the springhouse, and somebody was always churning, but Christie had now given up trying to get the babies to suck from the hard rubber nipples. Mittens stayed longer each visit, trying to coax the babies to take her breast. She rocked and sang, her songs more plaintive and urgent now. Mama cut a piece out of a new diaper cloth to make more sucky rags, and she and Amanda and Mrs. Willy tried by the hour to squeeze drops of sweetened milk into the babies. Mama kept up her baby talk as she cuddled the babies one by one. Mrs. Willy kept saying, “It’s a pity.” Alma stormed around, barking orders. She stationed her older children at the doors, and two or three of the men stayed out front at all times. The yard was still full of people. The weather remained cool, and Alma kept the fire going. Christie wanted to pound something to pieces. Sometimes, seeing James outdoors splitting kindling, she could imagine taking hold of the ax and chopping viciously into a stump.
Dr. Foote brought his daughter, Chancey, to sit with the babies on Saturday. He had confidence in his daughter’s observations, he said. She was to let him know of any significant deterioration in the babies’ health. Chancey was a plain girl with a habit of praying spontaneously, the way some people might comment on the temperature or the direction of the wind. “Lord, have mercy on the little souls,” she would say in the middle of a conversation, aiming her eyes at the loft. Christie paid little attention to her. She wished she could walk back through the fields. She paced across the floor, looking out the window, as if she expected someone to come and tell her what to do, or tell the future, or take the babies away. Brother Jones hadn’t taken much particular interest in the babies, but he told James he would hold Minnie’s service whenever they were ready.
Boone came down, bundled in a scarf and earmuffs. He gazed at the four struggling little forms and said something under his breath. Then he said to Christie, “Nannie’s been keeping house for me. Nannie’s going to make somebody a good little wife someday.”
“Nannie?” For a split second Christie didn’t know who Nannie was. “You take care of Nannie,” she said to Boone then. “I need my Nannie.” A spark of fear burned through her. “What will you do to her?”
“Now, Christie, don’t you worry none about Nannie. She’s already learning to cook. She fixed me a biscuit, with three peas and a gumdrop on it. I told her it was larruping.”
Where was James? She saw Mama scalding the churn. Christie thought Dr. Foote had gone home, but here he was again, pulling those ear tubes out of his satchel. His daughter folded and unfolded her harsh white hands. When she wasn’t praying, she was writing in a book.
“Are they going to live?” Mama asked Dr. Foote.
He listened to the babies’ chests. He lifted their long dresses the way he had moved up Christie’s skirt in his office, looking for those fibroids. The memory enraged her, as if the touch of this man had jinxed her body and now was working its poison on these little bodies. She wanted to shout. She saw Boone leaving, his neck ducked down into his coat, his earmuffs sticking out like a cow’s velvet ears.
Dr. Foote removed the tubes from his ears. “It’s a spring cold,” he said. “They might get over it, but their lungs are weak. If we can keep the right temperature—cool them off when they’re fevered and warm them up when they’re chilled—they could get over it. But they need nourishment.”
Christie was holding the butter mold in her hand. She turned it over and traced her finger on the design carved into the wood—buttercups.
“It’s all my fault,” she said. “My milk wasn’t good.”
“Now don’t talk that-a-way, Christie,” said Mama soothingly. “I believe they was handled too much. It wasn’t your milk.”
“I gained all that weight,” Christie cried. “Why wasn’t it enough to feed them with? I’m still big. I’m big as a cow. A cow could give enough.” She dropped the butter mold on the table.
“Be still, Christie,” Mama said, throwing an arm around her. “You’ll strain what milk you’ve got.”
Christie snatched the recent newspaper with the happy story about her and the babies. “Look at us,” she said, in tears.
“I’m awful sorry, Mrs. Wheeler,” the doctor said, as he put away his tools. “I’d give anything to help these babies live.”
“Well, do it! They’ve got to live!” Christie threw the newspaper toward the fire, and it landed, spread, on the hearth.
“He’s doing what he can, hon,” Mama said, stepping forward to pick up the paper.
“Tell me what to do!” Christie begged the doctor. “Just tell me what to do.”
Shaking his head wearily, Dr. Foote searched his bag as if he might find a magic cure that he had misplaced. He left Christie with instructions for keeping the babies’ fevers down, and he told Chancey to stay there till dark, then ride back with Mittens and Sam.
“They might pull through,” he said to Christie. “As long as you can get some milk down them.”
Through the south window, Christie could see him walking toward his buggy, weaving through the group of Wheelers and strangers out in the yard. Everyone seemed to be waiting.
As Dr. Foote drove away, Amanda brought Little Bunch and Lena down. “There wasn’t any school today, on account of planting,” she said. “Wad says they’ve got to be out helping, but Bunch goes along and digs up the seeds like a crow in a cornfield. Bunch-Bean, now set still and behave. We’ve got to cheer Christie up.”
Little Bunch was wearing an indigo dress and white pinafore, with high-top brown boots and gray cotton stockings. The child was tugging at the knot in her scarf and mumbling. She walked around the room, dancing off nervous energy. Then she stopped beside Chancey, and her shadow fell over the babies in the baby bed. Suddenly, before anyone could stop her, Little Bunch began poking at the doubled feather bolster that was their mattress. She pummeled it, feeling it as if she were looking for a ring or a tooth hidden inside.
Amanda jerked Little Bunch away. “Stop aggravating those babies, Little Bunch! Go help Lena wash the dishes.”
“Lord, help these precious little ones,” said Chancey.
“Where’s your mama, Christie?” Amanda asked.
“Out in the garden, I expect.” Christie heard the train whistle.
“You know, I miss the train.” Amanda sighed and sat down on the bed, facing Christie in the rocker. Amanda said, “What a thing to happen to us. I’ve had more society in the last two weeks than I’ve had most of my life. I think when it’s all over with, we’ll feel like we’ve been through that earthquake after all. We’ll think it happened right here.”
“When what’s all over with?” said Christie.
“Oh, excuse me, Christie. Oh, I’m such a eejit!” Amanda stood up, flustered. She touched Christie’s hair, smoothing back a stray lock. “I mean when we get back to the way we’d been a-being, before all this happened.”
“Do you think that will ever be?”
“Well, sometime, I imagine,” Amanda said, picking up James Lake.
“I don’t care if the train does stop,” said Christie with bitterness. “Let ’em all in. Let ’em see. They need to see. Somebody said it was like showing off Jesus in the manger. I feel like I’ve been living in a manger. Or a hog trough, one.”
“Shh, Christie. Don’t scare this littlun.”
Amanda enclosed James Lake in her arms and stood by the window, rocking him gently. Christie could hear her singing softly.
Chancey beamed her eyes ceilingward and said, “Dear Lord, show us the way, for the way seems crooked and the path strown with temptations and marked with mislabeled signposts.”
“Does it really?” said Christie sarcastically. “Signposts? Why, my stars.” She wanted to hit this dumb girl.
Christie dashed outside toward the outhouse. She felt breathless and light-headed. Amanda’s voice trailed behind her. “Christie, don’t be mad!”
As she approached the outhouse, she saw that Thomas Hunt was just emerging. A dog she’d never seen walked up to him, a small brown-and-white dog with a curled tail. Thomas stooped to pet him, then spotted Christie.
“Why, Christie, are you out-of-doors a’ready?”
“Go on in and see the babies. Mandy’s there.”
“Alma’s up at the house scouring pans. She was scouring like she was going to scour plumb through the bottom.” Thomas snapped a gallus in place and headed toward the porch, the dog following. “Come on, you good-for-nothing,” he said to the dog. “You wait for me out here by the steps.”
The seat in the outhouse felt warm. She drew in the smells that mingled from the springhouse, the barn, the bale of straw. Wad claimed filling up the outhouse hole with straw was a waste because it had to be shoveled out more often and used up precious straw. But the Wilburns had always used straw in their outhouse in Dundee, and after moving to Hopewell Christie had begged James for a bale of straw now and then.
She was still bleeding, but not so much since she had been out of bed. She barely had any infection now. She hadn’t paid much attention to her own body since Minnie died. Physical sensations seemed to whirl around outside of her, the way the babies were outside of her now. Occasionally, for a few moments, she forgot her situation altogether, and her mind went back to Dundee—she was a young girl, sewing underclothes and piecing quilt blocks; or, younger still, following her Aunt Zulah out to the henhouse to gather eggs when they visited Mama’s folks in Tennessee. Even now, Christie could sense the warm underside of a hen she called Mollie, a hen who always let her take the egg without protest. Aunt Zulah protested, though, that you didn’t give hens names. It made them persnickety, she said. Aunt Zulah Rhodes was gone now. She died of brain trouble the year Christie married.
Christie felt calmer. She threw straw down behind her. Outside, she encountered the strange dog, who lowered his head to her and wagged his tail. On the back porch she found a scrap of meat and threw it out to him. Now he would stay, she thought, hoping James wouldn’t mind that she had fed meat to the dog.
“We thought you fell in,” said Amanda when Christie returned.
“Are the babies awake?”
“Just one of them, that little blond one.”
“Mollie Lee,” said Christie impatiently.
“I still can’t tell ’em apart,” Amanda wailed. “Christie, Thomas here’s been telling what they’re saying all along his drumming route. Tell her, Thomas.”
Thomas needed no encouragement. Christie took up Mollie and walked with her, rocking her in her arms and humming to her while Thomas talked. Chancey was still sitting in a chair by the bed, dull as a stump.
Thomas cleared his throat and started. “Everywhere I go, when they hear where I’m from, they all want to know, Do you know them Hopewell quintuplets? Of course at first I play like I don’t know what they’re saying and then string ’em along. And when they find out who I am and how I’m related, why, they all want a souvenir! Or they want me to sign my name! Christie, what you done has gone far and wide! Why, I was down in Mississippi, and they told me it was in the Jackson paper. And I been through Tennessee, and over in Arkansas just a little ways, and back up here, and I tell you ever’where they know. I say Hopewell and they say the babies. It’s the beatin’est thing I’ve ever run across in all my drumming days.”
“Tell about the one down in Tupelo,” urged Amanda. She was busy molding the butter Mrs. Willy had churned earlier.
“This was in a little store. This feller always gives me a big order, and when he found out about the Hopewell quints—I refer to them as the Hopewell quints now—he decided to double his order of baby powder. He was going to paste a special label on the baby powder and make it a souvenir—because it come from me, you see. It’s that kind of baby powder the drugstore sent you? With him doubling his order, I made over five dollars right then and there. I tell you, I shot home on wings. But I’m setting out again right soon, soon as I get these orders in. I’m pushing this baby powder idea.”
“There’s four, not five,” said Christie, pausing before the fireplace.
Thomas nodded in the direction of the baby bed, shifted his feet uncomfortably, then changed the subject. He asked Amanda if she needed any complexion cream. He had brought some samples of Dr. Ayer’s Peerless Violet Cream. Christie wondered if Thomas thought they had merely dug a little hole in the yard for Minnie, like burying a dead cat. She sat down on the far side of the bed, turning her back to both Thomas and Chancey, and brought Mollie to her breast. Christie hugged her close, as if she could squeeze milk into her. The little face was hot against her skin. Nervously, Thomas and Amanda kept chattering. Christie didn’t know where her mother was. She knew Amanda was trying to be cheerful for her, but she wished she could be alone with the babies. Distractedly, she called to Lena and Little Bunch to open the packages Mr. Letcher had dumped in a box by the door.
“Oh, goody,” said Lena, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Thomas, you’ll be amazed,” Amanda said. “We’ve been getting so many letters.” She laid down her butter paddle and picked up a letter at random. “Listen to this.” She read aloud, “‘Dear Mrs. Wheeler, I had a dream that you would have quintups. In my dream, I was talking to a woman I’d never met. She was big and about to have a baby. I said I hope it’s twins and she said I hope I hope. I realize now the dream meant Hopewell and it was you. I read you got very big. Yours truly, Mrs. Raymond Sears.’”
Amanda folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. “That’s all the way from Georgia,” she said.
Lena had opened one of the packages, and she held up a baby dress—blue with pale blue edging and buttons at the bottom, with openings for the baby’s legs.
“That trimming is tatted!” cried Amanda. “How pretty. There’s a letter with it.” She snatched the letter eagerly and read to herself. Then she said, softly, “Oh, this dress belonged to this woman’s little dead baby. And she wanted you to have it, Christie.” Amanda spread the dress on the bed. “That’s the sweetest thing,” she said. “This woman says her baby had typhoid fever.”
“All five babies would fit in that,” said Christie. “Four.” She covered her breast and walked around the foot of the bed to the baby bed. She laid down Mollie and picked up James Lake. His mouth screwed around and a bubble of spit popped out, simultaneously with a bubble from his nose. She dabbed at his face and held him upright. He opened his eyes and gazed vacantly.
“Itty bitty bitty!” said Thomas awkwardly to the baby, reaching his hand to touch him. “Itsy bitsy.”
Christie stopped short. She had forgotten what to say to babies. Had she been talking baby talk in front of the multitude for two weeks? Had she spoken to any of those strangers, or had she lain there deaf and dumb like a rock, like an exhibit for them to witness? She didn’t have a clear sense of herself anymore. She recalled the murmurs, the oohs, the goo-goos they made, the faces. How odd that grown people would babble to babies. Babies couldn’t speak at all. She regarded Thomas Hunt, who was grinning foolishly. He still had his hat on, along with his striped shirt, watch chain, vest, traveling trousers, but no coat. The life of a drummer was a mystery. A man lived like a Gypsy, going off on a train with several trunks, to a strange town where he hired a wagon and drove around to the stores and sat around jawboning with rough men. Christie knew he brought the store owners whiskey to loosen their tongues and their pocketbooks. Alma said he even got shaved in barber shops, where men talked filth in dirty back rooms. Christie had heard him curse many times when he thought no women were around. He liked to say, “Goddamn that and a rabbit in the pea patch.”
Mama swooped in from the closed-off north room then to see the little blue dress.
“Is that trimming really tatted, Mandy?” Mama asked, reaching for the dress. “Why, it is. Such fine thread.” She squinted and held the dress at arm’s length.
“Look what I found,” said Lena, who had opened another package. “Baby bracelets.”
“Why, somebody’s knotted some baby bracelets out of colored thread and then embroidered on the names.” Amanda held up the bracelets admiringly.
Christie fingered the bracelets, wondering why anybody would take the time and care to fashion the bracelets so carefully as a gift for someone she didn’t know. James, John, Emma, Molly, Sophie.
“The names ain’t right,” she said.
“It won’t make no difference,” Mama said. “They’re close enough.”
“There’s a stray dog out there,” Amanda said, glancing out the window.
“He followed me all the way from the depot,” said Thomas. He kept a horse and wagon at a farm near the station in Cross Plains. “He trotted along behind so long I thought he’d never make it back to where he started, so I let him ride in the wagon with me awhile, and he trotted awhile, and then he rode awhile. He seemed bound and determined to come home with me.”
“Alma will say it was just like you, to dump another dog on her,” Amanda said. “You can go off drumming and then she’ll have to feed it.”
Thomas grinned. “You don’t think Alma’ll be tickled to get another dog?”
“Alma’s liable to send you and the dog back out on the road,” said Amanda, grinning back.
Christie couldn’t get James Lake to take her breast. She moved from the bed to the rocking chair. She loosened his bonnet and felt his damp wisp of hair. Closing her eyes and listening to Thomas and Amanda bantering, she thought about the time she saw them come out of the smokehouse, one after the other. She had wondered if they had been in there together, and now she decided they probably had. Ordinarily, it would have shocked her to think this, but now the surprise seemed so distant, like something observed on the horizon, the silhouettes of cattle plodding along.
She felt as though she were running after something she couldn’t catch. She couldn’t keep up with what went on in the smokehouse—or anywhere. She didn’t even care. For all she knew, some of the children might be out in the smokehouse now, sinfully exploring each other, or playing around in the hayloft or the stable or the shed that was some distance down the lane, where Wad kept some tools. Jimmie Lou already had boys hanging around on Sundays after church. Christie couldn’t stop any of it. Her own sins were more than she could face. She felt stiff and tired and heavy. Back when she was light and limber, she used to fairly run down the lane to the men in the field—to take them a jug of water, or a bucket of dinner. She would run through the morning dew to work in the field herself. She had stopped in that shed on the lane once to get out of a pouring rain. She longed for the simple pleasure of going with James to look out over the fields. Just going to the henhouse to gather eggs would be a great satisfaction. She wanted to return to life. She felt the babies slipping away from her. If she lost them, she would bury them away, plant them like seeds, and they would grow into fruit trees or bountiful grapevines or tall stalks of corn, fat with milky kernels.
“Ain’t no sign of that wagonload of presents from town?” Thomas was asking Amanda.
“They’re probably waiting to see if the babies going to make it,” said Christie sharply. “That’s what Alma said.”
But Thomas wasn’t listening to her—or thinking about the babies. He was drinking in Amanda’s words as she told about Wad collecting admission in his cigar box. Amanda had a flair for telling even the most ordinary detail and making it fascinating. It was the way she moved her hands, Christie realized. Her slender, white hands moved like doves, fluttering and soaring. And it was her youthful air too. Christie felt old. She leaned back in the rocker, clutching her sick child against her.
Thomas and Amanda faded away. Outside, some dogs barked. Someone was arriving. Christie wasn’t going to move from the chair, no matter who it was, or with what news. Lena disappeared into the kitchen. Immediately, Little Bunch was into the bolster again.
“Get out of there,” said Amanda, jerking Little Bunch away from the babies. “What are you after—snakes? We’re not helping Christie out one bit. You get out too, Thomas. Christie don’t need you down here. Christie, I’m carrying these younguns home, and I’ll bring Nannie and the boys down later. Dulcie’s got ’em out sweeping the yard since it’s warmed up.”
Christie closed her eyes. She heard Amanda and Thomas and the girls leave. In a while she heard other people arrive, then tiptoe past the stairway to murmur and squeal at the babies. She wouldn’t face them. She heard her mother talking to the people on the porch. “Poor little things . . . drafts . . . baby bracelets . . . tatted dress.” Christie heard Mollie whimper. She had no sense of how long the babies could hold on like this. She had made a dreadful mistake. She should have nursed the largest and healthiest one and saved him. James Lake. Her favorite. James Lake and Emily Sue, who was like Susan. She could have saved them both.
She would not let herself cry in front of all those strangers. She wouldn’t tell anyone how she felt, even if the Lord took all of her babies. Chancey Foote had been talking to the Lord about whether He meant to take them. Christie envisioned them flying through the room and out the window, up to Heaven. She had lost track of the strange girl and thought she had left. Christie opened her eyes. The girl was there after all, murmuring and writing something in her ledger.
“Dear Lord, have mercy on these dear babies,” said Chancey to the loft.
“Mollie needs changing,” Christie said, starting to rise from the rocker. She was relieved to know some fluid was going through the infant.
“I’ll do it, Mrs. Wheeler,” Chancey said. “Don’t stir.”
Christie did as she was told. All she had to do was utter a word—milk, biscuit, diaper—and someone would leap up and get it for her. She was a queen. Nobody could claim to know the mind of a queen, she thought.
The next day was Sunday. James went out at daylight with his rifle, taking Clint along. When they came back two hours later, Christie was rocking the two boys. They were barely nursing now, and she felt her breasts leaking through her clothes.
“Looky here, Chrissie,” said James with an awkward smile as he held up a fresh squirrel.
“It’s a fat one—for this time of year.”
“I get to have the tail,” said Clint, rubbing his hand down the fur.
Excitedly, he reported how the new dog had treed the squirrel and how he had stayed perfectly still while James took aim and killed it. With exaggerated motions of his arms, Clint imitated shooting the rifle.
“You’re making my arms tired,” said Christie, who had been in one position too long. Clint aimed his finger at each of the four babies in turn.
“Come on, Whistle-britches,” James said to Clint, steering him toward the back door, using the squirrel tail to swish the child’s head as they passed Christie. “Let’s get your grandmama to dress this squirrel.”
“The babies can’t eat squirrel,” Clint said to Christie.
“No, sugar. They’re too little to eat meat.” She wanted to reach out and hold Clint’s face still, to look into it deeply, but her arms were full with the two babies. She thought John Wilburn was interested in sucking.
“Go help Grandmama dress the squirrel,” she said to Clint.
“The baby needs to have his titty,” James said to him.
Christie and James shared a glance. Her breasts were bared, and the two little boys nestled against them.
By noon, Mama had a pot of squirrel-and-dumplings ready. She brought a bowl of it to the table for Christie.
“When I was dressing the squirrel, I pinched a nerve in my finger, and I can’t get the feeling back,” Mama complained, wiggling her forefinger. “Come on to the table, Christie.”
“I ain’t hungry.” She was gazing out the front window. Several dozen people loitered in the yard, in their Sunday clothes. The red oak was swelling with color.
“Ain’t none of us going to eat any of this,” Mama said. “It’s all for you, since James went out and killed it for you.”
“I ain’t hungry.”
“You need your strength. James got this to build up your strength. He went out looking for it jest for you.”
“Clint helped,” said James, who was at the kitchen washstand.
“I didn’t even breathe in,” Clint said. “I was so quiet!”
“Ain’t nothing as nourishing for a sick child or a new mother as a bird stew or a squirrel stew,” said Alma, who had just come in through the back with a bucket of water. “A dove or a patteridge makes a right good stew, but I believe squirrel is superior.”
Christie sat down at the kitchen table and lifted the large spoon. The broth was thickened by the dumplings, which Mama had made with long, thick strips of dough. Christie took a bite. It was rich with pepper. She dipped the spoon in the broth again. The tiny head of the squirrel rose to the top, and where the bone was broken she could see the dark filaments of the veins over the brain, little threads making a fragile net cap.
“Eat it,” said Alma.
“I can’t.”
“Eat it or you’ll die,” warned Alma.