LATER THAT MORNING, A STRANGER IN GOOD CLOTHES RODE UP IN A hired rig from the depot. He had thinning brown hair, with a wispy mustache curling around the corners of his mouth like little arms, and he carried a brown satchel. He was so completely outfitted in brown that Alma told Christie later she thought he might have been wallowing with the hogs. But Alma let him in when he said he was Mr. John W. Roberts, from a newspaper in St. Louis.
“I’m down here to confirm with my own eyes that what I’ve heard is true and to take back further news to my paper,” he said, stepping into the front room. “We printed the news as soon as we learned of it from the Hopewell Chronicle.”
Christie was sitting up in the bed, wearing a striped flannelette wrapper over her shift. With so many visitors arriving, she had taken care to fix herself. She wasn’t used to men coming into the house when James wasn’t there. The mail carrier was the only man who would stop and visit with her, and even he did not come indoors unless James was nearby. It wouldn’t be polite. But Christie had heard that Northern men had less respect for their womenfolks.
“You took the train all the way from St. Louis?” said Christie, astonished.
“That I did, Mrs. Wheeler. The overnight train.” Mr. Roberts stepped forward to see the babies. “Could I hold one?” he asked.
Christie had just been getting ready to nurse Minnie and James Lake, but she had hurriedly gotten her clothes back together before the man appeared around the staircase. She was too startled to know what to do now. Mittens and Dr. Foote had left two hours before. The only family members present were Alma and Amanda. She didn’t know where James was. John Wilburn and Mollie Lee had recovered from their colic, and the babies had all nursed well that morning. Dr. Foote wasn’t worried.
Mr. Roberts laid a newspaper on the bed, and Amanda snatched it up. On the first page was a large news article entitled THE HOPEWELL QUINTUPLETS.
“Look what it says here,” she said, rustling the newspaper excitedly. “It says this is so rare as to be unknown in this part of the world.”
“Read it out, Mandy,” said Christie. She was holding Minnie, who seemed heavier.
Amanda held the paper near the window light and read aloud. The first part of the article repeated what the Hopewell paper said. Then Amanda read, in an astonished voice, “‘In most known instances of quintuplets, the babies have been born prematurely, and most of them do not survive. There are no previously recorded cases in the United States of quintuplets being born fully developed. In the Hopewell case, the babies are said to have been born at the proper time, each weighing almost four pounds. The report from Hopewell is that mother and all five children are thriving, probably due to the mother’s uncommonly large weight gain, which aided in providing their nourishment.’”
“This never happened in the whole country?” asked Christie, stupefied.
“That’s what they tell me,” Mr. Roberts said. He had picked up Emily Sue and was cuddling her in his arms. All the babies were awake now. He said, “I telephoned doctors and hospitals in several large cities, and no one had ever heard of any cases on record. I would have telephoned you too, but there’s no service down here.”
“Hopewell’s getting telephones this summer,” said Amanda defensively.
“Not that anybody will have anything worth saying,” said Alma, who—despite having let the stranger in—was still eyeing him up and down. He had sallow skin and sunken eyes. He set Emily Sue down when she started to fret.
Christie said Mr. Roberts looked in need of refreshment, so Alma gave him a glass of tea and some biscuits and ham left from breakfast.
“Much obliged to you, ma’am,” he said, lighting into the food. He sat at the kitchen table, too near for Christie to feed the babies.
“Didn’t you eat at the train station?” Amanda asked.
“No, ma’am. It was late. I had some apples and candy on the train.”
“I’d love to take the train to St. Louis,” Christie said. “But I’ll be tied down all my life now with these babies.” She smiled. In Christie’s arms, Minnie seemed to smile too.
After Mr. Roberts finished eating, he got up and stared at the babies. “Are they all the same size?” he asked. “Which one was born first? Which ones are boys and which ones are girls?”
His direct manner made Christie uncomfortable. He kept asking questions—birth weight, precise time of birth, their feeding schedule. He wanted to know how long they were and what they weighed now. He asked about the attending doctor.
“I can tell the runt,” said Alma. “But I get mixed up on the others.”
Mr. Roberts wrote down the answers to his questions in a book. He asked further questions. He wanted to know how Christie was going to manage that many babies. He wanted to know their names. Christie handed Minnie to Amanda, who set her with the others. Then Christie went down the row of babies, naming them and describing them for the man. It came to her that Mollie Lee’s fine blond hair favored Granny Wilburn’s, but she didn’t say this. When the babies started crying—all at once, it seemed—Alma told him he’d have to wait on the porch while the babies had their dinner.
“That’s all right,” he said, screwing the cap back on his fountain pen. “I’ll be on my way.”
Amanda showed Mr. Roberts one of the nursing bottles, and he held it admiringly. Alma grabbed it from him.
“You don’t need to see that, mister,” she said.
He opened his pen and scribbled something in his writing book again. The babies continued to cry, and Christie and Amanda tried to quiet them. Amanda picked up the loudest one, James Lake.
“My, my, those babies have healthy lungs,” Mr. Roberts said. “I can’t but wonder how you get them all fed.”
“It ain’t easy,” said Christie, holding Mollie Lee close and jiggling her.
“We’ve got a colored woman helping out,” said Amanda.
“They look normal,” the man said, running his fingers across the dress tails of the babies in the bed.
“The least one was poorly for a while,” said Christie. “And they don’t much like sweet-milk. But they’re all doing tolerable well.”
“That sweet-milk made them sick last night,” Amanda said.
She set down James Lake and took Mollie. Minnie was whimpering lightly.
Christie was relieved when Mr. Roberts left.
“My best wishes to you, Mrs. Wheeler,” he said as he backed toward the door. “This is certainly a wonder of the world.”
“Read me that paper again, Mandy,” said Christie, after they had quieted down the babies and two of them were peacefully drawing milk from her breasts. “It don’t hardly seem real.”
Amanda read the whole story aloud a second time, shaking her head in disbelief as she read.
“Law, that feller sure made a lot out of this,” said Alma, wringing out a rag. “Come all the way from St. Louis.”
Christie laughed. “He didn’t tarry too long—after he come all this way! I reckon the notion of raising five younguns kindly scared him.”
“He had that hired man waiting for him with that buggy, and he was probably charging by the hour,” said Amanda, who was diddling with Emily Sue, plucking at her hair to see if it sprang back into curls.
“You oughtn’t to have said we had a colored woman helping out,” said Alma, who was wiping the kitchen table. “Now he’ll put it in the paper.”
“I didn’t say Mittens was giving ’em titty, did I?” Amanda protested. “Maybe he’ll think she’s doing the cooking and sweeping.”
“He’ll think we’re mighty grand, having hired help,” Christie said.
“I never had hired help in my life, except that time with Mary and Sary,” said Alma. “But when I was real little, Mammy and Pappy had slaves—two or three of ’em. Then Pappy went off to the War.”
“Jimmie Lou said she wished she had a slave,” said Amanda.
“Jimmie Lou thinks she can have anything she wants,” said Alma. “But I didn’t spoil her. It was Thomas, going out all over the country and coming back with pretty doodads—all kinds of samples.”
“The samples is always nicer than what you find in the store,” said Amanda. “But just feature the stores up there in St. Louis!”
“When’s Thomas coming home?” Christie asked Alma. “He don’t know a thing about these babies. Won’t he be surprised!”
Alma dunked the rag she had been using into a tub of water. “He’ll get here when he gets here, I reckon,” she said. “He was supposed to be here yesterday.”
“Maybe he’s read about it in the St. Louis paper.”
“He won’t see no paper from St. Louis,” said Alma. “He went down towards Natchez. He’ll take the train back up when he gets through his rounds for that spring line of women’s drawers. I wish he’d go back to peddling seeds instead of women’s underclothes. It ain’t nice.”
“I want to see his samples,” Amanda said eagerly. “Would you ask him for a sample for me?” Then she blushed. “Don’t tell him it’s for me.”
Alma grunted and slapped her rag open. “Ask him yourself,” she said.
When James came in for dinner, Christie told him about the newspaperman from St. Louis and showed him the paper. She read it to him because James was a slow reader, having stopped school after the tenth grade. He ate as she read, nodding now and then thoughtfully.
“What do you make out of that, James?” Amanda asked. “All the way from St. Louis.”
“Don’t know,” he said, breaking open his cornbread. “Don’t know what to make out of it.”
Amanda said, “The feller acted like he’d been in such a hurry to get here, but then he didn’t stay too awful long.”
“He stayed long enough to eat,” said Christie.
“He eat like he was starved,” said Amanda. “He looked half sick.”
Christie finished nursing John Wilburn and handed him to Amanda to change him.
“The real milk is coming now,” she said. “It’s kindly blue. It was sorter green-looking yesterday and now it’s just blue.”
“That’s good. Those babies will pick up now,” said Amanda. She lifted John Wilburn’s dress tail. As she changed him, she made playful baby noises in his face.
James was studying the newspaper, calling the words to himself.
“I sure don’t know what they think about us in St. Louis,” he said.
“Oh, they don’t know us,” said Christie cheerfully. “They can think what they want to.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her breasts were sore and heavy, but she felt like stirring. The floor was cold, so she slipped on some knitted socks.
“I don’t know,” James said. He shook his head as he swabbed his plate with a piece of bread. He had a stunned look in his eyes.
“Do you want some milk with your pie?” asked Amanda.
“If it ain’t ruint.”
“No, it smells all right. We’ve already churned about five pounds of butter, and there’s more cream here a-clabbering.” Amanda refilled his glass and dug out a hunk of deep-dish apple pie.
“What are you doing after dinner?” Christie asked.
“We’ve got the ground ready to sow clover,” he said. “And we’re ready to break ground for taters. It’s dried out enough.” He shook his head. “It’s the latest spring I’ve seen in years.”
“I hope we get enough taters this year,” said Amanda. “We ain’t hardly got any taters left, and they’re all swiveled up like little old men.” She laughed.
“I’m thinking we have to clear out some more ground this year to get more corn in,” said James. He finished his pie, then stood over the babies and gazed at them.
Little Bunch slipped in the back door just as Amanda was carrying the milk jug to the back porch.
“I thought I told you to help Boone pick out seeds,” said Amanda.
Little Bunch rushed over to the babies. Her eyes were wild, her face contorted.
“What is it, Little Bunch?” said Amanda. “Say something.”
Little Bunch clenched her teeth and pointed at the babies, trying to grab at them.
“Come on, Bunch,” said Amanda, pulling at her child. “Let’s go see what Alma’s fixed for dinner.”
She tried to pull Little Bunch, but the child wouldn’t move. Christie started to say something, and it came out a gurgle. Her saliva went down the wrong way and she had a spell of coughing. Little Bunch seemed not to hear the commotion as Amanda tried to drag her away.
“They’re too little for you to hold,” Amanda said. “You’re liable to squeeze the wind out of them.”
Little Bunch’s teeth were clenched so hard Christie was afraid the child was having one of her fits. She was breathing with difficulty, and her eyes became glazed. Finally Amanda broke the child’s hold on the floor—she seemed to be suctioned onto it and had to be pried off—and limply Little Bunch allowed herself to be guided out the front door.