“Where are the babies?” Gracy asked, as John helped her into the ore wagon.
The judge had declared a recess, not just because he believed that the infants were in danger, but more likely, Ted had said, because he wanted to go hunting that afternoon. Gracy’s testimony would wait until Monday, he said. Perhaps she should have told him right then that she would not testify, that as far as she was concerned, the trial was over. But she would wait. Ted would object, and she didn’t want to take the time to argue with him. The Boyce boys needed her.
“They’re at the trappers’ cabin. Ben’s taking care of them, I guess. Davy Eastlow came in to tell me about Esther.”
“Taking care?” Gracy sniffed. “Closing the door so he won’t hear them cry is more like it. But the babies should be all right till we get there. Did he tell you what happened?”
The sheriff slapped the reins on the mules, as Gracy turned to set her medicine bag in the back of the ore wagon. Although she wouldn’t be delivering a baby, she never went on a call without it. “I got the borrow of this wagon in case we need to bring the body to town. If there’s foul play, Coy Chaney will have to take a look at her, dumb as he is,” John explained. He paused. “I don’t know what happened. Davy just came in the office and said Esther was dead. ‘Died of lead poisoning,’ is what he said.”
“You mean Ben shot her? Or Davy?”
“It’s a confusion. Davy said to fetch you and get out to the place and pick up those babies or they’d die. Then he lit out before I could stop him. Esther already being dead and with the babies still alive, I figured we’d take care of them first. I can find out about Esther when we get there.”
“There’s other women who can take care of them. Why do they want me?” Gracy asked. She shifted on the board seat, which was not as comfortable as the tufted seat in the buggy or even a saddle.
“I don’t know. Is there something queer about the babies?”
Gracy sighed. “Queer enough.” She paused a moment, wondering if she should tell. But the sheriff would see for himself when they got there. So she said, “They got different fathers. I can tell such things, you know. One’s Ben’s. The other’s Davy Eastlow’s. It’s as plain as the wart on your nose. One of the boys is the spit of Davy.”
The sheriff whistled. “That’s queer all right. I hadn’t heard it.”
“Maybe I’m the only one that’s been to see them. I suppose it will get around now.”
“It’s not a thing can be kept secret. What do you suppose happened? Did Davy force himself on her?”
Gracy took a deep breath. She was not one to pass along gossip, but the sheriff had a right to know. “She told me she married Ben but ended up wife to both of them.” Gracy shook her head at the wonder of it. “Trees aren’t all that’s warped at timberline. Men, too.”
“Everybody said she wouldn’t part them two,” John said. “But she should have knowed it. She was a whore.”
“That doesn’t mean she had to be treated like one,” Gracy told him. “Whores are women, too.”
John gave her an odd look. “Didn’t expect that from you,” he muttered.
She let the remark pass, and they went on in silence, Gracy shivering a little as they rode under a fir whose branches were bowed to the ground like a tent. It was mid-August, and she could feel fall in the air. There were fewer hummingbirds now. They knew when it was time to move on.
“How’d you know about Esther and them?” John asked after a time.
“She told me. I stopped to check on her. The babies were fine, but Esther…” Gracy shook her head. “The men treated her like she wasn’t even there, and as for the babies, Ben and Davy gave them no more attention than you would to a baby squirrel. Except maybe to complain about them. I never saw such a sorry woman. I wish I could have helped her. It’s pestered me ever since.”
“What could you have done?”
“That’s the trouble of it. I don’t know.”
“Well, those boys won’t keep the babies. You’ve got them to raise now.”
Gracy looked at the sheriff, startled. “Me? My raising days are over.” She gave a woeful laugh. “Besides, how am I going to raise two babies in jail?”
John smiled at her. “You’re not going to jail. When you have your say, the jury will believe you. Folks don’t like Jonas Halleck nor Little Dickie, either. And they think Coy Chaney is crooked as a gold vein.”
“That’s just it, John. I’m not going to testify.”
John turned to her so quickly that he jerked on the reins, and the mules came to a stop. He slapped the reins on their backs and swore at them, and after they started up, he asked, “Why not?”
“Reasons.”
“Anything to do with Nevada? Jeff find out what he was looking for?”
“I don’t know what that was. Maybe he didn’t, either.”
“Gracy, if you don’t speak out, folks’ll think you’re guilty. You could go to jail. What would the women do without you? You’re the last midwife on the Tenmile.”
“I’ve thought about all that. But I’m no good at lying, John. You know it. I turn red and my hands itch so much I got to scratch them. That’s what set off Jeff.”
“What do you have to lie about now?”
“If Elizabeth didn’t tell you, I won’t.” Gracy remembered John’s story about communing with his dead wife.
“I never should have told you about her.”
“I wish I had somebody like her to tell me what to do.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
Gracy shook her head. “I can’t even talk about it with Daniel.”
“Then it’s a plenty grave secret you carry.” He slowed the mules as the wagon made its way between aspen trees on either side of the road, trees so close together the wagon could barely fit between them. “This is a lonely spot,” he said, easing the wagon through wheel-high underbrush.
“And that cabin is the loneliest place I ever saw. I expect Esther might have died of that loneliness. Those men had no right to treat her worthless.”
“You believe one of them shot her?”
Gracy thought that over. “I’ve been studying on it, but I couldn’t say they did. She said everything was fine until the babies came. Then they treated her poor, although they weren’t brutes. Just mean.”
“You think she tried to run away with the babies and they stopped her?”
“No,” Gracy said. “I think they’d be glad if she left.”
“Then maybe she should have taken out and left the babies behind.”
Gracy thought that over. “She wouldn’t have done that unless her mind went queer.”
“You think Ben and Davy’ll feed them?”
“With what? They’re useless.” She paused. “The feeding’s troublesome. I keep a bottle in my bag along with milk powder, but I don’t know if the babies’ll take it. Some will, some won’t. And there isn’t a woman in Swandyke now to be a wet nurse. I might grind up oatmeal and see if they’ll eat it.”
They were almost to the cabin, Gracy knew, not because she could see it but because she heard the faint cry of the babies.
“Sounds like robins hollering,” John observed.
“It does at that. I expect those poor little things are hungry enough to eat worms, too. When did Davy say Esther died?”
“He didn’t.”
“Those little boys won’t have eaten since before then, of course.” She reached for her medicine bag and took out a jar. “We’ll have to stop and get fresh water. I’ll heat it up and mix in the powder and see if they’ll drink it.”
John pulled the mules to a halt by the spring on the near side of the clearing where the house stood, and Gracy filled the jar. By the time she got back into the wagon, she could see that the two men had come out of the house and were waiting for them.
John stopped the wagon in an aspen grove. A blanket was spread on the ground, and under it, Gracy knew, was the body of Esther Boyce. She’d leave the body to John. The babies were her concern. Without a word, she walked past Ben and Davy and went into the house, where the infants were squalling. She picked up one and crooned to him. He was wet, and she changed him, changed the other one, too. Then with both infants in her arms, she went to the door and told Ben, “I suppose you haven’t fed them.”
He shrugged. “How’m I supposed to do that? I ain’t got me a pair of…” He blushed, and Gracy scowled at him.
“Build up the fire, then, and let me heat the water for the milk powder. You better hope your sons take it.” Then she muttered, “Your son.” She nodded at Tommy, the boy with Ben’s coloring.
If Ben heard the distinction, he didn’t remark on it, just went inside and shoved kindling into the cookstove and lit it. “There’s water,” he said, pointing to a bucket with dead mosquitoes in it.
“I got fresh,” Gracy told him. She found a clean pan, and poured the jar of water into it, then added the milk powder. She removed a bottle from her medicine bag and fitted a nipple onto it, wishing she’d thought to bring a second bottle. The babies would have to take turns. When the water was warm and the powder dissolved, she dipped her finger into the mixture and put it into Benny’s mouth. He sucked on the finger. She wet her finger again and let him taste the milk a second time. Then she took a clean rag from her bag and dipped it into the milk and let the baby suck on it. “You’ll have to take satisfaction with that,” she told him. “Your brother’s littler. He’s first.” She filled the bottle and attached the nipple, putting it into Tommy’s mouth. He pushed it out. Gracy spilled a little of the milk on her finger and let him taste it, felt his little mouth work around her finger, his tiny tongue lick it. Then she dribbled drops of the milk onto his tongue. At last, she put the nipple into the boy’s mouth, and he took it, draining the bottle. She filled the bottle again and gave it to Benny, and when that baby was done, Gracy placed both children in the cradle to sleep. She went to the door and leaned against the frame. “They’ll be all right,” she told John.
“That’s a blessing.”
“We’ll give those boys away if somebody wants them,” Davy said. “Me and Ben, how are we going to take care of them?”
“You don’t want them, your own flesh and blood?”
Davy looked out at the humps of mountains in the distance, ignoring Gracy’s remark. “Me and Ben don’t know nothing about babies,” he said at last.
“I wouldn’t leave them with you,” Gracy told him. “I wouldn’t want them to grow up to be a pair of fools like you two. The Lord only knows how they’d turn out.”
But Gracy knew how they would turn out. She’d seen it before, women dead and their children turned over to an orphan home because the fathers couldn’t care for them or didn’t want them. Sometimes the children were parceled out to relatives who didn’t want them, either. So a boy would run off as soon as he was old enough to be on his own. But a girl would have it harder. She would get pregnant without being married. Then at thirteen or fourteen, too young to give birth, she would die in childbed, crying with the pain and begging Gracy not to tell of her shame. And Gracy would keep the secret. The baby would be given away, and the cycle would begin again. Those mothers were hard to forget, girls who never had a chance to grow up but died while they were still children themselves. She’d seen too many of them, kept too many of their secrets.
“You think poorly of us,” Davy said.
“I do.”
“Wasn’t my fault. Nor Ben’s, neither.” He kicked at the dirt outside the door with the toe of his boot. “Ben, he thought it’d be handy having Esther around. We wouldn’t have to go to that house in Kokomo. Wouldn’t have to cook no more, neither. But it didn’t work out. She didn’t mind what you’re thinking. After all, she’d been a whore.” He glanced at Gracy then looked away. “It was other things. Her pie crust tasted like it come off a slag heap. She wanted the cabin her way. She’d leave it messy and wouldn’t let me clean it up, said she liked it looking lived in. She wanted us to take to her ways, not the other way around. It was our cabin. We built it. She should have made do. It was all right until the babies come. That’s when things changed. She never should have had them. The way things turned out was her fault.”
“Takes two to make a baby,” Gracy said. “And sometimes three.”
One of the boys let out a cry, and Gracy glanced at Davy, but he didn’t seem to hear the boy. Gracy turned to go inside, but the baby quieted, and she stayed where she was.
“Me and Ben, we never had a fight, not once, until Esther. We could have stood it, but the babies come, and Esther turned peculiar. She’d stay in bed, thought we’d wait on her. Expected us to help with the babies.” His voice rose in disgust. “That’s woman’s work. And there was all that hollering. Me and Ben had to move into the other place, but we could still hear them. Couldn’t sleep because of the racket. I reckon we made a mistake.”
“It was Esther made the mistake.” Gracy looked across the yard to where the dried stems of poppies were blowing in the wind, a few faded petals still attached to them.
Davy followed her gaze. “I planted them for her when she first come. I guess they’ll go wild now.” He paused. “We tried, Mrs. Brookens. I know what you think of us, but we give it a try. Ben never should have brought her here. It was wrong.”
He stopped talking as John and Ben came up to the door.
“You want to take a look at Mrs. Boyce, Gracy?” The sheriff gestured with his head at the body.
“I do.” Gracy followed John to where Esther lay. He lifted the blanket covering her so that Gracy could see the crumpled body of the woman, her chest all but butchered. Beside her was a shotgun.
“We didn’t touch her, just covered her up,” Ben said.
Gracy knelt beside the body and touched Esther’s forehead, brushing the hair from the woman’s face as she asked herself what she could have done. Why couldn’t she have helped Esther? The woman’s eyes were closed, her eyelids as thin as onionskin. Her hands were bloodstained, and when Gracy raised one to touch the gold wedding ring on Esther’s finger, blood came off on Gracy’s own hands.
“I’d like to keep the ring. It’s valuable. It was my mother’s,” Davy said.
“I don’t suppose she’d want to wear it for eternity.” Gracy removed the ring and all but threw it at Davy. Then she turned back to Esther. “Poor woman,” she said. “What happened?”
“She said she had a yen for rabbit stew. She took the gun and went out, tripped on a root, and shot herself,” Ben said. “It was an accident.”
Gracy looked at the sheriff, who shrugged. “I don’t see no proof otherwise. Who’s to say it isn’t so?”
“Will you have Coy examine the body?”
“What’s the need? It’s clear she was shot in the chest. And like I say, there’s no proof it wasn’t an accident. Ben said they’d bury the body here instead of the cemetery in Swandyke, here under the wildflowers. He said Esther liked them.”
“All summer she picked them, put them in a jar on the table,” Davy said.
“Told us once she thought the meadow would be a good burying place,” Ben added.
“You see any reason she shouldn’t be buried now?” John asked Gracy.
The Sagehen stared at the body for a long time. “There’s too much misery on the Tenmile already. Those babies will have a hard enough time of it. Why make it worse with them knowing their mother’s death might not be an accident? I believe you know your job when you say there’s no proof, John. I will back you up.”
“I’ll help dig the grave,” John said. “Gracy, will you clean up Esther a little, maybe put a fresh dress on her? There’s a box waiting for her. Ben made it whilst Davy went to fetch me. One of us can say a few words over her.”
Gracy nodded and went into the house to find something to wrap around the body. Esther’s chest was blown open and wet with blood. She needed a shroud, not a dress. The bed had no sheets, so Gracy found a quilt and took it outside, then held Esther’s frail body while she wrapped it in the coverlet. Ben brought the box he’d fashioned into a casket and picked up his wife and placed her inside.
When the grave was dug, the men lowered the coffin into the hole. Gracy brought the two babies to the gravesite, saying they ought to be there to see their mother buried.
“You want to say something?” John asked Ben, who shook his head. So John bowed his head and repeated a Bible verse. He ended with, “Dust to dust,” then picked up a handful of dirt and dropped it on top of the box. Davy did the same, but Ben stood there, staring into the grave, then reached up and wiped away a tear.
The men shoveled dirt on top of the coffin, while Gracy returned to the house and packed up the babies’ things. Esther had planned well for her children. She had stitched flannel blankets, knit shirts and stockings, made tiny caps of rabbit fur. Gracy wondered if Esther had shot the rabbits herself. She picked up a china baby cup the color and frailness of a robin’s egg and a silver baby spoon with “Esther” engraved on it. There was a framed picture of a woman who looked like Esther, probably her mother, Gracy thought, wrapping the geegaws in one of the small quilts that Gracy and Mittie had made. Maybe if Gracy could find her, the grandmother would raise the babies. Or perhaps there was a sister.
She went outside and asked Ben, “Did Esther have any relations, somebody who could take the infants?”
“None she ever mentioned,” he replied.
“What was her name before she married?”
“I never inquired.” He patted the mound of dirt with his shovel.
“Got chores to do,” Davy said, and the two men turned away.
“What chores?” John muttered.
“Maybe they’re grieving. It could be, you know. They’re an odd pair, more married to each other than they ever were to Esther. But maybe they’ve got enough goodness in them to grieve,” Gracy replied.
John stared at the grave. “Never even said good-bye to her, neither one of them. What do you think it was like for her in that cabin? Maybe it wasn’t any worse than being in a whorehouse.”
“In the end, the babies were all she had, and they weren’t enough.”
John brought the wagon to the cabin door, and Gracy put her bag and the burlap sack of baby things into the bed. John loaded the cradle, then held the boys while Gracy climbed onto the wagon seat. He reached them up to her before he settled himself on the seat.
Ben and Davy came out of the barn and stood taciturn, watching.
“You want to see your sons one last time?” Gracy called.
Neither answered, and Ben waved them to the road.
“Poor little fellers,” Gracy said, looking at the infants, while John started the mules down the trail toward Swandyke. “Their ma’s dead, and their pas don’t want them.”
“You’ll keep them, then?” John asked.
“I’ll find somebody to take them. I have an idea already, a woman I know that wants a baby in the worst way. But it’ll take some convincing.”
They rode without talking, Gracy humming to the infants, who mewled and stretched their tiny arms and legs, then settled down, the rhythm of the wagon rocking them to sleep. “Poor little fellers,” she murmured again. Then, “Poor Esther.”
“Rabbit stew,” John said after a time. “She died ’cause she wanted rabbit stew. Now why couldn’t one of the men have gone after a rabbit? That’s the question.”
“No,” Gracy said. “There’s another question. Maybe you didn’t notice. Why did Esther go hunting wearing her slippers?”