10

SHE MUSTN’T!” CALAMITY SAID, STRICKEN. “WE COULD PACK some snow and bring it to her. That would cool her.”

Fred stirred in his corner, disturbed by Calamity’s tone.

“I’ll go right now, Ogden,” she added, wishing Dora would open her eyes.

Almost as she said it, Dora did open her eyes—but they were the eyes of a woman wild with fever. Her forehead and upper lip were slick with sweat, though she was pale and shivering.

“Blue,” Dora said. “Blue, when are you coming? I want you to hitch the wagon so we can leave.”

Ogden sat dumbly on the other side of the bed. He didn’t understand why his wife kept calling out for someone named Blue, but he didn’t care. He just wanted her to sink out of her fever and get well. Only an hour before, she had calmed enough to feed the baby—a whopping big boy; true to their intention, they had named him Bob—but now she seemed worse than ever. Her feverish eyes looked at him but didn’t really see him; even so, she didn’t want him to leave. Ogden had never felt so sad or so confused.

“It’s a bright moon—dance by the light of the moon,” Dora said. “Don’t you hear me, Martha?”

“I hear you, but hush and rest,” Calamity said, barely able to get the words out. “You need to mind Doosie now. You need to hush and rest.”

“No, I don’t want to rest, we’re going to fix up the hotel!” Dora insisted. “I want pretty glass in the doors.” She tried to sit up. Doosie rose for a moment from her seat by the bed, mopped Dora’s forehead and lip, and eased her back down. The mopping did little good; beads of sweat reappeared almost at once. Doosie, who had been through many birthings and recoveries, was afraid the sweat would soon give way to chill, and it did. Though warmly covered with quilts, Dora was soon shivering. Calamity went out of the room to cry. Ogden sat dumbly across from the bed, and the baby boy, one of the largest Doosie had ever delivered, waved a small red hand from a box of blankets that had been hastily fixed as his crib.

The day faded; Calamity came and went, more drunken every time she returned; Ogden was allowed to go do his chores, but told to hurry. Dora wanted Ogden there; time and again she would try to find his large hand with her weak one. The baby wailed. Doosie took him in her arms and rocked him a little; he was a healthy boy and soon became quiet. By then, Dora’s mumbled talk was only whispers; she had no strength left to turn in the bed. Her fever burned; it burned more fiercely as the night deepened; the half-moon rose and lit one side of the room. Ogden came back and sat dumbly on the dark side of the bed. Doosie felt her boss’s forehead; she felt her fluttering pulse. Very late in the night, with Ogden asleep, his head and forearms on the bed, the rest of him in the chair, with Dora’s breath weakening with every time she strained to hear it, Doosie knew a woman’s life was ending.

Of all lives, it was the one she would have most liked to save—Dora, for all her sharp tongue, had shown her years of kindness—but Doosie had sat by many beds and knew that what one human wanted was not enough to save the dying once they had passed a certain point, had lost the strength it took to live. Neither the doctor’s skills, nor hers, nor her love nor anyone’s, was going to save Dora now—it was not likely she would see the sunrise.

Wearily Doosie got up and went out for a moment to seek a slop jar. The old Indian without ears sat smoking in one of the bare rooms off the hall. Doosie passed without speaking to him, but having found the slop jar, she stopped on her return and looked at No Ears.

“Do you know anything about this?” she asked. He was an old man; he might have some knowledge she herself lacked. “If you do, come help me,” she added, going back to Dora’s room.

Since the dying woman had been very polite to him over the years, giving him food and shelter and even tobacco when he needed it, No Ears felt it would be no more than good manners to follow the black woman into the sickroom, though he did not suppose there was anything he could do for Dora. Birth was as dangerous as death and indeed often brought death with it for mother or child or both.

He stood by the bed a moment. The black woman was rocking the large baby. “He’s big,” he said, meaning the baby, though certainly the husband was large, too.

“Well, she couldn’t help that,” Doosie said. “The child just grew.”

“I don’t think she will be able to live,” No Ears said.

“You don’t know anything do you?” Doosie asked. She was feeling desperate and would have liked to pass the burden of being the one with knowledge onto an older person; she would have liked a wiser person to contradict what she knew, which was what No Ears had just said.

“One of my wives died of this too,” No Ears said. “She was too old to be making children, and the child she made was too big.”

The old man left; Ogden slept; there were no sounds from downstairs. Calamity had gone somewhere to drink. Now and then the baby would wave its hand, a small shadow in the moonlight. Doosie slept a little, hunched over her knees. Then she felt Dora’s hand moving on the quilt; she straightened up. Dora’s eyes were open, shining, watching her. Doosie felt her forehead; there was no sweat, but when she searched for a pulse she was long in finding it, and it was very faint.

“I hope you’ll stay and raise Bob,” Dora said, her voice scarcely louder than a breath.

Doosie felt too broken to answer; dying women were an old story to her, but she had not expected to sit by while this one died.

“Did you hear me? I want to know if you’ll do it,” Dora said.

“Hush, miss,” Doosie said. “You know I’ll be staying. Where would I go?”

Dora reached for Ogden’s hand, but could not find it. Not being able to reach him troubled her; she wanted to reach him. Doosie went around the bed and touched Ogden on the shoulder. Ogden didn’t really wake up, but he put out his hand and Dora found it.

“Martha can help—where’d she go?” Dora asked.

“I don’t know,” Doosie said.

“She nursed all those boys with the smallpox,” Dora said. “Why won’t she stay and nurse me?”

“You, you, though,” Doosie said. “She can’t stand it when it’s you.”

“But you’re going to stay. You said it!” Dora insisted. “You’re gonna stay with Bob.”

“Yes, miss. I said it. I’ll be staying.”

“Bring me Bob,” Dora said. She felt that the deep rest was near; she wanted to see her boy again. Doosie brought him—Dora touched him, put her fingers on his cheek, saw him wiggle, make a fist, rub his eyes. She uncurled his fist and put her finger in it. “Put him back to bed, he’s sleepy,” she whispered.

As Doosie took the baby to his box she looked out the window and saw Calamity standing below in the street. Calamity just stood there, looking up at the window, which was open.

“You better be coming up,” Doosie called. “You better come on.

Calamity just stood there; she didn’t think her legs would make it up the stairs. She stood there, feeling bad. Finally she made her slow way up, but when she got to the bedroom, Dora’s eyes were closed.

“Is she gone?” she asked, shaking—she couldn’t see well in the dim room.

Doosie shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

Dora held onto one of Ogden’s fingers, as Bob had momentarily held to one of hers. Rest surrounded her, easy rest, and yet there were things nagging at her: she wanted pretty glass in the front door of the hotel—and another thing nagged, too.

“Martha, you better go tell Blue,” Dora whispered. “Or if that’s asking too much, make Ogden do it.”

“Tell Blue what, Dora?” Calamity asked. She sat down in a chair by the bed.

Dora tried to wake up to the question but she couldn’t, she wanted to accept her rest.

“Just tell him, I guess,” she said.

Later in the night, No Ears felt a difference in the house. He went into the sickroom. All the weary people in it slept—the baby in its box, Martha, the black woman, in chairs. The big youth slept in his chair, too; the parrot was silent on its perch.

But the woman in the bed wasn’t sleeping; her spirit had gone where spirits go. No Ears closed her eyes.