Caleb (4 page)

9

For the first time, Caleb wished that he’d paid more attention to Mr. Regan’s lesson. He laid his left hand on Miss Nancy’s swollen, cooling stomach so that his little finger just grazed her slightly protruding navel. Then he brought the straight-edged razor down so that its rounded tip touched the knuckle of his left thumb. Taking a deep breath, he began to push on the razor. At first it only dented the elastic skin, but Caleb took another breath, pushed strongly, and then felt the sharp German steel begin to cut through the abdominal flesh.

“Forgive me, Miss Nancy,” Caleb mumbled as he saw blood begin to seep sluggishly from the wound he was making. Biting his lip, he pushed harder and sensed that something resistant, but not hard, was giving way beneath the blade. Finally, he had a slit of ten or twelve inches running from about five inches below her belly button down nearly to the pubic hair. Caleb looked carefully at what he had done.

Ain’t no baby coming out of that little hole, he told himself. Caleb had butchered plenty of pigs in the last five years, and he tried to forget that he was not only cutting up a human being, but a white woman and the wife of his master. Swiftly and more determinedly but delicately, he cut both ways from his first vertical slash until he’d created a considerable opening.

“Come on, baby,” Caleb said under his breath, but he knew that baby wasn’t going anyplace without a lot of help.

Steeling himself, he reached down and pulled back the flaps of skin and tissue that he had created with the razor, looking desperately for any sign of life in there. His fingers felt like tent pegs, huge and insensitive, but he kept groping with them, gently pulling apart anything that got in their way and peering through the dim light of the lamp. Finally, in the morass of pink flesh, gray innards, and pooled blood, he saw the baby tucked up like a young frog. He got his two hands around it. It was the smallest thing that Caleb had ever handled, but he lifted it out of Miss Nancy’s dead body as if it weighed a thousand pounds and was made of crystal glass. The umbilical cord uncoiled and followed the bloody, slime-covered baby. Mr. Regan had told them about that. He told them that the baby ate and breathed through the cord until it was born.

Caleb saw that the baby was male. Ignoring the cord, Caleb looked for signs of life in the pale yellow baby. His eyes were clamped shut and his mouth hung open. Caleb knew you were supposed to spank the baby to jolt it into independent life, and the baby felt solid enough in his big hands, but he didn’t dare. Seeing that the baby’s head and face were covered with a sort of translucent weblike substance, Caleb took a corner of the satin bedsheet and wiped the baby’s entire face clear.

Suddenly, with a contortion that went right up Caleb’s arms, the baby threw back his head and took a deep breath. The breath came back out in a sharp but feeble cry, and Caleb knew that he had a live baby in his hands. Caleb set the baby on the bed and reached for the towel on the bedside table. He had started to wrap the baby in it when he remembered the umbilical cord. He slashed it with the razor a few inches from the baby’s body and finished wrapping him in the soft towel. Striding swiftly to the bedroom door, he opened it and shouted, “Cassie! You bring that hot water up here. Right now!”

When Cassie came up the stairs, panting and slopping hot water along the way, Caleb was blocking the partially open bedroom door.

“Put the water down, Cassie,” he said, “and take this.” He held out the towel-wrapped baby. Before she could react, he asked, “Are any of the women nursing?”

Cassie’s attention was so riveted on that baby that she couldn’t answer for a moment.

“Well?” demanded Caleb.

“Yes, Massa,” Cassie said in her confusion. “Sukey got a baby. Two or three months.”

“Clean this baby up,” Caleb said, “and take him to Sukey.”

Cassie stood there dumbly with the baby in her arms. “How . . . how Miss Nancy?” she finally asked.

“Not good, Cassie,” Caleb said as gently as he could. “Very bad. Now take that baby to Sukey.”

The girl walked down the stairs carefully. Caleb picked up the basin of hot water and went back into the bedroom, locking the door behind him. He wrapped Miss Nancy in the bedding and placed her on the floor near the big front window.

He removed the sheets from the bed and used a towel and the hot water to scrub the bloodstain on the mattress to a faint pink. Then he turned the mattress and swiftly remade the bed with clean sheets from the linen closet. He went back to where Miss Nancy lay in her nest of bedding. She was still smeared with blood from the navel down. He wanted to clean her up, but could not bring himself to do the touching involved. Instead, he put a fresh nightgown on his mistress and placed her in the clean bed, arranging her as neatly as he could, with one hand laid on top of the other over her diminished stomach. He fanned her dark hair out over the satin pillow. She looked as though she were in a deep sleep of exhaustion.

Looking around the bedroom, Caleb saw the bloody straight razor on the bed table, quickly washed it, and returned it to Jardine’s dressing room. Another glance around the room told him he could do no more. Leaving the lamp on by the bed, Caleb carried the bloody bedding and towels downstairs to the laundry room and plunged them into a vat of cold water. Rolling up his sleeves, he worked at the bedding until the water turned pink. He changed the water again and again until it came out clear.

By this time, it was well after midnight, and still there was no sign of Jardine. Cassie, after reporting that the baby was suckling well with Sukey, curled up on the horsehair sofa in the big reception room and went to sleep. Caleb realized that he was hungry, but he felt too tired to bother eating. He sat down in a big chair to wait and fell asleep.

10

The sound of carriage wheels and shouting out front woke them both. “Cassie,” Caleb said, shaking her to alertness, “go get the baby.” Then he walked out of the front door to the veranda.

Jardine had just sprung rubber-legged from Dr. Hollander’s buggy. Hollander, a big man with muttonchops and tiny round spectacles, threw his reins to Big Mose. Jardine’s roan was tied behind the buggy.

“How is she, Caleb?” Jardine demanded. His clothes were wet and smeared with mud. He’d lost his hat and his thick blond hair hung down in a filthy tangle.

Caleb could not speak. He just stood looking at his master with dumb misery. He shook his head.

“Damn you!” Jardine snarled, ran up the wooden steps past Caleb, and disappeared into the house.

Getting heavily out of his buggy with his bag in his hand, the doctor looked closely at Caleb. “Dead?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Caleb said helplessly.

“The baby?”

“Alive, sir,” Caleb said, “but—”

At that moment, Cassie arrived with the baby, wrapped in a quilt. After opening the quilt and doing a quick but thorough examination of the baby, the doctor turned to Caleb.

“Let’s get up there.”

In the master bedroom, they found Jardine on his knees on the bed with Miss Nancy in his arms. He was sobbing and talking to her as if he could coax her back to life. In his arms she was like a large rag doll. Jardine kept running his fingers down both sides of her face, hoping that the stimulation would somehow wake her and bring her back to him. He kissed her flaccid face passionately. He was aware of no one else in the world.

With a motion of his head, Dr. Hollander sent Caleb from the room. “Tell the girl to bring the baby,” he whispered.

When the door shut behind Caleb, the doctor walked up behind Jardine and put his hand on his shoulder. Jardine shook it off as a horse would a bothersome fly.

“Come on, Boyd,” Hollander said. “She’s at peace. You can do no more.”

“Leave me alone!” Jardine cried without turning his head. He pulled his dead wife to his chest, as if trying to start her heart with the beat of his own. “Go away!”

The doctor put his bag down on a fluted marble table. He got out a small bottle and a tiny beaker the size of a shot glass. Then he poured thick liquid from the bottle into the beaker. Leaving it on the table, the doctor went back to Jardine.

“Boyd,” he said, putting a hand on each of Jardine’s shoulders, “there’s a baby. The baby lived. You have a son.”

“I don’t care!” The words flashed out before Jardine could think. After a moment, Jardine released his grip on his dead wife and allowed Hollander to pull him to his feet. Hollander walked to the door and opened it, revealing Cassie with the baby. Caleb stood well behind her, wishing that he were invisible. Jardine stood staring at Cassie and his baby as if he didn’t understand what he was seeing.

“A son?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Hollander said, gesturing for Cassie to stay where she was. “Have a look. He’s a fine boy.”

Jardine took one stiff-legged step forward. Then another. Cassie, in tears, held the baby out toward him. With another look back at his wife, Jardine stared down at the baby but did not take it. “What’s his name?” he asked dumbly.

“That’s up to you,” Hollander said, picking up the tiny beaker. “Here, drink this,” he said.

“What is it?” Jardine demanded. “It won’t make me sleep?” He looked again at the bed behind him. “I can’t—”

“Drink,” the doctor commanded, extending the beaker. “You have to. It will make you feel better.”

Jardine, eyes half-closed, gave a small shrug and took the beaker. He got most of it down before turning, stumbling onto the bed, and going back down on his knees. He gathered his wife back up in his arms.

Hollander motioned Cassie out of the room and gestured for Caleb to wait there. He then sat down in a blackwood chair. In a few minutes, Jardine was asleep, lying on his dead wife’s breast. His thinly stubbled face was almost like a child’s.

Opening the door, the doctor motioned Caleb into the room and directed him to carry Jardine across the hall to a guest bedroom.

“Undress him,” the doctor ordered, “and get him into bed. He’ll sleep for hours. Then go down and get something to eat.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Caleb said.

11

Caleb had eaten and was sitting half-asleep at the long rough table in the back kitchen when Cassie told him that the doctor wanted him upstairs. When he walked heavily into the master’s bedroom, Caleb saw that the doctor had stripped the bedding off Miss Nancy right to the bottom of the big bed. And he’d pulled up her nightgown to reveal the awful gashes Caleb had made to her abdomen, which was covered in dried blood. In the early morning light, Miss Nancy’s skin had begun to turn gray. She looked like the deadest thing that Caleb had ever seen. He wanted to look away but could not.

“Close the door and lock it,” Hollander ordered. Caleb did as he was told, then turned back to the doctor, who asked abruptly, “What’s your name?”

“Caleb, sir.”

“Caleb, did you do this?”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb said.

“Clearly she was dead,” Hollander said, “or you would have had a hell of a lot more blood.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But where on earth did you learn how to do a cesarean section? And what did you do it with?”

Caleb explained how he’d learned the procedure and showed him Jardine’s straight razor.

“If that don’t beat all,” said the amazed doctor. “A slave surgeon.” He shook his head. “You know,” he added, “that if she’d been alive you’d have killed her. You cut right through the dorsal aorta.”

“If Miss Nancy’d been alive,” Caleb said, “I wouldn’t have tried it.”

“You know, you saved the baby,” said the doctor. “By the time we got here, he’d have been long dead. You did a good job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dr. Hollander shook his head violently. “But we can’t stand here talking shop. I want you to understand one thing, Caleb.”

“Sir?”

“This didn’t happen. If anybody asks, Cassie helped deliver that baby, and then Miss Nancy died. It happened like that. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you make sure that Cassie understands it, too. It’s vital. And do you have a coffin here or a carpenter to make one?”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb said. “A man came through here just last month, selling coffins. Master bought two of them. They’re up in the attic.” Caleb remembered what a joke Jardine had thought it to be, buying coffins when there wasn’t anyone even sick on the plantation.

“Good. Well, get one of them down and get it cleaned up. We have to get this poor girl in the ground as soon as your master wakes up. Now, get moving.”

Jardine slept for nearly five hours. By the time he woke, sober, pale, and quiet, Nancy was lying in the newly bought coffin in the big reception room. While Jardine was dressing, Doc Hollander told Caleb, “If you want to say good-bye to your mistress, you’d better go do it.”

Caleb walked into the reception room, which was empty except for the open coffin standing on sawhorses in the middle of the room. The coffin lid stood propped behind the front door. It seemed like every flower on the property had been picked, and Miss Nancy, dressed in the white
peau de soie
dress in which she had been married, was covered with flowers to just above her waist. Her hands lay crossed on a bed of pure white roses.

From the side of the coffin, Caleb looked down on the face of the woman who had shown him so much kindness in the months he’d been at the plantation. Though Dulcie had done her best with powder, Miss Nancy’s face was still gray-yellow, showing the ordeal she had been through. She looked like an exhausted little girl.

“I’m sorry, Miss Nancy,” he said. “I did the best I could.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Turning, he walked through the door to the back of the house.

Big Mose and Hector had dug a grave beneath a big horse-chestnut tree in the family plot, which was halfway up a slope. It was a very small funeral. Only Jardine, the doctor, and the slaves were there. Big Mose and Hector stood ready to lower Miss Nancy into the grave. Caleb stood behind Jardine, who had not seemed to notice him when he came shakily downstairs. Sukey held the newborn baby to her breast. Since the nearest minister was close to thirty miles away, Doc Hollander thought it was up to him to say a few words.

Dr. Hollander moved to the foot of the grave, where a crude cross leaned against a tree stump, ready for erecting. Holding his big beaver-skin hat in both hands, he glanced down at the closed coffin lying on planks over the grave.

“We all knew Miss Nancy as a kind, warm, compassionate, and loving young woman, and we will miss her more than we can know at this time. But Miss Nancy is with God now, and she feels no pain. She is looking down on us from a better place, secure in the knowledge that we will take good care of the son she left behind, the finest gift she could have given this world.” He looked up at the assembled slaves and Jardine. “If you loved Miss Nancy, show her you honor her memory by living the best lives you can.” Taking a small black Bible from his coat pocket, he read the twenty-third psalm in a warm and mournful voice. Several of the women began to sob. Finishing the reading, Hollander closed the Bible and signaled the men to lower the coffin.

As Big Mose and Hector struggled with the ropes, Jardine seemed to wake up and notice what was happening.

“Stop!” he cried. “Don’t! Wait! You can’t—” He stumbled toward the two men who were slowly lowering the coffin, but Caleb stepped forward and took a firm grip on his arms. Jardine spun around, broke free, and looked at Caleb angrily.

“You! What are you doing here?” Jardine demanded. “You killed her, you black bastard! Get away! Get out of my sight!”

When Dr. Hollander moved forward to grab hold of Jardine, Caleb backed away from the gravesite. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said as he turned around and walked down the hill toward the house.

Hollander turned Jardine back toward the grave, and the last thing Caleb heard as he walked away was the hollow thud of earth striking the lid of the coffin.