Gap Creek (36 page)

“This girl needs a drink of milk,” I said and pushed my gown aside. Soon as I brought the tiny lips to the nipple they started in to suck. “We know what a baby needs,” I said.

The little lips kept working and working and then turned loose, and the baby let out a sad little cry. “What’s wrong?” I said.

“You don’t have milk,” Hank said.

“What do you mean?” I said. I pulled the gown open on the other side and the baby took that nipple. I held her there as she sucked and hoped everything was going to be all right. But I knowed something was wrong. The breast should feel different somehow. The baby sucked and sucked and then broke loose and cried again.

“The milk will come,” I said.

“Sometimes women don’t have any milk,” Hank said.

“I never heard of such a thing,” I said.

The baby kept crying, and I tried again with both breasts, but it didn’t do no good.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“You ain’t got no milk,” Hank said. He took the crying baby out of my arms and carried her, holding her in both hands like she was liable to fall apart, back to the fireplace in the living room. It was awful to hear her cry out there by the fire. She was my baby and she was hungry, and there wasn’t nothing I could do about it. I was the one that was supposed to feed her, and there wasn’t nobody else to do it. I hated myself for not having milk.

I DON’T KNOW how much time passed. I know Hank brought in a doctor once and the doctor looked at me and said, “In a case of fever, the best thing you can do is keep her warm.”

“But she’s too hot already,” Hank said.

“Your best hope is that she will start to sweat and the fever break,” the doctor said. He was wearing a high collar and a dark red tie. I don’t know where Hank had found him.

“Please look at the baby,” I said.

“Don’t you worry about the baby,” the doctor said.

“She’s a little out of her head,” Hank said.

“I’m in my head,” I said. “I can’t go outside of my head.” I kept thinking I was so hot I must be ripening like an apple or tomato wrapped in foil. I was getting hot and mellow. And I would have milk later. And I heard music. It was the tinkle of strings. It was music somewhere in the air. It was harp music in golden light from the lamp.

“It must be King David playing his harp,” I said.

“You’re dreaming,” Hank said.

“Ask him to play again,” I said. For the harp notes stung the air and sweetened the air at the same time. The notes carved the air in shapes of blue and purple and red, like pulsing stained glass windows all around me. The notes carved time and colorful shapes too. I thought of the coat of many colors and the seconds of many colors. Minutes was made of shining pieces that formed pictures. I seen a picture of Moses from the Bible made of glowing seconds of many-colored glass. And I seen a picture of a dove which meant love and sounded almost the same as the moan of love.

The colorful pieces of time stretched bigger and longer, and they begun to move like big dust in the air. The colors danced in a shaft of light in the late afternoon. Motes juggled each other, and I thought the motes was notes. All the colors was sounds spinning. The colorful notes juggled in the air.

“Tell David to keep playing his harp,” I said.

“You’re not at yourself,” Hank said beside the door.

“I’m inside myself,” I said.

My bones ached, but the ache was sweet too. It was a deep
brown sweetness like heat from a hot bath. It was a sweetness that itched and made me shudder, like stretching when you’re stiff. It was the sweetness of an itch just before you scratch it.

That’s when I seen the doorway on the other side of the room. It was not a big doorway, but it was open. There was light behind it, but the light wasn’t blinding. It was the light of a spring evening. It was a door that appeared to open on to a grassy knoll with a trail over it. The door was open and waiting. All I had to do was rouse myself to get up and walk through. And on the other side would be the wonderful world I had always dreamed about. The mowed grass and the grassy trail led to the pine woods and to an opening in the pine woods like a room or an alcove, a little cove. It was the kind of place young people might dance on a spring afternoon, surrounded by pine trees and with white clouds overhead.

I looked through the doorway and seen that the sky was clear except for the white clouds. And there was another trail beyond the grassy alcove, a trail that led off into the pine trees and up a hill. It was a path inviting me to follow it. It was a path that was alive, a path I could feel along with my feet even if my eyes was closed. It was a path that led right up toward the lip of the hill to the edge of the sky. It was the trail into heaven. One step at a time I could walk there, through the doorway into the evening light, on the cool grass.

WHEN I WOKE up Hank was bending over me with a cup of warm tea. The steam off the cup made my cheeks sweat. “Have a taste of this,” he said.

“Am I better?” I said. I remembered the shining doorway I’d seen the night before.

“Your fever has gone down,” Hank said.

“Then I’m better,” I said.

“Fevers always go down in the morning,” Hank said. “And then they go up again in the evening.”

“How is the baby?” I said.

“The baby is so weak I can’t feed it nothing but a sugartit and milk in an eyedropper,” Hank said.

“Then I ought to nurse it,” I said.

“You can’t,” Hank said. I felt the emptiness in my breasts.

“I want to see the baby,” I said.

“The baby is too delicate to move,” Hank said. “I’m keeping her in a shoebox by the fire.”

“I want to see her,” I said.

“You just need to rest,” Hank said.

When Hank was gone I looked for the lighted doorway in the bedroom wall, but seen only the wall where coats and overalls hung on pegs. Yet when I closed my eyes and looked through the squint of eyelashes I seen the bright threshold. It was there all the time if you just looked at it right, like stars in the sky at noon if you can see them.

I closed my eyes and listened to the things outside the house. There was a dove calling somewhere in the woods across the creek. It was like the note when you blow across the mouth of a bottle. It was like a note coming out of a cave in the mountain.

Hank was getting clothes together in the kitchen to take out to the washpot. He had made a fire under the washpot and carried water from the spring to fill the cauldron and the tubs. As far as I knowed Hank had never washed clothes before. “The water is coming to a boil,” Hank called. “I hate to leave that baby for a minute.”

“You can’t take the baby outside,” I said.

“I’m afraid if I turn my back it’ll quit breathing,” Hank said.

“It’s in the hands of the Lord,” I said. But I didn’t know if I was talking in my head or really talking to Hank. I couldn’t tell the difference no more.

I could hear him talking like I was in the room with him. I
heard Hank carry the clothes out to the washpot, and I heard him singing to hisself as he stirred the clothes in the boiling water with the troubling stick. Hank had never washed clothes before, but now he had no choice. He was singing “By Jordan’s Stormy Banks.” He sung several verses and choruses while he troubled the hot water and then lifted the clothes out with the stick, streaming and steaming, and slopped them down on the washboard.

Hank left the baby in the shoebox on the chair by the fireplace while he done the washing and split more wood at the woodpile. I heard the
chop
of the axe and then the
hack
of the echo coming back from the ridge across the creek.
Chop-hack
it went.
Chop-hack, chop-hack
. His axe was making music and the dove was making music. Everything was making its own music. The dust in the air was music and the clouds in the sky was music. And the baby’s little cry was music that hurt.

WHEN NEXT I woke up I was shivering. It was cold like ice water was pouring through the hollows of my bones and there was ice in the sockets of my joints. My teeth chattered and my elbows jerked. Hank bent over me and said, “You’ve got the chills.” He wrapped the quilts tighter around me. But the quilts felt thin as muslin that let a cold wind through. There was nothing between me and the ice at the North Pole.

“Drink this,” Hank said. He held a cup of hot tea to my lips. There was fumes coming from the tea. It was part whiskey. My jaws shook so I couldn’t hardly put my lips to the glass. I swallowed a trickle of tea and it went down my throat like a lizard of fire. It crawled in my belly and curled up in a nest of glowing coals. I took another sip and the nest of coals got bigger.

“Drink all of it,” Hank said. I took another sip and swallowed. The hot herb tea made me shiver even worser. Shivering shows
you’re still alive, somebody had said. I shuddered and jerked from one end of the bed to the other. My breasts was empty, but I wanted to hold the baby. But I couldn’t even keep my arms still. I tried to lay still and my back jerked and rippled. My bones felt like they was rattling against each other.

As the warm juice in my belly started spreading, carrying its lights through veins and bones to my toes and fingertips, I stopped jerking a little. I laid back on the pillows and seen the door in the wall of the bedroom. It was warm evening light coming through the door, on the grass and among the pine trees. Somebody was calling to me on the path, just beyond where I could see.

Now I could think two things at the same time. I could hear Hank in the living room talking as he awkwardly lifted the diaper and gown from the baby and sponged the little body off with a piece of flannel cloth. The baby was so little a regular diaper almost covered it up. The skin was too delicate to rub. Hank just touched it with the wet flannel the way he might wash a sore place or a wound. He touched the baby like he was almost afraid to touch her.

“Be a miracle if this baby lives,” Hank said.

“It’s a miracle any baby lives,” I said. But I didn’t know if I was just talking in my head. I couldn’t nurse the baby. I had failed her.

It was night outside the window where Hank was. Night pressed against the house and made it feel little.

But through the door in the wall of the bedroom come the light of a summer evening. Birds was singing in the golden trees and the grass was warm from the sun. You could tell where the path in the grass was because it was sunk a little. The trail wound off into the pines and up the hill. “Julie,” somebody called among the trees, beyond where I could see.

Who could be calling me out into the late evening sun, into the woods where the sun didn’t reach? I wondered if I should get out of bed. I had laid still so long I was weak and my legs felt like they was
froze. If I had such a fever as Hank had said, should I get out from under the covers and walk outside?

“Are you coming, Julie?” the voice called. And at the same time I heard Hank talking from the living room. “I’ve heard of giving a baby ginseng tea to stimulate its heart,” he said.

“Ginseng tea is too strong for a baby,” I called. “I wouldn’t give it nothing stronger than pennyroyal tea.”

“You could give it a smaller dose, or a weaker dose,” Hank said. He sprinkled talcum on the little girl and slid a diaper under her. Hank worked careful, barely touching the delicate skin. The baby was so soft a touch could bruise it. The skin was softer than a rose petal and would break just as easy.

After he got the diaper under the baby Hank laid the ends across the belly and pinned them. He held one diaper pin in his mouth while he snapped the other into place. Hank’s hands was too big for that kind of work, but he was doing his best. I seen there was things about Hank I couldn’t have guessed. He was talking to the baby. “She’s a pretty girl, now ain’t she a pretty girl?” Hank was saying. “Prettiest girl in the world. Ain’t got a name, pretty little thing.”

But while I heard Hank talking, almost singing to the baby, I could hear the voice calling from the pine trees also. “Julie,” it said, “I want to show you something.”

Whose voice was it? It sounded so familiar. “Julie,” it called, “I want you to come out where I can see you.”

Suddenly I knowed it was Papa’s voice. I hadn’t noticed that before, for it wasn’t Papa’s voice when he was old, but when he was young. It was his voice as a young man, when he first met Mama. He was calling to me in the voice of his youth. He was calling to me across the summer grass from the pine woods.

“I’m not supposed to walk,” I called back.

“You can walk,” Papa said, almost like a kid calling me out to play. I lifted the covers aside and got out of bed. My legs was
stronger than I had thought they was. I had to walk slow, but I was steady. I took short steps to the door and walked out into the grass.

It was a world for a picnic out there. I had never seen a place so perfect. The grass was warm and trimmed smooth. The world was a park, a garden. It was like the world must have been in the beginning. There was bushes that smelled like perfume and flame azaleas in bloom. There was little bluets along the edges of the grass. It was grass you wanted to set down on. It was grass you wanted to lay back on and watch the clouds pass over.

Papa called to me again, but he was further out in the woods than I had thought. “Are you coming, Julie?” he said. It was like he had gone for a walk on the path up the mountainside and was waiting for me. We was going for a stroll on the trail that wound off through the pine trees to the edge of the sky.

But in the living room Hank was still talking to the baby. He laid a white flannel blanket over her up to her chin. “This little girl will live till the end of the century,” Hank said. “She will live to see the end of time. For preachers say the world will come to an end at the end of the millennium. This little girl will start out in a shoebox by the fireplace and live to see Jesus bust out of the eastern sky in all his glory.”

“How can time come to an end?” I said in my head.

“It will come to an end when the Word is fulfilled,” Hank said.

“Time can’t end, for what would follow would be time too,” I said.

“Don’t you believe the Bible?” Hank said. “Don’t you know it says plain in Revelation that time will stop?”