GodPretty in the Tobacco Field (6 page)

“With my prize money for the 'bacco, I aim to live in Louisville. Maybe we can meet or . . .”

He reached out and snuck a breezy finger to my jaw, lighting skin, dizzying my mind. “I've been thinking about us lately—you,” he said softly.

I searched his face.

Rainey tilted his chin down, put a hand on my shoulder. “I want to ask you—”

“RubyLyn!
Roo,
” Henny hollered from behind us, silencing his question.

For a split second Rainey tightened his grip on me; then we broke apart, turning to see Henny running toward us from across the fields, flailing her arms.

“Roo . . . oh . . . hell . . .” She bent over and rested her hands on her knees, blowing out tiny breaths. “Sister's baby . . . the baby . . . it's coming. C'mon, Gunnar said to fill the buckets and help me get the water up the hill. Th-them baby-buyers are up there waiting—and we still don't have water.”

“Lordy-jones!” I said, feeling sick and legs filling with sap. I sat down in the field. Henny jerked on my arm. “
Come on,
Roo, hurry!” she cried, shaking me out of my collapse.

“Roo, you okay?” Rainey stepped forward, concerned.

I found my legs, and we ran to Gunnar's barn and hauled out the buckets to the pump in the side yard. After we'd filled them, Rainey toted two, and me and Henny lagged behind him carrying one each up the mountain.

That no more than fifteen-minute walk uphill turned into thirty minutes, what with trying to keep our water from sloshing out of the buckets along the narrow rutted trails. The new baby, Rainey's lost question, and what lay ahead kept me company.

The hill swelled under our feet as we dragged ourselves through scents of pine, damp leaves, and ragged breaths of silence. At the first switchback we passed a shiny green station wagon with wood paneled doors parked next to the old pickup that belonged to midwife Oretta. We stopped to stare a minute and flex our hands.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Stump over on one of the trails. I wondered if he was hunting squirrel or rabbit for his family's supper.

Gunnar said Mr. Stump wasn't much of a worker, or hunter for that matter, just a blowhard mostly. Mr. Stump liked to boast that the government worked it out to let him draw the “Pappy Pay” after he groused once too often about the one-anda-half-mile hitch his kids had to walk to get to school. And when they couldn't get a school bus to ride up his ridge, he'd flat out told them his kids weren't going. Mr. Stump spent most of '68 being fined, and when he didn't pay the fines, jailed. This year the government came up with a “solution” to feed the Stump bellies and brains:
During the school year Mr. Stump would get up at six to walk his children to school and then collect them at three
. This made for one happy pappy, who earned just shy of three hundred a month for walking his kids to and from school and idling around moonshine stills along the way back home.

Rainey bumped me lightly, pushing me onward.

When we reached the Stumps' house, Henny's brothers and sisters were playing loudly on the long raised porch propped on stilts.

I climbed up, stepping high over the tall weeds shooting out between each board. I set my water down near a broken porch board and the kids swarmed the bucket, cupping their hands to dip up water, slurping, splashing, and taking turns to stick their blackened feet inside.

Baby Jane stood back from the others, wiping a puddle of worry off her face. I motioned to her. She rushed to my side. “Best get, Baby Jane.” I squeezed her shoulder and gently pushed her toward the steps. Unsure, she clutched my skirt.

“Go on.” I nudged again. Reluctant, Baby Jane took off.

Beside the ratty screen door, a man wearing glasses with a dark jacket hanging over his arm and polished black shoes and a woman wearing a yellow summer dress sat on wood crates. The woman had one of those fine city faces, like a Hollywood movie star in Rose's magazines. She held a small green knitted blanket, her hands balling up an edge, over and over, while the man sat with one leg perched over the other, kicking at the air.

Two bony dogs, long robbed of their tail wags, shared the shade of the porch, not bothering to rise to sniff a greeting.

Mrs. Stump pushed open the screen door, stepped out, and clapped her hands, shooing away the noisy kids. One of the toddlers rubbed his sunken belly, crying for food. The older ones scattered off into a cluster of scraggly pine, and the tucked-tailed dogs skittered away.

Rainey set down his buckets and helped three of the smaller, barefoot and bare-butt kids off the porch. One of them slapped away Rainey's hand and tumbled headfirst onto the ground. When the boy screwed up his red face to croon his injury, Mrs. Stump raised a warning finger. He took off wailing toward the woods.

Rainey said, “Best get back to work now.”

I nodded readily. “Me too.”

“Let's go,” Henny sang out.

Mrs. Stump shook her head and pointed. “Henny, stay put.
You
go, boy. And,
you
”—she stabbed a finger my way—“c'mon inside and haul one of them buckets in with ya.”

Henny kicked a protest into the dirt.

“Me?” I asked, wanting real bad to hightail it straight out of here, far away from any business of birthing and baby-buyers.

“Roo”—Rainey looked at me—“want me to wait for you?”

More than anything I wanted him to.

Mrs. Stump lifted a hanging metal cup off the tarpapered wall beside the screen door and shook it at Rainey. “Keep your ass to the rows, darkie. Ain't got no business around us white females!”

I winced, knowing most folks around here felt that way, even the ones who the town thought beggarly. Once, Mrs. Stump whipped Rainey with a tree branch when she spied him rescuing one of her daughters after the little girl took a bad tumble in the creek. Gunnar saw it from his tractor and hurried over with me running alongside him. He snatched the switch out of Mrs. Stump's hand, then swatted Rainey once on the behind with it, then again, saying, “I'll take care of him, Mrs. Stump.”

He gave a tongue-lashing to Rainey on touching white females, then on the way back, Gunnar'd quoted President Johnson like he always did, mumbling more to himself than to me or Rainey, “ ‘If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you.' ”

Gunnar'd looked at me, and said, “Mighty knowledge in that, maybe even some of the Lord Almighty's thoughts in there,” and then he'd repeated them twice more as we walked back across the field, and every time Rainey ran afoul with white folks like the Stumps.

 

Mrs. Stump banged the cup against the wall, startling the man and woman. “Git,” she snapped at Rainey.

I snuck a finger toward Rainey's tucked hand. “See you back at the rows.”

Rainey didn't dare touch it.
Good night,
he barely mouthed, a faint wiggle in his pinky.

Mrs. Stump glowered, then looked at the couple who now had their round eyes set on me. “Mr. and Mrs. Emery, it won't be much longer now.” She handed them the mug. “Fetch yourself some water if ya need to.” Looking around, she yelled, “Henny, where'd ya go? . . . Git in here!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Henny slip into the woods.

M
rs. Stump caught the folds of my long cotton dress and pulled me inside before I could protest. Not four feet from the screen door, Lena was stretched out on the floor atop a stained tick-striped mattress, whimpering. Another long mattress butted up to the far wall, and a sagging brown couch missing a leg hugged another. The little air in the room was soured with mash, hotly baked, and stirred by the youngest Stump boy, Charles. The one-year-old slobbered out a lost tune as he crawled back and forth across the blackened wood floor.

Above, a single bulb added to the harsh light spilling across the kneeling midwife, who hovered over Lena. She dabbed at Lena's mouth with a whiskey-soaked rag and spoke softly. “C'mon. You gotta let this baby go, girlie.
Push,
” Oretta urged.

Lena cried out, “I ain't giving away my baby. I ain't—” She lifted her head, clutched her belly, and grunted. “No—”

Mrs. Stump bent over Lena and hissed. “Wouldn't have to if you'd drank the pennyroyal I brewed ya—”

“I couldn't kill it, Ma,” Lena sobbed.

“Humph,” Mrs. Stump grunted. “Do as Oretta says, or we'll lose you both. And we sure don't need no law snooping round up here.”

As far as I knew, nobody had come meddling around here or even cared about the three baby graves set out back marked with tobacco sticks, and the one full-sized grave that showed up in the spring that no one talked about.

Mrs. Stump knelt down behind Lena's head and slipped her hands under her daughter's back, pulling her up to a half-sitting position. “That baby's gonna have a birthday
today
. Push.”

Oretta scooted down to Lena's feet, grabbed her ankles, and shoved her legs upward.

“No!” Lena screamed, kicking, crossing her legs tightly. “He—he's coming back for us, Ma.
He is....
We's getting hitched, Ma, swear. I'm getting a dress—”

“You'd be trading that hitchin' dress for a mourning dress if I get ahold of him,” Mrs. Stump spat.

“Where's Pa? He said . . . he said maybe I could keep it. I'll find it food,” Lena breathed. “I will.”

Mrs. Stump bared her broken teeth. “Your pa's busy working hard to feed ya—and you can keep it all right: long enough for it to get outta there and get its starch.
Push
.”

Little Charles stopped crawling, sat up, and began to suck earnestly on his thumb.

I moved closer to the door. I'd seen animals give birth: Gunnar's barn cat, even a field mouse birthing nine mice no bigger than my pinky, but never a woman other than my mama. I didn't see it exactly, but I was close enough that day to feel it in my dreams at night. And over the years folks had done enough whispering about Mama dying after she tried to give me a baby sister.

Some blamed Daddy, and hushed talk around town was the Scripture had sent her to an early grave. But Scripture never killed anybody back then . . . not since the Crusades anyway. Still a few said that a broken heart took her after Daddy got to handling a demon bigger than his nasty snakes. The only thing I knew was after Daddy died, Mama seemed to be sleepwalking during the day, and sometimes no matter how hard I yanked on her, or cried for her to stop, I couldn't shake her awake.

Lena thrashed, gusted out a tight yelp between her teeth. Terrified, my knees knock together. I rested my forehead against the doorjamb, trying to gulp down more air.

Oretta closed her eyes and chanted a prayer of sorts. For a second I caught a foggy glimpse of my daddy's long-ago tent revivals, the frenzied prayers swirling, hissing. When Mrs. Stump joined in, I felt myself buckling.

Oretta rushed to my side and pressed a cloth full of sharp, smelly herbs to my nose, burning, shooting me back upward.

That the Stumps were using prayers to birth the baby instead of the old town doc and his medical bag scared me for reasons I couldn't understand.

I pushed Oretta away, flattened my face against the door to shove back the darkness.

“RubyLyn, this ain't the time for hysterics! Tell Lena 'bout that couple out there,” Mrs. Stump ordered.

“Huh? What?” I tried to shake myself out of the haze.

“The premonition!” Mrs. Stump bit. “Where's Henny?
Henny!
. . . Henny gave us the fortune-teller and done told me what ya saw—said you even seen it'd come today—now tell Lena about the Emerys.”

“Today's July 26?
Oh!
”

Lena moaned and looked up at me with a dirty, tear-soaked face.

My eyes filled at the thought of her losing her baby. “No, Mrs. Stump, I—”

Lena blew out a string of yips.

I peered out the screen, into the tree line, and took several short breaths. “Uh . . . well, the Emerys and the baby . . . er, the baby
girl
. . .”
Like Patsy,
I thought.
Is it a lie if I wished it?
I tried to get a glimpse of the couple by pressing my face flat to the screen, but all I saw were the man's and woman's legs shooting up and down. “The Emerys have lots of food,” I said softly, squeaking open the screen and sneaking a better look. “Lots.”

Mr. Emery held up his glasses, wiping the lenses with his hankie, inspecting, rubbing, then inspecting again. Mrs. Emery leaned out from behind her husband and locked eyes with me. I couldn't get a sense of anything, except maybe they were wondering if they really wanted to take this baby, take it far away from this place.

Lena screamed out again, twice, and a third time. Oretta sang, “Good, good, good,” at each holler.

I heard a baby's faint cry.

“A girl,” Oretta announced, lifting up the baby. “Nubs all here and the mama'll be fine.” The midwife tugged at the baby's toe. The baby girl let out a strong squall as if in agreement.

I sagged against the door, relieved.

Mrs. Stump moved over to Oretta and took the baby.

“Ma, give me my baby.” Lena sniffled, raising her arms. “My baby . . .”

Mrs. Stump carried the baby past her daughter, into the kitchen's doorway, and quickly dipped her into a bucket of water.

Then Lena's mama smacked the baby's behind and brought the crying infant to me. “Give the baby to its ma and pa.”

My hands were dirty, stained from the fields. I pressed myself against the screen.

“Git on with it.” Mrs. Stump jerked her head toward the porch, shoving the tiny, naked baby into my arms.

The baby felt cooler than the hot air and slippery like a hornworm. Shaking, I pushed open the screen with my knee and slipped out.

Lena began weeping softly behind me.

Oretta said, “You ain't done just yet, girlie. Push a little more to get the rest of it out of you. C'mon now.”

I stood still on the porch in the softness of a warm mountain breeze, feeling everything and nothing. The shade and silence numbing. The baby mewed and thrust up her tiny pink fist.

Inside, Lena cried out, “My baby,
my baby
.”

The couple got up off the crates. Mr. Emery slowly put on his glasses. Mrs. Emery had her wide blue eyes fixed to the baby.

Lena's cries grew louder, turning into broken sobs, pleading, “Let me just hold her, please, Ma, let me see her . . . just once. Just one kiss. Oh,
please
let me hold her just one time.”

Mrs. Emery opened the green blanket toward me and scooped the baby into her arms. “She's perfect.
Perfect
. Let's call her Eve,” she whispered, lifting up the baby to her husband.

With a hesitant hand, Mr. Emery touched the baby's hair, then leaned over and kissed his wife's cheek. “Eve,” he echoed.

They stood there together, huddled over Eve, laying soft words between Lena's sobbing ones. “RubyLyn, bring me back my baby.
RubyLyn
. . .”

Clutching long sticks, two Stump boys wandered into the yard with their two-year-old sister tagging behind. The boys stopped under the half-broke birch to poke holes in a hanging hornet nest.

“
Please
. . .”

Baby Jane sat on a rotted log, waiting, tearing at her nails. She jumped up and ran to my side, clutching my dress. Blindly, I shook her off.

“
Oh, please
. . .”

Ten-year-old Ada Stump walked out of the woods, striking matches and throwing her lit sticks toward the cabin.

I stepped off the porch and set out onto the downhill trail.

“
Nooo . . . RubyLyn . . .”

I turned around and looked at the shack built with its loose-lip promises and dreams that wouldn't carry past its tarpaper walls—sitting there wedged between rock and a shallow well and the stinking two-seater outhouse in the woods.

Overhead, a hawk called out and quieted. Lena's pleas bubbled out of the tiny house and stirred the still mountain.

I didn't stop when I spotted Mr. Stump, half-hidden, slumped against a tree, tipping back a bottle of Old Crow.

Halfway down the mountain, I glanced back once. Mr. Emery and his wife and new baby followed behind me. Protectively, Mr. Emery wrapped an arm around his wife's small waist, hitching the hem of her pretty yellow dress.

A slinky slip the color of skin hung a few inches below it.