Whisper Town (3 page)

“Where’d you get a baby this time of night?” Angel stretched out her arms and yawned like a boy, ignoring the outstretched
bundle. She even kept back a ways, creating some distance.

“Someone left her out on the porch. Look through the basket, Angel, and see if she’s got a bottle tucked in her things.”

Angel rummaged through layers of blankets. She pulled out a note. “It says, ‘We heard you was a preacher who takes in kids.
Baby’s name is Myrtle Sapphira.’” Angel’s eyes lifted to study Jeb’s reaction, almost like she half-expected him to say it
was all a big middle-of-the-night joke. She continued reading the note. “‘We give you all the things for her care. She was
born recent.’”

“And, of course, they didn’t sign it,” said Jeb.

Angel shook her head. “Here’s her bottle.” She held it out to him by the nipple. “She don’t look like a Myrtle. More like
a June bug thrown on its back. Good night.”

Jeb did not want the bottle. “Maybe you should give it to her.” He tried to surrender Myrtle to Angel, but Angel kept her
arms folded in front of her.

“Just hold her close to you in your right arm. Feed her with the left.” She stuck the baby’s bottle in the crook of his arm.
“I’m going back to bed.”

“You’re not leaving me alone with this baby!” said Jeb.

“She ain’t mine to care for.”

“Babies don’t like me, Angel. Maybe if you made her a bed next to you—”

“Note says you’re the preacher who takes in kids. June Bug, meet your new daddy.” Angel waltzed out of the room.

Her laugh irked Jeb. “This is a big sin, leaving a newborn with the likes of me.”

She stonewalled Jeb, slamming the palm of her hand against the framing. “I’m not taking care of another kid, Jeb!”

“We’ll find a home for it in the morning.”

“You better search down around Tempest’s Bog then.”

“Why there?”

“She’s a Nigra baby.”

“Nigra?” He stared at her round face and pulled back the blanket to see the black-as-coal curls around her temple. “Angel,
I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m meeting the deacon board early and then I’ve got to get my Wednesday sermon ready.” And then
he had planned to be at the school by noon to see if Fern might join him for lunch.

“I’ve got a history test first thing, Jeb. I flunked the first one and can’t mess up again.”

“Stay home, then. It’ll give you an extra day to study. I’ll vouch for you with your teacher and you can take it the next
day.”

“Don’t want no extra day. I’m going to bed now.” She disappeared down the hallway.

Myrtle nuzzled Jeb’s shirt pocket, searching for a latching-on place. Jeb tapped her bottom lip with the bottle’s nipple and
her lips parted like a baby bass. He slumped down on the sofa to feed a stranger’s baby and to think up what he might tell
one of the churchwomen to get them to take on one more mouth to feed. It was ten past midnight.

The sun came early. Myrtle had slept for a few hours at a stretch and then awoke for another feeding. When Jeb’s eyes opened,
his head was propped against the hard sofa arm with the baby girl asleep on his stomach.

Ida May and Willie stood next to the sofa, waiting for Jeb’s eyes to come open.

“Can we keep her, Jeb? She’s a little dumpling, ain’t she?” said Ida May.

“That’s all we need around here, another girl.” Willie grumbled and munched on hard warmed-up bread.

“Angel says someone left her on the porch.” Ida May fingered the blanket around the baby’s head. “They must have been bad
off like our daddy or something to just drop off a whole baby like that.”

“What does she eat?” asked Willie. “She don’t look like she’s got a good set of teeth yet.”

Jeb held his finger to his lips. “She just fell asleep again. Hush and go finish your breakfast.” He had a headache and his
chest was damp with spit-up.

Myrtle lifted her head. Her eyelids fluttered and she gazed out at them.

“Since she’s awake, let me hold her, Dub,” said Ida May.

He sighed and slid his thumbs under her tiny chest.

Ida May flopped the baby over into her arms.

“Can’t hold babies like a rag doll,” said Jeb.

“You ought to take her to the doctor, make sure she’s well.” Angel entered the room, dressed for school and holding her books.

“Aren’t you full of advice?” Jeb sat up. He was still dressed in his work clothes from yesterday. “Lot of good you do me now.”

“Willie, Ida May, go and get your books. I have to head for school.” Angel sent them off to the bedroom.

“I don’t want to go to school. I want to stay home and play with Myrtle,” said Ida May. She whined all the way down the hall.

“She’s kind of runty, ain’t she?” asked Willie.

“Taking this baby to the doctor’s a good idea. Maybe he’s met the mother, knows how I might find some family members out there
who lay claim to this girl baby. Angel, sure you don’t want to come along, help me with holding her and all?”

“Jeb, I have to make a good grade on this test or I’m in hot water with Mrs. Farnsworth.”

Jeb sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“You changed her, didn’t you?” Angel stared at him as though she looked a fool in the eye. “I can’t believe you left this
baby all night in a dirty diaper. She’ll get the rash, Jeb. You have to change her now.”

“I never had no call to change a baby, Angel, you know that. It wouldn’t hurt you none to grab a diaper out of that basket
and help me out. At least give me the lowdown on how it’s done.”

Angel sighed. She set her books on the floor and retrieved a diaper. “Lay her on the sofa then.” She opened the diaper and
then grimaced.

Jeb turned to leave.

“Jeb, go and fetch a clean, wet washcloth. Maybe two, while you’re at it.”

Jeb ran into the kitchen and found a stack of clean linens, where Angel had stacked them on the kitchen table. He ran with
one to the sink, wet it, wrung it out, and then hotfooted it back into the parlor.

“Now check her things and see if you can find a jar of ointment. She’s going to need it.”

Jeb dug through the basket. “I don’t see any.”

“Run fetch a jar from the kitchen then. It’s in the cabinet where I keep the iodine.”

“We’re ready to leave,” said Willie.

“Give your sister a minute, Willie.” Jeb ran back into the kitchen to the pantry.

“Jeb, I can’t be late!” Angel yelled.

Jeb knocked over a can of baking powder. He grabbed a box of cornstarch and then saw the ointment in the back of the cabinet.

Angel held out Myrtle’s legs by the toes.

“I’m waiting out on the porch,” said Willie. “Man can only take so much.”

“Is this the stuff?” Jeb asked Angel.

Angel said, “That’s a good idea. I forgot about using cornstarch.”

Jeb glanced down and saw that he still held the cornstarch box in his left hand. “My grandma’s old remedy,” he lied. He couldn’t
remember back that far.

“June Bug’s got a rash. That cornstarch should help it dry up.” Angel finished up using ointment on Myrtle’s red places and
closed the diaper. “She’s all yours.” She grabbed her books and ushered Willie and Ida May out the door. Before closing the
door, she said, “You’ll do fine, Jeb. Just get her off to the doctor and he’ll know what to do. Surely you can handle that.”

Jeb looked down at the baby, who made sucking breaths as she wound up for another long wail. Her bottle was empty and Angel
had left the soiled diaper on the rug. He ran to the door. “Angel, wait! I don’t know what to feed her.”

Angel climbed into the Ford of a friend. Willie and Ida May climbed in behind her talking their heads off. Angel waved at
Jeb before they drove away.

Myrtle’s cry took every bit of starch out of Jeb’s morning plans. He checked his watch. The deacon’s meeting had commenced
ten minutes ago.

Jeb had not carried around that feeling of being the town underdog for quite some time, but the feeling he got hauling around
this baby did test a man’s spirit. He had to change clothes once before ever having left the parsonage, and then just as he
tiptoed through the church entrance with his large basket of baby, she awoke and let out the most awful scream.

Will Honeysack looked up from his chair, startled to see the Church in the Dell preacher carrying what looked like a load
of laundry. “Morning, Reverend. We been waiting for you.”

“Fellers, I got a dilemma. Look what someone left for me last night.”

The deacons inspected the basket.

“Lord-a-mercy, Parson!” said Arnell Ketcherside. His chair almost tipped backward. “What you going to do?”

“I was hoping one of you boys would tell me.” Jeb looked at Sam Patton. “You think your wife might take her in? Greta’s been
wanting a girl, what with the last two of yours being male.”

“Reverend, this baby’s a Nigra baby. You sure someone ain’t pulling your leg?” asked Arnell.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t oblige,” said Sam. “Greta’s still got one on the breast and the boy ain’t even started school. She’s
about half out of her mind, as it is.”

“Freda’s been so busy at the store, she’s about to shoot me as it is wanting a new floor in the back room. Both of us nearly
fell through stacking up cans,” said Will. “We been up late every night this week trying to figure out how to keep the store
going.”

“You know of anyone down around Tempest’s Bog that might take her in? Or at least figure out who come up missing a newborn?
The way I figure it, you can’t hide secrets like that too long, not in this county.” Jeb jiggled the basket the entire time
that he spoke, trying to appease this angry little god.

Will sat back in his chair, clamped his hands on each knee, and then laughed. “I never seen a preacher get hisself into so
many fixes as you, Reverend!”

“Boys, this is serious,” said Jeb.

Myrtle had stayed up most of the night and then sprayed her breakfast all over his good tie.

“Reverend, ain’t you ever been around babies before?” asked Floyd. “They don’t sleep for the first year or so.”

“I can’t take going without sleep, Floyd. A man’s not made for such things.”

Myrtle’s hand lifted and came over her face as though she fanned flies, but her eyelids drooped. She took a breath and then
fell asleep.

Jeb crept to a pew and set the basket down. “Let’s meet at the front of the church.”

The men carted chairs up the aisle, following Jeb and creeping so as not to make a sound or bump a chair against a pew arm.

“First order of business,” said Jeb. “Let’s pray.”

T
UESDAYS BROUGHT WOMEN OUT INTO THE
yards to do the wash and air linens on the clotheslines. As Jeb motored away from the churchyard, he had a silent conversation
with a housewife he passed along the way, imagining how he might deliver Myrtle into the happy matron’s arms and then, having
done his preacherly duties, hop back into his Ford and drive away in search of more holy exploits.

Not a thought about his Wednesday-evening message had come to him all morning, his mind too dammed up with worry over what
to do about Myrtle. He drove over Marvelous Crossing, past Fern’s cottage beyond the pond, and then made the right turn down
the lane that would lead to the house of the only doctor in Nazareth, Dr. Forrester.

When he pulled up and parked next to the picket fence, he tipped his hat at a teenage girl seated out on the porch. He thought
he recognized her from Angel’s class, but she did not appear to know him. “Dr. Forrester around?” he asked.

“My aunt’s inside with her baby, my cousin Ben. He’s got colic and keeps the whole house up all night. Be fine with me if
they just leave him here.”

“You say he’s got colic? Can the doctor give a baby something to help it sleep?” Jeb hefted Myrtle’s basket out of the front
seat of the truck.

The girl shrugged and fell back into a stupor.

He waited outside the doctor’s front door until Mrs. Forrester appeared and opened the door for him. Jeb felt relief when
she smiled back at him.

“Reverend Nubey, what you bringing to us today?” She looked surprised.

Myrtle’s eyes were open wide now and she nuzzled the blankets around her.

“Someone dropped off a baby girl in the middle of the night, Mrs. Forrester.”

“Terrible times we live in, Reverend.”

“Mystery to me why they’d drop a baby off on my porch.”

“Does she have a name?”

“The note in her basket named her Myrtle. No last name.”

The teenage girl’s aunt came out of the doctor’s house holding her baby. “Let’s go, Shirley.” The two females climbed into
a buggy parked next to Jeb’s truck.

“What’s this all about?” asked Dr. Forrester.

“Someone dropped a baby off on the preacher’s doorstep, Stu.”

Jeb smiled at Thelma Forrester. She returned the smile but kept her distance.

The doctor invited Jeb inside. The house smelled like Mrs. Forrester had stewed persimmons. A row of family photos stared
back from a piano top, a well-kept lot of grown children sitting with the Forresters’ next generation posed around the adults
in sailor-type costumes, the kind rich kids were forced to wear well into puberty.

“I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee, Stu.” Mrs. Forrester disappeared behind a green kitchen door. The parlor steamed up again.

“Doc, I got my hands full as it is with the Welbys and I don’t have a woman around the house to see to this child’s needs,”
said Jeb.

Dr. Forrester lifted Myrtle out of the basket. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

“All I had to give her was milk from the icebox.”

“Cow’s milk makes them sick, Reverend. What you need is a wet nurse.”

“I need a home for this baby.”

“Thelma, could you come and change this baby for the reverend?” Thelma appeared, her face red and damp. Dr. Forrester placed
the baby in her arms.

Jeb watched her lift the baby expertly and whisk her into the next room. He slumped down into a chair. “I’m grateful to you,
Doc. Angel changed her before school. Diaper handling is not my calling, so to speak.”

“You thought about driving her out to Tempest’s Bog, asking the families if they know of a girl who may have gotten herself
in trouble? Could be this baby belonged to a girl too young to care for her.”