Light to the Hills: A Novel (50)
Amanda remembered every push and wail from that night, the wind outside harmonizing with her anguish. She’d prayed. Oh, how she’d prayed: for the labor to stop, for the pain to go away, for it to be over. And other, less immediate prayers when she had a minute to catch her breath: for Gripp Jessup to fall in a well and drown, for him to be poisoned by his own moonshine, for the crows to peck out his eyes. Amanda was helpless to take every thought captive in the middle of pushing out a baby, so she hoped God would forgive her these last.
A midwife would have said that for a first baby, Miles had come quickly. Amanda had nothing to compare her experience to, no mama nearby to console her, and to her it seemed anything but quick. The labor persisted and intensified for several hours, and she shifted from the bed to the chair to the floor and back again, desperate to ease the spasms in her back. She knew enough to have a clean knife at hand, and she had the presence of mind to gather some towels and a pot of water when she had moments to breathe. Nature and the storm did the rest, and when at last Amanda lay panting on the bed, her hair slicked with sweat against her face, she cut the purple-blue cord that unraveled like a skein of yarn and held her son close, tears cooling her hot skin as his thin cries blended with her own. It was the first song they’d sung together, a keening lament that spoke of pain and fear and love.
Amanda’s world had distilled into that moment in that room, and she knew with a deep certainty, with a kind of ancient knowledge that traveled from the veins of the earth to her beating heart, that despite how terrified she was of the way this child looked to her for life, she would in fact protect and save him even if it demanded her last breath. She managed to clean and feed both herself and the baby, and they slept in deep exhaustion for a few hours before he woke her again with a frantic rooting at her breast.
The storm stayed put for three solid days, soaking the mountains and sending water cascading down into waterfalls, creeks, and rivers. In all that time, no one knocked at Amanda’s door, and she was so stiff and sore she could hardly move about the room, let alone venture out with a newborn into the wind and mud. She and Miles, for that is what she named him, hunkered down and got acquainted. Barely a day had passed before Amanda had already memorized the curves of his cheeks, the whorls of each ear, and the feel of his stubby baby toes against the palm of her hand.
It was another week before Amanda pieced together all that had happened in the storm. More than one family’s cabin had been swept down the mountain by water or mud, the mines had been closed due to danger from flooding, and the sheriff was run ragged trying to get word of the situation beyond the overflowing riverbanks. Trees were down across the trails that hadn’t been washed out. When she stepped out onto the porch with Miles, who blinked his eyes against the light, an earthy smell of upturned soil and churned silty creek water reached her nose, mixed with the dank smell of wet wood and leaves. No word from Frank. She’d been furious when she’d sent him away, and even more so that he’d left her alone to deliver Miles, but now a current of worry pulsed through her fog of exhaustion. He was likely stranded on the far side of the river and would come slinking back with that hangdog look on his face any day now. Also, she wondered about her parents. She knew their home site was secure, not too near the water, but she was anxious to get word to them about their grandchild.
When knuckles finally rapped on Amanda’s door, she swung it wide, Miles in the crook of one arm.
“High time!” The high pitch of her voice contradicted the fed-up look on her face. “Look what all you missed—” She stopped in mid-rail, for it wasn’t Frank who’d appeared on the step with his hat in his hand, but the sheriff, his black boots covered in mud.
“Miz Rye.” So. This was no welfare call and certainly no social visit. The man’s thin-lipped grimace and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down told her that much. The sheriff’s eyes lit on the baby waving his tiny hands in the air, and his face sagged even further.
“Rain’s done quit,” he said.
“You knock on my door to tell me what my own eyes can see?” Amanda raised her chin, bracing for the blow. Some bootlegger had turned snitch, and now Frank was likely sitting in a county jail cell.
“No ma’am. I come to tell you we done fished your husband outta the river this mornin’.”
Confusion clouded Amanda’s features, and she frowned. “The river?” She’d almost laughed.
“Edgar Mullins and his boy—they was huntin’ up the banks for anything useful that might’a washed through when the creeks rose up—they seen him lodged under a gum, hung there by his overalls. Thought it was a calf got swept off at first.” The sheriff stopped himself. “I’m awful sorry.”
Amanda blinked at him. Miles started up a half-hearted cry, the kind that—Amanda had already learned—would work itself into a full-fledged wail soon if she didn’t feed him. She looked down at her baby, turning his head by instinct to nuzzle into her chest, and she held the bundle out to the sheriff so that he would understand why this couldn’t be true.
“I’ve just birthed him,” she told the sheriff. “Not two weeks ago yet.”
“Like I say, I’m awful sorry. I’ll put the word out to some women down the way. Now the rain’s quit, give it a week or so and the creeks’ll be down.” The sheriff reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an iron-colored pistol. He held the butt of it out to Amanda. “Found this .22 under some brush close by. Looks like it’d been fired recently. Nice Smith & Wesson with his initials in the handle—F. R. Reckon it’s his.” Amanda took it and laid it on the shelf inside the door. She’d stow it under the bed with her own pistol later. He stepped back down the stairs and turned away, crammed his worn hat down on his head.