The sheriff, Abraham Pace, and Daddy searched Miss Watson’s house. They checked every window and rattled every door to show Miss Watson her windows were shut tight and her locks were working fine. After searching for half a day, Daddy came home to say Miss Watson might have a taste for whiskey, same as Abraham, although they did find a few cigarette butts outside the house. Annie asked were they snapped almost in two. Daddy said yes.
“Jesus Christ,” Ryce shouts from the drive.
Though Annie can’t see him, she imagines he’ll have laid his head back and is shouting up at her open window.
“What the hell do I have to do, Annie?”
Annie sits under the window, her knees bent up, arms wrapped across them and her face buried there, as Ryce walks around the house, shouting out the same. Eventually, Ryce will tire of Annie. He’s a good enough boy-that’s what Daddy’s always saying as if he’s somehow, for some reason, bracing himself for a lifetime of Ryce Fulkerson at the family table-and so Ryce will do what’s polite. He’ll try to soothe Annie by pretending it never happened, or maybe come right out and say he’s already forgotten it. But Annie will never forget. It’s no longer the memory of Ryce Fulkerson seeing her everything because of a rain-soaked shirt that is causing her this pain. Now Ryce is all tangled up in the lie Annie told about seeing Jacob Riddle down in that well and the hurt Annie caused Caroline by telling it. Ryce standing outside, shouting for Annie to please come out and talk to him, is nothing but a reminder of what a hurtful, selfish thing Annie has done.
Another five minutes pass, and finally that front tire of Ryce’s starts creaking and whining and slowly fades away. Ellis Baine, however, is still leaning up against that well, waiting for Annie.
21
THE ROOM IS dark except for the glow of a single kerosene lantern that sits near the bed. Juna lies on her back, the round bulge in her stomach straining her skin until it’s taut like a stretched hide. She coughs-a deep cough that rattles in her chest. It’s the cold air that burns her lungs. Outside, the wind rushes down the hill and past our small house, whistling through the cracks in the walls and the ceiling and around the one small window. Every night, rushing and whistling and it never stops.
The wet cloth on Juna’s forehead has turned stiff with the cold. I douse it in water kept warm by the fire, wring it, blot it to her face. At the end of the bed, near Juna’s feet, I fuss with a wooden stool until it’s positioned just so. As I move through the lantern’s smoky light, I throw long, dark shadows. Placing one hand under Juna’s right knee, I lift it and, with the other hand, push on her shin until her leg is bent. I do the same with her other leg, help her to sit up, and show her how to hook her arms under each knee. It’s what the women told me I should do. None of them would come but instead taught me what to do and how to do it and wished me well.
“God damn this cold,” Juna says.
I press Juna’s knees up and out. Strands of her long yellow hair have pulled loose from the cotton kerchief she wears. Even in the dim light, her cheeks and forehead shine and have the same pink glow she’d have after a day walking the fields under a full sun.
“Push now. Don’t stop until I say.”
When we knew the day was getting close, I pasted strips of cloth in the room’s one small window. I cut feed bags in long, thin strips and soaked them in flour and water I mixed up on the porch. It’s meant to keep out the cold, cut the draft, but even as I lower myself onto the stool, cold air settles in around my ankles and brushes past my cheeks.
“You’ve got to push harder,” I say, and silently, I count to ten. “Keep on. Keep on pushing.”
The room is like a box, sealed up tight so no one can see inside. But really it’s not so tight. Streams of icy air stir up the flame in the lantern, scattering its yellow glow. It moves across Juna’s face, lighting up a sliver here and a sliver there. First her left eye. It catches the light, reflects it back. Then the side of her face, the hollow in her neck, the strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
“I’m too cold,” Juna says, dropping her hold on one knee so she can wipe the hair from her eyes. “God damn this cold.”
“That don’t matter,” I say. “This baby is coming.”
It’s too early, far too early. That’s what the women said when I told them I thought the time was near. They shook their heads, counted on their fingers, discussed the last full moon and when we’d expect another. Too early, they said. So early it might be a blessing. Just over five months, they counted. Five months since Joseph Carl planted the child. Too little time. If it is to come, it’ll never draw a breath. Too tiny. Not yet ready for this world. It might be a blessing.
Behind me, the bedroom door opens. The rest of the house isn’t sealed up, and cold rushes into the room. The small lantern dims. Juna falls back on her elbows. Her face disappears in the weakened light and appears again after the door closes. Footsteps cross the wooden floorboards.
“Not fitting for you to be here,” I say, knowing it’s Daddy without looking.
He doesn’t answer, but a few more steps cross the wooden planks that run the length of the room and then fall silent. The cigar crackles as he sucks on its end and smoke settles in over Juna and me. A single chair is pushed up against the wall, yet he doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands, arms crossed, feet spread wide. It’s what he does, what he always does. Next to the other men, he’s not so large and not so smart and not so good with his crop. He’ll stand like he thinks a man should.
“I’m seeing something,” I say.
I can smell him. In the small room, closed up tight with floury strips of cloth, his odor takes no time reaching me. Even over the cigar smoke filling the air, I smell him. I close my eyes as if that will stop me from breathing him in. It’s sweat, sour and moldy; damp socks rinsed and pulled on again before they’ve dried; strong coffee warmed over two, three, four mornings until the pot is empty.
“It’ll be harder now,” I say, lifting my head until my eyes lock on Juna’s.
It’s what the women told me. When you see the head, they warned, she’ll want to stop. Make her push harder. Make her push until it’s out.
“Harder you push, quicker she’ll be here.”
“She?” Juna says. “You said she. Can you see?”
With that one word-“she”-the baby is real. She has tiny fingers with paper-thin nails, pink skin, and clear eyes.
“Haven’t gotten to that end yet,” I say. “But won’t Abraham be proud? You’ll be his special girls, the two of you.”
The smell of Daddy is stronger. I taste him in the air. Juna begins to pant, and I know with every short breath, she’ll be tasting him too. I think she’ll look at him in that way she does, that she’ll tilt her head just so, raise a brow, make him afraid so he’ll leave. But she does nothing, says nothing.
“Push,” I say again.
The women told me to make Juna push or she’d starve the baby of her air.
“Push, Juna. She needs you to push.”
There it is again-she. Every week and then every day, Juna grew larger as the baby grew. She plumped up to look more like me, softer, rounder. Her upper arms grew so large we cut the seams in each sleeve of her cotton blouses, and her cheeks and hips rounded out in a way that will probably stick with her long after the baby is born.