"The boys got a few bites, but let ’em howl for a minute. Here now, you lay back like I said." She stopped resisting and wilted to the earth. He stuffed his hat under her. "Here, you put your head on this."
She rested but small pains arced through her abdomen.
"You hurt anything when you fell?" Will asked anxiously, kneeling beside her, wondering what he was supposed to do if she started losing the baby out here in the middle of this weed patch. He watched her stomach lifting and falling in panting beats, wondered if he should touch it, test it. But for what? He sat on one heel, hands resting uncertainly on his thighs.
"I’m okay. Please… would you just see after the boys?"
"But you’re-"
"I’ll just lay here a while. You take the boys up to the well and plaster some mud on their bee stings quick as you can. It’ll cut the swelling."
"But I can’t just leave you here."
"Yes, you can! Now do as I say, Will Parker! Them bee stings could kill Thomas if he got enough of them, and I already lost their daddy to the bees-don’t you understand!" Her eyes filled with tears and Will reluctantly got to his feet. He glanced toward the pair, still sitting abjectly in the middle of the lane, bawling their heads off. He glanced at their mother and pointed authoritatively at her nose.
"Don’t you move until I get back." Then he was off at a run again. A moment later he rescued the two squalling boys and trotted on.
"Maa-maaaaw! I want my maa-maaw!" Donald Wade had several welts on his face and hands. One ear was scarlet and puffed. He ground his fists into his eyes.
"Your mama can’t run as fast as I can. Hang on and we’ll put somethin’ cool on them bites."
Baby Thomas was running from all ports and had bites all over, including a mean-looking cluster on his neck. They’d already begun swelling. At the thought of what could happen, should they be swelling as much on the inside as they were on the out, Will made his legs pump harder. He tried to think rationally, to remember if he’d seen where Mrs. Dinsmore kept her bread knife. A picture of the long silver blade flashed through his mind and he imagined having to slip it into Baby Thomas’s windpipe, through that soft, pink baby skin. His stomach tumbled at the thought. He wasn’t sure he could do it. Goddammit, don’t let this kid choke, you hear me!
Don’t think of it, Parker, just keep runnin’! As long as he’s screaming like a banshee he ain’t strangling.
Baby Thomas yowled all the way back to the yard. Will hit the mud patch by the pump doing seven miles an hour. His left foot flew west, his right east, and a moment later he landed on his seat with a splat. There he sat with two bawling boys. A bubble formed in Baby Thomas’s right nostril. Tears rolled down Donald Wade’s cheeks, wetting the bee stings. Will reached up and pulled Donald Wade’s fist down.
"Here, don’t rub ’em." He sat in the cold, slimy mud and started dabbing it on both boys at once. Thomas fought him tooth and nail, jerking his head back, pushing at Will’s hands. But in time the visible welts were covered. The howling subsided to jerky sobs, then the jerky sobs to breathy chuffs of wonder as it dawned on the boys that they were sitting beneath the pump, being plastered with mud. Will unhooked Donald Wade’s suspenders, turned his bib down and his shirt up. He treated several stings on his back and belly, then removed the baby’s shirt and did likewise.
"They got you, all right," Will confirmed, examining for any he might have missed.
"Are they all right?"
Will’s chin snapped up at the sound of Eleanor’s voice. She stood at the edge of the puddle, holding his flattened hat in her hand. "I thought I told you to stay put till I could get back to you."
"Are they all right?" she repeated.
"I think so. Are you?"
"I think so."
"Mama…" The baby reached toward her, but Will held him in place.
"You sit here a minute, sport. You’ll get your mama all muddy."
Suddenly Eleanor’s face crinkled and a chuckle began deep in her throat. Will shot her a glare.
"What you laughin’ at?"
"Oh, mercy, if you could see the picture you three make." She covered her mouth and doubled forward, laughing. "It just struck me."
Sudden anger boiled up in Will. How dare she stand there cackling when he’d just had five good years scared out of him! When his heart was knocking so hard his temples hurt! When he sat with the mud oozing up through his only pair of jeans! And all because of her and her boys!
"There ain’t a damn thing funny, so stop your crowin’!" He planted both boys on their feet as if they were spades and he was done shoveling. Clumsily he extracted himself from the mud and stood bowlegged, like a toddler with full diapers. All the while she giggled behind her hand. Giggled, for chrissake, when she could be standing there at this very minute having a miscarriage!
He got madder. His head jutted forward. "You crazy, woman?"
"I reckon I am," she managed through her laughter. "Leastways, they all say so, don’t they?"
Her good humor only intensified his choler. Incensed, he pointed. "You git up to the house and-and-" But he didn’t know what to advise. Hell, what was he, a midwife?
"I’m going, Mr. Parker, I’m going," Eleanor returned jauntily. She punched out the dome of his hat and plopped it on her own head, where it fell past her ears. "But how could I pass by without noticing you sitting there in the mud?" She reached down for Baby Thomas and Will barked, "I’ll take care of them! Just get up there and see to yourself!"
She turned away, chuckling, and waddled up the path.
Damn woman didn’t have the sense God gave a box of rocks if she didn’t realize she should be flat on her back, resting, after the fall she’d taken. It’d take some getting used to, living with a single-minded woman who laughed at him every chance she got. And didn’t she know what a scare she gave him? Now that it was over, his knees felt like a pair of rotting tomatoes. That, too, made him mad. Getting watery-kneed over somebody else’s woman, and a stranger to boot! None too gently, he called after her, "How long does this mud have to be on ’em?"
From up the path she called, "Ten minutes or so should do it. I’ll fix somethin’ to help the itching." She dropped his hat on the porch step and disappeared inside.
Will removed the boys’ shoes and let them play in the mud. He himself felt twenty pounds heavier with so much goo hanging off his backside. Now and then he glanced at the house, but she stayed inside. He didn’t know if he wanted her to come out or not. Confounded woman, standing there laughing at him while he was trying to calm down her howling kids. And nobody wore his hat. Nobody!
At the house, Eleanor set to work smashing plantain leaves with a mortar and pestle. You really don’t know a person till you see him mad. So now she’d seen Will Parker mad, and even riled he was pretty mellow-a good sign. What a sight he’d made, sitting in that mudhole with his dark eyes snapping. If he stayed, years from now they’d laugh about it.
She looked up and saw a sight that made her hands fall still. "Well, would y’ look at that," she murmured to herself. Will Parker came stalking toward the house with her two naked sons on his arms. Their rumps looked pink and plump against Parker’s hard brown arms, their hands fragile on his wiry shoulders. He had a long-legged stride, but moved as if hurry were a stranger to him. His head was bare, his shirt unbuttoned with the tails flapping, and he scowled deeply. What a sight to see her boys with a man again. Strangers scared them, but in less than a day they had taken to Will Parker. And in the same length of time she’d seen all she needed to be convinced he’d do all right at daddyin’, whether the boys were his own or not. He’d be gentle with them. And caring.
She watched from the shadows of the kitchen as he approached the house and paused uncertainly at the foot of the porch steps. She stepped out, noting that his pants and shirttails were dripping.