Читать книгу Lady Ann - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 2

Elihu Steele was a carpenter, and in his spare time farmed the ten acres on which was set his two-story, eight-room, white clapboard house in Elm Street, Eastham.

He was a big man, well over six feet in his stockings, wide-shouldered, a little stooped, with a big, bull voice. When he wanted chewing tobacco, he and his cousin, Albert Steele, lifted up one side of the red cow barn, pushed a keg of tobacco leaves, rum and molasses under the corner, and let the barn settle back into place. This procedure made nice, strong chewing material.

Elihu went to church every Sunday with his wife, Naomi, who had been a Smith of Old Orchard when he had married her twelve years before. The first Smith, Ebenezer, had come over on the Mayflower. The first Steele, Lieutenant Elihu, first had set foot on Massachusetts soil in 1630. The Steeles and the Smiths believed that kings and queens and aristocrats all were stupid, in-bred parasites suffering of syphilis, dementia praecox and curvature of the spine. They devoutly believed that the Smiths and the Steeles were the leading families, not only of Eastham and Massachusetts, but of the world.

They were members of the First Congregational Church of Eastham, where the Reverend Joshua Hazen in a voice like a trumpet call preached a jealous and fearful God, an earth exactly six thousand and some-odd years and hours old, and a blazing hell for infants and all others not baptized.

Elihu was not a deacon as had been the seven Elihus who preceded him, but he never went fishing in Fast River, or Broad Brook, or the Old Bed, or shooting at Moss’s Corners, or Old Haven, on Sunday.

On one such Sunday, having laid the foundation with a bath on Saturday night, he put on a suit of balbriggan underwear. Sitting on the edge of the inlaid walnut double bed with the crazy quilt cover, and grunting a little, he poked the toes of his right foot into the toe of a black sock, which he had turned inside out. He peeled this sock over the foot and up over the balbriggan leg of the drawers, swollen by a shapely and muscular calf.

Both socks on, he stepped into a pair of blue serge trousers, which he pulled up around his slightly bulging abdomen. Letting the suspenders hang for a moment, he opened the second drawer of the inlaid walnut bureau and took from it a white shirt with a stiff bosom. After inserting studs in the neckband, front and back, he pulled on the shirt over his head. Next, he selected a collar, and grunted, and turned red in the gills before he succeeded in snapping it into place over the studs. He stood in front of the mirror over the bureau and put a black tie under the white linen turn-down collar. Then, with the tie still hanging, he sat down again on the edge of the bed and pulled on Congress shoes, which were boots with elastic sides and no laces or buttons.

After that he arose, kicked a few inches first with one leg, and then with the other, to set himself comfortably in drawers and trousers, hitched the suspenders over his shoulders, and buttoned his fly. Stepping to the door he bellowed:

“Naomi.”

“Yes, Elihu,” Naomi replied from the dining room downstairs. “Coming.”

She was a short woman with large breasts and hips, tapering arms and legs, small wrists and ankles, and tiny hands and feet. Her cheeks were pink from work in the kitchen, where she had been pounding top round steak full of holes with a hammer and beating up batter for sour milk griddle cakes. Elihu liked to eat a dozen or so big griddle cakes soaked in steak gravy for breakfast on Sundays.

Naomi brushed damp brown curls from a white, damp forehead, wiped her hands on her gingham apron, stood on tiptoe, and took hold of the ends of the tie. Elihu raised his chin and stretched his neck, and breathed noisily while she made a bow and patted it into place. She said:

“There. How’s that?”

He put two hands, like steel hooks, under her armpits and hoisted her easily from the floor. As if it were an unusual occurrence, she squealed:

“Elihu, put me down. I’ve got to get the breakfast.”

He had black hair and brown eyes, a high arched nose, a wide mouth shaded by a yellow mustache, and a big chin. He rubbed her straight little nose with his big one, and pressed his lips to hers. He said:

“The breakfast can wait. Give me a kiss.”

She put plump arms around his neck and kissed him, her feet, in old but shapely high shoes, more than a foot from the rag rug which covered the patch of wide floor boards in front of the bed. Cheeks pink, and a little breathless, she drew back, blue eyes gazing into brown ones, and asked:

“What’s the matter with you all of a sudden, Elihu?”

He grinned, and pressed his mouth to her white neck. She wriggled, laughed, and cried:

“Oooh! That tickles.”

He dumped her on the mussed-up bed, so that she bounced. Brown hair came down in her eyes. She laughed and brushed it back. He took her by the ankles. She gasped, and cried agitatedly:

“Don’t, Elihu. Oh!”

He lifted her up by the ankles. Her skirts and petticoats fell over her head, revealing black lisle stockings, smooth white skin, and freshly ironed linen balloon drawers. He smacked her with his open palm on the balloon drawers. She kicked and squealed, and rolled away, breathless, panting, red-faced, as he smacked her again. She was between laughter and tears as she pulled up her clothing and bared white skin on which were red marks of fingers. She exclaimed reproachfully:

“Now I’ll be black and blue. You know how easy I bruise.”

“I’ll kiss it and make it well,” he said.

He sat down on the bed, which creaked under his weight, and kissed the fingerprints. Then he kissed her. She hugged him tight, sighed, and whispered:

“I love you, Elihu. I wonder if you love me as much as I do you.”

“You’re my little girl,” he said in what was intended to be a whisper but which was a low rumble.

After a minute, she said:

“You’re terrible, Elihu. Wait till I—”

But Elihu didn’t wait, and that is how it came about that two months later, in August, 1890, Dr. Samuel Benham said to Naomi:

“That’s right. You count nine months from the first day of your last period, and add ten days. But, of course, having February in there mixes it up some . . .”

Elihu carried Naomi up and downstairs. Naomi said:

“I don’t know why you act like this. I’m all right.”

“Sure, you are,” Elihu said. “But I like to do it.”

Naomi’s mother, Hetty, came from Old Orchard and took command of the house, the grounds, and as much of Elm Street as she could see through steel-bowed spectacles. Vina, an angular blonde girl, began to break dishes in the kitchen. Naomi said:

“This is ridiculous, Elihu. I feel just as well as I ever did. I like to do for myself.”

Elihu grinned and said:

“It’s kinda nice, isn’t it, to have Ma here?”

“I always loved to have Ma visit us,” Naomi said. “But this time she acts as if I was an invalid. You all do.”

Ma occupied the southeast chamber because she liked to see the sun as much as possible. The double bed in her room was rendered useless by a wooden frame over it on which she began to make a rag quilt, with tufts. She slept on a cot, but she said every morning:

“I scarcely slept a wink last night.”

She put her false teeth in a tumbler of water every night, and sucked horehound drops, and worked all day and into the night, when she darned Elihu’s socks and her own and Naomi’s stockings by the light of her kerosene lamp.

“It’s easier on the eyes,” she said of this old-fashioned illuminant.

She kept the three stone crocks in the pantry off the kitchen filled with ginger cookies, jumbles and doughnuts, and made apple pies at the rate of seven a week for Elihu. Ma said:

“It’s part of a woman’s chores to keep a man well fed.”

Elihu sat at the organ in the front parlor and pumped with his feet, and pushed and pulled stops with his fingers, and thumped keys, and made a wheezy dirge which was supposed to be:

There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood.

This was the only tune that Elihu could play, either on the organ or on any instrument. He was tone deaf, and flatted when he tried to raise his bass voice in song. But he played There Is a Fountain only when he was in high spirits, so Naomi sat and listened to him, a smile on her lips and a bit of baby-size sewing in hand.

“If it’s a boy we’ll call him Elihu,” she said.

He frowned at her and exclaimed:

“You know I don’t like that name. Call him William, or Robert or James, or something like that.”

“And if it’s a girl we’ll call her Ann, after your mother,” Naomi said.

“I hope it’s a girl,” he said.

She turned her head to one side and looked at him from the corners of her eyes, which was a trick she had, and said:

“You’re only saying that to make me feel good.”

“No, I’m not. I know you want a daughter, and I want what you want.”

“No, you don’t. I know. You want a son because there aren’t any more Steeles.”

He got up, walked over and kissed her. She smiled up at him and asked:

“Isn’t it wonderful, after twelve years?”

“It certainly is,” he said.

“I pray every night and every morning for a boy,” she said. “A son for you.”

He grinned and patted her clumsily on the back.

“If you’re happy that’s all I ask, Little Girl.”

Her legs swelled, and he sat and rubbed them by the hour. He said:

“The most beautiful legs in the world.”

“They’re not so pretty now,” she said dubiously.

He kissed her tiny feet.

“Cinderella feet,” he said.

“I have nice feet,” she admitted.

Dr. Benham came to see her. He was fifty, a big man with a big head of iron-gray hair, a tawny mustache and a Vandyke beard. His head trembled the least bit, and his hands trembled, a tremor just barely perceptible. His yellow-brown eyes against a background of weather-beaten cheekbone, white forehead and Roman nose always looked tired but wonderfully sympathetic. She said:

“I didn’t want to tell Elihu about the pain. I would only upset him.”

He petted her hand, and said:

“Everything will be all right. You’re a good soldier, Naomi.”

Snow was falling heavily on the tenth of January when Dr. Benham walked out of the bedroom into the parlor and took hold of Elihu’s sleeve.

“What is it, Doc?” Elihu asked.

“Now don’t get excited,” Dr. Benham said. “I guess the baby is coming sooner than we expected.”

Elihu swallowed, blood receding from his cheeks. The doctor continued:

“But everything will be all right,” he said. “I thought, though, that you might help me build an incubator.”

Elihu tried to speak, and failed. He made another effort, and said:

“Naomi.”

“Look here,” Dr. Benham said. “Naomi is going to be all right, and the baby is going to be all right. We’ll just have to make some preparations. Among other things, I’ll need a box . . .”

Dr. Benham began to describe what he wanted in the way of incubators, walking with Elihu toward his shop in the barn where he kept his tools.

An hour later, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Dr. Benham said to Elihu:

“Never mind working any more on that incubator. Have you got a clothes basket?”

“Certainly, Doc. Is . . .”

“Everything is all right,” Dr. Benham asserted. “But you hurry and get me the clothes basket.”

Elihu hurried away and Ma Smith said:

“I could’ve got the basket.”

Dr. Benham grinned, showing yellow teeth through nicotined stained hair of mustache and beard. He said:

“I know you could, Ma. But we’ve got to keep Elihu busy or we’ll have him for our patient next. I could have the nurse get hot-water bottles and blankets, but I’m going to have Elihu get ’em.”

Elihu was walking up and down in the hall when a baby wailed inside. Elihu leaned up against the wall. A minute later Dr. Benham poked his head into the hall. He said:

“Come here, Elihu.”

The doctor held out his right hand, and on it lay a red, puckered bundle of flesh and blood. The bundle opened a toothless mouth, balled microscopic but perfect fists, and howled a Lilliputian howl. Elihu bent over, staring, afraid to breathe. The doctor said:

“Little girl baby. Cute, ain’t she? Three pounds, and perfect.”

“But Naomi?”

“She’s fine,” Dr. Benham said heartily.

Miss Dolly, the trained nurse, black-haired, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, efficient, came to the door, and said:

“Do you want me to take her now, Dr. Benham?”

It was apparent that Miss Dolly disapproved of this exhibition of the newborn. Dr. Benham replied:

“Just a minute, Miss Dolly.”

Ma Smith, who had been hovering in the background, exclaimed:

“I never heard the like of it, Doctor—exposing that baby . . .”

Dr. Benham laughed, and said to Elihu:

“Just take off your ring a minute.”

Elihu removed the circlet of gold from his ring finger. The doctor added:

“Now just slip it over her hand.”

Elihu hesitated, hand shaking. The doctor held up the tiny fist, and exclaimed impatiently:

“Go ahead, Elihu. You can’t hurt her.”

Elihu applied the ring to the fist, gently and clumsily. The doctor said:

“Go ahead and push it up. Go ahead.”

Elihu pushed it too slowly to satisfy the doctor, who put his own fingers to the task and pushed the ring half-way up the tiny arm.

“Look at that, Elihu,” he said. “Your ring went up to her elbow. Always remember that when she’s a big woman.”

“Haven’t you played with that baby long enough?” Ma Smith demanded.

Dr. Benham pulled off the ring and handed it to Elihu. He held out the baby on the palm of his hand toward Miss Dolly, and said:

“Just look at that now. If that isn’t one of the most wonderful sights in the world!”

“Can I see Naomi?” Elihu asked.

“Sure, Elihu,” Dr. Benham replied.

Elihu hurried into the bedroom. Miss Dolly took the baby. Dr. Benham said:

“Wait a minute. We’ve got to measure her.”

The baby was seventeen and one-half inches long; her wrist was two and seven-eighths inches in circumference, and her left foot was two and seven-eighths inches long.

After she was put in her basket, surrounded by hot-water bottles and covered with a blanket so that only a peep-hole was left, Dr. Benham said to Miss Dolly:

“Do you ever wonder what’s going to happen in life to one of them?”

Miss Dolly said:

“No, Doctor, I don’t. I’m generally so busy looking after them that I don’t have much time for wondering about them.”

Dr. Benham crooked his right elbow, and fished with his right hand in his upper left-hand waistcoat pocket. He brought out a long, light-colored cigar, Connecticut tobacco, strong and harsh. He bit off the end and spit it out on the hall carpet. He crossed his left foot over his right knee, and moved rapidly across the sole of his left boot a sulphur match. He held it until the blue flame had changed to yellow and the suffocating odor of sulphur had dissipated. Then he touched the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed. Clear, blue, pungent smoke rose in clouds. Miss Dolly held out her hand:

“I’ll take the match,” she said.

He handed her the burnt match, took the cigar from his lips, looked at the ignited end, sighed, and said:

“You know what the poet said about the way an astronomer feels when he first sees a new planet? Well, that’s the way I feel when I first see a newborn baby. And I wonder, now, what the dickens is going to happen to this human mite?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Miss Dolly said. “And I’m to give the baby her second olive-oil bath. . . .”

“Tonight,” Dr. Benham said. “I’ll drop in again about ten.”