Читать книгу When the Pirate Prays - James B. Johnson - Страница 10
Оглавление5: MONDAY, 3:00 P.M.
“Tapes argues in favor of steel bridges,” I was telling Mary Lynn. “He’s very precise, mathematically oriented. He allows that steel bridges are engineered and designed to an inordinate exactitude.” I wondered if there was such a word as “exactitude” but I didn’t let it stop me from keeping Mary Lynn’s attention. “I, on the other hand, prefer wooden bridges. They’re better looking, rustic while functional, and usually develop their own character.”
“I have to listen to this?” asked Granny from Sandra Dee Kowalski’s bedside.
Mary Lynn glanced at Mizz Maple.
“Besides,” I continued desperately, “your average wood bridge lasts seventy years and—”
“How in Heaven do you know that?” demanded Angie Maple.
Mary Lynn looked between me and Granny.
“Statistics show it,” I said, an edge coming into my voice. “Road salt corrodes steel bridges and—”
“Excuse me?” said Sandra Dee Kowalski, retching to the side.
Granny held a pie plate out to receive the bile.
“I want a drink of water,” Sandra Dee said.
“Give her some more ice,” I directed. We’d been through this a couple of times.
“Yes, sir,” Angie Maple said, voice dripping.
“Gimme a break, Granny. Look, we’re almost done with the first stage of labor—”
“First stage?” asked Mary Lynn, rubbing her eyes. Which told me she’d never gone through childbirth herself.
Pointing, I said, “She’s had what you call your ‘show’,” which was the bloody discharge occurring after the mucous plug goes, “and sometime recently the membranes which surround the amniotic fluid have ruptured—”
“She broke her water,” Mary Lynn said.
“Well, yeah, if you want to put it that way.”
“You certainly know the terminology,” she added.
“Call it malarkey,” said Angie, wiping Sandra Dee’s brow with a wet cloth.
Ignoring the elderly “Granbo,” I nodded to Mary Lynn. “After I assisted in the emergency birth that time, I went to the library and read up on it. I, um, kind of have a didactic memory for some things.”
“You can say that again,” said Angie.
“Damndamndamndamndamndamn,” said Sandra Dee.
“You better check again, Billy,” said Mary Lynn. Her pony tail bobbed, distracting me for a moment.
Wishing I really did know what the hell I was doing, I checked again. I was wearing a pair of disposable plastic gloves from a package Tapes had found in the kitchen. He’d microwaved ’em for a few seconds to insure their sterility.
“Drop your knees to the side,” I directed Sandra Dee.
Granny shot me a scathing look; but Sandra Dee was in too much pain now to be modest. Soon she’d pay any price to be done with the labor.
Awkwardly and reluctantly, I felt around in there. “The infant’s head’s right there waiting. Her—” I regrouped. I wasn’t playing to an audience, even though it included the fair Mary Lynn. I should be concentrating on the one person who really needed my help. “Your,” I corrected, “cervix is dilating well. You certain you never had a baby before?”
“Yes, I, damndamn, mean no, I mean, damndamndamn, I don’t know what the hell I—”
“I know what you mean,” I said, and pulled the sheet down over her. “You’re close to ten centimeters—”
“What’s that mean?” asked Sandra Dee panting.
“Beats me,” I said. “I don’t do metrics.”
“About four inches,” said Mary Lynn.
I bent down there again and mopped up a bit of discharge. “The border between the first stage and the second stage begins when you get full dilation of the cervix. Your contractions will become stronger and more frequent.”
“Damndamndamn that’s reassuring,” Sandra Dee gasped. Her brown hair was splayed out on the pillow, framing her pale face. Her lips were almost bloodless.
“It’s not really any of my business,” I began, wondering. “But why are you here?”
“Any of your business?” Granny Maple said.
“It’s my fault,” said Mary Lynn.
“Nononono,” said Sandra Dee. “I live over in Placida, just across the bridge. I came to support my friend—damndamn damn.”
Not being familiar with divorce parties, I didn’t know the protocol about how you support a friend by attending a party in honor of the formal dissolution of her marriage.
“It’s about ten miles,” said Mary Lynn. She took the pie plate and went into the bathroom and rinsed out the accumulated bile, etc.
“I’m a licensed cosmetologist and, damndamn, esthetician,” Sandy explained.
“That must mean something,” I said.
“I wax, ohnoohno, Mary Lynn’s legs about once a month.…”
“I’ll trade jobs right now,” I said.
“See,” she moaned a bit, “after waxing, the new hair is softer than razor stubble—”
“I’m fantasizing,” I said.
Mary Lynn returned from the bathroom and my eyes froze on her legs for a moment.
A series of strong winds buffeted the hotel and the lights flickered and we all held our breaths at the same time and I saw the pure panic in Sandra Dee’s eyes.
The lights steadied. “No problem,” I said.
“You say,” said Angie.
“I do.”
“Mary Lynn needed her friends, it was—damndamndamn damn—as simple as that.”
I put my hand gently on her bulging lower stomach. “Sandy, push during the contractions. Use whatever muscles you can control; think abdominal wall, think diaphragm.”
“Her name is Sandra Dee, not Sandy,” said Granny.
“It doesn’t mat—damndamndamn.”
“Push a little this time.”
Things quieted down for a few minutes.
Mary Lynn moved to the other side of Sandra Dee and held her hand while looking at me. “My husband was ten years older than I am. We were married for ten years. He became enamored of someone ten years younger than I am.” She dropped her head and hiccupped softly. She still wasn’t over the trauma. Her pony tail wavered atop her bowed head. She raised her head.
“Some guys don’t know what they’ve got,” I said softly.
She eyed me, slightly off balance from what I said, and then said, “Several of my friends decided to help me over the hump. The first night of official singleness—some call it freedom.” She stopped as if she didn’t consider being single being free. “It was their idea to celebrate—”
“Damndamndamndamndamn,” Sandy breathed hard, “we wanted to show her she oughta be glad to be shut of that sneaking sonofa—”
“Now, now,” smoothed Angie. She looked crossly at me. “It’s none of his business anyway.”
“Just curious,” I said. “Not prying.”
“Sure,” Granny said.
Sandy’s legs spasmed, rippling the sheet. “Goddamn.” Her hair was bunching up around her head and Mary Lynn methodically straightened it.
A firm knock came at the door. Tapes.
I held up my gloved hands which I’d taken pains to keep from touching anything other than Sandra Dee Kowalski.
Angie went to the door and opened it a slice.
“Shortpants, it’s for you.”
“Shortcut,” I corrected. At least I was taller than Michael J. Fox and maybe Tom Cruise.
She held the door open and I walked out, hands elevated like you see on television.
Tapes was wet around the edges; he’d been outside, but in his foul weather gear.
“Thought you ought to know,” he said, glancing up and down the corridor. He spoke softly and the thick floor mat or rug or whatever the hell they called it in 1920 absorbed much of the sound.
“Damndamndamndamn!” came through the cracked door.
“Close?” he asked.
I shrugged. “That’s what I’m telling her. It could take a couple more hours. This is her first.”
“You need any help?”
“Nope—got too much already. Maybe you could figger out a ruse to get Angie Maple out of there?”
He shook his head. “I ain’t getting involved in your love life—”
“What should I ought to know?” I asked, irritated. If your best friend since childhood refuses to help you, what are you going to do?
“I had a look through the windows of several vans before I found the right one.”
“I bet Deacon didn’t like that.”
“Not a bit. But Deacon can’t work a door handle.”
Tapes would’ve killed the dog had it attacked.
“And?” I prompted again.
Tapes pulled out his tin of Copenhagen, opened it, touched a wet finger to the tobacco, and put that little taste onto his tongue. He sighed.
“That kid in there’s going to be in first grade before you get out with it,” I said.
“The weather’s bad and they got that dark tint on the windows.” He moved his tongue around in his closed mouth contentedly for a minute.
“You could look through the front windshield,” I said.
“Highbacked seats. But I did. Shortcut, there’s something weird. I saw a couple of gator hides. And there are big containers along the sides of the van. I leaned against the outside and about froze my arm off.”
“Ice?”
“Probably. Could be dry ice, I don’t know.”
“Why?” I wondered aloud.
“Beats me, but it could be poaching.” He dipped into the pocket of his jeans under the parka and took out a little six-foot tape measure made in Taiwan. He dragged about eighteen inches worth of steel out and let it retract back of its own accord, smacking eerily in the empty corridor.
The idea had leapt immediately into my mind too.
“Damndamndamnohshit!”
Mary Lynn’s worried face appeared at the door. “Billy?”
“Be right in,” I said, suddenly self-conscious.
“Billy? Billy?” Tapes said, eyebrows raised. Nobody calls me Billy. Except women when I fall in love.
“Don’t start,” I warned.
Mary Lynn had disappeared back inside.
“Don’t me start? Come on, Shortcut. You fall in love so fast and so complicatedly that—”
“You’re going to tell me I’m on the rebound from Becky—”
“Rebecca,” he corrected automatically, then realized, “I mean Becky. Hell, I forget what it’s supposed to be.”
“Forget the whole thing. I ain’t on the rebound. It’s just that me and Mary Lynn are kind of alike what with our same similar circumstance and all—”
Tapes groaned and drew the tape measure as far as it would go and released it. The damn thing snickered and crinkled for a second as it wound in.
“We’re becoming special friends,” I said defensively.
“DamndamndamndamnJesuspizzus!”
“Billy!” an imperative from Mary Lynn, but I knew Sandy had a while yet.
I looked at my gloved hands held in front of me and noticed they were kind of gunky. Well, I still had a dozen more inside. “Got to go.” Then I stopped and turned. “Remember that other freezer that Silas Smith didn’t want us to put Henry B. in?”
“I’ll go make me a sandwich,” Tapes nodded, pocketing the tape measure. “Want anything?”
“Nah. I’ll be busy for a while. Besides, it ain’t polite to eat in front of sick women.”
When I got back inside, I washed up again and pulled on another pair of gloves.
“It’s about time,” said Angie Maple.
“You ever have any children?” I asked the old lady.
“Nope.” She looked at me warily.
I shook my head. “Then don’t be so goddamn sure of yourself.”
“Well!”
I shook my head again. “A room full of women and not one knows anything about childbirth.”
“Damndamndamndamnsonofabitch!”
“That’s right,” I said, “push, slow and steady. Control your breathing.” I glanced at the wall across the room. “You need a focal point. See that picture of a sailboat?” Framed, short waves, some spray, blue background, the obligatory scuttling clouds.
“Nonononono, not that—”
“Whatever turns you on, Sandy. How about—”
“Sandra Dee,” said Angle Maple.
“—that old tapestry on the wall, that crossed thing in the middle?”
“Finefinefinefine, it hurts like bees.” Her eyes were as green as Vermont and as wide as Texas.
“Then push at the right time.” It would still be a while. Her dilation was coming along, but not quite finished.
“I’mumah trying.”
“Your husband is going to be surprised,” I said, positioning a few clean towels.
The immediate and freezing silence told me I’d stuck my foot in my mouth. Was he dead?
Mary Lynn’s face was serious. “Sandra Dee doesn’t have a husband.”
“Oh. Ah. Um. Forgive the intrusion, Sandy.”
She was breathing shallowly as if in fear of another contraction. “It’s okay, Shortcut. You didn’t know damndamn. Obviously God is a man.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“If He were a woman, women wouldn’t have to go through this shit, damndamndamn.”
She had a legitimate point.
Her face scrunched up in pure pain and I wished I had some kind of anesthetic for her. “Who’d want to kill Henry B.?” I asked.
“Not me,” said Angie Maple.
“Darn,” I said.
“What’s that mean?” Angie said, suspicious.
“DAMN!DAMN!DAMN!DAMN!”
“Push harder,” I said, ignoring the old lady.
Sandy’s tummy rippled and I lifted the sheet to top of her stomach.
“Is it time?” asked Mary Lynn.
“Close,” I said, checking and adjusting Sandy’s legs wider. “Each of you help hold one leg apart.” I knelt at the foot of the bed. “This here is what you call your second stage of giving birth.” Sandy’s perineum was bulging out. “Sandy, right now your pelvic muscles are rotating the baby’s head so that her chin is pointing down for the classic delivery position.” I so fervently hoped. If not, Sandy and I were in trouble.
“This cowboy knows some big words,” said Angie tugging on Sandra Dee’s left knee.
“I got a GED.” I paused, thought and to lighten up things, said, “Alexander was talking about Callisthenes when he said, ‘That vain pretense to wisdom I detest/Where a man’s blind to his own interest.’”
Mary Lynn’s blue eye stabbed me with curiosity.
Angie said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind.” I wondered if I wasn’t trying to show off in front of Mary Lynn to disguise the fact I had only a GED. Oh, Shortcut, thy vanity is education.
Mary Lynn was looking at me. “Do you know it’s a girl?”
“Nope. It just figures that a boy would have been on time and not made us all wait.”
“That’s sexist,” accused Angie.
“That’s funny,” said Mary Lynn.
“Damndamndamnitall!”
“Keep pushing at the right time,” I said.
“I am, goddamnit. You want to switch places?”
I drew back dramatically. “Not me.” To divert her, I said, “how’d you come by the name Sandra Dee?”
“Her mother,” said Angie.
“I didn’t ask you.”
Angie glared at me.
“My mom,” said Sandra Dee. “She was a child of the sixties.”
“I guess it’s better than Elvisaria.”
“Sexist, and insulting,” said Angie.
“Diverting,” said Mary Lynn.
I spared Mary Lynn one eye and gave her an imperceptive nod. I could like this woman a lot.
The kid’s head was beginning to show. The perineal tissues were really stretched, I mean stretched.
“Keep ’em wide,” I directed.
“Goddamngoddamngoddamngoddamn.…”
“I think I’d like your mom,” I said. I was still kneeling on the floor and we all scooted Sandy toward me a few inches.
The head stopped moving and I began to panic. The head had not yet emerged, but simply showed a clump of matted hair and gunk.
I started running my fingers around the opening, edging skin and tissue aside. I’d read sometimes the tissue tears of necessity. If the kid didn’t recommence his trip, I hoped that would happen automatically because I sure as hell didn’t know how to cut the tissue, nor was I prepared to do so.
Sandy was breathing rapidly now, retching a bit. Mary Lynn wiped saliva off her mouth. “Mom loved movies and movie stars oh God I feel like they’re wrenching my guts out and she had me after a movie and that’s why she named me ohChrist my guts are ripping out like in that movie Alien when the monster jumps out of a guy’s guts into Sigourney Weaver’s face and ohshitGodhelpme—”
Her stomach actually vibrated and her head jerked up and down and her harsh breathing whistled through her mouth and nose angrily and her feet tattooed the edge of the bed and I had an empathy attack.
I put command into my voice, “Control your breathing and push synchronously.” Was the word “synchronistically” instead? Granny gave me that odd look again. “Her head’s coming out,” I said, relief evident in my voice. When the weight of the world comes off my shoulders, ofttimes I become verbose. “As her head comes out, it will turn back to realign itself with the rest of her body.”
“Didactic is an understatement,” said Angie.
“Yet I avoid moral self-righteousness.” That ought to shut her up. I didn’t want to argue with her and this was distracting me.
My hands were edging and tugging and pushing and helping and the head was emerging and I was trying to help it go back to the right position all the while making the exit easier and get this damn thing over with.
“You’re doing this like a pro, Sandy.”
“Damndamndamn.” Her voice was much weaker. “I like the way you say ‘Sandy,’ Billy.”
“All delivering mothers fall in love with their obstertricicans.”
“Or whatever,” said Angie.
“Pushpushpush,” I said.
“Ihurtohsomuch.” Sandy was leaking sweat.
“It’ll all be over soon.”
“Come on, Sandra Dee, you can do it,” said Mary Lynn. “Follow my lead.” Mary Lynn began to breathe in and out in an exaggerated fashion, pausing to push at the right moment. She was a quick learner.
My hands continued to fly and the damn lights went out.
Oh, shit, I thought.
“Oh, shit,” said Mary Lynn.
“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.”
Angie acted swiftly and soon two flashlight beams pierced the dark. I might not be prepared for in-depth surgery, but the 7-P principle came to my aid. I’d been prepared for power failure.
“No problem,” I said calmly. “We don’t need power anyway.” The kid’s whole head was emerging. “Thanks, Miss Maple.”
“Mizz.”
“Whatever. Sandy, your daughter’s head is turning back into the correct position regarding the rest of her body.”
Angie snorted. “You can add pedagogic to didactic.”
“Irregardless of that—” I began.
“Humpf,” said Angie.
“Okay, disregardless—”
“SHE’S COMING DAMNDAMNDAMNDAMN.”
“Just like in the textbooks,” I continued. “One shoulder at a time within the next few contractions.”
Great gusts of wind buffeted the building and windows blew out and gables rattled, whatever the hell a gable is. The flashlights wavered in Angie’s hands.
Again, we all held our collective breath—except Sandy.
“You can name your daughter Storm,” I said.
“Damndamnda.…” Her voice was weary and weak and I could feel her body wanting to give up.
“Just another minute, hon, hang in there.” I put as much confidence as I could into my words.
Her body rippled again and the kid surged out into my scrambling hands.
“OhJesusGoddamn.”
“Yeah, me, too, Sandy. The kid’s out.” Just in time, for I believed that Sandy was becoming too weak to help and that wouldn’t have helped a bit.
The most important thing is to get the infant to breathing. I was holding her half upside down and cleaning gunk out of her mouth.
Nothing.
In the light of the flashlights, I couldn’t tell if the kid were turning blue or not but I sure as hell imagined it to be so.
The room was stifling; with the power off, the great paddle fan wasn’t turning and all four of us were sweating like we were on a death march and the kid still wasn’t breathing.
“Angie! The basting bulb. Now.” Tried to keep my voice calm.
The lights jiggled and the beams slewed aside.
Slap, and the basting bulb was in my held-up hand and I stuck it in the baby’s mouth not very delicately and pumped and withdrew it and stuck it back in and pumped and withdrew it and repeated and the kid was breathing like she’d been doing so for years.
“Nothing to it when you know how.” My voice was lame.
“They were right,” said Angie. “You are quick.”
“Not in everything,” I said absently and looked at Mary Lynn who was bending over in the pale light to check the kid.
Mary Lynn turned her head and stared at me, her special bold look again, shook her head, and looked at the kid again.
I felt like I’d been through a war. My hands were not shaking—yet.
I was still holding the baby but turning her around for Mary Lynn.
“It’s a girl, Sandra Dee, you’ve a daughter.” Mary Lynn’s voice was light, just the right touch.
“I told you so,” I said unnecessarily.
“And she has ten of everything,” Mary Lynn went on.
“Thank God,” whispered Sandy. She was so weak I knew we’d just made it.
Near the kid’s tummy, I snapped a number 2 Hunt clip onto the kid’s umbilical. We’d got several of the strong metal clamps from the front desk. Mary Lynn had boiled them in the kitchen.
Then I put the kid on Sandy’s stomach. “For warmth and bonding,” I said.
I thought Sandy cooed, but it could’ve been an exhausted sigh.
“We’ve got maybe ten minutes,” I began and my hands started shaking and mercifully Angie moved the light away from us all.
Mary Lynn must’ve sensed my reaction, for she started talking.
“You wonder who killed Henry? Check with cuckolded husbands. He’s wealthy, very much so. Or I should say, was wealthy. A womanizer on the grandest scale.”
“A charmer, Henry was,” agreed Angie, still holding the two flashlights aimlessly pointed at the floor. “One who leaves lives shattered in his wake.” There was a story behind Angie’s words.
I should be working, but the reaction was still pulsing through me, the shakes still assaulting me.
“He had it all,” Mary Lynn went on. “Wealth. Looks. Intelligence. Olde local family, don’t you know? Political power. National image.”
“If you spend too much time polishing your image, you’ll tarnish your character,” I said.
In the splash of light, Mary Lynn favored me with her brown eye.
“He had his health, too,” said Angie, “and I suspect he was very happy with himself.”
“He had to be,” said Mary Lynn. Her voice turned a bit angry. “You have to be somewhat amoral to be a good politician; so, hurting women wouldn’t bother him. Using women didn’t bother him. I doubt much of anything bothered him.”
I was now controlling my breathing. The reaction was passing. “A tennis racquet bothered him to death.”
“I believe he died from the fall,” Angie said, returning the flashlights to the proper position.
It was stifling in here and suddenly this wing of the building shook under a heavy gust and a window somewhere blew out and wind screeched down the corridor and sucked the stifling out the opened transom and the cool breeze made me feel better until someone slammed a door and the breeze died.
“How is it in there?” came a distinct Florida cracker voice. The lieutenant governor.
“Fine. The baby is doing well.” Angle’s voice was relieved, too.
“Let us know if you need anything.”
Angie didn’t answer.
I cut the umbilical with a boiled sharp kitchen knife near the office clamp.
I breathed deeply. We weren’t out of the woods yet. “The third stage of labor takes up to ten minutes.”
It didn’t. It happened right then.
“Goddamngoddamngoddamnnotagain!” Voice very weak. I don’t know how women take it, and Sandy was having a difficult time. But she’d live through it.
“Placenta, Sandy. Push a little. This is natural.” The mess came right out in my hands. Soon, I had it wrapped in a towel and dumped into a plastic garbage bag. Talk about your maggot gaggers.
Wishing for real lights, I made do with the flashlights. This was critical. While I had several needles ready and threaded, I knew zilch about sewing up vaginal bleeding. I cleaned as well as I could—
“Sandy?” my voice demanded her attention.
“Billy?”
“Relax, hon. Breathe evenly. Think about your daughter, not your pain. Relax.”
Mary Lynn and Angie had caught my urgency.
“Another clean cloth,” I said quickly and Angie supplied one.
I mopped around, Angie moving the lights over my shoulders as I shifted position to keep the light on.
Mary Lynn hiccupped and wiped Sandy’s brow with a cool wet cloth and spoke softly to her.
I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Something I’d read—and I read a great deal. The uterus has to contract properly or blood—
I held the cloth on the source tightly for two long minutes.
Sandy perceptively relaxed and the trickle of blood which had me in a panic stopped. Carefully, I removed the cloth and the bleeding did not recommence.
Then I cleaned Sandy and Mary Lynn cleaned the baby.
When I finished, I went into the bathroom, thought about vomiting, but didn’t. I peeled off the gory gloves and washed up to my armpits in the old fashioned shower.
When I left the bathroom, I went straight to the dresser at the side of the room. There was enough splashover from the flashlights to enable me to find what I was looking for.
The 7-P Principle in operation again. A liter of Jim Beam from the bar. Even though I don’t do metrics, I made an exception.
I upended the bottle and gurgled happily for a moment.
“Ahem.” The voice startled me.
Mary Lynn reached out and took the bottle from my hands. She did not upend the bottle and gurgle. But she did take two healthy slugs of the amber liquid before she returned the bottle to me. Her hiccups were gone.
A pounding came at the door.
“Hello in there.” The lit gov.
Angie opened the door and explained that it was over.
“Good,” said John Dellum Ionata. “Mr. Birthday, would you step out here for a minute?”
Angie stood aside, her flashlights swinging awkwardly, and I walked out still holding the bottle of bourbon.
The corridor was lighted by a gas lamp Silas Smith was holding. The tall geek and the short geek were standing to the side.
Tapes was standing in front of them with his arms crossed. He was livid. I didn’t need ESP to pick up the emanating danger signals from him.
“Mr. Birthday,” Ionata began, “you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to—”
“Tapes, what the hell is going on?”
Ionata said quietly, “You both are being placed under arrest for suspicion of murder of Governor Henry B. Gonzáles.”
I drank quickly from the bottle. “Just washing a bad taste from my mouth. Ionata, you take dislike a long way.”
“You also have the right to an attorney present—”
“You aren’t a cop,” I pointed out. “You can’t arrest or charge anybody.”
His Florida-cane voice was assured. “I am constitutionally sworn to uphold the law. I am de facto governor. The governor is in direct chain of command of the state law enforcement agencies, including the Highway Patrol.” He said highway patrol as “ha-way pee-troll.” “Which gives me all the authority I need.”
Angie applauded awkwardly, flashlight beams swinging. “Very good, John.”
“You’d best back off, Mrs. Maple, lest you be stung by my words.” The vehemence in my voice caused her to step back.
I was tired and shaken by tending to Sandra Dee Kowalski and child. For once, I was out of words.
