House of Earth (22 page)

“Imitation electricity. Phony. All them lights an' stuff out there in Hollywood's imitation. Buildin's is. Actors is. They couldn't bring us no 'lectric cow juicer. They don't even know we're a livin'.”

“No. Not them. But we have got rivers around here that we could dam up and make our own electricity.” Ella laughed a bit. “I think I am really going to paper my new earth house with Government books.”

“Musta froze your brain up.” Tike tried to sound rough and serious, but there was more than a little tenderness and melted snow in his throat. “Froze somethin'. Head ain't a-runnin' right.”

“If my head has stopped dead, it still operates much better than that old thing of yours.” Ella smiled now with more relief, more comfort, because she felt that Tike was regaining his old self again. She felt worried for a few minutes that he would think that her dash out the door was somehow connected with getting away from him. “If I had been dead ten years and the eagles had picked my bones clean, I could still think better with an empty skull than you do with yours full of sourdough.”

“You think them 'lectricity fellers is gonna spend eight thousan' smackeroos ta put a power line two 'er three miles all th' way over ta our place even if it was built with three barns an' two houses an' all made outta Portlan' seement?
Hell no. Ain't 'nuff houses roun' this buffalo waller. Gotta be more houses an' more folks a-livin' out here.” He sat back on the edge of the table and ran his finger over the cloth as he frowned down at his shoes. “More.”

Ella May lifted her voice into a cry that sounded to Blanche like a real one. She gritted her teeth, shook her head, and squinted her eyes tight and shut. “Well, now, if you aren't a good one! Just stand there and look down at your old mean feet! If you're not just about the meanest and hatefulest and the worst of all the men that I ever had the displeasure of meeting! More people? More houses? Well, Mister Tikeroo Hambone, will you please try to tell me just what you think I am doing here flopped across this bed with this big lump in my stomach, having all of these labor pains and painful labors for?” She had lifted her head and shoulders up a few inches from the pillow but let her weight fall down with force enough to shake the floor under the bed. “Oooo. Will you try to tell me just what you think I'm doing here? Posing for a movie magazine? Ohhhh. Jeeezus.”

“Easy.” Blanche listened to the whole show with sharp ears.

Ella May was not afraid, but she was frightened that Tike would be. Tike, himself, was not afraid but was only nervous because he feared that Ella May would be afraid.

Blanche had been the one to carry healthy feelings between wife and husband many times before, in her hospital training and in a dozen or so actual births that she had been on. Just how she came to be at the Hamlin shack is a long
story that runs through the births of several babies for a hundred miles around. She had all of the papers that a trained nurse needs, yet she was not an actual medical doctor. She could stand in for a doctor but could not replace him. She could perform most of the things that a doctor could perform, yet she was not called a doctor. There was only one expert baby doctor in this entire county, only one who had all of the most modern tools, equipment, and knowledge. There were two others, an old absentminded grouch that might or might not come, and a younger fellow with a black mustache who upset the nerves of his patients by making strange remarks from famous plays and operas. Blanche did not charge a fee of any kind. She heard of a pregnant woman by word of mouth, and simply paid her a visit, had an all-day talk, and as a general rule she stayed a few days or weeks, received her room, board, and whatever sum of money the people paid her. She was very well known and warmly welcomed into any ranch or farmhouse door, yet at the same time, being so pretty, she had many kinds of passionate skirmishes with men. As to her love life, nobody seemed to know anything for certain, and many tales traveled the country both pro and con. She was not what is called a midwife nor a hoodoo healer of any kind. Her full breasts and strong body had caused more than one man to attempt to go to bed with her both indoors and out. Tike Hamlin, feeling a craving for an active sex life, had managed to feel of her body a few times, and burned several hours of each day and night to feel more of her. Of course she was several
thoughts ahead of him on this matter, and had never entered into the spirit of the thing with him.

Tike had never in his life learned the unhandy art of keeping his cravings a secret. To him a craving was a craving—he did not make them, so did not have to feel ashamed of them. He had said over and over to Ella May that he would “really like to roll that Blanche in a way that she'd admire.”

Ella May felt like she was not in a position to satisfy Tike in her usual way, so if there was a ripple of hurt in her, she more than made up for it by ripples of joy that she was with a child, which to her was the world's greatest work. She did not proceed to even scold Tike for smacking his mouth at the sight of Blanche. She simply told him a dozen times, “It is purely up to you and Blanche, not me.” Tike even went to great pains to try and convince Ella that he had been with another woman or two since her pregnancy, but she had always known that he was lying. Over and over, he had asked her if she would get mad at him if he was to roll Blanche in the hay. And over and over Ella had shaken her head and said, “If you feel that you need the practice, go ahead.”

And now that the three of them were close together in the one little room, Tike felt all of the joys and hurts that Ella May felt with his baby in her belly. He already felt proud of the new jobs that would come along as the kid grew. He ran here and there, lightened Ella's chores, and did most of her lifting and pulling, yet he could not shake this hot fire out of his brain that flared up as his eyes looked Blanche up and down. It was not the feeling of wanting to go away with
her and live the rest of his life, it was just the old craving to touch her, to hold her, to feel her skin, to kiss her, and to bite her all over. He even tried to hold such a feeling down, not to let it come into his mind, but the more that he fought against it, the bigger the thing moved inside him.

Blanche knew that the labor pains of Ella May there on the bed would not bring any relief to Tike's passions. The baby would be there howling and kicking before the morning light, but Tike would keep on feeling this way toward Blanche even after Ella May was up walking around.

“How would you like to have a job, Tike?” Blanche asked. She walked to the wash bench, the stove, the closet, to her suitcase, then filled two large buckets and a teakettle with water and set them on burners to heat. “One that will get you out from under my feet for a few minutes at least?”

“Wish't I was under yore feet. But I ain't.”

“Do you want a job? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Put on your coat and your gloves and go out and get that shovel there against the house, then go down by the cowshed somewhere, there back of it, and dig us a hole.”

“Hole.” Tike stood for a moment. “Kinda hole?”

“Just a hole. Oh. About the size of a washtub. So deep.” Blanche moved so smooth and fast about the room that Tike followed her every step. He watched her like she was some kind of a machine moving.

“Gonna do? Bury 'er?” He moved across the floor, half smiling and half afraid.

Ella May lay on the bed and saw herself in her earth house. She did not hear what had been said. She moaned and sighed in a babylike way to her own self for her own amusement.

“Shh.” Blanche took Tike's heavy shirt down from its nail and held it up behind him as he slipped into it. “Shh. Just a little hole big enough to bury the afterbirth in, that's all. Here. Here's your coat. I know it's as cold out there as a blizzard can be, but we have got to get rid of it and we can't leave it out on top of the ground anywhere because the animals will all smell it and get into it.”

And then, to keep Ella May from catching on, Tike walked out the door, cursing, “All I got to say is, by God, damn me to hell anyhow, this is one fine time to send me out into th' face of a damned blue blizzard to get just one little lousy bucket of water.” He slammed the door, shaking the house all over, and carried his shovel down behind the cowshed.

Ella May and Blanche could hear the dim ringing of Tike's shovel against the hard-frozen topsoil. To Ella it sounded not like a shovel but like the voices of bells, bells of a thousand tones, and the bells had tongues and sang out of their mouths. She saw the bells all over the plains and heard them as they filled the room. They felt the baby push, move down a part of an inch, then push and move down another way. The pain she did not want Tike nor Blanche to see. That needle pain that burned above her left breast she smiled and laughed to hide. Tike down behind that cowshed
in this blizzard did not have the least idea that the ring of his shovel was in the room. In her mind, somehow, Ella mixed the sound of the shovel in with the crank of the separator, the rattle of milk buckets. She closed her eyes as her dreams spun past, and talked in a smiling whisper.

Blanche understood a few words but not enough to make any sense out of them. She worked with her cloths, old rags, papers, fixed her two rubber sheets near the head of the bed, speaking to Ella as if she knew every pain, smile, thought. All four of the coal oil burners on the stove were lit and shot whitish, reddish purple lights out through the mica glass doors. Fumes from the newly lit burners mixed in with the steamy vapors from the buckets of water and Blanche felt the sting in her nose. She frowned as she worked and prayed that the fumes would not make it any worse for Ella May. The steamy oil soot became heavier in the air and settled on cobwebs in the high corners where the winds touched easiest. And Blanche worked with a heavy, empty weight in her body, a weight that grew heavier when she looked about the house of rot. She licked her tongue across her lips, then swallowed the saliva in her mouth and tasted the acid burn of the winter dust and oil fumes.

Ella May's lips tasted the poison dust, and she asked, “Where are all those cowbells coming from?”

Blanche set her ears in the direction of Tike's shovel. She worked around the stove, touched a pot, stooped to look in the door of a burner, carried an extra dipper of water from the wash bench to pour into the buckets. Her nose was
stubby, shiny, and pink like a slick-skinned cherry. Tears blurred her eyes like hot breath on a cold windowpane. She thought of opening up a window or cracking a door, but knew it would only bring more dirt. The smells from the oil stove made her eyes pink around the rims, and caused her temples to throb and ache. All that she said in reply to Ella May was, “Hmmmm? Bells? Cowbells?”

Ella May tried to smile. “I hear bells. They couldn't be church bells.” She moved under the covers. “They must be cowbells.”

“Possibly so. Here, raise up your hips a wee trifle. Let me spread this rubber sheet there under you. Here. That is fine. Now. Lift your feet and legs. Do you feel any terrible pains? Here. Now. There. Isn't that better? Is it not?” Blanche's hands put the rubber sheet in place before the drafts of cold wind could reach Ella May's skin. “There are no other kinds of bells that ring out here on these plains that I know of. How is that, now?”

“Better. Yes. But I, ah, see ten million faces inside of bells. Half like bells. Half like people singing. I see the people in the bells and the bells in the people. And they're all a-ringing together. All ringing at the same time. All together.” Ella May's lips fell wide apart, she spoke her words against her pillow. The warmth from her breath on the slip felt good against her eyebrow and she moved her cheek closer to the warm spot. “Every cowbell has ten people inside it, and ten people come and go with every cowbell. Ten people live, ten people die, and the cowbell keeps going
on. And every time the old cow rings her bell on her neck, ten people talk the dingle of the jingle. And when the old cow is measured and sold the bell goes away with her or the bell falls somewhere behind, and somebody's toe stumbles across it where it fell, and the voices are in it. But the voices have just been lost in the mud and dried in the dirt. And I'm walking and I'm looking. And so this is me here walking and looking. And I never did to my soul know why, but I always did get the best feeling in the world, just, just out of finding an old brassy cowbell. I see it dried in the dirt. I stop and I dig it out. I clean it out good and then I take hold of the handle or the strap and I shake it just as hard as I can. And of course it doesn't ring. It won't ring because I left some plugs of dirt in it. So I feel away up inside of it with my finger and I dig out the crusts of dirt. Rain-mixed, sun-dried dirt. All kinds of horse hoofs wading around in the mud. Men and women with their kids tromping loose hay and grass, dry manure, down in and through the mud. And they push the cowbell down into the mud and they cut it up into big square blocks. And while they lift and haul and work, once in a while the cowbell will ring, just a little dingle, just ever so little a dingle. But all of their voices I hear inside the brass of the bell. And when they cut the square blocks, isn't it funny? Their voices soak into the sun-dried bricks. And when the bricks are lifted up into a house, then all of their yelling, joking, laughing, crying, everything, is all in the walls and the ceilings, and the floors, and the yards and the fields and the house. Crazy. Silly old, goofy old cowbells.”

Blanche worked fast about the room. She took a white slipover uniform from her suitcase under the bed and tied her hair up tight in a colored handkerchief. She heard a sound in Ella's talk that could have been caused by a fever from some sort of a pain that Ella tried to hide. A rambling delirious tone. A flow of words from some unconscious place. Ella had not labored long enough to be so feverish. Blanche shook a thermometer and put it under Ella's tongue.