House of Earth (23 page)

Ella May's face felt a bit too hot to the touch of Blanche's hand, but she guessed this was because her hand was cold from dabbling in the water on the stove. Through the black glass of the north window Blanche saw the first flakes of snow fly in the storm. The wind had blown too hard for the past few hours, the night had been too cold, the clouds had blown too fast, too high, for the snow to form. “A blue blizzard is not a blue blizzard unless the snow blows in with it,” she said to herself. But her words must have been louder than she guessed because Ella May covered her pains with a smile and answered with the glass tube in her mouth, “Unless th' shnow jusht blowshhh itshelf to death itsh not a genuine blue blizhard.” And Blanche pushed her hand against Ella's forehead saying, “Do not try to talk. You will swallow the thermometer. I haven't got another.”

And then through the blow of the snow they both heard again the ring of Tike's shovel against the deeper dirt by the shed.

“There'sh my bellsh. See?” Ella stiffened herself.

“I told you to lay still. Be quiet. I don't hear any bells.
I only hear Tike up in the attic with his tractor parts. Will you please please be quiet just for a while, Ella May? I want to see if you're running any fever. Still.”

“That Tike is forever and forever working with those old parts. He thinks that he can build a new tractor out of them. You don't hear any bells?” Ella May rolled on her pillow. She opened her eyes a tiny slit and the whirl of the room before her caused her to shut them again with a squint. “People? Bells?”

“Quit your dreaming.” Blanche lifted the thermometer from Ella's lips and held it up in the lamplight. “It is too hard on you. Hmmm.”

“I think you are just lying,” Ella told Blanche. “You are just an old liar. Liar woman. Liar woman all dressed up to fool me. I'd rather to dream than to live and not be able to.” And then a bit later she said, “Dream.”

“Hush. I thought so. You're feverish. Two points above. Hmmm.” Blanche tapped her fingernails against the iron vines and flowers at the head of the bed. “Anything else hurting you besides your baby? Is there? Any other pains anywhere? I have to know. Is there?”

“No. You lied to me. Hush. I wouldn't tell you if I had a red-hot stove poker stuck in my chest. I've told you ten dozen or more times, no. No. No. Just the baby.”

“Any sprains? Bruises? Headaches? Have you hurt yourself in any way that pains you?” Blanche wiped the thermometer on a white cloth, then dropped it into its case and down in her pocket. “You have more pain than you
should at this early hour. If you feel any others, tell me. I have to know.”

“Just the baby. Drawing. Pushing. This pushing down. All of this. Just the baby. After this is over, I'll be fine and dandy,” Ella lied, but her story had a truthful sound.

Blanche knew that if the pains were causing so much delirium and fever at this early hour, she could expect things to get several times worse before the child saw lamplight. She had seen other cases where old forgotten sore spots, bone and ligament bruises, sprains and fractures, had flashed back into the mind of the woman again to hurt her and frighten her to such a degree that her muscles were tight, nerves tense, and the birth was delayed for several hours and became twice as painful and far more dangerous. She could treat such a thing now if only Ella May would point out to her any such places of pain caused by old hurts. There was pressure on one or more of her nerves, there were feverish worries in her brain. These caused all of the earlier pains to magnify and, already, to run into rambles of unconscious speech. Possibly she could trace it down as the night wore on.

Tike dragged his shovel back across the yard and listened to it ring down against the hard-frozen ground. It rang louder when he tossed it up against the side of the house. He was a walking bag of fears and hopes and the ringing was still in his words when he shoved the door open and said, “Snowin' ta beat hell out there. Say, ain't I a papa yet, after all my diggin' and freezin'?”

In the blowing flame of the lamp he saw Blanche with her finger against her lips, and his words trailed off down the Cap Rock. He ducked his head in bashful sorrow because he had let it slip his mind Ella was not to know that he had been digging a hole in the sod to bury her afterbirth in.

“Shh.” Blanche could not be seen any too plainly in the flicker of the lamp. But her “Shh” was plainer than any snake that Tike had ever heard hiss in the grass.

“Tikey Doodle?” Ella's voice was high, scattered, broken off into loose stems, then drowned out by a howl of swift wind whining up under the floor. “You? Tikey Dude?”

“No tellin' what you'll think to call me next.” He slid out of his coat and sweater and hung them up on their nails. “Yes. This is me. Where's my brat? I mean baby? I come ta git 'im.”

“You will catch your death of dampness up there in that old roost. You just leave those old tractor parts go until some day when it is warmer.” Her words were strained through the bedclothing.

Tike looked at Blanche with his mouth open. “Ahhh. Roost? Ah. But, Lady,” and then he fished for a story. “Ahh, honest ta God, Lady, I got th' best tractor in Texas put together up there. It's a su'prize! Soooprize! We're gonna take on six hundred more acres of wheat land, Lady! Six hundred! I took alla them ole parts, an' took 'em, an' I twisted 'em, I mean, I took 'em, an' I wired 'em all up together! All together! An' I made the biggest pertiest tractor in th' world!”

“I have not entertained the slightest inkling of a doubt.”
Ella's laugh dealt her more pain above her breast. “And just what is the name of it? Your tractor?”

“Ahhh. Hamlin. H
AMLIN
! Better'n any other kind on th' market! Just wait'll ya rub yer eye out on it!”

“I'm simply dying to.”

That word
dying
sent trembles of icy sweat up and down Tike's backbone, but he shuffled from one foot to the other and tried to act braver. “You'll hear plenty about it. Don't worry. Just take it easy and let that little Tike Hamlin git outta yer belly first, 'cause I cain't git my tractor down outta th'roost without his help. So just lie there, an' don't worry, an' take yer pace easy. 'Cause he's, he's th' only one can lift it down while I hold the roof up fer 'im.” He felt such a shaking in his body that he started to fall to his knees and crawl over to the side of the bed. It was Blanche that motioned him back with her hands as if to say, “We don't want to get her all nervous again.”

“Is that your new tractor that I hear running? Or is that a feather floating through the air?”

Blanche motioned him back again. He hated her for waving him about in his own house, and a thousand curse words flew onto his tongue. He kept his lips closed as tight as he could and managed to swallow his words. He would remember it, though, and mow her down with them the very first time he caught her out of Ella's presence.

“That noise that you hear? That?” He put his hand to his ear and walked to the north window. “That's them old loud noisy snowflakes out there running into one another.
And they're a-makin' so much of a damned racket that I cain't even hear my new tractor run. Lissen. Lissen. Nope. Them goldern snowflakes. Cain't hear my tractor engine.”

There was a faint frown on Blanche's face as she moved her eyes up and down in an effort to get a look into Ella's eyes. Was this horseplay back and forth between Mr. and Mrs. Hamlin a good or a bad thing for the baby? Well, it had its good parts. Ella had turned quieter, less strained. Tike's eyes were so filled with the wild lamplight that he looked like a fiery-eyed devil to his own self as he saw the things of the room reflected in the whipped snows out the north window glass. And the feeling that came over him as he saw his eyes shine outside was, “I'm a devil. I'm a devil with nine little devils dancin' off my prong.” Of course, these were his thoughts, his whole feelings. But his feelings whirled and stirred in with the norther and he went right on being a devil. He blew his hot breath against the cold glass and drew a circle, two dots for eyes, a new moon for a mouth, two new moons for horns, and laughed. “Hey. Blanche. Wanta see th' baby's pitcher? Huh?” And when Blanche took a step or two across the floor and looked at his artwork with a cold disgust, Tike slapped his hands against his knees and stood there laughing for a good long time.

“If I was your wife and I was having a baby and you would make such a picture of it on the window glass, believe me, I would get a broom and wear it out on your head.” And Blanche took a short walk around the room to see if all of the needs of the night were in their proper order. She
spoke each word as she looked. “Soap. Water. Cloths. Towels. Washrags. Rubber sheets. Gloves. Chloroform. Cotton. Papers. Tools and scissors.” And then she lifted her fingers toward her black suitcase and nodded at its contents.

“Hey, Blanche,” Tike said when she came near his window. “I betcha that whenever ya see this here baby, you'll want one exactly like it. Jist wait.”

“Hot water. Broom. Mop. Oh. Huh? I will bet. I know that I will just simply go wild to have one. Lots of other proud poppies have told me the same story. But so far they are all mistaken. Matches. Alcohol.”

“You'll see. Jist watch.”

“You are trying to make me a joke. But I really would like to have a baby. I admit.” She looked out into the north.

“Make ya a big barg'in.”

“What?”

“I'll give ya th' pertiest baby on all these north an' south plains if ya'll come an' help me build my earth house.”

“Doesn't your brain function on any other subject except just this business of making babies?” Blanche blew her own breath on the glass and drew circles with dots for eyes, noses, and mouths.

Tike touched his finger to the glass and added half-moon devil's horns to Blanche's faces and said, “Nope. Nuthin' else. Makin' babies. An' earth houses to raise 'em in.”

Blanche drew bare trees, sprigs of grass, weeds, all around the edge of the windowpane. In order to keep the upper hand in this situation, she shook her head seriously,
slowly, pooched her lips, and said, “I know that you are just fooling me, Tike. I mean, Mister Hamlin. But I really do want a baby. Not just only one baby, but I want several nice boys and several nice girls. And of course I really and truly want a nice big weatherproof house, possibly the earth kind that you keep talking about. And since I must have a man, naturally, before I can have my babies and my house, I will remember you, and I will certainly keep such a great inventor, ahhh, builder of, ahhh, Hamlin tractors in mind. But of course, this country is a free country, and I do feel that you should allow me the full freedom and the full liberty to consider possibly one, maybe two or three, other men for the job. You agree?”

“Shore. Shore. Ya mean ya might? Might take me up?” Tike's face in the glass was serious. “Chance, huh?”

“A chance?” Blanche ridiculed him. “Of course there is a chance. A chance and more than a chance.”

Tike's head shook till his neck was tired as he repeated her words. “More'n jist a chance? More'n jist a chance? Huh? Hey. Ha.”

“After all, you are a man and I am a woman. And the force that draws the man together with the woman is larger and stronger than the powers that drive little tractors to plow and to reap, or that blow little blue northern blizzards down on top of the people's houses.”

Tike's eyes stood open like saucers of milk and his mouth was a cavern filled with bats. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Gosh.”

“A man and a woman must get together. They must find
one another somewhere in these storms of life. They must cling and hold and come together. They must. They just just just just must.”

“Yep.”

“And after all, I am a pretty girl when I get my things taken off. There is nothing seriously wrong with my legs, and my waist will not get much larger. I am rosy of cheek and full of breast. I look at myself in the mirror and I think how bad I really do need a man and all of these little babies that you keep talking about. And after all, for you, young, thirty-three, strong, fairly slim, not any too wise, but fiery and windburned. For you, don't you think that there is more than just a chance?”

Tike had shaken his head so long and so fast that he could not control it, nor stop it. He tried to say something, but only managed to stammer, stutter out some loose words.

“There are not more than, well, say, fifteen or sixteen million people out in these midwestern states, and I do not guess that more than six or seven million of them are men. The rest of them are women, and naturally I would not marry any of the women, so it is only the men that I could possibly marry, and here you are, right here, and I know a good bit about you. I am familiar with some of your little ways and I understand you very well. It is just these other six, seven million that I will have to look over and pick from. So the wind is blowing your way, after all. You see? Now when you foolishly asked me a minute ago if there was
a chance for you and I to have babies together, earth houses together, you did not see how close you were to hitting the head on the nail, did you?”

“Huh-uh.” Tike was feeling his legs with his hands down in his pockets. He leaned back against the wall, half drifting out into the piling, blowing snow. “Gosh no. I, ahh, er, didn't see that I was hittin' my, ahh, head on no, ahhh, nail.” And then he thought of how silly the whole conversation had sounded, and he dropped his gaze down along the bottom of the window and saw the snow blow in and mix with the dust.