Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (28 page)

As though reading her thoughts, Will turned his head, and shouted, “Good thing we’re as near home as we are. I know right where we are. The nearer we get to Fielding and home the more worn the road is, the deeper the ruts, and the better the horses can see it.”

Tierney closed her eyes and thought of Pearly. What would Pearly do in such a circumstance? Pray, of course. Tierney had tried it earlier, but not in such a state of anxiety as now. Perhaps she hadn’t been earnest enough before. Most desperately now she attempted it again:
O God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Pearly, please hear this plea for help and get us home safely!

After that, jolted continually though she was, she must have dozed, although, to her panic-stricken thinking when she awoke, she feared she might have slipped into the sleep of death that fell on freezing people. But realizing that all her limbs felt the cold and that they moved satisfactorily at her command, she sighed with relief and felt a little foolish. Tierney knew, from conversations with Pearly, that she wasn’t ready to meet God.

What would it be like, to face the living God and not have made your peace with Him? It was an uncomfortable thought, prompted by the desperate situation and her realization that it could happen, without warning and without preparation. Her earlier prayer, as with this one, had been one of desperation and not contrition. Did God get impatient with people who cried out to Him in emergencies and forgot all about Him in better times? These uneasy speculations were interrupted by welcome news:

“Not far now!” Will sang out through frozen lips, and Tierney’s thoughts turned with relief to happier things—a fire, a hot cup of tea, a good warm supper.

This time Will helped her down, having clambered out and made his way to the back of the wagon where he removed the tailgate. He began pulling boxes and crates and bags from under the great heap of blankets he had carefully spread over them to keep cans and jars from splitting and cracking. The food items had been warmer than she had, Tierney realized, wishing belatedly that she had crawled under the waterproof tarpaulin that sheltered the entire store of goods.

It was two snow-covered figures who trundled their way, arms laden, across the few feet of ground from the wagon to the porch.

There was no reason to find it ominous when Lavinia didn’t come outside to welcome them. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard them; the snowfall muffled most sounds. It was a white, silent world. And dark; even the moon and the stars hid themselves on this most stormy of nights. Tierney blessed the team that had, unerringly, trudged them homeward to their warm stalls, good grain, and satisfying currying, when Will would take a gunny sack and sweep them free of the last vestiges of snow still clinging to their broad, steamy backs, and rub and brush them dry.

There was no reason to feel alarm when there were no footsteps across the snow on the porch; it was too newly fallen, too recently come.

But when they stepped inside, to stand momentarily on the mat at the door, it was both ominous and alarming when Lavinia was nowhere to be seen, the house was colder than it ought to have been, and no tea kettle simmered on the stove and no supper.

“What the—?” Will muttered. “Vinnie! Lavinia—!”

It was a sleepy-eyed Buster who greeted them from the doorway to the front room, his hair touseled, clutching his “bankie” to him.

“Mama’s sick,” he said.

“O God!” Will exclaimed, and it was a prayer. Hastily setting down the box he carried, stamping his feet heavily on the mat, he began unwinding the scarf that obliterated most of his face and pulling off the flap-eared cap from his head. Sitting down, while Tierney stood dumbly by, beginning her own unwrapping, Will pulled off his galoshes, removed his coat on which the snow was quickly turning to water, dropped everything on the linoleum, and fled toward the front room and through it to the bedroom beyond.

Her own things removed at last, Tierney took a moment to hang up the coats and scarves and hats, set the overshoes aside, and then gathered up the bemused Buster in her arms.

“Mama’s sick,” he repeated. “Did you bring me something?”

What a long and lonely time it must have been for the child, his mother ill, perhaps in bed for goodness knew how long, and the time stretching interminably until his father should come home.

“Of course,” Tierney reassured him. “Now first, let’s go see if we can be of any help.”

Tierney, with Buster by the hand, made her way to the bedroom. How cold it was! Obviously Lavinia hadn’t been able to tend the fire. The little hand Tierney clasped was warm, however, as though the child had been cuddled warm and secure under blankets.

Standing in the bedroom door, she could see Will leaning over the bed. Lavinia, white-faced and obviously frightened, was stumblingly explaining.

“It’s the baby, Will. Something’s wrong. It’s far, far too early, and yet . . . and yet I know it’s trying to come. Ohhhh,
Will!
” Her explanation turned into a cry as, apparently, another pain struck. Even from the doorway, even through the covers, Tierney could see the turgid belly stiffen and distend.

Will looked around wildly. “My Lord,” he said, just as wildly as before, though just as prayerfully, “what’ll we do?”

Hesitantly Tierney stepped forward, leaned over, and brushed the damp hair back from Lavinia’s forehead. With her eyes fixed on Will she said, just as tensely as he had spoken, “There’s no question about going for . . . whoever it is . . . that midwife, I suppose?”

Knowing it was indeed out of the question, she added, hopefully, “Or your neighbor. But,” she answered her own question, “she’d be only two miles closer than the woman in Fielding, right?”

Will, swallowing convulsively, nodded dumbly. “I could try—”

Not knowing much about blizzards, still Tierney had experienced enough in the last few hours to say, “It probably isn’t a good thing. We—you and I—will have to manage alone—”

It was enough to startle Will into action. “I’ve got to try,” he said, the muscles of his jaw working. “Listen, Lavinia—” he bent toward his panting, sweating wife, “I’m going for help. If I can get to Fielding, I will. Otherwise I’ll stop at the Brokaws’ and bring Lilyan. Hold on, Sweetheart. Be brave just a little longer.”

He might just as well have said “a lot longer,” for that’s what it proved to be.

A lot longer, and still, when he and Lilyan Brokaw arrived, Lavinia struggled helplessly against the contractions, though weaker and weaker.

Frightened almost out of her wits, Tierney found herself actually wringing her hands as she waited. Her gripping fear was that the child would come with only herself to deliver it. And yet the fact that it didn’t seem to budge was just as agonizing.

“Dear God,” she whispered, “I can see how selfish and stupid our prayers can be, always telling You what to do, trying to decide for ourselves what’s right. It’s up to You to sort them out and do what’s best for us. But please, please, don’t let Lavinia die!”

It was a much-needed prayer, for by the time Will and Lilyan Brokaw arrived, dawn was coloring the sky with pale light and Lavinia was almost past help, having sunk into a state of half-awareness, rousing only to struggle and groan. Even that was becoming less with each futile effort to expel the burden from her body.

“How is she?” Will asked when his wraps had been laid aside and he had approached the bed. Lilyan Brokaw had preceded him, having been busy in the sickroom while Will was unhitching and caring—once again—for the weary team of horses.

Lilyan Brokaw, a hefty woman in her early fifties and the mother of eight, turned from the bed, and said in an aside, “Not good, Mr. Ketchum. Though it’s early and the child is small, still there’s something wrong. Very wrong.”

Lilyan tried, with whatever skills she had, to advance the babe in the womb; Tierney, worn and trembling, turned to the kitchen to build up the fire, boil water, and make tea. Good reviving tea; even it failed in its restorative powers this time. Tierney was terribly afraid.

Creeping back, finally, with a cup of tea for Mrs. Brokaw, it was to hear the neighbor woman say, somberly, “It’s never going to come on its own.”

Will looked ghastly—worn with his two long trips, his lack of rest, his hunger, and his terror.

“Do
something!
” he pleaded.

Still Lilyan Brokaw hesitated.

But looking at that desperate face, perhaps thinking of the living child asleep now in his own bed upstairs, perhaps moved by the eloquence in Will’s eyes, Lilyan Brokaw was moved to try that something, desperate measures indeed for an unskilled person.

“We have to get the child out,” she said flatly, “though I’ve never done it. I had it done to me once, and it . . . well, it worked.”

Her voice faded, and it was, in its way, as eloquent as the silent but speaking eyes of the husband on the other side of the bed.

“Bring a pan of hot, soapy water,” Lilyan Brokaw said with a sigh, and Tierney did so, along with numerous clean towels.

And then she fled the scene, not needed, and totally unable to bear the screams that ripped through the house from the hoarse throat of the tortured woman as Lilyan Brokaw, stolidly and with dogged resolution, thrust her hand into the birth canal and, by force alone, withdrew the scrap of humanity that was the cause of it all.

Wet, bloody, and motionless it lay, at the last, on the towel Will held out, tremblingly, for the deposit of his second son.

When, ashamed, Tierney crept back, it was to see Will standing alone, his second-born in his arms, his wife unconscious, and Lilyan Brokaw, almost as pale as the patient, going about the job of cleanup. Here Tierney tried to help, bringing fresh water, finding an old sheet to be torn into padding, taking the bloody linen and putting it to soak.

Finally Will handed the dead babe to the reaching arms of Lilyan Brokaw, who took it to the kitchen area to be bathed and dressed in the clothing Tierney located, having helped sew on it across the past months. Finally, Lilyan wrapped the tiny mite in a small blanket, as Tierney stood by, feeling helpless in the face of so great a tragedy.

“Here,” she said, feeling that, finally, there was something she could do. “I’ll put it in the little crib in their bedroom. I’m sure, once she’s . . . alert again, she’ll want to see her baby.”

But Will was waiting. As soon as he saw Tierney, he rose from his knees at the side of the bed, reaching one last time for his son. How pathetic the sight; how final the good-bye.

Lilyan, who was checking on the swooning Lavinia, said abruptly, “Miss Caulder, take the baby. Will, you need to be here by your wife.”

It was difficult to say who was the most startled, Tierney or Will. He handed her the dead child and turned immediately to the bedside.

“What is it?” he asked.

“She hasn’t stopped bleeding. It’s . . . it’s just
flooding
from her. Oh, Will, I’m not capable of the care she needs!” Lilyan, good, helpful neighbor, was in despair.

“Miss Caulder . . . Tierney,” she called, “quickly, bring more towels! Lay the baby down and bring more towels!”

There were no more towels. Frightened and trembling, Tierney located what she could—extra sheeting, dish towels, even a thick, woolly blanket. Hurrying back with these it was to find Lilyan and Will lifting the supine Lavinia and shoving the rubberized sheet from the baby’s crib under her body. Lilyan took the items Tierney offered and began stacking them also beneath Lavinia and packing them into place on her torn body.

Mesmerized, eyes staring, Tierney could see that it wasn’t enough. Before their very eyes, Lavinia Ketchum was bleeding to death.

Will dropped to his knees beside his wife, murmuring her name brokenly, pleading for her to hold on, to stay with him, and, finally, to know that he loved her . . . loved her . . . loved her.

As the packing grew more and more brilliant, Lavinia’s face grew more and more colorless. Her very life, it seemed, was flowing from her, collecting in a few towels while her husband pled his case and Tierney and Lilyan stood helplessly by.

Finally, feeling that she was listening in on things too private and personal to be shared, Tierney slipped out of the room. She stood in the kitchen, hands to her temples, weeping uncontrollably. How quickly autumn’s glory had fallen prey to winter’s invasion; how quickly health and vigor had surrendered to death’s cold beckon.

It wasn’t long until Lilyan Brokaw followed Tierney to the kitchen, her hands full of towels bearing her neighbor’s life’s blood, and feeling herself to be the cause of it all.

Lilyan all but collapsed onto a kitchen chair, staring blankly at the fire flickering around the range door. “I did it,” she whispered.

“Of course you dinna do it!” Tierney answered, falling to her knees beside the suffering woman. “Someone had to do something. Will begged it of you. There was no doctor available . . . no doctor anywhere—”

“I shouldn’t have done what I did . . .”

“You had to do it, Mrs. Brokaw! You had to! There was no other option; there was no one else.”

Lilyan’s gaze shifted to Tierney’s face. As a thirsty person yearns toward a spring, so she looked for reassurance from Tierney.

It was a burden not to be borne for the rest of her life! It was a guilt that should not eat her heart out forever—so Tierney concluded. “Listen to me. Mrs. Brokaw, listen to me. Mr. Ketchum went for you. You had no choice but to come. Think—if you had turned him doon, which you had every right to do, being so stormy and all, how you’d feel now. In the midst of a blizzard you left your fireside and your children and came. The baby wouldna be born; it simply wouldna coom! I had watched by her side for hours and did nothing . . . could do nothing. You did what you could. It had to be done.”

Anguish filled the fading eyes of the middle-aged woman.

“Listen,” Tierney urged, feeling she had not yet banished the question of guilt, “the alternative was to leave her alone, let her struggle herself to death.
Isna that so?
”

Lilyan, finally, recognized and accepted the truth, releasing her own self from the blame that had fastened on her. With a sob she fell on Tierney’s shoulder, her own thick shoulders heaving with the release of tears that came.