The Midwife of Hope River (14 page)

“Mrs. Wade, Mrs. Blum, the labor is almost over, and it's time for Prudy to take a birth bath. She needs to get ready for the delivery.” The two women raise their eyebrows. They've never heard of a
birth bath
before! Becky frowns; she hasn't heard of a birth bath either. Come to think of it, neither have I.

“You two go across the hall and get the tub ready. Make the water comfortable but not too hot, then go down to the kitchen and help Becky boil more water and sterilize the linen in the oven.”

Bitsy puts her book down with a thump and gives me a look. She knows that taking a bath is not part of the usual process; she also knows that the pads in our satchel have been sterilized and wrapped in newspaper for days. She did it herself. I give her a half smile, hoping she'll understand that this is just a ploy to get the patient calmed down and these meddlesome insects out of my hair.

 

The water closet in the Otts' home is nicer than the MacIntoshes'. There's a green-tiled floor, with lighter green tiles halfway up the wall, an indoor toilet, a sink, and a very shiny white bathtub with claw feet. When I helped Prudy to the lavatory earlier and admired the tub, she explained that it was her husband's gift to her when they married five years ago. “It even has a gas water heater,” she told me.

Now Prudy's in the tub, warm liquid up to her chest, and I kneel at the side, pouring water over her back. “Is your pain less, Prudy? I haven't heard you cry for a while.”

“Yes. It must be the warm water. Here comes another one!” She throws her head back and commands me, “Pour faster! Pour more!” I'm rinsing her with a copper dipper as fast as I can, and this time there's no screaming, only a low “Muhhhhhhh!”

Her moan makes me think of Moonlight. I've completely forgotten my pregnant cow, and she needs to be fed and watered. I know only one person I can ask for help, and my obligations to him are growing.

“Bitsy,” I call. She's still in the bedroom, still lying low, and for the first time I realize why. Her presence here is awkward with the society women of Liberty. Only a few months ago, she served them tea in the MacIntoshes' parlor.

“Can you sit with Prudy? Just pour water over her back and shoulders when she has a pain. She'll tell you what she wants.”

I trot downstairs, and when I enter the kitchen, all heads go up. Becky, at the sink, half turns. Mr. Ott is there too, and he drags himself from deep between the pages of the
Torrington Times,
a pack of Lucky Strikes on the table and a lighted cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“Prudy's fine. Bitsy's staying with her. The bath is relaxing her. Do you have a phone?” I spit this all out in a hurry because I want to get back to my patient.

“Well, I never,” I hear Mrs. Wade whisper. “Taking a bath in labor, and that nigger girl with her!”

I steam at the comment but again bite my tongue. No use getting in a fight. It wouldn't change their minds anyway. Black and white miners and their families have worked together for decades, but these upper-class women probably never had a Negro friend—or a Negro servant, either, in many cases. Most West Virginia families don't use nannies or maids. At most, they might have a cook and a hired hand, usually someone off of a farm and most likely white.

Mr. Ott scrapes his chair back and walks me to the telephone in the front hall.

“I have to get someone to take care of my livestock.” I say this as if I have a whole herd, when really it's only Moonlight and the chicks. Taking hold of the crank, I twist it three times the way I saw Hester do. A woman's voice answers.

“Is this Susie?” I take a guess at the name and apparently get it right. “This is Patience Murphy, the midwife. I'm at Mr. Ott's home. I need to speak to Daniel Hester, the veterinarian on Salt Lick. I don't know the number. Can you connect me?”

“One moment.” There's a buzzing in the background and then four short rings. The vet finally answers.

“Hester here. Large and Small Animals.” This makes me smile.

“Murphy here. Large and Small Women.” I can't help it. It's funny.

“Patience?” I like it that he uses my first name.

“Sorry. Just a little joke. Listen, Bitsy and I are in Liberty with a patient in labor. The woman, Mrs. Ott, the mayor's wife, is going to have a baby tonight, and—well, I hate to do this, but you're the only one I know to ask. Could you go over and feed and water Moonlight? Since she's with child, I don't want her to have to go hungry all night.”

“With
child
?”

“You know what I mean. I'll repay you whatever you want.” I rephrase this. “I mean, I'll go with you to an emergency call or whatever . . .”

“Yeah, I can do that. You want me to feed the chickens too?”

“Would you?”

An ear-splitting roar comes from upstairs.

“Patience!” Bitsy hollers. All heads go up, and Mrs. Wade and Mrs. Blum collide in the doorway.

“Stay!” I hiss at them as I drop the phone on its cord and take the stairs two at a time.

“Prudy! Don't push! Tell her to
blow,
Bitsy!”

In the bathroom, I grab the woman's chin. “Prudy, don't push! We have to get you back in bed!”

Prudy whips her head back and forth to say no, her wet hair flying, spraying us with water like one of my beagles just out of the creek. She grabs the side of the tub and bears down again. I hold her chin tighter. “Listen to me, Prudy! Blow like this.
Whoo, whoo.
Bitsy, my satchel!”

When the contraction is over, I explain to the mother, as well as her friends, now standing at the lavatory door, what's happening. “That was an urge to push. You never felt it before because in the hospital you had twilight sleep and then gas as the doctor pulled the baby out. We need to get you out of the tub and back—”

Before I can finish, Prudy growls again and instinctively pulls her legs back. This is not the prim woman who has lace doilies layered over every surface in the house. Bitsy runs for my gloves, and I struggle into them.

I know that there's no way we can get the patient out of the tub, down the hall, and into bed in time. This is her second baby. The train has left the station and is heading downhill, so I just lean over the tub's side reach into the warm water, put my hands around the infant's head, and hold on. Within less than a minute, the baby is born. I lift him up out of the warm water, cord still attached, and he cries as soon as he hits the cold air. “Towel?” I request casually, as if this happens all the time. I look up and see Becky, beaming and holding out a clean cloth, all the pain and worry of the last few hours now wiped from her face.

“My baby. My baby,” Prudy insists, her arms stretched out. What harm can it do? I give the sobbing woman her still wet infant.

“Keep all of him under the warm water, except his little face.” Becky takes back the towel and gasps at the idea of submerging the baby, but the infant stops screaming and opens one eye to take in his world.

Bitsy hands me the scissors, and I trim the cord. When I turn to drop the scissors into the sink, I'm surprised to see Mr. Ott in the doorway too, wiping his eyes, gazing at Prudy and their new son. “I love you,” he mouths as his wife looks up. Their eyes fall into each other's and the rest of us fade, like the blurred images on the edge of an old family photo. “I love you,” he says again, louder.

 

February 25, 1930. Dark sliver of a moon.

Birth of Harrison Ott, 7 pounds, 12 ounces, second child of Mrs. Prudy Ott and J. B. Ott of Liberty. An eight-hour labor with very frightened mother. Prudy's last baby was born in Boone Memorial Hospital with twilight sleep, gas, and forceps. This baby was born in the bathtub! The water seemed to relax the mother. Baby did fine. I talked about this with Bitsy later. When you think about it, the baby has been in the water all along. It probably felt comfy to him.

No complications. No vaginal tears. As tense as Prudy was for the labor, she sat there in the warm water and nursed the baby in front of us all.

Present were myself, Bitsy, Becky Myers, and two of the mother's lady friends, who got in my hair, Mrs. Wade and Mrs. Blum, the doctor's wife. I hope they don't come to many more deliveries! The father saw everything from the door to the lavatory! Paid $10, which is pretty good for these times and made us feel rich.

Spring

19

Thaw

A week of heavy rain, and patches of green appear. New icicles melt as soon as they form, and shoots of purple and yellow crocus push up through the earth.

Yesterday, just after Bitsy went hunting for turkey down on the flats near the Hope River, I saw, through the kitchen window, something move.

 

It's Mr. Maddock working on the road again, I figure, but as I stare, the open cart with two burros passes the Maddocks' mailbox and continues to travel fast up the hill. Emma starts barking, and Sasha chimes in. The cart pulls to a halt, and the driver jumps down and ties his animals to the picket fence.

“Mrs. Potts says come quick.” It's Reverend Miller, the pastor of the Hazel Patch Baptist Chapel. At the gate he ties his animals to the picket fence. “The melting snow has caused a flood in the Wildcat Mine. Twelve miners are trapped. They fear a cave-in.”

The poor man is panting. “There's going to be injured, and there's no doc to be found. She wants you now.” I don't think to argue but step into my tall rubber boots, grab my birth satchel, scratch a note to Bitsy, and jump onto the cart. The reverend turns the topless carriage around and slaps the mules into action before I sit down.

“I had to bring the wagon. There's no way an auto could make it through this muck,” he offers. Other than that he doesn't say much, and we take Salt Lick Road around the mountain, slipping and sliding in the mud and slush. At the bridge we meet Daniel Hester coming home from town and pull over so he can pass. I wave him down. The vet's not a doctor, but he did a good job stitching my leg.

“Wait!” I yell to Reverend Miller.

“Mr. Hester,” I call, standing up in the cart. “There's trouble at the Wildcat Mine. A flood. Men are trapped. They fear a cave-in, maybe injuries. Can you come?”

“He won't make it in that auto,” the pastor advises under his breath. “That's why I didn't bring my hack. Roads are too rutted. Tell him to get in with us.”

“Did you hear? The pastor says the roads are no good. Your Model T won't make it.”

“Give me room to turn around!” Hester shouts back without hesitation. “I'll get as close to Wildcat as I can. If I go ahead and get stuck in the mud, you can pick me up. If I make it to the camp, we'll have another vehicle to drive the men to the hospital.” The preacher complies, backing into Hester's drive.

Thirty minutes later, we pull up the hill into a mining camp much like the first one I visited, only, if possible, more dilapidated. A crowd presses around the gaping mouth of the mine while a disaster siren blasts over and over. The fear is so thick you can taste it.

“Oh, God!” a gray-haired woman screams. “Oh, God, my son's in there.” She falls to the ground, then rises and tries to fight through the throng. Two other women pull her back. “Let me go! I have to find him!” The two holding the distraught mother are Mildred Miller and Emma, the Hazel Patch ladies who made the feast after Cassie's birth.

I'm surprised to see Thomas here too, with Izzie Cabrini at his side, consulting with a huddle of black and white men, all wearing miner's hats. In a disaster, color and nationality don't seem to matter.

The vet had mentioned that King Coal had folded, so the two must now be working at Wildcat. Mr. Hester, who made it through the muck and arrived well before we did, stands at the edge of the pack, listening.

On an empty wooden dynamite box near a pile of dirty snow, I find Grace Potts, sitting with her hands folded in prayer, and I step into her circle of calm. Thankfully, someone shuts off the disaster siren and my heart slows its pace. One of the Italian women gives the thin lady a shawl.

“Oh, honey,” the old midwife greets me, “I'm so glad you're here . . . and that fellow . . . what's his name? They told me he's an animal man, some kind of doctor. Thank the Lord. Thomas Proudfoot, that little Eye-talian fellow, and Byrd Bowlin, one of the young men who attends our chapel, are going down now. There's a low place where the water has collected about three thousand feet back and a thousand feet under. The walls there are starting to slide. One timber already crashed down on a man. The miners on this side of the water scratched their way through and brought him out, poor fellow. He was half buried under the mud.”

She indicates a sobbing wife and daughter kneeling over a corpse covered with a rough wool blanket. I leap up to go to them, but Mrs. Potts pulls me back. “Not now, honey.” Two other very tall women stand crying nearby, leaning into each other like trees.

“Not now,” she repeats her counsel. “Give them some time.” I know she's right. Though I yearn to hold them, take some of their sorrow into my body, it's not my place.

Hester wanders over, frowning and rubbing his chin. “They're rigging up ropes and cables to tie to the last solid post, then a few of the miners are going down. They plan to swim through the water on the other side of the slip, see if they can get to those trapped. It's dangerous as hell.” He looks back at the three as they head into the hole. Thomas is in the lead, tied to Cabrini, who's tied to the young miner Mrs. Potts mentioned, a tall narrow black man about twenty-five.

“I don't know anything about mining codes, but this place is a mess,” the vet rants as he paces back and forth. “Notice the leaning timbers. That can't be regulation!”

I stand and take his hand. Hester looks surprised but doesn't let go. My heart is so full of fear for the families. If I were a believer, I'd kneel down and pray.

 

Resurrection

Inch by inch, the sun crosses the sky. It lights the windows of the miner's shacks and then ducks down over the mountains in the west. There's the drip, drip, drip of melting snow. This morning, I welcomed that sound of spring; now I hate it because it means more water flooding into the mine.

Delfina Cabrini, with her baby tied around her under her wrap, brings Mrs. Potts and me two blue-speckled tin cups of coffee. Hester wanders over to talk to Sheriff Hardman, who's just arrived with a posse from town. I duck my head when I notice the two city slickers from the courthouse. Are they some kind of feds investigating moonshiners or marshals looking for me? It's been years since the riot at Blair Mountain, but I feel sure my mug's displayed on a yellowing wanted poster somewhere. When you've been a radical, lived with radicals, marched in the streets, and spent time in jail, you are, forevermore, wary of coppers.

 

Dark pours into the hollow, and lanterns appear. I find another empty dynamite box and drag it over next to Mrs. Potts, all the while keeping my back to the lawmen. So many times I have waited like this, stiff with worry outside a mine, waiting for Ruben while he confronted the bosses. I could always tell, by watching, when he was angry. He'd stuff his hands deep in his pockets to keep his big fists from flying into someone's face.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,”
the old lady begins in a deep contralto,
“that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
Mildred, Emma, and a few of the other Hazel Patch ladies join in and then three white ladies and then the vet and me. It's funny how music can soothe, can heal, can give us courage, especially singing together.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares we have already come. 'Twas Grace that brought us safe thus far . . . and Grace will lead us home.”

 

There's movement at the opening of the mine, then a rending cry from the waiting assembly. Hester grabs his bag, grips my arm, and leads me forward, but the new victim, carried by Izzie Cabrini like a rag doll over his shoulder, has no use for our medical services. He's a broken man, his face gray and covered in mud and his eyes wide open. I look away, and the vet steps forward to check his pulse with his stethoscope. He shakes his head to confirm that it's hopeless . . . and Izzie moves on. The immobile victim is the second man crushed under the slide.

Now the crowd surges forward. More miners are coming out, five of them, staggering, limping, shuffling, crying. I search for Thomas. Maybe his dark face doesn't show in the gloom—and then I catch sight of him hobbling forward, supporting another injured coal miner, whose left arm dangles from his shoulder. From nowhere a small brown body shoots forward. It's Bitsy, who jumps up on her brother, shouting “Praise God!”

Where did she come from? How did she get here? Last I knew, she was heading down Wild Rose Road toward the banks of the Hope River, carrying her shotgun, planning to shoot a wild turkey for dinner. She must have come home, seen my note, heard the distant wailing siren, and, fearing for Thomas, run through the woods and over the ridge all by herself.

Hester motions me forward. “Patience! Over here.” The women of the camp have made pallets on the ground, and he is kneeling over a man with a gash on his head. “You clean the wound and bandage it. There's a lot of mud. Wash it thoroughly. I'll check this fellow, it looks like he may have a broken arm.”

No one asks who we are or if we are a qualified physician and nurse. They're just glad to have us. Bitsy trots over with my birth satchel and gets out the yellow antiseptic soap and clean rags. Mrs. Potts brings over a vial of echinacea tincture and a fifth of whiskey. I'm shocked when she boldly pulls the booze from under her shawl.

“Had it since my husband passed away in '19, before the Prohibition,” she explains. The injured man reaches for the bottle. “No, you don't.” She blocks him. “It's for cleansing your wounds, and it's gonna burn some.” She drips the liquid over the four-inch gash in his forehead. “Now bandage him good, and he'll stop bleeding.”

“Patience!” It's Hester calling again. Bitsy finishes the dressing, then collects our gear, and we move where we're needed.

“His arm isn't broken, just dislocated,” the vet explains. “I'm going to try to put it back in place. Save him the expensive hospital admission and the painful trip to Torrington over the muddy rutted roads. What I want you to do is hold his right shoulder down. You may need to kneel on it.”

The injured man looks at me, his face white with pain.

“What's your name?” I ask him.

“Farley Tuggs.”

“It will be okay,” I comfort him. “Mr. Hester's very good at this.” In reality, I have no clue what we're doing.

I fix my glasses behind my ears, put the man's arm against his side, and, with both my knees against his shoulder, pin him down, like the vet said. Bitsy, without anyone asking, cradles his head, protecting it and at the same time keeping the poor fellow from thrashing around. Mrs. Potts shows up and this time gives the man a slug of whiskey for the current pain and the greater pain he has coming.

“Ready?” Hester asks. The miner shuts his eyes.

I watch as the veterinarian first folds the victim's forearm in and across his abdomen, then rotates his arm and shoulder out. Slowly, steadily, he rotates the limb back and forth. Tears make white rivulets down the sides of the patient's coal-blackened face, but he doesn't make a sound, just bites his lower lip till it bleeds. When the dislocated shoulder pops back into its joint, Farley screams. Then “That wasn't so bad! Thanks, Doc.” The relief is instant. He sits up smiling. It reminds me of a woman after she's just given birth. “That wasn't so bad!” It's the fear of the pain more than the pain that gets to you.

“Can you fellows make him a sling?” Hester asks two men in the crowd around us. “I need you to stabilize his whole left side.” Then he stands up and goes on to the next miner, who is sitting on the ground holding his leg. A woman with tears streaming down her face, who I imagine is the guy's wife, hovers over him and has already brought a pan of warm water out of their shack. The leg is not broken, just cut down to the bone, and Hester sews it up in layers as I watch.

In an hour, the crisis is over. Two miners are dead, but the rest have survived and, if they aren't too banged up, will go back to work as soon as the water subsides and the walls are shored up. They have families to feed and are paid by the ton. There's no camp medical care. No disability benefits. No life insurance for the dead miners' families. I look around for someone in charge. If there's a foreman, I can't tell. Thomas and the miners seemed to have organized everything.

For twenty years, the United Mine Workers fought for mine safety, higher pay for hazardous work, and cash compensation rather than scrip at the company store. They won victory after victory, but there was a price: union men were injured in riots, sometimes killed.

As steel production dropped after the boom, the need for coal went down too. Union membership dwindled. Mine owners returned to the practice of treating miners like chattel, and now here we sit on the wet earth, tending the nonunionized miners of Wildcat Mine.

Few here remember the massacre at Matewan in 1920, when miners defended their family and homes. Few remember the Battle of Blair Mountain, a year and a half later, when thirteen thousand miners fought in open warfare for their rights.

 

Bitsy decides to stay overnight with Thomas in his two-room cabin, and just as Hester gets ready to leave, Becky shows up in an ambulance that's covered in mud. It's been stuck in the slick clay down near the bridge all this time. We stand in the dark, telling her what happened, and I can see that she's glad she missed the whole catastrophe.