Tisha (42 page)

“How’s the baby?” he asked.

“She’s not moving.”
She’s going to die
was what I thought, but I didn’t want to say it.

“You’d better give her to Chuck,” he said. “I’ll need your help with Jennie.”

I handed the baby over. “Hold her tight,” I said. I could have saved my breath. He was eight years old, but if ever I’d seen a boy act twice his age it had been him.

Fred lifted Jennie’s shoulders and I took her legs. Halfway up the bank one of them slipped out of my grasp. Her foot dropped onto a rock, making a horrible sound—as if it was a rock itself. I glanced up at Fred, cringing inside. His mouth set itself in a tight line. Only one thing could have made a sound like that—a foot that was frozen solid.

Somehow we managed to get Jennie up through the hole and into the sled.

We made a few trips back in to bring out food and things for the baby. Then Fred dragged out the dead dog and left it some distance away. There’d been some traps on the sled, and before we left, he brought five of them out and set them around the hole. We hoped they’d keep the wolves away from Elmer’s body.

When we reached the cabin I wondered how Fred had found it at all. It squatted so low against a hill that I didn’t even see it until we were practically on top of it.

Inside, the sloping ceiling was too low for Fred or me to stand up straight except by one wall, and there wasn’t too much room to move around. It was shelter, though, and it was all we needed. There was oil in a dusty lamp. After Fred fit it we brought Jennie in and laid her on a rickety canvas cot, then Fred started a fire in the small Yukon stove.

I took Patricia out from under my parka. When I
looked at her I almost groaned. Her face and hands were a sickly violet in the light of the oil lamp, and there wasn’t anything I could do for her except sit by the stove and hold her close to me.

After we stored our gear and filled some pots with snow, I started some stew thawing while Fred and duck went to work on Jennie. Fred filled a small washtub with snow, then took the moccasin and socks off her frozen leg. It was hard as marble, white up to the knee. He put it into the washtub and began to bathe the leg with snow while Chuck bathed her face. She hadn’t regained consciousness and I hoped for her sake that she’d sleep for as long as possible. Once feeling came back to her she’d be in terrible pain.

It took a long time to boil water for tea. The stove had to be coddled, since the sheet-metal sides were too rusted and flaky to chance a big fire. Someone had laid a piece of sheet metal across the top to reinforce it, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to cook on it at all. Even so, it didn’t throw out much heat.

I handed some tea over to Fred and Chuck, then poured some for Ethel and me. None of us had said a word since we’d come in. We were all played out, just going on nervous energy. Jennie moaned softly and moved her head. Some snow fell away from her face.

“How bad is she,” Fred?”

He didn’t have to say anything. His look was enough. He shook his head. “How about the baby?” he asked me.

“She hasn’t moved.”

“We have to decide what to do,” Fred said. “Jennie’s foot’s frozen to the bone. The leg may be too, I can’t tell.”

“What can we do?”

“Get her to a doctor.”

Outside the wind was blowing hard as ever, making the stovepipe hum. “How can we?”

“We have to.
I’ll
have to … Even if she does get to a doctor she’s going to lose her foot, maybe the whole leg.”

“Where’s the nearest one?”

“Dawson.”

That was over a hundred and fifty miles.

“I could take her as far as Forty Mile,” he said. “There’s bound to be someone who could take her to Dawson from there.”

Forty Mile was the first town across the Canadian border, but it was still ninety miles. I didn’t see how he could make it, not as tired as he was. The weather outside was as mean as ever. “That’s a long trip, Fred.”

“I know,” he said. “I’d have to get some sleep first, a few hours anyway, but I could do it. There are places I could stop at on the way. I’ve traveled in worse weather.”

“When would you start out?” I asked him.

“After we eat and I get a few hours sleep. You’d have to manage here alone.”

It was a grim meal. I hardly tasted the food. When Chuck and Ethel finished they sat stupefied. They couldn’t stay awake anymore. They used a pail to relieve themselves, then they bundled up together in a sleeping bag we’d taken from the Terwilligers’ sled. They were asleep before we buttoned the bag up.

Fred and I had another cup of tea.

“I hate to leave you all alone here,” he said.

“How long do you think it might be?”

“Mr. Strong’s due up the river in a day or two. I’ll leave word at Steel Creek that you’re here. With the weather like this, well, you’ll be here a couple of days. Maybe more.”

“You better get to sleep,” I said.

“You think you can stay awake?”

“I’ll have to.” Somebody had to wake him up.

I took Patricia out of my parka to look at her again. She was losing the blue color. Her little hands were pink. If she woke up she’d have to be fed, so I had another reason for staying awake.

Fred laid out another sleeping bag and told me to wake him in three hours. He fell asleep almost as fast as the kids had. My watch had stopped, so I set it at twelve, then sat down on the edge of the cot. Jennie’s face had begun to blister. Her foot was still in the wash-tub, the skin on her leg beginning to wrinkle. I leaned over, picked up some snow and bathed her leg with it.
When my hand touched the flesh it made me shudder.

After a few minutes I felt sleepy and got up. The dog that had been in the dough was lying between the stove and the wall. He lifted his head. We’d chained him up outside with the other dogs, but they’d attacked him, so we’d brought him in. I stood by the high wall for a few minutes, then I sat down on a stool by the stove. I took the baby out and rocked her. I brushed her cheek with my lips. It was warm, soft as a flower petal. She looked like Elmer around the cheeks and eyes, but she had Jennie’s mouth, kind of pouty and nice. “Patricia?”

I’d changed her diapers and gone over her carefully to see if there was anything wrong with her. She had a black and blue mark on her thigh and it had swelled a little, but she didn’t have any broken bones. Outside of some chafing from wet diapers she seemed all right. I rocked her some more and talked to her. She squirmed a little and there was a flash of pink tongue before she sucked it back in her mouth. Then she yawned. Excited, I walked back and forth with her. I had a bottle filled with diluted condensed milk, all set to be plunked in a saucepan if she woke. “Come on, Patricia. That’s it,” I said. “Just wake up and start yelling. You can do it …”

She stopped and was still.

There was a small fruit crate lying by the stove with some kindling in it. I emptied it out, laid some newspapers on the bottom, then wrapped a blanket around Patricia and placed her in the crate. After that I put some more wood in the stove. The sides of it were so thin that the fire gleamed through in places.

I sat down on the edge of the cot again and bathed Jennie’s leg. I fell asleep right in the middle of it. I caught myself falling forward and my knees almost touched the floor before I woke with a start. For the next couple of hours I kept putting snow on my face and neck to stay awake.

A half hour before I was supposed to wake Fred, Jennie began to scream.

She kicked away the washtub and I had to grab her to keep her from falling off the cot. It happened so
suddenly that I was terrified. One moment everything was still and the next I was wrestling with Jennie and sobbing hysterically for Fred. She thrashed around, screaming in pain. And finally Fred was on the other side of the cot, holding her in a firm grip, talking to her while she stared at us wild-eyed. She kept trying to talk, but her mouth was twisted in an ugly sneer and her words were just a babble of sound.

“Jennie, you’re here with Anne and me,” Fred kept repeating. “You’re safe. You’re safe, Jennie. Try to understand.”

The wild look went out of her eyes. She stopped struggling and fell back in exhaustion. She realized where she was. Her eyes closed and tears of pain welled up from them. “Eshuh,” she said quietly. “Ee-shuh.”

“Patricia’s here, Jennie,” I said. “… She’s sleeping. Do you want to hold her?”

She nodded.

I brought the baby and laid her in the crook of Jennie’s arm. She raised her head to look at the baby a moment, then slumped back and closed her eyes. The pain she was suffering must have been excruciating, but she lay still. She had her baby.

“Jennie,” Fred said, “I have to get you to a doctor … you understand?” She nodded without opening her eyes. “Anne’ll stay here with the baby and take care of her.” She only made the barest movement. She understood.

Chuck and Ethel hadn’t waked up. They’d lived in close quarters all their life. They were used to all the noise that went with it.

While Fred made preparations to leave I warmed up a chunk of vegetable soup and fed the broth to Jennie. She was able to drink only a little of it. Once in a while she moaned softly, but from the moment I’d given her the baby she’d hardly made a sound. The only way I knew what she was going through was when I looked into her eyes. The pain was there, the pain of losing her husband and leaving her baby, and the pain in her tortured body. I could hardly imagine the suffering she was going through.

When Fred was ready we carried her out. The cabin
and the hill in back of it gave us little protection from the wind as we lashed her into the sled. Gray sleet drove at us, the cold pressing like water. When the lashings were secure I leaned over Jennie to say a hurried good-bye. “I’ll take care of the baby, Jennie. I’ll take good care of her.”

She moved one mittened hand feebly and pulled the scarf from her mouth. One side of her mouth twisted up before her hand dropped. She had tried to smile.

Fred was ready to go.

There were so many things I wanted to say to him—how much I admired him, how much I needed him and wanted him, how deeply I loved him. But there was no time. Instead I said, “Please be careful, Fred.”

“I will. Just don’t you get scared.”

“I’ve got the easy part.”

I didn’t wait for him to kiss me. If I did, I’d have waited till Kingdom come. I kissed him hard enough so that maybe it would keep him warm and safe and alive all the way he had to go.

Then he was gone, the sled disappearing in a gray swirl. I turned back into the cabin.

After a while I knew I couldn’t stay awake any longer. I’d kept walking back and forth with Patricia as long as I could, coaxing her to wake up. It wasn’t doing any good. She’d move a little, open and close a tiny fist, and that was all. She was a perfect little thing and inside of her there was a struggle for life going on, but there was no way I could help her. I felt myself caving in. I put some more wood in the stove, then crawled into Fred’s sleeping bag with her. Even if the stove went out we’d all be warm enough.

I didn’t know how much later it was that I started to wake up, thinking there was an alarm ringing somewhere. Groggy, at first I thought it was my father’s alarm clock and I wondered why he didn’t turn it off. It seemed to keep ringing for hours and it made me angry until I realized it wasn’t an alarm at all. It was a baby crying.

Then I was awake. Beside me, Patricia was spluttering in rage—the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. I was out of the sleeping bag in a moment. I stood
up too fast and bumped my head on the ceiling. The fire in the stove was just embers. Shaking the ashes down, I heaped up some paper and kindling, then wood on top of that. It caught right away and I plunked the bottle I’d prepared into the saucepan. Then I turned up the oil lamp.

Chuck and Ethel were still asleep, the top of Chuck’s head poking out of the bag. I rocked Patricia in my arms, talking to her, telling her she’d be eating soon, filling up on all she needed. I looked at my watch. It said 8:30. That meant I’d slept almost five hours since Fred had gone. I wondered what the real time was, whether it was day or night. I’d lost track and there was no way to tell. Sleet was needling at the window. It was iced over and it looked to be night outside. I couldn’t be sure, though. I kept going over to the stove to check the bottle, but it always seemed as cold as ever and Patricia kept yelling. Her fingers found her mouth and she shoved them into it, gums clamping down on them. They satisfied her for a couple of minutes before she realized nothing was happening, then she bawled again for the real thing.

The bottle was tepid when I gave it to her. I just couldn’t wait for it to get any warmer. She grabbed at the nipple, struggled with it, then pushed it out. I tried again and the same thing happened. I checked the nipple and it was all right, but when I gave it to her again the milk dribbled down her chin. She wasn’t getting it.

I started to feel helpless panic, afraid I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t know what. Patricia screamed louder than ever. Chuck’s head popped out from the sleeping bag. He looked over at me, not really awake, then his head disappeared.

I put the bottle back in the saucepan, thinking that maybe it wasn’t warm enough. Every few minutes I tested it on my wrist. When it felt warm I gave it to her again. She still wouldn’t take it. I tasted it to see if there was anything wrong with it, but there wasn’t.

Ten minutes later she was asleep again. I sat looking at her, wondering what could possibly be wrong, if maybe she’d been injured internally in some way. If she
had been then there was nothing I could do but sit here and watch her die. I crawled back into the sleeping bag with her and lay there in a half stupor.

The next time she woke I was up before she began to cry. I’d refilled the bottle with fresh milk, and this time I waited for it to heat to the right temperature before I gave it to her. She still wouldn’t take it. She twisted and turned, avoiding the nipple, screaming as though she were in pain.

Sick with fear, I sat and stared into space. I couldn’t help her. Whatever she needed, I couldn’t give it to her.