Raintree County (71 page)

—I think it's come, Johnny.

—You mean——

—The pain. I felt it all night.

—I'll go for the doctor, he said, smiling to show an assurance that he didn't feel.

She lay without speaking and stared at him, her eyes dilated and expressionless.

—Now don't worry, honey, he said. Having a baby's the most natural thing in the world.

The words gagged him. She didn't say anything but rolled her head away, staring at nothing.

He dressed hurriedly and called the Negro girls.

—Now, Bessie, he said to the more intelligent one, you look after your mistress until I come back. I want you to stay in the room with her. Don't leave her.

—Yes, sir.

—And, Soona, you run any errands that are necessary. I'm going for the doctor.

In the latter stage of Susanna's pregnancy, he had finally persuaded her to see a doctor whose house was in the northern part of Freehaven, almost a mile away.

As he rode through the pale dawn, all things seemed strange to him. He beheld a world that no man ought to see, a world of gray streets, houses, yards. Sleep had fixed batlike on this scene and sucked it bloodless. Dawn beat around it in a lonely tide, trying to engulf it to all eternity. All things seemed alien to him, devoid of relevance, drawn back to namelessness.

There was no other person in the Square as he passed through, the horse's hooves echoing off the blank faces of the business fronts. No man ought to behold this world devoid of human faces and meanings. No man ought to see the discarded husk of this huge stage, after the actors and audience had gone home.

Yes, all things were strange in this dawn. But strangest of all was himself, a bearded, haggard young man, shivering in a thin coat, riding as if his foolish haste could change the thing that had come to pass. The tide of years had stranded him on this bleak shore of morning, and he couldn't say how he had come here. He only knew that he was afraid and desperately alone.

There could no longer be concealments and evasions. A new life pressed against the gates of time. The enormous mystery in which Raintree County floated like an island in oceanic dawn had sent another wanderer to the shore of Names, Boundaries, and Events. It had come from Unspace and Untime. It was as old as the world, and yet it would be called a child. It had woven into its dark fabric the memories of ages. It had never forgotten anything.

No, whatever it was, it had never forgotten anything. And it was
necessary that it be received and seen and that its paternity be acknowledged and that it be given a name.

It was gray morning when Johnny reached the house that he was hunting. He knocked a long time at the front door. A woman opened.

—Is Doctor Howard in?

—No, the woman said. I'm sorry. He was called out to the country. He left an hour ago.

The woman suggested that Johnny might ride out and find the doctor and take him directly to Susanna. She told him how to reach the place, which was close to Moreland.

—You'll probably catch him on the way back, she said. Since it's her first baby, she may not have it for a while. I think you've got plenty of time. It might be a false labor.

Johnny thanked her and rode off. He cut through the outskirts of Freehaven to the familiar road east. The sun was up when he passed the Home Place. He felt a little foolish riding by and hoped that neither T. D. nor Ellen had seen him.

At the house near Moreland, he found that the doctor had left an hour earlier and had taken the road north, ostensibly to call on someone before returning home. Johnny rode some distance up the road, making inquiries, but without success.

He turned around and rode hard back to Moreland and turned for Freehaven. As he neared the Home Place, he made a sudden decision. He turned in, rode up to the back gate, dismounted, and went to T. D.'s Office. There was a sign on the door:

Have went to town. Be back in the afternoon.
T. D. Shawnessy

The house was empty like the Office.

He galloped the horse all the way back into town. It was already ten o'clock. To his surprise, he kept passing people, more and more people as he neared the outskirts of Freehaven. He tried to remember if it was a holiday. The street into the Square was full of vehicles.

When he reached the Square, he looked around him, vaguely surprised to see that the empty mask had been filled with life. Apparently most of the County had come in for the day. He tied up the horse to the hitching rail and began looking for members of his family.

Almost immediately, he saw Ellen and T. D. in the middle of a group of citizens. T. D.'s hands were clasped behind his back, his chin was up, he was talking with animation, though no one was listening very closely except Ellen.

Johnny motioned to Ellen, who left the group. He started to tell her what had happened and explained how he had been unable to get the doctor.

—I wonder if you and Pa could come right over, Mamma. I should tell you that Susanna doesn't want T. D. and you to—to have to help. She's been—well—a little upset. She may seem a bit strange—but if you could come over in a little while——

—Why, sure, we'll be right over, Johnny, Ellen said. My, you picked a bad day!

Then for the first time in hours, Johnny looked about him with seeing eyes. The Square was packed with people. A band was striking up somewhere. Everyone was talking, gesturing, laughing. Businessmen had left their counters and were standing in the street. Knots of citizens grew thicker until around the telegraph window at the station north of the Square they were a solid mass of heads.

—Say, what's going on anyway? Johnny asked.

—Haven't you heard? Ellen said. They've fired on Fort Sumter.

The mythical words had come at last. And with these words, he knew, as all men did, that an era was done. These few words had slain an old republic.

A throng of men and women marched into the Square behind a band. They were singing:

—Blow ye the trumpet, blow

The gladly-solemn sound.

And indeed, everyone looked jubilant. Even T. D. kept smiling from sheer excitement.

—Well, he said, after he had come over and learned Johnny's predicament, you picked a solemn day, my boy. This means war as sure as anything, though I don't think it can possibly last long. Perhaps this was the only way to settle the matter.

—The Southerners have made a big mistake, a man said. This was all we needed. Now we'll go down there and beat the time out of 'em.

—Ain't no two ways about it, a man said. They fired on the flag.

—Come over in about ten minutes, Pa, Johnny said. I'm going home now.

He picked his way through the thickening crowd to the alley on the south side of the Square. The old sick anxiety coursed through him stronger than ever as he approached the house.

Inside, he met Soona on the stair coming down.

—Nothin's happened yet, Mistuh Johnny. She's just havin' the pains, tha's all.

Johnny went up stairs, and sitting down beside Susanna, took her hand and gently broke the news to her that T. D. and Ellen were coming.

To his surprise, she said only,

—It doesn't matter who comes.

She clung to his hand and watched him with frightened eyes. Her face was pale; her deep lips were deadpale. Her hair looked coarse and lifeless like an animal's. Her eyes were dilated by fear and pain. She seemed a stranger to him. Her suffering had stricken off her beauty, her sophistication, and her stately name.

With sad wonderment, he realized that this moment was indirectly the consequence of a golden afternoon beneath the tree on the shore of Lake Paradise. Then too she had lost her name, her clothing, her sophistication. Then too she had been wholly woman and without shame. Now for this candor, she must have an equal candor. For this namelessness, she must suffer the suffering without a name.

Like a rhythm of waters was the tidal recurrence of the birth contractions as he sat and watched with her. From the fetid swamp of life beneath the time and space of Raintree County, dark rivers flowed, dark waters bore their burden to the shores of time. He was filled with pity as he watched her lying there exhausted, waiting for the empty pool of her anguish to fill up again. But she hardly made a sound. She had the same expression in her eyes that he had sometimes seen there when he discovered her walking in her sleep.

Johnny was relieved when T. D. and Ellen came in and took charge of the situation.

—Now, John, you stop worrying, T. D. said. Having a baby's the most natural thing in the world.

Susanna didn't have her baby that day. Toward night the pain lessened, and T. D. pronounced it a case of false labor. He and
Ellen decided to stay for the night. All night and the following day, which was Saturday, the vigil continued.

—I don't know what the trouble is, T. D. said. She ain't quite made up her mind yet to have this baby.

Then about midnight the strange old tide in Susanna's body began to reach the full.

—I think her time is here, T. D. said.

—Johnny, I think it'd be best if you waited downstairs, Ellen said. You'd just be in the way, and besides it might be hard on you. Bessie and Soona and T. D. and I are enough to handle this.

Pacing back and forth in the empty first floor of the house was also hard on Johnny. He heard unidentifiable sounds from upstairs, crisp orders from T. D., exclamations from the Negro girls. The periods of silence were worst of all. Now and then Bessie or Soona would come down the stair to get something from the kitchen. Johnny would stand, haggardly watching the descending face to see what he could read there.

—Miss Susanna sure is brave, Soona said once. She don't hardly call out at all, poor thing.

Later, however, the cries from upstairs were louder; and shortly after that, his mother appeared at the head of the stair.

—It won't be long now, Johnny, she said. She's had the breaking of the waters.

Back to Johnny's mind there flashed a scene from years ago. An old song throbbed in his brain with sad, insistent rhythm:

I had a dream de udder night,

When eb'ryting was still;

I thought I saw Susanna dear,

A-comin' down de hill. . . .

Like yesterday, he remembered the day he had driven into Danwebster with T. D. and Ellen and had stood before the General Store, listening to a woman cry in an upstairs room, while men discussed slavery, compromises, and the western lands. Now thirteen years had passed. He had drifted down the incredible great labyrinth of time for thirteen years. And it was strange to think that without that elder scene, this scene could never have been. That old scene had been the parent of this scene, that child had been father
of this man, and every word spoken before the General Store, the haunting westward song, the Doniphants and their infant boy (lost child, bearing a name of Raintree County toward purple mountains), the fat bulk of Grampa Peters, the newspapers, and the election—all had been necessary. But who then could have charted Johnny Shawnessy's voyage on the webbed waters of the Republic? Who could have guessed the reunions and farewells that were to bring him and the Republic to this perilous day? So the waters of life were breaking, mystical waters, on the shores of Raintree County in vast propulsions and withdrawals, bringing events and souls to birth.

Dark questionings, suspicions, memories coursed through Johnny's thoughts. Alas! for guilty seed brought overseas in old migrations! Alas for the inscrutable Swamp from which had risen a stately, mongrel City! Did anything guarantee that each time a woman's womb became fruitful it would give back a repetition of the parent forms? What was the child of a man and a woman?

Johnny Shawnessy stood in darkness, and the darkness had the head of a sphinx, and from its moving lips the riddle of life was propounded. This riddle couldn't be solved except with a cry of pain in the night, with a priestlike laying-on of hands, with a violation of beauty.

O! Susanna,

Do not cry for me;

I come from . . .

He was slowly aware that the moans and cries from upstairs had ceased. A silence hung over him batlike, descended, clung to him, enveloped him in horror. Cold sweat drenched him. His heart beat violently. He wanted to run up the stair, he wanted to force his way past the watchers in the room, he wanted to tear the hideous veil of his fear and behold whatever it was that had caused this silence.

—Johnny!

It was Ellen's voice. His mother appeared at the head of the stair. She leaned over. She had something in her arms wrapped in a blanket. He heard a thin, piping cry.

He began to walk up the stair, trying to see his mother's face in the darkness. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

—You're the father of a fine little boy, Ellen said.

At the head of the stair, he plainly saw his mother's face. What
he saw there reassured him. Tears started to his eyes. He looked down at the thing she cradled in her arms.

All that he could see for certain was that it was red and raw like the other babies he had seen in his time and that it had the imprint of humanity on its little ancient face.

—Magnificent child! T. D. said, coming out of Susanna's room. And the little mother is all right. Came through fine. There's nothing to worry about.

They all went back into the room where Susanna lay, her eyes closed in deep exhaustion.

—I think this calls for a little prayer, T. D. said.

Johnny, Ellen, and the two Negro girls bowed their heads. The baby in Ellen's arms went on crying. T. D. closed his eyes, leaned back, extended his arm, and said,

—Dear Father in Heaven, we ask Thee to bless this little child who is this day born unto this young man and woman. May he grow to manhood in a land free from the troubles with which Thou, in Thy all-seeing and beneficent judgment, hast seen fit to visit upon this poor distracted nation. May . . .

The baby went on crying. The Negro girls and Ellen joined in. T. D. went on praying. Susanna slept like one dead.