The Midwife of Hope River

When I trudge out to the barn with a headache the size of Lake Michigan, I’m surprised to find Moonlight licking a small miniature of herself. With the events of the last few days, her delivery was the last thing on my mind.

“Bitsy!” I scream. Moonlight looks over at me and then turns back to her calf. “Bitsy!” I yell. “Bitsy!”

My friend slips through the barn door and leans with me against the side of the wooden stall. It’s another female and she’s already nursing, butting her little black-and-white head into Moonlight’s udder.

We name her Sunny.

Bad News

“Bitsy,” I ask. “Do you know much about calves and mother cows? I mean, are we supposed to start milking right away or wait until Moonlight’s supply is established? This is something I didn’t think of.” We are washing up the midday meal dishes, each of us in her own world.

“You could ask Mr. Hester. Maybe he would have an old veterinary book you could borrow. Why don’t you ride Star over the mountain?” I take a big breath and let it out slowly. Maybe she just wants to get rid of me. Is she also hungover from the blackberry wine? Or is she just so weighted with grief that silence is the only dark place that soothes her?

At the top of the ridge, where the sandstone cliffs drop off, I stop to wonder at the checkered hills, rectangles of emerald green, moss, and gold; pastures, woodlots, and fields of grain. It’s good to get away from the farm and the leaden weight of Bitsy’s sadness. Moving anywhere brings me back to my body. It doesn’t take away the grief, just puts it into perspective. Here and there black-and-white cattle, the same breed as Moonlight, graze, so small in the distance they look like toys. Far off, there’s the faint whistle of a train.

Thirty years ago, this was virgin forest, thick with huge poplar and oak, maple and chestnut, spruce and fir, some over one hundred feet high. The industrialists scraped all that from the land with the coming of the railway. Now small farmers till the poor soil, eking a living out of the steep slopes and in the narrow hollows. Winding through the valley bottom in and out of the second-growth trees, the Hope River sparkles like beads of glass.

As Star and I come down the hill, I spy Hester shoveling manure out of a wagon, looking like a real farmer in blue denim overalls.

“Hi.” I slide off Star’s back and tie her to a tree. He glances over but doesn’t smile. Probably thinks I’m trouble on the way. “Moonlight had her calf last night.”

“Everything okay?” He stabs his pitchfork into the earth and wipes his face with a red bandanna. “You should have come for me.”

“I would have, but it happened in the middle of the night.” I don’t tell him that it happened in the middle of the night when Bitsy and I were half drunk and I forgot to go out to the barn and check on her. “The calf’s beautiful, black and white like Moonlight. A female! She’s eating and nursing, but I realized I never asked you if I should start milking her now or wait? Do you have anything I could read, maybe an old textbook?”

“Let’s go in. I have something to show you.” He doesn’t answer my question, so I figure he’s going to give me a pamphlet or old text on animal husbandry.

Inside the shadowy kitchen, I pump water while he washes up. For a change, the counters are clean and there are no dirty dishes in the porcelain sink. When Hester returns from upstairs, sweat free, his hair combed down, wearing a short-sleeved blue work shirt under his overalls, he hands me yesterday’s copy of the Liberty Times. I don’t have to wonder what he wants me to read; the headlines scream everything: COAL BARON FOUND STRANGLED IN HIS OWN HOME.

“Shit!” I swear, then bite my tongue. I don’t usually use such foul language.

I read the first paragraph aloud. “The body of William MacIntosh, owner of MacIntosh Consolidated Mines, was discovered by a neighbor, Mrs. Dyke of 140 High St., Liberty, around nine Friday morning, a rope around his neck . . .”

I toss the newspaper on the table. “I can’t finish this.”

Hester fills me in. “The reporter says MacIntosh was found in the dining room with a rope around his neck. There was a chair turned over, but it’s unclear if he took his own life or was murdered. There’s no note. The death is under investigation.”

“Shit,” I say again, this time without cringing. “You think it was Thomas?”

Hester shrugs. “The night before he died, remember, there was that complaint to the sheriff’s office that a black man was standing outside the MacIntosh home yelling for William to come out. And listen to this.” He straightens the paper and reads aloud for my benefit, “Sheriff Hardman is also investigating a related missing-person case. Mrs. Katherine MacIntosh and the couple’s young son were reported missing three days prior to her husband’s death. Readers with any knowledge of either event are instructed to call the sheriff’s office immediately. Withholding information in a capital murder case could be construed as collusion.”

“Shit! Shit!” I don’t seem to be able to control my expletives. “What the hell do we do now? Bitsy and I have been to the Wildcat Mine twice, asked around, but no one’s seen Thomas, and it isn’t like him to go away like this. If he isn’t at Mary’s funeral service tomorrow, we’ll be really worried. Do you think he did it?”

Daniel Hester goes to the sink and pours each of us a glass of cold water. “Drink this.”

I’m pulling at the roots of my hair. “Could Thomas have killed William?” I ask again.

“A man might lose control if he thought his mother was thrown down the stairs by her inebriated employer.”

“But Thomas . . . he isn’t like that. I don’t think he is, anyway. And should we tell Hardman we know what happened to Katherine? She didn’t just disappear, she went home to her mother in Baltimore to escape her drunken husband. If we withhold, we could be in trouble.” My mind jumps from one thing to another like oil in a hot skillet.

“Take a deep breath,” Hester orders. I try, but it’s more like a gulp of air. “We should wait,” he goes on, “until we talk to Thomas, get all the information, hear his story. In the military you get a feeling for men, which ones will go off like a loose cannon and which you can trust. If Thomas did kill MacIntosh, the asshole deserved it.”

An hour later, I find Bitsy sitting on our front steps, stroking Emma’s head and staring into some sorrowful space two feet in front of her. I hand her the copy of the Liberty Times. Her reaction surprises me.