Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 34

In the inner room, only two of the car interior lights were lit. The other two, headlamps and floodlight on the tripod over the birthing stool, were still dark. There was no fire in the fireplace, and to Jeebee the air seemed cool after being in the smithy. But by the light of the lamps Merry’s face and arms gleamed with a sheen of perspiration.

“I’ve had the enema,” she said, “about half an hour ago. I’m all cleaned out and ready. I’ve been resting a bit, but help me up now. As I say, I’ve got to walk.”

He moved to her automatically, but his mind was still adjusting to the fact that the baby had decided to put in an appearance three days ahead of schedule. He was grateful to Merry for being able to think for both of them in this first moment—for him of disbelief that the moment had actually arrived.

He took her hands and assisted her up off the bed. She could, he knew, have made it to her feet herself, but from here on she should save her strength as much as possible. The walking was good and necessary for her. Standing up from the bed was an unnecessary waste of strength.

She began to walk. “I’ve been having contractions for a while now,” she said. “They were about eight minutes apart to start. Lasting about a minute.”

Jeebee turned to a pad and pencil he had laid ready on a wall shelf, the pencil from his backpack, the pad made of paper scavenged from the ranch. He made a note of the time.

“How fast are they now?” he said with the pencil still in his hand. He looked at the faithful old watch with its hundred-year battery, still on his now sun-browned right wrist.

“Time them,” she answered, “Now. And… now!”

“Six minutes, fourteen seconds,” said Jeebee, looking up from the watch. “How long did you wait before calling me?”

“Not long. Calm down,” said Merry.

Jeebee made himself take a deep breath, “I’m calm—calmer,” he said, “I think.”

“Good,” said Merry. The ending of the word was a little tight between her teeth as a contraction hit her.

“Is there anything at all I can do?”

“You can walk along with me,” said Merry. “I’m a little clumsy.”

Jeebee walked with her.

For the next six hours Merry walked, and intermittently rested, sitting on the side of the bed. Jeebee checked for probably the twentieth time that he had triple sheets below her. Triple sheets with a plastic tarp between each. And he checked both bed and birthing area for cleanliness again. Everything seemed to be the way it should be. Above the birthing stool was the tripod with the crossbar that Merry would be able to hold to during the actual birth.

Her contractions gradually increased, and although she continued to walk, with only short rests, Jeebee himself became worried that she was spending too much of her strength this way. After six hours she gave in to his suggestions and agreed to sit on the edge of the bed for a good fifteen minutes.

The contractions had speeded up now. They were coming more often and lasting longer. They had both thoroughly absorbed the idea that a first birth would be slow, but secretly Jeebee had expected things to happen faster than this. He made an effort of will to put a damper on his imagination, which was threatening to envision all sorts of complications. He reminded himself that now was far too early to start imagining that sort of trouble.

“Sit down, yourself,” said Merry from the bed. “You’ve been on your feet as much as I have.”

“I don’t have a baby inside me fighting to get out,” Jeebee grumbled, still standing in front of her. “Besides we’ve got to keep that bed and stool area sterile.”

But he sat down on the floor at her feet, anyway, crossing his legs and telling himself that she had enough to deal with herself, she did not need to put up with his nervousness.

After a while she got up and walked again, for a little while, and then sat down once more. The contractions were now down to four or five minutes apart and stronger. Jeebee made a note of it while she was resting and before he sat down again himself.

The truth of the matter was he did not really feel like sitting down. The walking was nothing. He was used to walking all day on snowshoes or in his boots if necessary. But with the tension added on, he found a moment of sitting down was welcome, even for him, and certainly it masked his concern for her. He strove to exhibit the same matter-of-fact way in which she seemed to be taking matters.

It’s being helpless, not being able to do anything, he told himself. Men aren’t built to be helpless. Of course, women aren’t either. No creature is.

His concentration on her was so exclusive that he was not aware of the rest of the room. He was standing over her about 5:00 p.m., as she was sitting on the edge of the bed again, and without warning a wedge-shaped, furry head suddenly pushed past his left leg, plunging its nose toward the very center of everybody’s attention.

Wolf had appeared, and evidently Jeebee had failed to latch the inner door. In any case, Wolf had now slipped in without either Jeebee or Merry noticing it. Once inside it was inevitable that, with the active curiosity he had always shown, and that the books had told Jeebee was a prime characteristic of wolf behavior, he had tried to get in on the act.

“Wolf—” Jeebee shouted—and at that moment Merry’s water broke.

The short single shiftlike garment she had made to wear during the birth process was up above her knees. Her amniotic fluid stained the sheet and some even splashed onto Wolf’s intruding face. He disappeared like a flash of lightning, jerking backward out of Jeebee’s sight.

“Are you all right—” Jeebee began to Merry.

“Yes, I’m all right!” said Merry. “You might get me something to clean up a little with—and get Wolf out!”

Jeebee reached to the foot of the bed where he had piled a number of freshly laundered and boiled small pieces of cloth somewhere in size between a washcloth and a towel. He handed one to Merry and, now having a second to spare, glanced over his shoulder. Wolf was clear across the cave, as far as the small dimensions of the cave would let him be, down on the floor licking at his paws and using the dampened paws to scrub at his face, washing it like a cat.

“Get out of here!” said Jeebee. He remembered that a better way of talking to Wolf was, in effect, in Wolf’s own language, essentially. He snarled at the other. And the snarl was possibly one of his best efforts.

Wolf stopped washing his face and looked up. Merry snarled, too, and there was no doubt about the meaning behind Merry’s snarl.

Wolf got to his feet. After they had first met, it had taken Jeebee a few weeks to appreciate how expressive a wolf’s face and body could be. Now, Jeebee read absolute outrage in them. Wolf got to his feet and literally stamped toward the door, looking back over his shoulder with a snort and a facial expression that clearly said, “I don’t have to stand here and take this kind of treatment!”

He made a stiff-legged exit through the partially opened door into the lower room beyond. Jeebee turned back to Merry.

“Are you really all right?” Jeebee asked. “I could shut the door, but it’ll get awfully stuffy in here.”

“No,” said Merry, handing him back the cloth with which she had been cleaning herself. Jeebee threw it out past the tripod on to the open floor by the fireplace. There would be time to pick it up later. “He won’t bother me again.”

“No. He won’t!” Jeebee said, with feelings that had not reached that particular depth of sincerity since he had climbed up out of the root cellar where he had found canned food, and seen Wolf waiting, possibly with the intention of trying to take the food from him. He had been ready to kill Wolf then if he had to, and he found he was feeling almost as strongly about the other now. Undoubtedly, the moment and feeling would pass, but right now Jeebee was pure animal himself.

Jeebee told himself to forget Wolf. He was gone now. Being the practical sort of individual any wolf was, he had probably just curled up in the front room in his normal sleeping spot. Jeebee could forget about him and concentrate on important things. He turned back to the bed to strip the stained sheet and the first plastic underlayer from beneath it.

Merry got up and continued to walk. Jeebee walked with her for three or four minutes. Then a strong contraction stopped her. She sat down on the edge of the bed once more.

At twelve minutes after 7:00 p.m. she had two even stronger contractions, one and a half minutes apart, and then went almost immediately into contractions one minute apart and lasting a full minute.

From that moment on, time went by in a blur for Jeebee, and he was sure the same thing was happening to Merry. She sat on the edge of the bed and the contractions speeded up. He checked occasionally, as the words of the books he had memorized had taught him, using two fingers to see if the cervix, a little less than four inches inside the vagina, had opened to its full aperture. So far, it had not; nor had its ring of muscle thinned in stretching, to the point where the passageway was completely open and free for the baby to emerge.

By some time after 10:45 p.m. (Jeebee’s note on it was scribbled so badly that later he was unable to read what he had written), Merry’s contractions became very strong indeed, lasting a minute and a half.

She sat continuously on the edge of the bed now, and was having a strong urge to push at the end of the contractions. It was strange, thought Jeebee, because Merry knew what he was telling her better than he knew it himself, but the urge to push down in her was so close to being on automatic and out of her conscious control that it helped her to have him keep cautioning her against it.

“No, don’t push. Not yet,” he said, again and again.

At first, when he said this, she had nodded, but after a bit she stopped doing even that. She was panting like a puppy now, to keep from pushing, because she knew, as Jeebee also had learned, that if she pushed at this time, she might tear membranes, which would mean bleeding and possible infection.

Sometime—Jeebee later estimated it as being almost midnight—the contractions had become very strong indeed; and reaching in to check the cervix, he could no longer feel it as a ring of muscle. It had thinned to the point where it would allow the downward passage of the baby. The road from the uterus was finally completely open, and the tips of his fingers at last felt something that could only be the crown of the baby’s head. Thank God, it was head-down!

It was time for Merry to move to the birthing stool. Jeebee carried her to it; for she was now exhausted from the labor. Her mouth was dry from the panting and he held a cup to her lips so she could take another of the small sips of water he had been giving her. She was very exhausted now, and she was just passing into the stage the childbirth books had warned about, called transition. That point at which the body shifts gears, giving up the labor of the cervix, which is now completely dilated. Merry looked at the end of her tether, worn-out, depressed, and desperate. She was past the point of being reasonable, and she glared at Jeebee.

“I’ve got to give up. This is all your fault. I’m never going to do it again.”

“It won’t be long now,” said Jeebee, “it won’t be long. Just hang in there a little while yet. You don’t want to stop now… ”

At this point she was shivering, and when Jeebee touched her, her skin was icy cold. He wrapped layers of blankets around her. Time moved on. Gradually, warmth began to return to her, and the period of depression passed.

Suddenly she had one great contraction that made her gasp. She had pushed involuntarily, and now Jeebee no longer encouraged her not to. From now on pushing was appropriate. Now, it only hurt her when she was building up pressure to push. This was as the childbirth books they had memorized had told them. When she actually pushed, the pain would go. Jeebee was to ask her about this afterward, and she would tell him, then, that she didn’t know if it had. She just hadn’t remembered.

She had a death grip on the crossbar, now almost hanging with all her weight from the tripod.

The baby descended still further. Now it was crowning, beginning to show its forehead at the enlarged entrance of the vagina. Jeebee was busy gently helping the opening, pulling back Merry’s body from around the emerging head.

Before his eyes, he saw the first of the miracles happen. The birthing books had warned that he might have to help position the baby, but this time at least, it was not necessary. Before his eyes the physical part of the head and the body behind it rotated by itself, so that the shoulders were now up and down vertically.

The head began to emerge, and Jeebee cupped it softly with his hand, supporting it and holding it back a little so that it would not come too fast and tear membranes in Merry’s body. With his other hand, the right hand, he continued to help pull back the body around the opening, and Merry pushed with all her strength, pushed and pushed…

It was at this moment, in just the flash of a second, that Jeebee saw Wolf once more back in the room. Wolf was just putting his shoulder down to shoulder-shove-and-roll on the stained blanket Jeebee had ripped off the bed earlier after Merry’s water bag burst. But Jeebee had no time to waste on Wolf now. All of his attention had to stay on Merry.

When he was once more free to flash a look in Wolf’s direction for another split second, he saw Wolf lying in watching position, paws crossed in front of him and his eyes taking in the whole process.

The head was all the way out now and Jeebee was still supporting it, kneeling and sitting on his heels so as to keep himself and the baby below Merry and the stool top. Suddenly, the lower shoulder emerged at last, and with that, everything suddenly began to move quickly.

Jeebee tried to keep the baby from coming too fast, but it came swiftly, nonetheless, now that the difficult parts of it were past the narrowest part of the opening passage.

Almost immediately it seemed he held the baby in both hands. He continued to sit on his heels, making sure he held the baby below Merry’s body and watching the umbilical cord to see if it was still pulsing.

It was. But as he watched, the pulsing gradually slowed and ceased.

Cradling the tiny naked figure in his left arm with his hand still half enclosing and supporting the head, he reached blindly back behind him to the foot of the bed and got one of the sterilized, boiled, still-damp cloths off the pile he had left there. With it, he gently cleaned the baby’s nose and mouth of mucus.

This was the point at which the books had called for suction to completely clear the nose and mouth of the newborn. But they had nothing of rubber or other elastic to make one. Jeebee put his mouth over the tiny nose and mouth and sucked gently. He felt only a touch on his tongue to tell him anything had come out. He spat sideways onto the plastic sheet.

As soon as the baby was able to breathe he took in a deep breath and uttered a tiny, immediate wail of a cry. Softly, with the cloth, Jeebee continued cleaning the rest of the little face. As soon as the baby’s eyes were uncovered they flashed about, incredibly blue.

With the flash of the eyes, something expanded powerfully in Jeebee, a silent explosion of emotion that he would have not believed possible, a connection of himself with this child of his he was holding.

He had identified his earlier feeling of protection with the moment he had been ready to kill Wolf to protect the food he had found. He changed his mind now. What he felt at this moment in protectiveness toward the infant in his hands was much greater. It faced outward, like an armed wall against the world and anything that might threaten his child.

He continued, wiping clean the little body.

It had been, on emergence from Merry, a plainly blue color, beneath a thin white covering that looked like nothing so much as cream cheese. It was a boy, Jeebee noticed for the first time. Now, unexpectedly, rapidly, it began—and this was the second miracle—to turn pink. Jeebee, cautiously supporting the baby with both hands now again, lifted him and laid him on Merry’s chest. Her arms came up wearily but immediately to enfold it, and to direct its head toward her left breast, which was closest. Immediately, instinctively, the baby found her nipple with his mouth and began to nurse.

For his first moment of relaxation from tension, as he watched the two of them, Jeebee began to realize that he was reeling from fatigue and emotional backwash from his emotional experience just now, which he suddenly realized had been foretold in the childbirth books. It had been his moment of instinctive bonding with his son. Now it would never leave him.

Jeebee stayed, kneeling where he was by the birthing stool, caught for a moment in a half daze, mesmerized by the timeless picture of Merry feeding her child. Then his sense of urgency jerked him out of the daze suddenly. There was still work for him to do. He looked at the bed now and located the scissors he had boiled, before he had laid them there on one of the boiled cloths; and next to them an adjoining cloth supporting two clean strips of rawhide cord, almost small enough to be fish line.

With one of these he tied off the cord about an inch from Merry’s skin, and then tied the other cord about an inch and a half beyond that. Then using the scissors from a sewing box they had found at the ranch house, he cut between the two ties and the baby was free.

He rose unsteadily, suddenly aware that he could hardly stand on his cramped leg muscles after having sat in a kneeling position so long. Blood flowed back into his legs.

Gently, he picked up Merry with the baby from the birthing stool and laid them both, just as they were, on the clean sheet he had exposed in that moment in which he had stripped the stained top one and the plastic sheet after Merry’s water had burst.

Merry accepted the move without seeming to notice it. She was half sitting up now, with double pillows between her and the head of the bed to support her back. She was still having mild contractions, and every so often, a small flow of red-stained fluid that Jeebee remembered was called lochia drained onto the sheet beneath her.

It had been in preparation for this that Jeebee had sandwiched several layers of plastic between alternate layer of sheets so that when the sheet became too dampened, he could clear it away down to another, dry one.

A moment later, as he watched, the afterbirth, slippery with blood, emerged. He wrapped it in plastic and put it aside on a high, overhead shelf, to be taken out later.

The baby stopped nursing and closed his eyes. Merry, who had been watching him, let her head loll back against the pillows with a sigh of happiness. Her baby was alternately feeding and staring about, his blue eyes flickering here and there, then closing as he seemed to doze for a short while, then waking to search for the nipple again and feed some more.

With one of the boiled cloths dampened in warm water, he cleaned the rest of the baby and wrapped him in the warmest and softest cloth he could find. Then he wrapped both the baby and Merry in their softest blanket.

He turned away to start to clean up. Little whimpering noises of the kind Wolf would make in certain social situations made him spin back. He had forgotten all about Wolf being there.

To his surprise, Wolf was slowly approaching Merry and the baby in the bed, in his most submissive and ingratiating of postures. His head was held low, his ears were back, his tail wagging, wolf-style, and he was making the little whimpering sounds of reassurance and promise of the best of all possible intentions.

Merry, totally exhausted but fully alert, snarled at him with surprising strength and intensity. The snarl was so reflexive and real that it startled Jeebee. He did not have to be a wolf himself to read it very clearly. Merry was a mother and Wolf was not going to get any closer to her baby.

Wolf stopped immediately and Jeebee, suddenly coming to his senses, woke up and moved toward him to throw him out, bodily, if necessary.

But Wolf was gone through the door before he had fully taken the first step toward him. This time, however, he did not leave with any show of temper, but rather with a quick self-effacement that was almost magical in its speed.

“Take him,” Merry said, lifting the baby from her body. “Would you bring me that chamber pot? My teeth are floating.”

Jeebee moved to take the baby from her.

“Carefully!” Merry’s voice was almost as sharp as when she had snarled at Wolf. Jeebee felt a momentary flicker of indignation, which was gone as quickly as it came, as he moved over to accept the baby into his arms. He had handled the baby carefully enough before Merry ever held him, he thought. But the thought remained unuttered.

“Oh,” said Merry, getting out of bed slowly and painfully. “And will you get me some food, now? I’m starving! And I want a large cup of water—and maybe five more after that.”

The chamber pot was handy, the cup and the water were available. Merry got back under the covers and took the baby back again. He had woken when he was passed to Jeebee, and when he came back to his mother he searched once more for her breast. Then she sighed happily, again. A very, very deep sigh.

Jeebee was busy bringing her sandwiches made by putting a slice of cold cooked beef between two slices of cheese. They had been hoarding some of the cheese against this moment. Merry bit into it voraciously.

“Do you know, when he suckles there’s no pain at all?” She spoke with her mouth full; but that was all right. It was all right, Jeebee thought, with the world.