Free JEWEL by BRET LOTT Page B

from me and off the quilt, dropped to the floor, her nye-nye tight in one hand. She backed out the room, and I heard Wilman say from just outside the door, “Annie, let’s go out and we’ll play kick the can, hey? ” then the shuffle of feet down the stairs.
    “This one be the quickest yet, you think? ” Cathe ral’d said, smiling now.
    I’d started to nod, but the pain swept into me, mindless pain that wouldn’t even let me answer her, and she’d taken my hand, squeezed it hard. I closed my eyes, felt her settle herself next to me on the bed.
    Id sent Burton first to Cathe ral’s, then to find his father, the crew working its way through the woods out past Jacob’s Ferry Road, a good four miles from Cathe ral’s. I hadn’t counted on them showing up for quite a while, maybe even after this baby was born, new life in here a giant surprise for Leston when he drove in. Then I heard the engine on one of the trucks moving up the road outside, the slam shut of doors, the hurried banging upstairs.
    I opened my eyes, saw the two of them moving into the room, Leston, hat in hand, eyebrows furrowed, Burton just behind him, his hair wet, cheeks flushed. Cathe ral stood, moved away and to the washstand beneath the one window, her back to us, and Leston came toward me. He let go the hat with one hand, and touched my cheek. He smiled, and I could smell gunpowder and pine tar and engine oil all at once.
    I said, “What time is it? ” and heard how weak my voice had become, a clouded whisper in the room.
    Cathe ral looked over her shoulder at Burton, who hesitated only a moment after he’d met her eyes.
    “Momma, ” he said, “I’ll be outside if you need anything else.” He crossed his arms, held them tight to his chest. I nodded, said, “My big man.”
    He looked down, embarrassed, but then smiled, said, “Take care, Momma, ” and he was gone.
    “It’s five-thirty, ” Leston said, both hands at his hat again, and the old pictures of bearing my other children started coming in, Leston awkward and delicate when Cathe ral came, as if he were a guest come to visit the near-dead in his own home, the shapes in the hard stucco of the ceiling in this room, shapes I turned into mountains and foreign countries and the grown-up faces of the children I was bearing as I lay here, my fingernails digging into the pine headboard above me until blood came from beneath my nails with the last few pushes, each child I had James and Billie Jean in the cabin on Rosehill Road, Wilman and Burton and Anne right here as Cathe ral surrendered them to me, wiped clean and swaddled, ready for my breast.
    “You be passed out for a time, Miss Jewel, ” Cathe ral said, still at the washstand, and then I realized what Leston had said, Five-thirty.
    I’d sent Burton a little past one to Cathe ral’s.
    “Five-thirty? ” I whispered, and Leston seemed to move back from me, still smiling.
    “We would have been here a touch earlier, but Burton lost himself in the woods for a time.” He paused, swallowed. “How soon before this one? ” he said, and he touched my cheek again, this time his fingers there for only an instant before he brought them back to the hat.
    “Only the Lord know, ” Cathe ral said. She came back to the bed, touched her wrist to my forehead. “Right now, Mr. Hilburn, you be a better help to God and his mercies you head on downstairs. I let you know what going on up here.”
    “Oh, ” he said, then, “Fine.” He almost seemed to bow, and backed out the room. “Take care, ” he said.
    I smiled, nodded as he pulled the door closed behind him.
    Cathe ral took her hand away from me. I said, “I never passed out before.”
    Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine as she sat down next to me again. She said, “Every birthing different, Miss Jewel. You know that.”
    By nine, nothing had changed, every five minutes or so huge gusts of pain pushed through me, my belly separate from me then, some white-hot curse and blessing at