Free Shadow in Hawthorn Bay by Janet Lunn Page A

other side of the road untethered?” he bellowed. “She’s calved in the swamp and I can’t find the goddamn calf nowheres.”
    “Please, John, don’t swear,” Mrs. Anderson whimpered.
    John Anderson let loose a stream of words only a few of which Mary had ever heard before, and those only by chance. Mrs. Anderson sniffed. Sim roared with laughter. “I don’t need no lip outta you, Simeon Anderson. Git yourself—and you others too—out there and find that calf.” His father reached across the table, lifted the whisky jug to his mouth, gulped from it as though it held spring water, turned on his heel, and left the house. Simeon, Luke, and Henry followed.
    Still holding the whisky Sim had given her, Mary stared, mesmerized, at Mrs. Anderson drooping in her chair. From the corner the cat mewed again.
    “Would you mind fetching me a drop from the jug, honey? I been feeling poorly since the baby come.”
    Mary took the woman the pewter cup. The mewing in the corner grew louder.
    “Oh, do see to baby.” Mrs. Anderson lifted her hand to push back the lank, fair hair fromher face, then sank back into her chair. Mary realized, with shock, that what she had thought was a cat was the baby.
    He was in a box in the corner behind Mrs. Anderson’s chair. As she looked at him Mary saw the grey mist of death around him. She sighed. He was thin and as blue-white as skimmed milk. He was wet and dirty and wrapped only in an old matted shawl. Flies clustered around his face.
    “Och, the poor wee
uan,”
murmured Mary as she lifted the baby from the box. “Come, come,” she crooned. She rocked him until he had stopped his wailing, too weak, too ill to go on—too weak, too ill to raise his fist more than halfway to his mouth.
    “He must be hungry,” she told Mrs. Anderson indignantly, “and he needs a clean cloth. Because he is dying is no reason to leave him like this.”
    “Don’t talk like that, honey. I don’t know what’s to be done. We allus gets Miz Whitcomb to come. She knows. She knows what.…”Mrs. Anderson closed her eyes, her voice trailed off into a thin snore, and her head fell back against the chair.
    Rocking the baby on her arm, Mary searched the cabin in vain for a clean cloth. “Nor is she likely to have a drop of milk in her to give the poor wee mite,” she mutteredangrily, “and had she one it would surely be all whisky.” She opened all the crocks and jugs in the cupboard, hoping to find milk. “For,” she reasoned, “they have a cow.”
    “Please, miss.”
    Mary jumped, whirled around, and all but dropped the baby. It was Henry. He looked scared but he stood his ground.
    “Would you send us all into the arms of Auld Clutie before he has made ready for us in hell?” she cried.
    “Please, miss,” he repeated, “Emily’s freshened if you wants milk fer baby.”
    “I do.” Mary nodded and Henry ran off. He was back in a few minutes with a small crockery bowl full of warm milk. Mary dipped her finger into it then put the finger in the baby’s mouth. He sucked it feebly. She did it two or three times more, then he turned his face, too tired to suck.
    “Henry, the bairnie is needing water and a nappie. Is there a scrap of cloth we might get?”
    Without a word Henry went to a box under a bed in a corner of the room and brought out a rag. He ran outside and came back with it dripping wet.
    “Is there not a wee dishie?”
    He looked puzzled.
    “A dishie like this with the milk in it.”
    He went to the cupboard, brought out awooden trencher, was off again, and brought it back full of water. Mary took the baby closer to the fire where there were fewer bugs. She took off his dirty rags and sponged him off as best she could. He scarcely made a sound.
    Henry brought another rag which Mary wrapped around the baby for a diaper. She did not want to put him back into the same dirty shawl in which she had found him but she could find no other clean cloth in the entire cabin. Tight-jawed, she