Free Dunaway's Crossing by Nancy Brandon

with sweat. The best thing for her, under the circumstances, was to rest in her rocking chair, which she couldn’t do because Ralph made her leave it, in the front yard of all places. The neighbors would surely think she’d gone batty.
    Without the rocker, Netta decided to take a walk around the cabin to calm her nerves, and that helped a bit, but the stench of the outhouse and the harsh summer sunshine drove her back indoors. Finally, she sat on a straight-backed wooden chair, the one that wobbled the least, and took a few deep breaths.
    She rubbed her rounded belly, a habit she’d developed over the past few months, a kind of tacit signal to her baby that all would be well. When she’d reached the three-month milestone, she wept for joy, with relief that she’d finally have that beautiful child of her dreams. Now, at seven and a half months, she found herself stuck in the middle of nowhere without even her husband, the only person she would trust to deliver her baby.
    Netta held her feet up in front of her. The ride to the country and walk outside had exacerbated her swollen feet so that now the tops of them puffed like half-baked loaves out of her slippers, the only shoes she could still wear. Ralph always told her to put her feet up, but if she lay down on that cot, she might not be able to get up by herself. Instead, she pushed the other wooden chair around the table so that the two chairs faced each other. Then she rummaged through a box of housewares until she found her book, Baroness Orczy’s The Elusive Pimpernel , a birthday gift from Ralph. Sitting in one chair with her feet in the other, she resolved to ignore the hard seat and focus on whether Chauvelin would succeed in tricking Sir Percy Blakeney in returning to France. She never fancied this kind of romantic fiction. She much preferred an Edith Wharton novel, but the closest library was twenty miles away in Hawkinsville, and its collection was sparse. Buying new books required a trip to Macon, which was impossible for her these days.
    The swelling in her feet subsided a bit, but she doubted they’d ever look the same again. Apparently, the fluid in them had traveled to her bladder because she was about to pop. Of course, lately that need arose hourly. As she tensed her muscles and crossed her legs, her eyes widened in alarm. She could never use that putrid outhouse once, much less a dozen times a day. What would she do?
    She tried to read more of the novel, but the building pressure inside her ruined her concentration. Still, she ignored the urgency in her bladder until her belly ached. Shutting her book, she whispered a curse on her husband, then pushed herself out of the chair, shuffled to the door, and waddled down the cement block steps. The sun had lowered itself in the sky, but the temperature had dropped little. That outhouse would be both stinky and stifling. She’d just have to hold her breath while she was in there.
    As she neared the rickety wooden structure, its emanating odor withered her resolve. She stopped, considered the alternative for a moment, and then turned toward the lake, just down a slight embankment. At the sound of water lapping the edge, Netta thought she would wet herself, but she held on long enough to remove her underclothes and find a bush thick enough to squat behind. It would be just my luck for Bea Dot to arrive at this moment , she thought as she hiked up her skirt and held the fabric in her fist. With her other hand, she grasped the trunk of the bush for balance and squatted. She’d never felt such simultaneous relief and shame. Here she was, a graduate of St. Vincent’s Academy, former secretary of the churchwomen’s guild, and wife of Pineview’s only physician, urinating out in the open into a country lake. Her mother would just die.
    When she finished, she put her underclothes back on, and just before turning to go back to the camp house, she spied a large black turtle sitting on a nearby log, staring at her.