Free Still House Pond by Jan Watson Page B

respectful, though, tipping his hat when John introduced them and answering her questions thoughtfully.
    Evidently, Mrs. Morton had lost three babies in the past. Mr. Morton told Copper he had heard from kin about the lady who caught babies on Troublesome Creek and so had come in search of her. It was a smart move on his part and unusual. Most folks still waited until labor was well under way to seek help.
    Copper prided herself on making some inroads into that old-fashioned way of doing things. Generally it was another woman who told her of a sister or a daughter or a friend who was newly in the family way. Copper would take the information and start preconfinement visits. People were learning they could trust her, except for the Stills. She could stand in the middle of the week and see both ways to Sunday on that one.
    The Stills had a right to be upset. The law, under the direction of a traveling nurse with the state board of health located in Bowling Green, had forced Adie Still to leave her family, after all. But as Copper saw it, the Stills’ anger was futile and misdirected. It was not her fault, nor the law’s, that Adie had an active, contagious disease. It was nobody’s fault that the traveling nurse, backed up by the sheriff, did not believe Adie could be properly quarantined from her family unless she left that family. Adie’s husband, Isa, had a reputation and it was not a good one. The only neighbor he had not feuded with over property lines or straying livestock was John.
    Naively, Copper had thought she could help the whole family by providing a safe place for Adie until the baby was born. She had imagined herself taking care of Adie and her household until Adie had her baby and regained her strength. So she volunteered the little house and her services, but the Stills were not appreciative. Clannish people, Copper mused. Though they had lived on Troublesome Creek as long as she could remember, she had rarely seen them.
    One day in late April when she was shopping at the dry goods store in town, she’d spotted Adie through the store’s plate-glass window. Her husband walked ahead of her, a long-handled pistol in a holster on his hip, a row of silver-tipped bullets on the belt. The oldest boy walked shoulder to shoulder with his father. The barrel of the boy’s shotgun pointed toward the ground. Adie, with a sack of sugar on her shoulder and a five-pound bucket of lard in her hand, struggled to keep up. A string of stairstep children followed her like ducks. Adie was obviously expectant. She was carrying the baby high, and it stuck out round as a pumpkin on her thin frame. To Copper’s practiced eye, the woman looked ill. Of course she had to visit the Still house—and she didn’t wait for an invitation.
    John had warned her not to get involved with their reclusive neighbors. “The only way to get along with a Still is to stay away from a Still.”
    â€œHow could I not offer my help to Adie?” Copper had demanded of him.
    â€œNo good will come of it,” he had responded angrily.
    Maybe John was right, but she truly had no choice. Midwifery was her ministry, and she could not pick and choose to whom she would minister. She had discovered her calling while living in Lexington with her first husband. Life in the city was stifling to Copper. Playing the socialite wife of an up-and-coming doctor bored her to tears. She had a beautiful home with servants at her beck and call, lovely gowns, and too many fancy hats and pairs of gloves to count, but she was terribly unhappy. In the midst of such plenty she yearned for more.
    Her unhappiness had spilled over into her relationship with Simon. She wanted him to bring her back to the mountains. It seemed to her she’d left herself behind when they married. She’d become like a shell lying useless on the beach—pretty on the outside but empty within.
    Thankfully, her husband had seen to the root of her