The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

Chapter 65

227 Chapter 65 Dr. Cailleteau ignored the woman who was still screaming. His attention was elsewhere. “Hold that lamp up higher,” he commanded. The man—his shirt in tatters, his skin black as polished ebony, his face turned away from the woman—extended his arm holding the lantern as high as it would go. Dr. Cailleteau, holding the baby upside down by the ankles, hit him again on the buttocks. The infant’s lungs filled with air, and the grayish -blue tint disappeared from its face as its tiny yells filled the room. The woman stopped screaming and started to weep. A big smile broke across the man’s face, and he placed the lamp down on the table and hugged the woman lying on the bed. “You got yourself one fine baby boy,” Dr. Cailleteau said, handing the still-wailing newborn to the woman, who gently moved the man aside so she could clutch her baby to her breast. Dr. Cailleteau finished up with the afterbirth, wiped his hands on his apron, and packed his bag. These people could not pay him. Maybe one day, in the spring, he would find outside his back door a bushel of corn or a few loaves of bread or a dripping basket of still-flopping cat- fish or sacolet freshly caught from the bayou. That would be payment enough. Dr. Cailleteau wished, however, that Sally hadn’t left Cottoncrest. For years she had taken care of all the births for the blacks not only on the plantation and not only in Parteblanc but also at Little Jerusalem and wherever else in Petit Rouge Parish she was needed. Dr. Cailleteau had trained her well, but given what the Knights had done to Nimrod ’s cabin in Lamou and with the gossip about Sally and Marcus and Jenny’s disappearance having already spread, no Negress would want 228 to take her place, traveling alone across the parish in these dangerous times. Dr. Cailleteau pulled his pocket watch out, flipped open the top, noted the time, and then wound it again before putting it back into his vest. It was long past midnight. He was getting too old for this. Sighing as he left the tiny cabin, Dr. Cailleteau climbed back into his buggy for the fifteen-minute ride south to Parteblanc. It was a good thing that man had come to get him. His woman might not have made it. As the baby’s head emerged, Dr. Cailleteau had seen that the umbilical cord was entangled around its neck, and it was only by the barest that Dr. Cailleteau had been able to save the child. Dr. Cailleteau still liked to deliver babies. White babies, who emerged almost crimson. Black babies as dark as coal. Babies the color of mahogany or the color of brown Mississippi mud or with skin like darkened copper or yellow-brown like pine or light tan like a fine palomino or so pale and sallow they could pass for white. Assisting with a birth was still the most satisfying thing he did. Unfortunately , too many woman died in childbirth, and too many babies did not make it to their first birthday. It was another mystery of life and death. During the war Dr. Cailleteau had been able to make snap decisions on care. He could look at a dozen bloody soldiers lined up on the ground outside his tent, with limbs missing and organs protruding through holes in their abdomens, and tell at a glance which ones would not make it through the night, which ones would survive even without immediate care, and which ones’ very existence depended upon his skill, if he acted in time. But childbirth was not like that. It was one woman at a time. It was much better to bring a new life into the world, one full of promise, than to salvage a soldier so that he could savage another living being when he was able to fight again. Often, despite his skill, however, Dr. Cailleteau couldn’t predict beforehand which young woman would have a child who would live and which one would have a child born sickly. Then there were the women who seemed to be fine but would die during the birth or soon afterward . Some of these girls were barely women at all. In one out of every ten to fifteen births, despite his best efforts, all [3.135.209.249] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 00:04 GMT...