1930: Midwife

1930 Midwife Over on Rowdy three women due the same day. At midnight Amos called to her his soft voice tumbling across the river "Hallooo, Nurse Jane, Sarah's pushing bad." In the dark yard she hoisted onto Bob's back the saddlebags full of medicine and glass hypodermic needles so carefully wrapped. She mounted and swam the horse through the roaring river. Hours through the stinging rain, the ringing rocks to the hand hewn house whose walls were papered with newsprint. Hours to wrest from the exhausted womb the mottled child as the break of day sifted gray through the door. Something big eased over; The children came back. Sister fried eggs. 98 They took her to the smokehouse where pieces of meat hung pink from the shadowy rafters; the shank, the ribs, the hogback salted down and asked which was her favorite. They begged to giver her all to herself the bed with a double wedding ring quilt But she had to ride back for the next father's call. Decades later, stiffed by years, she leaned over Corey like a withered crane, and pressed into her hands a prayer and the current of thousands of years of knowing, pressed with the very fingers which once guided and nudged a thousand tiny heads through the blind passages the dark waters safely to light —Noel Smith 99 ...