Lovie's Baby
by Janice Daugharty
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Janice Daugharty
Honorable Mention in Story fiction contest
They said they saw her that Monday morning, running up the road towards the courthouse, with that pink blanket all nussed-up to her bosom like the baby was still alive. And it some cold. Frost like sugar on the humped weeds along the road shoulders, limbs of the liveoaks snapping with ice. Mr. King had left his outside spigot dripping, and the trickle was a solid icicle, and that's where Lovie stopped. Like that spigot being froze up was the last straw, or some sign that no matter what, she would stop running like that water.
Of course, King's wife, Lular, took Lovie right on in and stood her before the fire and somehow got that baby away from her, but she wouldn't let go of that blanket. Would just sit there in Lular's favorite rocker before the fire and hold on to it. Wasn't much point in trying to get her to part with it, Lular figured, and what difference did it make anyway?
Lovie ate a little grits and eggs, Lular said, and even lay down on the white chenille spread, on the bed there in the living room, with that peed-on pink blanket bunched under her chin. Lular thought she spotted a tear rolling down the girl's chapped cheek.
King had already carried the baby girl to the funeral home in Jasper, Florida, and he'd be the one to stand good for the bill, same as always, and Lular didn't begrudge him that because he'd made a promise to his mommer on her deathbed to take care of his baby brother, which somehow had come to include his whole family. Not that Lular minded that either.
It was just that next thing she knew, the girl was gone, and next thing she knew--Lular had to hear all this from King or her daughter across the road, because she never went anywhere--Lovie had walked clear down Highway 129 to that shack on the Georgia/Florida line where she lived with that sorry A.J. Johns, who was half-way responsible for his own baby's death. The other half being Lovie’s own daddy's fault, King's own brother's fault. And the fact that Lovie went back, and didn't bow up at either one of them for running her off the evening before, made her somehow just as much to blame. They said.
***I been walking, toting this baby, since way before sundown, so cold my feet's losing all feeling. So cold my face is stinging. But the baby up against my bosom is hot as a mustard poultice. Burning up with fever.
Ahead, in the clearing worried out of the pinewoods, the old man's shack looks like it's on fire from the low sun blazing on the unpainted porch boards. I figger Popper ain't gone be no gladder to see me than I am him. Lord knows, I dread him, but not half as much as I would going back to A.J.'s and facing him again. Mean as a snake when he's drunk.
I go on, past Aunt Becky's rotting-down cabin ain't nobody lived in since she died, August was a year ago. My shoe soles slap on the hard dirt, wind-swept of white sand and rough and gray as cement. Cold pines sing in the dying wind behind both houses, tree tops rocking against the nickel sky. No smoke coming from the old man's chimley. I wonder if he's home and hope he ain't. Cause if he ain't, I can go inside and build up a fire to warm by; maybe find a little something to eat and nurse the baby. She'll be all right once I nurse her; I'll be all right once I sleep. My shoulder'll quit throbbing where A.J. socked me.
Nothing new in getting socked, since I married A.J. a few months ago. Sorry as he is, Popper wadn't never no fighter, didn't care enough to raise a fist to me nor Shirley nor Mommer neither one. Just a hell-raiser who would run us off quick as he'd spit. No real reason behind nothing he done, not even no temper to speak of; it's like he's got a whole set of rules in his head handed down or made up as he goes along. Sometimes he'll work, sometimes he won't. Let him get hold of a little shine, and he's apt to sing or cut a jig. Which is what throwed me off, and me not but fourteen when I married A.J., who's got a good twenty years on me.
Mangy old dog with lit yellow eyes comes yipping from under the porch, don't even quit yipping when he sees it's just me. "Get on away from here!" I say, walking with a grip on the baby bundled in a pink blanket and then my overcoat.
I get to the doorsteps and the old man yanks open the door and leans against the jamb. Stringy and tall with his nasty britches gathered at his sucked-in waist. Green eyes ringed with blue, and gray-brown hair, what's left of it, sprigged on top. His face looks like a wrinkled brown papersack. He is dead sober, and it on Sunday.
"It's me, Popper," I say.
"I can still see," he says. "What you doing back here?"
"Come to stay a spell," I say. "If it's alright."
"Well, it ain't." He steps inside, leaving the door open.
I go on in. "Baby's sick," I say. "Need some place to come in out of the cold."
"Go on back to A.J.'s then." He squats before the caved-in fireplace on the south wall, strikes a match and lights a splinter.
Smoke feathers up to the low vee-ceiling. Dark coming in out of the sun. A gelled sulphur smell.
"A.J. run me off." I ease into Mommer's old rocker at the foot of her bed, lay the baby on my lap, and start unwrapping her from my coat and the pink blanket. Too poor-looking to be three months old. Like a baby just born. That limp.
"You knowed him before you married him's what I say." The old man's got a fire going now, but it don't do nothing but light up the room a little.
"I could cook you something," I say. I figger him and A.J.'s had some kind of run-in; not that Popper has to have a reason for what he does.
"Done et."
I know he ain't; I don't smell nothing but rancy lard and dog.
"I can shore make biscuits, you know that."
"Eat'em too, best I recollect."
"I could eat one, yessir." I unbutton A.J.'s green plaid shirt I'm wearing and hold the baby's face to my leaky left tit. Her parted red lips breathe hot on my nipple. Her eyelids look stitched shut.Old man gets up from the fireplace, wiping his smutty hands on his geared-up, green twill britches.
"Soon as you get done, get on out from here," he says.
I look at the two smeary windows over the porch, turning from orange to purple, hoping he'll look too, see it's dark and have mercy.
"I wouldn't be no bother," I say. "Baby ain't cried all day. Too sick to cry."
He don't look at the windows; he don't look at the baby. He passes through the flickering fire shadows to the kitchen, goes to the stove and starts stirring what I figure is a pot of dog scraps.
In a minute he goes out the back, calling, "Heah boy, heah boy!"
Soon as I hear his brogans pounding from the porch and thumping on the dirt, I stand up with my nipple raking the baby's hot cheek and slip my chair closer to the fire. I press the baby's head to my naked chest again and feel guilty for warming myself with her face.
To make up for it, I take the coat over my knees and cover her up all over, head and all. "I ain't gone let you get cold, don't you worry."
When the old man comes back, stopping at the door with his scrap pot, watching me, I stop rocking and hold my breath to show how quiet I can be. Ain't the racket, I know, bothers him. What bothers him is getting shed of me just to have me show up again. You made your bed, now lay in it, he'd said when I left home with A.J.
"You done yet?" he says.
I stare at the fire. "She won't eat, could be she's got the pneumonee."
He stomps off into the kitchen again, and this time I hear Mommer's old black iron frying pan grating across the stove eye. Hear him strike a match, hear the fire whoosh under the pan. Hear the light chain click over the eating table and see the narrow dim kitchen flush white. A warm feeling. The light says maybe he'll let me stay.
In a minute, I hear him hacking off sidemeat, hear it singing in the pan, smell the smoky salt off it filling the house.
I ain't eat since morning, just a biscuit. I try not to think about it. I try to feed the baby to take my mind off my stomach. I shake her a little bit to wake her up. She opens her eyes, whimpers, wallows my nipple around her hot mouth, and goes back to sleep. Just as well--if she cries, he'll make me leave for sure.
Ain't long before I hear him slide his chair back from the eating table, his spoon scraping his plate. The rattle of a plastic bag--lightbread.
I get warm, my knees do, think he's forgot me or decided to let me stay. Then, "You better be gone when I get in there," he hollers.
I press my lips to the crown of the baby's peachy head. I know he means it now. I know he won't change his mind. I don't know where I'll go, but I know I can't go back--not tonight--to the house on the Georgia/Florida line. Tomorrow, A.J.'ll be sober, back at work in the post woods. Won't even recollect coming in drunk and knocking me sidewinding. None of it.
I could go to my big sister Shirley's, but she lives about ten miles from here, over towards Fargo. Shirley don't take nothing off of no man--that's what she says--but I know she does off that man she's married to. When I see her, I see the signs; her nose is crooked now, she looks sad even smiling. Course, she's Popper's pet--not that I hold it against her--and now she's married a man who'll work, Popper can go to her for extra cash, which could be how come her nose got broke in the first place. If Popper wants anything from A.J., he just steals it from him--big drinking buddies--same way with A.J., who steals from Popper. Last one sobers up is the loser.