AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Duvalier picked him up off her corpse, pulled him out of the darkness. Hoofbeats. The loom of riders in the darkness. Words, Boothe bending over Thatcher, applying pressure as Duvalier waved the riders over. Finally the strange emptiness in his head left, and he could distinguish faces again.
"Haloo, Bulletproof. You're far from home. What hospitality can fellow tribesmen offer?"
* * * *
They bartered the Reaper's robe for transport and found their way back to the Bulletproof. In a few days they again knew Kentucky hospitality in a chilly, Z-shaped valley fed by artesian springs, his jaw braced and bandaged with baling wire by Boothe. Valentine learned to appreciate smashed cubes of legworm flesh, slathered in barbecue sauce sucked through a straw. He also got mashed squash, pumpkin, and corn, eating out of the same pot as the resident babies.
A giggling nursing mother offered him a spare teat after feeding her daughter. It hurt to laugh.
Once his jaw knit he borrowed an old-fashioned horse, loaded up a second with grain and dried meat, and rode out to where he had last seen Ahn-Kha. He left a stoppered bottle of Bulletproof bourbon at Grog-eye level with a note to his friend, telling him where they were wintering until warmth allowed travel again. He tried to learn what had happened to Ahn-Kha and his pursuing column, but only found some shattered glass and debris that might have been from a motorcycle eight miles away.
The fruitless search left him moody and depressed. His tender mouth troubled him every time he spoke and ate, and a fragment of mirror showed that his jawline now had an uneven balance to it thanks to the break. The only bright spot was Gail Foster's transformation into a convivial, charming woman, though she remained a little pallid, even on the hearty Bulletproof cooking. She looked as though she were about to have twins. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a woman with such a wide belly after the baby dropped.
The baby came on December 22.
Duvalier woke Valentine and passed him a hot cup of grassy-tasting tea. "Gail's water broke. Our vet is attending. Suki's there too."
She brought him to a modest, pellet-stove-heated home that served as a sickroom for the local Bulletproof.
Suki was a Bulletproof midwife. She was young, perhaps a year or two older than Valentine, but had a calming effect on Gail brought about by nothing more than her quiet voice and cups of the honey-filled silvery cinqefoil tea she brewed. Gail had given birth once before, but remembered nothing of the event but gauzy business on the other side of her screened lap.
Valentine went in and saw Gail lying on her side with her knees drawn up and buttocks at the edge of the hammocklike "birthing bed." He gripped her hand through a contraction, sponging the sweat from her forehead when it was over. She'd soaked through her shirt even in the winter cool.
"I wish Will was here," she gasped. "He always ..." The words trailed off.
Valentine wrung out the sponge. "Will never forgot about you for a moment. Your husband wasn't the man you thought. Or he was. You'll understand when you see him again."
She smiled and nodded.
"First we have to get your baby into the world. Can do?"
"Can do," she agreed.
But you can't be there to see it. This trip, the risks. You'll never see a payoff. You could just as well have driven away with Ahn-Kha. You can never walk down an Ozark highway again. You're condemned by your own actions, an exile.
"She's quit dilating," Boothe said, bringing Valentine out of his thoughts with a flash of guilt over what Gail must be experiencing. She had a short flashlight attached to her forehead: a medical unicorn. "I'm going to C-section. Pe-Suki, get me the tray I laid out in the kitchen."
Valentine got out of the way as the midwife came in with the tray.
"Suki, keep her chin up."
Boothe poured a shot glass full of Bulletproof, then added a couple of drops of ether to it. She tipped it into a fist-sized wad of cotton.
"Have her breathe this," she said, handing the mask to Suki. Gail inhaled the mixture.
"Christmas baby. You were almost a Christmas baby," Gail said as the ether took effect.
"Enough," Dr. Boothe told Suki. "Gail, keep looking at the ceiling. Over before you know it." Valentine watched her focus on Gail's belly, steadying the scalpel.
Valentine watched, relieved and fascinated at the same time, as the scalpel opened Gail just above the pelvis.
"Coming now. Your baby's doing fine," Boothe said.
Valentine couldn't help but think about Malia. What had Amalee's birth been like? The sweet, burning scent of ether in the air, along with blood, sweat, and amniotic fluid?
God, do they all look like that?
Boothe pulled out a froglike creature, narrow, legs drawn up tight, arms folded like a dead insect's, brachycephalic skull all the more unreal as the doctor held it upside down. "Oh, Christ."
