none of it, not even allowing him past the front door, telling him that a birthing was no place for a man to be, that he should find something to do in the fields to make himself useful until the time came when he could see his wife again, and his child.
It had seemed to Nell that the labor would go on forever, the pains continuing into the evening and late into the night, until it seemed to her the child would never come. But the pain had only worsened, coming and going until it seemed a constant, twisting her body with its intensity, making her bite her lips and dig her hands into the straw tick of the bed to keep from crying out—she saw the granny woman shake her head, heard her tell Henry’s mother that Nell should never have conceived, that she was too narrow to give birth, and too frail. But Deborah Sanders had only pushed the granny woman aside, saying she had brought many babies herself over the years, and that she was not about to lose her own daughter-in-law, or her grandchild.
“You push, honey—” she had told Nell, her face already drenched with sweat in the hot room. “You push with everythin’ you got—you an’ that baby’s both Sanders; cain’t nothin’ get th’ best ’a either one ’a you unlest you let it. Now, push! Push like the devil hisself has got a’hold ’a you! Push!”
She had pushed, had thought she would die, had prayed to see Henry one last time, to see the baby born and put into his arms before God took her, just as her mother had seen her put into her father’s arms before she had died—she screamed aloud when the baby finally came, and Henry rushed into the room to see his son born into his mother’s gentle and knowing hands, and to hear that first cry of life as Deborah Sanders lifted him by his ankles to slap him across the bottom. Henry collapsed to his knees by the side of the bed, taking Nell’s hand in his, watching as their son was put into her arms for the first time, the baby screaming, red-faced, and angry at his entry into the world. Henry would not be moved again, staying with her even as they tried to make him go, touching her and their son, keeping her from heaven itself with the very love in his eyes.
As long as she lived, Nell knew she would never forget the feeling of holding that miracle in her arms for the first time, of counting the tiny fingers and toes, and examining the small, perfect body of the son she and Henry had made—and she would never forget the tears in Henry’s eyes, the wetness on his cheeks, as he brushed the sweat-drenched hair back from her face. “We got us a son,” he kept saying to her, over and over again. “We got us a son.”
They named the baby Janson after her father, and Thomas after his, and their world had been complete within the three of them. Henry’s mother said there would be no more babies, but, after the years alone, they had never expected even this one, and they accepted that one miracle was enough for any lifetime. They had each other, they had a son, and they had the land that would be his one day. They could want nothing more.
Janson had grown fast, a handsome young boy with his mother’s dark coloring and his father’s green eyes. He was a loving and happy child, with a bad temper when pushed, and, as his grandmother often said, more stubbornness and pride than was right in any man or boy. He loved the land from the moment he could walk, loved growing things, and the feel of the red earth beneath his feet; loved his parents, his grandparents, and his kin, but the remainder of the world he was often uncomfortable with. He was dark, and he was half Cherokee, and he was proud with a pride the world would deny him—Nell knew he often heard the same things she had heard in the years since she had left the reservation, but, whereas she had fought her battles with silence, and with the dignity her heritage had taught her, she knew her son often fought his with fists, and with a temper that was nothing less than Irish and inherited from his father’s side of the family.
As Janson had grown into a young man, he had kept few friends, often alone it seemed, but never lonely; a young man often silent, but at peace with the earth and the sky and himself. He often reminded Nell of her father, and often of Henry, and often of herself—but Janson was Janson, and often even she could not understand him, though she had almost died to give him life.
There was a sadness within her now as she sat in the rocker by the side of the old bed, looking at the young man who had been stabbed and so badly hurt, remembering the baby she had nursed and held and touched—he was a grown man now, eighteen years old, older than she had been when she had become Henry’s wife. There was a feeling within her that he had already been close with a woman, had already learned things that she and his father had not known until their marriage night—young people grew up so fast now days, she thought, too fast. She knew the stabbing had probably been over a woman—the wrong kind of woman—though Janson had not spoken a word of it, though she knew he would not. He would remain silent if asked, silent, and with that look in his eyes that said there were things in his soul that belonged to him alone—and she knew she would not ask.
He was proud, proud and stubborn and determined, traits that would make his life all the more difficult, even beyond what his coloring and heritage had already deemed that life would be—but she had known that from the start, from the time he had been that baby first learning to walk, slapping her hands away as she tried to catch him, falling, only to push himself to his feet and take a few tottering steps before falling again. She had tried to protect him, to keep him from hurting himself, even as he had learned, but again and again he had pushed her hands away, falling time and again, bruising his chin, hurting his elbow, fighting even as he cried—she had not seen him cry in years now, not since he had been a little boy, beaten bloody by bigger fellows because he would not perform a war dance when they demanded he do so. She had tried to protect him then as well, had tried to get him to tell her the names of the other boys so she could talk to their parents, but he had refused, coming home bloody and beaten day after day until they had at last found more interesting game—even then there had been no shame in him for a fight well fought, no defeat after a hard battle. Those were traits she could see in him now, the same pride, stubbornness and determination, and she knew she could expect nothing less of him, for he was a part of her, and he was a part of Henry.
The door opened quietly and Henry’s mother entered the room—her mother, she thought, for she and Henry were long since the same. Deborah Sanders was dressed in a long cotton nightgown buttoned to the throat and wrists, her brown and gray hair hanging over one shoulder in a thick plait that reached to well past her waist, her round face kind and gentle as she looked at them, knowing they had not slept at all, and knowing it was only what they had to do. She walked to the side of the bed and reached to touch Janson’s forehead lightly, his cheek, and then to check beneath the bandages to the wound that had bled so freely earlier, as Nell and Henry rose to their feet at the side of the bed. Henry reached out and brushed Nell’s hand almost unconsciously, as he often did, and they waited.
Henry’s mother came around the bed to them, placing a gentle hand first on Nell’s cheek, then on Henry’s, as she smiled at them. “He’s gonna be fine, jus’ like I tol’ you,” she whispered. “He’s jus’ got some healin’ t’ do, an’ restin’ t’ get his strength back. It ain’t gonna do him no good, you two gettin’ yourselfs sick. You need t’ get some sleep—”
“We will,” Nell said, looking back to the bed, and to the young man who shifted slightly in his sleep as he lay there. “We will—” But she sat back down in the rocker, and Henry moved to sit again at her feet, lowering himself slowly as he leaned heavily on the arm of the chair, as he had not had to do in years past. He took her hand in his again and held it, intertwining their fingers securely. After a moment, Deborah Sanders shook her head and sighed, knowing there was no use in talking to them further. She turned and crossed the bare wood floor without another word, going out the door and closing it again quietly behind herself, leaving them alone again with their son.
Nell watched as Janson slept, thinking of the baby she and Henry had made, the child she had carried within her, thinking that time had passed too fast, and that the years had been all too quickly gone. She looked down at Henry, remembering the tall and handsome young man who had so tenderly told her about love, and who had even more gently taught her; the same man who sat beside her now, his brownish-red hair streaked with white, the wide shoulders bent from age and work, the once-smooth skin near his eyes lined from years of smiles—but the green eyes just as alive, just as caring, just as full of love now near fifty-seven, as they had been