Read Online Finding Bluefield by Elan Branehama - Free Book Online Page B

an outie by the baby. The restaurant was full with farmers. Nicky had known these people her whole life. They knew her father, her mother, and her sister. Like Nicky, they were descendants of the way things have been, white inheritors of a once prosperous and dignified occupation. Nicky’s father had always had their sympathy, losing his wife early, running that farm by himself, having only girls, and then dying young. Maybe that was why they didn’t ask Nicky about the child’s father. Not directly. Or maybe it was because they were farmers and this was the season of planting seeds in the earth and making things grow and the weather had not been kind.
    They were talking about the newest government farm plan, the presidential primaries, the young baseball season, and their hopes that their Washington Senators would not lose a hundred games. Again. They were talking about anything but the weather. But Nicky knew their thoughts were on rain. They needed the rain to remain idle. They’d had too much time to prepare things. It was up to the plants now. They simply had to start growing. If the rain came, they would eat more pie, drink more coffee, and worry about flooding. Nicky saw her father in these men, remembered his worry, his patience, his pride at getting food from the earth. Every year it was different, and every year it was the same.
    Nicky wanted to sit and listen and lose herself in their small talk, but she was not a farmer and not a man. Maybe someday her son would sit here. Barbara had recently agreed to apply for a job at the hospital at the end of her residency and not force the issue of moving. Nicky was certain that staying in Bluefield would be best for the baby, and she was almost as sure that Barbara would learn to love Virginia the way she did. She lifted her coffee, wedged a copy of the morning paper under her arm, and stepped back outside.
    Andy was waiting outside the diner with Nicky’s car. He was holding the door open for her. “Got names picked out?”
    Nicky tossed the newspaper onto the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. “I’ve narrowed it down to a few.” The engine purred.
    “What are they?”
    “I like to keep them to myself, you know, till he’s born.”
    “You like secrets.”
    “Don’t start with me, Andy.”
    “How’s the pedals?” he asked. He was leaning against the door, checking the space between Nicky’s belly and the steering wheel. Andy had rigged the Chevy’s gas, brake, and clutch with blocks when Nicky’s expanded belly forced her seat back and left her feet out of reach.
    “Good. But if the baby doesn’t come soon, you’ll have to move me back some more.” She depressed the clutch and pushed the lever into reverse.
    “There is no more.”
    “That’s how my belly feels. No more room.”
    Andy wiped his hand across the hood. “You call me if you need something, Nicky. Anything.”
    “I will.” Nicky maneuvered back onto the road. On the radio, the announcer read the results of the primaries. Barry Goldwater was going to make things easy for Lyndon Johnson. Nicky had never liked Johnson. She figured that somehow he was involved with those Texans killing JFK.
    It started to rain and soon the rain began coming down hard. The wipers looked like they were trying to make the car take off. The college radio station was playing songs with rain in the title. It was “Singin’ in the Rain” by the time the rain slowed to a drizzle. Nicky turned her wipers on and off as she drove. They wiped away the drops, they hesitated, they wiped again.

    *

    “I’m ready now, Doc,” Nicky said when Dr. Roberts entered her exam room.
    “Your baby’s not quite as ready as you are,” Dr. Roberts said. “But soon. Couple of weeks at most.” Dr. Roberts paused to look at her chart. “The good news is that everything looks fine.”
    “How big is the baby?”
    “I always guess between four and twelve pounds and that way I’m seldom wrong.”
    “Promise me