Read Online River Thieves by Michael Crummey - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Crummey
Ads: Link
head throbbed with fever. The dry heaves she fell into were so violent that ablood vessel in her right eye had burst and the dark look she turned on Annie was so forlorn and foreboding that the Mi’kmaq woman crossed herself repeatedly.
There were no resident doctors or clergy on the northeast shore of Newfoundland before the turn of the century and Annie’s mother was called to the homes of the French and English settlers as often as those of her own people. At the age of thirteen Annie was sent alone to attend a birth while her mother nursed a boy who had fallen on a fish fork and punctured his abdomen. The pregnant woman’s husband had rowed two hours down White Bay to their tilt and Annie’s brother walked him an hour more through bush in the dark to the home of the injured boy. He was a tall rickety Englishman of no more than twenty-five with a pinched look of worry and he pleaded with Annie’s mother to attend his wife who was in distress when he set out three hours before and might be dead by now for all that he knew. But the boy was bleeding and running a fever so high that Annie’s mother was afraid it would kill him. She conferred with Annie quietly and sent her away with the Englishman and he walked Annie back to his boat in a stunned and furious silence. She sat in the stern facing him as he rowed and he watched her carefully in the sparse moonlight. He asked her age and then pulled at the oars so fiercely Annie could see the veins and muscles in his neck straining like anchor chains in a tide.
The pregnant woman was lying in a bunk along the back wall when they came into the one-room shack. Annie told the husband to light a fire and boil as much water as the pot would hold and then she knelt beside the woman. “You keep breathing now,” she said, and she used the curt, belligerent toneshe’d heard her mother use around whites who were ashamed to be so naked in front of Indian women and to need something from them besides. She put her hand between the woman’s legs and felt for the baby’s head and asked about the pain and how long it lasted. The husband clanked the pot on the crane and hovered nervously and asked Annie and his wife useless questions until Annie told him to wait outside and leave them to their business.
In an hour the baby was ready and Annie had the woman squat in a corner where the walls gave her some support. She had ripped a bedsheet into towels and boiled them and had a pot of fresh hot water at her side. It was just the end of April but they had struck a solid week of unusually fine weather and the tiny shack was stifling from the heat of the fire. “You got to push when I tell you to push now,” she said and the woman nodded and sucked air through her clenched teeth. “Nothing to be scared of but the hurt,” Annie said, and when the contractions shook the woman’s body again she yelled at her to bear down. The husband shouted through the door as if he thought Annie was doing something to inflict her pain. After the contraction subsided the Englishwoman lifted her chin to take air into her lungs and to tell him things were bad enough without him losing his head and they heard nothing more from him until they were through. Annie wiped the sheen of sweat from her face with a hot cloth and the woman managed a crooked smile until the next contraction ripped through her.
Three days later the Englishman came down the bay to their tilt with a small cask of pickled herring and a kid on a rope. He stooped under the low ceiling of the front room and hemmed his awkward and formal thanks to Annie, who wastoo embarrassed to look at him. He proffered the barrel of fish and motioned outside to where the goat was tethered.
“You leave the barrel,” her mother told him, “but take the animal back home. Annie too young to expect all that, she just a child herself.”
The boy her mother stayed to care for was dead by the time Annie returned from delivering her first baby. Birth and
There were no resident doctors or clergy on the northeast shore of Newfoundland before the turn of the century and Annie’s mother was called to the homes of the French and English settlers as often as those of her own people. At the age of thirteen Annie was sent alone to attend a birth while her mother nursed a boy who had fallen on a fish fork and punctured his abdomen. The pregnant woman’s husband had rowed two hours down White Bay to their tilt and Annie’s brother walked him an hour more through bush in the dark to the home of the injured boy. He was a tall rickety Englishman of no more than twenty-five with a pinched look of worry and he pleaded with Annie’s mother to attend his wife who was in distress when he set out three hours before and might be dead by now for all that he knew. But the boy was bleeding and running a fever so high that Annie’s mother was afraid it would kill him. She conferred with Annie quietly and sent her away with the Englishman and he walked Annie back to his boat in a stunned and furious silence. She sat in the stern facing him as he rowed and he watched her carefully in the sparse moonlight. He asked her age and then pulled at the oars so fiercely Annie could see the veins and muscles in his neck straining like anchor chains in a tide.
The pregnant woman was lying in a bunk along the back wall when they came into the one-room shack. Annie told the husband to light a fire and boil as much water as the pot would hold and then she knelt beside the woman. “You keep breathing now,” she said, and she used the curt, belligerent toneshe’d heard her mother use around whites who were ashamed to be so naked in front of Indian women and to need something from them besides. She put her hand between the woman’s legs and felt for the baby’s head and asked about the pain and how long it lasted. The husband clanked the pot on the crane and hovered nervously and asked Annie and his wife useless questions until Annie told him to wait outside and leave them to their business.
In an hour the baby was ready and Annie had the woman squat in a corner where the walls gave her some support. She had ripped a bedsheet into towels and boiled them and had a pot of fresh hot water at her side. It was just the end of April but they had struck a solid week of unusually fine weather and the tiny shack was stifling from the heat of the fire. “You got to push when I tell you to push now,” she said and the woman nodded and sucked air through her clenched teeth. “Nothing to be scared of but the hurt,” Annie said, and when the contractions shook the woman’s body again she yelled at her to bear down. The husband shouted through the door as if he thought Annie was doing something to inflict her pain. After the contraction subsided the Englishwoman lifted her chin to take air into her lungs and to tell him things were bad enough without him losing his head and they heard nothing more from him until they were through. Annie wiped the sheen of sweat from her face with a hot cloth and the woman managed a crooked smile until the next contraction ripped through her.
Three days later the Englishman came down the bay to their tilt with a small cask of pickled herring and a kid on a rope. He stooped under the low ceiling of the front room and hemmed his awkward and formal thanks to Annie, who wastoo embarrassed to look at him. He proffered the barrel of fish and motioned outside to where the goat was tethered.
“You leave the barrel,” her mother told him, “but take the animal back home. Annie too young to expect all that, she just a child herself.”
The boy her mother stayed to care for was dead by the time Annie returned from delivering her first baby. Birth and
Similar Books
