Rain drenched again in a vertical obscurity down the glass and the flashes of lightning flushed heavily through the watery waver.
Later the lights came on and Meris, blinking against the brightness, went to bed, drawing the curtain across the bunk corner, leaving Mark at work at his desk. She lay awake briefly, hearing the drum of the rain and the mutter of the thunder, hardly noticing the clatter of the typewriter. She touched cautiously with her thoughts the aching emptiness where the intolerable burden of her unresolved grief had been. Almost, she felt without purpose- aimless-since that painful focusing of her whole life was going. She sighed into her pillow. New purpose and new aim would come-would have to come-to fill the emptinesses.
Somewhere in the timeless darkness of the night she was suddenly awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. She pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, shivering a little in the raw, damp air of the cabin. What had wakened her? The sound came again. She gasped and Mark stirred uneasily, then was immediately wide awake and sitting up beside her.
“Meris?”
“I heard something,” she said. “Oh, Mark! Honestly, I heard something.”
“What was it?” Mark pulled the blanket up across her back.
“I heard a baby crying,” said Meris.
She felt Mark’s resigned recoil and the patience in his long indrawn breath.
“Honest, Mark!” In the semi-obscurity her eyes pleaded with him. “I really heard a baby crying. Not a tiny baby-like-like ours. A very young child, though. Out there in the cold and wet.”
“Meris ” he began, and she knew the sorrow that must be marking his face.
“There!” she cried. “Hear it?”
The two were poised motionless for a moment, then Mark was out of bed and at the door. He flung it open to the night and they listened again, tensely.
They heard a night bird cry and, somewhere up-canyon, the brief barking of a dog, but nothing else.
Mark came back to bed, diving under the covers with a shiver.
“Come warm me, woman!” he cried, hugging Meris tightly to him.
“It did sound like a baby crying,” she said with a half question in her voice.
“It sure did,” said Mark. “I thought for a minute-Must have been some beast or bird or denizen of the wild-” His voice trailed away sleepily, his arms relaxing. Meris lay awake listening-to Mark’s breathing, to the night, to the cry that didn’t come again. Refusing to listen for the cry that would never come again, she slept.
Next morning was so green and gold and sunny and wet and fresh that Meris felt a-tiptoe before she even got out of bed. She dragged Mark, protesting, from the warm nest of the bedclothes and presented him with a huge breakfast. They laughed at each other across the table, their hands clasped over the dirty dishes. Meris felt a surge of gratitude. The return of laughter is a priceless gift.
While she did the dishes and put the cabin to rights, Mark, shrugging into his Levi jacket against the chill, went out to check the storm damage.
Meris heard a shout and the dozen echoes that returned diminishingly from the heavily wooded mountainsides. She pushed the window curtain aside and peered out as she finished drying a plate.
Mark was chasing a fluttering something, out across the creek. The boisterous waters were slapping against the bottom of the plank bridge and Mark was splashing more than ankle-deep on the flat beyond as he plunged about trying to catch whatever it was that evaded him.
“A bird,” guessed Meris. “A huge bird waterlogged by the storm. Or knocked down by the wind maybe hurt ” She hurried to put the plate away and dropped the dish towel on the table. She peered out again. Mark was half hidden behind the clumps of small willows along the bend of the creek. She heard his cry of triumph and then of astonishment. The fluttering thing shot up, out of reach above Mark, and seemed to be trying to disappear into the ceaseless shiver of the tender green and white aspens. Whatever it was, a whitish blob against the green foliage, dropped down again and Mark grabbed it firmly.
Meris ran to the door and flung it open, stepping out with a shiver into the cold air. Mark saw her as he rounded the curve in the path.
“Look what I found!” he cried. “Look what I caught for you!”
Meris put a hand on the wet, muddy bundle Mark was carrying and thought quickly, “Where are the feathers?”
“I caught a baby for you!” cried Mark. Then his smile died and he thrust the bundle at her. “Good Lord, Meris!” he choked, “I’m not fooling! It is a baby!”
Meris turned back a sodden fold and gasped. A face! A child face, mud-smudged, with huge dark eyes and tangled dark curls. A quiet, watchful face-not crying. Maybe too frightened to cry?
“Mark!” Meris clutched the bundle to her and hurried into the cabin. “Build up the fire in the stove,” she said, laying her burden on the table. She peeled the outer layer off quickly and let it fall soggily to the floor. Another damp layer and then another. “Oh, poor messy child!” she crooned. “Poor wet, messy, little girl!’”
“Where did she come from?” Mark wondered. “There must be some clue-” He changed quickly from his soaked sneakers into his hiking boots. “I’ll go check. There must be something out there.” His hands paused on the knotting of the last bootlace. “Or someone.” He stood up, settling himself into his jeans and boots. “Take it easy, Meris.” He kissed her cheek as she bent over the child and left.
Meris’s fingers recalled more and more of their deftness as she washed the small girl-body, improvised a diaper of a dish towel, converted a tee shirt into a gown, all the time being watched silently by the big dark eyes that now seemed more wary than frightened, watched as though the child was trying to read her lips that were moving so readily in the old remembered endearments and croonings. Finally, swathing the small form in her chenille robe in lieu of a blanket, she sat on the edge of the bed, rocking and crooning to the child. She held a cup of warm milk to the small mouth. There was a firming of lips against it at first and then the small mouth opened and two small hands grasped the cup and the milk was gulped down greedily. Meris wiped the milky crescent from the child’s upper lip and felt the tenseness going out of the small body as the warmth of the milk penetrated it. The huge dark eyes in the small face closed, jerked open, closed slowly and stayed closed.
