too, twenty-five feet long if it was a foot, with a moon roof and tinted glass, a compact disc player, and a goddamned telephone. And this teen Amazon queen at the wheel-in her dirty white lace dress, with mud spattered on her bare legs and her sandals.
“And you mean to tell me,” he shouted over the rain, “that with a big car like this, you couldn’t have brought this baby’s mother to the hospital?”
The baby looked fine enough, thank God for that, about a month premature, he figured, and undernourished, of course! But otherwise okay and sleeping right now, deep in the ice chest with all the stinky little blankets around it, as he held the thing on his knees. Why, these blankets actually reeked of whiskey.
“Good heavens, Mary Jane Mayfair, slow down!” he said finally. The branches were making a racket on the top of the car. He flinched as the clumps of wet leaves slapped right against the windshield. He could hardly stand it, the way she ran right over the ruts! “You’re going to wake the baby.”
“That baby’s just fine, Doctor,” said Mary Jane, letting her skirt fall all the way back down her thighs to her panties. This was a notorious young woman, nobody had to tell him that. He’d been pretty damn sure this was her baby and she was going to make up some cock-and-bull story about its having been left on the doorstep. But no, there was a mother out there in those swamps, praise God. He was going to put this in his memoirs.
“We’re almost there,” Mary Jane called out, half smashing a thicket of bamboo on their left, and rolling right on past it. “Now, you got to carry the baby in the boat, all right, Doctor?”
“What boat!” he shouted. But he knew damn good and well what boat. Everybody had told him about this old house, that he ought to drive out to Fontevrault Landing just to see it. You could hardly believe it was standing, the way the west side had sunk, and to think this clan insisted upon living there! Mary Jane Mayfair had been slowly cleaning out the local Wal-Mart for the last six months, fixing the place up for herself and her grandmother. Everybody knew about it when Mary Jane came to town in her white shorts and T-shirts.
She was a pretty girl, though, he had to give her that much, even with that cowboy hat. She had the most high-slung and pointed pair of breasts he’d ever seen, and a mouth the color of bubble gum.
“Hey, you didn’t give this baby whiskey to keep it quiet, did you?” he demanded. The little tucker was just snoring away, blowing a big bubble with its tiny little pink lips. Poor child, to grow up in this place. And she hadn’t let him even examine this baby, saying Granny had done all that! Granny, indeed!
The limousine had come to a halt. The rain was teeming. He could scarcely see what looked like a house up ahead, and the great fan leaves of a green palmetto. But those were electric lights burning up there, thank God for that. Somebody’d told him they didn’t have any lights out here.
“I’ll come round for you with the umbrella,” she said, slamming the door behind her before he could say they should wait till the rain slacked off, and then his door flew open and he had no choice but to pick up this ice chest like a cradle.
“Here, put the towel over it, little guy will get wet!” Mary Jane said. “Now run for the boat.”
“I will walk, thank you,” he said. “If you’ll just kindly lead the way, Miss Mayfair!”
“Don’t let him fall.”
“I beg your pardon! I delivered babies in Picayune, Mississippi, for thirty-eight years before I ever came down to this godforsaken country.”
And just why did I come? he thought to himself as he had a thousand times, especially when his new little wife, Eileen, born and raised in Napoleonville, wasn’t around to remind him.
Lord in heaven, it was a great big heavy aluminum pirogue, and it didn’t have a motor! But there was the house, all right, the entire thing the color of driftwood, with the purple wisteria completely wrapped around the capitals of those upstairs columns, and making its way for the balusters. At least the tangle of trees was so thick in this part of the jungle that he was almost dry for a moment. A tunnel of green went up to the tilting front porch. Lights on upstairs, well, that was a relief. If he had had to see his way around this place by kerosene lamp, he would have gone crazy. Maybe he was already going crazy, crossing this stretch of duckweed slop with this crazy young woman, and the place about to sink any minute.
“That’s what’s going to happen,” Eileen had said. “One morning we’ll drive by there, and there won’t be any house, whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, will have sunk into the swamp, you mark my words, it’s a sin, anybody living like that.”
Carrying the ice chest and its quiet little contents with one hand, he managed to get into the shallow boat, thrilled to discover that it was full of about two inches of water. “This is going to sink, you should have emptied it out.” His shoes filled up to the ankles immediately. Why had he agreed to come out here? And Eileen would have to know every last detail.
“It’s not going to sink, this is a sissy rain,” said Mary Jane Mayfair, shoving on her long pole. “Now hang on, please, and don’t let the baby get wet.”
The girl was past all patience. Where he came from, nobody talked to a doctor like that! The baby was just fine under the towels, and pissing up a storm for a newborn.
Lo and behold, they were gliding right over the front porch of this dilapidated wreck and into the open doorway.
“My God, this is like a cave!” he declared. “How in the world did a woman give birth in this place? Will you look at that. There are books in there on the top shelf of that bookcase, right above the water.”
“Well, nobody was here when the water came in,” said Mary Jane, straining as she pushed on the pole.
He could hear the
“And I guess lots of things are still floating around in the parlor. Besides, Mona Mayfair didn’t have her baby down here, she had it upstairs. Women don’t have their babies in the front room, even if it isn’t underwater.”
The boat collided with the steps, tossing him violently to the left, so that he had to grab the slimy wet banister. He leapt out, immediately stamping both his feet to make sure the steps weren’t going to sink under him.
A warm flood of light came from upstairs, and he could hear, over the hiss and roar of the rain, another sound, very fast,
“Why doesn’t this stairway just float loose from the wall?” he asked. He started up, the ice-chest cradle beginning to feel like a sack of rocks to him. “Why doesn’t this whole place just disintegrate?”
“Well, in a way, I guess it is,” said Mary Jane, “only it’s taking a couple hundred years, you know???” She went thumping up the steps in front of him, pushing right in his way as she hit the second-floor hall, and then turning around and saying, “You come with me, we got to go up to the attic.”
But where was that
And then he saw old Granny Mayfair at the very top in her flowered flannel gown, waving her little hand at him.
“Hey, there, Dr. Jack. How’s my handsome boy? Come give me a kiss. Surely am glad to see you.”
“Glad to see you too, Grandma,” he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he’d be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who’d wound up carrying it, anyway?
At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.
“How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?” he asked.
Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn’t such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn’t smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.
“What is that ‘clickety-clickety’ sound I’m hearing on the second floor down there?” he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.
“You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby’s birth certificate. We don’t want any problems with the registration of this baby’s birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn’t register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born, and you wouldn’t believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that …”
“And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?” he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him
