“Which is?”
“Jacqueline. My momma got it outta some book she was reading. It never did suit me. Her giving me that name was just like her putting me in frilly dresses all the time. Pretty things just don’t suit me. I was always the plain, practical type. Not like Momma.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“As far as I know. ’Course, the last time I heard anything was probably four years ago. She was still living down in Florida then. That’s where she went when she left Daddy and me. She left Daddy for another man when I was seven years old, but she didn’t stay with him either. She couldn’t be satisfied with nothin’ . . . she was the restless type. I think that’s one of the things that got on her nerves about Daddy and me: We were both content to stay in the same place and do the same thing. Not a restless bone in our bodies.”
“Hmm,” Lily said. “I think a lot of women in your mother’s generation were probably dissatisfied, always thinking they’d be happier with some other man, when the source of their unhappiness was really a lot deeper than that.”
“Huh,” Jack said. “You think a lot.”
Lily blushed. She hadn’t meant to get all theoretical, but she had just the same. All those years of living with a college professor, maybe. “I guess I do. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer. Of course, I don’t tend to philosophize like that in my books, since my usual audience is made up of seven-year-olds.”
Jack grinned. “You know, when you asked me if you could come along on some farm calls, I kinda wondered if you’d be a nuisance, since I’m so used to being by myself. But having some company for a change is nice.”
“We’ve not even gotten to the farm yet. I’ve still got plenty of time to be a nuisance.” It occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea what to expect when they arrived. “Say, when you called you said there was a sow in trouble. What did you mean by that? It sounded like she’d been caught writing bad checks or something.”
Jack laughed. “No, a pig’s too smart to get caught writing bad checks. This sow’s in labor, but she can’t get one of the piglets pushed out. It happens sometimes — a baby’ll get turned the wrong way in the birth canal. And the mother panics cause she doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s really just a matter of getting the piglet turned around the right way. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing.”
Jack pulled the truck into a long gravel driveway at the end of which was a small, white frame house. The house was dwarfed by the huge, unpainted barn that sat behind it.
A craggy-faced man in a John Deere cap and overalls began talking to Jack before she could even get out of the truck. “She’s in the barn over yonder. I done got you some soap and hot water.”
“Thanks, Ed. Let’s go take a look at her.”
Jack was apparently in an all-business mood, since she didn’t bother introducing Lily to the farmer. Figuring that manners took the backseat in a medical crisis, Lily grabbed her sketch pad and pencils and tagged along behind Jack and Ed, feeling faintly ridiculous.
The sweet hay smell of the barn was soured by sounds of fear and pain. In a corner pen, the enormous sow paced and squealed. Her eyes were wild, terrified. Two newborn piglets lay a few feet away from her, tiny and pink, rooting blindly in the straw.
This was the first birth Lily had attended since Mimi’s, and while the mother pig didn’t have as colorful a vocabulary as Charlotte, the similarities between the two occasions were striking. Lily knew the party line was that giving birth was a beautiful thing, and she agreed with that sentiment up to a point. But the miracle of birth also had a dark, scary
