ranch had owned something like that, perhaps with the solar-cell blanket he could have used it to seal the bag edges together.
In the next few weeks he experimented with his heated rod. The work was frustrating. It seemed the iron was always either too hot or too cool. If he got it to just the right temperature for a few moments, it had cooled again before he had completed what he had set out to do with it. But, eventually, he found the right temperature and built a rack over the forge. Then, by resting the rod in hooks on the rack at just the right height, for a specific time, he was able to get it warmed, or rewarmed just enough, but not too much, to work.
In the end he became expert at this, too.
He sealed enough bags together to make a plastic sheet a little larger in area than the floor of the inner room.
Together, he and Merry laid it down, sealing it with strips of narrow boards nailed on top of it at the bases of the vertical walls. After that, it was merely a matter of bringing up and nailing down the planks of the upper floor. They used the trailer to carry the planks. For by this time they were well into April and the ground was dry enough to hitch both horses to that vehicle for trips to the ranch.
Merry went with him on these trips. While there, she carefully planted sections of the potatoes she had saved in a cool corner of the inner room through the winter, for seed in the garden. She had some other seeds, which she planted as well, but Jeebee was too involved in his own concerns to pay much attention to what they were.
“Why do you want to do anything like this?” he asked her. “We’ll be gone by the time fall comes around.”
“You don’t dig and eat new potatoes in the fall,” Merry said.
She was right, of course.
He made no more objections to anything she decided to do, after that. In any case, there were other matters to occupy him.
With the total vanishing of the snow, Jeebee’s inner unease shifted unexpectedly into high gear. With the earth bare and new green stuff sprouting, it was now undeniable that time was on the march.
Until then he had been able to look out on the snow and say to himself, “It’s winter still. There’s a while yet. I’ve still got time to get ready.”
But the sight of the naked, burgeoning earth was like the ticking of a clock. They were little more than two months from the expected birth date.
He had memorized the books that Merry had taught him, line by line, like someone from a time before the written word had been invented. She would give him a sentence, have him repeat it back to her, then repeat it to himself again and again, until it came automatically to him. He found the repetition of the words comforting, even after he already knew the books backward and forward. Their words were something of authority, something to cling to.
At the same time, it did not tell him what he really wanted to hear—the fact that he would be able to handle his share of things when the time came. He searched between the words for that kind of reassurance, but could not find it. Then his mind went off in a dozen different directions to worry about a dozen other, different things.
He worried about Wolf. A pet dog could be jealous when a new baby came. That was common knowledge. Wolf, of course, was no pet. On the other hand, while a pet dog might be jealous, he was not likely to look on the baby as possibly something to eat.
“It’s good you’re going to have the baby in June,” Jeebee said to Merry. “It’s a stroke of luck.”
“Stroke of luck, nothing!” Merry answered cheerfully. “It’s a matter simply of counting the days forward. It takes nine months to produce a baby. That’s all you need to know.”
“Yes, yes,” said Jeebee, “I know that. That isn’t what I’m talking about. June’s the time when the testosterone in wolves is at its lowest. They’re at their least aggressive then.”
Merry, who had been cutting cloth for clothes for the baby, stopped abruptly in what she was doing.
“Aggressive? What do you mean—aggressive?”
“Oh, just what I say,” said Jeebee. He was suddenly upset at having mentioned the matter at all to Merry. “The high testosterone season is during the early winter months. January, February—like that. That’s when the wolves in a pack compete for position and breeding rights. Just the opposite in May and June.
June more than May is the time when they’re least competitive, and it’s at that time that the pups are born. Then all the wolves in a pack are concerned with all the pups. I’ve told you about this. They all help to feed the new ones, and baby-sit them if the mother has to go off for a while. What I was saying, was that we’ll be having our baby at just the time when Wolf is at his most friendly and helpful.”
“You mean he’s the least likely to be aggressive toward the baby?” Merry looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“Well, yes,” said Jeebee, “but aggressive isn’t the word. Just the opposite. It will be a time when Wolf will be most likely to be protective and helpful.”
“I see,” said Merry, and the frown that had drawn a line between her two eyes smoothed somewhat.
Jeebee still felt uneasy at having perhaps planted a worry in her mind. He made a mental note not to bring the subject up again. Merry was perfectly capable of making sure, permanently, that Wolf was not a potential danger to her baby. He did not want any reaction as drastic as that.
On the other hand he, too, was determined that Wolf must be agreeable to adding this newcomer to their pack. It would have to be a matter of being completely on guard against him when the time came. Jeebee primed himself for that moment, among his other preparations.
Meanwhile, there was an endless list of things to make. He built a framework around the bed, and an extra area of floor next to it that would be the actual birthing area. He set up sheets of plastic made from the bags that could be used to enclose it completely, like a tent within the room, if necessary to protect against dirt or sand.
He had already put a plastic layer tight against the ceiling and the top of the walls of the room. It was impossible to double-plank from underneath, but the ceiling was already as well sealed as was possible. Now, in addition, this tentlike affair would be ready. Merry would probably not want it with its sides down most of the time, simply because it would become intolerably hot inside and possibly shut out a sufficient air supply.
At any rate, there it was, ready to go. It was not difficult to build or to make, after his experience in plastic- coating the floor.
Merry had also wanted an enema syringe for herself, when the pains would first begin. First births, according to the books and her experience, were usually more prolonged than the births of children born later to the same mother. They found such a syringe with a plastic nozzle and a rubber bulb down in the ruins of the ranch house, but the rubber was so old that it had cracked and no longer worked. They kept the nozzle and instead attached a bag Jeebee made up from plastic sealed into the shape of a long, rectangular bag, fastened to the nozzle with tight thongs of rawhide that had been allowed to shrink around the inner end of the nozzle to the point where it was watertight.
Filling the bag was a laborious process of immersing it in a container of warm soapy water and simply holding it under the surface until the air escaped upward and water took its place in the bag. Once the bag was full, it could be emptied simply by rolling up the bag.
Merry had also asked him to build what was in effect a type of birthing stool that had been used for centuries under primitive conditions, with a solid vertical rod before it, with a solid crossbar she could cling to, to help in the muscular effort of the delivery.
Jeebee eventually came up with a tripod with the requisite bars. She drew him a sketch of the birthing stool she wanted him to build for her. This was simply a three-legged stool with a seat. However, the seat was to be cut out in half-moon shape to give the baby room to emerge and to give Jeebee room to reach in and help when the time came.
He had been lucky enough to find a keyhole saw down at the ranch, and with this, since it was small and rather a flimsy saw, but would cut in a curve, he carved out three identical seat shapes from light plywood and glued them together, reinforcing the glue by nailing them together and countersinking the nails. He finished by padding the seat with cloth covered by leather they had tanned themselves from cattle hide.
The tripod, the bars, the stool with its special seat ended up as sturdy pieces of equipment, and Merry was pleased.
His final and most important concern, as they moved on into May and then through May toward the early June date of the birth, was for the lighting in the cave.
