Not a Drop to Drink

“You should be the one to call to him,” Stebbs said. “Beings as he’ll know your voice.”

“We didn’t talk all that much,” Lynn said, then cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hello, the camp!”

The only answer was the rustle of falling beech leaves, and a frantic scurrying sound in the underbrush nearby. “Try again,” said Stebbs.

She shouted again, this time adding a high-pitched whistle on the end of her call. No response.

“How bad of shape were they in?” Stebbs asked.

Lynn’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Not as bad as all that,” she said. “Unless someone—”

A piercing scream split the night air, dropping Stebbs and Lynn to the ground in an instant, their hands going to the pistols at their belts. It broke on a high note, followed by a screech and a howl of pain that dwindled into a racking sob.

“The woman,” Stebbs said soberly. “That’d be labor.”

“Labor?”

“The baby’s being born.”

Lynn’s hand tightened on her gun, for all the good that it would do her in that situation. “What do we do?”

Stebbs got to his feet awkwardly and brushed the dead leaves from his flannel shirt. “I know a thing or two about it,” he said. “If that boy is as green as you say, I doubt he’s much help.”

Lynn stayed on the ground, peering through the bracken as if for an enemy. “What do you want me to do?”

“Get up, for one.” He hauled her to her feet.

Lynn hallooed the camp when they were close enough to make out the feeble gray wisps of smoke climbing skyward from the fire. Eli burst out of the shelter, looking wildly in every direction. “Girl? Is that you?” He held a branch above his head in case it wasn’t her, but it didn’t look like he posed much of a threat. His weapon was thicker than his arm.

“Christ, he’s skinny,” Stebbs muttered.

“I’m coming in with a friend,” Lynn yelled toward the camp, pausing only slightly before using the word friend to describe Stebbs. They splashed across the stream to Eli, who lowered his club and squinted into the night.

“Hello, son,” Stebbs said as he emerged from the darkness. “Name’s Stebbs.” He held out a hand, and Eli shook it.

“Eli,” he said shortly.

“The girl here is Lynn, somehow I doubt she introduced herself properly when you met.” Lynn nodded to Eli across the fire.

“How’s Lucy?”

“The girl’s fine,” she said. “That her mother screaming?”

Eli nodded and gestured toward the shelter but came up with no words.

“She trying to be mother to another?” Stebbs asked gently.

“All day it’s been like this,” Eli said. “I don’t know what to do. The baby won’t come out, and Neva is exhausted.”

A cautious silence had emanated from the shelter since they’d converged onto the camp. Lynn had stalked a bobcat through the woods once. Mother had sent her out to find a turkey, but the unfamiliar flash of a feline coat had caught her attention and she’d taken it as a challenge. Bobcats weren’t common, and Lynn had known she was out of her league when she’d emerged into a clearing where she knew the cat should have been, but was out of sight. The same feeling was with her on the bank, the idea that she was being watched by unfriendly eyes attached to a body that was ready to pounce if it made up its mind to do so.

“We’re not here to bother,” she said loudly, hoping her voice carried to those perked ears. “Just wanted to let you know Lucy’s all right.”

Eli’s face fell. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Hold up now,” Stebbs said to Lynn. “If they need our help, we’re here to give it.” Lynn’s eyes cut uneasily to the shelter Eli had constructed, but she kept her mouth shut. “First off, why are you down here on the stream? There’s plenty of empty houses to put her up in to bear the child.”

“Neva says she won’t go. She’s heard too many stories, people’s faces turning black without water, their bodies shriveling up as they die slow.”

“It happens.”

“She won’t come away from the water. I set this up for a temporary camp, but she wouldn’t move from it.”

“It’s not so bad,” Stebbs reassured him. “Probably leaks like a bastard though.”

“It’s not waterproof, no,” Eli admitted.

“Can’t hold any heat either, I reckon.”

In the firelight, Lynn could make out a blush creeping up Eli’s sharp-boned cheeks. “No, it can’t.”

“So here you’ve got a pregnant woman and a child living under a bunch of dead twigs next to a stream when winter’s coming on?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Eli said tightly, desperation making him bite off each word.

“How about not letting the most paranoid person in your bunch call the shots?” Lynn suggested, then fought down her own blush when Eli turned his angry glare on her.

Stebbs cleared his throat. “Water can be hauled. You get her set up in some real shelter with some heat in it and bring the water to her. Staying next to the stream in the summer and fall’s fine. But in the spring, it’ll drown ya, in the summer it could disappear altogether. You stay by it in the winter, one morning you’ll wander out to your precious water source to find out you froze to death in the night.”

Eli’s jawline was set tightly, and Lynn had lived long enough with a person who had a temper to know that the fuse was getting short. “I’m afraid your suggestions come a little late,” he said as another wrenching moan rose from the shelter behind him.

She’d been fighting it. Lynn could tell by the stifled sound of the cry that the sufferer did not want them made party to her pain. Stebbs flicked on a flashlight and moved to the mouth of the shelter. “I’m here to help you. I’m no doctor, but I’ve seen my share of goats born and helped a few of them along.”

He’d made it about a foot into the shelter when he came flying backward, landing in the mud.

“Keep away from me, you fucking perverted cripple!” The scream that followed Stebbs’ exit was shrill, laced with fear and pain. “Eli! Eli, where are you?”

Lynn helped Stebbs up as she listened to Eli trying to calm the panicked woman inside. She approached the entrance to have a clod of dirt smack her in the face.

“I’m done here,” she said to Stebbs. He grabbed her arm as she turned for home.

“She’s in labor—you don’t know what that’s like.”

“Don’t much care either,” Lynn said, rubbing the spot on her jaw where the dirt had hit her. But she stayed.

Eli emerged. “She said you can go in.” He pointed to Lynn. “But not Stebbs.”

“Stupid choice,” Lynn said. “I don’t know the first thing about this. At least he’s seen it.”

“With goats,” Eli countered.

“More than I got,” Lynn answered, but ducked her head and shuffled into the shelter.

The woman lay under a pile of clothes, writhing with pain. When she realized Lynn was there, she made a conscious effort to control it, but her hands dug deeply into the dirt on both sides of her hips. The repeated action had dug holes there as deep as her wrists.

“You don’t have to hide it,” Lynn said. “Pain is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Black eyes regarded her with contempt. “Pain isn’t the word,” she seethed, her perfectly symmetric white teeth biting off each syllable. Another contraction struck and she balled her fists into the earth. Cords stood out on her neck as she struggled against it, and her lips peeled back in a grimace. Lynn could only watch until it passed.

“Do something,” the woman spat at her. Sweat streaked her face even though the night was cold, her black hair was tangled in dark coils from tossing.

“I can’t,” Lynn said calmly. “I know nothing about it. Better off to let Stebbs in.”