I felt her fingers fumbling at the back of my dress and perceived her silence as that of a person stunned. I felt the same way, now, speechless and paralyzed. I had obeyed Mother. I had not gone into Mary's room. But the door had been open a crack, and I had pushed it open further and peeked. I knew, now, what she had seen there, because I had seen it, too.
16. OCTOBER 1911
Father came in through the back door with another man, their clothes dripping. He had left the buggy standing in the driveway, the horses there in the rain; it was unusual for him to do that. They should have been taken to the stable and rubbed down. He should be calling Levi to come and tend them, to rub them down and give them oats.
But the horses stood silent in the rain, and Father ignored Naomi's offer of hot coffee and a dry cloth to wipe his face and hands. He looked at Mother and she rose and took him silently to the stairs. The other man followed. I began to go with them, but Mother spoke sharply to me from the landing.
"Stay downstairs," she said. Then she felt something under her foot. Leaning down, she picked it up and handed it impatiently to me. "Put this away, Katy. It's left from your party."
I took it from her, knowing she was mistaken, but said nothing. I put it into my pocket.
I heard their voices upstairs, moving down the hall toward Mary's room. I knew what they would see there and wondered what they would do. It didn't seem to matter much. Nothing did. Except, perhaps, Jacob.
I checked the baby, who was still sleeping soundly on the parlor sofa, her small hands outstretched. Then I pulled on a heavy jacket from the hall closet, and when Naomi was turned toward the stove and didn't see me slip through the kitchen, I let myself out the back door and ran through the rain to the stable.
I found him there, huddled behind the hay bales, in the corner where I had once come upon Nellie and Paul, near the shelf where the can of harness oil was kept, and beside the covered barrel of oats and the bridles and harness hung from hooks on the wall. He was half-asleep but shivering, his clothes very wet. I knew he had been there for hours. He must have been alarmed when Father entered in the night and moved the horses out. Knowing his way of being, I thought that he had probably been sitting close to the horses and then had run to hide when he heard Father come.
He clutched the handle of a rake as if he might have need of a weapon.
"Here," I said to him, and held the gold-flecked brown marble out. "You dropped this on our stairs."
He released the rake, took the marble from me, put it into his pocket where it clicked against the other, and looked at the floor. His shoulders were hunched, and he still shivered with cold. I went and got a horse blanket from where it hung folded over the door of the stall. I draped it over Jacob's shoulders.
We sat silently together there in the stable, and I sorted out a clear picture of what had happened. Slowly I said it all to Jacob, knowing he would not respond, but the saying of it fixed it firmly in my mind, and I knew I would have to explain it soon to the others.
"Nellie had a baby, didn't she? And she didn't want it. It was born but she wouldn't take it, wouldn't feed it."
He was silent.
I could picture the cold bedroom of the little farmhouse. Probably they had moved Anna to her parents room again when Nellie went home in disgrace. And for the past two days Peggy had been there, too, to help. I pictured the family gathered there in anguish while Nellie gave birth to a baby who came unwanted into the world.
"Did it come early, Jacob? It was very small. Much smaller than Mary was when she was born, and even smaller than the Shafers' twins.
"Was it born alive? I know some aren't."
He made a sound, then, and at first I thought he was imitating the sound of a kitten, something I had heard him do in the past. But he made the mewing sound again, and I knew, suddenly, that it was the sound of the newborn baby.
I touched his shoulders through the thick plaid blanket and he did not pull away. "It was like the kittens, wasn't it? You used to take the new kittens down to the creek. Peggy told me. She said you were gentle with them. Did you do that to the baby, Jacob?"
He cried out then, harshly, and pulled his shoulders away from my hand.
The door to the stable opened, and my father was standing there. "Katy," he said to me, "I have to take the boy in now."
I stood in front of Jacob as if to shield him. "He meant no harm, Father!"
"The court will decide."
I could feel Jacob's fear behind me, and with it something else. Anger. He had responded with that harsh, angry cry when I talked about the kittens. Suddenly I became aware of what had happened.
"Father!" I said. "I need to know—"
"Katy, a terrible thing has happened that you know nothing about," Father said in a stern voice. "I must take the boy now."
"But I do know, Father! I saw it! I looked into Mary's room and saw it! The red hair made me know it was Nellie's," I said, whispering it, explaining it to myself.
"And it was wet. But, Father, I need to know this: was the baby wet, or was it just the feed sack, from the rain?"
Father looked at me, puzzled, and I think saddened that I had seen. "The baby's body was dry," he said.
I turned back to Jacob. "I'm sorry," I told him. "I was wrong, Jacob. It was like the lamb, wasn't it? Its mother turned away, but you found a better mother who already had a baby of her own so she could feed it. Remember? I saw it in your barn, the day you gave Goldy to me."
I thought of that lamb, as fleecy as a child's toy, comfortable in the pen beside the mother that Jacob had found to save its life. Alive, fed, the lamb bore no resemblance to the limp, gray, staring thing wrapped in the wet feed sack that I had glimpsed in Mary's crib. But Jacob had meant only to save Nellie's baby by bringing it to my mother. I was certain of that. It was just too small, and the night too cold and wet; the journey was too long.
Outside, behind Father, through the rain, I heard heavy feet on the back steps. More men had arrived and were entering our house. I knew there was very little time left. I turned back to Jacob.
"You must come now, Jacob," I told him. "They're looking for you." I lifted the blanket from him and helped him stand. Though he had always withdrawn from my touch in the past, now he let me hold his hand and take him to the house, where the men were waiting. My father led the way.