The Dogtrot Christmas BONUS–Chapters 2-3

In honor of the Blogroll/ Bloghop the authors of A Log Cabin Christmas Collection will be running next week, I am posting the original first chapters for what became my story The Dogtrot Christmas. Chapter one was in the last post, today’s post includes chapters two and three.

While featuring characters from The Dogtrot Christmas, these “bonus” features provide insight into Molly Faires’ life in what is essentially backstory. Enjoy!

Chapter Two

            “Jamie, is the baby here yet?”  Molly tossed the braid over her shoulder and whispered into the white canvas tent. She could hear rustling but Syntha’s moaning had eased some.

Her brother stepped out, running his fingers through his sandy-colored hair and blinked several times. “Not yet and Kizzie’s getting worried. She wants me to send scouts out for Ma Hanks.”

“Why?” Molly could smell the sweat rolling off him and something worse, a heightened fear they already knew too well.

His whip-thin body suggested adolescence more than fatherhood, but her brother thrust his shoulders back and his chin out. “Syntha’s having trouble. Kizzie thinks the baby may be too big.” He looked down at her from his six-foot height. “She don’t look very good.”

Molly touched his arm. “You don’t think?”

“I don’t know what to think. The Hankses always know best. I’m going to find Ma Hanks. And to tell Pappy Hanks to start praying.”

“God always listens to Pappy Hanks. Even the Texas Mexicans are afraid of him.”

Hope and indecision crossed Jamie’s face, but he nodded. “I’ll find ‘em now.”

Molly watched him thread his way between the handful of tents and the dozen wagons.  Three children ran by chasing a yellow hound with a stick in his mouth and she could hear the milk cows bellowing. Coming soon to be milking time and the men should be back from scouting out the trail ahead through theArkansasswamps. Everyone was getting worried. All the good land might be taken up; they needed to get toTexasto lay claim as soon as they could.

“Molly, that you out there?”

She heard Kizzie’s quick voice. “Yes ma’ am.”

Kizzie leaned out of the tent and thrust an iron pot into Molly’s hands. “We need more hot water. Get it from the cauldron on the fire and then find a bucket and draw cool water, too.”

Molly took off in the same direction as her brother.  “How’s Syntha doing?” asked a young woman rocking a babe of her own.

Molly shrugged. “Baby’s coming.” She handed the pot to a hollow-eyed woman minding the smoky fire.

“Taking a long time,” the woman said. “We be praying.”

“Thank you. Jamie just went for Pappy Hanks.”

“Ma Hanks going to be unhappy she went with Pappy Hanks today.”

“Syntha’s baby wasn’t due for another month.” Molly held out the pot.

“I know he’s been praying for his girl. That Syntha’s the light of his eye, his baby girl.”

“Yes, ma’am. Kizzie needs more water, though.”

“Aye. I’ll fill it up.” The woman lifted off the lid from the blackened cauldron and ladled in hot water.

Molly hurried as best she could without spilling any of the precious water down her brown homespun skirt. It was hard to keep clean on the trail and she only had the two dresses. She walked carefully to not scuff up any dirt and managed to arrive at the tent with most of the water still in the pot. “I’m here, Kizzie.”

“Thank ye.” Kizzie look harried as she grabbed the metal wire handle.

“Can I see her?”

Kizzie held her sky-blue eyes closed a moment as if to rest. When she opened them, she stared unblinkingly at Molly. “How old ye be now? Seventeen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re old enough to know, especially if that Parker boy is still swanning around. Come in, but be quick about it.”

Jamie’s bride lay on a tick of old corn stalks. Her face looked pallid and drawn in the dusky light.  Kizzie crooned softly as she wiped a damp cloth across Syntha’s forehead. “The baby’s coming soon, you just need to push and use all your strength.”

Syntha moaned and Molly saw the cords that bound her head to her neck strain. She reared her back into an arch and let out a stifled cry. “That’s it,” Kizzie whispered. “Let it out. Ease down there, push from up here, and scream if you need to.”

Molly backed toward the flap just as Ma Hanks bustled in. “We’re be back. The scouts thought they saw Indians. I’m grieved I wasn’t here.” She drew back the sheet from Syntha’s knees and Molly slipped out of the tent. Molly picked up a water bucket and hurried to fill it at the cool chattering creek. This time she didn’t care if her dress got wet when she scurried from the bank.

Pappy Hanks returned with Jamie, carrying a lantern the woman quickly took into the tent. The two men sat on a log beside Molly as night fell and the flitting movement of bats crossed the sky. Pappy Hanks held his thick hard-covered Bible in his large hands, but he did not open it. His eyes were closed and his lips moved as he invoked the blessings of his powerful God on behalf of his youngest daughter.

Jamie hung his hands between his knees and stared at the ground, flinching every time Syntha moaned. Molly wanted to run away from the noise and the fear, but love for her frightened brother kept her beside him.

“It is woman’s lot to suffer in childbirth,” the Reverend Hanks said once. “But that doesn’t mean it is any easier. “

They heard the great horned owl soar overhead and the scent of the pine tree woods seemed to intensify in the dark. Families called good night and the cows lowed in their make-shift corrals. A knot of women gathered just outside the lantern glow of the tent and Molly could see the tension in their shoulders.

When at last the thin wail of new life slipped out of the tent and to their grateful ears, Molly felt joy break through her heart. Her niece or nephew was here! After so long being a twosome, she and Jamie had another blood member in their family.

Ma Hanks slipped out of the tent carrying a bundle and her fierce voice broke. “Jamie, Tom, come. We’re losing her.”

Molly jumped to her feet after the men. When she reached the tent Ma Hanks thrust the bundle into her arms.  Under the thin light from the cusp of a moon and against the dying rasps of Syntha’s breath, she looked for the first time at her nephew’s red, scrunched up face. What were they going to do without his mother?

Chapter Three

            Years later when in the brush camp meetings Pappy Hanks would talk about hell, he’d describe it as fire and brimstone, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But when Molly thought of hell she remembered the months after Syntha died; when all life went to silence and cold, shot through with the terror of a baby who might starve and languish for lack of his ma

Jamie sat with Syntha’s body growing cold and stiff in the long night.  Pappy Hanks read aloud from out of the book of Psalms, the whole time tears dripped down his rugged face.  Ma Hanks and Kizzie washed the body and combed out Syntha’s hair long and straight. When Molly entered the tent to pay her respects, Syntha looked waxen and motionless, all the vivid laughter lost along with her rosy cheeks. The tent felt empty even with the ones who loved her best gathered around.

Molly still clutched the tiny baby wrapped in a blanket and sleeping with a stillness that nearly matched his dead mama’s. When he finally stirred deep in the night, she didn’t know what to do. But Kizzie took him. “We’ll thank God I have still have milk,” and unbuttoned her breast to give the babe some feed.

He scarcely seemed to have the strength of a kitten, yet suckled to her like a trap snapping on.

They buried Syntha the next morning on a knoll not far from the camp site. Kizzie’s Willie marked it off and he and Jamie dug the hole down deep. All the members of the train except the scouts and watchers, gathered around as they lowered Syntha in wrapped in a sheet strewn with her mama’s dried lavender. Pappy Hanks striped the thin gold wedding band from her finger and handed it to Jamie, whose face crumbled into grief like a tired leaf trampled underfoot.

Pappy Hanks quoted the passage from Isaiah 61 from memory; “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

Sobs broke from the crowd as he continued in his deep voice, “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”

Pappy Hanks only preached the Scriptures. He didn’t add one word. They stood around that gravesite until drizzle began to seep through the trees. Ma Hanks picked up a handful of damp dirt. She put it into Jamie’s hand and indicated the hole. He shook his head. “I can’t put dirt on my beauty’s face.”

“She’s not here, Jamie,” Ma Hanks spoke in her gentle way. “Her soul’s detached from this place and gone home. You’re in different places now, like two rooms of a dog-trot cabin. Your love is like a roof that stretches from your past to your future. It will never forget her, but for now, there’s a porch that separates you for the spirit to move on through. Just like the kitchen is separate from the sleeping spot because it’s not safe for them to share, you need to separate yourself from her and let her go.”

He shuddered. She gave him a push, real nice and soft, and he dropped the dirt onto the sheet. Ma Hanks nodded and her children, all boys save Kizzie now, reached for dirt to toss into that grave. The babe in Molly’s arms stirred and cried out, and she fell to shaking. Willie Colwell took the baby. “You need to help your brother.”

Molly scraped dirt from the ground. She let it dribble through her fingers into the grave and felt an icy chill ripple through her soul. How many times had they heard these words and stood beside a filled grave? Molly counted them off on her dirt-encrusted fingers: Ma, Pa, Mary, John, James and Andrew.

“Where did the family go?” he whispered.

“Like Ma Hanks said.” Molly dug her fingers into his arm so he could feel her presence. “They just stepped across the dog trot to heaven. We’ll see them again someday.”

“Not soon enough for me.”

He blew out his cheeks and opened his fingers. They watched the soil dot the sheet. Eli Parker and John Stewart picked up shovels to fill in that hole. Pappy Hanks stood at the head of the grave, his string tie flapping in the wind and the rain, the tears falling, with his big black Bible clutched to his chest as if he was protecting it from the rain, or perhaps using it to keep his heart in place.

As soon as the wooden cross was affixed, Pappy Hanks stirred himself and called the wagon master. “Time to move out.”

Jamie didn’t want to leave. Ma Hanks tugged him away. “You ride in our wagon today. I’ll have my Joshua take yours. The baby will ride with Kizzie.”

Molly didn’t much know where to go other than to follow the wagon. Kizzie beckoned her. “With my four little ones, I can’t manage alone. You and I will have to keep this scrap of baby alive. I’m going to need you with my wagon. Can you help me?”

Molly looked toward Jamie, but he scarcely heard. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my best.”

Kizzie’s red eyes looked bleak as she gazed past Molly to Jamie. “He’s going to need you too, him and the baby both. You’ve shown yourself strong Molly Faires. Can you do this hard thing?”

Molly wrinkled her nose and thought back to all the grief in theTennesseewoods. “I can do anything I put my heart and soul to, ma’am.”

Kizzie looked down at the baby in her arms and thrust him into Molly’s. “Good, because it’s only going to get harder.”