Extract
“Hand me that,” he says, pointing.
With one arm, he sweeps the magazines from the bed. I set the laundry basket on the mattress. He takes the baby out, wraps her in two clean flannel shirts, front to back, the small face above the folds. He makes a nest of sheets in the basket, and then he lays the infant gently in. “Okay then,” he says to steady himself. “Okay now.”
I climb into the truck. My father sets the basket on my lap.
“You all right?” he asks.
I nod, knowing that no other answer is at all possible. My father gets into the truck and puts the key into the ignition. I know he’s praying that the engine will start. It catches the first try only half the time in winter. The engine coughs, and he coaxes it to a whine. I’m afraid to look at the infant in the plastic basket, afraid I won’t see the tiny puffs of breath in the frigid air, mimicking my own.
My father drives as fast as he dares. I grit my teeth in the ruts. The frozen lane is ridged up from the early snows and thaws of the fall. In the spring, before the town comes by to grade it, the road will be nearly impassable. Last spring, during a two-week melt, I had to stay at my friend Jo’s house so that I could go to school. My father, who had taken great pains to be alone, finally walked into town one day, both to see his daughter and to break his cabin fever.
Marion, who tends the register at Remy’s, tried to bring him home in her Isuzu, but she couldn’t make it past the first bend. My father had to walk the rest of the distance, and his calf muscles ached for days.
The baby snorts and startles me. She gives a wail, and even in the weak light from the dashboard, I can see the angry red of her skin. My father puts his hand out to touch her. “Atta girl,” he whispers in the dark.
He keeps his hand lightly on the soft mound of flannel shirts. I wonder if the motion of soothing Clara is coming back to him now and hurting his chest. The road down the hill seems longer than I remembered it. I hope the baby will cry all the way to Mercy.
My father guns the engine when he hits the pavement, and the truck fishtails from ice in the treads. He pushes the speedometer as high as he can without losing control.
We pass the Mobil station and the bank and the one-room elementary school from which I graduated just the year before. I wonder if my father will stop at Remy’s and hand the baby over to Marion, who could call for an ambulance.
But my father bypasses the store, because stopping will only delay what he’s already doing — delivering the infant to someone who will know what to do with her. We drive past the small village green that is used as a skating rink in winter. In the middle is a flagpole with a spotlight on it.
Who left the baby in the sleeping bag?
My father turns at the sign for Mercy. The driveway to the hospital is lined with yellow lights, and I can see the baby, scrunching her face, ugly now. But I remember the eyes looking up at me in the woods — dark eyes, still and watchful. My father pulls up to Emergency and leans on the horn.
The door on my side swings open, and a security guard in uniform pushes his face into the truck.
“What’s the horn for?” he asks.