The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,52
branches so as not to get swept off and the two girls clutching at me and vampire bats yo-yoing up and down making the girls scream and all in all it was a trip to remember.
It took an hour to get to the Shoe sign which the wind had snapped so the toe stuck in the mud. The rain wasn’t quite as bad here and there was enough light in the sky to see the land was all blasted and ruined with nothing but jagged tree stumps and huge piles of slash. Geezus I said to myself. What A-bomb fell here? A tractor was mired off to the side of the road near a trench wide enough to make me wonder whether they were digging a moat after all. There were pennants or banners stretched across the trees and then when we got to the main building there was a flag with vertical bands I had my suspicions might be Vietnam’s and I don’t mean the South part either.
August tugged me toward the door but first I told Gabriel to get some tires on the truck and get them on quick in case we had to go fetch a doctor. I knew now it was Lilac I had been called for because there’s a smell that comes during childbirth that maybe only a mother can catch or a nurse but it’s got urine in it and blood and sweat and something sweeter that’s hard to describe but was waiting for me the moment I went in.
This had once been a logging camp and you could still see scars on the floor from hobnailed boots. The homemade table and chairs had been shoved against the wall to make room for a bed lit by kerosene lamps hanging down from the rafters. Lilac lay on a mattress where the beams converged and judging by the way she rolled and heaved she was well along. She was a little slip of a girl who seemed even smaller with the enormous thing that was trying to happen just down from her middle. I went right over and knelt by the table and told her my name and said I was there to help things along and she nodded in gratitude though I don’t think she was aware of much now except the force that had hold of her which had to be bewildering compared to what puny forces she could muster against it. She took my hand and pressed it hard to her breast then moved it to her mouth found a finger and started desperately sucking. For comfort I suppose. I let her suck all she wanted.
We weren’t exactly alone with this. The other commune members squatted on their heels against the wall watching so it was like summer camp after all and this was an initiation ceremony they were required to attend. My first instinct was to shoo them all away but then I realized Lilac was drawing strength from having them near. “Our baby” August called it and maybe they were helping by just being there tightening their pelvises in sympathy the girls or feeling their penises shrivel in guilt the boys. There was one big girl with thick pigtails who looked serene as a Viking princess and I delegated her to keep mopping Lilac’s brow while I concentrated on what was happening lower down.
What was happening lower down looked normal enough to me though naturally it scared them especially with her moans which were awfully LOUD. I didn’t think we’d need to send to town for my doctor friend but could see it through ourselves. It wasn’t even a nurse they especially needed. What they needed and needed badly was an adult.
Two adults. For standing against the wall rocking slowly back and forth on heels was Rosen or Granite or whatever he wanted to be called. A lot of men intimidate you with their size and brawn but he was one of those rarer ones who impress you by their thinness like they’re showing you they don’t need much from life and because they don’t need much from life they’re a hell of a lot tougher than you are. He had on ragged work pants a red flannel shirt taut suspenders and looked like he had stepped into that room from 1885. He stroked his blonde beard while he rocked but never smiled never came close to smiling. Granite is a good name for him since his skin is steel