"Life After Rachel " by Maren Smith is completed. It is twelve chapters in length and is in our member's area now. Join now and you'll be reading new chapters immediately.
Prologue
“Don’t
you leave me, Rachel! Rach! Honey, don’t you dare leave me!”
A big man,
Daniel knelt in the middle of their bed, his beautiful wife of three years
held tightly in his arms as he begged. He begged her, he begged God. Neither
seemed to be listening.
“I can’t
lose you,” he sobbed, his massive shoulders shaking. “Please, baby, breathe. Come
on, breathe!”
His chin
wobbled and big tears rolled unabashedly down his face as he rocked her. And
Rachel did, in fact, breathe. Her whole body convulsed with the effort
it took to suck that ragged gasp into her failing lungs. Her face
was ashen, her eyes fixed and glazing as she stared unseeing at the ceiling,
those beautiful sky-blue orbs seeming more unfocussed with every shaky gasp.
For the
millionth time, Daniel reached for the bowl of cool water propped against his
hip, nearly lost in the tussle of bedclothes surrounding them. He awkwardly
tried to wring the excess drops from the cloth with one hand before tenderly
bathing the cold, clammy sweat from her face. It was the only comfort
he could give her, and Rachel, his sweet Rachel, was already beyond the mortal
ability to feel it.
Across the
room, lying in a makeshift bed fashioned from their lowermost bureau drawer,
the baby that had left her like this was wailing for a nourishment his mother
was beyond the ability to provide. Daniel didn’t spare his son so much
as a glance, not when, in his arms, Rachel began to spasm.
“No,” he
wept. “No, no, no!”
He pulled
her fiercely close, willing with all his might for the convulsions to stop. But
when they did, her ragged breathing changed as well. No longer fast
and hard, each gasp seemed to come with a longer and longer pause in between. Her
whole body worked to draw in the next hard gasp.
"Please,
baby," he moaned, and shuddered with her. “Please, don’t go.”
Rachel wound
down in his arms like an old waistcoat watch. Until finally, she simply
stopped. With her head pressed to his heart, she grew limp and very,
very quiet.
Some pains
stabbed too deeply for tears to express. In that instant, as the softest
of sighs slipped past her parted lips, the deep well of Daniel’s tears abruptly
exhausted itself. Everything inside of him that had up until that moment
been alive--it all went utterly still as well. Pulling Rachel close,
Daniel stroked his beautiful wife’s hair and quietly died with her.
Chapter One
After battling
childbed fever for eleven days, Rachel Abigail Bower gave up the fight. At
seven o’clock that cool fall morning, she was lovingly bathed and dressed in
her Sunday best by three of her closest friends. A few hours later, as
the whole of Redemption arrived to pay their final respects, the twenty-four-year-old
mother of one left her home for the very last time. The loss of her was
more than Daniel could bear.
Standing
at the head of her grave, the giant, blond mountain of a farmer stood in the
shade of the old oak tree and watched without expression as the sum and total
of his world was carried from the tiny farm house he had built with his own
hands just for her. Unable to afford even the plainest coffin for her
funeral; instead, her fellow townsmen carried her across the yard, wrapped
in a sheet on an ordinary wooden stretcher. Elizabeth White, the Reverend’s
wife, sang Amazing Grace in her sweet soprano voice.
Wrapped
in a blanket in his arms, his newborn son was crying. The baby hadn’t
stopped crying, it seemed, since the moment of his birth. Daniel, on
the other hand, couldn’t make himself shed so much as a single tear. Inside,
all he felt was...nothing.
A soft breeze
rustled through the leaves of the sheltering oak, wisping through Daniel’s
short hair and making his gray eyes sting. Look away, he told himself,
as the pallbearers neared the hole he and the Reverend had dug. She
didn’t look right, swaddled that way. This didn’t feel real. And
yet he couldn’t force his gaze away as they set the stretcher on the ground
not far from his feet. He watched, unblinking and impassive, his insides
feeling as though they were being ripped apart, while Rachel was lowered gently
into the ground.
Reverend
John White opened his bible and began to speak, but the words were incomprehensible. Everyone
but Daniel managed through the hymn as Davis and Charles, twin brothers who
owned the Mercantile and Grocery respectively, took up their shovels and filled
in the grave. The first scoop of dirt hit Rachel’s chest, the second
her head; Daniel couldn’t breathe. It was all he could do not to grab
their shovels and chase the brothers away.
Inside he
was screaming; on the outside, he couldn’t make himself move so much as a muscle. As
still and stiff as the old oak behind him, he waited until the eulogy ended. Knowing
the Reverend, it must have been a nice one, but Daniel couldn’t recall a single
word. Still, he knew the ordeal must be over when Reverend White closed
his bible and lay a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Rachel is with God now,
son. Her earthly toils are over; she’ll never suffer or feel another
moment’s pain. There is some comfort to be found in that.”
Daniel stared
at the Reverend’s moving mouth, but the words just didn’t make sense. Something
was expected of him, though. After a belated moment, he made himself
say, “Thank you for coming.”
Elizabeth
touched his arm. “Daniel, I just want you to know...”
He turned
woodenly to face her, too, and watched until her mouth stopped moving as well. “Thank
you for coming,” he said again. He raised his head, in some part of himself
aware of the ocean of sorrowful faces staring silently back at him, gathered
as they were around the freshly turned earth that covering his wife. “Thank
you all for coming.”
Nobody said
a word when Daniel excused himself. With his baby wailing nonstop in
his arms, he walked back to the house, climbed the three wooden steps and,
without a backward’s look, quietly closed the door between himself and the
forty some-odd towns’ people of Redemption.
“That poor
man,” Elizabeth said, when the mayor’s matronly wife came to stand at her elbow.
“That poor
baby,” Sara Evans replied. “How in the world will Daniel ever take care
of this farm and raise up that little one, too?”
“You don’t
know?” Becky Simmons asked as she joined them.
Sara blinked,
first at Becky and then at Elizabeth. “Know what?”
“The baby
can’t take cow’s milk. We’ve been trying all week. It only makes
him sicker, poor little thing.”
Sara gasped,
and Elizabeth grimly nodded, confirming what the others had already deduced. “Weak
and frail as he is now, I reckon he'll be in the ground next to his dear mama
within a few days.”
"How
can you say that so matter of factly?" Sara gasped. “We have to do something!”
“What?”
Elizabeth solemnly countered. “No one in town is nursing or even pregnant. .”
Becky’s
mouth tightened wryly. "That old nanny goat of the Thompsons’ got
‘et by Sacs last fall. There ain’t another in probably forty miles."
"Martin
could send someone to Clovervale. They could wire my sister in Montgomery. She's
still nursing her youngest...."
"Even
if Martin could sneak past those damn Sacs, she'd never get here in time." Shaking
her head, Elizabeth said again, “Poor Daniel. He and Rachel had so looked
forward to starting their family and now, in a day or maybe two, he’ll have
lost them both!”
All three
women turned to stare at the house, listening in quiet sympathy as the reedy-thin
wails of the baby filtered out through the fluttering lace of the kitchen curtains.
The Reverend
came up behind them. He, too, fixed sympathetic eyes on the house before
laying a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Come along, Liz. It’s time
to be heading home.”
While the
women climbed up into the appropriate wagons, the Reverend turned again to
the grave. Charles was just tamping the grave marker into the soft earth, a
simple plank of wood that was carved with Rachel’s name. “Lord have mercy
on this house,” he murmured under his breath. “That poor boy can’t bear
much more.”
“Amen,”
Elizabeth added. The Reverend lay an arm across her shoulders as tears
rose to dampen her lashes; Rachel had been her best friend.
“Come along,”
he said, squeezing her in a sad, half-comforting hug. They left together
for home.
* * * * *
Daniel
stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the rest of his small, two-room
house. There wasn’t a corner of this house that didn’t have Rachel in
it. She was all over the kitchen, in the fluttering yellow curtains
and the tin dishes stacked neatly on the high shelf above the hearth. She
was in every stitch of the doily that was wrapped around the bible she used
to read from each night, and in the cup of dry, brittle flowers sitting on
the table.
He turned
slowly to face the bedroom, and the bed that filled up that whole part of the
house. There was just enough space in the far corner for that elegant,
old Edwardian bureau she had stubbornly insisted they bring with them in the
back of that covered wagon all the way from New York. Rachel had
loved that dresser. It had been her grandmother’s, and ever since he
had known her, Rachel had dusted and polished the aged mahogany wood with near
religious dedication, every week without exception.
Right now,
the bottommost drawer was doubling as a cradle for their son. In the
last few months, Daniel had done his best to scrape together enough wood and
time to carve a proper cradle, but with Rachel now gone and knowing his son
was within days of following, he couldn’t see the point in finishing.
Ah now,
but the bed...Rachel’s memory was all over that bed. It had taken him
three months to carve out the elaborate frame and almost two years of begging
and bartering among the neighbors to fluff out the ten-inch-thick feather mattress. He
had finished it three years ago, barely in time for his and Rachel’s wedding
night. That, without a doubt, had been the best night of his life.
Daniel closed
his eyes, breathing deeply, smelling Rachel with every inward draw. Their
first night together, she had come to him dressed in a plain white nightgown
and smelling faintly of soap. She had been trembling. So had he
for that matter. It had been a night of firsts for them both.
And now...
Daniel opened
his eyes to a reality more painful than any physical hurt he had ever suffered
in his life. Nothing compared to this. Not the time he’d been run
over by a wagon, kicked by a mule or even the night he’d been near beaten to
death by cattle raiders. Without hesitation, at this moment Daniel would
eagerly undergo all three tortures again if only it would bring Rachel back.
Lying ignored
in the bottom dresser drawer, swaddled in blankets, with tiny fists flailing
angrily in the air, the newborn howled in hunger. There was nothing Daniel
could do to ease that discomfort. And so the baby cried, his tiny stomach
empty and aching, and all Daniel could do was stare. It was only a matter
of days now; he may as well start digging another grave.
Closing
his ears to his son’s plaintive misery, Daniel turned and walked back out of
the house. The last of the funeral guests had vanished down the winding
road that led to Redemption. He was alone now, something that he would
now need to grow accustomed to.
Bowing his
head, he closed the door so he wouldn’t have to hear the baby’s cries and then
he just started walking. Down the steps and across the yard, his
feet took him straight back to Rachel’s grave. For the first time, he
read the words carved into the simple wooden marker:
Rachel Abigail Bower
Beloved Mother and Wife
b. Mar. 4, 1835
d. Sept. 22, 1859
Daniel
sank to his knees beside the dirt mound. He struggled to hang onto that
feeling of nothingness inside him, but the emotions that had abandoned him
in the wee hours of the morning were flooding back now on an unstoppable tide. Against
his will, with no one around to witness it, a crack of weakness fragmented
through the emotional void. Moisture filled his stormy gray eyes and
his chin began to wobble. A soft autumn breeze rippled across the grass,
rustling the leaves above him and tussling through his hair.
“Rachel,
my heart,” he whispered, brokenly. “I miss you already.”
His shoulders
shook as he bowed his head. The intensity of his loss hit him all at
once, without pity or reprieve. The awful pain was crushing, striking
like a fist, punching through his chest into the very core of him. He
couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t bear it.
“Oh God!” He
bent until his forehead touched the dirt. “Oh God, Rach!”
He rocked. He
cried. His big hands shook as he reached out to grab hold of the grave’s
unyielding marker. He traced her name with his fingertips and then his
hands fell limp into his lap. Raising his face to the sky, he just wept. Until
his eyes hurt, and his head hurt, and still nothing changed. Rachel was
still gone, the baby was still crying and he was still alone.
For the
first time in his life, completely alone.
* * * * *
As the
funeral procession wound its way slowly back to Redemption, Reverend John White
sat pensively in the buckboard of his wagon, driving his horses more by rote
then by any conscious thought. Sitting beside him, his wife gave him
a half-playful nudge with her shoulder. A normally cheerful person, she
tried to smile despite the sadness in her blue eyes. “A penny for your
thoughts.”
“Oh,” he
tried to give her a smile. “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”
“Dying is
the price of life,” Elizabeth said. “Eventually, Daniel will be all
right again. He has to be for that baby’s sake.”
The Reverend
took a deep breath. “Liz,” he said gently. “There is nothing
that can be done for that baby. At this point, only a miracle will save
him.”
“We’re supposed
to believe in miracles,” his wife reminded him, but the hopefulness of her
tone did not match the expression on her face. “I know everyone says
it’s too far, but I still think if someone rode to Clovervale and brought back
a goat...or maybe if we took the baby there...”
“That’s
a three-day ride one way through Indian territory,” the Reverend told her,
not ungently. “Who among us should we sacrifice for a dying child?”
A thunder
of horses’ hooves came riding up from behind them, stopping the argument before
it really began.
“Reverend!”
Davis called out. The Reverend swivelled on his seat, reining back the
horses while the brothers Davis and Charles raced to catch up to his wagon. “Look.” They
pointed out across the eastern horizon, and John felt a familiar tightening
in his gut when he saw the column of black smoke rising into the sky a good
half mile off.
“What is
that?” Elizabeth asked, her voice growing softer as it filled with dread. Nobody
had to say it, but ‘Indians’ sprang to everyone’s mind.
“Liz, get
out of the wagon,” the Reverend ordered. The very thought of riding out
to meet what might very well be hostile Indians heading their way, it scared
the hell out of him. But if there were wounded out there, if there were
people who needed help....He reached into the back of the wagon for his rifle.
“Go home with Sara. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
His wife
didn’t move. “You can’t go out there, John. You can’t.”
“Liz,” he
said again, a little harder this time and he fixed her with a stern look. “Mind
me, now.”
“Maybe it’s
just a big camp fire,” she offered. “Or stragglers from that wagon train
that came through six days ago.”
He turned
on the seat, holding her gaze as he softly but firmly asked, “Am I going to
have to cut a switch when we get home?”
Liz got
down out of the wagon, her skirts kicking out behind her as she hustled down
the line of funeral attendants to the wagon belonging to the blacksmith and
his wife.
“Let’s go.” Steering
his horses off the road, the Reverend started towards the column of smoke with
Davis and Charles both riding ahead of him, their guns already drawn. He
offered a quick prayer that they wouldn’t have any need to use them, but by
the time they reached the base of the small grassy hill that separated them
from the source of the fire, the Reverend’s hopes were dashed. Davis
and Charles reached the top just ahead of his wagon, but when he saw them kick
their horses into a wild gallop down the other side, shouting and shooting
all the way, his worst fears were realized. The Indian war party was
still there.
“H’yah!” He
slapped the reins, urging the horses faster and reached the peak of the hill
to find the worst possible scenario spread out in the tall grass below. Three
Conestoga wagons had been attacked. Whatever had forced their delay West,
whether it be because of an inopportune birth, terrible illness or a serious
accident, the fate met by the families of those three wagons was even worse.
The Sacs
had already scattered. The sight of Davis and Charles, with the
suggestion of more white men behind them, had sent the small party fleeing
back across the fields to whence they’d come, but up until that moment they
had shown the white stragglers no mercy at all.
They’d stolen
the horses, flour and bacon. They’d killed one of the oxen, butchering
it there on the spot. The wagons had been set on fire, and every man,
woman and child lay dead on the ground.
“Dear God,”
the Reverend moaned when he saw the carnage. This was going to be a day
of funerals. Sighing heavily, his eyes quietly seeking out and counting
the bodies of eleven people within the smoking ruins, he set the brake on his
wagon and climbed down to the ground. “Let’s get these poor souls back
to town. A proper burial is the least we can do.”
Davis and
Charles dismounted, and the three men carefully picked their way through the
rubble of broken furniture, scattered dishes and clothes, and all the worldly
possessions the Indians had left behind as unusable. Into the back of
the Reverend’s wagon, they loaded an elderly man and woman, two blond men in
their mid to late twenties, a young woman who, judging by her eyebrows, might
have been red-headed had the Sacs not taken her scalp, and four children.
A second
young woman, her face and hair matted with blood from a gash in her forehead,
was found lying under the deflated white canvas of a toppled wagon, her body
still shielding the body of her dead infant daughter. But it wasn’t until
Charles reached down to lift her over his shoulders that anyone realized the
woman was still alive. She groaned, long and low, when he caught hold
of her arms.
“Reverend!”
he shouted, almost dropping her he was so startled.
Both the
Reverend and Davis came running. God help him, but the Reverend’s first
thoughts when he saw her was neither sympathy for her bloodied condition nor
for the loss of her infant child, although that little body did figure into
his gut response. As small as the baby was, her mother had to have milk. Here
was his miracle; this woman could feed the starving Bower baby.
* * * * *
The whole
house reeked of soured milk. Not from what little liquid remained in
the water skin, lying on the kitchen table, but from the small mountain of
soiled rags and sheets that the baby had vomited on every time Daniel had tried
to feed him.
Lying in
the bottom dresser drawer, covered by the only clean towel left in the house,
the baby was making pitiful mewling noises that hardly sounded human. His
face was swollen, his tiny body was covered with bright red hives, and Daniel
was at the end of his tether. Cow’s milk simply was not going to work,
and there was nothing else around.
Sitting
at the dining table, his hands folded before him, Daniel stared through the
open kitchen window with blank, unseeing eyes. Past the curtains that
fluttered in the breeze, he spied his plow mare grazing in the south field. Playing
in the tall grass around her feet, her month-old foal romped around and through
her legs before venturing in to suckle.
Daniel watched
for a moment before reaching out to take the tin cup from the table. Absolutely
no thought went into what he did. He barely even remembered walking across
the yard, or stretching out his hand to touch the mare’s velvety muzzle before
taking up his position beside her. Horses weren’t meant to be milked
like cows. Not only did his mare not hold still for it, but for all the
effort that went into the attempt, what little milk he managed to collect barely
covered the bottom of the cup.
Still, it
was something.
Daniel went
back inside, rinsed out the water skin and poured the mare’s milk into it. Trying
to get the baby to drink was a completely different battle. Of the tablespoon
or two that he’d managed to obtain, significantly less actually made it into
his son. The rest oozed out of the corners of the infant’s tiny mouth
as he struggled to suckle from a device not made for suckling.
The last
clean towel in the house was now soiled with mare’s milk, and Daniel had no
choice but to face the cold and bitter reality. His son could not survive
on a tablespoon of milk a day.
Putting
the baby back in his makeshift bed, Daniel went back to the kitchen. Staring
at the water skin in his hands, he stopped in the middle of the floor and for
a moment didn’t move. Futile anger exploded out of that bare instant
of calm. He flung the water skin against the far wall. It hit
a shelf, knocking a lot of tin dishes and a very few precious porcelain ones
to the floor. The porcelain dishes shattered, leaving a spray of white
shards that Daniel crunched beneath his boots as he walked straight out the
front door. At the end of the porch was a rain barrel, still almost full
from last week’s downpour.
Staring
at the barrel, Daniel’s eyes burned with unshed tears and his options narrowed
to only a very few unsavory choices. He could let his son starve to
death or end the baby’s suffering right now. He clenched his hands tightly. Clench
and release, clench and release. The muscles jumped erratically along
his jaw, but there was really no choice left to make. Rachel was dead. Their
son was fated to join her. And really, after that what would be the point
of his living?
Turning
on his heel, he walked back into the house to get the crying baby. Even
less thought went into this than did his attempt to milk the mare. He
was going to kill his own child, and he really couldn’t bring himself to feel
anything about it one way or the other.
