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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Ten Miles from Town
Raymond Maher
Ann felt the winter cold seeping through the sod house, penetrating to the very cook stove itself. The cook stove had proved to be weak and often overwhelmed by the extreme cold that blanketed the prairies these last few weeks. It was the heart of winter and the thin line between frostbite, freezing, and death was sod walls and a cast iron cook stove. The winter had proved its powerfulness by battering their sod house with cold and scorn for its meager heat and shelter. It seemed at times as if nature itself was against their intrusion into the vast prairie. Yet, Ann was determined that they would make a home there on the prairie despite its endless emptiness. She would keep swallowed any discouraging words that at times overwhelmed her. She would look to her God for help to comfort her thoughts and attitude. She would look to her husband to share his strength and determination for homesteading.
It was said the worst years had to be the first few, but in time there would come a real house with board floors and a place to be human and complete. Now they lived in a place of incomplete, a place of make do. Make do with a dirt floor. Make do with a small space with no privacy or privilege and just the basest of the necessities of life. Make do with loneliness and wind. For now, Ann must make do with a dream of tomorrow - where the hardest part of pioneering life would be behind them. Now she had to be tough, determined, and just powerfully stubborn. They had a good start. A team of good work horses, a milk cow, a small flock of hens, a few pigs, and both hay and grain for their livestock’s feed. They also had a good supply of firewood for the winter. They were in many ways very rich, Ann decided. The baby she carried seemed to be turning summersaults in her womb. The kettle on the cook stove was boiling and she moved to make tea, so it would be strong and black for Art when he returned from the sod barn.
Art was almost ready to head for the house. He had been no stranger to hard farm work in Ontario, but this prairie winter was more brutal than he had ever experienced in Southern Ontario. He could not let Ann sense his doubts. He had to be tougher than he had ever been. The Canadian prairies were to become the bread basket of the world. He and Ann and their children would be part of the settlement of the Canadian west, but for now it just seemed they were lost in the middle of a wilderness of snow and severe cold that cut to a person’s very soul. It had became painfully apparent that in the Canadian west it would be about basic survival through long frigid winters, a short growing season, and the vast unplowed emptiness that mocked easy settlement.
After carefully barring the barn door, so the wind, cold, and snow would not invade the small barn, Art hurried for the house to soak in the heat of the cook stove. He was surprised to find Ann in a panic. Her water had broken. The baby was coming early! The midwife was ten miles away in town. Ann announced that Art must help deliver the baby. There it was. It struck like a slap in the face. The life of their first born baby and Ann’s life were both in his reluctant hands. Was there a neighbor close enough to help? No. It was up to him or let Ann give birth on her own accord.
Art wanted to yell in protest. He wanted to run. He couldn’t think of anyone more unprepared than himself to be a nurse, but there was no one else. “Dam it, to hell anyway,” he thought, but held his tongue. He hugged Ann and said, “Tell me what to do and I’ll do my best to get you through this.”
Ann had helped her mother at the birth of her sister and knew what the midwife had done. Giving birth herself made it far more personal and it was hard to concentrate on anything but the dam labor pains that tore her in two and left her trembling in anguish. She dare not think that anything could go wrong. She must be tough and stubborn for the baby’s sake. They said the second and third child came quickly and far more easily. Everything was always to be easier in the future Ann thought, except death itself.
Time stood still! They were caught in the blurred world of labor pains and the ordeal of child birth. Neither knew how long each part took. While the labor pains were progressing, Ann directed Art to the clean sheet for child birth she had ready. He must set out the night gown and baby blanket in readiness for the new baby. He must also have the cloths and towel ready for cleaning up the baby. There was the string to be handy to tie the umbilical cord and a sharp knife to be washed in boiling water so it was truly clean and ready to cut the cord. Cutting the cord was to be done after her after- birth came. As Ann would push and strain Art must hold and guide the baby out of her. If the baby didn’t cry after birth Art must gently clean the baby’s nose and mouth and rub it on the back to get it crying. Newborn babies needed to cry and breathe freely. Art prayed the baby would come out screaming for truly he feared his ability to help it if it didn’t.
All Ann’s directions couldn’t prepare Art for the fluids and blood and the panic and fear that gripped him. Ann was a woman of faith and prayer and Art was content to leave God to his wife. In this situation, Art began praying in his mind like a religious fanatic. He had never felt so humble and ineffectual in his whole life. His wife and their bay needed him to care for them and he wasn’t sure he could do it. It seemed to Art that God had heard him, for the baby came out screaming. Both the baby and mother were alive and there was thankfulness and hope in Art’s heart like never before. For Ann, it was all a very real nightmare until she found the baby was crying and in her arms and Art had cut and tied the baby’s umbilical cord.
Art kissed her forehead and Ann went to sleep dreaming of easier tomorrows that she knew would never come. The baby also quickly went to sleep in Ann’s arms and Art took the sleeping tiny baby and gently laid it in a homemade cradle he had placed beside the cook stove. Art sat beside the cradle and listened to the baby’s tiny sleeping sounds and Ann’s exhausted ones. The wind whistled around the sod house. The cold seeped into the room even to the cook stove itself. Yet, Art would keep the stove fed with fire wood all night and well past the dawn. Life in their sod house was becoming sweeter and full of promise because their first born son had been born there with God’s help. It seemed they were not alone on the empty prairie.
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