A Garden of Earthly Delights Read Online Free Page B

ants stinging. Was she going to have the baby here? So soon? Carleton wanted to protest it was early, wasn't it? Pearl had not gone to any doctor but had counted the months and this baby was not due until next month.
    “Carleton, I told you
I don't feel right.
”
    Carleton yelled, “ 'Melda, Lorene? Hey—Pearl's gonna need you.”
    Carleton was holding Pearl, who'd begun to lose strength in her legs. She gave a sudden high scream like a kicked dog, and clutched at her belly. Contractions? Carleton knew what that meant. But it meant you had time, too. Last time, with Mike, Pearl had been in labor through a day and most of a night, Carleton hadn't been present and had been spared.
    Now, women hurried to Pearl, to claim her. That animal glisten in their eyes a man found fearful to behold.
    Carleton and Red backed off. White-faced, and needing a drink. There came Franklin bellying up to them, the cut on his face still fresh. “You, Walpole. She's having that baby right now, you and her are
out.
We can't wait for you. We got a contract, we're not waiting.”
    When Carleton ignored him, Franklin said, appealing to the others, “If that woman dies it ain't my fault! I don't want no pregnant women on my truck! I don't want no nursing babies! I got troubles bad enough!”
    It was just blustery bawling, Carleton thought. The truck wasn't going anywhere except to a garage. Nobody was going anywhere for overnight at least. Carleton wanted to slam the fat bastard's face, bloody his nose like his eye was bloodied, but knew he had better not, his quick temper had got him fired in the past. He wasn't younglike Jack Dempsey had been getting started at sixteen, seventeen fighting in saloons out west, Christ he was thirty, and losing his teeth. Get on a recruiter's blacklist, you were dead meat.
    “Hell, Franklin. Your old mother had got to have
you
, hadn't she?”
    This wasn't Carleton talking, it was somebody else. Carleton was drifting back toward the truck. The women had torn off the tarpaulin, and were making a kind of tent there. It was raining harder now. And the red clay shoulder of the highway getting softer. Kids liked to run in the rain like dogs, but not adults. Carleton was shivering. Carleton heard another high-pitched scream. That was Pearl, was it? He said, “It's my fault. I shouldn't of let her come with me. I told her to stay home but she didn't listen.” By
home
he meant not his and Pearl's own home because they didn't have one, he meant his in-laws, but nobody would know. Carleton was fearful of crying. His lips were moving—“Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” First time Pearl had had a baby, he'd broke down like a kid. So scared. He was a coward, that was so. He knew, there was danger of infection when a woman had a baby in such filth, everyone knew of babies that had died, and mothers burning up with fever, or hemorrhaging to death. “Carleton, she'll be all right. They're taking care of her. Carleton?” It was a woman named Annie: freckle-faced Irish: big motherly girl, in her late thirties but still a girl, breasts soft against Carleton's arm like they were loose inside her shirt. In the rain Annie looked like a wax doll, smiling at him with her mouth shut so he could not see her teeth. Red was smiling, too. Smiling hard and ghastly. And thumping Carleton's shoulder. Telling him it didn't make any difference to any baby that ever got born, whether it's a hospital or anywhere.
    Carleton tried to say yes. “Them hospitals are treacherous,” a man was saying. “Sometimes they cut open the wrong people. Put you to sleep and you don't ever wake up. Ever been in a hospital?”
    “Never was, and never will be,” Annie said. “They do things to women, you can bet. When they're doped up and laying there.”
    Carleton heard the dog cries again. He was grateful for people close around him, talking to him and about him as if to create a wallof talk to protect him. There was Franklin looking repentant. Handing him a