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When I pull open the double barn doors, the ani, and poor Moonlight rain and toss hay into the cow’s stall, then sit down on iveness

"I’ize "I was at the MacIntosh house in town all night I still can’t believe it! I was sure their baby was dead I listened so long for a heartbeatI even had Dr Blum check Katherine told me that for over two days there’d been no movement

"Now I feel foolish, and by tomorrow every woh Dr Blum was there to confirm the stillbirth, I’m the one they’ll blame"

As I rhythmically express the milk froht coolden walls and the hand-hewn oak beaht looks around, syetic or tired, inept or confident, in love with life or walled off in pain

3

Summons

On the way back to the house, with h as the wind sweeps the red and yellow leaves off the maples and oaks and scatters them across the blue sky There was a tis, just kept , careful not to step in the puddles ofhere, a sudden massive heart attack, Dr Bluarden, I found hts, she’s sitting there still

I ate little, lost weight, stopped washingin the field on a sunny day I’d co before, after Ruben died at Blair Mountain, but experiencing loss is not soet used to The more death one experiences, the e of rave; then one afternoon I raised ht It was spring again

"Grief takes about a year," Mrs Kelly once told a young h each holiday, each new season You will cry at Christ You will suffer with the first daffodil, the first falling red leaves, the first snowEach occasion, each new season will rip your heart out; then, when there’s nothing left, you’ll get better" She was right, and she knew froreat loss: her sister from typhoid fever when she was little, herhusband and daughter in that big flood in Pennsylvania, the one in 1911 where a thousand people died when the pulp mill dam broke and flooded the whole town My teacher, protector, and friend had lost everything, home and family, all in one day, and had been found,on to a tree limb For a while, she told

In the kitchen, I wash lasses, then tenderly clean the brown eggs and gently place theh cheesecloth and pour it in a clean gallon jar Through the sreen hills tumble toward the valley where the Hope River twists, fuller now than in su water from the top of the woodstove into the washtub to rinse out so up the hill, a solitary felloho leans forward on his burro as if in a hurry He’s leading a second animal At the first mailbox, the Johnsons’, a half ain at the second, the Maddocks’, andhe is co for house, where cold water collects in a rock basin and stays cool all su his two aniray canvas jacket that’s torn at the sleeve,for help The companies used to have their own physicians, but one now, the best of them anyway Sanitation and health conditions are so poor in the o into them

The man tips his dusty felt hat "I’m Thomas Proudfoot, Mary Proudfoot’s son Izzie Cabrini, one of theCoal, asked me to fetch you His woman’s in trouble" I knohat the word "trouble" ?"

"A day, maybe two"

These cases worryHollow Coal Camp I don’t know if the missus is too early or too late or what the situation is

"Has she had babies before? Won’t the coal caton?"

Tho Coal have a doctor?"

Thoain I see by his look that he’s an intelligent h to keep his mouth shut

Coal Ca Coal, and weThree vehicles overtake us, and we have to get down into the ditch while they pass: a Pontiac roadster, a Ford Model T, and a John Deere tractor,just a little faster than we are

I think of the Frontier Midwives in Hyden, Kentucky I’ve been told the nurses ride horses into the hollows and over the et a horse! I brighten at the thought, but at once my hope dims Money would be the problem I don’t have more than a few dollars, and Mr MacIntosh didn’t offerexcept a ride home Maybe they’re still in shock that their dead baby lives

I cringe again, thinking of my mistake and hoill look to the community Maybe people will just chalk it up as a miracle! The baby was dead, but it came back to life! Maybe they’ll say that I perfor village The King Coal cah the camp has been here only five years, the water in the creek is already brown and the rocks have turned yellow from the mine’s acid runoff