JEWEL by BRET LOTT Page A

whispered. “What’s wrong here? ” Leston came into the room, at first silhouetted by the hall light, then lit with the lamp. It was as if he’d only been gone a mmoment, the hat was still in his hand, the brim moving round, and for an instant I wondered if those useless hands could possibly be the same hands I’d let fill me up with the same pleasures I’d known for so many years now.
    Hands I’d given up to, only to be ushered into this moment, and the pain of bearing our next and last child.
    He leaned close to me, Cathe ral moving away to give him room, and I could see that, though maybe they were the same hands, something else had changed in him, his eyes had become even older, fear dug into the lines below them, into the creases beside them, the green gone now to a color I couldn’t name for the trouble they seemed to see, and I knew this change signaled from God I was lined up to die, the birth of this child my own death.
    “Leston, ” I whispered, and he held up a finger to his mouth to quiet me. He tried to smile, then reached that finger to me, touched it to my lips.
    “We got Sepulcher and Temple right here, two good, strong bucks, they’re going to carry you on downstairs and out to the truck. We’re going to take care of you, Jewel. You just hold on.” He paused, blinked. “I already got a call over to the hospital, and they should be ready for us when we get on up there. So don’t you worry none.
    That’s all I want you to do for me, just don’t you worry none.”
    “The hospital, ” I said again, and Cathe ral edged in front of Leston, touched a cold cloth to my face. “Now hush, ” she whispered, “now hush.”
    She looked from me to the door. Leston backed away, looked there, too.
    Cathe ral nodded, and in came two of her sons, boys with mouths closed too tight, eyes turned from me, foreheads glistening though the room was cold now, ice cold, and I knew that, yes, I was going to die.
    I prayed, the words rising up in me suddenly, a small and perfect and horrible prayer, If it’s a death You want, I gave up to God, the words in my head shiny and polished and black, let it be the child’s.
    Sepulcher came round to my right, Temple to my left, so that they faced each other across the bed, Cathe ral tucking the quilts around my legs, my arms. Then the boys looked to Cathe ral. She nodded, and they bent to me, moved their hands beneath me until they met, and lifted, carried me over the foot board and toward the hall, where Leston was already moving backward, glancing over his shoulder to the stairs, to me, the boys, over his shoulder.
    I held on tight to Cathe ral’s boys, my arms round their shoulders, my eyes wide open as we moved down the stairs. They took each step slow and deliberate, eyes on each other as though that might give them some greater balance.
    But it wasn’t fear of falling that kept my eyes open. It was my prayer, and how it’d come to me so easily, so clearly, the words swelling in my head, my heart thick with them, Let it be the child’s, let it be the child’s. They made perfect sense, and though I tried to stop them, another part of me held tighter to them, and to the purpose I finally saw for them, I wanted none of my children to know the sorrow of a lost parent, a sorrow I’d known too close my whole life.
    We were at the bottom of the stairs now, Leston with his hat on, holding open the door. “Annie, ” I said, and closed my eyes a moment, conjured a picture of her on the bed next to me.
    “She be sleeping, ” Cathe ral whispered, and I felt the cloth at my forehead.
    “Burton, ” I said. “Wilman. Billie Jean.” I saw my oldest in uniform, somewhere in the South Pacific right now, blue water, beaches the color of bone. “James, ” I said.
    “Now you be hushing up, Miss Jewel, ” Cathe ral whispered, “because you know all yo’ children be asleep. They all asleep. Even James, he be asleep right now wherever he be.”
    I opened my eyes to the