“How about not letting the most paranoid person in your bunch call the shots?” Lynn suggested, then fought down her own blush when Eli turned his angry glare on her.
Stebbs cleared his throat. “Water can be hauled. You get her set up in some real shelter with some heat in it and bring the water to her. Staying next to the stream in the summer and fall’s fine. But in the spring, it’ll drown ya, in the summer it could disappear altogether. You stay by it in the winter, one morning you’ll wander out to your precious water source to find out you froze to death in the night.”
Eli’s jawline was set tightly, and Lynn had lived long enough with a person who had a temper to know that the fuse was getting short. “I’m afraid your suggestions come a little late,” he said as another wrenching moan rose from the shelter behind him.
She’d been fighting it. Lynn could tell by the stifled sound of the cry that the sufferer did not want them made party to her pain. Stebbs flicked on a flashlight and moved to the mouth of the shelter. “I’m here to help you. I’m no doctor, but I’ve seen my share of goats born and helped a few of them along.”
He’d made it about a foot into the shelter when he came flying backward, landing in the mud.
“Keep away from me, you fucking perverted cripple!” The scream that followed Stebbs’ exit was shrill, laced with fear and pain. “Eli! Eli, where are you?”
Lynn helped Stebbs up as she listened to Eli trying to calm the panicked woman inside. She approached the entrance to have a clod of dirt smack her in the face.
“I’m done here,” she said to Stebbs. He grabbed her arm as she turned for home.
“She’s in labor—you don’t know what that’s like.”
“Don’t much care either,” Lynn said, rubbing the spot on her jaw where the dirt had hit her. But she stayed.
Eli emerged. “She said you can go in.” He pointed to Lynn. “But not Stebbs.”
“Stupid choice,” Lynn said. “I don’t know the first thing about this. At least he’s seen it.”
“With goats,” Eli countered.
“More than I got,” Lynn answered, but ducked her head and shuffled into the shelter.
The woman lay under a pile of clothes, writhing with pain. When she realized Lynn was there, she made a conscious effort to control it, but her hands dug deeply into the dirt on both sides of her hips. The repeated action had dug holes there as deep as her wrists.
“You don’t have to hide it,” Lynn said. “Pain is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Black eyes regarded her with contempt. “Pain isn’t the word,” she seethed, her perfectly symmetric white teeth biting off each syllable. Another contraction struck and she balled her fists into the earth. Cords stood out on her neck as she struggled against it, and her lips peeled back in a grimace. Lynn could only watch until it passed.
“Do something,” the woman spat at her. Sweat streaked her face even though the night was cold, her black hair was tangled in dark coils from tossing.
“I can’t,” Lynn said calmly. “I know nothing about it. Better off to let Stebbs in.”
“He won’t be touching me.”
The undeserved hatred directed at Stebbs made no sense to Lynn, so she sat quietly through another contraction that left Neva panting. “I’m wasting my time here with you,” Lynn informed her. “I’ve gotta get back.” She rose to leave.
“Wait! I’ll let him in,” Neva said as if granting a favor. “Just get it out of me.”
Lynn emerged into the darkness, handing the flashlight off to Stebbs. “Your turn.” He ducked into the shelter, and a murmured conversation followed, pausing whenever Neva suffered a contraction too painful to speak through.
“What do you think?” Eli asked, his gaze bouncing off Lynn’s when they met over the flickering fire. She lowered herself to the ground before answering.
“Don’t know. She’s worn out though, and that’s not good with the baby still on the way.”
Eli nodded and they sat in silence. He flinched when Neva’s cries came again, louder this time and more desperate. Lynn stared impassively into the fire, noticing that Stebbs had placed dead wood on it.
“You got to use the dead,” she said. Eli snapped out of his trance.
“What was that?”
“Dead wood.” She pointed to the fire. “You use the green, living stuff and you get more smoke than heat.”
“Okay.”
The silence fell again, but it felt awkward now that she had tried to break it unsuccessfully. “They take your blankets? Those men?”
“Yeah.” Eli’s voice caught in his throat from disuse. “Yeah,” he repeated more clearly. “Blankets and our food. I went to a house looking for more, but they’d all been stripped. Most of the clothes were gone too, except for some that were way too big for anybody I’ve ever seen. I took them to use for blankets for Neva and Lucy.”
Stebbs voice cut through the night. “Lynn, come here.”
She approached the entrance warily. “What is it?”
“Take this,” he handed her a bundle. “Bury it.”