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  The cemetery was only a couple of hundred feet farther. If she were careful, she could manage the frozen-dirt trail without slipping. Being pregnant helped her keep her balance, for some strange reason. Hard on the feet, though.

  She was swelling today. The health department had told her swelling might be a sign of pre-something-or-other. High blood pressure. Bad news.

  She made it to the white stumps of stone, old rain-worn markers. Granite. One of them just a piece of bleached quartz about the size of a baby's head. Little flecks of mica sparkled on the skin of the quartz.

  Twenty-seven Stameys. She counted again just to make sure.

  Susan Eleanor, Donna Faye, Laney Grace, Melville Martin, Timothy Mark, Simon Martin. Her father John Randolph Stamey, the ten-dollar letters chiseled neat and final.

  More. Many without names, all connected by the dirt.

  Some older ones, the name spelled S-T-A-M-Y.

  Off by itself, where the dust and dead bones were cuddled by the roots of an old apple tree, stood a lonely grave. It bore the only marble marker in the lot. A fine hand had etched a lamb near the top, amidst some Biblical-style scrollwork.

  The name, Lewis, engraved in the marble.

  Her father's twin, who died so quickly after birth that he never got a middle name.

  The grass in the shade of the apple tree was brown. One lone apple clung to a branch, shriveled and spotted. The baby squirmed as Kelly approached the grave.

  She knelt before the marker. How sad that this child had never danced across the yard, napped in the hayloft, chased leaves in the October sundown. This child had never tasted the April air, a corn bloom, the cold mist of the creek. This child had never known his mother’s arms.

  This child never connected.

  At least Lewis had been buried with love. Paying for such a fancy monument must have been a strain on a mountain farm family. But the Stameys had always taken care of their own. From the cradle to the grave.

  “Since I'm the last, who will bury me if I die?” Kelly whispered to the morning.

  Chet. He would come back to bury her. Chet wasn't all bad. Once, when Kelly had a deep cut across her hand, Chet didn't make her wash dishes for a week.

  But Chet was gone. And she would not be the last. She rubbed her belly. “You'll live,” she said.

  She had dreamed it was male. He had talked to her last night, even though in the dream he was not even old enough to walk, his skull still pointed from the pressure of birth. His eyes were brown, like John Randolph Stamey's. The family brown.

  She told her belly, “You will carry on the name.”

  Kelly leaned forward and touched the marble. She would have a family. Her baby would live and grow. She would be connected.

  She groaned as she struggled to her feet, pulling on a tree limb for balance. The sun had killed the frost and the ground glistened in a thousand wet sparkles. A mile away, rising from the forest, came a thread of chimney smoke from the Davis place. Beyond that, the Blue Ridge mountains stretched toward the horizon. Blue as a stillborn.

  Mothers weren't supposed to think that way. Sure, you had your little fears, but you let them pass and thought only of the baby against your breast, alive and grunting in ceaseless need. You hoped and prayed that everything would be perfect. And you forgot about everything that could go wrong. Just like you forgot about Chet.

  She made her way back to the farmhouse. Her back ached, so she sat in a rocker in the kitchen. The sun through the window fell on her belly, warmed her. The baby kicked, then rolled in her womb so that either a shoulder or a knee squeezed her bladder.

  “You're going to be a mover,” she told him. “Just like your daddy.”

  Chet, who wriggled like a snake. Who moved so fast that nothing stuck to him, no responsibility, no steady job, no woman. No family. No connections.

  She looked out at the Chevy in the driveway. She'd drive herself in, when the time came. She'd have to do it early on, because you never knew what to expect with a first pregnancy. They said some women spent two days in labor, while others dropped them five minutes after the first contraction. You never knew.

  Chet’s sister had offered a room in town, right up close to the hospital. But Kelly belonged here, on Stamey ground.

  The baby squirmed again, probably hungry. Kelly had forgotten to look for eggs. All this foolishness over graves and ghosts, and she wasn't taking care of duties. She rose from the rocker and went back to the barn. It was either that, or oatmeal again, and if she ate any more oatmeal, she'd probably give birth to a colt.

  “You can't see ghosts in daylight,” she told her belly.

  But you could see them during the day, if the place you're in is dark enough. The barn had only a couple of windows, set high in the plank walls and covered with chicken wire. She'd tried to get Chet to run electricity to the barn, but there was always fishing or hunting or a Squad meeting. The important things.

  The ghost was closer now, the closest it had ever been. She'd come around the corner and nearly dropped the little basket of eggs. But if the ghost wanted to hurt her, it had missed plenty of chances.

  She couldn't run, anyway. She could waddle, maybe, take three or four steps while her hip ligaments caught fire and her breath left her. How fast was a ghost? No, if it wanted her, it would have had her any night while she was asleep.

  The ghost wiggled in rhythm with the baby. Kelly tried to look at the ghost's face, but it was like watching patterns on the surface of a windy lake. Shifting, sparkling, not knowing what it wanted to be. She stood before it, waiting.

  The sound came from between the trees. She knew it well, she'd laid awake many nights listening for it. Chet's Chevy pick-up, with the rusted muffler. The truck was coming down the long driveway.

  Kelly smiled. Somehow, she'd known he would come back. He was a good man. He loved the good times, sure, but he knew when to stand up and be a man.

  Kelly set the basket on the hard dirt floor, and the first contraction hit when she raised back up. She'd had a few Braxton-Hicks contractions, the false ones that were just practice for the real thing. This one was different. This rippled around her womb and clenched like a fist.

  She gasped, but her lungs were stones. The ghost hovered nearer, its substance touching her, ice cold, and she tried to wave it away. Chet's truck stopped by the house, and she fought for enough air to call him. Another contraction hit.

  Chet yelled her name. Was he mad? Did he expect to drive in after ten weeks gone to find breakfast waiting for him on the table? She'd take him the eggs, make him happy. Or throw them at him.

  The next contraction drove her to her knees. They weren't supposed to come on like this, one on top of the other at the start. The health department had told her what to expect, and this was none of the normal things. This was one of those symptoms that meant you'd better get to the hospital and fast.

  The ghost moved closer, Kelly could see the silver and white threads of the borrowed life that held the thing together. It was like one of Mamaw's old quilts, stitched after the woman's eyes had failed. Loose and tangled, nonsense. If not for ache in her guts, Kelly could have watched for hours, tracing the nearly-invisible lines.

  The pain came again, like a knife blade and a punch at the same time, and Chet yelled her name from outside. She crawled toward a pile of hay, sucking for air. The ghost hovered over her, shaking and spasming like linen on a December clothesline. She wondered if the baby was spasming, too, but she couldn't feel him through the globe of hurt.

  Maybe the ghost was causing all this, the pain, the fetal distress. If the ghost and the baby were connected, like to like, one jealous dead and the other with an entire life yet to live, years and years and years stretching out ahead, a billion heartbeats owed him . . . .

  Chet called again, and this time she managed to shriek. Nothing to write home about, but it was loud enough to get through the walls of the barn. Then she curled up in the hay, clutched her stomach, and tasted the dust that spu
n in the air. Her water broke beneath the tails of the long flannel shirt she wore. The barn door banged open, and daylight sliced through the ghost and cut it to nothing.

  “What the hell's going on?” Chet blinked into the shadows.

  Kelly gulped for another breath. “B—baby...”

  Chet hurried over, the smell of bourbon arriving before he did. He looked down at her, at the basket of eggs, at the amniotic fluid soaking her clothes between her legs. Kelly tried to smile at him, but her lips were dumb.

  “It's our baby,” she said. Everything would be okay now. The hospital was only twenty minutes away, you could hold out until then, why, the pain was nothing if you held onto that dream of brown eyes. And the baby was part Stamey, it was tough, it could bear up under a little trouble. Kelly was heavy, but Chet could manage, he would put her in the truck and slow down for the bumps.

  “It ain't mine.” Chet smiled. Except the smile was turned down at the corners, sharp as sickles.

  His boot came fast, knocking over the basket. She heard the damp crack of the eggs, and then her mind screamed red because the boot was at her stomach, into her stomach, fast and then again, the pain worse than the contractions even. He tugged at her waistband, and she thought at first it was some new kind of pain, then cold air rushed over her skin.

  Chet pulled the bloody pants down to her ankles, laughing, grunting.

  “Ain't mine.” He walked away, leaving her numb and broken and half naked. The truck started, backfired, and headed toward Tennessee or wherever it was he went to hide from himself.

  Chet wouldn't bury her after all. No one to bury her.

  Kelly, alone and dying. No, she wouldn't die alone. She would bring this child into the world. The child that was on its way, hospital or not. Dead or alive.

  She writhed in the hay, wracked by waves of a new hurt, as if her pelvic bones were being ground to powder. The muscles in her stomach ached from pushing. The child inside her squirmed toward the world, toward the light, toward the land of pain and promise.

  Kelly's eyes squeezed closed, tears leaking, the same saltwater that had filled the amniotic sac. The water of life. She pushed again and something tore free down below. She was going to pass out, die without ever seeing the flesh of her flesh, without ever connecting.

  She forced her eyes open. The ghost hovered again, settling down upon her in the dark corner of the barn. She had no air to scream. Her final breath would be stolen by this thing of mist and dreams.

  Except, as the ghost wafted over her, gentle as lamb's wool, a warmth flooded through her. This time, its touch was soothing. The pain lifted, vanished like a spirit in sunshine. The ghost pressed against her, embraced her, bathed her in whatever energy and life it was able to give back. She rose to meet it, like a lover or a penitent surrendering to a force of faith.

  Kelly felt strong again, and she pushed, grunted and pushed again. The baby slid free, and she reached down between her legs. He was slick from her fluids, warm, but still. Too awfully still.

  She sat up and clutched the child to her chest, wailing, all rain and thunder. The child's skin was blue. She rubbed him, shook him, pinched the tiny nose and blew into his mouth. Even though he was already dead, she admired the beautiful face. He was Stamey, all right.

  “Don’t leave me,” she cried, the limp umbilical cord tangled across her thighs. She rubbed its chest and shared her heat. She half-crawled, half-wriggled toward the cemetery, the chill of the infant’s flesh reaching deep into her soul. Blood oozed from her birth channel and her scraped knees and palm as she tugged herself over twisted roots and jagged gray stones.

  Her muscles were gone but she tapped faith for fuel, dowsing for some hidden wellspring. The pale outlines of the grave markers appeared through the foliage. She continued her crippled crawl, compelled herself forward to hallowed ground, pushing over the scrabbled turf until she collapsed before the slab of etched marble.

  And the ghost was there, forming again, smaller this time, its effervescence less bright. The milky threads of the ghost settled over the baby, swaddled him, gave to him that same strange energy that had revived Kelly.

  The baby coughed weakly, shuddered, and then the cord pulsed. The small heart pumped, unevenly at first, then more steadily. His lungs got their first taste of air, then he let loose with the first of many complaints to come. He breathed.

  Kelly hugged him, wiped the stray fluids from his mouth, smoothed his slick wisps of hair. She clawed a scythe from the barn wall and severed the umbilical cord. Then she wrapped the baby in the folds of her shirt, pressing him against her warmth. When the cries died away, she gave him her breast, and he fed.

  She lay in the hay until the placenta was delivered. She looked around for the ghost, but knew she would never see it again. Not as a ghost, anyway. The child blinked up at her. In his brown eyes, those strange Stamey eyes, were those silver and white threads. As she watched, the soft threads dissipated, but not completely.

  The Stameys had always taken care of their own. From the cradle to the grave, and back again.

  She named him Lewis Kelly Stamey.

  And it named her Mother.

  THE END

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  ###

  SHE CLIMBS A WINDING STAIR

  Outside the window, a flat sweep of sea. The ocean's tongue licks the shore as if probing an old scar. Clouds hang gray and heavy, crushed together by nature's looming anger. In the distance is a tiny white sail, or it might be a forlorn whitecap, breaking too far out to make land.

  I hope it is a whitecap.

  Because she may come that way, from the lavender east. She may rise from the stubborn sandy fields behind the house, or seep from the silver trees beyond. She could arrive a thousand times, in a thousand different colors, from all directions above or below.

  I can almost her hear now, her soft footsteps on the stairs, the whisper of her ragged lace, the mouse-quick clatter of her fingerbones on the railing.

  Almost.

  It's not fear that binds my limbs to this chair, for I know she's not bent on mortal vengeance. If only I could so easily repay my sins.

  Rather, I dread that moment when she appears before me, when her imploring eyes stare blankly into mine, when her lost lips part in question.

  She will ask me why, and, God help me, I will have no answer.

  I came to Portsmouth in my position as a travel writer on assignment for a national magazine. In my career, I had learned to love no place and like them all, for it's enthusiasm that any editor likes to see in a piece. So neither the vast stone and ice beauty of the Rockies, the wet redwood cliffs of Oregon, the fiery pastels of the Southwestern deserts, the worn and welcoming curves of the Appalachians, nor the great golden plains of the central states tugged at my heart any more or less than the rest of this fair country. Indeed, much of my impression of this land and its people came from brief conversations and framed glances on planes, trains, and the occasional cab or boat.

  So the Outer Banks held no particular place in my heart as I ferried across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke. To the north was the historic Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in the country, which was currently being moved from its eroding base at a cost of millions. I thought at the time that perhaps I could swing up to Hatteras and cover the work for a separate article. But assignments always came before freelance articles, because a bankable check feeds a person much better than a possibility does.

  So on to bleak Portsmouth for me. At Ocracoke, I met the man who was chartered to take me to Portsmouth. As I boarded his tiny boat with my backpack and two bags, my laptop and camera wrapped against the salt air, he gave me several looks askance.

  “How long you going to stay?” he asked, his wrinkled face as weathered as the hull of his boat.

  “Three days, though I'm getting paid for seven,” I said. “Why?”

  “You don't look like the type that roughs it much, you d
on't mind me saying.” His eyes were quick under the bill of his cap, darting from me to the open inlet to the sky and then to the cluttered dock.

  “I'll manage,” I said, not at all pleased with this old salt's assessment of me. True, I was more at home in a three-star hotel than under a tent, but I did hike a little and tried to be only typically overweight for a middle-aged American.

  The man nodded at the sea, in the distance toward where I imagined Portsmouth lay waiting. “She can be harsh, if she's of a mind,” he said. Then he pushed up the throttle and steered the boat from the dock in a gurgle and haze of oily smoke.

  We went without speaking for some minutes, me hanging on the bow as the waves buffeted us and Ocracoke diminished to our rear. Then he shouted over the noise of the engine, “Hope you brought your bug repellent.”

  “Why?” I said, the small droplets of ocean spray making a sticky film on my face.

  “Bugs'll eat you alive,” he said.

  “Maybe I can borrow some at the ranger station,” I said.

  The man laughed, his head ducking like a sea turtle's. “Ain't no rangers there. Not this time of year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hurricane season. That, and federal cuts. Government got no business on that island no way. Places like that ought to be left alone.”

  My information must have been wrong. Portsmouth was now administered by the National Parks Service, since the last residents had left thirty years before. An editorial assistant had assured me that at least two rangers would be on duty throughout the course of my stay. They had offices with battery-operated short-wave radio and emergency supplies. That was the only reason I had agreed to take an assignment to such a desolate place.

  Not for the first time, I silently cursed the carelessness of editorial assistants. “The forecasts are for clear weather,” I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way or another.

  “You should be all right,” he said. “Least as far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick sometimes.”