Gracie swept the barn floor and heard a tremendous noise outside, like one of her cows moaning in death’s final grip accompanied by a cacophony of hens awaiting the slaughter. She looked at the door and a bunch of chickens pecked their way outside.
An old Model A lay prostrate in the road, the front wheels stuck in the mud. A white man sat at the steering wheel, gunning the motor. Looked to Gracie like he was trying to get his car out of the mud. A woman sat in the car with him – looked like red hair to her.
They got out and started walking toward her. White people on her place. Couldn’t be good, that’s all she could think. Fifty years on this farm, Gracie had never had anything good come of white people on the place.
“Don’t you be kicking up mud in my driveway, young man. You be getting that car off my property. What in tarnation you doing here anyway? White people never come out this far.”
“I’m Balmoral, woman, and my wife’s in labor. Old Many Lacey sent us here. He said you’re a midwife. Are you Mrs. Honeywalker?”
Gracie looked at the pair – the man so tightly wound, every muscle in his neck strained, the woman with the long red hair, pregnant and waddling as she walked toward Gracie. Bad news, Gracie thought, always bad news in the ‘20s and ‘30s trying to deliver a white woman’s baby, especially one as white as this freckled girl. But something in the young woman’s eyes …
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