WHEN THE MOUNTAIN WEEPS

                       As told by

               Edith Marie Oxford

                          *****

A roaring March wind blew blinding sand across the plains which surrounded Crescent, Oklahoma, sending cattle and horses to seek cover.  With heads down and eyes closed; they huddled together, pressing close to the sides of weather-worn lean-tos.

The sky was a swirling dreary brown, the horizon blending in with the plains as the sand danced in fury.  Oak trees bearing the first sign of spring stood firm, anklets of sand deepening around their trunks.

With shutters closed against the gale, wood cabins dotted the plains.  Inside, a new day was dawning as logs were added to open fireplaces and bread was broken.  In one a new life was beginning. The year was nineteen hundred and twenty-four.

                                                    *

Silent hope, an occasional cry of pain, and the scent of oak burning slowly, filled the one room cabin.  The wind howled outside blowing the sand through cracks between the logs and sending an eerie sound down the chimney.  It was such a bleak, poor place, with a dirt floor and uneven wooden shutters over holes cut in the logs for windows.

A man, his small frame prematurely bent from days of hard labor braced himself against the wind as he made his way outside.  He clutched his jacket close to his chest with a calloused hand, and firmly held a faded blue bandanna tightly against his mouth and nose with the other.  The wind was fierce, and escaped past him through the open door.

A scream from inside the little cabin halted his exit.  He turned and looked toward the young woman lying across the lone bed in the room.  Her hair was moist with perspiration, as was her brow.  She glanced toward the door, her pain-filled eyes captured in the gaze of the man.

“Be gone, this is not for your …” she called out, as yet another pain ripped through her body.  He turned quickly, embarrassment clouding the image of a back arched in agony, a fist pressed against clenched teeth.  Slowly making his way through the swirling sand, he resigned himself that birthing was indeed a woman’s job.  His was to provide for his small family.

It would be a difficult day, he decided, as he turned into the lane that led to his neighbor and employer, Fred Green’s farm.  The man would work long and hard hours, planting and pulling cotton.  His pay, the one room log cabin.

                                                        *

Inside the cabin; a small boy, James, lay on a pallet near the fireplace, his head partially hidden by a worn blanket.  He longed to stand next to the warmth of the crackling early morning fire, but the strange sounds coming from the far side of the room kept him under the covers.

He watched the intruding wind as if by magic, make spinning tops from the dirt dance across the floor.  He tried to catch one of the little wonders, only to have it become dirt the instant his tiny fingers touched it.

Near the bed stood a woman of nineteen years.  She was a well experienced mid-wife and the younger sister of the woman who wreathed in labor before her.

“Aunt Dovie,” James said, his voice shallow and filled with fear.

“Not now, child,” she admonished him.  Her voice softened as she leaned over the young woman lying on the bed. 

“Won’t be long now,” she stated.  With gently strokes she wiped the droplets of labor from the woman’s brow and smiled.

Rosa Lee, scurried around the cabin. She as five and although she appeared detached from the sounds, inside was excited and anxious.  She had witnessed James being born, two and a half years ago. She had seen puppies and kittens born.  How she had prayed this baby would be a little sister.

It was her job to keep a fire going under the large cast iron pot, now filled with boiling water.  Loose twigs and small oak branches that she had gathered the night before filled the wood bin next to the fireplace to over-flowing.  She watched the fire lick and catch the dry wood in a dancing array of reds and blues. Her eyes followed sparks that shot upwards toward the opening of the fireplace.  Surely, this is what stars are made of, she thought.

She heard the familiar sound of birth and rushed to the side of the bed.  She looked upon a tiny face, red as a fresh scrubbed beet, crowned with a thick mass of black air.

Rosa Lee knew in her heart without hearing, her prayers had been answered.  She watched as Aunt Dovie quickly wrapped the baby and laid her in the arms of the young woman now lying breathless on the bed.

“Edith Marie Oxford,” she whispered.  Moments of agony were forgotten as she placed her firm nipple inside the tiny mouth and felt the first drop of milk drawn.

                          

                       A touch, a smile, a name – life.