Looking Backward in Darkness. Kathryn Ptacek

      “I don’t know anything about you,” he said after he finished his first sandwich and started on a second. He had never realized how good stale bread and dry cheese could taste. “You married?” She shook her head. “About to be?” She nodded. “And your boyfriend abandoned you, right?”

      “Yeah, how did you know?”

      “Lucky guess. Well, you’re better off without him. He wouldn’t have been much help now, I suspect.”

      “No, Randy said I was getting too fat and ugly.”

      “You’re certainly not ugly. And you’re not fat. You’re pregnant. There’s a big difference.”

      She flashed him a grateful smile.

      “Where you going to?”

      “Home to Omaha. I wanted to be with my family. My parents don’t know about...my pregnancy. I guess my dad will yell a bit, but he really loves me, and my mom will just glare at him until he shuts up. It’s the only place I can go. I was running out of money.”

      “Sounds like a good place, basically.”

      “What about you, Chato?” She was gnawing on her lower lip. She hadn’t made any noise for some time, but he knew she was hurting.

      “I live in Las Vegas; I was coming from New York City going to Dallas-Ft. Worth, but got diverted here. I do odd jobs, I guess you could say, sort of this and that. Sunny is a blackjack dealer at a casino. What else? Well, I grew up in New Mexico.”

      “And you’re Indian,” she said softly.

      “Yeah. Chiricahua Apache.”

      “I went to school with some Sioux. There are a lot of Indians in Nebraska, you know.”

      “Yeah, I know.” He paused as he thought he heard someone speak. Hadn’t they said Gail? No, it couldn’t be. “Hey, I brought along some paper and some pens, and thought after we have our dessert of Paydays or Hershey bars, we could have a rollicking game of hangman. How’s that sound?”

      She winced slightly from pain. “Great. I think I’m ready for my dessert now. What were you doing in New York?” she asked as she peeled back the wrapper.

      “Business. Okay. I was at some meetings in northern New York state.”

      “Are you an Indian activist?” she asked.

      He was surprised by her question.

      She smiled. “I heard about the protests up there with the Mohawks, and just wondered.”

      “Yeah, well, I was there at the same time, although for different reasons. I’m not really an activist, though.” He didn’t want to go into details of the matter that he had handled; he thought it would be too upsetting for her now. There had been some misunderstandings, some deaths; nothing was ever as easy as he thought it would be. He rubbed at a scar on his arm, an red angry-looking scar all too recent. He should know better by now; except that he didn’t.

      She sensed his reluctance and didn’t pursue it. “How about that game now?”

      “Fine.”

      He drew a hanging tree, and twelve spaces below it, then showed her the pad of paper.

      “Twelve letters? Oh, no! I was never good with long words!”

      She had guessed eight of the letters when the really big pain shot through her, and she groaned so loudly he dropped the paper. He realized she’d been huffing her breath for the past few minutes, and he hadn’t even noticed.

      “Oh, damn,” he muttered when he saw her face, and leaped to his feet. The baby was coming.

      Rolling up his sleeves as he dashed into the bathroom, he scrubbed his arms with soap and hot water, dried them, then came back to where Gail lay moaning softly.

      He checked his supplies. He was as prepared as he’d ever be—rolls of paper towels, spare blankets, a bucket of water and sponges. Now, if he just knew how to deliver a baby, he’d feel a little happier about the situation.

      He helped her lay back down on the couch cushions, settled a pillow beneath her head.

      “Okay?”

      She nodded, her breath huffing faster. She seemed to be counting silently. Then she said, “I have too many clothes on. You-you’re going to have to help me.”

      He was embarrassed for himself and for her, too. He helped her remove her panties and push back her dress, and then he draped a blanket over her upraised knees.

      Oh, God, Sunny, he thought, where are you when I need you? He didn’t know that Sunny had ever birthed a baby, but he wouldn’t put it past her, and he knew she’d just stride into this little maternity cubbyhole, take in the situation at once, roll up her sleeves, and that would be that. Sunny would take care of everything.

      Only Sunny wasn’t here; he was.

      “Oh, God!”

      Gail gripped his hand as he told her to push. That’s what they did on TV, he told himself, so he assumed it was close enough to truth.

      “Push again. That a girl. Good. Again.”

      The umbilical cord. What was he going to do about that? Oh, Jesus, what had he gotten himself mixed up in? Then he remembered his pocket knife. He’d clean a blade off the best he could and he’d use that.

      What if the baby died? What if Gail died? What if she bled to death right here? He’d have to go get help, he knew it. But upstairs...was there any help upstairs?

      No. There was just him and Gail and a baby about to be born.

      And almost before he knew it then the baby was coming, and he could see its head, and he told Gail to push harder and harder, and she screamed at him that she was, Goddamnit, and he told her she was doing good, really good, and then all at once there was a baby in his hands. A tiny warm thing covered with blood, and the wrinkled faced contorted itself, and he remembered some dumb medical show he used to watch, and he gently pried open the baby’s mouth and removed mucus, and the baby coughed and started to cry.

      Gail, her hair plastered dark against her forehead, smiled weakly. “Girl or boy?”

      “Girl.”

      “Good. Boys are nothing but trouble. Does she have all her toes and fingers?”

      “Sure does.”

      He cut the umbilical cord, and cleaned the baby gently with the paper napkins and towels, then wrapped her in one of the blankets. He had to clean up. And he had to help Gail clean about.

      Still holding the baby, he stared down at her and she blinked up at him. He felt himself an inane urge to grin foolishly. Babies did that to people, he knew.

      He heard a sound behind him.

      A small white-haired woman stood there. It was, he realized, the woman from the newsstand.

      “I will take over from here,” she said softly, and her eyes were the yellow brown of a wolf’s.

      And he knew that this woman was the part of the reason for his unease.

      He knew in an instant what she was. Bruja. Witch.

      Beyond her something shimmered, and at first Chato thought it was fog that had somehow crept into the terminal, but then he squinted and the fog coalesced. In the rippling light he could see figures that were there but not there, men from the past, dressed in feather headgear, cotton tunics and shields. Their dark bodies glistened as if oiled, and the men grinned fiercely.

      “These are my ancestors,” the woman said. “They suffered much under the whites. And they are hungry for their revenge.”

      Chato didn’t have to ask how they would be brought into this time. He saw the bruja eyeing the baby, and he knew without question she would harm the newborn, would...sacrifice...it.