"Bailey-HomeBurial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

DALE BAILEY

HOME BURIAL

FEBRUARY GRIPPED THE farm like a fist, and the baby would not let her rest.
Rachel lay wakeful by her sleeping husband and listened. The baby's cry came to
her as a faint protest from the burying ground, patient and mournful as the keen
of wind about the clapboard house.

"Breece," she whispered, shaking him gently. "Breece, listen."

Breece mumbled, rolled over, and dragged her into his embrace, but he did not
wake. Outside, the wind gusted, rattling the knotted fingers of the skeletal oak
that stood by the house and chasing watery moon-cast shadows through the
bedroom. The barn door banged. Gray specks of snow spat beyond the pale square
of the window.

The wind grew louder, drowning out the baby's racket, and Rachel felt a quick
surge of relief that Breece had not awakened. She pulled the rough woolen
blanket close against her breasts, still heavy and sore with milk, and
admonished herself for imagining things. Breece Casey is a practical man, her
mama had told her the week preceding the wedding. He won't tolerate your
day-dreaming and nonsense!

That had been almost a year ago. Sighing, Rachel knotted herself about the
lingering tenderness between her legs. In the chill of the midnight bedroom,
there came to her a series of stark inviolable memories: sweltering summer
nights when Breece had lovingly assembled the tiny crib, hardly a real bed at
all, and she had sewn the unborn child a tiny flannel night dress; another
night, more recent, rank with the doctor's whiskey-stench, the fever vision of
his face distorted by a haze of pain and morphine.

Rachel choked back tears. Squirming from beneath the dead weight of Breece's
arm, she settled herself more comfortably in the goose-down mattress. Quills
pricked her side and back. Every night for two weeks now, the baby's patient
mournful wail had pierced through to her from the burying ground. Imagination,
she told herself, but tonight she was glad for the clamorous fury of the storm.
Wind shrieked through the barren hollows about the house and drove snow against
the window-panes with a gravelly spatter.

Presently, Rachel began to drift. Swept gradually into the tidal rhythms of
Breece's respiration, she dreamed of a sun-dappled forest clearing, the warm
bundle of a breathing child against her breasts, ribbons woven into its fine
hair.

A sound woke her. Her heart pounded against her ribs; frigid air needled her
lungs. Breece slept restlessly beside her, his scored knuckles curved beneath
his chin, his breath sour. Big downy-looking snowflakes swirled beyond the