“Is she now!” Bonard said after Leon told them what had brought him so unexpectedly into town. “Go easy, friend. You’re nervous enough to be yourself the father!” Bonard rolled his cigar in his fingers appreciatively, raised it to his mouth and drew on it deeply. He held the smoke warm and pungent in his mouth and then exhaled it in voluptuous clouds. Looking at Leon, he narrowed his eyes and finally smiled. “She’ll be slim and pretty again,” he said. “And seasoned. There’s nothing like a seasoned woman to set a man to his best.” Bonard looked at Felix, and they laughed together, candid reprobate and remorseless old sinner. Leon looked from one to the other to see if they were laughing at him, and then he laughed with them, without having decided.

At Beulah Land matters that could, progressed quickly, and those that would not, took their time. Lovey was with Lauretta five minutes after Floyd found her having an after-dinner nap on her bed. As she drew outer clothes over the petticoat she had, like Sarah, rested in, she told Floyd to find Myrtis and send her along to her.

As soon as she entered Lauretta’s room, Lovey ordered Lauretta to undress, and then she and Sarah helped her to do it. Presently, Myrtis arrived and knocked on the door and came in without waiting for permission. Occasions of childbirth always embolden women to assume authority. Lovey asked her to stand by in the kitchen, and to post Plumboy as lookout for the doctor’s buggy, and to send the brighter of her two kitchen helpers, Juanita, to assist them as she might be needed.

Unasked, Buttercup and Posie arrived soon after, in clean, starched dresses and aprons, wearing serious looks with an air of knowing which the old give themselves often with no justification other than their own proven survival. As the audience in the room increased, so did Lauretta’s demonstration of discomfort and pain. She whimpered, she moaned and groaned, she beat her hands upon the bed’s sides. She twisted and arched her body. She did everything she could to concentrate attention upon herself, except actually giving birth. Buttercup and Posie whispered together before Buttercup slipped up to the foot of the bed and tied a knot in the corner of the sheet Lauretta lay upon “to help ease the pain.”