Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

His seventeen-year-old fiancé sleeps,

he drives south. Exhaust seeps through

holes in the floor of their Chevy pick-up,

a rusted deathtrap that he curses.

She wakes, she vomits twice, she needs

to pee every two hours. He feeds more

oil into the engine, a scared dog

that shudders above fifty. He watches

her watch the black river of asphalt flow.

Folks back home would be buzzing with gossip

by now. He glances at her

swollen belly, nine months large, not his.

“There’s only one way a girl gets knocked up,”

his best friend’s words pop like distant rifles.

Her water breaks as they pull into town,

a one-stoplight speck, Bethlehem,

Pennsylvania, with no proper hotel

or hospital. Joe ducks inside a bar

to ask about a doctor. Darkness seethes

with folks like them, out-of-towners

needing beds. No vacancies anywhere,

no clean sheets at a bed and breakfast.

Emergency room? Epidural? None.

They hold hands, he prays, “Don’t let Maria

or the baby die. We’ve tried so hard

to do what’s right. People are calling her

a slut and me a fool. You are

our only refuge, our only hope.”

A tap on the window. The bartender

in flannel and jeans nods, “I think I can

help.” They follow him out to pastureland.

He’s called ahead. His wife’s father was

an ob/gyn. She’s cleared off the tool bench

in the garage and spread a faded quilt.

“We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,”

she smiles. She has hot water, dish towels,

rubbing alcohol. Joe follows orders.

Maria’s lost more blood than he’s ever

seen, even butchering a deer. He cuts

the cord with a carpet knife. “Tearing

could have been much worse,” she observes.

He’ll believe anything right now.

A crowd has heard somehow and gathers

outside. They sing those happy hymns, laughing,

Glory Hallelujahs, Holy Holys.

He kneels, Maria kisses his fingers

one by one. He wants most to be slow, gray,

kissing her cheek, recalling this night,

terrible, brimming over, okay now,

after he’s known for years that she was

telling the truth, that this really happened,

that he was the one who wiped blood off

the face of God with his busted up hands

and heard in the baby’s first cry

laughter of the Most High, Creator,

Doer of impossible joys.