bough and discovered a mat lying flat on the ground. The mat had been woven of reed and laced with brush to create a kind of blind. The whimper came from beneath it. She lifted the mat and found a deep basin dug into the earth. In the basin sat a dun-colored, oblong wicker basket. And in the basket, wrapped in a small, quilted blanket, lay a baby. The child looked to Jenny to be no more than a few weeks old and had thick black hair and a round face and dark little eyes. But what drew Jenny’s attention, what would have drawn anyone’s attention, was the misshapen mouth.
The child had an enormous cleft in its upper lip. It was as if some cruel hand had taken a pair of shears and snipped away a triangle of flesh. Through that cleft, a broad stretch of pink gum showed.
Jenny drew the basket from the basin, and the baby began to cry in earnest. Its little arms poked from beneath the blanket and flailed. Its face grew hot red. Jenny backed out from under the fallen spruce, lifted the child, and cradled it in her arms.
“Oh, little one,” she said softly. “Where are your parents?”She scanned the devastated island and answered her own question. “Caught outside in the storm.” She looked down into the tiny red face with the gaping cleft in its upper lip. “Don’t worry. We’ll find them.”
The child quieted for a moment, pressed against her, and turned its face into her body. She realized it was trying to suckle her breast through the flimsy cotton of her T-shirt.
“You must be starved,” she whispered.
She laid the baby back down in the wicker, and the child began to scream again, though muted, as if it had already cried itself hoarse. Quickly, she returned to the cabin, set the basket on the bunk, and searched the maple tabletop on the far side of the room. Next to the stacked cooking pots, she found two clean glass baby bottles and several nipples.
Behind her, the baby’s cries were growing ever more feverish.
“Hold tight, little one,” she called. “I’ll be right there.”
She lifted the Ball jar, unscrewed the lid, and pulled a kitchen match from the supply inside. She pumped propane into the Coleman stove, something she’d done a zillion times with her father on camping trips, then opened the line to one of the burners and lit a flame. She took a quart-size cooking pot, filled it from the distilled water in one of the plastic jugs, and set the water over the burner to heat. From the opened carton under the table, she grabbed a canister of baby formula, popped the lid, and unsealed the contents. She measured formula into the bottle, filled it with distilled water, screwed on a cap and nipple, and shook it to mix. She set the bottle in the pan of water heating over the burner. Finally, she returned to the baby and took it in her arms. Immediately, its little face turned to her breast, and it tried again to feed.
“I wish I had something for you there,” she said.
Now she smelled it. The baby needed changing. She remembered seeing a squat wicker hamper beside the bunk. When she lifted the lid, she found clean diapers inside, folded neatly, alongwith baby clothing. She took one of the diapers, spread it out on the damp mattress of the bunk, and set the squalling child on it.
“Ah,” she said, when she’d unpinned the soiled diaper. “A boy. No wonder you scream so loud.”
She could tell he hadn’t been changed in a good long while, but fortunately no rash had developed. She grabbed another clean diaper, hurried to the jug of water, and soaked the cloth. At her back, the baby’s screams grew more furious.
After she’d cleaned and rediapered him, all the time working around his flailing limbs, she carried him to the stove, where the bottle was heating.
She bent her face near his and said, as if he could understand, “Not long till dinnertime.”
At last she removed the bottle and shook a few drops onto her wrist to test the temperature. It would do. She plugged the nipple into the